A Drive-By Wedding Read online

  The constant travel was hard on Sasha, who got more and more restless as his strength and color improved. Allyn hated seeing him cranky, but the fact that he was verbal, demanding and full of beans because he felt good was a source of both maternal satisfaction and maternal exasperation. Keeping him occupied was a full-time job.

  Getting Jeth to stop at regular intervals so Sasha could get out and blow off steam was another.

  Since the morning of their almost, he’d gone back and forth between seeming wholly relaxed with her and distinctly uncomfortable. There was a tension between them that Allyn found disturbing and exciting. One moment he touched her, offered her a hand up, placed one in the small of her back to guide her, dropped a kiss on her mouth, and the act was as natural, familiar and profound as breathing. The next moment she’d catch him watching her from as far away as possible, eyes hooded, face brooding, wary. At those moments she wanted to say something exasperated to him, punch him verbally in the chops—anything that would relieve the situation and tell him exactly how ridiculous were his concerns.

  Whatever they might be.

  And whether she believed herself or not.

  Something inherent in her woman’s intuition told her this was prelude, temptation—denial of an event as inevitable as time, as plain as history. If they didn’t do something about this thing between them—talk about it, relieve it somehow—it would only build to explosive levels. And unless you set them carefully and purposefully, explosions, as Allyn had reason to know, usually happened when you least expected and could least afford them.

  Diffusing the situation somehow seemed the wisest course, but since she’d only ever been good at avoiding man-woman-love-sex complications, she didn’t know how to dissolve the one before her now.

  Nor was she sure she wanted to. Ease it, yes; dispel it, no.

  So she bided her time, knowing the squall before the storm would break sooner or later and determined to be ready for it.

  Or as ready as she could be when she wasn’t sure where the life jackets were kept.

  Toward evening of what was the fourth full day of travel, when she saw Jeth staring into the middle distance and had to call his name three times before he heard, Allyn put her foot down.

  “That’s it,” she announced when he finally gave her his attention, “I’ve had it. This will not do. You sit up on guard all night, either afraid I’ll jump your bones, you’ll jump mine or that some entity we haven’t seen behind us since you picked up the van will sneak up and surprise us in or out of flagrante delicto. Then you drive all day because you won’t—or don’t—trust me behind the wheel. Blast it, Jeth, you’re exhausted, Sasha’s crabbin’ up a storm because he’s been cooped up in his seat too long—” she winced at a particularly piercing bellow from the seat behind Jeth “—I mean, in case you can’t hear him—and if I don’t get a bathroom soon, I won’t be responsible for the consequences, and I don’t care how embarrassing that sounds, we’re pretending to be married, for crying out loud, and body functions are part of the package like companionable silences, but we’ve been married less than a week and you’re blessed poor company when you’re falling asleep at the wheel or avoiding me altogether—”

  Jeth viewed her blankly, shuttled his attention to the road as though mechanized, blinked at her. She was ranting, and she knew it and didn’t care. One thing the women in her family did extremely well was point out to their menfolk what was best for them and make sure the menfolk either listened or had their heads examined.

  It didn’t even occur to her that she’d consigned Jeth to the role of hers.

  “—and I didn’t sign on for this, I really didn’t. I could practically kill for the use of the same bathroom for even two days in a row, I want a real meal that’s not sandwiches and carrot sticks and sliced apples because they’re easy, I want to call my family so we don’t have even more problems than we’ve already got, and if you don’t stop for a while and get some sleep you’ll be no good to Sasha or me if the people you’re running from do find us, not to mention that I will bonk you on the head and leave you for the buzzards if you don’t let me at least drive for you because, you thick-skulled, bean-brained idiot, you dragged me into this and we’re in it together now and I’ll be jiggered if I let you screw things up for Sasha because you’re tired.”

  She was practically shouting—if violently contained, whip-tongued, low-voiced scolding could be called shouting, that is. But she had Jeth’s full and undivided attention, and that’s what mattered.

  Except that his lips twitched.

  “Did you just call me a bean-brained idiot?” he asked, trying hard not to laugh.

  It was a losing battle.

  “I’m going to call you more than that if you don’t pull this vehicle into the nearest rest area PDQ,” Allyn said grimly, “because you’re going to want to be well rested for the conversation I intend to have with you.”

  “Oh, no.” He cringed; he couldn’t help it. Laughter sputtered out of him no matter how severely he tried to marshal it. “There’s more?”

  “Trust me,” Allyn suggested far too sweetly. “There’s lots more.”

  Jeth tightened his jaw and cleared his throat in an attempt to stifle both the mirth and the groan that warred to escape him. For a woman who professed to know nothing about the workings of male-female relationships, she was sure driving him crazy. “You couldn’t maybe give me a hint, let me prepare myself for your next, ah, outburst before it hits?”

  She set her mouth in a prim line and folded her hands in her lap. “If I tell you what it is, you’ll only cause an accident because you won’t be able to handle it.” She tapped her doorframe, a schoolmarm at the blackboard emphasizing the sums her students were to copy for homework. “Now, come on, it’s getting dark. I don’t know why we all of a sudden can’t stop anymore. It’s not like you’ve been in a big hurry to get where we’re going—”

  “That was before I knew how badly I wanted to share your bed,” Jeth muttered under his breath. And therein lay not only a whole host of dangers, but the abrupt urge to run flat out for the only place he knew both Allyn and Sasha would be safe, if he forgot himself and gave in to the need to be with her the way he had the feeling she wanted him to be.

  The way he was beginning to need to be wanted.

  She rattled on without having heard him. “—And it’s not like we’re actually getting anywhere or doing anything constructive, so why don’t we just pull into that rest area right there—” she pointed to the sign preceding the off-ramp “—and stretch and eat and hit the rest rooms and put this child to bed and get some sleep and then come up with a plan that doesn’t leave us wandering the earth like the Israelites for forty years.”

  Jeth bit back a grin. “If we wander for forty years Sasha’ll be old enough and big enough to take care of himself and we won’t have to do it for him anymore,” he pointed out—somewhat to his discredit.

  Disgusted, Allyn stuck her nose in the air, looked out the passenger window and gave him huffy.

  Last word achieved, and therefore the present skirmish won, Jeth didn’t bother to halt the grin this time. Might as well enjoy the victory—however marginal—while he could. He doubted if his all-too-willing hostage allowed many people to get the verbal better of her often.

  Still, he did as Allyn requested and pulled into the rest area—mostly, he assured himself, because the risk really was minimal at the moment, Sasha was still howling in the back seat, and until she’d decided on a new tack, Allyn had been even more ticked off at him, Jeth, than she’d been the morning he’d kidnapped her. And though he couldn’t decide exactly what, that meant something to him. Demonstrated something intangible but solid, offered wary insight—however reluctant he might be to define it.

  There’d been a new note mixed in among the thunder she leveled at him. She was exasperated, irritated and downright infuriated, but she was truly no longer afraid of him; she was concerned for him. Every word she spoke and the one
s she didn’t told him how much things had changed since that first morning.

  Showed him they were in this together even as she’d told him the same.

  He hadn’t been in anything together with anyone in a very long time. He wasn’t sure he’d be very good at it now.

  However, that, at the moment, was entirely beside the point Allyn made. Which point being that he was fagged beyond belief, he hadn’t—as she’d said—noted anyone following them since they’d traded the Saturn for the van, he’d started this odyssey in order to get Sasha away from things that were bad for him, and constant driving was apparently not all that good for the little boy, either.

  He also wanted—more than anything he’d thought possible in so short a time—to please Allyn.

  Needed to please her.

  In a great many more ways than one—and which other ways, he ruthlessly informed himself, he would not entertain at the moment. Because no matter what he and his body might want from her, feel for her, she was still a civilian and off-limits.

  No matter how tempted he was, nor how easily temptation came to mind.

  Not to mention that, truth be told, for the first time in longer than he planned to try to remember, he was downright curious about what anyone might have to talk to him about that might provoke him enough to cause an accident.

  He glanced at the altogether baffling, too fascinating woman in the bucket seat beside him. If he let himself, he could take one hand off the steering wheel, reach over and touch her, be pretty darn certain that the hand bearing the rings he’d bought would reach back, that her fingers would twine with his. That she would squeeze his hand and let him know they were both alive and really here and part of this thing.

  Together.

  He didn’t want to know why he was certain of this, only knew that he was, and that certainty was reason enough to make him risk granting her almost anything she requested, if it was within his power.

  Almost anything.

  He blinked at the lights coming on around the rest stop’s travel center, pulled into a parking space under the trees in back, turned off the engine and puffed out a breath. Lord, he was tired.

  Allyn unbuckled and slipped between the seats to Sasha. “I’ll get him taken care of,” she said. “Then we’ll walk around a bit. Why don’t you wash up and stretch out in the back of the van. We’ll be right back.”

  Suddenly too leaden to move, he nodded and watched her go, holding on to Sasha’s hand, letting him go when he protested, turning once to grin at Jeth. His gut wrenched at the sight of that half-smile, full of the devil and the siren’s lure at the same time. Wisps of her hair blew from her face as if reaching for him, beckoning. Then she was chasing after Sasha, catching him to zoom him through the air like an airplane. His baby shrieks this time were of laughter, excitement—security. Young as he was, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mama Allyn would not drop him. Trusted that the Allyn Mama would keep him safe, hold him, love him no matter what.

  Something stung abruptly behind his eyes; he blinked it away, pinched it back as though trying to hold off a sneeze. Marcy had trusted him as implicitly once. She really hadn’t been so much older than Sasha when she’d died. When it happened, three years ago, she’d been ten, the youngest of his five siblings. He was fourth oldest, one of her heroes. She’d trusted someone who’d told her he was Jeth’s friend, that Jeth was waiting for them. It had been Jeth’s job that brought the grief to his family. His carelessness.

  His silence in maintaining a cover no matter what the cost, because that was the job.

  It didn’t matter that he hadn’t known about Marcy until it was too late. It mattered that because he’d been younger and more careless, had considered himself invincible and therefore untouchable, that it hadn’t occurred to him to believe what could happen if his cover was blown. He’d thought no one but himself could be hurt if anything went wrong. Neglected to remember there was a reason for sending unattached young guys into the fray; guys with ties had too much to lose.

  One undercover, one mistake and the cost…the cost.

  Sasha, a part of him half hoped, would be payback for Marcy, redemption for him—in his eyes, if in no one else’s. He doubted he’d ever forgive himself for what happened to Marcy, but to be redeemed…maybe that would be enough.

  Almost enough.

  Or at least better than where he still dwelled much of the time.

  Ah, hell. He slid upright in his seat, pushed himself out the van’s door. He’d promised himself not to think about the past while the present required his attention. His great-grandfather used to tell him that the past was all well and good as a place from which to learn lessons one didn’t want to repeat, but it was no fit place to live. You couldn’t change what had happened, you could only change what would. Philosophy to live by.

  He missed Grumpy.

  He missed the past.

  Allyn appeared with Sasha, swinging through the travel center doors and into the warm June air. Jeth’s pulse picked up speed and energy at the sight of her; his belly warmed. He smiled at his “wife.” There were certain things about the present that looked pretty damned good to him, too.

  Sasha barreled up to him, squealing, arms outstretched, ready for Jeth to lift him and whirl him around. Laughing and out of breath, Allyn caught up to them at the same moment Jeth finished Sasha’s spin and set the little boy into the crook of his arm.

  “You’re getting too fast for me, squirt,” she told Sasha, poking him gently in the ribs.

  He giggled and jiggled away from her, tucking his head into Jeth’s neck and screaming happily into his makeshift father’s ear. Jeth grimaced and jerked his head sideways, trying to get as far from Sasha’s merry screech as he could without getting away from the child. Allyn leaned into them both and laughed at Jeth, provoked Sasha some more. Jeth found his reflection in her one green, one blue eye, wondered if the image would drag him in to drown.

  And thought he would sink readily if drowning meant being held in Allyn’s eyes the way he was held now.

  He sucked air and tried to remember he was a man on a mission that didn’t include drowning in this woman’s eyes. Expelled a breath and dismissed the effort as futile.

  Oh, yeah. The present was very damned good.

  Very.

  Simply because he wanted to, because it was the natural thing to do, he stooped and placed a lingering kiss on Allyn’s mouth. She lifted a hand to the back of his neck, steadied herself against Sasha with the other and melted into Jeth, meeting his mouth move for move, touching her tongue briefly to his lips, inviting his to trace hers.

  Planting a promise within the invitation that left Jeth shaken, stirred and downright uncomfortably hard.

  “You did that on purpose,” he murmured, drawing back.

  “Did what?” she returned, with what might have been genuine puzzlement.

  Jeth wasn’t sure he was convinced, but convinced or not, he could play. He nuzzled her hair aside and placed his lips against her ear. “My pants are tight,” he told her. “You make ’em that way. Trust me when I tell you I’m not comfortable.”

  She pulled away, brows beetled into a visual huh? “What?”

  Jeth lifted a significant brow in return, canted his head slightly in the direction of his waistband.

  It took her a minute to catch his drift. When she did, she blushed crimson. “Oh.” She backed up two steps. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I mean, I was going to… Oh, blast.” She gave him a look of pure feminine you are toast, and drew herself up, stepped forward and hoisted Sasha out of his arms. “It’s your own darn fault if you’re uncomfortable,” she informed him primly. “You’re so blessed good at this playacting or whatever this stuff between us is that I forget who we are and get drawn into it and it’s not make-believe. If you’d stop thinking about it, hardness would stop happening. Not to mention that I was going to talk to you about this sex stuff later, but maybe you ought to just go in there—” she waggled her fingers
in the general direction of the brick building that housed the restrooms “—and deal with yourself and we’ll talk about it when you get back.”

  Jeth choked. He couldn’t help it. She was absolutely unbelievable. Embarrassed scarlet one instant, high on her dignity and determined to make him insane the next.

  “Deal with myself?” he asked, incredulous. “Deal with myself?”

  “Absolutely,” Allyn said firmly. “Deal. Cold water, chaste thoughts, whatever it is you do to handle it. Just go.” She waved him away. “Go, go, go. Sasha and I will be eating yogurt and catching June bugs and fireflies somewhere over there. I’ll get him tired out, and then you and I will chat.”

  She started away, but Jeth snorted, caught her hand and hauled her back.

  “Oh, we’ll chat, all right, little girl, but you may not like where the conversation goes.”

  Allyn’s eyes sparkled at the challenge. “Little girl?” She nodded. “I see. You think you’re going to get the upper hand in this discussion by going all macho stud and intimidating me into remembering you’d be the first beforehand. Well, let me point out that I’ve just finished seven years’ study of biology, anatomy, reproduction and a lot of other things relating to life and I probably know more about some things than you’ll ever know even if I do turn red when the subject comes up with you, so two can play that game.”

  Jeth bent and nipped her lower lip, kissed her roughly. “Two playing that game is when it’s the most fun,” he muttered softly. “Remember that.”

  Then he left her staring openmouthed after him for a change, turned on his heel and strode off to wash up.

  Jeth fell asleep in the back of the van atop Allyn’s sleeping bag and the folded-down seats before they had a chance to discuss anything.