Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady) (7 page)

“Jake, what are you doing? I thought we were going out for dinner?” Monica’s voice was still soft, but somehow a thin edge of frustration was finding its way through.

“In a minute.” Jake pointed the remote control at his television, punched the channel button grimly, switching through several channels. A stream of pictures flashed past – a car flying over a cliff and bursting into flames, a baby-faced blond holding a bottle of shampoo and simpering at someone off-camera. The picture settled on a depressed young man who talked with forced enthusiasm.

Monica protested, “That’s a sports broadcast. You’re not a football enthusiast.”

“Depends who’s playing.” Jake frowned heavily at the sports announcer. “The weather’s next.”

Storms in the Gulf of Alaska. He’d caught just the tail end of a marine weather update when he turned on the radio in his car half an hour ago. Monica had been settling her skirts into the bucket seat of Jake’s sports car, still talking about the play they had just seen. Jake had heard the words
gale warning
as the volume came up on the car speaker, but Monica’s voice had drowned the rest.

Where was Jenny now? Did that lover of hers have any idea how to handle a boat in a storm? He shouldn’t have let her go. He should have done more, somehow made her see that sailing around the north Pacific in a small sailboat wasn’t a game.

“Are we going out?” Monica asked patiently.

“In a few minutes,” he answered absently. “I want to catch the weather.”

Monica waved a hand towards his living room window. “You can
see
the weather. Rain! You dashed back here as if you had the devil on your tail. Driving like a maniac, breaking the speed limit, then—”

“I heard there was a storm in the Gulf of Alaska.” He was sitting on the edge of a large chair, glaring at the announcer.

“It’s Jenny? You’re worried about Jenny?”

He used the controller to turn the volume up, then back down. His face was grim as he said, “That’s my part of the country. I grew up on the Queen Charlotte Islands – summers, anyway. My mother’s family were mostly fishermen. I spent my summers fishing, finding out just how wild those waters can be.”

“Jenny can look after herself.”

Jake turned away angrily, remembering Jennifer sitting in that coffee shop at the airport the day she left. She’d agreed to let him drive her to the airport and they had come out from the city in silence, Jenny staring out the window, presumably dreaming of her damned George. Jake had pretended to concentrate on the traffic while he tried to think of a way to talk sense into her.

He couldn’t believe she would throw up everything for a man whose name he’d never even heard until a few days ago.

In the five years since she’d walked into his studio, he’d seen her work her way through a string of admirers. He’d watched jealously, yet never believed any of them mattered to her. She kept them all at a distance. Certainly he had never thought Jennifer might leave him for one of them. She was too damned
good
at her job to just walk away like that.

But she had done it, and only unwillingly accepted his offer of a ride to the airport. She’d insisted on dragging one of the heavy suitcases into the terminal building on her own, until he’d grabbed it away from her and stalked to the ticket counter. He had slid both suitcases onto the scales with muscular ease that he would never have admitted was a deliberate show of superior strength.

She’d had a routine conversation with the woman at the counter – Yes, two pieces of luggage. Non-smoking – no, not a window seat.

In the course of work, Jennifer had often flown with him to locations where he was filming. She had always arranged to let Jake have the window seat, placing herself in an aisle seat. If he thought of it at all, he had assumed she gave him the window seat because she knew he enjoyed looking out as they flew. Now, after five years, it occurred to him that she was nervous of flying, that she had always been oddly silent when they were in the air.

How on earth could she be afraid to fly, yet willing to trust a man named George to pilot her over the high seas?

“Gate twenty-nine, four o’clock,” the ticket clerk pronounced.

Jenny took her boarding pass and slipped it into her shoulder bag, swinging back to Jake, eager to take her leave and get on her way to that blasted George.

She was dressed casually for traveling – jeans and a light blouse under a loose sweater that hinted enticingly at the fullness of her breasts. He kept finding his eyes straying to the tightness of the denim across her hips, the curves revealed by the soft sweater.

“Thanks for the ride, Jake.” She stepped out of the way of a young woman lugging a toddler and two suitcases.

Jake stared down at her, wishing he could take her in his arms, realizing that she really
was
going. He had no idea how he could make her see reason. He’d never been able to get close to her except when they were working.

“Thanks,” Jennifer said again. He wondered why she was so nervous of him. “I’ll go to the gate now. I may as well.”

“You’ve got an hour. Let’s go have a coffee.” He grasped her elbow and steered her out of the path of a volubly French group wheeling past with two luggage carts piled high with suitcases. He avoided her eyes, knowing she wasn’t coming willingly. “Are you hungry, Jennifer? Did you have lunch?”

She shook her head and he urged her on, propelling her ahead of him.

“Here, let’s get out of this crowd. All of Vancouver must be flying today. Now which? You’re not hungry? Or you didn’t have lunch?”

“It doesn’t matter. They’ll feed me on the plane.“

Once he had her seated in the restaurant, he ordered her a light lunch and she didn’t protest. She sat staring silently out the window. He had to work at distracting her.

“Did you see the photographers gathering near the Air Canada counter?“

She had shaken her head, making him uncomfortably aware that she didn’t want to be with him.

“I wonder who they’re waiting for,” he persisted. “Someone said something about the Prime Minister’s wife.”

“I doubt that. She probably travels on government jets all the time.”

“Don’t be cynical, Jennifer,” he had teased and, finally, she had laughed.

“Jennifer, do you— what are your plans for this sailing trip? Your itinerary? This George, does he know what he’s doing? Now, don’t get prickly, Jenn— lord, you’re temperamental these days. I’m just concerned about you.”

He hadn’t often heard impatience in her voice, but now she said abruptly, “I’ve sailed before, Jake. I grew up sailing, spending my summers on the water.”

“At Campbell River, for God’s sake!” he burst out angrily, frustrated by his inability to make her see reason.

She bristled, pushed her hair back and said aggressively, “I’ll have you know, we’ve had some pretty heavy weather up there.”

“That’s protected waters,” he scoffed. “Sure, the winds blow, but you never get the kind of seas they get in the Dixon Entrance – where are you going, Jennifer? The boat’s in Ketchikan?” She nodded and he pressed on, “What’s your first port of call after you leave? When are you leaving?”

She looked across the table, away from him. He followed her gaze. She was looking out the window at the runway. Was she in that much of a hurry to get to her lover? She said, “Jake, our plans aren’t that definite. We’re stopping at the Queen Charlotte Islands – it’s the logical first stop, just across Dixon Entrance.”

His overactive imagination supplied a graphic vision of the two of them, drifting in some secluded bay, in intimate loneliness. Monica, he reminded himself grimly, trying to drown out one fantasy with another. It didn’t work. It never did. He was cursed with wanting the one woman who wouldn’t let him near.

“
Just!
Jennifer, do you have any idea what that stretch of water can be like?”

“Jake, I—”

He leaned forward, pleaded, “Shouldn’t you think about this more? After all, this George is a pretty new event in your life. You’re throwing away everything for someone you hardly know.”

She stared at him for a long, heavy minute. When she did answer, her voice was flat and angry.

“You’re making a lot of assumptions, aren’t you, Jake? I haven’t told you anything, but you’re determined to jump to conclusions. First you’ve got me taking a job with your competition, then running off on a sudden— a sudden love affair. None of this is your business, but – just as a point of information – I’ve known George a lot longer than I’ve known you.”

“I don’t believe it,” he insisted over a sick fear. Why the hell did it matter to him? She’d never been even slightly interested in him as a man. He wanted her back because he needed her in the studio. This sexual attraction would go away sooner or later. He found himself insisting, “I don’t believe in this love affair with George.”

She’d always been so cool. He’d seen the ice in her eyes when she caught him watching her, when she’d sensed his attraction to her. He’d seen her with other men, and he would have sworn it was the same. She kept everyone at a distance.

Was George the reason for it all? For George, was she a passionate lover, giving out the warmth, the passion he sometimes thought he sensed in her?

“You don’t believe—” Jennifer started to say angrily, then her voice lost its heat, dropped. “But it doesn’t matter what you believe, does it?” She smiled without any humor. “Excuse me for a minute.”

He should have realized what she was up to, but he actually thought she was going to the ladies’ room. He watched her, then jerked to his feet as she went through the doors to the main terminal and just kept walking.

She’d left him tied up with a furious waitress who was just bringing a seafood salad and clam chowder to their table. The waitress was quickly reinforced by the restaurant manager, an aggressively dangerous woman dressed in a severe gray suit. Jake managed to free himself from the whole embarrassing incident with quick apologies and ready cash.

Jennifer was nowhere in sight.

“Damn!” he cursed, earning himself a severe reprimand from an elderly woman who rushed past with her purse clutched tightly to her breast.

What had gotten into Jennifer, transforming her from her usual quiet, helpful, dependable stability into— into what? He’d always known she was hiding her feelings from him, but he hadn’t expected this strangely contrary woman who seemed to be determined to do the craziest, the most—

He caught up with her just as she was passing through the security checkpoint.

“Jennifer!”

She ignored him, smiling brightly at the guard as she handed him her handbag.

Jake moved between Jennifer and the security booth. “Now, listen—”

“Your boarding pass, sir?” The uniformed man stepped between them as Jennifer walked briskly through the X-ray scan.

“I’m not a passenger. I just want to talk to—”

“Sorry, sir. You can’t go beyond this point without a boarding pass.”

And Jennifer was gone, walking around the corner, with only a quick, unrepentant glance back.

Jake stared at the television set, oblivious to the details of today’s football game, waiting for what he’d come for. The weather. Just how detailed did they get on this channel? He couldn’t remember, hadn’t really cared before.

“Are we going out?” Monica asked, not for the first time.

“Yes,” he said absently, wishing he’d never started dating her. “In a few minutes.”

What a fool he’d made of himself in that flaming airport! Jennifer, turning contrary and elusive, had been like a red flag to a bull. First the embarrassment in the restaurant, then leaving him standing like a fool at the customs counter.

Damn! No one had made a fool of him since the day he went to art school over the protests of his father’s family. Only Jennifer, damn her! He’d never been able to get anywhere near her. Was that why she’d been so fascinating to him from the beginning?

When Jennifer first started working for him, he’d been in the middle of a casual affair. He’d ended it immediately, turning his attention to this mysteriously quiet girl with the deep, stubborn eyes.

She’d said no when he asked her to dinner – but she’d accepted an invitation from the accountant in the office downstairs. When she stopped dating the accountant, Jake had tried again, inviting her to a show he knew she wanted to see.

She had been silent for a long moment, concentrating on the papers in front of her. Then she had met his eyes directly and said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

He hadn’t asked again. He hadn’t stopped wanting her, but he thought he’d stopped showing it. After a while, he came to see how valuable an assistant she was, and he told himself he was glad that he hadn’t ruined a good working relationship for a short-lived affair.

But now she was leaving, walking away and leaving him on the wrong side of an airport security check. He stood staring at the empty hallway, finally becoming aware of the uniformed guard who was smiling, as if he had seen it all before.

If she thought she could walk away that easily, evade him by walking through a gate and laugh back from the other side…

“I want a ticket on the flight to Ketchikan!” he demanded of the ticket clerk back at the terminal. “The one that’s boarding at gate twenty-nine now.”