instant, his eyes narrowed to slits. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “What the hell is your game?”
This had been a terrible idea. How else could she have expected him to react except with anger?
“I knew you didn’t believe me on the phone the other day,” she said, “but if you’ll just take a look at Emma’s picture, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.” She extracted the picture from her shirt pocket, her hand trembling, and tried to hand it to him. He wouldn’t take it. “You’ll know she’s yours if you’d just look at her for two seconds,” she pleaded.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “They should lock you up.”
“I know.” She was still holding the picture toward him. “This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done. But I’m sane, I swear it, and—”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” he said. “And frankly, I hope never to see you again.” He took the radio from his belt.
“Come in, Alex.” He spoke into the radio, then to her he said, “You thought you’d have me captive up here and I’d have to listen to you, huh? Well, sorry, but you’re wrong.”
“Yo, balloon.” Alex’s voice crackled on the radio.
“We’re coming down,” Dylan said.
“Mechanical problem?” Alex asked.
“Nothing that simple,” Dylan answered, his voice tight. “I can make Del Russo’s orchard in a few minutes.”
“We’ll be there,” Alex said.
“I’m sorry,” she said when he’d hung the radio on his belt again. “This was a mistake.”
“Don’t talk to me, all right? I’m working.”
She decided it was best to say no more as they descended. Facing the direction the balloon was drifting, she kept her eyes riveted on the trees below. They floated over them, the bottom of the basket brushing the leaves. Suddenly, the trees fell away and an orchard appeared below them, grapevines stretching into the distance in neat rows.
Two men were running toward the spot where the balloon appeared to be headed, and it was a minute before she realized they were Alex and Brian. The balloon was aimed directly at a row of grapevines, and she braced herself for the impact. But Dylan tugged on a line at the side of the basket, and the balloon instantly dropped to the ground, landing with a barely perceptible thump, neatly, tightly, between two rows of vines. Within seconds, the balloon was transformed into a pile of colorful rags strewn over the orchard.
“Help her out,” Dylan said to the men, his voice gruff.
The man with the ponytail produced the stepladder again, and she climbed out of the basket, her legs like jelly.
“Take her back to the house for her car, Brian,” Dylan ordered without looking at any of them.
Laura caught the glance that passed between Alex and Brian as they tried to figure out what had caused their boss’s sudden sour mood.
“Yessir.” The young man with the beard turned to her. “Let’s go.”
She followed him through the orchard, the sunrise coloring the vines a creamy yellow.
“Didn’t feel too good up there?” Brian asked as they neared his van.
She nodded. It was not a lie.
He opened the van door for her, and she got in and fastened the seat belt.
“Don’t feel bad,” he said as he drove away from the orchard. “It happens sometimes. My girlfriend got really sick. I’ll never get her up again.”
“Thanks,” she said, then fell quiet again. She would let him think her silence was due to illness rather than embarrassment and regret.
He drove her back to Dylan’s log cabin, and she thanked him and got into her car. She drove down the driveway a short distance, far enough so that Brian would not see her, and stopped the car. Leaning her head against the seat back, she shut her eyes and tried to still the shivering in her legs. What an imbecile she’d been! He’d been quite a jerk himself, but she could hardly blame him. He must have thought he was trapped up there with a loon.
After a few minutes, she put the car in gear again and started slowly down the driveway. When she reached the mailbox topped with the wooden hot air balloon, she stopped again. She pulled Emma’s photograph from her shirt pocket, turned it over and jotted her number on the back. Then she got out of the car, walked over to the mailbox and slipped the picture inside.
13
DYLAN WAS TURNING THE SALMON STEAKS IN THE MARINADE when he heard the front door open. He peered from his kitchen into the living room.
“Hey!” He smiled at Bethany. “Good to see you, Beth.”
“Good to see you, too.” Bethany walked into the galley kitchen, her arms wrapped around a paper grocery bag, and gave him a kiss.
“Can’t hug you,” Dylan said. “Got marinade on my hands.”
“Well, I brought dessert.” She pulled the cartons of Ben & Jerry’s from the grocery bag, and Dylan smiled. Bethany knew his weakness.
“I also picked up your mail for you, since you obviously haven’t made it to the end of your driveway today.” She put the stack of envelopes and junk mail on his counter.
“Thanks.” He washed his hands at the sink, then gave her a proper kiss.
“So, what’s this?” Bethany picked up the photograph lying on the pile of mail.
Dylan looked at the picture just long enough to feel the return of his anger from that morning.
“Where was that?” he asked. “In the mailbox?”
“Uh-huh. Just lying loose. Who is she?”
“I don’t have a clue.” He tossed the picture upside down on the stack of mail, noticing that Laura Brandon had written a phone number on the back.
Bethany looked as though she didn’t believe him, but she didn’t press him. He could count on her for that.
Of the women he’d gone out with over the past few years, Bethany was his favorite. She was beautiful. Besides running her own photography business, she modeled part-time, and he loved finding her face and body in the pages of Washingtonian magazine. Her shiny, short hair was as black as a raven’s wing and she wore a perpetual tan. More important than her looks, though, was the fact that she understood him better than anyone else he’d dated. She understood that he didn’t want to be tied down; he was always honest with her about that. She understood that he needed to see other women, and she dated other men. Still, Dylan feared that Bethany’s carefree facade masked her real yearnings. She was only thirty-one. He knew she wanted marriage and a family, while he wanted neither. She wanted to be loved, while he knew his feelings for her would never move beyond affection. He was brutal in his honesty about that, and while she accepted his words on the surface, he worried that she expected him to change. He’d told her many times that if marriage and commitment were what she was after, she had the wrong guy.
One concession he’d made to her was that she be his only lover. She could not have a physical relationship with more than one man at a time, she’d said, and she needed to know the same was true for him. It was true, not because of the emotional complications more than one lover could engender, but because of the physical risk. He was enigmatic that way. He wanted to live from day to day, without a care for the future, but damned if he was going to get AIDS or something else in the process. He and Bethany had been tested. They were monogamous—sexually, anyway—and he took comfort in that.
Bethany made the salad and microwaved the potatoes while he grilled the fish on the deck. They ate at his picnic table under the thick