Free Hold Me by Lucianne Rivers Page B

use, finally.
    Taking a smartphone out of his pocket, he found the number for the airstrip and dialed.
    Jane eyed his cell, which he hadn’t mentioned he owned.
    “You can use this after I’m done to call your sisters,” he said.
    “Thanks,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “
    He tugged a strand of her hair as he waited for a customer-service agent. “You assumed I didn’t have a phone, and at the time I still thought you were going to share my whereabouts with your media buddies.”
    She shook her head, her face a mock grimace, then smiled.
    The next bus to Flores left in an hour. They’d have just enough time to get back to his place and pick up some traveling items.
    Cady pondered what he had done. This was it. He was going home. First time in years. Fear of his addiction fought with his resolve. What if he reverted to his old ways? In Narcotics Anonymous , he’d been advised to break with anyone or anything associated with his addictive past. But most of his friends from the Eighties were either dead or settled into family life and spread across the world. He faced little risk of meeting them in Albuquerque. New Mexico was far enough away from his old haunts in Los Angeles.
    Cady called a local cab to get them to the only flight to the States that entire week. They cleared Guatemalan customs, and Zach trundled off to buy snacks, leaving them alone. Jane looked nervous as hell.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “I couldn’t reach either of my sisters.”
    “Is that unusual?”
    “For Allison, anyway. She’s always home, or manning her cell phone in case a guest is trying to reach her.”
    The boarding call for their flight squawked from the loudspeaker. Jane waved at Zach across the concourse.
    After they boarded the plane, Cady watched Zach as he took in the luxury of the first-class accommodations he’d purchased—four seats in two rows, spanning the entire second row of the plane with the aisle in the middle. Cady wanted as much privacy as possible while travelling. Zach eased down next to the window and propped his bum leg across the adjacent seat. He claimed he wasn’t used to so much activity and his leg hurt.
    By the time Cady and Jane settled in the row across the aisle, Zach had closed his eyes. Cady was tempted to draw the privacy curtains, titillating thoughts of the mile-high club flitting through his mind. He’d become a member long ago during his drug-hazed youth. But the sight of Zach Caldwell quelled his lusty urges.
    The plane taxied and took off, and Cady forced himself to relax. Once they were airborne, an attendant offered him a drink and he declined, teeth clenching, the smell of alcohol wooing him. He hummed the new song he was writing and closed his eyes. When Jane turned down the drink offer, he snapped his eyes open. “You don’t have to do that.”
    He had no doubt that she knew what he meant. “I want to.”
    “No,” he said, ignoring the curious look of a passenger seated next to the aisle, one row back. “I don’t want you pitying me.”
    Now she looked pissed. “Pitying you?”
    “I’m an adult, Jane. I can handle temptation.”
    Could he?
    “Well forgive me for being considerate, Cady Hewes.”
    The nosy passenger across the aisle looked surprised when she said Cady’s name. Crap. Spotted. He heard the rude click of a camera phone and frowned, raising a hand to his face in protection.
    Jane shot the photographer a killer frown.
    “Do you mind?” She rose to close the curtain around them, then turned back to him. “I’m sorry.”
    “I knew what I was doing when I got on this plane,” he said, his tone gruff.
    “And what were you doing?” Her eyes were a fishing expedition.
    He shrugged. “Putting some faith in the person I’ve become?” Or something like that.
    Understanding relaxed her expression. “And you want others to do the same.”
    He nodded, touching her cheek with his fingertips, tracing the bone, enthralled.
    “All right. I’ll have a case of