"No." Hayley waved her hand. The tears ran faster. "Oh, crap. I feel like such an idiot." She swiped at her cheeks and then met the older man's concerned gaze. "I got the weeps, Bluey."
"I can see that for myself. C'mon now, enough of that," he ordered brusquely. "Pull yourself together." He patted her shoulder awkwardly and she cried harder. "What the hell's the matter with you?"
"PMS," she sobbed. It was such a catch phrase for every stray female vagary that she was loath to even admit it.
"Oh." A ruddy flush climbed his cheeks.
Hayley laughed shakily. "Nothing quite like a murderous premenstrual woman who can't stop crying, huh?" She knuckled her nose and sniffed.
Again he patted her and then guided her to the door. "Go on, get out of here," he said gruffly. "I'll close down the bar."
Hayley swiped at her cheeks again. "Thank you," she said, blinking up at him. "I'm sorry. God. I’m a damn cliché."
She sat out in the parking lot for several minutes, gasping in breaths of air and trying like hell to pull herself together. It was not until patrons began trickling out the front door that she fired up the Pontiac's engine and drove carefully onto the road.
Pulling into the garage on the Olivet estate a short while later, she climbed from the car, slammed the door, and dodged the lowering garage door as she stepped out onto the apron. Her tears had finally dried, but she took one look at the darkened house and turned toward the shore. No way in hell was this going to be one of those drift-right-off-to-sleep nights.
Dropping her purse on the dock’s weathered planking, she stripped off all her clothes, stepped out of her shoes, and dove into the lake. A shock of cold water closed over her head and she strenuously frog-kicked underwater to propel herself as fast and far from shore as she could get.
Oxygen-deprived lungs finally drove her to the surface and shooting out of the lake with enough force to expose her to the night air clear down to her waist, she flung her hair out of her eyes and sank gently back into the water until only her neck and face rose above the dark surface. Treading water, she sucked in a noisy inhalation, blew it out, then struck out for the center of the lake in an efficient crawl stroke.
She had only swum about a hundred feet before it occurred to her that while exercise helped alleviate both the mood swings and her pre-period cramps, heading for the middle of the lake all alone at two o'clock in the morning might not be the mark of a mature, responsible adult. She turned and swam back to within a yard of the dock where she could touch bottom if she ran into trouble. She swam back and forth parallel to the shore.
After innumerable laps she finally decided she was too tired to feel sorry for herself any longer and was probably now weary enough to fall sleep. She swam back to the dock and pulled herself up the ladder.
Slowly straightening, she thrust her hands through her hair and gathered its mass to one side in a thick ponytail. She leaned forward and wrung water from it onto the bleached planks beneath her bare feet. Releasing it, she tossed it behind her shoulder and slicked her hands down her arms, her chest, her breasts and stomach, sluicing away what excess lake water she could. Then, feeling relaxed and almost content for the first time since she had rolled out of bed early that afternoon, she folded at the waist to give her legs the same treatment.
And nearly had heart failure when, out of the darkness, a voice commented dryly, "I am glad to see suicide wasn't on the agenda here."
Eight
A short while earlier.
Three separate people went out of their way to tell Jon-Michael Hayley had left the bar in tears. He put the same effort into insisting to himself that was her tough luck. There was no good reason why he should get involved.
But the minute the band finished its last set he climbed on his Harley Softail and burned up the road between Bluey's and the old man's estate.
Remembering over and over again the devastated look in her eyes when he tossed off that thoughtless, smart-ass remark about saving the state money by killing Wilson herself.
At the turnoff, he killed the lights and the engine and coasted the bike down the driveway. No sense in waking the entire household if he could avoid it. Rolling to a stop at the apex of the circular drive, he straddled the bike's seat and stared up at the guest room where his sister had installed her best friend.
Not that there was a damn thing to see beyond a dark window.
Assuring himself he had done his Boy Scout best, he was about to push his bike back up to the road when he heard the tell-tale creak of the dock's old timbers and a splash in the lake. He rocked the bike back onto its kick stand, climbed free and sprinted down the manicured lawn to the water.
Rounding the stand of ancient Douglas firs, he arrived at the dock in time to see Hayley shoot up out of the depths of the lake like some mythic Siren, flashing pretty shoulders and a long, sleek naked back. She tossed her hair, sending an arc of crystal droplets flying before the soaked mass slapped against her back.
A nanosecond later, she sank to her neck again in the stygian water and that dark mane floated around her. She bobbed gently in place for a moment, then started swimming with strong, determined strokes away from shore. For one panicky minute, he actually thought she was about to drown herself.
He had his shoes off and his jeans down around his ankles by the time she turned around and started stroking her leisurely way back to shore. Feeling like the world's biggest dumb shit, he simply watched her. Then, whispering curses, he yanked his pants back up. Christ, what the hell was he thinking? Hayley was a fighter; she always had been. If she’d been the type to opt out of life's problems when the going got rough, she sure as hell would have done so long before tonight.
And over something a lot more important than a single thoughtless remark out of his mouth. He started to turn away.
But something stopped him. Because on the other hand, neither was she the weeping type. Try as Jon-Michael might, he could not recall a single time he had ever seen her cry.
He parked himself in the shadows and watched her swim vigorous laps up and down the shoreline.
It took her twenty minutes before she finally climbed up the ladder. And looking at her as she rose out of the lake to stand on the dock facing him, Jon-Michael forgot for several long seconds how to breathe.
He knew damn well he should alert her to his presence. Instead he just sat there paralyzed, taking a dazed voyeuristic pleasure in watching the progress her hands made squeezing the water from her hair. Stroking it from the surface of her skin.
Damn. He really needed to say something. But, oh, Jesus, he had tortured himself for more than a decade now wondering what her body looked like, thinking of all the possibilities given what he remembered from seeing her in various bathing suits over the years.
Now here she was, gloriously naked but for transparent panties and a bedraggled, sopping wet bow tie. Finally, he had an image to connect to all those vague imaginings.
And, Lord have mercy. What an image it was.
Hayley’s turquoise work vest was low-cut on the sides. For over a week he had watched Bluey's customers give themselves eyestrain watching the point where the armholes teasingly bisected the soft outer curves of her tits. Watched idiots who had done everything but stand on their heads to score themselves a more revealing glimpse. One guy, a longtime regular, had started drinking the damnedest concoctions in order to make her reach for a bottle on the top shelf. Another, a man Jon-Michael knew for a fact did not even like beer, consistently ordered a bottle of imported for the sheer enjoyment of discovering if this would be the time she bent to retrieve it from the refrigerator unit instead of her usual habit of stooping.