“Okay, baby,” he said low, and put his hand on her arm, but Leah instantly shrugged it off and would not look up.
He looked at Rex, who put a hand on Leah’s shoulder. “Let us take you back to camp,” he said soothingly, and led a strangely dejected Leah away.
If Michael could have any moment of the day back, it would have been that one. He wished he’d never seen her expression—the weariness, the bewilderment. Part of him wished he’d never even run into her again so that he would have spared her all this turmoil. He’d been so intent on his own wants he had obviously failed to consider Leah’s fully. He’d just been so certain they’d both want back what they’d lost years ago. It never occurred to him that the intervening years would rise up to stop him.
Leah didn’t look back, just let Rex lead her away.
Michael felt about as low as he’d ever felt in his life.
After one of the agents took Leah back to camp, Michael spent the rest of the day with Rex ensuring that what had happened on Sunlight Canyon Road would not be discovered by local authorities or by the media—or whoever owned the rundown old cabin, for that matter. As far as the world outside the U.S. government was concerned, Juan Carlo Sanchez had never come to the United States, and government agents would make sure that his tracks were completely erased.
A nondescript white car pulled away from the cabin, whisking Juan Carlo away to some clandestine holding cell. As they watched it barrel down the gravel road, Rex asked, “So what’s the deal with the key? Your boy won’t stop talking about it.”
“It fits a safe deposit box that was full of money and gold and a lot of blow at one time,” Michael said with a snort.
“That explains some of it,” Rex said. “We know he owes a lot of money to some really scary people.”
“He won’t find it in that box,” Michael said. “And all this time, he thought I was the one to have cleaned it out, the stupid fool.”
“Who did?” Rex asked.
Michael smiled wryly. “His wife. Who else?”
IT was late when Michael got back to camp, and the women were in rare form. As usual, they were divided into two main groups. The Starlets, as Leah called them, were sitting around a roaring campfire, obviously a little drunk, laughing and singing and calling out some surprisingly lewd suggestions to the camera guys milling around.
The cameramen, however, were not as interested in those suggestions—at least not professionally—because there was another group of women who were arguing over something that had happened on the rafting trip, and it looked as if it might come to blows.
“The girls are tired,” Cooper said with a slight shake of his head. “They need a nap.”
“What’s going on?” Michael asked.
“A paddle accident,” Eli said as he squinted in the direction of the squabbling women.
“A lost paddle?”
“Nope. One of them managed to hit another one in the back of the head through a chute, and wouldn’t you know it, that opened up a whole other can of worms.”
“About?” Jack asked.
Eli sighed, swiped the baseball hat off his head, scratched his scalp, and put the baseball cap back on before responding. “I’m not certain, but I think about shoes.”
“Shoes?”
“Shoes,” Eli said emphatically. “Those two women and their friends almost killed each other over a pair of shoes.”
“Now be fair, Eli,” Cooper said. “It was a pair of Stuart Wiseass, or something like that.”
“What does that mean?” Jack asked.
“Hell if I know,” Cooper admitted.
The four men peered at the women, who were quite animated in their heated discussion about who had done what to whom, baffled by such strong feelings about shoes.
But when a petite brunette carelessly tossed a plastic tumbler at a buxom blonde and hit her in the knee, a screech went up that had Eli and Cooper moving quickly to break up what all of them feared could turn into a brawl.
“So how was your day?” Jack asked as he and Michael watched Cooper try to reason with women who were alternately pouting and arguing, while the rest of the women snickered about it.
“Not so great,” Michael said truthfully.
“Where’d you find her?”
“You were right. She hooked up with someone.” The lie rolled easily off Michael’s tongue, just like the old days when everything he said had been a lie. It made him feel old.
Jack winced a little. “Sorry, bro. I know you’ve got a thing for her.”
“Yep,” Michael said. “But shit happens.” And with that, he walked away, unwilling and unable to speak of it any further.