Saffron Nights by Liz Everly Page B

Hong Kong. He’ll be questioned there, I assure you. And we’ll be in touch with you.”
    “Hong Kong? That’s on our itinerary,” Maeve said.
    “Then it would seem he probably is following you, but why?”
    “Detective, are they in danger?” Alice said.
    “It’s hard to say. We don’t know that Snake had anything to do with any of this. But if he did, I’d say yes, you are both in danger.”
    “Well, maybe we should call the project off for a while and you two come home,” Alice said.
    “Let’s at least finish Hawaii,” Maeve said. “We’ll be staying at Jack’s place on Big Island. He’s a creep, sort of, but harmless. And besides, what could this Snake want with us? Must be some weird coincidence.”
    “Jack’s estate is quite secure . . . I’ve been there,” Alice said. “Let’s do this and reassess. I’ll stay here with Jackson. Thank God I hadn’t gotten out of L.A. before I received his call. You go ahead, Maeve. We’ll catch up with you. Maybe we’ll skip Hong Kong.”
    “I wouldn’t worry about Hong Kong,” the detective said. “The authorities will apprehend him immediately.”

Chapter 17
    M aeve didn’t want to leave Jackson. He looked so sweet and vulnerable lying in that hospital bed. Whether she liked it or not, she was pulled between wanting to be by his bedside and needing to move forward with the project.
    “I hate hospitals,” she said, when Alice had left to get some lunch for them.
    “Why? They seem pretty helpful to me,” Jackson said.
    “It’s just that it reminds me of my dad. The last years of his life, you know, in and out of hospitals,” she said. Why was she telling him this?
    Jackson looked away from her. Was he embarrassed by the intimacy of her statement?
    “We’ve all had our share of bad hospital moments,” he said, looking out the window.
    “My father’s death,” she told Jackson as he gazed out the window. “It was hard on the whole family. Cancer. It left us grieving and broke.”
    He looked sheepishly at her.
    “You don’t have to tell me this.”
    “It’s okay,” she said. “You know, I was only able to get to journalism school because of a scholarship. My mom was left with nothing. She was never the same after my father died.”
    Maeve took a deep breath. “Martin said she died of a broken heart. And I believe that. She gave up everything for my dad, for us. And, well, that’s what love gets you.”
    It came tumbling out of her. Why was she opening her heart to him? Would she regret that? There was a quality to Jackson that made him easy to talk with. It was one that she didn’t know he had until this trip.
    “Not always,” Jackson said, with a hushed, thoughtful tone. “But you’ve done so well for yourself, eh?”
    She shrugged as Alice walked in with sandwiches.
    Maeve’s career had taken off in the midst of all this, and she felt like she had to make the most of it by working harder and harder because someday it could all slip away. She put away her money and kept figuring out ways to make more. But as she looked at Jackson lying there, even sick and beaten, still pulling at her, she was beginning to wonder if something was missing from her life.
     
    When Maeve finally arrived at Jack’s estate—which indeed was the correct word for it—she was pleasantly surprised by the fact that he wasn’t home. The security guard at the gate handed her a note from him, telling her to make herself at home.
    Maeve loved to travel and was used to traveling alone, but she was a little leery of exploring on her own too much because of Jackson’s experience. She hated to admit it, but she was worried about him. The more she thought about it, though, she wondered if all this had to do with one of his many women. She’s seen him with all the women in the tabloids. Trashy women, into nothing more than how they looked, who they laid, and where the next party was. Maybe she shouldn’t be concerned for herself at all. Maybe this had