UPON THE STORM Page 9

  Christy opened her mouth, but she couldn't speak. He sounded so humble, so full of that self-directed disgust she'd seen in the hut. He was ripping her apart inside.

  "But I kept trying. I called anyone and everyone I could think of. Finally I went to Reno."

  She stared at him in shock. "You … what?"

  "I went to Reno. I started with the police, then the hospital, then the juvenile court." His mouth twisted wryly. "It was ironic, really. For the first time I was determined not to play the big celebrity game, to leave all that behind, and I ended up doing it more than ever. I signed more autographs and posed for more pictures… But I didn't care, not if it meant … they'd help me find you."

  "My God," she breathed.

  "I talked to your doctor, the one who found you. You said you'd gone back there. I hoped he might have known from where. I thought I could go there and look. But he didn't know." He looked up at her. "The Sawyers have two more foster kids now," he said, "but they still remember you."

  Christy's eyes widened. "You … saw them?"

  He nodded. "They said you were only with them for two years, but you were why they continued with the foster parent program."

  "I … they were good to me."

  "I know. I could tell by the way they talked about you." His throat tightened at the memories of what they'd told him of a young Christy, fighting to overcome her shaky start in life, proud yet frightened, and determined to make something of herself on her own.

  "But they wouldn't tell me any more. They got … protective, I guess." His mouth twisted again. "They knew about me, all right." He sighed. "I think I liked them all the more for it." She'd had few enough people to watch out for her in her life.

  "They're … very special."

  "Yes. And so is John Donovan," he added softly.

  Christy's heart turned over. God, how long had he spent tracing the threads of her scattered, confused life? And why?

  "Do you know one of your pictures is still in that display case?" He saw her shiver under the onslaught of emotion that swept her. He remembered that afternoon so clearly.

  Although he'd tried to keep a low profile, he'd wound up causing a near riot in the halls of the school when one of the more observant students took a second, then a third, look at the man in the battered leather jacket talking to Mr. Donovan outside the photo room.

  It had taken nearly an hour of signing his name on everything from paper towels to book covers, and a picture taken by every member of the Photography II class, before he'd been able to sit down and talk to the man who had been her mentor. He'd smiled through it all, determined that this new leaf would stay turned.

  "He told me how he'd found you, how you took to the camera like a 'duck to water,' he said. How you never thought you were good enough, and he had to send your first contest entry in without you knowing about it."

  Christy blinked at the sudden stinging behind her eyelids. "I was furious."

  "So he said. 'And that,' he said, 'is something to see.' I told him I knew that."

  She was huddled on the couch now, arms wrapped around herself as if trying to keep herself from flying apart.

  "But when I asked him if he knew where you were now, he clammed up. Told me he didn't much care for what he'd heard about me, and he wasn't saying anything unless he knew you wanted him to." He laughed, that short, harsh, painful chuckle again. "I've never been so … stymied. My reputation got them to see me in the first place, then it made them refuse to tell me anything. Hoist with my own petard…"

  Christy was stunned. She never would have guessed he would go to such lengths to find her. And she never would have guessed she would receive so much protective help from the people who had been havens in her stormy life.

  "Trace," she whispered, but no other words came. After a moment he went on, in the tone of one unburdening a tortured soul.

  "So I came home. I went back to work. And I started to climb out of the hole I'd dug for myself. 'You just have to keep going,' you said, remember? Sometimes that was the only thing that kept me from quitting. I'd look around at all the people I'd made hate me, at all the bad feelings I'd brought on myself, and I wanted to give up. But then I'd think of you and feel so damned ashamed of even considering quitting, when you never had, with ten times the reason…"

  "I…" Again, no more words came; he looked up and saw the eyes he'd dreamed of for so long, wide, dark and misty gray.

  "Then I saw the book." His voice had dropped to a mere whisper of sound, taut and strained. "It was like … reliving it, all over again. I was up all night, just staring at it. I saw the listing of the Alaska book. I couldn't believe it. It had been right out there, all that time, and I never knew."

  He shook his head slowly, as if in pain. "All I could think of was how many people, probably even some I knew, had your name sitting on their bookshelves, and I never knew. It wasn't until the next morning that I realized I was holding another chance. I thought … I hoped that maybe … you'd heard. I knew the papers were blaring my … conversion, I guess they called it, all over. I hoped you had. That you knew why. That you knew I … meant what I'd promised you."

  He stared down at the plush, blue-smoke carpeting. "I meant it all. My work, my attitude … even Tony." He glanced at her. "He's in school now. You were right. He … took my help, that way."

  Christy tried to speak, to acknowledge him, but her throat was too tight.

  Trace took a shuddering breath. "I called Dragon Books. They told me … what you said. That's when I knew … that I'd been right in the beginning. That you … hated me."

  "I don't … hate you," she repeated, forcing the words out past the choking, aching lump in her throat. She hadn't hated him, even when she'd given those instructions. Even though she'd known then…

  "Then why?" he asked again, huskily. "Why did you run?"

  She stared at him, torn. The changes she'd seen in that photograph on the plane—a thousand years ago—were even more evident in person. He was no less compellingly handsome, but there was a new gentleness about him and a strangely older, wiser look in those dramatic eyes.

  Had she done that to him? Was she the reason for that sad, almost haunted look in his eyes? It didn't seem possible, but then, neither did all he'd done. She was confused, still dazed by the shock of seeing him, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she owed him this, at least.

  "I … that morning … when they came for us…" She stopped. Although the memories of those days with him often rose unstoppably to batter her, she had usually managed to avoid thinking of that last morning. They had been startled awake by, of all things, someone shouting her name through the battered door of the hut.

  For all her fury, Charlotte had not lasted once she'd finally struck. After teasing them for days with the outer fringes of her might, she had swept through in haste, as if eager to expend herself on the land that would be her undoing. Fifteen hours after she had finally set her course she was gone, and they had been roused to a brilliant, sunny September day that had been nearly as big a shock as the unexpected voice shouting through the sliding door that was, judging from the pounding going on, jammed shut. From that moment, things had happened so fast that she'd had no time to think.

  Only a quickly spoken warning from Trace had saved her from slicing her feet to ribbons; she'd forgotten about the shattered window.

  She had called out to reassure the young ranger as she scrambled into her clothes, tautly aware of Trace close behind her, and of the awkwardness she was feeling at their mutual nakedness as the world began to close in on them. He had grabbed his own clothes, and she was even more aware of all the things they hadn't said.

  "I … when I saw how he looked at you … I think I began to realize," she said slowly. Dan Rogers's expression of relief at finding her safe had changed to one of shock the moment he had seen Trace standing behind her. "My God," the young ranger had gasped. "We thought you were dead! We've been finding pieces of your boat … the reporters have b
een all over us, asking when we were going to find your body."

  "Realize what?" Trace asked, his voice low and gentle, as if he was afraid anything above a whisper would break the spell and she would slip into silence again.

  "Just … how famous you really were. When I saw that newspaper, on the Coast Guard boat … then I really knew."

  He remembered it, that glaring headline, "Charlotte Strikes," with his own name and the fact that he was missing in letters only slightly smaller beneath it.

  "People died, towns were washed away, but you were bigger news … almost bigger than Charlotte herself."

  "It shouldn't be that way," he said tightly. "I didn't want it that way."

  "I know. But that's what I realized. That whether you wanted it or not didn't matter… You were big news. You were someone the whole world really did know, enough so that they didn't even have to explain who you were. Just your name was enough." A sadly rueful expression came over her face. "And I didn't have the slightest idea who you were."

  "Christy, don't—"

  "But even if I hadn't figured it out then, I would have when we got to the dock."

  "God, I'm sorry about that." He'd sensed a change in her before, but the tension that had shot through her when she spotted the mass of hovering, circling reporters on the Coast Guard dock had been almost visible. The flashes had begun to snap from the moment the boat had come into sight and had never stopped. "If I'd known … hell, I should have known. The damned vultures follow me everywhere."

  "It's their job," she said quietly. "You're what people want to know about."

  He sighed. "I suppose it wasn't their fault. I'd never minded before. Egged them on, in fact. Played their silly game for all it was worth. They had no way of knowing I was … changing the rules."

  "You … handled it like it was nothing. But I guess it was, for you."

  "What're a few reporters, after a hurricane?" She looked away. "Did they scare you? Is that why you … left?"

  "Partly. That's … a different world, Trace. Not mine. Yours. You belong in that world."

  Not to me. The words echoed in his head as if she'd spoken them. Was that what she was thinking? "I know it was crazy for a while, but … later? Why did you stay away?"

  She smiled tightly. "You don't exactly just pick up the phone and call the biggest superstar in America."

  "I'm not the—" He cut off his sharp words, then began again. "I made sure you would have gotten through."

  She raised her eyes to his. "You don't even realize, do you? You live with it all the time … narrowing your life down to who's on some list or something. To only the people you decide you have time for."

  He winced; she was hitting awfully close to the reality of his life. "Did you really think I wouldn't have time for you? You, of all people?"

  She dropped her gaze. "No. I knew you would find time. If nothing else, out of … gratitude or something."

  "Gratitude?" He fairly shouted the word. "I thought we settled all that."

  "I know. But I still thought it, at first."

  "At first?"

  She nodded wearily. "Then I realized that we … were even on that score. After that day I fell and you came for me."

  "But you still didn't contact me."

  She let out a long, slow breath. "I'd … never really paid attention to all those gossip rags, or even to the legitimate ones. But all of a sudden it seemed like they were everywhere. And you were always the top story. Along with everything you've ever done."

  Or everyone, he thought, flinching. "I told you, I … hadn't been an angel," he said tightly.

  "It wasn't that. I'd seen the change you went through, and I knew that whatever had happened before, you were going to try. But I—" Her voice caught in her throat, and it was a moment before she could go on. "It was better this way, don't you see? I understood, and you didn't have to … be kind."

  He stared at her. "Kind?"

  She tightened her grip on her elbows, trying to stop the little quivers that were shaking her as she nodded. "If I just … went away and didn't bother you, you wouldn't have to be kind about it. About just walking away, I mean, after…"

  "Is that what you thought?" He sat up, suddenly rigid in the chair. "That I wanted to just walk away?"

  "Didn't you? I mean, I know it … didn't mean that much, that it just happened, because we were scared. And I understood," she repeated.

  "Understood what?" His voice was deadly quiet.

  "That you didn't … couldn't really want me. Not back in your world."

  "So I get lumped with all the rest of them, is that it? All the ones who left? Because no one else ever wanted you, I didn't, either?"

  She stared at him, bewildered by the anger in his tone as well as by his words. "Why would you? You could have anyone. The most beautiful women in the world. Why would you want me?"

  In that moment he saw the abandoned little girl, certain that there must be something inherently wrong with her that made it impossible for anyone to truly care about her. He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her until that little girl was only a distant memory. But he didn't dare, not yet; he couldn't risk losing her again, not after he'd waited so long.

  "Why would I want you?" he asked softly. "How about because you're the bravest, most compassionate, most gallant person I've ever known? Not to mention the quickest, brightest, sassiest wildcat—" he said the words caressingly "—in the world."

  Christy shook her head in disbelief. "But I'm not!"

  "Hush," he said shortly, but not angrily. "The most beautiful women in the world, you said? Maybe some people see them that way. Maybe I did, once. And I can't deny that I've been with my share. But there's not a one of them who can hold a candle to you. And not one of them who I want the way I want you."

  "But you can't!" she burst out. "You don't … even know where I came from, or who—"

  "I know you," he cut in relentlessly. "Who your parents were, or why they couldn't stay with you, doesn't matter. You do."

  Desperate, she fell back on the old, tired argument she had used so unsuccessfully on herself when she would awaken in the middle of the night so filled with longing it nearly smothered her. "It was just … the circumstances," she whispered.

  She gave a start at the sharp, harsh sound that broke from him. "God, Christy! Don't you think I haven't told myself that a thousand times? That it was the situation, the storm, the thought that we might die in the next minute, that made it so incredible? Don't you think I haven't called myself a hundred kinds of fool for waking up in a cold sweat, wanting you so badly it hurt? It hurt, Christy."

  He shook his head at the memory. "I used to laugh at guys who told me about feeling that way. I was lucky, I thought. Nobody would ever get to me that way. I'd always be in control. And it worked, in ways I never expected. It seems to attract some women. Especially the ones like you talked about, the ones who take it as a challenge, as a chance to prove how irresistible they are."

  His eyes fastened on her like a man looking at his last chance at the life preserver before he sank out of sight. "And then there you were. Clean and honest and good, like they could never be. And without the slightest idea of how beautiful you were, what you could do to a man with just a look from your silver eyes…"

  After a moment he went on hoarsely. "That's why it wouldn't work, telling myself it was only the time and the place. You had me climbing the walls long before that night."

  "I … did?" Christy stared at him, her eyes wide with turmoil. "I … didn't know."

  He let out a strained, wry laugh. "That's what I mean. There's not one of those women you keep talking about who wouldn't know, down to the last flicker of an eyelash, exactly what effect she had on a man. And you do more with a look, with the way that chin of yours comes up when you're mad, than they can do with all their … charms. And you don't even know it."

  "I thought … it was just me," she murmured, almost to herself.

  "Just you?"

/>   She colored, but made herself go on. "Who was climbing the walls." It was Trace's turn to stare. "I kept telling myself that it would be over soon, that you would go back to your world, to—" she glanced at him "—all the women who were probably waiting for you. But you were there, running around in that damned towel … I told myself I was a fool, that somebody like you wouldn't even look twice at me, that back in your world, you were used to women with … experience."

  "Experience?" He was looking at her so oddly that the thought that he might have misunderstood made her cheeks flame once more.

  "I didn't mean … you weren't…" She swallowed and tried again. "I mean, I wasn't a virgin."

  "Weren't you?" he said softly, still with that odd look.

  "No!" she exclaimed, embarrassment making her hug herself even tighter. "There was somebody else, once. When I was seventeen. I thought he could make me feel … wanted, I guess. Like … you did. But I just felt … used."

  Trace could barely speak, he hurt for her so. No one, in all that time, until him. He'd guessed there had been only a few when she had registered the surprise and wonder on her face as he'd entered her, but he had never suspected this. He felt humbled in a way he'd never known before this gray-eyed sprite had come into his life. "And you think that means you weren't … a virgin?"

  She looked at him blankly. "Doesn't it?"

  "Physically, maybe. Emotionally?" He shook his head. "I think we both were."

  He saw her absorb the idea, could almost see her turning it over in her mind. "Both?"

  He saw her doubt and couldn't blame her for it. "I know. I ran around a hell of a lot back then. But I never … felt anything. It didn't mean anything. I just didn't know it then. I didn't know it could be any other way for me. Until you." He lowered his eyes. "And now that I know … the other isn't good enough anymore." He gave her a tight, embarrassed little laugh. "Not that it matters. I gave up after I humiliated myself a time or two. My body knows I don't want anyone else."