A memory surfaced. A brief moment when he was surrounded, so many others talking to him at once, pressing close, all eager to make their points with him. A fragrance drifted to him out of nowhere—wild coral honeysuckle, so faint as to almost not be there, mixed with daffodils. He remembered it was so distracting his head had come up alertly and he had looked toward the side exit door, but there seemed to be a sea of faces looking at him, and then the elusive scent was gone.
He knew they were red flags. He didn’t want to see them because he didn’t want to miss out on a partner. He indicated it was safe to go back to the cabin. “No one is around. Let’s go back inside. We can hash this out where it’s warmer.”
“I just think it’s better if I leave.”
She crossed into the open, moving cautiously. She stayed a distance from him, irritating him. Her hair was light, and she had nothing covering it. He had dark hair and was much harder to spot. Anger swept through him, and with it, realization. She was deliberating presenting a target, the way Diego would in order to protect him.
Jonquille wanted to leave. She was trying to find a way to maneuver them into having her leave when it would actually be safer for her to stay with them. If he didn’t believe she was the bait for Whitney’s team to recover him, or for a terrorist cell or a foreign government, then what would be her motivation? Why was Jonquille really there? Had she honestly come in order to ask him to help her?
She had almost reached the back door of the cabin when she stumbled. It was the last thing he’d expected. She crouched down to fix her shoelace as if it had come untied, allowing him to get ahead of her. Rubin had never had much of a temper. He was easygoing, always had been, but the way his team, and especially his brother, insisted on protecting him because they considered his talent so valuable annoyed him. Now she was doing it. He didn’t believe for one moment anyone was in the cabin. He would know. He would feel it. She was protecting his back. He wasn’t a swearing man, but it was enough to make him want to become one. His team. His brother. The woman that should be his.
He’d been upset for weeks. Months. His entire team had been watching him closely, but his brother especially. Rubin had announced abruptly that he needed to go to the mountains and see patients there. It wasn’t exactly time yet, but he had to get away.
They weren’t scheduled to come to the mountains for another month. Diego and Rubin had decided to go early to hunt and fish. To work on the property. Rubin had needed alone time before he saw to the people he would normally check on. They weren’t two weeks early. They were four weeks early because Rubin thought he was going out of his mind.
4
Rubin strode into the cabin, his senses automatically flaring out to ensure for himself they were alone. He knew they were. He had the sinking feeling he knew why Jonquille had come to the cabin and what she planned to do there. It wasn’t happening.
Rubin? Diego was cautious.
Diego had to feel that slow burn building to a raging fire. Rubin rarely got angry. He wasn’t that kind of man, but when it did happen, as was often the case with quiet men, he was a volcano, capable of taking down a house and everything else in the vicinity when his temper did erupt.
I’ve had it. Just get in here.
Diego didn’t argue or respond. His brother knew him too well. Rubin removed his boots and set them aside in the mudroom. Beside him, Jonquille cast little anxious glances at him while she did the same. Rubin didn’t even try to stop the dark, smothering tension from pervading the room. It moved like an ominous cloud, spreading throughout the open rooms, filling every corner from floor to ceiling.
Diego came in the front door, his gaze flicking from Rubin to Jonquille and back. He set his rifle down and took his boots off as well before coming all the way inside. He didn’t say anything to either of them. He simply put his rifle away, handling it with care, the way he always did.
Rubin noted that the dishes were done. Diego had done them before taking up his rifle and following them outside.
“Sit down, Jonquille,” Rubin advised when she looked toward the sink where her duffel bag was. “Right there, in that rocker where you were before. I’m done with the half-truths you were telling us.”
She hesitated, her gaze flicking toward the mudroom, where she’d just taken off her hiking boots. There was no doubt in his mind that she had more than one bag stashed in the forest so she could grab and go. She didn’t need anything in the cabin.
“Sit. I’m not messing around with this anymore. I’m pissed as hell and you do not want to make me any angrier. Either one of you.” He included his brother in that, daring Diego to say one more word against or about her.
Diego raised an eyebrow but remained silent. He knew Rubin better than anyone else. He wasn’t about to tangle with his brother when Rubin was in this mood. Apparently Jonquille had a good sense of self-preservation. She walked across the room, looking for all the world like a small fairy, one of the lightning bugs that danced and entertained at dusk and then mysteriously disappeared. That wasn’t happening.
The cabin was dark. No one had bothered to light candles or the gas lanterns, or even turn on the electrical lights. It was easy to see that Rubin’s energy, usually so low, was pouring off him in waves, rushing to feed the magnetic hunger in Jonquille’s body. Her skin had taken on a glow. Her hair seemed even whiter than usual. Her blue eyes had gone more silvery blue than that deep cornflower blue. Little forks of energy moved around her in blazing streaks of electricity, and the static buildup in the room heightened.
“Did you think I wouldn’t figure out why you came here, Jonquille? What you were planning? It’s not happening.”
Fury rode him so hard he could barely contain it. His voice shook with it. The walls trembled, contracted and expanded as if alive. As if breathing. For a moment the floor trembled as if an earthquake threatened.
“Sit down, Diego. I don’t need you pacing around.”
Diego didn’t object to his order as he ordinarily might. He simply chose the rocker beside Jonquille, whether to protect her or restrain her, Rubin couldn’t tell.
“Answer me, Jonquille,” Rubin hissed.
“You’re a brilliant man, Rubin,” Jonquille conceded. “I knew I didn’t have much time before you started figuring things out. I tried to get away before you did. I’d hoped I could get into the forest and disappear.”
Diego stirred as if he might say something, ask a question, but Rubin silenced him with a glare. He could barely breathe, he was so angry. Angry at himself. At Jonquille. At his team. At Diego. Mostly at Whitney.
“I wondered for a long time why Mama just gave up when she still had the rest of us left alive. I wondered for a long time, Diego.”
Diego nodded. “I wondered too. Never could get over that. The sight of her like that.” He glanced at Jonquille and then away, clearly not wanting to discuss their mother’s suicide in front of an outsider.
Rubin didn’t think of Jonquille as an outsider. Strangely, she was part of him, but he had no idea how to convince his brother of that when he couldn’t explain it to himself or to her. She was the reason he was trying to tell his brother how he felt. What it was coming to for him.
“She had gifts. Psychic gifts. We got them from somewhere. They didn’t just appear out of nowhere. She went to the neighbors when they were ill or giving birth. Remember? Sometimes people would come from far away just to see her. She had to be a healer. But she couldn’t save her children or her husband. That weighed on her until she couldn’t bear it anymore.”