“Yes, and believe me, it takes something to be a black sheep in a family whose early members consisted of reivers, cutthroats, and pirates.”
“Why do I get the impression that the family hasn’t progressed that far from those days?” she asked teasingly, and to her delight Burke actually laughed. It was a deep, full-bodied laugh that encompassed everything around him, including her.
“You’re no doubt referring to the Delaney trait of always getting what we want.”
“That’s what I’ve heard. The Delaneys are legendary for going after and getting what they want.” Cara could now see the back of the big house where the Spanish influence on its design was dominant. An eighty-foot tiled pool and spa were here, around which a series of gardens and patios circled and meandered, forming a lush, lagoonlike environment, evidence of what determination and money could achieve. “It must be interesting—to say the least—to be born with special genes for persistence and luck.”
With his hand still on her arm he stopped her, and his brilliant gaze turned particularly intense. “It is, and this particular Delaney wants you to stay for the weekend. Am I going to get what I want?”
Her expression grew wary, and a slight shudder raced through her. It was amazing how this man could make her feel cold at times and hot at other times, Cara mused. She had known that he would ask her, of course. What she didn’t know was what her answer would be.
“For the weekend,” he pressed. “Until Monday. I’ll fly you to Tucson then. Someone can drive your car back—today if you like.”
One part of her told her to leave, flee, but another part said, Stay: peace is here, happiness is here... Burke is here. “Thanks for the offer, but... no.”
His forehead pleated into a frown. “Why? Do you have someone, a man, you have to get back to?”
She shook her head.
“What about a job?”
“No, that’s not it. I’m not working, today at any rate. I’ve tried various jobs over the years, but nothing has really held my interest, and luckily I don’t have to work. Thanks to Mother’s last four divorce settlements, I have four sizable trust funds. Her husbands were all very generous men.”
“Yet none of the marriages lasted?”
“No. Marriages don’t, you know.”
Burke had been cynical about love for a long time, but it bothered him that Cara should be also. She was too shining on the outside to be so dark on the inside. “My parents had a wonderful marriage. I still remember how much in love they were and how much they loved me and my brothers.”
She nodded, vaguely, almost as if she weren’t really listening to him. “I suppose there are a few exceptions. A very few.”
Strangely his inclination was to argue with her, but, he reminded himself, his arguments would be only academic since basically he agreed with her. “You changed the subject. I want you to reconsider staying for the weekend.” Even as he talked, his hand strayed to her cheek, and he realized that touching her could easily become a compulsion. She wasn’t safe. He withdrew his hand. “I can tell you love Killara. Stay. You haven’t even been here a complete day yet.”
Cara chewed on her bottom lip. “It wouldn’t be safe.”
The wrinkles on Burke’s forehead deepened. She was echoing his thoughts precisely, although he had no idea to what she was referring. But since he had no intention of letting her go until he was ready, it didn’t really matter anyway. He dropped the pretense of civility, and all manner of jagged edges surfaced in the tone of his voice. “I’m perfectly capable of making it impossible for you to leave.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked incredulously. “Ring Killara with men?”
“I can.”
There it was—the threat she had felt all along. She shrugged his hand off her arm and took a minute to consider the severe lines that slashed his face into the grim frown she recognized now as characteristic of Burke being displeased because things weren’t going as he wanted them to.
She had sensed that Burke Delaney held on tightly to all things he considered his. And she remembered that just before he had kissed her the first time, he had said. You must belong to me too. No! Belonging... holding on to a person... it didn’t work. She knew.
“There’s something you have to understand, Burke, and understand it well. No one can keep me someplace don’t want to be!”
“And there’s something you have to understand. I fight for what I consider mine.”
“I’m not yours.”
His dark green eyes were dazzling in their fierceness. “Convince me.”
She met his stare and stood her ground. “I don’t have to. If I want to leave, I’ll leave.”
He uttered a soft particularly violent curse. Her wide gray eyes remained unwavering. Raking his fingers through his night-black hair, he muttered roughly. “Okay, Cara, let’s bring the real problem out in the open. It’s been hot between us from the first moment, and I’m not sure it can even be explained. I know that I sure as hell have never run across anything like it. But dammit, why not relax and enjoy it? If we’re both aware of the pitfalls, we can avoid them.” His voice lowered. “It’ll be good, Cara. I promise you that.”
“Yes,” she murmured in the vague abstracted tone he was beginning to dislike, because it meant she was thinking of something else besides him. “Pitfalls can be avoided.”
“If we want to.” He wasn’t used to having to convince a woman of anything, and the harsh strain of his words showed his displeasure. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Killara too. We can reacquaint ourselves with it and each other at the same time.”
“We never knew each other—only of each other’s existence.” She had heard the strain in his voice and finally decided what it meant. It told her that he didn’t know how to deal with her. Her confidence increased as she realized that, unless it was what she wanted, Burke Delaney wouldn’t have her.
Her quick, sudden smile made it seem as if the sun had just broken through a cloud-filled sky. At the sight of it, tension Burke hadn’t been aware of began to ease out of him. “I can see now how deplorably stupid it was of me not to make friends with that solemn, wide-eyed little girl.”
She felt better, to the extent that she began to indulge in a bit of lighthearted flirting. “Ah, there’s the fabled Delaney charm coming out! One way or the other, you’re a difficult man to resist, Burke Delaney. The first time I saw you I realized you were a man who was used to getting what he wanted.”
“Is that so?” he asked, his lips twitching with humor. Her moods shifted so quickly, it left his head reeling. “I think it’s better if I don’t tell you what I thought when I first saw you.”
“Tell me.” She stopped him with a hand on his arm.
His gaze lowered to her hand curved around his forearm. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but only part of it. I thought you looked like an Indian maiden.”
“Me! In a designer dress?”
He nodded. “Arizona is a state formed by the sun and the wind. You have a look about you, like you were formed the same way—like you’re part of the land.”
She was deeply touched. “What an extraordinary thing to say.”
“It was meant as a compliment.”
She turned and looked back the way they had come. “It’s strange, but I do feel a part of this land. I remember my father used to say I must have the sun in my bones. Even with my fair hair, the rays from the sun never burned me. I just seemed to soak them up.”
“I haven’t seen you in Paris or Rio or Marrakesh, but here you look like you belong.”
“No.” she said, the remoteness back in her voice, “I don’t.”
He deliberately kept his voice light. “For the weekend anyway.”
She badly wanted to stay. And where was the harm? she asked herself. She was no longer a heartbroken nine-year-old. She was a grown woman of twenty-five. She would never come this way again, so why not? She made her decision suddenly, as she made all her decisions. “Okay,” she said. “I’
ll stay. But I want to keep the car here.”
He frowned. “Why?”
She soothed a finger lightly down the furrows of his brow. “So I can leave if I change my mind.”
His hand reached for hers, but she had already moved away.
* * *
At one end of the house of Killara stood the original adobe homestead of Shamus Delaney, or rather the final one the Apaches prudently decided not to burn down. At the other end of the house was the twelfth-century Norman keep brought stone by stone to the Arizona cattle ranch from the Delaneys’ ancestral home in Leix county in the province of Leinster. In between the two remarkable wings the house tended to ramble.
Cara, with Burke at her side, spent hours wandering through the house. She found to her delight that each generation had added its own touches—sometimes eccentric touches—but added them with apparent love and enthusiasm. The Delaneys clearly had respected their predecessor for no addition had ever been altered nor any purchase removed.
Every time Cara turned a corner, she found a surprise. One of the bedrooms was known as the Red Bedroom because its walls were covered with red wallpaper. Over a hundred years before, the new Mrs. Delaney had honeymooned in Paris at the Ritz Hotel, taken a fancy to the wallpaper in the bridal chamber, had it duplicated, and brought it back with her.
In a hallway Cara came upon a four-foot jade Chinese dragon that glowered menacingly at her, then she passed under a Spanish-style arch that was surrounded by a Tiffany-glass grape arbor. In yet another part of the house a Sala Grande with a thirty-foot-high ceiling and three banks of windows served as a sunroom.
But most wonderful, she thought, was the way Burke regarded this house. As she listened to him tell her about his home, she could hear the love and the pride, and she grew to know more about the real man. The paramount thing she learned was that if Burke had any soft spots, they were reserved for his family.
Burke told her stories about his family’s travels and adventures. There was the Spanish noblewoman who added the Gothic chapel, where the altar rail was fashioned from Spanish olivewood, and silk and gold-threaded petitpoint covered the over one-hundred-year-old kneeling cushions. Then there was the Englishman whose love of books resulted in the addition of the sumptuous two-level Baroque-style library that held thousands and thousands of bound volumes framed by lustrous mahogany panels. The second level of the library could be reached by a mahogany and brass circular stairway that was a piece of art in itself.
“You see,” Burke explained as they entered the drawing room, “most of the Delaney children were sons, but the few daughters managed to marry and bring home men who strengthened and enriched our family.”
He pointed to a miniature portrait of a beautiful, green-eyed, red-haired young woman. “That’s Brianne Delaney. Shamus’s granddaughter and his pride and joy. She was the daughter of Shamus’s oldest son, Rory, and the first girl child born into our family in over three generations. She holds her own special place in our family’s history. There are some extraordinary stories told about her.”
Cara grinned. “I’m not surprised. As far as I know, there’s nothing ordinary about any part of the history of your family.”
He smiled his agreement. “If there was a war to be fought, the Delaney men went. If there was a country that they decided to visit, they took off for it. And along the way, if they found a work of art, or a particular piece of furniture they liked, they would bring it home.”
Cara walked to the mantel. It was made of gleaming white marble and rose all the way to the ceiling. An arch formed the opening. Sitting dead center was a clock of extremely dark wood. “Did that go for women too?’’
He followed her. Sliding his hands into his pants pockets, he propped his foot upon a basket of logs. “Several of the men married women they met abroad.”
She eyed him curiously, “Have you had the opportunity to travel much?”
“Only on business. Rafe and York are the two who have really done the traveling.”
“Don’t you ever think you may be missing something?”
He had been watching her long tapered fingers smooth over the white marble, but at her question he looked directly into her eyes. “No. I’ve always considered my life full. I love my work, and it gives me all I need.” He tilted his head. “What do you think? You seem to be the expert on the subject. Am I wrong?”
“Travel is fun and exciting, and you can learn a lot. But after a while... I don’t know,” she finally said, after giving it a minute’s thought. Her gaze took in the room, warm and rich because generations of people had lived in it and brought their treasures to it. “I travel because I have no one place on earth where I feel I belong, because no one place can ever seem to hold me.” She tossed her head and laughed. “That’s not a complaint. I cherish my freedom, and when all is said and done, I lead exactly the kind of life I want. A lot of people would envy me. But sometimes—just sometimes—I wonder if my life would have been different if my parents hadn’t divorced and I hadn’t been taken away from Killara.”
He couldn’t think of a single thing to say. It was obvious to him that Cara had been a sensitive child who had badly needed a secure, loving environment. She was a fascinating woman, but every now and again he caught a glimpse of the child. Her sensitivity was a fragile thread weaving in and out of the stylish, sometimes colorful fabric that was Cara.
She was a woman who knew herself well, who was fully aware of her strengths and her weaknesses. She protected herself. He had seen it in action. That was something he could understand, even admire. But his admiration didn’t prevent him from spending a lot of time trying to find a way to get through her defenses.
The hours he had spent with Cara had been totally consuming. Her intelligence challenged him, her beauty beckoned him. He had learned a lot about her, but there was so much more for him to learn. For instance, he still didn’t know how she could make him want her so.
He noticed that her attention had been captured by the clock. “Shamus and his wife brought that clock all the way from Ireland to America, then overland to Arizona in their covered wagon.”
“It’s marvelous! And it’s made of bog wood, isn’t it? I ran across some bog wood furniture on a trip to Ireland not too long ago. It’s seasoned in turf bogs where it gets this wonderful rich black color, and then it’s dug up. It’s quite rare now.” The clock was about two feet square. Running the pad of one finger probingly around the face of the clock, she asked, “What is this carving? It’s very unusual.”
“Serpents.”
“What?” She drew her finger away, as if it were endangered. She wasn’t fond of snakes.
He grinned. “An ancestor of mine carved it. The symbols are from are our family shield—a drawn sword and two serpents. See”—he pointed to just beneath the face of the clock—“here’s the sword.”
“Yes. I can see it now.” She checked the face of the clock. The time was wrong. “It doesn’t work, does it?”
“Well, actually...”
Cara was surprised to see a glitter of amusement spring into his eyes. “What?”
“Uh, when York and Rafe and I were younger, there was an accident with the clock.”
“An accident?”
“Perhaps the better word would be incident. It seems somehow someone broke the clock so badly, it couldn’t be repaired.”
“This someone. You wouldn’t happen to know who it was, would you?”
His grin broadened. “Mother seemed to think it was one of the three of us, but none of us ever admitted to it, so she punished all of us.”
“For heaven’s sake! Don’t keep me in suspense.” she protested. “Who did it?”
“All I’m going to say is that I didn’t do it.”
She crossed her arms and favored him with a suspicious gaze. “Uh-uh. Why do I get the feeling that you must have been something of a hell raiser when you were a boy?”
“You were here part of the time. Don’t you remember?”
/>
“Not much. I told you. You seemed distant to me. I suppose because you were the oldest. And I shied away from York. He always struck me as having a certain wildness to him.”
Burke laughed. “You got him right, at any rate. What do you remember about Rafe?”
“I remember him the best of the three of you. He occasionally played with me. I think he thought I was lonely.”
“Were you?”
“Yes. Back then, there weren’t many kids my age who lived on the ranch. But I didn’t mind so much. There were other compensations.”
“Such as?”
“Such as Crackerjack and having all of Killara to roam over.”
He leaned his forearm on the mantel. “Your father was never the same after you left. I think losing you was very hard on him. Why didn’t you ever visit?”
“He didn’t want me to,” she said in a monotone.
“That can’t be true.”
“It is, but it doesn’t matter.”
He regarded her silently for a moment. “Would you like to go riding?”
Her wide gray eyes lit up at the thought. “I’d love to! Do you have a horse in mind for me?”
“Shalimar.”
But I can’t take your horse,” she protested.
“I’ll ride Sheikh. He’s actually York’s horse, but since York’s up in the mountains, he has no place for him. Shalimar and Sheikh were gifts to us from Rafe. He has their half brother, Saladin.”
“Great! I’d love to meet Sheikh, and I can’t wait to see Shalimar again.”
Burke hardly had time to move before Cara was racing out the door, her silver hair flying behind her.
Four
Sunday afternoon found Burke and Cara making their way to the top floor of the Norman keep. The stairway spiraled tightly upward inside one corner of the thick stone wall.
“It was built this narrow so that only one armored man at a time could fit on the stairway and so that it would be impossible for a man to swing a weapon,” Burke explained to her, a few steps behind and below her.
“How very clever. Leave it to a Delaney to think about something like that.”
Burke, the Kingpin (The Shamrock Trinity) Page 5