Liam understood completely. Moving close enough to pick up her suitcase brought a hint of her lavender scent to his lungs. He instantly grew hard.
Down boy. No more of that.
His body refused to listen. He smiled, not quite sure what to say. A simple “thank you” might be enough, or it might be seen as not enough. Instead, he opened the door leading to the garage and hit the button to raise the door. He took her to his truck, setting everything in the backseat, before helping her into the passenger side. If his fingers lingered a bit too long on her leg, or their gazes meshed a couple more moments than was necessary when he shut the door, neither said a word.
He hadn’t seen Johnny, though his sport utility vehicle was still parked on one side of the driveway, Liam noticed as he pulled out. He figured his brother would either give him the old Quintursa party line or simply hound him over driving the woman he loved to the airport and out of his life. Cameron wasn’t anywhere to be found, though Liam had seen bear tracks leading away from the house.
I’m sorry, brother. I’ll explain things. I’ll make it up to you.
He knew he couldn’t let the rift between them go on for too long.
Sarah didn’t speak on the way to the airport, and really, Liam couldn’t think of anything to say that hadn’t already been said. He ached for her. The tendrils of her hair escaping from beneath her cap begged for his touch. She nibbled on her lower lip, her hands clasped in her lap. She kept her gaze directed out her window, her head turned away from him just enough for him to barely see her in profile. He didn’t blame her.
The drive would be a long one if neither of them talked. He thought about fiddling with the radio to see if he could get a station, but decided to leave it quiet in case she wanted to speak. Having the radio on might give her the impression that he didn’t want to chat with her, and he did. If he came up with something to say.
He wondered if this was how Cameron felt when Gillian’s internship was up and she had the option of staying on, maybe working on her degree out of Anchorage or going back to the lower forty-eight. In the end, with some help from his parents, she’d chosen to go back to school in Billings. At least it wasn’t Florida, but a thousand miles, two thousand miles, it really didn’t matter. Cameron couldn’t follow even if it had been ten miles, at least not according to their parents.
The airport appeared on the horizon. Sarah’s expression was unreadable as she stared out the window. He thought about mentioning that they were nearly there, then pressed his lips together. She knew. It showed in the tense set of her shoulders, the way she kept her hands primly clasped in her lap. He wouldn’t ruin these last minutes together by stating the obvious. He’d let her lead, because soon enough she’d be gone, and he would be alone again.
~* * *~
Sarah cursed every trite word that flowed through her mind. Staring at the landscape provided an opportunity to etch it into her memory. Liam sat behind the driver’s wheel. His face held no emotion, no regret, no traces of anything showed in the lines of his body or his features. She had her pictures, her paper, and her memories. Sarah supposed they’d be enough.
She glanced out the windshield and saw the airport. Her stomach fell. The gravel road changed to paved and then, he turned into the parking lot.
“I don’t know…” Liam’s words trailed off.
Sarah turned to him. “Don’t,” she said. Leaning across the bench seat, she brushed her fingers across his lips, his cheeks, the strong line of his jaw. She inched so close their breaths mingled. Closing her eyes, she kissed him. Just a gentle, lingering touch of mouths, though she wanted more. She yearned to slide her tongue across his lower lip, to kiss him as long and as deep as she wanted. But that would lead to things they couldn’t do in the front seat of a truck, especially sitting in the airport parking lot. When she pulled away, they both were breathing heavily. “I have to go back, but I’ll never forget what happened here.”
She opened the truck door.
“At least let me help you with your luggage.”
Sarah closed her fingers around the handle of her suitcase. “Don’t make this more difficult for either one of us.” Hefting the laptop bag over her shoulder, she made a quick check to be sure she had everything. Well, everything except her heart, she’d left that in Liam’s keeping. She nudged the truck door closed with her hip, then head held high walked across the parking lot to the airport terminal.
A truck door creaked open.
Sarah’s steps faltered. The small, one-story building loomed in front of her. Her neck ached to turn around and take one, final look at Liam. Heavy footsteps sounded on the concrete.
“Wait!” Liam called out.
Sarah stopped.
No, don’t do this to us. Don’t give me a movie-of-the-week good-bye. I don’t think I can take it.
She bit the inside of her cheek, half afraid the stinging in her eyes heralded tears. Keeping her shoulders square, she started walking.
Liam’s hand fell to her shoulder. “Wait,” he repeated.
He stopped, and she had no choice but to do the same. She could have shaken off his hand and continued on, but she didn’t want to be rude. “Liam.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “We can’t. Just let me go.”
“I can’t.” He spun her to face him, and there, in the parking lot, he cupped her chin and tilted her face up to his. “I thought I could let you go. I can’t.” Emotion clogged his voice.
“You have to.” She stepped away from him, shrugging off his touch. “I’m sorry.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to go, and you have to let me.” Turning on her heels, she hurried into the terminal, leaving him standing in the parking lot.
Her chest burned. Somehow, she made it to her ticket counter, checked her bags, and found herself in the same, hard chairs awaiting her flight out. The airport looked the same, except now, what she thought was quaint she realized was simply economical. Out here, these people didn’t need much.
The crackling loudspeaker announced her fight. She rose along with a few other people, mostly business-types or older individuals headed for Anchorage. Looking over her shoulder, she tried to find Liam in the parking lot. She didn’t even see his big, white truck and the idea that he’d left before her plane took off was like a shot to the gut. Well, she’d told him she had to let him go.
She boarded and made her way to her seat. A nice older gentleman on his way to visit his grandkids in Anchorage took the chair next to her. She nestled in against the cool window with a view of the edges of the airport. There, next to the tree line, she saw a grizzly.
Liam.
He raised on his hind legs, paws waving as if to say “good-bye” and as the plane taxied down the runway, she watched the bear watching her. The plane rose into the air, the landing gear rose, and still the bear was there, until she sailed into the cerulean, cloudless sky and the bear was just a speck on the ground. Soon, it wasn’t even that. A silent tear rolled down her cheek and she dashed it away.
Damn you, Ken, for putting me in this position. Damn you for tearing me away and playing politics. I hope you’re happy, because I sure as hell am not.
Jet lag didn’t begin to describe how she felt upon landing in Washington D.C.. Too many time zones all in one day. She took a taxi back to her apartment, coming home to find a blinking answering machine. She pressed play.
Most of the messages were hang-ups or automated recordings from telemarketers. None from her former fiancé or her boss. The last message, left just a few hours ago, started. “Sare-bear, I have to see you as soon as you get in. I think I lost my job. I don’t know what to do. They’re saying…” Her words trailed off in a hiccupping sob. “I need you.” The tape ended, cutting off whatever her sister was about to say. Two more hang-ups, which a quick check of her caller id revealed to be from her sister, and then the tape ended.
“Damn,” Sarah growled. She slumped onto her black leather couch thinking about the contrasts between her immaculate apartment and Liam’s lodge. Her place looked barely lived-in, with few family mementos or signs that anyone even stayed here beyond a place to sleep and maybe eat. She wasn’t ready to face her sister and her problems just yet. The ache of leaving Liam still hurt too much. It probably would for a long, long time.
She breathed a sigh and picked up the phone. Hitting her sister’s speed dial number, she prepared herself for the maelstrom that was Nat in a crisis. Her sister answered on the first ring.
“Nat, I just got back and got your messages. Need me to come over?” It was a useless question, of course Nat needed her to come over, but Sarah still wanted to give her sister the opportunity to stand on her own two-feet.
I feel like a bitch. She’s my sister.
“Yeah. I don’t feel comfortable talking on the phone.” Nat stifled a sob.
“Okay, sweetie. I’ll be over in…” She mentally calculated drive time. “Half an hour or so?”
“Thanks.” Nat’s voice broke with the effort it took to hold back her tears.
“Take care of yourself. Make that husband of yours brew you a cup of tea and put the kids to bed. I’ll be there as soon as possible, okay?”
“Uh, huh,” Nat replied and a moment later the phone went dead.
Sarah stared at the phone. Surely her sister didn’t think the Senator’s office had bugged her telephones? She replaced the hand set into the cradle. Talk about wiretaps was one thing, but that truly was illegal. Her sister had done nothing, wasn’t involved in this project whatsoever. Snatching the phone back into her hand, Sarah started to dial the office.
She slammed the phone down. What good would it do? Ken had made his position crystal clear. Taking her allegations to him wouldn’t help, and probably would hurt, her cause. She drew a deep breath in a futile attempt to calm her nerves. Popping up from the couch, she paced her living room, knowing each step wouldn’t bring her closer to her sister, or a solution.
“Okay, it’s like this.” Sarah stopped pacing and stood in front of the glass doors leading to her patio. Though she stared at the mauve curtains covering the glass, she imagined her reflection staring back at her. Hands on her hips, she addressed her invisible self. “You’re going to go over to your sister’s and calm her down. Then, you’ll go into work, see if you can’t talk to your boss and start on the report. Hopefully within a few days you’ll know what’s going on and be able to make a more informed decision.” Talking to herself was something she hadn’t seriously done since college, but at least it helped to put things in perspective.
Feeling much calmer and more in charge, she snatched her purse from where it sat on the end table and slipped it over her shoulder. She didn’t need a coat as she went down to the underground garage where she kept her Audi, and the contrast between Washington D.C.’s somewhat balmy weather and Alaska wasn’t lost on her. Moments later, she hopped the interstate over to her sister’s house.
On the way there she wondered what sort of situation she’d face. Nat’s tears were a given. Her husband would probably be in the living room, watching sports as he usually was, and she hoped by this time of night, Nat’s kids would be in bed. Always the same thing with her sister. Sarah wished there were some way she could make things better. She feared her actions with the report would make them worse. Her sister
needed
this job. Without it—
Sarah cut off the thought. No, the Senator wouldn’t open himself up to a political situation by firing her sister. Unless something else was going on…
Sarah cursed herself for even thinking that there might be other things happening in her sister’s life. She lived within the hyper-intrigue of Washington D.C. for too long. Her sister was a good person, a hard worker, there wouldn’t be any reason for the Senator to fire Nat. Or so, Sarah hoped.
She made it to her sister’s place with ten minutes to spare. Nat met her on the porch, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders to ward off the slight chill in the air. Sarah parked her car and got out. She hurried across the darkened lawn and up the stairs to the porch. “Everything okay?”
Nat patted the cedar bench next to her. “I brought a blanket if you get cold. Didn’t you bring a coat?”
“Compared to Alaska this is downright tropical,” she replied.
“Oh,” Nat softly answered. Her frown deepened.
Great Sarah, remind your sister that you went to all sorts of exotic locations and she didn’t.
“What’s up, Nat? How come we’re not inside?”
“Jim’s drunk. He’s scared to death I’m going to get fired and he can’t go back to work yet. If I lose my job, I don’t know what we’ll do.” Nat gulped air, but kept her composure. “You don’t understand what this means to my family. The Senator is saying that if you don’t come through he’ll fire me.”
“Surely there has to be more to it than that? I’d like to flatter myself and think that my works matters in the larger scheme of things, but from what I’ve been told, an outside consulting firm wants this report to share with a congressional committee.” Sarah suspected it was larger than that, but didn’t want to tell Nat the entire truth.
“The Senator has been making advances,” Nat’s voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. It wavered. “I don’t want Jim to know. But I think the Senator thinks that if I don’t sleep with him, then he can fire me.”
“That’s sexual harassment. You have to tell someone!”
Nat grabbed Sarah’s hand. “Keep your voice down.” Her chin dipped to her chest. “No one would believe me anyway. Can’t you just write the report favoring more drilling to make your boss and the Senator happy so they’ll leave us alone.” She gave a shaky breath. “Please, all I want is to be able to make a living for my family.”
You shouldn’t have to do it alone. Your husband should be getting some kind of job.
Sarah squeezed her eyes closed so she wouldn’t have to see the anguish in Nat’s face.
Coward.
She’d seen enough of Jim’s medical records—Nat had shown them to her—to know that if he wanted to, he could get another job. Sure, the economy wasn’t very good right now, especially in the construction sector, but there were other places to work, other jobs. They might not be what he was trained for , but they’d help take care of his children. She shoved the disgust she felt toward her sister’s husband into the far corners of her mind. Nat didn’t need to hear it right now.
“Sexual harassment is illegal. I’ll go into the office first thing in the morning and get to the bottom of this.”
Nat’s hand tightened on hers. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“How far has he taken this, Nat? What has he done?”
“N-N-Nothing,” she stammered. “Gotten too close. Made comments. He hasn’t touched me. Well, there was this one time, but it was an accident.”
“Where did he touch you, Nat?” Anger boiled in the pit of Sarah’s stomach. To think of the Senator touching her, pushing himself on her, just because he held power. She swallowed against a rising tide of bile. Report or not, Senator or not, such behavior couldn’t go unpunished.
“He brushed against my breast.” The night sounds chose that moment to abate, and Nat’s whisper sounded horribly loud in the darkness. “He was reaching for a file and it happened. It was an accident.”
“How do you know? If he’s been pressuring you…” Sarah let her sentence dwindle. Her sister didn’t need a lecture on what was, or wasn’t proper workplace behavior. She knew. “The Senator can’t bully you around. I’ll see what I can do.”
Nat pressed her lips together. Her lower one wavered, and in the sallow illumination provided by the porch light, her eyes brimmed with tears. “I just want it over with, Sare-bear. Just make it go away.”
Sarah wrapped her arm around her sister’s shoulder and hugged her. “I will. I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.” The words tumbled from her lips, lies that she’d told her sister for a long time. Sare-bear to the rescue. Wasn’t that how it always had been? And, as she rose to her feet, she wondered if that’s how it would always be.
Nat hadn’t given her any documents, any proof that this had happen. The dark upstairs windows showed her nieces fast asleep. This wouldn’t be a long, lingering family visit. Not with the tension in Nat’s shoulders or her refusal to even let her sister come inside. Sarah wondered what Jim had thought of Nat’s reactions. A part of her figured he hadn’t even noticed, and she dismissed the thought as uncharitable. Surely there were reasons why he wasn’t working, good ones. He loved his family. Times like this, she just wished she believed it.
She wasn’t even out of Nat’s neighborhood when her cell phone rang. Behind the wheel of the car, she couldn’t glance at the number. Instead, she fumbled for it, flipping it open and holding it to her ear. “Hello.”
“About time you got back in town. Thought maybe you decided to build a den and hibernate or something.” Walt laughed.
Sarah winced. Walt’s words picked at wounds barely beginning to heal. She drew a sharp breath, her eyes stinging with the image of the bear at the edge of the airstrip watching the plane ascend into the sky. Not even gone twenty-four hours and she missed him. Damn, she missed him. “What do you want?”
“Is that any way to treat your fiancé? I’m hurt. I just wanted to see if you’d gotten back into town yet.”
“My former fiancé, Walt. I called off our engagement. And you could have gotten my itinerary from Ken if you were so worried about me. I’m tired. What do you want?” She knew she was being rude to him and frankly didn’t care. Next to Liam, he looked like a simpering, spineless man, who no doubt had never needed to stand up for what he believed in because everything had been handed to him on a silver platter.
“I did check with Ken. I’m surprised you didn’t call when you got into town. What’s gotten into you, Sarah?”
“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Walt. Especially now that we’re not engaged. If it’s the ring you want, I’ll courier it to your office first thing tomorrow.” She eased into the flow of traffic and debated about switching to her headset. Except she didn’t think she’d be on the phone with him for that long.
“You’re going to write a report that gives Ken what he wants, right? Something that’ll make Congress happy?”
Sarah snorted. “Congress? You’re talking about one pushy Senator, Walt. One Senator does not make up the whole of the legislative body, and I’m sure there are a lot more of them who would be better served if I wrote the truth in my report. I’m going home. Tomorrow I’m going into the office, and then, I will start on my report. I’m sure you’ll know the contents as soon as my firm releases the report.” She flipped the phone closed, not caring that she hung up on him.
Except his words made her wonder. Sarah decided to head over to the office. Though her laptop gave her access to email and their servers, something about being in the building, seeing what kind of files or notes had been left on her desk, would perhaps help her gain more information on this. And, at this hour of the night, she expected the building to be deserted, which meant she could do a little investigation of her own.
If Sarah went home, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Working on the report now might be productive, but without the full picture it could also be dangerous. Walt had let something slip when he said Congress. In her gut, Sarah feared this went far beyond just one Senator. She knew the administration had talked about expanding drilling, had pushed for it even, but the power had switched in Congress. It could switch again with the next presidential election. Frowning, she eased into traffic and took the exit for her office.
She made it there in less than ten minutes. As she expected, most of the windows were dark except the one on the top floor where Bill Hodges, the firm’s owner, worked. She glanced at her watch. Way too late for him to be working, but with the curtains open, she saw him pacing back and forth, his hands moving in the air in an agitated manner. Over her? She shook her head. No, that couldn’t be the case. Hodges & Associates worked on several projects, not just her own, so whatever caused his distress couldn’t be her. Could it?
She tried to dismiss the feeling as she turned into the parking lot. Several other companies shared the same building with her firm. Maybe she’d gotten the windows mixed up or something. Except she worked across the hall. Her office overlooked the green areas in the back, and she always thought it was odd that the owner had to take the office looking over the street and more office buildings. It seemed that as the head of the firm, he should have the better view, not that she minded.
Hodges and Associates occupied nearly an entire wing of the top floor of the building. Other consulting firms, not many of them political, had the remaining floors. Her firm shared the top floor with an investment banking firm. She’d definitely seen Bill in the windows, but that didn’t explain why he was there.