Reilly's Return Read online

  Dear Reader,

  Readers sometimes ask me where I got my start as a writer. When I tell people that my first novels were romantic comedies for Bantam’s Loveswept line, they’re usually quite surprised. Although this genre may seem completely different from the suspense I write now, the two have more in common than it seems.

  For me, every good story has two essential elements to it: characters to fall in love with and root for, and a mystery to figure out—whether it is an unsolved crime or that baffling and bewildering emotion that puzzles us most of all—love. Even the most intricate murder plot can’t compare to the complex inner workings of the human heart.

  In Reilly’s Return, Pat Reilly is a sexy Australian movie star who is used to ladies throwing themselves at his feet. But the one woman who holds Pat’s heart was married to his best friend, and now is mourning her husband’s death. Pat promised that he would give Jayne Jordan time to grieve, but a man can only stay away from his love for so long. Just as Jayne thinks she’s finally settled into her life after her husband’s passing, writing movie reviews in an idyllic coastal town, Pat comes storming back into her life. Can Jayne give herself over to this dangerously handsome man without losing her head and her heart?

  Pat and Jayne’s story brings us back to the small town featured in my Rainbow Chasers trilogy that captured my imagination years ago. I hope that you’ll enjoy this story as much today as I did at the very beginning of my writing career.

  All my best,

  Tami Hoag

  BANTAM TITLES BY TAMI HOAG

  The Alibi Man

  Prior Bad Acts

  Kill the Messenger

  Dark Horse

  Dust to Dust

  Ashes to Ashes

  A Thin Dark Line

  Guilty as Sin

  Night Sins

  Dark Paradise

  Cry Wolf

  Still Waters

  Lucky’s Lady

  The Last White Knight

  Straight from the Heart

  Tempestuous/The Restless Heart

  Taken by Storm

  Heart of Dixie

  Mismatch

  Man of Her Dreams

  Rumor Has It

  The Trouble with J.J.

  McKnight in Shining Armor

  Heart of Gold

  Contents

  Letter from the Author

  Other Books by this Author

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana Spring 1977

  “OKAY, EVERYBODY, THIS is it. The final portrait of the Fearsome Foursome. Make sure your caps are on straight, ladies. I’m setting the timer now.” Bryan Hennessy hunched over the 3.5-millimeter camera, fussing with buttons and switches, pausing once to push his glasses up on his straight nose.

  Jayne Jordan watched him, her dark eyes bright with curiosity and unshed tears. She memorized everything about the moment, Bryan’s athletic way of moving, the gentleness of his big hands on the delicate equipment, the way his tawny hair stuck out between his cap and the collar of his shirt. At some later date she would be able to replay this moment through her mind as if it were a movie clip.

  Absently she lifted a slim hand in a token attempt at straightening her wild mane of dark auburn hair. Her heart ached at the thought that memories would soon be all she would have of her friends.

  Decked out in graduation caps and gowns, they stood on the damp grass near the blue expanse of St. Mary’s Lake. The clean, cool air was sweet with the scents of spring flowers, new leaves, and freshly cut grass. Birdsong mingled with Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” blasting from a boom box in a distant dorm.

  Beside her stood sweet-natured Faith Kincaid—golden hair, golden heart, and an inner peacefulness Jayne had always admired and envied. Beside Faith stood Alaina Montgomery, the group’s cynic. Alaina was as practical as the short style of her chestnut hair. She stubbornly refused to believe in anything that couldn’t be admitted as evidence in a court of law. Bryan hustled around to stand behind them, his cap askew. He was handsome, sweet, and eccentric. A student of all things mystical and magical, he was her soul mate in many ways. To the group as a whole, Bryan was their surrogate big brother, their confidant.

  These were Jayne’s three best friends in the world. They were the first people who had ever really understood her, including her own beloved family back in Paris, Kentucky.

  They had banded together their freshman year. Four people with nothing in common but a class in medieval sociology. Over the four years that followed they had seen each other through finals and failures, triumphs and tragedies, and doomed romances. They were friends in the truest, deepest sense of the word.

  And today they would graduate and go their separate ways.

  As hard as she tried, Jayne couldn’t be philosophical about it. As eager as she was to plunge into the future, she couldn’t help but feel she was being cut adrift.

  “Okay. Everybody smile,” Bryan ordered, his voice a little huskier than usual. “It’s going to go off any second now. Any second.”

  They all grinned engagingly and held their collective breath.

  The camera suddenly tilted downward on its tripod, pointing its lens at one of the white geese that wandered freely around St. Mary’s Lake. The shutter clicked and the motor advanced the film. The goose honked an outraged protest and waddled away.

  “I hope that’s not an omen,” Jayne said, frowning as she nibbled at her thumbnail. She was devoutly superstitious, and this certainly didn’t look like good luck.

  “It’s a loose screw,” Bryan announced, digging a dime out of his pants pocket to repair the tripod with.

  “In Jayne or the camera?” Alaina queried, her cool blue eyes sparkling with teasing mischief.

  Jayne made a face at her. “Very funny, Alaina.”

  “I think it’s a sign that Bryan needs a new tripod,” said Faith.

  “That’s not what Jessica Porter says,” Alaina remarked slyly.

  The girls giggled as Bryan blushed up to the roots of his hair. Outside of this unusual set of friendships with Jayne, Faith, and Alaina, Bryan had led an active social life.

  “If you want a sign, look behind you,” he said as he fussed unnecessarily with the aperture setting on the camera.

  Jayne turned and immediately caught sight of a rainbow arching gracefully across the morning sky above the golden dome of the administration building.

  “Oh, how beautiful,” Faith said with a sigh.

  “Symbolic,” Jayne whispered. A tingling feeling raced through her as she admired the soft colors and contemplated the meaning of this moment. A rainbow seemed like a good sign, something to follow and believe in.

  “It’s the diffusion of light through raindrops,” Alaina said flatly.

  Bryan looked up from fiddling with the camera to frown at her, his strong jaw jutting forward aggressively. “Rainbows have lots of magic in them,” he said, dead serious. “Ask any leprechaun. It’d do you some good to believe in magic, Alaina.”

  Alaina’s lush mouth turned down at the corners. “Take the picture, Hennessy.”

  Bryan ignored her, his wise, warm blue eyes taking on a dreamy quality as he gazed up at the soft stripes of color. “We’ll each be chasing our own rainbows after today. I wonder where they’ll lead us.”

  They each recited the
stock answers they’d been giving faculty, friends, and family for months. Bryan had been accepted into the graduate program of parapsychology at Purdue. Faith was heading for a managerial position in a business office in Cincinnati. Alaina was staying on at Notre Dame to attend law school. Jayne was all packed and ready to leave for Hollywood to pursue a career as a writer and director.

  “That’s where our brains are taking us,” Bryan said, pulling his cap off to comb a hand back through his hair as he always did when he went into one of his “deep thinking modes.” “I wonder where our hearts would take us.”

  If anyone knew the answer to that, it was Bryan, Jayne thought. He was the one they told all their secrets to. He was the one who understood her need to find a place of her own, a place where she fit in, a place where she wouldn’t be an outsider looking in.

  “That’s the question we should all be asking ourselves,” she said, wagging a slender finger at her friends. “Are we in pursuit of our true bliss, or are we merely following a course charted by the expectations of others?”

  “Do we have to get philosophical?” Alaina groaned, rubbing her temples. “I haven’t had my mandatory ten cups of coffee yet this morning.”

  “Life is philosophy, honey,” Jayne explained patiently, her voice a slow Kentucky drawl that hadn’t altered one iota during the four years she’d spent in northern Indiana. The expression on her delicately sculpted features was almost comically earnest as she tried once again to breach Alaina’s wall of practicality. “That’s a cosmic reality.”

  Alaina stared at her, speechless for a full twenty seconds. Finally she said, “We don’t have to worry about you. You’ll fit right in in California.”

  Jayne’s wide mouth split into a smile, her beautifully carved lips lifting at the corners. Alaina was her opposite in almost every way, which was probably why they understood each other so well. Lord, she was going to miss her friend’s sardonic teasing.

  “Why, thank you,” she said, knowing Alaina would have preferred a spirited argument. She almost giggled at the disgruntled expression her comment received.

  Faith chuckled. “Give up, Alaina. You can’t win.”

  Alaina winced and held her hands up as if to ward off the words. “Don’t say that. I abhor losing.”

  “Anastasia,” Bryan declared loudly. He gave a decisive nod that set the tassel on his cap dancing. The word would have seemed straight out of left field to anyone who didn’t know Bryan Hennessy and the workings of his unconventional mind.

  Anastasia was the small town on California’s rugged northern coast where the four of them had spent spring break. Jayne’s eyes misted over at the memory of how they’d fantasized about moving there and pursuing idealistic existences: Bryan had wanted to play the role of local mad scientist; an inn with a view of the ocean had been Faith’s wish; they had somehow gotten Alaina to admit to a secret desire to paint; and Jayne had told them all of her dream to have a little farm of her own. It was a desire she’d had ever since she was a child growing up as a tenant in a cottage for hired help on one of Kentucky’s prominent thoroughbred farms.

  “That’s right,” Faith said. “We’d all move to Anastasia.”

  “And live happily ever after.” Alaina’s tone lacked the sarcasm she had no doubt intended. She sounded wistful instead.

  “Even if we never end up there, it’s a nice dream,” Jayne said softly.

  A nice dream. Something to hang on to, like their memories of Notre Dame and each other. Warm, golden images they could hold in a secret place in their hearts to be taken out from time to time when they were feeling lonely or blue.

  Jayne reached up to dab a hankie at the tears that clung to her eyelashes. The memories weren’t enough to ease her heart now, and she hadn’t even left her friends behind yet. How was she ever going to make it without them? They were her anchors, her rocks, her shoulders to cry on. How could she ever find true happiness without them?

  Bryan set the timer on the camera once again then jogged around to stand behind Faith. “Who knows?” he said. “Life is full of crossroads. You can never tell where a path might lead to.”

  And the camera buzzed and clicked, capturing the Fearsome Foursome—wishful smiles canting their mouths, dreams of the future and tears of parting shining in their eyes as a rainbow arched in the sky behind them—on film for all time.

  ONE

  REILLY WAS GOING to show up sooner or later. It was fate, destiny, an ominous portent that had appeared in her morning horoscope. She could feel it in the bottom of her belly, that deep, hollow sense of impending doom. She could feel it in the weight of the antique gold bracelet that circled her left wrist with tingling warmth. That was a sure sign.

  It wasn’t going to matter a bit that she had left Hollywood and moved up the coast to Anastasia—hundreds of miles away from Tinsel Town in more ways than just distance. The year of waiting was over, and he was going to find her.

  Jayne Jordan abandoned the wall she’d been washing, dropping her sponge in the metal bucket full of soapy water that sat beside her. Tucking her feet beneath her, she took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut as if preparing to dunk her head under water. Heedless of the fact that she was sitting on a scaffolding eight feet above the floor of the stage, she released the air from her lungs and willed herself to relax. Strains of a Mozart serenade floated through her mind as she attempted to banish the sense of dread from her body. Unfortunately, the sweet joyous notes that had poured unblemished from the composer’s soul did nothing to erase the image of Pat Reilly from her mind.

  She could see him clearly. His image was indelibly etched on her memory. Those breathtaking sky-blue eyes, pale and opalescent, staring out at her from beneath straight dark gold brows; eyes set in a face that was ruggedly masculine. She could feel the intensity of those eyes penetrating her aura, burning through her veneer of restraint and searing her basic feminine core.

  It had been that way from their first meeting, and she had cursed both him and herself for it. It had been that way at their last meeting, and it would be that way again, once he found her. And he would find her. Pat Reilly was many things, not all of them admirable, but he was nothing if not a man of his word.

  Jayne could still feel the mist on her face. She could see the green of the hills and the gray of her husband’s headstone and Reilly as he’d stood before her with the collar of his leather jacket turned up against the wind. She could still taste his kiss, the only kiss they had ever shared, a kiss full of compassion and passion, wanting and guilt, sweetness and hunger. And she could hear his voice—that low, velvety baritone with the Australian lilt that never faded, vowing that in a year’s time he would return to her. When they both had had a chance to lay Joseph MacGregor’s ghost to rest, he would be back.

  The year was up.

  Jayne sucked in another deep breath as a wave of panic crashed over her. In a valiant effort to fight off the feelings and the memories, she pinched her thumbs and forefingers together to make two circles, held her hands out before her, and began chanting. “Oooommm … oooommm … oooommm …”

  The community theater was empty for the moment. Because she hadn’t been able to sleep, Jayne had shown up at the crack of dawn to begin cleaning up the building that had stood unused for the past six years. But it wouldn’t have mattered if there had been a hundred people present. She would have gone right on chanting had her entire staff of volunteers been gathered around. When a person needed to meditate, a person needed to meditate. It wasn’t good for a body to block out its spiritual needs.

  “Oooommm … oooommm … oooommm …”

  She scrunched her eyebrows together in an expression of absolute concentration and oooommmed for all she was worth, but it didn’t do a darn bit of good. In the theater of her mind the memories played out, undaunted, in all their Technicolor glory. Memories of Reilly proved to be as stubborn as the man himself.

  The theater was dark and dank, an unpleasant contrast to the sunny spring mo
rning outside. Pat Reilly ignored the atmosphere. His mind was on more important things than the musty state of the auditorium. He ignored the clutter of junk that had been piled haphazardly backstage, stepping over and around the stuff when necessary, but barely sparing it a glance.

  He had followed Jayne Jordan’s trail to Anastasia, wondering how long it would take actually to track her down once he got there. But luck had been with him. Driving into the picture postcard coastal village, he had spotted her car—a vintage red convertible MG—slanted drunkenly into a parking spot on a side street with one chrome-spoked wheel on the curb.

  If he’d had any doubts about the vehicle being hers—and he hadn’t because only Jayne would desecrate the beauty of an antique car with a Save Catalina’s Wild Goats bumper sticker—the building the car was parked beside would have settled the question. The marquee was missing several letters, making the building look like an old crone whose teeth were dropping out one by one, but there was enough of the words left so they were understandable. It was the Anastasia Community Theater—a fitting place to find the woman he was looking for.

  Now he wound his way through the rubble to the stage proper, following a weird chanting sound. That would be Jayne, he thought, a wry grin tugging at his mouth. The glue beneath the false beard he wore pulled at his skin and he winced. Damn, he probably should have taken five minutes to peel off the disguise. It was his fans he was trying to hide from, not Jayne.

  He’d done enough hiding from Jayne and his attraction to her. The time had come for both of them to face facts. Mac was dead and there was nothing standing in their way. It was time to face this damnable attraction that had burned between them from the first time they’d laid eyes on each other, this attraction both of them had denied and cursed and fought against. She had been his best friend’s bride, and Lord knew Pat Reilly would sooner have died than betray a mate. But Mac was gone now. A year had passed since they’d laid him to rest. And there was no reason for the living to go on feeling guilty.