Harley’s head throbbed as if it were being squeezed
repeatedly by a giant pair of hands. She felt woozy, faint. A movement from
outside the window caught her eye: the black Jag pulling into the driveway.
Tucker emerged, carrying a bagful of bagels. She slammed the window shut and
went back to the desk to return the newspaper to its drawer.
When she lifted the photo album she noticed something else
beneath it, another folded newspaper with Chet’s father’s business card clipped
to it. The headline announced
Tucker Hale
Guilty on All Counts,
and beneath it,
Street
Value of Drugs $1.2 M,
and,
Maximum
Sentence Expected.
The picture showed Tucker in a suit, his hair
conservatively shorn. Other men in suits surrounded him, all of them walking
down the steps of a courthouse. Reporters crowded around, raising cameras and
thrusting microphones at him. He ignored them, his eyes again directed straight
ahead, strangely dignified despite the circumstances.
Hearing Tucker in the hall, she quickly slipped the first
newspaper in its place and shut the drawer.
He appeared in the doorway and opened the bag. “Did you know
they made blueberry bagels? You didn’t tell me what kind you liked, so I got
one of everything.”
An image of Tucker in handcuffs superimposed itself on the
man in the doorway. Harley turned away and leaned on the desk.
He approached her. The aroma of warm yeast mingled with onion
and garlic, raisin and blueberry, caused a swell of nausea to rise in her
throat. She dosed her eyes and swallowed hard. Feeling his hand on the small of
her back, she jerked away, then the hand was gone.
His tone softened. “What’s the matter? Still
hungover
?” Without opening her eyes, she nodded. “Have you
eaten anything?” She shook her head. “Dr. Hale recommends a poppy-seed bagel
with cream cheese and lox, followed by as many laps as you can manage, to burn
the toxins out of your system. I swam, and I feel great now.”
How nice for you,
she thought.
How nice that you can feel great while I’m
twisting inside.
“I can’t eat,” she managed to say.
“Nothing?” He replaced the hand on her back. “You’d really
feel better if—”
She opened her eyes. “I’m going for a run.” She shook off the
hand and darted from the room, leaving him staring after her.
***
Tucker Hale guilty on all
counts.
She
repeated the words over and over in her mind as she ran. They became her
mantra. They seared themselves into her consciousness. They were hard words.
They were painful. It hurt her to think them, yet she forced herself to think
them over and over again.
“Tucker Hale guilty on all counts.” She whispered the words
out loud to reinforce them, to underline their truth. Tucker Hale had been
found guilty on all counts. A court of law had determined that he had attempted
to smuggle cocaine and marijuana into Florida in his Piper Comanche. That was
the truth. She couldn’t afford to flinch from it.
He had taken her in, charmed her, made himself a part of her
life, all under false pretenses. Refusing to tell her what happened in Miami
amounted to a lie by omission. So, technically; he had lied to her, despite his
pious insistence that he never lied. She remembered his excuse when she had
asked him directly about Miami and he had declined to answer. He was worried
that she would judge him and find him lacking.
Damn
straight
, she
would find him lacking.
He had been a drug dealer, just like her father. Well, not
just
like her father. Her father had
been small potatoes compared to Tucker. Her father had peddled nickel bags of
pot and the occasional Quaalude to his fellow down-and-out biker hippies,
making barely enough to keep them both fed. Tucker, on the other hand, had
smuggled millions of dollars’ worth of drugs into the country, or had attempted
to.
Harley tried to piece it all together, struggling to remember
the things he had told her about his past and his business, and reconstruct the
things he hadn’t. After his music career had fizzled out, he’d moved to
Miami—he and Chet— and saved up for a Piper Comanche. She couldn’t recall his
saying exactly what kind of cargo he had intended the plane for, although now
it was clear enough. The shipment that the feds intercepted might have been his
first, or he might have been doing it for a while and had millions in a Swiss
bank by the time they caught him. Harley didn’t know or care; a drug dealer was
a drug dealer.
Apparently they had sent him to prison, and when he got out,
he moved to Alaska and saved up for another plane. He’d started as a humble
bush pilot, he said, parlaying that into an air cargo business so successful
that he had a staff of pilots, half-a-dozen planes, and enough pin money lying
around to drive Jags off the lot when the spirit moved him.
Harley began to wonder just what kind of cargo he’d built his
business around. Granted, to her knowledge, Alaska, unlike Florida, was not
exactly a hub of international drug trafficking. But she did recall having
heard about some kind of special,
superpotent
marijuana they grew in Alaska’s Matanuska Valley, which sold for astronomical
sums. The possibility that he had returned to the same risky, but
super-profitable business for which he had once been sent to jail could not be
discounted.
Did he really intend to give it all up and move back to Long
Island? Maybe. Maybe the crash had convinced him it was time to retire. He was
a wealthy man; he could certainly afford to.
“Tucker Hale guilty on all counts,” she whispered again. It
didn’t matter if he
was
getting out
of the business. It didn’t even matter if he hadn’t been in the business since
Miami. That he had been in it at all condemned him for eternity as far as she
was concerned.
She closed her eyes as she ran and saw her mother’s
once-pretty face, made monstrous by an ugly, drug-induced death. No prison term
could make up for the crime of preying on the weakness of people like Jennifer
Sayers. Tucker had not paid his dues, and she could not forgive him.
She opened her eyes to erase her mother’s image. He had kept
the truth from her because he knew that, once she learned it, she would never
want to have anything to do with him again. He had tricked her, ingratiated
himself with her, and it shamed her that she had let it happen.
She stopped running and looked around, chest heaving. Neither
this stretch of beach nor the houses above it were familiar to her. She had
never run this far before.
Tucker Hale guilty on all
counts
.
She had even begun to think she might be in love with him. A
sob rose in her throat and she choked it back.
He’s not worth crying over,
she thought.
Don’t let him get to you any more than he already has.
She turned around and headed back, grimly whispering her new
mantra over and over:
He’s not worth
crying over. Don’t let him make you cry.
Harley thought up a number of unnecessary errands that would
keep her out of the house all day. When she came home late in the afternoon,
Tucker told her that Phil had invited them, along with Rob and Larry and their
wives, to his place to boil some lobsters. She declined, citing her hangover as
an excuse. The truth was that her morning run had cured her of it. But she
insisted that he go without her, that she was going straight to bed.
There were things to think about now, decisions to make.
Should she ask Tucker to leave? That would be hard to do. This was his father’s
home; she was just an employee.
R.H.
obviously knew
about his son’s arrest and conviction. Did Liz? She doubted it, given Liz’s
obvious affection for Tucker. Probably
R.H.
had kept
the truth from her to protect her, just as he had kept the truth of Angelica’s
suicide from Tucker to protect him. A mistake in both cases. Ignorance wasn’t
bliss, it was just ignorance. As Harley had found out that morning, when the
truth finally came to light, it was all the more painful for having been kept a
secret.
***
As darkness fell, Harley decided to take advantage of Tucker’s
absence and go for her evening swim. She wouldn’t have dared it had he been
there, given their deal. But he was gone, and she could use the relaxation.
Soon—by this time tomorrow at the latest—she would have to develop a strategy
for dealing with him. That strategy would certainly involve a confrontation
with him, and she dreaded the idea of that. But she didn’t have to confront him
tonight. She didn’t even have to think about it tonight. Tonight she would
swim.
She changed into her burgundy suit with the bow-tied
spaghetti straps, and slipped into the cool, comforting water. For about ten
minutes she backstroked slow, relaxing laps, watching the night sky and
purposefully occupying her mind with trying to make out the constellations.
A sound from the shallow-end deck startled her; she coiled up
like a spring and trod water. Tucker stood there, kicking off his moccasins.
He said, “I thought you were going to bed.”
She willed calm into her voice. “I feel better now.”
“Really?” He grinned. “Then you won’t mind my joining you.”
He pulled his T-shirt off over his head and tossed it aside. Dressed only in
khaki shorts, he lowered himself into the pool.
The blood roared in her ears. Taking a deep breath, she said,
“Why aren’t you still at Phil’s? This is kind of early to be leaving a dinner
party.”
“All Phil can talk about is Kitty. It seems she went on a
date last night with the head of cardiology at the medical center. Phil’s
turned into a raving basket case over it, but that’s good. Maybe now he’ll be
desperate enough to finally take my advice and let her know how much he wants
her back. Anyway, it was a pretty tiresome evening, but that’s not the only
reason I left. You weren’t feeling well, and I wanted to check on you.” He
smiled again. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. And I’m glad I came home before
you left the pool.”
“I was just about to get out,” she lied.
“You wouldn’t deny me my nightly shot at the big prize,” he
said. “It won’t take a minute.”
Unless you win
, thought Harley.
Then it’ll take all night.
She could not go to bed with Tucker Hale—not knowing what she
knew now. But she wasn’t prepared for a showdown, either. She hadn’t even
decided which of them should be the one to leave. Confronting him without
knowing what she wanted would put her in a position of weakness. She needed
time. She needed until tomorrow. Biting her lip, she calculated his chances of
catching her tonight at thirty, maybe forty percent, thinking,
Wouldn’t Liz be proud of me for reducing
this situation to numbers.
“Okay.” she said, positioning herself at the drop-off.
Let’s get this over with.
“Ready?”
“Am I ever. I’m really up for this tonight.”
Harley recalculated his chances at closer to fifty percent.
“I’m feeling
fast.
”
Maybe sixty. Tops.
She inhaled deeply and let it out.
Got to pull out all the stops tonight. Whatever you do, don’t let him
catch you.
“One… two… three… go!”
Go-go-go-go-go!
Harley surged forward, a
lightning-fast, unthinking machine.
Kick-kick-kick-kick-kick,
go-go-go-go-go!
She could hear him pursuing her through the water, his
strokes quick and powerful. Her heart raced with the panic of the chased
animal. He was closing in on her. She could feel the turbulence of the water as
he neared. Was he doing the butterfly? She pictured the trophy in his room,
inscribed
Tucker Hale, 200-Meter
Butterfly, First Place—
The big hands wrapped around her waist just a split second
before she touched the deck.
He did it!
No-no-no-no—
She grabbed the deck with both hands to pull herself up, but
he pressed down on her shoulders, halting her efforts to rise. He was behind
her, very close to her. She could hear his ragged breathing, she could feel his
heat through the water that separated them.
What could she say to him? How could she get out of this?
He gathered her wet hair to one side, and then she felt his
lips, warm and gentle, on the back of her neck. His kisses sent shivers down
her spine, and she closed her eyes, thinking,
I don’t want this, I can’t let this happen.
Abruptly she gripped the deck and pushed herself up and out
of the pool, but he was right behind her, leaping up like a big cat. Before she
could rise, he lowered her to the deck, covering her body with his.
Maybe she could tell him they had to wait until tomorrow. She
could claim she still felt unwell. That would give her the night to think of
what to say to him. But when she opened her mouth to speak, he leaned down and
closed his own over it. He kissed her with a deep and urgent passion, the
culmination of six weeks of aching need. His hands traced restless paths over
her breasts, down to her waist and hips, and back up to her shoulders.