A Drive-By Wedding

Jeth grinned and swept her a bow. “My pleasure,” he drawled, and it really was. Because for all that Sasha clung to her, it was Jeth who’d found the youngster something he’d eat.

Chapter 4

They didn’t discuss the almost-for-real kiss that hadn’t taken place in the examining room. They looked at each other when they thought it was safe to do so and wondered what if, but they didn’t talk about it. The possibilities were far too idiotic even to contemplate.

Instead they exchanged minor information about themselves, worried over Sasha, praised him when he accepted not only a couple of animal crackers but also some water after he finished the sucker—or rather, sort of finished it. Allyn allowed him only to lick it until she heard the first slight crunch before relieving him of it—much to his fury—so he wouldn’t choke on any big chunks of hard candy. By the time he’d opened his mouth on extended protest, however, she’d popped several animal crackers into his hand and he had to stop yelling in order to see what she’d given him. When he found it edible, blessed silence reigned briefly once more.

They’d gotten only six miles farther down the Pike when Jeth spotted what he thought was a tail.

He glanced over his shoulder at Allyn, sitting in the rear seat beside Sasha, holding a straw in a bottle of Pedialyte while the little boy greedily drank.

“I think we’ve got company,” he told her grimly.

She let her head snap around to look out the window before she could stop herself. “Which car?”

“Black Mercedes on our left, three cars back.”

Rational thought returned, prompted by the fact that she didn’t believe anyone knew he hadn’t just gotten on a bus and left town that way. “How do you know it’s tailing us, Jeth?” His name slipped easily off her tongue, as though she’d known him a lot longer than one interminable morning and most of an afternoon. “How would they know my car? How would they even know you’re with me? A lot of people take the Pike.”

“I don’t know, Allyn.” The first time he’d actually used her name, Jeth realized. It felt strangely…right…rolling around in his mouth. Allyn. Lynnie. Lyn. Al-lyn. The whole thing and all its diminutives settled in his head and flowed without thought to his lips. “Call it paranoia. I’ve got a feeling. It’s been with us awhile. I think it was with us when we left the grocery store, and again after the emergency center. My belly’s crawlin’ on this one.”

“If you’re right?”

“Keep driving. See if they maintain distance. Only stop in populated areas for gas. Try and lose ’em.”

Allyn moistened her mouth. She’d been working with him as much as possible to this point for Sasha’s sake, but she really couldn’t fathom how anyone might possibly have found Jeth in her car so quickly—especially since they’d had no connection before this morning. She swallowed. What if he was just plain crazy—paranoid, as he had suggested? What if him taking, having Sasha was everything she’d first thought and she’d simply gobbled up the lines of a chemically imbalanced, albeit somewhat believable and charming hotty because he’d managed to play into her own secret, though probably momentary, fantasy of living Becky’s normal family life? She really couldn’t let him jeopardize any of them on some sort of paranoid, out-of-control whim.

“I’m not crazy,” he said quietly, reading her mind. “And I’m not out of control. Someone from the neighborhood could have seen you draw down on me in that school yard this morning. They could have called the police. Reports go out. Other agencies pick ’em up. Word gets around. Coincidences happen. I’m not taking any chances—with you or Sasha.”

Guiltily she glanced up, met his gaze in the mirror. The midnight eyes were steady and unwavering. She looked at Sasha.

“I’m sorry,” she said, equally softly, “but I don’t know you, and I can’t accept at face value that you might be right. I read a lot, but I don’t live like this. The most exciting thing I’ve done recently is go down in a shark cage with a research team to do some filming. I just held the fish to feed the sharks—”

Startled, Jeth looked over his shoulder at her and nearly swerved into a car in the next lane. Good grief, no wonder she’d taken to this business with him so easily. Far as he was concerned, anyone who swam with sharks willingly—even protected by a steel cage—was crazier than he’d ever considered being.

“—but that’s nothing like this.”

“Nothing like—” Flabbergasted as he was, words failed him. “Geez-oh-pete, woman, you swim with sharks? What the hell do you do?”

She grimaced. “Marine biologist. Doctor. Graduated this past Tuesday. Sharks are only one of the species I’ve worked with.” She made a face and shrugged self-deprecatingly. “I’ve studied a lot of underwater things up close and personal. Sharks are pretty predictable compared to this—to you.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “I think.”

“You’re welcome,” she responded, equally wry. “I think.”

They were silent for a moment. Then:

“So,” Allyn said, poking Jeth verbally a smidge. “Are you going to try to force their cover or something? Speed up or slow down or get off 70 or something and see what they do?”

Jeth cleared something akin to laughter from his throat. “You that anxious to know?”

“Aren’t you?” she countered. “I mean, don’t you think it’s better the devil you know?”

“Not always. Sometimes it’s better to let things ride. Especially when you don’t have more of a plan.” He should know. If he’d let things ride three years ago… No, he would not think it. He would not.

“But not this time,” Allyn suggested.

Jeth glanced at her in the mirror, read the need to know, to believe in her eyes and lost any desire to laugh. Without another word he switched on his blinker, dropped back and moved into the right-hand lane as though he was about to take the next turnoff. While Allyn watched as unobtrusively as she could, the Mercedes dropped back three cars and gradually did the same.

“It could just be coincidence,” she said, but she didn’t sound sure.

“It’s not coincidence, Lynnie.”

She eyed him sharply. “Why’d you call me that? It’s a child’s name. No one calls me that except my mother and sister.”

Use of the diminutive surprised him, too, but he didn’t apologize for it. “It fit the moment,” he said. “It’s the kind of nickname a man uses for his wife when she’s scared.”

“I’m not your wife, and I’m not scared.”

“In a pig’s eye you’re not,” he told her flatly. “Hell, I’m scared, too. I’d rather it just be chance that Mercedes is following us, but I can’t treat the situation that way. Scared is better than foolish.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“You’d better.” He cast another look her way. “And just so we’re clear—if this masquerade is going to work, I’ll call you anything that fits the moment. Got it?”

Allyn’s mouth flattened, jaw tightened. “Long as it’s reciprocal, Jethro,” she agreed.

Silence fell between them, thickened and grew unhealthily stuffy. The only sound other than the rush of the road under the tires were the noises Sasha made jabbering and playing with some of his new toys in his car seat, and Allyn reading softly to him until he started to get squirmy and unhappy. Then she put the book down and talked to him, asking if he was cold, hot, wet, hungry, et cetera. He stared at her without comprehension.

She sighed and felt his legs and arms before she hiked up Sasha’s shirt and tucked the tip of her finger down the front of his diaper. Sure enough, just as she’d suspected. Couldn’t rehydrate a kid with as many fluids as Sasha had guzzled without eventually finding him soaked.

“He needs his diaper changed,” she said without preamble. “We have to stop.”

Jeth swore under his breath. “You can’t change him there?”

Allyn glared at the back of his head until he turtled his neck into his shoulders against the weight of her glower.

“All right, fine.” Not happy. Not cordial. “Apparently not.” Decidedly grumpy. “We need gas, anyway. Let me lose the tail and we’ll stop.”

“Sooner would be better.” No, she didn’t know better than to poke a bad-tempered alligator with a stick when it was close enough to bite.

“Not at all would be best,” he snapped.

She was concerned for Sasha’s comfort as well as for the little boy’s safety—not to mention her own and Jeth’s. But that didn’t mean the good-looking, clean-shaven, libido-startling jughead in the front seat wasn’t starting to rile her temper—heck, her misbegotten Brannigan obstinance—in a major way. “Then drop me off, and you float away when Sasha’s diaper overflows.”

“And risk losing you to them?” Jeth wasn’t exactly feeling casual about their situation at the moment. “Uh-uh, babe, not a chance.”

“You could always leave the gun with me.” The retort was instant, deliberate and provoking.

Jeth snorted. Stubborn, single-minded, sweet-smelling woman. If she didn’t quit playing havoc with both his brain and his body pretty darn quick, he was going to have to jam on the brakes, turn around, reach back and shake her. “Oh, sure. That’d work.”

“You never know,” Allyn retorted. “It might—Hey!” Jeth slammed on the brakes and veered hard onto the shoulder of the highway, causing Allyn to jerk forward into her seat belt and grab for Sasha’s baby seat. “Geez, Jeth, what are you doing?”

Jeth shoved the transmission into reverse, sent them squealing and whiplashing backward down the side of the road. “Shutting you up and losing that damned tail.” Swearing, he watched the Mercedes blow past them in traffic, its driver swiveling angrily in his seat, taken unaware by his maneuver. “Judas, they spotted us. It’s the Colombians. I recognize the driver. We’ve got to get out of here, switch vehicles, find a safer route. These guys are not out to take hostages—except maybe Sasha. And even that’s only a maybe.”

“A maybe?” Panic was an unwelcome and instant companion, changing the circumstances. Allyn felt her stomach clench, her lungs squeeze, her heart pound. “A maybe?” Her voice rose and squeaked, and she hated it. “What does that mean? What the hell have you gotten him into? You think they’ll kill him if they catch us? How does that make it better for him to be here than where he was before? What is the matter with you? Do you ever think before you act?”

“What’s the matter with me?” It was difficult to carry on a knock-down, drag-out while he was driving backward and east down the edge of the westbound I-70, but Jeth managed. Hell, he might not get another chance to give her a piece of his mind if he didn’t do it now. “You, you’re the matter with me. You’re not who you were supposed to be. You were supposed to be June Cleaver, but look at you. I’m running this show, damn it, but you gotta step in, take my gun and tell me we’ve got to stop for baby supplies, stop for groceries, find a damned doctor and I take one freaking look at you and my brain takes a hike. You’ve got hair made for touching, eyes like I’ve never seen, a mouth I’d really like to make shut up, and you’re freaking ornery enough to punch all my buttons. So this, this is your fault, not mine.”

“My fault?” Somewhere underneath Allyn’s outrage a part of her recognized exactly what he’d said and tucked it away in a drawer labeled Oh, my God, now what? for later perusal. The rest of her told him what she thought of him. “You pigheaded, chauvinistic, macho hunk of beef. My fault? You car jack me, but the three of us being followed by a group of drug dealers you gelded is my fault? I don’t think so.” Fuming, furious. “God, I should have known a guy as pretty as you would have to also be a giant pinhead. I’d really like to see you try to shut me up, I really would.” Unfortunately, her body really did want to see him make her shut up.

By kissing her.

Which was just about as pinheaded a desire as they came, under the circumstances. But apparently her body liked the threat of danger a lot more than her head did. And if she hadn’t realized it when he’d stuck his gun in her ribs, she knew it for certain now: Jeth Levoie was as dangerous to her as they came—and in a lot more ways than one.

And this whole line of thought was just a bit more revealing than she wanted it to be—especially while they were in the middle of a big-screenlike chase scene. Or getaway scene. Every instinct Allyn possessed told her to do whatever it took to make this stop.

Trouble was, how?

She’d spent the past several years learning how to think fast under conditions that most people would consider abnormal—including, once or twice, in potentially life-threatening instances—but even Gabriel’s admonitions and training aside, none of her underwater experiences compared to this.

She’d thought quickly enough in the school yard, but that had been as much luck as it had been fury. That had been before she’d understood Jeth Levoie at all, before she’d known about Sasha. Now she didn’t have the steering wheel beneath her hands, she had a cranky baby disturbing her ability to think and an infuriatingly dangerous man who liked purple lollipops making his subtle way under her skin. Her normally more-than-able mind was a blank.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to come up with a way to get them out of trouble; Jeth already had one.

He waited until he saw the Mercedes U-turn into the eastbound lanes and gather speed, then took advantage of a grouping of westbound eighteen-wheelers, let a couple of them get ahead of him, a couple to the side and a couple behind with barely enough room for the Saturn to squeeze into the pocket between them before he jerked the transmission into drive and skidded onto the highway. Allyn covered Sasha’s eyes and shut her own so neither of them would see the mega car squash she was certain was inevitable. When, after a reasonable length of time, no crunch sound occurred, she opened one eye, then the other, then took her hand away from Sasha’s face.

And flat-handed Jeth upside the back of his head with her ring hand.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she said hoarsely. If her voice had been steady she’d have made more of an impression, she was sure.

Without looking, he grabbed her hand before she could withdraw it and imprisoned her wrist. Arizona lightning couldn’t move more quickly, and Allyn knew it at once.

Lightning couldn’t crackle and burn with more electric intensity where it hit, either.

“Don’t ever distract me while I’m saving your butt,” he returned grimly. “You’ll get all three of us killed. I won’t have that.”

“You won’t—” Allyn stared at him breathless, speechless. Too aware of his fingers around her wrist, of how immediately the tension had changed, the threat had grown, of the taste he left on the back of her tongue.

Too aware of him, period.

She would not let him get to her under these or any circumstances, she would not.

“If it wasn’t for you—” The accusation was petty, and she knew it, but that didn’t stop her from making it. From wanting to verbally beat his culpability into him.

From wanting to escape her own.

“—we wouldn’t be here—”

He squeezed her wrist hard, once, and released it. “Give it a rest, Lyn. I don’t apologize for the choices I make anymore. I can’t. We’re here. Make the best of it.”

Startled, she looked at him. Not because the fire in his touch lingered, though it did. Not because his fingers had left a visible imprint on her wrist, though that was true, too. She looked because the passion in his refusal to apologize for who he was and what he did equaled her own.

And because, unlike men she knew in her field whose passion for their work left little room for a threedimensional life outside it, there was a lot more to Jeth than whatever he was doing at the moment.

She’d recognized that before—sort of—in the way he’d put Sasha’s comfort and welfare first, before himself, in his willingness to try to make her feel easier despite putting her in an unthinkable predicament, but this was the first time she’d known it. Understood it way down deep where it played havoc with the nerves that butterflied about her stomach, and in whatever emotion squeezed heart and lungs inside her chest.

Recklessness and petty accusations whooshed silently out of her, made her subside into her seat where she sat quiet and wary, watching Jeth while absently rocking Sasha’s car seat trying to hush the little boy.

In his own place, Jeth found himself trying not to scrub the distracting feel of Allyn out of his hand. The harsh imprint he’d made of her wrist in his palm lingered in the nerves beneath his skin; the tips of his fingers thrummed to the beat of her pulse. He could feel where her wrist bones had molded the ball of his thumb, the pads of his calluses.

With some new desperation, he concentrated on driving, on getting them as far away from the Colombians as possible. He shouldn’t have touched her, not like that. He should have known touching her would result in him getting burned. In fact he wouldn’t be surprised to find blisters seared along his palm. And if by some chance he didn’t have third-degree burns there, it would be sheer luck only, not because the fire wasn’t hot enough.

He glanced at her in the rearview mirror and saw his own wariness written on her face, in the green and blue eyes fastened on him. Something akin to comprehension passed between them before Jeth’s jaw clenched and they both blinked away from the connection.

In the middle of a smooth ride down southbound I-75 somewhere in Ohio on the way to Kentucky, Rebecca Meyers Catton suddenly shot forward hard into her seat belt. When she recovered her equilibrium, she rubbed her bruised collarbone and eyed her husband, Michael, in outraged indignation, then clipped him a good one upside the back of his head with her ring hand. Michael eyed her in shocked disbelief.

“What was that for?”

Quickly Becky turned to check on the welfare of the three children, ages two, four and six, carefully belted into the rear seat of their Lumina van, before rounding on him furiously. “You could have killed me or the kids, stepping on the brakes like that at this speed. There’s nothing in front of us. What’s the matter with you?”

“The matter with me? What the—” Ever mindful of little pitchers out to collect language of all sorts, Michael swallowed the expletive. “What do you mean, what’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you? You’re going to cause an accident swatting me like that. Never should have given you a platinum wedding ring. You’re going to knock me out with that thing yet.”

“I’m going to cause an accident? I’m going to…” Anger throttled Becky’s ability to speak. “You’re the one who stepped on the brakes.”

Clarity dawned on Michael. “I didn’t step on the brakes, Beck. Ask Andy. Did you guys jerk like Daddy hit the brakes, Andy?”

Becky’s oldest child shook his blond head at his mother. “Uh-uh, but Momma jerked really hard up there, I saw her. Maybe you only hit them in the front seat.”

Michael chuckled. “I don’t think that’s possible, An, but thanks.” He glanced at Becky. “No brakes,” he said, carefully neutral. “UFO, you think?”

Becky rolled her eyes, gave him a look of withering scorn. “Yeah, right. UFO.” She tsked her tongue against the back of her teeth, then bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. “You know, that’s the second really weird thing that’s happened today.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “This morning I all of a sudden felt like I was being whipped around until I got dizzy, then it was like I had a gun in my hand. It was weird. I kept wondering if I could pull the trigger if I had to on a weapon that wasn’t there.” She bit down on sudden concern for her sanity. “I’ve never held a gun in my life, Mike, not even when you and Gabriel wanted to teach me, so what is going on?”

They eyed each other, and light dawned almost simultaneously.

“Allyn.” Michael said it first. He’d known his wife’s twin sister as long as he’d known Becky, after all. And although he’d never understood it, he knew about and accepted Becky’s and Allyn’s extra connection with each other, had witnessed the results of it on more than one occasion. This time, though, he didn’t particularly care for the effect the extrasensory tie seemed to be having on his wife. She’d gone pale, appeared nauseous and terrified. “Beck?”

“She’s in trouble,” Becky said, horrified. “We’ve got to do something.”

Michael hoped she was wrong. “Are you sure this isn’t just something like when she gets morning sickness when you’re pregnant?”

“She’s not pregnant,” Becky told him. “She’s never even…” She paused, aware of avid ears in the back seat, embarrassed to even think she’d know when Allyn lost—or that Allyn had probably known when she— She shuddered. Talk about your inconvenient abilities, and thank God she’d realized this one in time to put a lock on it before Allyn did…you know. “It’s nothing like that,” she said lamely. “I’d know.”

There were some knowledges better left unpursued, and Michael had the distinct impression this was one of them. “You have any idea where she is?”

Becky shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. But she was supposed to be leaving from that friend of hers in Baltimore this morning. She told me she got a Triptik Route Map from Triple A, and I don’t think she planned any more detours.”

“She still driving that Saturn?”

“Far as I know.”

“Then Gabriel can probably get the license number and put out a description, have the staties along the way keep an eye out, pull her over and make sure everything’s copacetic.”

Becky looked at her husband, viewing him for the first time in several weeks the way she used to before the seven-year itch had come along. “You think he could do that just because I feel weird?”

Michael smiled slightly and squeezed her hand. “I think he’d do that if you didn’t feel weird. Give him an excuse to be overprotective, he’ll take it.” He picked up the cell phone between their seats. “Call him.”

Wordless, Becky stared at her husband a minute, then caught his hand and brushed a kiss across the back of his knuckles. Took the phone and speed dialed her stepfather.

Jeth gave them twenty minutes amid the protection of the big rigs before ducking off the interstate into a truck stop.

The thing about two-year-olds was that when they were sick, they were very, very sick, but when they decided they were well… Well! Keeping them down to insure their recovery was, to say the least, a joke. On you.

While Allyn took Sasha inside and changed his diaper and generally learned a little more about him—like the fact that he could not only walk, but run fast if a trifle drunkenly—Jeth emptied and rid them of her Saturn and found them a Dodge Ram as a replacement. He toyed briefly with the idea of finding some way to change their appearances, but decided against it when he couldn’t find hair dye he was sure wouldn’t do harm to Sasha’s tender scalp. He also couldn’t find wigs or anything else that he thought would be the least convincing to disguise himself or Allyn. Such was the problem of keeping a low profile on the fly between small towns and truck stops. That was why when she and Sasha met him in the restaurant portion of the truck stop, he handed her a bag with her license plate and paperwork inside, shook his head at her consternation and said, “Don’t ask.”

He had the keys to the Dodge with him, so despite a world of misgivings, she didn’t.

It was also not like misgivings were exactly new to her where he was concerned. In fact, if she’d had to name the primary emotions she felt about Jeth Levoie, they would be misgiving, uneasiness and disquiet—among other shadings of the term.

She would also have to say that, for the first time in months, due to him—not thanks to him—she felt alive.

The van was far more comfortable for family travel than Allyn’s coupe. There was room to stretch out, spread out, feed and change and play with Sasha while they were moving—although Allyn was adamant about regular stops to give the little boy a break, and Jeth reluctantly obliged.