Against the Wind (8 page)

Maddy looked up at him, up into the hazel eyes that had once burned into hers, hazel eyes that had, according to her mother, watched an entire village of women and children slaughtered by his fellow soldiers in Vietnam and he hadn’t been able to stop them. Had he even tried? And if he hadn’t tried, would anything stop him from being equally brutal to her? He’d spent the last fourteen years on the outposts of civilization, doing penance as he protected Samuel Lambert. But just how far had he come?

He waited, seemingly patient, but the tension was thick in the room. Luis had a look of delicious anticipation on his face, obviously hoping she would refuse. Ramon looked deeply troubled, adding to Maddy’s suspicion that Jake’s request was only a thin excuse. But excuse for what?

Slowly she rose, throwing back her shoulders. “A walk in the garden would be very pleasant,” she said slowly.

Jake’s smile was less than reassuring.

He didn’t touch her this time. He didn’t need to. The sheer force of his presence was enough to cow her into obedience, at least temporarily. She followed him docilely enough, past the smirking Luis and the concerned Ramon, through the deserted, darkened hallways, back up the stairs. She half expected him to take her back to the front courtyard with its profusion of flowers, but instead he veered sharply to the left, past a series of empty, desolate-looking rooms, stopping outside a heavy door.

It was bolted, and it took him more than a moment to deal with the solid-looking locks. Maddy watched with silent interest, taking the moment to relive the feel and the memory of him. The hands she remembered, large and strong and tanned. The long legs, encased in khaki rather than those dark suits, also brought back lascivious teenage fantasies. The way he tilted his head, that distant, mocking glance that he cast down at her before he opened the door. How many times had he looked at Helen Currier Lambert in just that way? He’d hated her mother, and now it looked as if he might hate her.

She could only try again. “Jake, you can’t have forgotten,” she said in her most reasonable tone of voice as she
halted by the doorway. “What about the first time we met, in my father’s kitchen? You made coffee, and I’d gone swimming. It was the summer of the presidential election and you—”

“I don’t remember,” he said flatly.

“But you must. What about when you taught me to play poker? Or the night we stayed up late in the pool house, talking? And you remember Stephen, and how worried I was about him. You can’t have forgotten all that.” Her voice sounded desperate, pleading in the fragrant stillness, but Jake was clearly unmoved.

He looked down at her, and his eyes were opaque in the afternoon silence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said wearily. He gestured to the tiny courtyard ahead of them. “After you, Allison.”

Maddy could see the familiar profusion of flowers, hear the faint buzz of bees, and she was uncertain whether to believe him or not. She held her ground, glaring up at him mutinously. She had made him call her by her name once before; she could do it again. She had to reserve that small triumph in the face of a total rout.

He cocked his head to one side, and his eyes were enigmatic. “You’re waiting for me to call you Maddy?”

She nodded, controlling the urge to meet his gaze. She wasn’t entirely sure she was capable of keeping that beseeching look from her own expressive eyes, and she was through with pleading.

“It’ll be a cold day in hell,” Jake said, clamping his large hand around her elbow. A moment later she was shoved out into the garden, half dragged, half pulled, as he slammed the door behind them.

Did he know his own strength? Probably. Did he know those long, steely fingers were digging into the tender flesh of her arm, making her forget about the throbbing
of her rib, giving her nothing but sheer rage to focus on? Probably. She tried to pull away, and the fingers only tightened. A tiny gasp of pain escaped her before she clamped her jaw down on it.

He pulled to a stop a few feet into the garden, and to her surprise he released her. “You don’t have to make this harder on yourself,” he said, but his face was remorseless.

“Why won’t you believe me?” It didn’t come out as she had planned. She’d hoped it would be a strong demand, instead it was wistful, showing more vulnerability than she ever wanted to show to the man in front of her. “If you’d just listen to me I can give you all the proof you need. I don’t understand why you won’t trust me.”

She didn’t really expect an answer, and when it came it surprised her. “Because I can’t afford to,” he said finally. “And neither can you.”

“Neither can I what?” she demanded. “Trust you? Or afford to have you trust me?”

Jake shrugged. “However you choose to look at it.”

“But—”

The hand clamped around her wrist this time, albeit a great deal more gently, and he began pulling her into the garden. “I didn’t bring you out here to argue, Allison-Madelyn,” he rasped, and Maddy allowed herself to accept the tiny sop to her defenses.

“Then why did you bring me out here?” she demanded, stumbling to keep up with him, her thin leather sandals tripping over the weed-choked path.

He grinned down at her then, the smile a lightning slash of white teeth in his dark, dangerous face. “For your peaceful company,” he replied. “Oblige me by being more peaceful, or we’ll continue this walk with you wearing my bandanna as a gag.”

The protest that was forming on Maddy’s lips was quickly swallowed. She contented herself with a glare that spoke volumes, a glare that left Jake completely unmoved.

She had no choice but to follow him, like a dutiful dog, she thought resentfully. His hand on her wrist was not ungentle, and the pace around the weed-choked garden was leisurely. Surprisingly so—through the few square of inches that their bodies touched she could feel the tension in him like a palpable thing.

She should have fought him, she berated herself. She should have thrown his words back in his face, yanked her wrist away from him, maybe even slapped him in that cool, distant, unemotional face. At least she should have told him no.

Girls say yes to boys who say no. The line came back to haunt her with sudden force, and she flinched with the memory. It was one of those smug little catch-alls of the sixties and early seventies, along with If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. Maddy had used the phrases often, along with her favorite paean to draft resisters, the ultimate bribe for an unsure eighteen-year-old boy: Girls say yes to boys who say no.

She had gotten very drunk at her party. Well, perhaps not very drunk. But the champagne had flowed freely, and no one had appeared to mind that half the guests at the private birthday party held at the exclusive country club were under eighteen.

Eric Thompson had been fairly dazzled by the new Maddy, with the thick straight hair hanging down to her waist, the new figure, the slight edge of desperate gaiety that clung to her. Her mother’s words still ran through her head, the cold, cruel pleasure she took in recounting
the court-martial that Jake Murphy had endured along with his entire unit. The court-martial that he had instigated, in the teeth of the army’s attempt to cover it up, where he testified against his friends and comrades. All the champagne in the world hadn’t been able to drive it from her head. Dancing barefoot, her slender body pressed up against Eric’s sturdy one had only just begun to dim the edges of the awful revelations her mother had made, and the dark corner of the poolside cabana with Eric’s clumsy hands on the front of her dress and his wet, hungry mouth on hers almost made it all go away. But not completely. Particularly not when it was Jake who found them there.

“Party’s over,” he’d said, looking down at her with unreadable hazel eyes as she sat curled up on the chaise longue, her skirt up high around her long tanned legs, her head on Eric’s shoulder.

Eric had turned bright red when Jake’s tall figure had appeared from out of the shadows, and he had yanked his hand away from Maddy’s breast with unflattering haste. She was sitting in his lap, making no move to get up, and he could hardly dump her on the cement walkway, so he tried a little sophisticated, man-to-man banter.

“Give us just another half hour, would you, old man?” he requested, not noticing Maddy’s stillness as she sat in his lap. “You understand these things.”

Jake had only looked at him, his face forbidding in the moonlight. “I understand only too well. Come along, Maddy.”

And she had gone, docilely enough then as now, without even a backward glance at Eric Thompson’s crushed expression.

Jake had driven her new car over to the country club, and the sight of his long limbs folding into the driver’s
seat of the shiny white VW bug had struck Maddy with inappropriate amusement. He stared up at her with great patience, waiting for her to get in the car.

When she finally did so he made no move to start it, just sat there watching her. “Where are your shoes?”

She giggled. It had been awhile since her last glass of Moet, but the giddy delight still lingered. “I have no idea.”

“And your comb?”

She reached up a vague hand to push the mane of dark-brown hair away from her face. “I don’t know. It’s probably in the bottom of the punch bowl.”

“Is that what you were drinking?” He started the car, pulling out of the crowded parking lot with practiced ease.

Maddy shook her head, the gesture making her feel slightly dizzy, and she slid lower in her seat. “Champagne,” she said succinctly.

“I think we’d better go home by way of some coffee,” Jake had said after a moment. “Your father doesn’t need to deal with you in your current state on top of everything else.”

“What’s everything else?” she asked idly. Before he could answer she began humming, a little off-key, and the conversation lapsed into silence.

“Was that Eric Thompson?” he said after a long moment.

“Who?” She interrupted her humming for a moment to peer at him owlishly.

“The young man you were kissing so enthusiastically?” Jake’s voice was wry.

“I don’t know if I was enthusiastic. But yes, it was Eric. He might have to go to Canada,” she confided.

“The war’s over, Maddy.”

“Well, you never know what might happen. Particularly if my father doesn’t get elected.”

“That’s no longer even a vague possibility,” Jake said under his breath as he swung into an all-night diner. “You stay here while I get you some coffee.”

“He might get drafted.” Maddy’s mind was still clinging to Eric’s dilemma.

“What were you doing, trying to comfort him?” he snapped, the first sign of emotion he’d shown since he’d found them.

Maddy smiled sweetly, recognizing the edge of anger there. “I was encouraging him to resist. Girls say yes to boys who say no.”

Jake’s face was very still. “Then it’s a lucky thing I wasn’t going to ask you, isn’t it?” And he left the car.

Maddy pulled her knees up, propping her bare feet on the flat glove compartment. “It didn’t work, dummy,” she whispered to herself. “You didn’t make him jealous, you didn’t challenge him into doing anything. You just made a fool of yourself, and now he hates you.” On that cheery note she pressed her flushed face against the cool cotton of her summer dress and moaned.

She didn’t raise her head when she heard the car door open again, didn’t look up when the light vehicle sagged beneath his weight as he got into the driver’s seat. His hand reached out and caught hers, pressing a huge Styrofoam cup in it, and then she did lift her woebegone face to his.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a muffled tone.

He smiled then, a wry smile, and brushed her tangled hair away from her flushed, miserable face. “Trust me, Maddy,” he said in his husky voice, “it’s hell to be seventeen. And it only gets worse.”

She stared at him, wanting to nuzzle her face against
that hard, strong hand of his, still maintaining enough sobriety to keep from doing it. “It can’t be that bad,” she whispered.

“Not for you, I hope. Drink your coffee, Maddy. I’ve got to get you home.”

“Why?”

“Because I have to pack.”

“You’re leaving?” Panic filled her voice. “Jake, you shouldn’t listen to my mother. She’s just a troublemaker—you know Samuel wouldn’t care about your being involved in the massacre, and …” Her voice trailed off at the sudden bleak look in his face.

“She told you about that?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then why don’t you hate me? What are you doing sitting here talking to me?” He sounded so cold, so angry, so filled with hatred that could only be directed at himself.

“I could never hate you, Jake,” Maddy cried with all the desperation of adolescent passion. “I love you.”

The faint smile that lifted the corners of his grim mouth was self-derisive. “And I love you too, kid. Which is why I’d better get you home, fast.”

It was a silent ride. Maddy sat there numbly, sipping on the too-sweet coffee that splashed her skirt and scorched her skin through the thin cotton dress. Jake flicked off the lights a moment before he turned into the driveway, and he was out of the car before she could say anything.

Slowly she followed him. The house was a blaze of lights, cars were parked all along the street, but her own third-floor windows were dark and deserted. Jake went in through the back gate, circling the pool, Maddy a silent shadow behind him. Finally he paused, long enough for
her to catch up with him. She could smell the scent of freshly mown grass mixing with the acrid smell of the chlorine from the pool, hear the distant sounds of traffic and the mumble of agitated voices from the living room beyond them.

“I think you’d probably better go straight up to bed,” Jake said, not even turning to look at her, keeping his attention on the house. “I don’t think that coffee was enough to counteract the effects of champagne and Eric Thompson.” He was making an effort at keeping his voice lightly humorous, but Maddy didn’t believe him.

“What’s going on, Jake?”

He did turn to look down at her then. “Your father’s dropping out of the race. Some very unsavory things were done in his name, things that he can’t condone. So he’s withdrawing.”