Hannah Alexander - A Killing Frost

For weeks afterward, she spouted little tidbits of wisdom she had learned from her forays to the stack of tomes she’d hauled to the house. “Never complain about ‘if only,’” she’d said often. “Just plan on what you’ll do better next time.”

Then Jama had reminded Renee that Fran had always said the same thing with different words.

As Jama stepped from the SUV, she glanced again at Tyrell, his firm chin with the deep cleft, straight, dark eyebrows. Recalled the touch of his lips on hers, the feel of his arms around her.

If only…

There would be no “next time.”

Tyrell watched as Jama circled the SUV to join him. Even in the pea-green jacket, she looked great. He forced himself to look away. A man had no business thinking about something that might never happen, especially at a time like this.

And yet he hadn’t given up hope. He wouldn’t. She was here with him now, wasn’t she? Which was something that had him thinking hard and long on his way here. First, of course, he needed to remember that he was a man, not a boy who felt threatened because a woman exceeded him in certain abilities, like tracking and strategizing.

His second thought had been that he hated dragging Jama into danger. He told himself that the only reason he’d driven to the clinic was because he knew if Jama decided to do something, she’d do it with or without him. And he’d rather be with her, watching out for her safety.

To be honest, though, he knew he’d decided to get her partly because of Renee’s passionate belief that he and Jama had a chance to rescue Doriann, and partly because of the irresistible draw Jama held for him. He wanted to be where she was. Simple. That hadn’t changed in years, he’d just become more honest with himself about it.

Now his gaze rested on her as she stood beside him.

“Remember the first day we met?” she asked.

He tugged his pack from the backseat of the truck and slung the hefty nylon straps over his shoulders. He tried to get his mind around her question as he focused on the job at hand. Not an easy task.

“Why don’t you remind me?” he asked.

“I was seven.”

He thought a moment, nodded, reached inside the Durango for a couple of flashlights in the netting behind the front seat. “You had the biggest, most beautiful blue eyes.”

“Blue-green.”

“You can tell your story, and I’ll tell mine. I remember they were blue. They’ve just changed color.”

“Tyrell, eye color doesn’t change. Mine has always been-”

“They looked like the ocean, and they were as filled with salty water.” Tears, dripping down a pale, frightened face. Even at that age, his protective instincts had flared. “You had hair so blond it was white.”

“You were eleven, playing fetch with your dog on the front lawn when Amy and I came walking up.”

Oh, yes, he remembered. While Amy went tearing through the house, then out to the garden, searching for Mom to come and make everything better for Jama, Tyrell had decided he would rush to the rescue.

“You introduced me to your dog,” she said.

“Gladys.”

“And I told you that was a weird name for a dog, while I wiped my nose on my sleeve.”

“I don’t remember the nose wiping.” He closed the door, handed her a bottle of water and stepped ahead of her to follow the narrow path that led to the Katy Trail just over the rocky rise pelted with cedar trees. “What I remember is a pretty little girl, lost and scared, who spoke her mind about everything.” He loved that she still spoke her mind.

She also still looked lost and scared more often than Tyrell wanted to see. When a man loved a woman, he liked to think he could make all her fears go away. For some reason, Tyrell seemed to have escalated Jama’s fears with his proposal. Not a good omen for a relationship, but he’d beaten that horse to death. Time to get past it.

Jama fell into step behind him, and he could tell by her footsteps that she was once again focused on their mission. He could feel her wariness.

He glanced over his shoulder, and saw her gaze darting toward the trees, the road, the bridge over the creek. She shivered.

“Cold?” he asked.

Her spine stiffened. “Not in this coat. It’s double-lined.”

“Remember the game we played that afternoon we met?” Tyrell asked.

She skipped up to walk beside him. He stepped aside on the narrow trail, made sure she was walking on the actual beaten path so she wouldn’t trip in those shoes-should’ve grabbed some of Amy’s hiking boots from the attic. But then, how was he supposed to know he’d be picking up Jama?

“You’re doing it again right now,” she said. “Using your distraction technique.”

“Isn’t that what doctors do with little kids when they’re scared?”

“Sure, but I’m not a little kid.”

“But it still works, right?”

She allowed her silence to tell him that it did.

“I’ve forgotten what I called the game that day,” he said.

“I Spy. You had Gladys sit beside me on the porch steps, and then you sat on my other side.”

He remembered. He’d put his arm around her shoulders and told her about a game Gladys loved to play. He would name a landmark, and she would go to it and bark. Gladys was some smart dog. Of course, “fence,” “tree” and “grapevine” were easy commands for a dog with such a large vocabulary.

“Your arm felt so good around me,” she said quietly. “I didn’t want you to move away.”

As if he would have. But she couldn’t have known that then. Did she know it now?

That night, when Mom had taken Jama back to her parents, Dad had helped Tyrell to understand what Jama was enduring with her mother’s rejection.

He smiled, remembering seven-year-old Jama’s outspokenness.

“Now you’re doing it again, sweetheart,” he said, trying to imitate his father’s favorite actor. Bogart.

Jama stumbled, nearly fell. Tyrell caught her by the elbow, then drew her close to his side, once again feeling his protective instincts rise.

“What am I doing?”

“You’re falling under my spell,” he said, then chuckled softly.

The white of her teeth flashed in the growing dusk. “You big goof.” But her tone told him she didn’t think he was goofy at all.

What was it, Jama? What went wrong between us? How can anything be wrong when we’re so good together like this?

He glanced through the trees to their left, and saw the barest reflection of the waning sunset over the river. “I spy something ever-changing but never-changing.”

She frowned, then looked around. It took only a few seconds for her to tune in to his wavelength. “The water particles are never the same from second to second, but the river is always there.”

“You got it.”

The light slowly disappeared, and Jama fell behind him again, which allowed him access to the trail once more. Smart woman. She knew how easily a rock could blend into the ground and trip a person when the shadows melded into blackness.

“You seemed so grown-up to me back then,” she said. Her voice was soft, thoughtful.

“And I don’t now?” he teased.

“Well…” There was a smile in her voice. He loved that sound.

“That’s the curse of the birth order, oldest sibling and all,” he said.

She didn’t reply, and a companionable silence stretched and grew between them as they reached the Katy Trail.

Every time Jama stepped on this trail, she felt as if she was a part of history, connected to the many others who walked or biked this rails-to-trails state park that stretched more than two hundred miles across Missouri.

It reminded her of the moment she’d stepped from her car this morning and her hometown had enveloped her in a magical sense of connection and nostalgia. But the day’s events had shocked her back to the cold reality of the present. There was never a way to go back.