Hanging Time

35

Jason didn’t expect Emma to pick him up at the L.A. airport, but she was standing in the crowd of welcomers at the gate when he arrived. He was caught behind a couple with two babies who had screamed all the way across the country. Now mother and father were determinedly trying to wheel the exhausted infants, in two heavy-duty strollers, through solid matter. Their maneuvering gave him a minute to realize the beauty waving at him, dressed in the buff-colored linen trousers and mint-green blouse, with the arms of a tan nubbly sweater tied around her neck like a fashion model, was his wife.

Emma looked different. Her hair was shorter than he’d ever seen it, cut bluntly around her jawline to make her look jaunty and young. It was lighter, too. She was wearing a heavy gold necklace that was clearly expensive and a large braided leather handbag over her shoulder. The way she was put together complimented her perfect figure and fine complexion without making a big deal of either. She had a fresh healthy appearance, like the classy cover girl of Town & Country. She did not look like a woman who’d been abducted and tattooed by a madman only three months before.

A space opened up in the crowd. Jason walked toward her, stunned. He thought he was prepared for anything. Emma hadn’t been in good shape when she left New York right after an ordeal that would have turned most people into vegetable soup for quite some time. There were still bruises and burn marks on her body. Also on her feet. She had been naked and barefoot, and had to walk out of a house on fire. Weeks afterward, she was still finding it painful to cross the room.

And of course there was the unfinished tattoo. A couple of serpents curling up from her groin, stopping short just below the navel because they had been lucky and stopped the guy before he had time to finish the scenario he had planned. Emma shot him with his own gun. April Woo, the police detective on the case, shot him with hers. The bullets from both guns were found in his charred remains. But it was the fire that finally killed him.

Jason still woke up in a cold sweat, reliving the scene of Emma’s rescue. Half a block of Queens on fire, the shrieking of horrified homeowners and fire equipment. The pungent odor of two barbecuing bodies. And Emma being hustled into an ambulance, covered with soot, colored all over like an Easter egg ready for dipping, protesting all the while, calling for her own doctor. For him.

And despite it all, she grabbed her big break and headed for Hollywood anyway. Jason was still staggered when he thought about it. The man who abducted Emma had been triggered by a tattooing scene in her first film. And that didn’t put her off getting up there on the screen again as soon as possible. Not at all. Quite the contrary, Emma had been afraid the producer and director would fire her when they saw her packaging was no longer flawless.

Even though they hadn’t fired her, and she appeared to have made it through six grueling weeks of filming, Jason would not have been surprised to see any kind of deterioration in her now. What he wasn’t prepared for was the transformation three months away from him had made. The intelligent, attractive daughter of a navy meteorologist, raised on navy bases around the world, had brought herself through her own wars, just as she said she would.

As a person who prided himself on curing the sick and wounded, Jason felt the shock of having been short-circuited.

“Hi, pal.” Just barely brushing against him, Emma smiled. She lifted her lips to his cheek.

He restrained the impulse to grab her, hold her tight. Instead, he raised a finger to touch the place where she had kissed him.

“Wow, you look great. Thanks for coming.”

Now she looked surprised. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

He shrugged. “I could have taken a cab.” He hoisted his carry-on with one hand and his overstuffed briefcase with the other.

She stared at him. “I guess you don’t think much of me.… Canyon Beach is an hour and a half away.”

“I think the world of you. But thanks anyway.”

She flushed, her eyes flashing anger for a second.

Jason didn’t know L.A., had no idea where she lived. He bit his lip, worried that he had blown it in the first five minutes. “Was that manipulative?”

“A little.” She nodded, frowning, then brightened up. “Oh, well, let’s go.” She turned toward the exit.

He followed her, relieved. Emma had never been a person to hold grudges. He didn’t know what she was like now, except that she was in a hurry. She covered what felt like several miles across the airport to the short-term parking lot at a race walk, finally stopping beside a red Mustang convertible.

“Nice.” He wasn’t looking at the car. He was watching Emma fumble in her huge new braided handbag for her car keys. He realized he missed her even more than he thought.

He shook his head at her hair. Emma always said she’d never color it. Once a rich honey-wheat color, her hair was now unashamedly movie-star blond. Her perfume was different, too. Spicy.

More winded than he liked to admit, Jason dropped his gear. He didn’t know what to make of her. It was like meeting a stranger with a familiar smile.

“Tired?” she asked.

“No,” he said quickly.

She found the keys and unlocked the trunk, looking up at him almost shyly. Showing off her car. “Like it?”

He held back a choke, managed a moderately convincing “Uh-huh.”

As he had once told his friend Charles, there wasn’t a thing not to like about Emma. Except now he no longer knew who she was.

She inclined her head modestly. “It’s leased.” She jumped in and put the top down, then turned to him questioningly, as if she suddenly remembered something.

“Any objections to my driving?”

He shook his head. How could he object?

“Good.” She pulled out, had no trouble finding her way out of the airport, and was soon speeding south on the 405.

This, also, was an adjustment. Jason had been married to Emma for five years, but even on long trips he’d never thought of asking her if she wanted to drive. Now it occurred to him that she might have minded.

He looked out at the scenery, which wasn’t impressive. He didn’t know where they were headed, and didn’t ask. They drove for almost an hour before Emma turned off onto a road leading through a small canyon that dead-ended at the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly the red Mustang was stopped at a traffic light facing a beach crowded with volleyball players. Emma turned to him with another of her smiles.

“Canyon Beach. Like it?”

“It’s great, really terrific.” He nodded. Yep, really terrific. A million light-years away from New York and definitely too far from the L.A. airport to take a taxi. This was more than the fragile male ego could take. Emma drove back up another hill and pulled to a stop on a steep incline that made him slightly dizzy.

A few minutes later she was unlocking the door to her rented house. “Come on in.”

The way her eyes were glowing with pride made Jason suddenly realize why she had wanted him out there. It wasn’t to explore new laser treatment to get rid of the tattoo on her stomach. Unh-unh. It was to show him this.

He could see the ocean from the front steps. It was just at the bottom of the steep hill. Up there, they were perched high enough for a New Yorker to get a nosebleed. Jason looked around.

It didn’t take a genius to see that the house was hanging by a few sticks from the side of the cliff. He couldn’t get the images of mudslides, fires raging down from the canyon above, huge earthquakes dumping the entire Tinker-Toy town into the Pacific, out of his mind.

To make matters worse, the house was not without charm. The living room melted into the dining-kitchen area. The bedroom was up several steps to one side in a clever way that allowed both living room and bedroom to have views of the sea. Another sleeping loft was carved out of the cathedral ceiling along the back of the living room. Below it was a glass wall that looked out on a rock garden planted with blooming rosebushes.

The furnishings were simple, in earth colors that suited Emma’s complexion. Throughout the place a southwestern feeling pervaded.

“Like it?” she asked when he had seen it all. It was the fourth or fifth time she’d made the query since he arrived.

Jason arranged his mouth for another, “What’s not to like?” kind of answer. So, she had to get him out there to show him how gorgeous it was. How the sun shone down on her and her red convertible, bathing her in golden serenity and the well-being of the truly self-sufficient, while he rotted unhappily by himself, locked in with the crazies of New York.

Her eyes were almost pleading. What did she want from him? Forgiveness? His blessing? He looked away, already worrying about having to sleep up there in the loft.

“It’s great. Really terrific. I’m just—flabbergasted at how great it all is.” Seeing how great it all was had given him a headache. He needed a drink, too.

She nodded, picking it all up right away. “Must be strange, huh? Want to go out for a drink?”

“Yeah.” The frown behind his smile eased just a little for the first time. He wouldn’t turn down something to eat either.

She was looking him over. His blazer and khaki pants were wrinkled. He hadn’t changed his style, probably never would. “You look very thin,” she concluded. “Better eat something, too.”

“Yes.” Everything about their relationship was different, yet the feeling of togetherness was still there. He didn’t know what to think. To take his mind off the subject, he glanced over at the telephone. Emma followed his gaze, a little frown beginning to organize itself between her eyes.

He turned away from the phone. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

For once in his life he decided not to call in for his messages.