Never Trust A Lady

After the waitress left, for a while they did just that, other needs put aside while they attended with silent concentration to one perhaps even more fundamental. Perhaps. Because, with an empty bowl and a full stomach, Jane found her thoughts returning to-if indeed they’d ever really left-that other hunger, the one so rudely, so voraciously awakened by the gentle press of this stranger’s mouth on hers. By the weight and warmth of his body, the electrifying caress of his fingers. The hunger that, once awakened, stubbornly refused to creep back into hibernation.

Tom Hawkins… Always a fast eater, having disposed of her bowl of chowder while her companion was barely beginning his assault on his steak, she watched him narrowly through the steam from her refilled coffee cup and thought how strange it was that features so forbidding and irregular should have become, in so short a time, so pleasing to her eyes.

Man From Interpol… How alien that sounded, without reality, like the title of a book, or a movie. And how impossible now to think of him that way. Now he was just…a man, a flesh-and-blood man, in need of a shave, a shower and a good night’s sleep, a man who had covered her with his jacket and watched over her while she slept, a man whose hands had touched her in intimate places, a man whose tongue she’d tasted.

A man who played games in which the stakes were human lives.

How could this have happened? she thought. To me.

“I think,” said Hawk, pushing aside his plate and reaching for his coffee, “we’d better talk about what we’re going to do.” He felt much better for having a decent meal under his belt, much less off balance, much more in control. A good night’s sleep, he thought with dogged optimism, and I’ll be back on track again.

Jane was nodding, regarding him steadily, as she had been for a while now, across the rim of her coffee mug. She’d been hiding behind that damn mug, it seemed to him, ever since they’d sat down. Which was probably just as well. Her eyes were bad enough, dark and disturbing as the sea just before a storm, but vulnerable, too, and smudged with shadows. He wasn’t sure that in his own exhausted state he would have been able to look at her mouth and have the willpower and concentration to block out the way it had felt…tasted… Or to stop himself from thinking about how much he wanted to taste her again.

He lit a cigarette, then said, “I still don’t think there’s much use trying to get back to the mainland tonight. It would take us till morning to get anything accomplished anyway. Better we check into a motel here, get some rest I’ve, uh, arranged for a flight out in the morning.”

She’d been nodding, going along with him, but when he said that, she pulled up, looking surprised. “A flight? You mean, an airplane?”

“Yeah, there’s an airstrip here.”

“Air…strip. You mean, a small plane.”

He quirked a smile at her. “Little one.”

She murmured, “Oh,” and her eyes flicked sideways in a way that made him uneasy.

“Don’t tell me-you get airsick.”

Her eyes were wide, the smudges under them making her seem very young and apprehensive, like a child contemplating a Ferris wheel. “I don’t know. I’ve never been in a little plane before.”

He felt a sudden and unsettling tenderness toward her, which probably accounted for the brusqueness with which he said, “Hey-don’t worry. You’re gonna love it”

The funny thing was, he realized as he stubbed out his cigarette, reached for the check and shoved back his chair, that he knew it was true. Once she got used to the idea, she would love flying, the adventure of it, the breathtaking thrill, the excitement. And it wouldn’t make any difference to her if she did get airsick, she’d enjoy it anyway, just because the experience was new. And how was it he knew so much about her, when he actually knew her barely at all?

“My kids are never going to believe this,” he heard her mutter as she followed him to the cash register.

He turned to scowl at her, one hand in his pocket, groping for change. “You got kids?” Of course she had kids. The woman practically had a sign around her neck that said MOM. Just another thing he’d managed to forget while he was doing the tongue tango with her back there in the truck. One more reason why he had to forget about it, put it out of his mind.

Sure. The way he could forget the taste of a ripe peach, or a fine, sweet Tuscany wine.

“Two daughters,” she said, hitching her tote bag onto her shoulder. “Lynn’s in college and Tracy’s a senior in high school. What about you?”

He didn’t reply, pretending his business with the cashier was occupying so much of his attention that he hadn’t heard the question. Because another thing he’d come to understand about her in the brief time he’d known her was that she was too polite-or maybe too sensitive-to ask again.

He turned from the register with a frown to inquire as he tucked away his wallet, “You need to call? Let somebody know where you are?” Like your husband, he thought, and put the leaden feeling in his chest down to tiredness.

The question had been meant to distract, and it did, even though he had a feeling she knew perfectly well what he’d done. She made a wry little grimace. “I tried, from the terminal.” Then, with a smile and a shrug, “It is Saturday night. I got the answering machine. I left a message-just told them I’d call tomorrow. Even if they had tried to reach me at the hotel, I don’t think they’d worry. They’d just assume I was out seeing the sights in Washington, or maybe having dinner, or something.”

As he held the door for her, he played back what she’d said, frustrated to realize he still didn’t know whether or not she had a husband, angry with himself for wanting to know. And damned if he was going to ask her.

“We’ll call the hotel,” he said, “as soon as we get settled in here. Take care of checking out. You’re probably going to want to have your things sent.” He reached for her tote bag, shrugged it onto his own shoulder. He did it unthinkingly, an automatic response to something he’d all but forgotten, like hearing a song he hadn’t thought of for years and discovering he still knew the words. “I can have somebody from headquarters take care of it for you, if you like.”

Again he felt her eyes flick at him, quickly and then away. “Thank you. I’ll try the hotel first. If there’s any problem…” She let her words trail off into nothing.

They were walking unhurried in the cold March night, the breeze damp and sea-smelly, the sandy pavement gritty underfoot. Jane suddenly shook herself and wrapped her arms across her body as if she was cold, but when she spoke it was in a soft, ecstatic voice, full of wonder and a fierce kind of joy. “How quiet it is here, have you noticed? No man-made sounds at all, only nature. And look how bright the stars are. It reminds me of when I was a child. the mountains…the desert… I wish-”

She would have left it there, but for some reason, not knowing why he did, he prompted her, “You wish…?”

She shrugged and laughed her low, self-deprecating signature laugh. “Oh, just that I guess I wish I’d known then how lovely it was-the desert, I mean. I hated it-fealty. I wanted to go…somewhere else. Anywhere else. And everywhere else. I wanted to see the whole world…backpack all over Europe, see London, Paris, Rome, Madrid. And I was so afraid I was never going to get to see any of it, except for that damn desert.”

“Well, there you go,” said Hawk gruffly. “See how wrong you were?”

“Yes…” But he thought she sounded sad. After a moment, in a different, lighter tone, she said, “This was one of the places I dreamed of going, do you know that? The outer islands…I’d read about the wild ponies, you see. And the Atlantic Ocean…wow, it seemed as far away as Mars.”

Restless and reaching for his cigarettes, he said dryly, “It’s okay now, I guess. Not so nice in the summertime. Sure as hell not quiet.”

He could feel her eyes touch him with that brightening look of hers. “Oh-have you been here before? Really?”

Kicking himself, he drew hard on his cigarette and exhaled with the answer. “Yeah, I’ve been here.”

He was here with his wife. As soon as the thought touched her mind, she knew it was true, just as she knew his wife must also be the childhood friend whose name he refused to speak. The friend and wife whose death had cast him into a lonely exile of grief from which he couldn’t seem to find his way back. How did she know? She just did. She knew.

Compassion filled her, spreading like Novocain through her heart so that she no longer felt her own pain. Softly,