Rogue's Revenge - By Gail MacMillan Page 0,58
left alone to raise me.”
“Oh, Heath…”
“I never knew my father, so I never missed him.” He cleared his throat. “But it was hard for my mother. She took any job she could get—waitress, cook, dishwasher. We must have moved a dozen times before I was twelve, each time to a cheaper and poorer apartment in a rougher section of the city. Things just seemed to get harder and harder…for both of us. The whole thing came to a boil when I stole that car and racked it up.”
He paused, and Allison sensed the emotions roiling inside him.
“Heath, that girl…that Jennifer…what she did, it would have driven anyone a little crazy,” she said softly.
“Hardly a valid reason for what I did. At least, that’s what Jack said. A couple of months after I was sentenced, my mother saw an ad in a maritime daily newspaper. Someone with a wilderness lodge in New Brunswick was looking for a cook/housekeeper. She decided to apply, hoping she’d get the job but worried sick she would have to leave me incarcerated in Halifax. She saw only one way to do it. She applied telling Jack the truth about her circumstances. When she had no answer in over a week, she decided he wasn’t interested. Imagine her surprise when he showed up at our apartment one June afternoon and asked her how soon she and her son could be ready to go with him back to New Brunswick. Seems he’d already spent a couple of days at the Justice Department getting me placed in his custody so I could leave the province with them.”
“Gramps was one amazing man.”
“I wasn’t much of a joy to either of them after I came to live here. I tried to run away a couple of times. The first time Jack caught me and brought me back, he was reasoning and understanding; the second time he threatened the bejeebers out of me, which was exactly what I needed.”
“And so you reformed.”
“Started to. Then you and your mother arrived. I think I might have managed to stay away from you, but you had that big, obvious crush on me…”
“Now just a minute, Mr. Macho…”
“Do you deny it?”
Silence. Then, reluctantly, “No. But still…”
“You reminded me of Jennifer—pretty, and rich, and stuck-up.”
“I wasn’t…stuck up.”
“Sure, you were. You got everything you wanted. And that summer you wanted romance with a bad boy.”
“Oh, God.”
“True, isn’t it?”
“I guess, but it embarrasses me to hear it.”
“Okay, moving on. We had that incident, and you went away. Jack must have suspected something, because after you left he called me down to the boathouse, lifted me off my feet by the front of my jacket, and told me that if he ever found out any part of me had touched his granddaughter, he’d amputate it.”
“ Gramps wouldn’t hurt anything—”
“Anything that didn’t threaten his granddaughter. From his expression that day I wasn’t about to risk another encounter with you. But I didn’t have to worry. You never came back.”
The soft sounds of the wilderness filled the following wordless moments. An owl hooted, a coyote howled, frogs chirped.
“Heath?”
“Hmmm?” He nuzzled her hair.
“Were you sorry…that I didn’t come back?”
“Sorry and relieved. I wanted to see you again, to make things right between us, but relieved that I wouldn’t be tempted to do anything that could lead to bodily mutilation.”
She felt the soft chuckle in his chest and smiled into the darkness.
“In that case, so am I. I really like you…intact.”
“Don’t tease. We have to get some sleep.”
He settled against her. She tried to relax and follow suit. It wasn’t easy. Lying beneath that huge spruce, its spicy fragrance adding to the sensuousness of the star-sparkled night in the arms of this earthy man, was almost more than she could bear. Heath’s long muscular body wrapped about hers made her heart race, her senses catapult. She longed to run her hands up under his shirt, to feel those hard ripples of flesh with her fingers, to kiss his lips, his neck, the hollow at his shoulder.
His regular breathing told her he slept. She drew a deep breath, forced down the quiver threatening to rush through her body, and struggled for sleep. Fifteen miles with five thousand two hundred and eighty feet in each. Or was it one thousand seven hundred and sixty yards? How many feet…yards…?
She awoke to sunlight winking into her eyes between the branches. She blinked, struggled up on one elbow, and realized she was alone in the sleeping bag.
“Heath?” Panic seized