Love on the Line (27 page)

“Foul play, Cara. You’re making his decisions for him. I might remind you, being male, that I know something of the male mind. We hate having decisions being made for us.
Hate
it.”

“It seemed the right thing to do at the time. What happened to you not wanting me to mess up his season?”

“I said that before I knew how serious you two are.” He jumped up from the chair. “Look, I can help you sort out your All-Star later. Right now we need to hop into my very slow, very boring rental car and go see Alston. Whether you step up as president of the foundation or not, we need a plan, one with teeth that can oust Dray Bender. Grandpa wouldn’t like any of this.”

“He should’ve had another plan,” Cara said. She didn’t like the defensiveness in her voice.

“Maybe this plan was his best shot. Maybe you were.”

“You sound like Alston.”

“Been practicing,” Quinn said. “Cara, you can help thirty people or you can help thirty thousand—or three hundred thousand. You could fund this clinic you’re so worked up about. Hey, you could even help me with Moonbird.”

“
Moon
bird?”

“It’s the name of a very special Rufus red knot, a bird that flies every year from the Canadian Arctic to Tierra del Fuego.”

Quinn’s eyes lit with the fire she’d always envied. He lived his passion, jumped into projects with his whole heart.

“This particular guy is a survivor—he’s about eighteen years old, and all told, he’s flown a distance greater than the one between the earth and moon.”

“You’ve always loved your birds.”

“He’s a poster child—poster bird—for the whole species. The populations are in trouble. The lords of industry have discovered that the birds’ critical meal for their midflight refueling—the eggs of the horseshoe crab in the Delaware Bay—are also a source for lysate, a chemical used by the medical industry to test for contaminants in injectable drugs or implants. Lysate is a two-million-dollar-a-year industry.”

“Horseshoe-crab eggs?”

He nodded.

“Bender’s probably funding the pharmaceutical firms you’re trying to stop.”

Quinn pressed his lips together, but didn’t laugh.

He paced the room. She knew his stride, knew how he ran a hand over his face when he was thinking. She’d missed him. Since she’d moved to Albion Bay and he’d begun the work with migratory birds and the project in China, they’d rarely seen each other.

“We’re hoping to get the Rufus listed as a threatened species. And maybe train egg collectors to harvest eggs in ways that won’t kill off the crabs.” He shook his head. “You don’t want to know how they do it now.”

“No fair playing the abused-creatures card,” she said, only half-joking. “You know I have no defenses against that argument.”

He stopped midroom and planted his feet wide. Jammed his hands to his hips. “The work will take more money than I have at hand, more than my foundation can grant.” He grinned. “See, it begins already, the path to your door. Even I have an ulterior motive.”

He sat on the arm of her sofa.

“You can do this, Cara. I know you. We can work out the details and the timing. Maybe keep it under wraps for a while until—”

“Quinn, you don’t get this town. And you don’t know Ryan. I can’t explain what I feel for him. It just feels right, like he’s my future. I’m afraid to lose that. And stepping up, acknowledging who I am, acknowledging my connections... Well, I’m afraid that will destroy what Ryan and I have... destroy everything.”

She heard herself say the word
afraid
and remembered the advice she’d given Molly: fear never solved anything. She pressed her palms against her eyes, felt the pressure, savored the calming darkness.

She could run, but she couldn’t run forever. And she was tired of hiding.

Quinn was right. It was time to face her fears. Time to step up. Time to stop using Laci as an excuse and instead stand in the shoes of the person she’d become. And it was time to take her own advice and practice turning up the positive. High time. She’d been touting the benefits of the practice, but now she needed to dig in and use it.

She pulled her hands from her eyes and held a hand out to him. “I get it,” she said. “I’ll do it—I’ll take the position.”

He took her hand. “I knew you would.”

“No gloating.”

“Can’t promise that.” He grinned.

As his fingers curved around hers and he pulled her from the sofa, she felt a strange lightness, a lifting, as if the forward motion of her decision was already at work in the world and in her. But the slow churn in her stomach warned her of the shadowed path ahead.

“But I still need some time.”

“Alton’s a master,” Quinn said. “I imagine he can pull off a stall or two.”

She grabbed her purse from beside the TV.

“Nice TV,” Quinn said. “Not like you.”

“It was a gift from Ryan.”

“He must love you if he bought you a forty-eight-inch flat screen.”

“You have been living in cities for
way
too long. Love is not determined by the size of screen diagonals.”

A grin curved across his face. “Sis, someday you’ll realize that most guys still believe size matters.”

She ribbed him as they got into his rental car and then quizzed him about his recent trip to China. But with each mile they covered as Quinn drove toward San Francisco, Cara ran her decisions over and over in her mind.

Maybe there’d been another way to carve out her life, one not based on deceit, one that wouldn’t have required such machinations. But what she’d done had seemed her best shot. And though she was a realist, the trace of optimist in her fought to hold on to the hope that she wouldn’t have to give up loving Ryan. The realist knew better, of course. She’d be lucky to come out of the web she’d spun with any friends at all.

And wouldn’t
that
be ironic, running off her true friends through her own actions, through the inescapable confession of her reasons for seeking out real friends and community in the first place.

Ryan bounded into the hotel bar and spotted Alex right off. Now that he was out from under the paternity suit, Boston took its place once again as Ryan’s favorite road trip. He loved the bookstores and the sophisticated fans. A guy could actually go out for a drink and not be interrupted by well-meaning fans. They’d wait in the wings until he paid his bill, then politely hold out whatever they wanted signed. Very civilized, Boston.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” Ryan said to the bartender. Copley’s Bar was a favorite with its wood-paneled walls, old gaslights and cushy leather barstools that had probably been used for a century. It was no wonder his mother loved visiting her girlhood home. Everything had an air of mystery, of history, and the city was damned gorgeous. Except in the winter. He’d never want to live buried under ice and snow; he hadn’t gotten that gene from his blue-blood mother.

The bartender plunked down a tumbler with a couple fingers of amber liquid. Ryan lifted the glass and sniffed. “Angelfire?”

“You bet,” Alex said as he sipped from his glass. “Best whiskey around.”

“Good for plotting and scheming?” Ryan sipped at his drink, felt the fire burn down his throat. “Because we’ve got some work ahead.”

“Whatever you say, this fundraiser you’re planning must have you jazzed. You hit the hide off every ball tonight. The cycle, man—Boston is still reeling.” He raised his glass in a low-key toast.

“I sweated that last hit—wasn’t sure it would get over the fence.” He’d never hit for the cycle before; there was nothing like a single, a double, a triple and then a two-run homer to set off a good buzz. “Eight games to go. We win three and we’ve clinched our spot in the playoffs.”

“Don’t count those chickens yet,” Alex said with a finger wag.

“I’d rather count up the advance pledges we’ve got for the Albion Bay clinic.”

“I’m in. Scotty and Chloe are too. We’ll have to work on the rest of the guys. Most of them have never heard of Albion Bay.”

“The Pacific-Union Club is all set. Walsh pulled some strings for me.”

“You have it bad, my boy,” Alex said over the rim of his glass.

“You’re one to talk. Scotty told me you’re going to the Pribilof Islands for marine mammal research at Christmas. You do realize those islands are
between
Alaska and Northern Siberia? It’ll be thirty degrees—
below
zero. Not counting wind chill.”

“Wind chill’s nothing compared to telling Jackie I wouldn’t go with her,” Alex said with a somber look. “I’ll be the one in the Nanook suit, bearing flasks of brandy.”

“What we do for love,” Ryan said, shaking his head.

“We’re talking love now, are we?” Alex drew his brows together. “Glad to know these efforts are for the big prize.”

“It’s for the clinic,” Ryan countered, not yet willing to lay himself bare.

A smile lit Alex’s eyes as he raised his glass. “Well, then, here’s to the clinic.”

Chapter Twenty

Cara sipped at her coffee and read through the foot-high sheaf of papers that Alston had given her after she and Quinn had met with him in the city.

Alston had been pleased that she’d decided to take the reins at the foundation and had agreed to put protocols in place that would help maintain her anonymity, at least for a while. Both Quinn and Alston were doubtful about her ability to delay, but Alston had gone along with her plan. She’d have to fly back to New York at the end of the month and meet with the board; there was no way around that. And she’d have to deal with Bender sooner than she’d hoped. It hadn’t helped that her dad had given Bender her cell number. Bender had wasted no time in calling and leaving two artificially calm and yet subtly threatening messages. She’d asked Alston to do all he could to keep him away from her, at least for a while. It was going to be a pleasure to eventually oust the guy.

If all went well, she’d bought herself three precious weeks.

She shoved the stack of papers aside and sorted through her emails, reading for a third time Jackie Brandon’s request that Cara meet her later that afternoon at a café a few miles from Albion Bay.

She had no idea why Jackie wanted to meet with her so badly. She looked Jackie and Alex up on the Internet. When she saw the stories about Jackie—
Lady
Jacqueline Brandon—and how she’d shunned her aristocratic past to set up shop as a veterinarian—with marine mammals, no less—a creeping unease swept her and she wished she’d stalled or at least put off meeting with Jackie for a couple of weeks.

Jackie’s face had seemed familiar on the day they’d helped with the sea lion, but Cara still couldn’t call up where she’d seen her before.

Scores of scenarios shot through her mind as she drove the winding road to the café. Perhaps Jackie had heard she lost her job driving the bus. She shuddered at having to discuss job leads. Maybe she wanted to ask Cara to volunteer at her lab, or maybe she needed an assistant in her office up there.

But as Cara pulled into the gravel parking lot next to the café, the sense of unease squeezed deeper into her chest.

A grove of redwoods nearly hid the rustic building housing the Lagunitas Café. It served the locals as general store, coffee shop and meeting place. Jackie sat at one of the outdoor tables, shaded from the sun by an umbrella that looked to be as old as the faded wood siding.

“It’s a lovely day,” Jackie said in her perfect English accent as Cara sat at the only other chair at the rickety table.

Weather was a safe topic.

But as Jackie leaned back and appeared to be taking Cara’s measure, Cara was pretty sure she hadn’t brought her out here to talk about the weather.

“Perfect,” Cara said in a light tone.

“I’m not one to draw out suspense,” Jackie said as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. “I met you at Wimbledon. Six years ago. Your brother and your parents were with you. I remembered you because you took such an interest in my work in the Okavango Delta.”

Cara sat silent, stunned.

“And because your brother was tracking the Moonbird,” Jackie continued. “Not many people even know it exists.” She gestured to her own face. “I had short hair and a hat; it doesn’t surprise me you had trouble placing me. But I remember you well. You suggested that I write to your grandfather to fund my work.”

Jackie appeared calm, as if revealing world-shattering secrets was an everyday occurrence.

“I want to thank you for that suggestion,” Jackie added. “His funding allowed me to finish up the species survey.”

The memory flashed. “You had seats next to ours.” Though her heart raced in her chest, Cara felt like a load was lifted from her shoulders. She looked Jackie in the eyes. “Busted.”

“Not exactly.” A smile teased at the corners of Jackie’s lips. “I’m good at keeping secrets.” She pointed to the hand-lettered sign listing a variety of espresso drinks. “Want a cappuccino? We may be miles from nowhere, but they make a killer cappuccino.”

Cara nodded. While Jackie went in to get their coffees, her mind raced almost as fast as her pulse.

Jackie placed the coffee in front of Cara, the smiley face the barista had swirled into the milky foam staring up at her.