To the Edge (30 page)

The place was spotless. No newspapers spread around. No empty liquor bottles or boxes of half-eaten takeout or the stench of either one. The white curtains at the sparkling salon windows were neatly tied back. The blue toss pillows on the white upholstery of the sofa were neatly fluffed. No dust gathered on the teak wall paneling or galley table. The carpet had been vacuumed.

Come to think of it, the aft deck had been shipshape, too,
the all-weather furniture neatly arranged instead of scattered about helter-skelter as he'd sworn he'd left it.

"Something wrong?"

He laughed, dragged a hand over his face as he stood in
 
the middle of the salon, taking it all in. "No. Just a surprise is all. Looks like the cabin fairies were here with their magic fey dust. This place was a pit when I left it."

"Is she yours?"

"Ours.
The family's. Dad bought her new back in '88."

All fifty-six foot of her, with her twin Caterpillar 275-horse-power diesel engines and all the comforts of home. "God, he was proud," he said aloud before he realized he'd taken a quick stroll down memory lane, where life had been simple and sweet. They'd had a blast onboard over the years.

"Do you... live here?"

He turned, saw that she was listing a little toward starboard. She was exhausted. Running on fumes. And still a little shocky. He motioned for her to sit, waited until she did before answering. "Temporarily. No one's taken her out for while, so I claimed squatter's rights for the time being."

He crossed the few feet to the open galley and snagged a note stuck to the refrigerator door by a magnet shaped like a seagull.

Cookies and chicken casserole in the freezer.

You're such a slob, sweetie. You owe me.

Love, Mom

He grinned. "My mother," he said by way of explanation when he felt her gaze on his face.

"Aka the cabin fairy?"

He nodded and stuck the note back where he'd found it.

"So .. .how long have you been staying here?"

"About three months." He wandered back to the master cabin and found it as spotless as the rest of the boat.

"Since you separated from the Rangers," she calculated as he ducked back through the doorway.

He met her eyes, girded himself for another game of twenty questions. Only the funny thing was, he didn't feel nearly as resistant to answering them as he had in the past. He wasn't sure what that meant, but he figured it wasn't good. So he made sure his answer was short and to the point in the hope of warning her off.

"Yeah. Since then."

She got the message. And for the better part of a very long minute she just sat there, perched on the edge of the sofa, her hands folded on her lap, glancing around the cabin in a way that said part of her was here, cataloging and familiarizing, but that another part—the scared-out-of-her-wits part—was still back at her penthouse, reliving the shock.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, leaning back against the galley counter and crossing his arms over his chest.

Her gaze darted to his, then back to her hands. She shook her head. He couldn't see her face, but he could see the way she'd clutched her fingers together until they were white. Could see the catch of each breath, the valiant way she held her shoulders stiff and her legs together, like a soldier working to prove with everything in him that he wasn't afraid to die. Hell no, she didn't want to talk about it. Yet he knew that it was probably all she could think about.

All of her leather furniture had been cut to pieces, wooden tables hacked and marred, paintings viciously slashed, pricey antique vases smashed.

Her bedroom... God. Down feathers were everywhere, her white sheets and comforter had been ripped to shreds—her clothes, too. And every mirror in the house was shattered.

But the worst part... the very worst was the huge pool of blood congealing in the middle of what was left of her bed.

So no, she didn't want to talk about it or about Eddie the doorman, who had taken a rap to the head hard enough to knock him out. He was awake now, but he'd never seen what—or, more important, who—had hit him. The intruder had known what they were about. The security station's desk had been jimmied open. Inside the desk had been all the security codes for the building, which explained why the alarms had never sounded.

Nolan watched her for a moment, making some denials of his own. Like the need to go to her, pull her onto his lap, and let her lean and latch onto him for as long as she wanted, as long as she needed. But he knew where it would lead. He wasn't that self-sacrificing. And he didn't have that much self-control.

"How about the fifty-cent tour?" he asked, and told himself it was an attempt to distract her instead of an act of desperation.

She looked up. Forced a smile. "Sure. That way I won't stumble over something in the night if I get restless."

OK. Fine. Whatever. He didn't want to think about her wandering around in the night. Restless. Just like he'd be restless in his own bed.

So, he showed her the
EDEN
from stem to stern, then took her back topside to the foredeck, where they stood in silence, listening to the water, the occasional wisp of a conversation, and watched the small scattering of lights that indicated other boats were occupied as well and that they weren't as isolated as it seemed.

She removed her shoes, then sat with her bare feet dangling over the bow. Hands on the bow rail, she looked over the side where the
EDEN
rode several feet above the water's surface.

"So, you had some good times here."

Well behind her, leaning a shoulder against the flybridge, he watched the moonlight cast creamy shades and shadows over her hair. "Yeah. I don't know how the folks stood it.
 
There wasn't a one of us who wasn't hell on wheels when we were kids. Eve included."

"They named the boat after all of you. Something tells me they stood it very well.

"She's a nice piece of craftsmanship," Jillian added, running her hand across the polished deck. "I envy you the times you spent on her with your family."

Nolan had seen pictures of the Kincaid yacht. While the
EDEN
was shipshape and seaworthy, in contrast the yacht made her look like a dinghy. An old, weatherworn dinghy.

"Daddy uses his yacht for entertaining. I don't know if it's ever been out of port. Crazy, huh? It's fully staffed twenty-four-seven and I don't think he's been aboard more than once or twice this past year."

"Are you a sailor?" He could picture her in open water, her face turned into the wind, her eyes bright with excitement.

"Me? No. I love the water, but when I was a kid I was pretty much involved with gymnastics all the time. It didn't leave much room for sailing."

"How about other things?" he asked, moving forward to help her when she stood.

"Other things?"

He shrugged, then leaned down to pick up her shoes. In the process, he noticed that her toenails were painted bright red. "Didn't you ever get into trouble?"

She laughed, but there wasn't much humor in it. "I was a good girl. Good girls don't get into trouble. They get good grades, toe the line, and set goals."

"Sounds boring."

She started walking aft along the side deck until she reached the ladder that ascended to the top of the flybridge. Instead of climbing it like he thought she might, she leaned back against it and stared up at the stars. "I was too busy to be bored."

He grunted, dragged a cushioned patio chair out of the a deck, and sat down. Because he was tired, he told himself not so he could see her face better in the moonlight. "And I was too busy raising hell."

"I'll bet you were one of those guys all the girls drool over." A speculative smile tilted one comer of her mouth. "Football hero. Good-looking. All attitude and ego."

He slouched back in the chair, laced his fingers together over his abdomen. "Because you smiled when you said that, I'm not going to let myself feel too wounded."

'Tell me about your family," she said abruptly. "Not the newspaper, magazine article stuff. The real stuff. The things that tie you together."

Her hands were above her head now, clutching the handrails on the ladder at her back, her pose unconsciously seductive, unequivocally sexy. Her yellow jacket fell open, the black camisole pulled snug against her breasts. Her short skirt showed enough leg to make his throat feel thick. He noticed her red toenails again.

Details. He'd always had a knack for details.

He looked away. The alternative was to stand up and press her deeper into that ladder with his body, then figure out the fastest way to get her horizontal and naked. He didn't care which order.

But he'd already had this conversation with himself and he already knew that couldn't happen. So he thought about what she'd asked him. And then he started talking and smiling as he remembered.

Once he started, she wouldn't let him stop. She coaxed him with smiles, charmed him with her laughter, delighting in the simplest tales that he'd always taken for granted as his due. But in the small hours of the morning, with the water and the sky and the woman listening in, he slowly realized they were very special and very cherished memories.

Some of which he'd completely forgotten.

"We had a banyan tree in our backyard. My mom was so proud of it. One year a storm came through and cracked one of the trunks. We'd heard Dad talking about how he needed
 
to saw it off before it broke off. He was still on the force then. I must have been... I don't know... maybe five. Anyway, one day Ethan and Dallas decided they'd take care of that limb for him.

"So there they were, both of them straddling it The sucker must have been ten feet off the ground. Anyway, they were sawing like crazy and I was whining on the ground because they wouldn't let me help."

He paused, remembering with a smile. "Finally they sawed through. Only problem was, Dallas was sitting on the hanging side of the cut. When that limb cracked and fell, so did he. Knocked the wind out of him and scared Ethan to death. Me, being the baby and the brat, went running to the house screaming to Mom that Dallas had fallen out of the tree.

"Mom went into a panic. She grabbed me by the shoulders. 'Oh, my God, Nolan. How far did he fall?'". he said, imitating his mother. "Meaning, how many feet did he fall? Because she was scared, I got scared and started bawling. 'All the way to the ground, Mom! He fell all the way to the ground!'"

He paused. Shook his head while she chuckled. "My dad loves telling that story."

"And you like hearing him tell it."

He sat up, leaned forward, and, legs splayed, propped his elbows on his thighs. "Yeah. I guess I do."

And he did, he realized. He liked talking about his family. Got a little melancholy thinking about it. Let down his guard. Because the next thing he knew, he found himself thinking out loud about things he'd never confided to anyone. About things he'd rarely let himself dwell on.

"He's a quiet man, my dad. Normally doesn't have a lot to say. I've never heard him talk about his experience in Nam. And I'd always wanted him to. Wanted to understand his military experience. How he'd felt about coming home to protesters when he'd only been fighting for what he thought was right."

"I imagine he felt much the same way about it as you did."

His gaze cut to hers. "Not the same. Sure, we've had our share of peace protests, but it wasn't the same as what they experienced coming home from Nam."

"Have you ever talked about it? About your experience with anyone?"

Quiet. It had grown so quiet.

And then before his inner hall monitor could step in and take control, he started talking. Just started talking. About Afghanistan. About Iraq. Little bits and pieces just sort of burped out. Then bigger slices. The poverty. The fear in the children's eyes. The soldiers who had died. The bomb-cratered countryside and the sand that seeped into his pores and stung his eyes and he still woke up tasting in his mouth.

"I loved it," he heard himself say. "And I hated it."

And when he looked up and saw by the position of the moon in the sky that he'd been talking for damn near an hour, he shook his head and swore softly.

"Why didn't you shut me off?
"

She had slid to the deck long ago and sat with her legs folded under her hips. "Because I wanted to listen. And because you needed to talk."

Yeah, he realized. Yeah, he had.

And yet he hadn't told her the whole story. He hadn't told her about Will. The man he'd let down. And the reason he was going to move heaven and earth to keep from letting her down, too.

He stood, stiff from sitting for so long, and reached a hand down to her. "Come on. You've got to be beat. You shower first. I'll find a T-shirt for you to sleep in."

She took the hand he offered. Like him, she'd been sitting in one spot too long. She lost her balance and fell against him.

He caught her, cupping his hands on her shoulders to steady her. For the longest moment they stood together that way. Her face tipped up to his. Her eyes glittering in the moonlight. He wanted to pull her flush against him, feel her evening-cooled skin against his, experience the woman softness of her body, and simply sink into everything she was.