Midnight Rainbow (26 page)

           
 
Jane and her parents fell into each other's
arms, laughing and crying and hugging each other exuberantly. Her return called
for a family celebration that lasted hours, so it was late that night before
she and her father had any time alone. Jane had few secrets from her father; he
was too shrewd, too realistic. By silent, instinctive agreement, they kept from
her mother the things that would upset her, but Jane was like her father in
that she had an inner toughness.

           
 
She told him how the entire situation in
Costa Rica
had come about, and even told him about the
trek through the rain forest. Because he was shrewd, he picked up on the
nuances in her voice when she mentioned Grant.

           
 
"You're in love with Sullivan, aren't
you?"

           
 
She nodded, sipping her glass of wine.
"You met him. What did you think about him?" The answer was important
to her, because she trusted her father's judgment of character.

           
 
"I thought him unusual. There's something
in his eyes that's almost scary. But I trusted him with my daughter's life, if
that tells you what you want to know, and I'd do so again."

           
 
"Would you mind having him in the
family?"

           
 
"I'd welcome him with open arms. I think
he could keep you in one place," James said grumpily.

           
 
"Well, I asked him to marry me, but he
turned me down. I'm going to give him a while to stew over it; then I'm going
to fight dirty."

           
 
Her father grinned, the quick, cheerful grin
that his daughter had inherited. "What are you planning?"

           
 
"I'm going to chase that man like he's
never been chased before. I think I'll stay here for a week or two; then I'm
going to
Europe
."

           
 
"But he's not in
Europe
!"

           
 
"I know. I'll chase him from a distance.
The idea is for him to know how much he misses me, and he'll miss me a lot more
when he finds out how far away I am."

           
 
"But how is he going to find out?"

           
 
"I'll arrange that somehow. And even if
it doesn't work, a trip to
Europe
is
never a waste!" It was odd how much he missed her. She'd never been to the
farm, but sometimes it seemed haunted by her. He'd think he heard her say
something and turn to find no one there.
At night…
God, the nights were awful! He couldn't
sleep,
missing
her soft weight sprawled on top of him. He tried to lose himself in hard
physical work. Chores piled up fast on a farm, and he'd been gone for two
weeks.

           
 
With the money he'd been paid for finding
Jane, he was able to free the farm from debt and still have plenty left over,
so he could have hired someone to do the work for him. But the work had been
therapy for him when he'd first come here, still weak from his wounds, and so tightly
drawn that a pine cone dropping from a tree in the night had been enough to
send him diving from the bed, reaching for his knife. So he labored in the sun,
doing the backbreaking work of digging new holes for the fence posts, putting
up new sections of fencing, patching and painting the barn. He
reroofed
the house, worked on the old tractor that had come
with the farm; and thought about doing more planting the next spring. All he'd
planted so far was a few vegetables for himself, but if he was going to own a
farm, he might as well farm it. A man wouldn't get rich at it, not on this
scale, but he knew how to do it. Working the earth gave him a measure of peace,
as if it put him in contact with the boy he'd once been, before war had changed
his life.

           
 
In the distance loomed the mountains, the
great, misty mountains where the ghosts of the Cherokee still walked. The vast
slopes were uninhabited now, but then, only a few hardy souls other than the
Cherokee had ever called the mountains home. Jane would like the mountains.
They were older, wreathed in silvery veils, once the mightiest mountain range
on earth, but worn down by more years than people could imagine. There were
places in those mountains where time stood still. The mountains, and the earth,
had healed him, and the process had been so gradual that he hadn't realized he
was healed until now. Perhaps the final healing had come when Jane had shown
him how to laugh again.

           
 
He had told her to let it be, and she had. She
had left in the quiet morning, without a word, because he'd told her to go. She
loved him; he knew that. He'd pretended that it was something else, the
pressure of stress that had brought them together, but even then he'd known
better, and so had she. Well, hell! He missed her so badly that he hurt, and if
this wasn't love, then he hoped he never loved anyone, because he didn't think
he could stand it. He couldn't get her out of his mind, and her absence was an
empty ache that he couldn't fill, couldn't ease.

           
 
She'd been right; he was afraid to take the
chance, afraid to leave
himself
open to more hurt. But
he was hurting anyway. He'd be a fool if he let her get away.

           
 
But first there were old rifts to try to heal.

           
 
He loved his parents, and he knew they loved
him, but they were simple people, living close to the earth, and he'd turned
into someone they didn't recognize. His sister was a pretty, blond woman,
content with her job at the local library, her quiet husband, and her three
children. It had been a couple of years since he'd even seen his nephew and two
nieces. When he'd stopped by the year before to tell his parents that he'd
retired and had bought a farm in Tennessee, they'd all been so uncomfortable
that he'd stayed for only a few hours, and had left without seeing Rae, or the
kids.

           
 
So he drove down to Georgia, and stood on the
weathered old porch, knocking on the door of the house where he'd grown up. His
mother came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. It was close to noon;
as always, as it had been from the time he could remember, she was cooking
lunch for his father. But they didn't call it lunch in this part of the
country; the noon meal was dinner, and the evening meal was supper.

           
 
Surprise lit her honey-brown eyes, the eyes
that were so like his, only darker. "Why, son, this is a surprise. What on
earth are you knocking for? Why didn't you just come in?"

           
 
"I didn't want to get shot," he said
honestly.

           
 
"Now, you know I don't let your daddy
keep a gun in the house. The only gun is that old shotgun, out in the barn.
What makes you say a thing like that?" Turning, she went back to the
kitchen, and he followed. Everything in the old frame house was familiar, as
familiar to him as his own face. He settled his weight in one of the straight
chairs that were grouped around the kitchen table. This was the table he'd
eaten at as a boy. "Mama," he said slowly, "I've been shot at so
much that I guess I think that's the normal way of things."

           
 
She was still for a moment, her head bent;
then she resumed making her biscuits. "I know, son. We've always known.
But we didn't know how to reach you, how to bring you back to us again. You
was
still a boy when you left, but you came back a man, and
we didn't know how to talk to you."

           
 
"There wasn't any talking to me. I was
still too raw, too wild. But the farm that I
bought,
up in Tennessee… it's helped."

           
 
He didn't have to elaborate, and he knew it.
Grace Sullivan had the simple wisdom of people who lived close to the land. She
was a farm girl, had never pretended to be anything else, and he loved her
because of it.

           
 
"Will you stay for dinner?"

           
 
"I'd like to stay for a couple of days,
if I won't be messing up any plans."

           
 
"Grant Sullivan, you know your daddy and
I don't have any
plans
to go off
gallivanting anywhere." She sounded just like she had when he had been
five years old and had managed to get his clothes dirty as fast as she could
put them on him. He remembered how she'd looked then, her hair dark, her face
smooth and young,
her
honey-gold eyes sparkling at
him.

           
 
He laughed, because everything was getting
better, and his mother glanced at him in surprise. It had been twenty years
since she'd heard her son laugh. "That's good," he said cheerfully.
"Because it'll take me at least that long to tell you about the woman I'm
going to marry."

           
 
"What!" She whirled on him,
laughing, too. "You're pulling my leg! Are you really going to get
married?

           
 
Tell me about her!"

           
 
"Mama, you'll love her," he said.
"She's nuts." He'd never thought that finding her would be so hard.
Somehow he'd thought that it would be as simple as calling her father and
getting her address from him, but he should have known. With Jane, nothing was
ever as it should be.

           
 
To begin with, it took him three days to get
in touch with her father. Evidently her parents had been out of town, and the
housekeeper either hadn't known where Jane was, or she'd been instructed not to
give out any information. Considering Jane's circumstances, he thought it was
probably the latter. So he cooled his heels for three days until he was finally
able to speak to her father, but that wasn't much better.

           
 
"She's in Europe," James explained
easily enough. "She stayed here for about a week,
then
took off again."

           
 
Grant felt like cursing.
"Where
in Europe?"

           
 
"I don't really know. She was vague about
it. You know Jane." He was afraid that he did. "Has she called?"

           
 
"Yes, a couple of times."

           
 
"Mr. Hamilton, I need to talk to her.
When she calls again, would you find out where she is and tell her to stay put
until I get in touch?"

           
 
"That could be a couple of weeks. Jane
doesn't call regularly. But if it's urgent, you may know someone who knows
exactly where she is. She did mention that she's talked to a friend of yours…
let's see, what was his name?"

           
 
"
Sabin
,"
Grant supplied, grinding his teeth in rage.

           
 
"Yes, that's it.
Sabin
.
Why don't you give
him a call? It may save you a lot of time." Grant didn't want to call
Kell
; he wanted to see him face to face and strangle him.
Damn him! If he'd recruited Jane into that gray network…!

           
 
He was wasting time and money chasing over the
country after her, and his temper was short when he reached Virginia. He didn't
have the clearance to go in, so he called
Kell
directly. "Sullivan. Clear me through. I'll be there in five
minutes."

           
 
"Grant—"

           
 
Grant hung up, not wanting to hear it over the
phone.

           
 
Ten minutes later he was leaning over
Kell's
desk. "Where is she?"

           
 
"Monte Carlo."

           
 
"Damn it!" he yelled, pounding his
fist on the desk. "How could you drag her into this?"

           
 
"I didn't drag her,"
Kell
said coolly, his dark eyes watchful.
"She
called
me.
 
She said she'd noticed
something funny and thought I might like to know. She was right; I was highly
interested."