If You Loved Me Page 8

  "Where did you take your lessons? You have to take ground school first, don't you, to learn navigation and so forth?"

  "Hmm." When the sound of the engine changed, Emma twisted around with a jerk. Had the monotony of trees and more trees confused her mind into blanking out in the one moment when Chris's kayak might have passed by beneath them? Had she missed something?

  "Coffee break," said Gray.

  "What?"

  The plane banked slightly and they rushed over the water low and fast, dropping down, then touching quiet water in a small inlet completely sheltered from the chop of the passage outside.

  "Did you see something?" she demanded. "Is that why you landed?"

  "We need a break. We'll stretch our legs, drink a cup of coffee, rest our eyes."

  "I'm fine, Gray. I'm not tired."

  He threw a switch and silence filled the cabin. She pulled off her headphones. "Gray, I don't need a break."

  "We both do." It was his real voice she heard now, not the distortion of the intercom system. "Flying when you're stiff and the trees start blurring—"

  "If I can stand in surgery all morning, I can—"

  "You're stiff as hell. You asked about ground school and flying lessons. I did it in Prince Rupert, did my hours from Rupert Airport. Hired Dave as instructor for my float endorsement. You can undo your seat belt, Emma, stretch out some of the stiffness."

  "How do you know I'm stiff?"

  "You've been squirming for almost an hour, and you keep rubbing your leg. Next time say something. I'm going to run up on the beach. We'll take a walk, have a cup of coffee, then we'll check in with the Coast Guard and the camp by radio before we start again."

  "Run up on the beach? This is a floatplane."

  "Amphibious floats. Wheels on the bottom of the floats."

  Of course, he'd said he'd asked Dave to help him find an amphibious plane, had talked about running up on the beach. She hadn't really understood what he meant.

  "You'd have no problem learning to fly if you wanted to."

  She was startled. "Me?"

  "Sure. You've grasped the basics of navigation pretty fast. You'd have no problem with the other technical material. You'd have to learn some meteorology, the elements of what makes a plane fly."

  "You forgot the important part. Flying the plane."

  "You need a cool head and good hands. You'd be a natural."

  She studied the instruments in front of Gray. Dials and indicators. One was an altimeter, and it was reading zero now. Sea level would be zero, she supposed. The others were no more complex than the instruments and readouts she worked with every day in surgery, just different.

  She wondered what it would be like to hold the controls of an airplane in her hands, to take herself into the sky.

  Gray taxied his plane to a section of beach she hadn't realized was there, an enclosed arm of the inlet with a magical stretch of hard sandy beach and a high pile of sun-bleached logs pushed against a wall of trees. When he opened her door, she climbed down and walked slowly along the edge of the water, leaving him with the pack he'd pulled out of the luggage compartment.

  A few minutes later, he called out, "Emma, here's some food."

  She walked back to take the small pile of crackers and cheese from him. "Gray, tell me, what do you think happened to Chris and Jordy?"

  He glanced toward the entrance to the inlet and his eyes narrowed as if his vision could penetrate beyond the bounds of hers.

  "It could be any of a dozen things. A broken or lost paddle. An injury. A damaged hull on one of the kayaks might have forced them ashore somewhere. There aren't any roads around here, no pay phones."

  "Could they have been attacked by an animal? A cougar?"

  "They're a bit big for cougar prey."

  "I've heard of cougars attacking people."

  "Yeah, but usually small children who are alone, usually a wounded or older cougar who's been hanging around a community for easy hunting, and mostly down on Vancouver Island. We do have cougars up here, but not as many, and you don't see them often."

  She stared at the sandwich in her hands. "Bears?"

  "I doubt they'd have a problem with a black bear."

  "Grizzlies?"

  He shrugged and his gaze swung to challenge hers. "What do you want me to tell you, Emma? That there aren't dangers?"

  "They could have drowned." She made herself say it tonelessly.

  "Not likely. Two separate boats, and you said they wear their life jackets. They probably lost a paddle or hit a rock and punched a hole in one of the boats." He shrugged. "There's no point speculating."

  He hadn't mentioned hypothermia. Surely that was the most likely? She swallowed and whispered, "I'm not going to believe he's dead."

  His gaze burned into her eyes. "I won't give up, Emma. Not until we've found them."

  She wished she could move into his arms and ask him to tell her everything would be all right. She remembered his promise last night. He would find Chris and Jordy if they were alive. She cleared her throat and tried to think of something to talk about, anything to take her mind away from the worst that might have happened to her son.

  "That camp back near your place. It is yours, isn't it?"

  "Bob runs things."

  "For you?"

  "Yes."

  She stared at her right hand, clenching and unclenching. "Archaeology students' excursions and tourists? When did you start the camp?"

  "A few years back." He bent down to pick up the thermos from the sand. "Do you want some coffee to wash those crackers down?"

  "One of the boys said something about his probation officer. How did the probation kids get involved?"

  He poured coffee into two tin cups and handed one to her.

  "Gray, for heavens sake! You always were so damned closemouthed. It's not top secret, is it?"

  He shrugged. "It was a project one of the district probation officers and I worked out. He figured if he could send some of the young offenders out to learn how to survive in the wilds, it might change their attitude about a lot of things." He lifted his cup and sipped. "He got permission and I took a group out."

  "Did they stay out of trouble afterward?" She warmed her hands on the tin cup. She'd never pictured Gray becoming a mentor to young boys. In her memories there was only Gray and Emma, and when she'd thought of him over the years it was always Gray alone she saw, not Gray with other people. Gray in the wilderness, but this man's wilderness was populated with other people and relationships. The pilot who flew her to Stephens Island had known Gray. Bob and the boys obviously looked up to him.

  "The three boys back at the camp were from the first group. I hired them afterward to help with the wilderness excursions I got involved in."

  "And Bob?"

  Gray threw her a glance that echoed the curve of his lips. "He was caretaker of a fish camp north of here. The camp was closing and Bob needed a new wilderness home. Bob and cities don't mix. I wanted someone to take over the paying excursions. I'd gotten too busy with the wildlife photography to keep up with it all. It worked out for both of us."

  She lifted the coffee and sipped. It tasted creamy and too sweet. "You still take the kids out yourself?" She thought of Paul, of the way he'd seemed to ignore Chris those last few years. She knew it was her fault in a way.

  Gray shoved his hands through his unruly hair. "Why the questions, Emma?"

  "I wondered, that's all."

  She stared down at her cup, breathed in the aroma, and told herself that they would find Chris soon. She thought of the way the three boys at the camp had watched Gray with something close to worship. For the first time, she found herself wondering about Gray's parents. She knew his father had spent most of Gray's teenage years searching for gold in the North, but that's all she really knew.

  Nothing about Gray's mother.

  She looked up and found him crouched a few feet away, watching her. The look on his face told her this wasn't the time for personal que
stions.

  "Bob's not married?"

  "He's married. Sharon's away at the moment, visiting her mother."

  "Why haven't you married?" she asked, then immediately wished the words unsaid when his expression closed down.

  "You always did leap to conclusions, Emma."

  "You are married?"

  "What the hell does it matter?" He stood abruptly and threw the remainder of his coffee toward the trees with an abrupt motion.

  He was right. All that mattered was this search. If it weren't for needing his plane and his knowledge of this country, she'd never have met Gray again. Better if he were married and happy. She didn't want to think of him lonely.

  Her hand trembled as she lifted the cup again.

  "I was married," he said.

  She held her breath, but when he didn't say anything more, she had to ask. "What happened?"

  "Divorce." His face looked as if it were carved in stone.

  She slowly poured her coffee into the sand. "What was she like?"

  "Very beautiful."

  Nausea crawled up her throat. Jealousy was an unattractive character trait, particularly jealousy for a man she didn't even want anymore.

  "Yes," he said softly. "Very sexy."

  She lifted her face first, then her eyes. She was shocked not by his words but by the pain they stirred in her, as if she were that young girl again, needing him too desperately.

  "I shouldn't have said that. Put it down to old jealousies."

  "I loved you." She swallowed a hard lump in her throat. "It's your fault I married Paul."

  "Don't bullshit me, Emma. If you'd loved me, you'd hardly have jumped for the first man who came your way after I left. You'd have come with me after my father died."

  "You never even pretended to love me."

  "I knew you wouldn't come."

  She folded her arms across her breasts. "Maybe you were afraid I would. You never trusted me, never trusted what was between us. You made it as scary as you could for me. You told me you had to go out and work your father's mine in the wilderness. You asked me to drop everything and follow you into the wilds with the bears and the wolves. You knew I'd never been outside the city without the protection of a car. I would have had to change everything."

  "That was the point, wasn't it?" He smiled wryly. "You gave it up for Paul quickly enough, married him and got pregnant—except it wasn't like that, was it? You got pregnant by me, then married Paul. Why didn't you come to me when you learned you were pregnant?"

  She couldn't stay still under his accusing eyes. She brushed hair away from her eyes and demanded, "Where would I have found you?"

  He jerked as if she had slapped him. "You're admitting Chris is mine?"

  "No!" Her shout echoed in the trees. "Chris is not your child. And I would have come with you if you'd given me something to hang onto, if you'd once told me you loved me, or even asked me to marry you."

  Oh, God! She'd promised herself to keep all this sealed away, but she was so off balance with worry for Chris, she couldn't seem to control her reactions to this man.

  "That was always the problem between us," growled Gray. "You believed in fairy tales. Love and marriage. Happy ever after."

  "Gray, for all I knew you intended to drag me out into the middle of nowhere, then cast me off when you were tired of me."

  His lines on his face tightened. "You had to know I wouldn't do that."

  "I knew nothing. You wanted me to follow you to the ends of the earth without a promise or a vow of love. I'd have been insane to come with you."

  He tossed his cup into the pack. "We have to stop this."

  "You're right. It's all so long ago. It doesn't matter now."

  "You kept my son from me. That matters."

  He turned away from her and she saw his shoulders broaden as if he'd taken in a deep gulp of air. He was staring out at the water, the light wind bringing his words back to her.

  "Emma, after we find those kids, there are things to be settled between us."

  She closed her eyes and the past was too real, too close. The younger Gray tangled with this man in her mind, tears pressing so close they threatened to drown her if she let them loose.

  When Gray turned back to face her, his anger was hidden.

  "When did you go to college?" he asked, his voice so empty of feeling that she shivered at the sound of it.

  "After my father died."

  "I hadn't heard he died. I'm sorry."

  She shrugged. "You never got on with him."

  "That doesn't mean I wanted him dead."

  She walked a few steps along the beach.

  His voice followed her. "When did it happen? When did he die?"

  "Chris was two."

  His silence made her uneasy and she turned back to face him.

  "You used your inheritance to go to medical school?"

  "You make it sound like a crime."

  "You sent my son to day care and went off to med school?" He stared into the trees on the other side of the inlet. "What about Paul? Did he know the truth?"

  "I've told you—" She saw from the harsh rigidity in his face there was no point in denials. He simply wouldn't believe her. Perhaps that was inevitable. He'd never trusted her. "Not day care," she said. "My mother moved in with us. She looked after Chris."

  "She still lives with you?"

  "Not now. She married our next-door neighbor last year. They're off cruising the States in a motor home."

  "So you're alone now? No lover? Are you still grieving for Paul?"

  She could see only harshness in his face.

  "No. I—" If she told him about Alex, he would question her, and she was in no shape to frame the answers. "I have Chris. He's in a dorm at the University of Washington. He just finished his freshman year. He completed high school a year early, and went off—"

  She broke off, realizing she was chattering like a nervous girl. She lifted her head high.

  "If this is question period, Gray, tell me what happened to your father's mining claim." His father's death had precipitated Gray's demand that she leave everything and follow him into the wilderness. Mr. MacKenzie had left his personal affairs in chaos, with creditors threatening to foreclose the claim.

  Gray shrugged. "Another of my father's empty dreams."

  "You never did believe in dreams, did you, Gray?"

  His eyes were black, but he didn't answer.

  * * *

  After their lunch on the beach, Gray's voice through the headphones sounded strange to Emma. When he called the camp by radio after their takeoff, Ed answered and reported that Bob had gone out with the party of students two hours earlier. Meanwhile, Ed had worked his way through some of the people on Gray's list of contacts, but had been unable to reach others.

  "I'll keep trying," Ed promised, his voice distorted over the radio.

  "Right," agreed Gray. "I'll check with you again in an hour. We're just coming up to Wright Sound."

  Emma lost track. One inlet seemed much like another. She knew the Coast Guard helicopter had patrolled this area, and she was beginning to fear they wouldn't find Chris and Jordy. Flying over yet another body of water surrounded by islands and inlets covered by endless dense rain forest, she was increasingly afraid.

  She kept glancing at the chart folded in place between her seat and Gray's. Through the windshield, she tried to focus on the distinction between one green tree and another, but the lush growth blurred and she could only pray that if a flash of fluorescent orange appeared, her brain would sort it out from the tangle of trees below.

  Ahead of them, two narrow lines of color interrupted the black of the water.

  Emma's heart stopped.

  "Kayaks," she breathed.

  "Wrong color," said Gray, but they did drop down to fly low over the kayakers. One pulled his paddle out of the water and waved to diem. Emma felt the shift in motion of the plane as Gray signaled back by waving his wings.

  "A man and a woman," his
voice murmured in her ear over the headphones.

  She'd seen two shapes in the kayaks and had no idea how he could have told the sex from up here. His eyes were much better than hers at spotting what was below.

  What if she missed something important, something out her side of the plane?

  At their next contact with Ed, Emma listened with her heart in her mouth "...old Sammy. Been out fishing Grenville Channel. Radio bust, he says. Says he talked to the boys in Klewnugget on the seventh, or it might have been the eighth. They talked about kayaks because Sammy's sister's boy wants one. Two boys. One blonde. One dark. Taking a hike up that mountain, Sammy says, then they were heading for Rupert."

  Gray keyed his microphone. "We'll head north as soon as I refuel. Keep working that list, but concentrate on the names from Klewnugget north now. And relay to Coast Guard."

  "I already called Coast Guard," said Ed.

  "Good work," Gray said, and signed off.

  "Where is it?" Emma could hardly speak for the pounding of her heart in her throat. "Where did he see them?"

  "Sixty miles north of us." Gray covered her clenched hands with one of his. "It was over a week ago, so take it easy."

  When she turned her hand and gripped his, his hard strength seemed to flow into her. "Where do we refuel? You said we'd go there after we refuel."

  "Hartley Bay. It won't take long," he promised. Then he added, "We're one step closer. We've narrowed the search area. That means the Coast Guard chopper and anyone else who's looking can concentrate their efforts on a much smaller area. But, Emma, don't count on finding them in Klewnugget."

  "Okay," she agreed, but she hugged herself tightly as Gray landed at the village of Hartley Bay. He looked at her sharply when the plane had come to rest beside the fuel float.

  "Get out and walk around. Take the thermos and go ashore. See if you can get it filled."

  At any other time, she would have found the small First Nations village fascinating. As it was, she could only walk blindly along the float to shore. She found a steaming coffeepot in the general store and returned moments later with the full thermos, just in time to see the covers go on the fuel tanks in the wings of the seaplane. Gray stopped her as she was about to climb back in. He gripped her shoulders with both hands and stared into her eyes.