"Hey," Lucy said, sitting up.

"And then you married Nash, but he didn't do a very good job, did he? J.T. would watch over you."

"Listen-"

"And you could watch over him because he needs it, too, Luce. You'd be good for each other."

Lucy shook her head. "If you'd come back to New York with me, we could watch over each other." She leaned forward. "Really, Daize. There's work for you and schools for Pepper and colleges for you and I miss you both so much-"

"All those things are down here, too," Daisy said, and looked strained again. "Plus, you know, warmth."

"Alligators," Lucy said.

"The ocean."

"Hurricanes."

"J.T."

Lucy sucked in her breath. "Uh, big hurricanes."

Daisy shook her head. "You really happy in New York?"

"Well…" Lucy frowned into her drink. "I like what I do. And New York is the greatest city in the world. 'Happy' may be pushing it."

"Because J.T.'s down here permanently, not just for this shoot. He teaches at Fort Bragg."

"He teaches?" Lucy said, taken aback.

"Yeah. Bryce told me. He teaches at some Special Forces school. You could see him all the time. Pepper could see him all the time. She keeps saying she's his egg. She wants a family. She wants him in the family."

"That I can't deliver. I don't think he's a family kind of guy." Lucy tried to relax into the music, taking the edge off her lousy day. "This really is a great song." She closed her eyes and listened to the liquid notes. "Funny how the really great stuff has a few years on it. Eighteen-year-old scotch, seventy-year-old music-"

"Thirty-something Army captains," Daisy said.

"Daize-"

"I'm not teasing, Lucy," Daisy said. "I mean it. He's a good guy. Close your eyes and think about him. About him, not the shoot or whatever the mess is, just about him. Because you care a lot, Lucy. It shows."

Behind Daisy's voice, Susanna sang, "There's a somebody I'm longing to see," and Lucy remembered J.T. close to her in the swamp, catching her as she fell, his hands strong on her. J.T. coming to get her when Nash had been threatening, J.T. beside her in the Jeep, J.T. falling out of a helicopter for her, J.T. just standing there, every inch a hero. She gave up pretending to be responsible and memorized the planes of his face and the way his smile came slowly, and the light in his eyes…

Oh, God, she thought, don't let me fall in love with him. Lust I can handle but-

"Don't screw this up, Luce," Daisy said.

"You're not helping."

"Yes, I am." Daisy pushed her glass away. "I've had too much to drink to drive, and I'm so tired I'm going to fall off this chair. So I'm going to crawl in bed in the back with Pepper. If you decide to drive to the hotel, wake me up when we get there, and I'll go pack so we can leave. But I hope you don't. I hope you go find the guy who needs you like you need him."

"Such a romantic," Lucy said, trying to keep her voice light.

Daisy shook her head and started down the short passage to the bed where her daughter slept, dreaming of Wonder Woman.

"Wait," Lucy said, and Daisy stopped. "I want us to be together. I don't want to lose this again."

Daisy nodded. "Me either."

"So we'll work something out," Lucy said. "New York or here, we'll work something out. But we'll be together. Okay?"

Daisy's eyes filled with tears. "Okay," she said, her voice breaking.

"And we'll take care of each other," Lucy said, nodding.

Daisy nodded back, and sniffed.

"Good night," Lucy said, fighting her own tears.

Daisy came back and hugged her, strangling her just like Pepper had. "I love you, Luce," she whispered.

"I love you, too, babe," Lucy said, putting her cheek against Daisy's hair as she hugged her back. "So much. From now on, we're together."

Daisy nodded and then pulled away, sniffing. "But we need a man around, too, to like, hook up the stereo. Go get the Green Beret. He'd be good."

"I don't know if he does stereos," Lucy said, and Daisy gave a watery laugh and went back to bed.

Lucy wiped away her tears as Susanna sang on. A man in her life would be good. She rolled her eyes at herself. So antifeminist of her to sigh for a man to watch over her. "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." Well, that was wrong. A woman needed a man the way a woman needed a man. Which in her case was badly. Susanna sang about need, and Lucy swallowed scotch and lost herself in the music until she realized there were tears in her eyes again. Then she straightened and thought, Pathetic. Needy and pathetic. A little scotch and I liquefy. Well, that's wrong. I'm tough. I don't need no man to love me, no how. Nope. Sure don't.

It didn't help. By the time Susanna started the next song, singing, "There were chills up my spine," Lucy was lost. I want that, she thought. I want to look at somebody and feel that. I want to touch somebody and feel that. Susanna sang on, smoothing out the refrain again, and Lucy thought, Not somebody. Him. She'd been focusing on Daisy, on Pepper, on the movie, but underneath all of it, he'd hummed in her blood, making her breathe faster when he was close, making her look for him when he wasn't.

Lust, she told herself. Perfectly understandable. Perfectly healthy.

And really a good deal for J.T., too, and not just for the sex. He was so reserved, it was probably hard for him to connect with people- real connection, not Althea connection. I could give him real warmth. I could rescue him… She let herself fantasize his mouth hard on hers, hot on her body, and everything faded away as the heat spread until Susanna finished her last slow verse. Then Lucy thought, Enough waiting. Nothing wrong with going after a good healthy boink with a good healthy guy after a very tough day. Get rid of some tension, share some warmth.

Make love with J.T. until her brain melted.

Okay, I want him, she thought, relieved to acknowledge it.

And I want him now.

Then she put down her scotch, turned off the iPod, found her flashlight, and went out into the woods to get him.

Chapter 14

The thing about the woods at night, Lucy thought as she walked along the side of the road, was that it was dark. Really dark with the trees branching over the road, shutting out the moon, dark enough that the miniflashlight from her purse was fairly ridiculous. Gator dark, one might say. Sufferin' Sappho, it's dark. She thought about going back and then thought, No, and kept going, shining her flash on the ground ahead. She was not going to spend another night trying not to think about what she wanted when she could have him.

She was pretty sure she could have him.

She tripped over something in the grass and played the flash over it, remembering how J.T. had tracked down Pepper, fire ruts, the dirt freshly cut. Had to be J.T. and his big-wheeled Jeep. She followed the ruts with her flash but they disappeared into the trees along what could barely be called a road, more an afterthought at the end of one. The woods got really dark, darkest where the ruts went, and she thought, It didn't used to be this hard to get a guy to sleep with me, and followed them in.

As soon as the real road disappeared behind her, she lost her sense of direction and stuck with the ruts as her only hope, not only of finding J.T. but of ever getting out again. And when she found the Jeep and he wasn't in it, she had a moment of panic. Going on would be suicidally stupid, staying here would be unbearably frustrating, going back would be worse than the other two combined.

"J.T.?" she called into the darkness and waited a moment. Nothing. Oh, come on, she thought. How far into the woods could he have gone? "J.T.?" she called again, louder this time, and then jumped when he said from behind her, "You know, it was nice and quiet here until you showed up."

She turned around and played the flashlight in his face for a second before he took it out of her hand and shut it off. She stepped closer. "You know, you're damn hard to find."

"That was the point. It's easier to be alone if you're damn hard to find."

Lucy stepped still closer and he didn't back up. "Yeah, but you didn't want to be alone," she said, praying that was true, and then she leaned in and kissed him, almost missing his mouth in the dark until he corrected for her and kissed her back, his mouth hard on hers, his hand cupping the back of her head. He tasted right, hot and sweet, and she gave in to the kiss, letting it flood her. And when he pulled back, she was dizzy from him, clutching him as she sucked in air, trying to get her breath back.

"Okay," he said, sounding as breathless as she was. "The way back to the road-"

"You have got to be kidding me," Lucy said, and he said, "Right," and kissed her again and made her blood pound, and then he pulled her away from the Jeep, a little deeper into the woods, as her heart raced.

The light was better in the small clearing they came to but she still stumbled over the foot-high ring that surrounded the clearing.

"What's that?"

"Shell ring."

"Huh?"

"A spiritual place. Very old and sacred."

Sacred, she thought, and wondered if she'd go to hell for thinking what she was thinking in a sacred place. But those old earth goddesses had thought that way, too. She'd seen the carvings. "Works for me," she said, and then she saw that the only thing in the circle was a thin mattress with some kind of camouflage cloth tossed over it. "This is it? Where's your tent, your sleeping bag, your Coleman lantern? Where's the S'mores, for Christ's sake?"