This Love Will Go On (8 page)

“Where's Tate?”

“Marc is watching him. Jade, I…I'm sorry for what I said back there. I know…I know it's been hard for you and I understand how you feel.  I'm not trying to come between you and Tate. I would never do that. But I can't let Tate grow up with your terrible prejudice against women.”

“Is that what I have?”

In the soft sunlight, her eyes burned with earnestness.  “You have a perfect right to feel the way you do, I realize that.  But all women aren't like my sister. She was never satisfied here. She shouldn't have married you.”

“Tell me something I don't know.”  His smile was ironic.

She shook her head in mild exasperation.  “Don't try to keep me away from Tate.”

He gazed at her.  “How long will your devotion last, Raine?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Right now, Tate's an interesting diversion for you. But you've been seeing this…Martin regularly, haven't you? Suppose you decide to get married.”  He waited a breathless silence.

“Suppose I do.” She lifted her chin and above the dark fur collar, the line of her throat was creamy, enticing. “That doesn't mean I'll see any less of Tate.”

In a quiet, deadly voice, he said, “He's a lifetime commitment, Raine.”

She stared back at him. “I realize that even if my sister didn't. Stop linking me in your mind with her.” Her voice was as frosty as the air around them. “We're not alike at all.”

Her gray eyes glistened with defiant anger. He met her silvery gaze, fighting that electric sensation of sexual energy her close proximity gave him.  “I’ll try to remember that,” he said softly.

For a moment, she looked stunned. Then the dark pupils of her eyes dilated, and for the first time she seemed conscious of the cold. She shivered and wrapped her coat around her, her eyes never leaving his. She turned to go, her back straight, her head proud and high. He wasn’t conscious of speaking until he heard her name leaving his throat. In the frosty air it sounded like a groan of pain.

Slowly, teetering a little on her high heels she turned back. “What is it?”

He stood for another long moment, watching the way the wind took her hair and swirled it around her shoulders, molded her coat against the slender lines of her body.  “Come here.”

She hesitated for an endless eternity. Then she shook her head.  “No.”

The word echoed in his ears as if she had shouted it when in reality her voice was huskily soft. “I need to hold you.” He heard his own words with a kind of detached amazement.  He had sworn he would never be vulnerable to a woman again. And here he was, cutting his heart open for the sister of the woman who had betrayed him.  It didn't matter.  He needed her so much he ached with it.

“I can’t.”

He didn't move.  He wasn't going to move toward her or grab her.  She had to come to him of her own volition.  She had to want him as much as he wanted her.  “Raine.”

She cried, “Don't ask me.  Don't.”

“I…” he gritted his teeth.  “I need you.”

“You don't need me.”  Her voice trembled with the intensity of her emotions.  “Any woman would do.”  Her eyes went molten silver.

“Listen to me…”

"No," she shook her head. "Don't lie to me.  Michele has been gone for almost a year and you've done nothing to dissolve the marriage.  I can't get involved with you, Jade. I want a man who is free to love me for the woman I am.”

Her silvery eyes played over him.  He stood watching her, conscious that the sun had disappeared behind the edge of the earth and the landscape was more gray and bleak than ever.  “Martin?” he asked, his mouth curling.  “Is Martin your candidate for that honor?”

His caustic tone made her draw in a sharp breath.  “I don’t know,” she said finally.  “Possibly.”  She turned away from him to walk down the snowy road with her head high, leaving him there to stare after her in the dusky light.

He spent a restless night. The next morning he opened up his computer and made reservations on the seventeenth for a trip to New York City.  His second task wasn't as easy. Raine's voice sounded casual and familiar when she said hello, but when he identified himself, her voice turned icy.

He steeled himself and said, “I wonder if you could take care of Tate for me for a few days.”

There was that little pause of surprised silence. Then she said, “Yes, of course.”

“I’d like to bring him in tonight if I may.”

After a bit she said, “I don't think there will be any problem.  I'll get the bed in Michele's old room ready.  I can take him to school in the morning when I go to work and pick him up in the afternoon.”

“Good.  I’ll see you later on this evening, then.”

All day, she felt it, the tenseness, the waiting, the uneasy anticipation. Jade had evidently taken her words to heart about being able to share Tate with her, or he would never have asked her to take care of him.  But where was Jade going in the dead of winter?

It was snowing again when Jade's pickup pulled up in front of Julia's house. Raine met them at the door, the tall lean man and the young boy with flushed cheeks and bright eyes who was excited about staying with Aunt Raine and Grandma Julia.

“I'll take the suitcase,” she said, reaching for it, brushing his knuckles with her soft fingers.

He relinquished the case and watched her as she went up the stairs.  She wore a dress, a fine wool one, in a soft beige color that brought out the gold in her hair. As she ascended the stairs, he could see the shapely curves of calf and thigh encased in nylon stockings.

Tate tugged impatiently at his hand. “Put the sled out on the porch, Daddy.”

Julia insisted that Jade stay for supper. After supper, at the table surrounded by enough .plants to fill a greenhouse, Jade sent Tate into the other room to play while they had their coffee.  He drew a piece of paper out of his pocket.  “There's the address and phone number of the hotel where I’ll be in New York City.'”  Raine's reaction was a sudden dark flare of color in her cheeks. Seeing her body betray her made his stomach tighten.

Julia recovered first “You're going to see Michele?”

“Yes.  Is there anything…”

Julia shook her head.  “We hear from her occasionally.  I don't need you to carry my messages." Julia's normally soft voice had a crisp edge.   “Be careful, won't you, Jade?  New York City is a big place.”

“I'll be careful,” he promised, unable to take his eyes off Raine. She sat very still and said nothing to him…not even goodbye.

He hated the city; he always had. Once before he had come East and then he had carefully put away his Western clothes and purchased a suit and a pair of tight-fitting shoes. This time, he said to hell with it, and when he checked in to the Roosevelt Hotel, he wore his sheepskin jacket and his comfortable old boots. No one batted an eye at his clothes, except a couple of women who gave him admiring glances.  Did they think he was a Texas rancher with oil wells to support his cattle operation?  He sure as hell wished he was.

Installed in his room, he looked around. From the window he could see only a concrete well created by the walls of the buildings surrounding the hotel. Vertical lines all of them, and to a man accustomed to scanning the wide expanse of the prairie, it was like being locked in a prison.

He turned away, a soft growl of disgust escaping him and reached for the phone…then stopped. He'd be a fool to give Michele advance notice. He knew where she was rehearsing. She hadn't hesitated to tell him during one of their brief telephone calls. She'd called to ask about Tate and had given him the address and telephone number where she could be reached. He suspected that it was Costelino's apartment. He no longer cared.

He looked at his watch. Two o'clock. He'd wait until later in the afternoon, toward suppertime. He flung himself down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He wondered what Tate was doing.  At least he didn't have to worry about his boy. Raine would take care of him. Raine loved the boy as much as he did. Raine…images poured through his mind. Raine at sixteen, staring up at him indignantly, her denims torn from the barbed wire fence she had followed him through. Raine on the back of a horse, looking like a graceful young animal with her incredible hair flowing out behind her. Raine, an adult woman with Tate sleeping against her breast.

He grimaced, feeling the tension in his shoulders, his back, his thighs. He had to relax, get control of himself. He would need all his wits to bargain with Michele.  How could he have been so wrong about her? Ironically, it was that wild, restless quality that had attracted him to her in the first place. She'd seemed so alive, so vibrant.  When she told him she loved him, he'd thought his life was complete. But the first winter they were married the weather was severe even for South Dakota. They'd had two weeks of bitter cold, and almost five feet of snow fell. The blizzard confined them to the ranch house.  He had tried to console her.  He'd carried in wood for the fireplace, gone into the stock of wine, wooed her on the dreary winter nights when the wind howled around the house.  At first, she'd enjoyed the lovemaking.  But as the days went on and their isolation continued, she became irritable and petulant.  When she discovered she was pregnant, she was livid with rage.  It was then that he’d begun to love her less. By the time she left, he felt nothing for her. She had borne his child, but she didn't love Tate.  She was incapable of loving anyone…and she had damn near robbed him of the ability to love anyone as well. In his pain and rage, he'd lashed out at Raine…his body tensed. Hell! This was getting him nowhere. He had to get out of this room, away from his thoughts, his thousand regrets.  He'd go out and find a coffee shop and stay there until it was time to go to the theater.

He'd expected a theater, not a church, except that it was unlike any church he’d ever seen.  There were boards where the stained glass windows should have been. He squinted at the old sprawling building tucked in between two high-rises.  The steeple was painted a bright, robin's egg blue.  “Are you sure this is the right place?”

The cabdriver bristled.  “This is the address you gave me, buddy.  Either pay the fare and get out or I start the meter going again.”

Jade handed him the money and got out.

Inside, the floor creaked under his booted feet.  The entryway was a sort of pinky-lavender that smote the eye. He followed the path of a plastic runner over the dark blue carpeting and came around the corner to what must have once been the sanctuary of the church. The altar area had been expanded and converted into a stage.  Michele was on it, saying lines that made no sense to him.

A burly man, obviously the watchdog, rose out of the wooden seats.  “Sorry, buddy.  Nobody's allowed to watch rehearsals.”  He took a step toward Jade. He was Jade's height and forty pounds heavier.

Jade stood his ground.  “I came to talk to my wife.” He nodded in Michele's direction, his cold tone matching his adversary's.

Michele stopped and looked out from the stage. He could see her straining, trying to see from the lighted stage into the darkened hall. From a seat about a third of the way back, Tony Costelino rose.

Jade stood, meeting Michele’s gaze, his hands clenched.  It was a danger signal and Michele knew it.

After a long, loaded silence, she said in a casual tone, “Let him stay, Matt. He won't bother me.”

From his place in the empty row of seats, Tony shook his head. “We'll take a break. It's time, anyway.”

The other actor on the stage shrugged his shoulders and moved away from Michele. She turned and disappeared in the wings. A second later, she appeared at a doorway on the side of the stage. She walked gracefully up the aisle, stopping beside Costelino and linking her arm in his. 
Even with all her bravado, she needs his support
.  Jade was amazed at his own ability to coolly analyze the actions of a woman he had once loved.

“You're a long way from home, cowboy.” Her voice had changed. She'd only been gone a matter of months, and she was like a creature from another planet.

“So are you,” he drawled.

She smiled at him, a feline, amused smile. “No.  I'm more at home here than I ever was in South Dakota. I belong here.”

He thought that was probably true.  “I'm glad you finally found your niche.” At her arched eyebrow, he said, “I'm only here because you left a few ends dangling.”

“Did I? What ends?”

Jade's eyes moved over Costelino.  “Is there any place where we could talk?  Alone?”

Costelino took Michele's arm and unwrapped it from his.  “Go on and talk to him. I'll see if I can figure out what's wrong with your microphone.”

“Sit down.”  She gestured toward an aisle seat.  He looked at hard chair and said, “Isn’t there a place where we could get a cup of coffee?”

“Across the street.  Are you paying?”

“I always do,” he growled.

The coffee shop was clean.  It had highly varnished table tops and glass pastry cases that reflected his own grim face back to him. Michele slid into a booth and looked expectantly at him.  He strolled to the counter and got coffee in plastic cups and handed one to her.

She lifted the cup to her lips.  “I assume there's nothing wrong or you would have called.”