The Best Revenge Page 13

  “Just like he used to take it out on you.”

  Chapter 17

  She knew.

  St. John couldn’t deny the shiver that went through him. That it was tinged not just with relief, but a strange sort of pleasure rattled him. He’d been so certain no one would ever recognize him, yet had, he admitted now, secretly wished one person would.

  This one.

  He considered, for all of a split second, denying it. But he doubted it would work. She was looking at him steadily, holding his gaze in an unflinching manner even those at Redstone rarely did.

  Oh, she knew, all right. And nothing he said would convince her she was wrong, he could see that in those beautiful, changeable eyes.

  Besides, he didn’t want to deny it. Not to her. To everyone else, but not to her.

  Finally he, who was never the first to blink, lowered his gaze.

  “How long?” he asked, startled at the sound of his own voice, at the strain he heard in the quiet question.

  “Since that day in the cemetery.”

  His head came up sharply, his gaze shooting back to her face. That long? “Why?”

  She followed his jump, as she seemed able to do better than some who’d had a lot more practice.

  “Why didn’t I say something before?” At his slight nod, she answered, “No one knew better than I that you had good reason to not want to be recognized here. Especially by one man.”

  “Didn’t.”

  “I know he didn’t recognize you. Looking at his own son, face-to-face, he didn’t. But then, he hasn’t spent the last twenty years wishing you’d somehow come back.”

  And suddenly his throat was so tight he could barely breathe. And again he had to look away.

  “Why?” he managed.

  “Because until my father got sick, nothing else in my entire life had gone so wrong.” She took a breath, as if to steady herself to go on. “Or been so precious and then lost.”

  He felt another shiver go through him, knew this one was visible, but couldn’t bring himself to care if she saw it. Not Jess. She had always known his darkest secrets, and they had ever and always been safe with her. He’d never trusted anyone as he trusted her. He’d trust Josh with just about anything, his life even, but this woman, who even as a child had had a wisdom far beyond her years, had been the only one he’d trusted with the dark shadows of his soul. “Not fair.”

  “That my good, loving father is gone while your vicious, evil one lives on? Oh, yes, it’s beyond unfair.”

  There was no answer to that sad truth. Then, finally, he got to the crux of it, the one thing he’d been afraid to ask. And because he realized, with a little shock, that he was afraid, he made himself ask. “How?”

  “How could I not? I only felt a fool because it took me so long to realize there could only be one pair of eyes like that in this world. And they belonged to the one person who has haunted two-thirds of my life. Adam Alden.”

  He winced at the sound of the name he hadn’t heard applied directly to him in that two-thirds of her lifetime. She caught it, and spoke quickly.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t blame you for wanting to wash your hands of everything that tainted you from this place.”

  “Not everything,” he said, so low he wasn’t even sure she’d heard it.

  There was a pause before she spoke. And for a moment he was afraid of what she might say, that whatever words came would somehow make it worse, make him realize he’d not accomplished the only real thing he’d wanted to before he’d gone. She had to know, he thought. She had to know that the only thing he regretted leaving behind when he’d escaped this place was her.

  She didn’t say it. Instead, she said simply, “I’ll try not to slip up on the name again. You must hate it.”

  “His arrogance.” He sucked in a breath. “Thinks he’s God.”

  Again she made the jump with him. “So he named his son after God’s firstborn, as it were?” Her mouth twisted, her expression sour. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

  He couldn’t speak.

  “Definitely lose the name, then,” she said, briskly, as if to shake off the feeling. “But I admit, I can’t quite get used to calling you just St. John. Dameron?”

  He’d known he’d regret that, but her mother had deserved a full introduction, to ease her fears. It had been the least he could do for the woman who had always been kind to him, when others assumed he was everything his father had to nobly endure.

  And Jess deserved an explanation. She was the only person on this planet outside of Redstone who did.

  “Dameron. Dam.” He gave her a sideways look. “Fit.”

  Her mouth quirked at that. “Let’s hope when it comes to your father, it’s a verb.”

  He blinked. And then, slowly, unable to help himself, he smiled. Her eyes widened. And then she smiled back, and in that moment, the two kids they’d once been greeted each other once more.

  When she turned, walked to the front of the store and flipped the Open sign to the Closed side, he knew he was in for it. He realized when she was back that he could have escaped while she’d been doing it, but it hadn’t occurred to him. More proof of how rattled he was.

  “How did you come up with that name?” was her first question when she was back.

  He knew he had to answer. This was Jessa. She deserved it. And more.

  “Walked to River Mill. Hitched to Grant’s Pass. Bus. Driver was St. John. California. First street sign I saw.”

  “Was…Dameron Street?”

  He nodded.

  “Why California?”

  “Where the first bus was going.”

  “What did you do? You were only fourteen.”

  He shrugged. “Ways.”

  “I’m sure there are, but—” Her words broke off sharply. He flicked a glance at her face, read the horror that was dawning.

  And realized, as he’d feared that day in the cemetery, she knew everything. He’d hoped, somehow, that she hadn’t guessed the details of his final degradation, that she’d been too young, too innocent, too pure to even conceive of it. And perhaps she had been, then. But she was too smart not to have realized, eventually. He should have known.

  “No,” he said, fighting the churning in his gut. “Not that. Never again. Swore I’d die first.”

  She moved then. Quickly. So quickly he didn’t have time to move, to dodge. And then her arms were around him, her warmth enveloping him. He stiffened, resisting, but she held on, and she was stronger than he’d realized. Strong enough that if he forced it, he could hurt her.

  And with a jolt that nearly took his breath away he realized he didn’t want to. Realized that instead of fighting her, his own arms had encircled her as if of their own volition. But he knew that wasn’t true, knew that on some level he’d wanted this from the moment he’d walked into this place and seen her again. Little Jessa Hill, all grown up, a change that, sillily, had shocked him.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dameron St. John,” she whispered.

  “Jess,” he murmured, unable to say anything more.

  He was half-sitting on the edge of the desk, and she was locked in his arms, leaning against him. He felt an odd flood of sensation, as if somehow she had the power to give him back some of the innocence and hope she’d always had in abundance and he’d never known. At the same time, his body was very aware it was a soft, warm, sweet woman he held. It had responded swiftly, fiercely, before he could rein in the response. He who controlled so much, most of all himself, couldn’t seem to control anything about his responses to her. His emotions, and now his body, were running amok. And if she so much as moved she was going to realize that.

  “What happened then?” The question came quietly, muffled slightly because she was pressed against his chest. He wondered if she could hear his heart slamming in his chest, rocketing out of control.

  Out of control.

  God, no one at Redstone would believe it, they wouldn’t recognize the legendar
y St. John, reduced to this at the mere touch of a little blond pixie who had haunted his years just as she’d said he’d haunted hers.

  He wanted to answer as St. John would, to tell her, in as few words as possible, that it was none of her concern, that he didn’t talk about it, wouldn’t talk about it, and then move on to business.

  He couldn’t. This was Jessa, and he couldn’t.

  With one of the greatest efforts of his life, he fought against twenty years of ingrained conditioning, twenty years of isolating himself, of keeping the world at bay. He’d never thought about how he would tell his story, because he’d never expected to tell it.

  “Start,” he muttered.

  “Beginning,” she suggested, again as if his single word responses were catching. “That night,” she added then, “you planned it all?”

  “Yes. Nature had other plans. Really fell.”

  She jerked back sharply, stared up into his face. “Into the river?”

  He nodded. “Slipped on the rock.”

  He didn’t have to explain which one. He knew she’d know he meant the huge boulder where they often sat, in a hollowed-out section that formed a comfortable spot.

  Her gaze shifted to the scar along his jaw. He nodded. “That edge.”

  The mostly smooth boulder had also had a jagged edge where a section had broken off, and it had been that that sliced open his face when he’d slid over it in his tumble into the swirling water.

  “That explains why they found skin and blood there,” she said.

  “Yes. Rain had stopped by then.”

  “You knew?”

  “Later. Looked up newspapers.”

  She settled back against him, and he relaxed, only then realizing he’d been afraid she would pull away. The knowledge rattled him even further, and he wondered if he was going to survive this. But she had the right to hear it. She was the only one who did.

  “The rest?” she said after a minute of silence.

  He nearly shuddered under the effort, and when the words finally came, they were like the staccato bursts of a machine gun.

  “Four years surviving. Bad company. Learned a lot, good and bad. No jail, barely. Moved around.” He took a breath, amazed at how much this was taking out of him. “Met a man. He…helped.”

  What a paucity of acknowledgment for what Josh had done for him, he thought. It bordered on insult, and he couldn’t let it go at that.

  “He…saved my life.”

  He felt her go still, seeming to even stop breathing. “Figuratively?” she asked.

  “And literally. Eighteenth birthday. The real one. Was going to…finish what started that night.”

  He thought about it rarely, and never spoke of it at all, but now that he had, it rose up and engulfed him. That dark, wet night, in a fierce California rain—they seemed to get it all in one storm—he’d been on an overpass, looking down at another sort of flooding river, an endless river of cars. Shivering, he fought not to give up, not to hurl himself into that stream as the world thought he once had into another deadly river.

  He’d actually been straddling the railing, trying to think of one reason not to do it, when he’d heard the squeal of brakes. He came within a hairsbreadth of making the irrevocable decision, before whoever it was who had stopped could stop him.

  Then he realized they hadn’t stopped for him, but for a bedraggled, soaked-to-the-skin dog, skinny, limping, but moving on. And in that instant he’d felt like less than that dog, who kept moving despite it all, driven by the instinct for life that had once driven him to escape, but now seemed to have deserted him completely.

  “Hey! Give me a hand with him, will you? He’s hurt.”

  The voice that had come out of the night had a touch of a drawl, and the man who’d issued the request was tall, lean, with slightly shaggy hair, and while older than he, still young. Although he was dressed in faded jeans, a worn denim shirt and jacket, and oddly, battered cowboy boots, the vehicle was newer, and well kept.

  He heard the man talking to the frightened dog, coaxing, crouching down to be at the animal’s height. The dog took a tentative step toward the man, stepping into the beam of the headlights.

  “He looked like Kula,” he said now, not realizing in the swirl of memories that somewhere in his pitiful tale he had begun to talk in almost full sentences. “Same color…but mostly the same eyes. That old soul.”

  “So you helped,” Jessa whispered in a strained voice, the first thing she’d said since he’d slipped back into that nightmare turned salvation.

  “Had to. That dog was braver than I was.” He took a breath and plowed on; now that he’d started, he knew he had to finish. “Got him loaded in the back of the car. Guy pulled off his jacket, rubbed the dog almost dry.” Another memory stabbed him. “There was a blanket. Asked him why he didn’t use that. He said…I was going to need it.”

  He shivered as if it were that cold, wet night all over again.

  “He offered me a lift. I didn’t have anywhere to go, but…I couldn’t get my mind back to what I’d been about to do. And the car would be dry.”

  She murmured something he couldn’t quite understand, but the sound was so full of pain that it didn’t matter that he hadn’t understood the words. She was, as she always had been, aching for him. That both pained him and thrilled him, in a twisted combination of emotions that he told himself he’d sort out later. Much later, when he was ready to deal with the fact that he was feeling emotions at all.

  “I knew—you learn to tell, on the street—he wasn’t…one of those. He told me to get in, and I did. I didn’t trust anyone, but I couldn’t seem to…say no to him.” His mouth quirked upward then. “Still can’t.”

  She pulled back again, to look up at him. When she saw his expression, her own changed, lightened. “Still?”

  “He’s my boss. Has been since that day.”

  “You work for him?”

  He nodded. “No skills. But I could organize. And track. Plan. Knew some people, some shady, some not. Build a network, he said. Started as his assistant, researcher and general gofer.” He gave her a lopsided smile. She smiled back so quickly it warmed him. “Still am. It’s just a bigger deal now.”

  “A bigger deal?”

  “Much.”

  He saw the curiosity come into her eyes, knew she was going to ask, and wondered what her reaction would be when she got the answer.

  “Who is he?”

  He held her gaze as he spoke the name known around the world. “Josh Redstone.”

  Chapter 18

  Jessa knew she was having trouble processing it all when the first thing she asked him was, “What happened to the dog?” “Died.”

  The cold word jabbed at her, and she winced. Of course the dog had died, he was talking about two decades ago. But that hadn’t been what she’d asked, and she knew he knew it. The quickness with which he amended the terse answer proved it.

  “Sorry. Years later. In Josh’s lap, after the first flight of the Hawk III.”

  She wanted to smile at the real answer, and the image that presented. Josh Redstone. She had suspected, when she’d heard of Redstone’s interest in Riverside Paper, but still, of all the places in the world she could have imagined him ending up had she known he was alive, she doubted that Redstone Incorporated would have occurred to her.

  “He just…took you on? You helped him with a stray dog and he hired you on the spot?”

  His mouth quirked. “Wouldn’t have taken a job. Didn’t trust…anybody that much.”

  “But?”

  “But Josh is smart about people. Took me—and the dog—to the hangar he was working out of. Said he had too much work to do to look out for Clover—named him for an old airfield—and asked me to do it. Couldn’t pay me, but gave me a bunk there, and meals.”

  “Josh Redstone couldn’t pay you?”

  “The Hawk I was still a prototype, then.” He was remembering, she could tell by the slightly unfocused look of his eyes. “Bu
t later that year she took the light aviation world by storm, and Josh was on top of the world.”

  “You’ve been with him ever since?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Only two people with him longer.”

  She remembered an article about Josh Redstone her father had given her to read a few years earlier. She’d been in college, and frustrated at the fecklessness of most of her fellow students of the male persuasion. Her father had told her there were other kinds out there, and had handed her the article as proof. She had only scanned it until she got to the part about Redstone being in his twenties when his first design had taken to the air.

  “A real man,” Jess Hill had said. “Making his own way, not expecting anything to be handed to him, knowing he had to prove himself, prove his design was the best.”

  Jessa had taken note; her father was a genial, kindly man, but he didn’t all that often express such unreserved admiration. She’d read the article carefully, noting that Josh Redstone’s life had had its share of lows to go with the highs; he’d lost his wife to cancer, and the article had stated that he’d never remarried.

  “And he’s a straight shooter,” her father had added. “Inspires loyalty, the kind you can’t buy with just high salaries.”

  Her father, as he’d usually been about people, had obviously been right if Josh Redstone had people still with him after that long.

  “Who?” she asked, genuinely curious, not simply because she couldn’t decide how to ask the rest of what she wanted to know, what he’d done every minute of every day since that awful morning when she’d stood on their rock and stared at the river that had always been a silent companion but then had turned enemy.

  “Draven. John. Head of security.” She remembered a mention of that, as well, that Redstone Security was a legend in itself, earning respect, admiration and sometimes envy around the world as it worked to protect Redstone and the Redstone family. “Served with Josh’s brother in the army. With him when he died. Came to tell Josh, never left.”

  Beneath her empathy for the story he was telling, she was aware he was being, for him, positively expansive. She seized the mood, thinking that he could clam up anew at any moment.