Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  The enormous two-story library had been modeled after an old English abbey with walls of gray stone. It was now festooned with white roses and candles, with hundreds of chairs set up to create an aisle down the middle.

  At the sight of the bride standing at the end of the aisle, musicians hastily began to play “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” on guitars and violins. Laura stopped the music with a chopping gesture across her neck.

  Silence fell. She could have heard a pin drop as three hundred pairs of eyes turned to her.

  She trembled, passing a hand over her eyes. Then she heard her baby cry out halfway down the aisle. Going swiftly to her cousin Sandy, who held him in her lap, Laura took her son in her arms. Robby looked dapper in a little baby tuxedo just like his father’s, complete with rose boutonniere. She smiled through her tears. For an instant, she just held her baby in her arms, feeling his soft skin and breathing his sweet smell.

  Then, squaring her shoulders, she slowly turned to face her family and friends.

  “Thank you all for coming,” she said loudly, then faltered. “But I’m afraid. Afraid that.”

  “What?” her great-aunt Gertrude demanded loudly from the back. “Talk louder!”

  Laura’s knees grew weak. Did she really have to announce to all her friends and relatives that the only man she’d ever loved had just left her at the altar? How had she ever thought this was a good idea?

  “Did he leave?” one of her hotheaded cousins demanded, rising to his feet in the front row. “Did that man desert you?”

  “No,” she cried, holding up her hand. Even now, she couldn’t bear for them to think badly of Gabriel. He’d always been honest with her from the beginning. She was the one who’d arrogantly tried to change him, who’d thought that if she loved him enough, he might love her back. She was the one who’d thought if he knew Robby was his son, he might change, and love the child he’d never wanted. “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “I told him to go. I made him leave—”

  “You couldn’t,” a husky voice said behind her. “Though you tried.”

  With a gasp, she whirled around.

  Gabriel stood in the double doorway, dark and dashing in his tuxedo. And most incredible of all, he was smiling at her, smiling with his whole face. Even his black eyes held endless colors of warmth and love.

  “What are you doing here?” she murmured. “I thought you were gone.”

  He started walking toward her.

  “I couldn’t go,” he said. “Not without telling you something.”

  “What?”

  He stopped, halfway down the aisle.

  “I love you,” he said simply.

  She swayed on her feet. She was dreaming. She had to be dreaming.

  He caught her before she could fall. “I love you,” he murmured with a smile, and he looked down at the baby between them. “And I love my son.”

  There was an audible gasp. Gabriel looked around him fiercely.

  “Yes,” he said sharply. “Robby is my child. Laura was afraid to tell me about Robby, afraid I wouldn’t be able to measure up to be the man—the father—he needed.” Gabriel looked back at her. “But I will. I will spend the rest of my life proving I can be the man you deserve.”

  A sob escaped Laura’s lips. Reaching up, she put her hand to his cheek, looking up at him. “You love me?”

  He pressed his hand over hers. She saw tears in his eyes. “Yes.”

  She blinked, sucking in her breath. “But what about the deal in Rio?”

  He looked down at her. “I don’t care about it. Let the Frenchman have it.”

  She gasped, shaking her head desperately. “But you’ve tried to get the company back all these years.

  It’s all you wanted. All you’ve dreamed about day and night!”

  “Because I thought it was my family’s legacy.” He reached down to cup her cheek. A smile curved his sensual lips. “But it wasn’t.”

  “It wasn’t?” she whispered.

  “My family loved me, and I loved them,” he said. “No accident can ever change that. I will honor their memory for the rest of my life. I will honor them by living as best as I can until the day I die.” He took her hand tightly in his own, looking down at her. “And today, I will start the rest of my life loving you.”

  “I love you….” she choked out. “So much.” She swallowed, then shook her head. “But we can get married later. We should leave for Rio at once. I don’t want you to lose your company, your family’s legacy—”

  “I haven’t lost it. I’ve found it at last. My family’s legacy is love,” he said. “My family’s legacy—” he lifted his shining eyes to her face “—is you.”

  The autumn leaves of New Hampshire were falling in a million shades of red, gold and green against the cold blue sky when Gabriel and Laura returned home from New York.

  Laura sighed with pleasure as their SUV rounded the bend in the road and she caught her first glimpse of the old Olmstead mansion on the hill. It was the Santos house now. The day after their wedding, Gabriel had bought it for her as a present.

  “It’s too big,” she’d protested. “We can’t possibly fill all those rooms!”

  He’d given her a sly, wicked smile. “We can try.”

  And they had certainly done their best. In fact, they’d done excellent work on that front. Laura blushed. Since they’d moved into the house in March, they’d made love in all forty rooms, and also in the secret nooks of the large sprawling garden. They’d shared many warm evenings on the banks of their private lake, swimming and talking and watching the stars twinkle in the lazy summer night. One big pond, she thought, for what was sure to be one big family. She smiled. She would someday teach her own children to swim there, as her father had taught her.

  She’d been in New York City with Gabriel for only a single night, but she was already glad to be back home. She hadn’t known it was possible for a man to fuss so much over his wife.

  As the SUV stopped, she started to open the door, but Gabriel instantly gave her a hard glare. “Wait.”

  Laura sat back against her seat with a sigh.

  He raced around the SUV and opened her door. Gabriel held out his hand, and his dark eyes softened as he looked down at her. She placed her hand in his, and felt the same shiver of love and longing that she had the very first time she’d touched his hand, in the days when she was only his secretary.

  After helping her from the SUV—it wasn’t as easy as it used to be—he closed the door behind her. He followed her constantly, anxiously, always concerned about her safety and comfort. It might have been irritating, if it wasn’t so adorable.

  “I can close my own door, you know,” she observed.

  He stroked her cheek, looking down at her fiercely. “I have a lot to make up for. I want to take care of you.”

  Glancing at the sweeping steps that led to the front door, she lifted her eyebrow wickedly. “Want to carry me up the stairs?”

  Grabbing her lapel, he pulled her against his dark wool coat. “Absolutely,” he whispered, nuzzling her hair. He gave her a sensual smile. “Especially since the next flight of stairs leads straight to our bedroom.”

  Lowering his head to hers, he kissed her.

  His lips were hot and soft against her own, and a contented sigh came from the back of Laura’s throat. As he held her, a cold wind blew in from the north around them, scattering the fallen leaves and whispering of the deep frost that would soon come to the great north woods. But Laura felt warm down to her toes.

  “You’re a furnace,” Gabriel said with a laugh as he pulled away. Then he smiled. “I think the baby is glad to be home.”

  “So am I,” she said, then laughed. “For one thing, you won’t be trying to throw yourself in front of trucks, trying to protect me on the crosswalk.”

  “Fifth Avenue is insane,” he muttered.

  “Yeah, all those crazed tourists and limo drivers,” she teased. Turning, she started to walk toward the front steps.
She was excited to see Robby, after his first overnight apart from them. He’d had two loving babysitters fighting over him, Grandma Ruth and nanny Maria. “Thanks for a lovely night. It was nice.”

  “Yeah.” Lifting a dark eyebrow, he grinned wickedly, clearly remembering their time alone together in front of the fire last night.

  She elbowed him in the ribs. “I meant with the girls.”

  “Right.” He cleared his throat. “Your sisters seem to be settling well. It’s the first time I’ve seen them since they started college.”

  “You’re not in New York very much these days,” she teased.

  “I have better things to do than work,” he growled. “Like make love to my beautiful wife.” Grabbing her again by the lapels of her warm camel-colored coat, he kissed her again, long and hard, before she pulled away.

  “You are insatiable!”

  He gave a dark, wicked grin. “I know.”

  A flash of heat went through her. After they’d married that blustery day in early March, he’d made love to her without protection for the first time. The sensation was so new to him that they hadn’t left the bed for a full week after their wedding. In some ways, Laura thought, she’d been his first, just as he’d been hers. And they’d gotten pregnant on their honeymoon.

  Laura put a hand on her jutting belly. Their baby, a little girl, was due in just a few weeks.

  “Thanks for moving up here,” she whispered. “I am so happy to be close to my family.”

  His eyes met hers. “So am I. And I have you to thank for that.”

  Maybe it was pregnancy hormones, but Laura still felt choked up every time she thought of the three girls now living in the same city, all going to college. Two of them were her sisters. Brainy Hattie had transferred to Columbia University, and eighteen-year-old Margaret had opted for NYU.

  But the greatest miracle of all—Gabriel’s young niece, Lola, was now at Barnard.

  Last spring, shortly after Laura had found out she was pregnant, she had tracked down Izadora, Lola’s mother, and invited their family to come up for a weekend visit to New Hampshire in the private jet. To Gabriel’s shock, they’d accepted.

  After twenty years, Gabriel had finally made peace with Izadora and met her American husband, a restaurant owner in Miami. Gabriel had hugged his young niece for the first time since she was a baby. And he’d convinced Izadora to allow him to create a trust fund for Lola. “It’s what Guilherme would have wanted,” he’d said gravely, and put like that, how could Izadora refuse? Lola was now at Barnard College studying art.

  “All this family around us.” Wiping away her tears with a laugh, Laura shook her head and teased, “And you paying for three students at college already. Robby will probably want med school. And now this little one. Are you sure you’re ready for more?”

  Gabriel put his hands on her swelling belly beneath her long T-shirt. At nearly nine months along, she could no longer button her wool coat. Half the time she was too hot to wear it, anyway. “Just a few weeks now,” he whispered. Dropping to one knee, he impulsively kissed her belly.

  “Gabriel!” she gasped with a laugh, glancing up at the big windows of the house.

  Her husband looked up at her. His eyes glowed with tenderness and love. “I’ll be here this time, querida,” he said in a low voice. “Every step of the way.”

  “I know,” she said, her throat choking with tears of joy. Tugging him to his feet, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. And as the cold wind blew, carrying dry leaves down their long driveway, she felt only warmth and love in the fire of their embrace.

  And Laura knew two things. The fire between them would always last. And second, that they had an excellent chance of filling all forty rooms.

  To Love, Honour and Betray

  Jennie Lucas

  To my husband.

  Thanks for Europe.

  Thanks even more for home.

  Thanks for making all my dreams come true

  CHAPTER ONE

  CALLIE WOODVILLE had dreamed of her wedding day since she was a little girl.

  When she was seven, she placed a long white towel on her head and walked down an imaginary aisle in her father’s barn, surrounded by teddy bears as guests and with her baby sister toddling behind her, chewing on flower petals from a basket.

  At seventeen, as a plump, bookish wallflower with big glasses and clothes hand-sewn by her loving but sadly out-of-date mother, Callie was mocked and ignored by the boys at her rural high school. She told herself she didn’t care. She went to prom with her best friend instead, an equally nerdy boy from a neighboring farm. But Callie dreamed of the day she would finally meet the darkly handsome man she could love. She knew that somewhere out there in the wide world, he waited for her, this man who would wake her with the sensual power of his kiss.

  Then, when she was twenty-four, that man had come for her.

  Her ruthless billionaire boss had kissed her. Seduced her. He’d taken her virginity, as he’d already taken her heart, and for one perfect night she was lost in passion and magic. Waking up in his arms on Christmas morning, in the luxurious bedroom of his New York brownstone, Callie thought she might die of pure happiness. For that one perfect night, the world was a magical place where dreams came true, as long as your heart was pure and you truly believed.

  One magical, heartbreaking night.

  Now, eight and a half months later, Callie sat on the stoop outside her former apartment on a leafy, quiet street in the West Village. The sky was dark, threatening rain, and though it was early September it was hot and muggy. But her cleaned-out apartment felt almost ghostly in its emptiness, so she’d come outside to wait with the suitcases.

  Today was her wedding day. The day she’d always dreamed of. But she’d never dreamed of this.

  Callie looked down at her secondhand wedding dress and the wilting bouquet of wildflowers she’d picked from the nearby community garden. Instead of a veil, pearl-laced barrettes strained to hold back her long, light brown hair.

  In a few minutes, she’d marry her best friend. A man she’d never kissed—or even wanted to kiss. A man who wasn’t the father of her baby.

  As soon as Brandon came back with the rental car, they’d be wed at City Hall, and start the long drive from New York to his parents’ farm in North Dakota.

  Callie closed her eyes. It’s best for the baby, she told herself desperately. Her baby needed a father, and her ex-boss was a selfish, coldhearted playboy, whose deepest relationship was with his bank account. After three years of devoted service as his secretary, Callie had known that. But she’d still been stupid enough to find out the hard way.

  A car turned off Seventh Avenue onto her residential street in the West Village. She saw an expensive dark luxury sedan and watched it go by, then exhaled. It wasn’t Eduardo’s style of car, and yet, as clouds covered the noonday sun, Callie looked up at the sky and shivered. If her ex-boss ever found out their single night of passion had created a child …

  “He won’t,” she whispered aloud. Last she’d heard, he was in Colombia, developing offshore oil fields for Cruz Oil. After Eduardo possessed a woman in bed, she was pretty much dead to him, never to be remembered again. And though Callie had witnessed this scores of times during her time as his secretary, she’d still thought that she might be different. That she would be the exception.

  Get out of my bed, Callie. She’d still been naked and blissful and sleepy in the pink light of Christmas morning when he’d shaken her awake, his voice hard. Get out of my house. I’m through with you.

  Eight and a half months later, his words were still an ice pick in her heart. Exhaling, Callie wrapped her arms around her baby bump. He would never know about the life he’d created inside her. He’d made his choice. So she’d made hers. There would be no custody battle, no chance for Eduardo to be as domineering and tyrannical a father as he’d been a boss. Her child would be born into a stable home, with a loving family. Brandon, her best friend since
the first grade, would be her baby’s father in all the ways that counted, and Callie would be a devoted wife to him in return. In every way but one.

  She’d been doubtful at first that a marriage based on friendship could work. But Brandon had assured her that they didn’t need romance or passion to have a solid partnership. “We’ll be happy, Callie,” he’d promised. “Really happy.” Over the months of her pregnancy, he’d worn her down with kindness.

  Now, as Callie leaned back against their suitcases on the stoop, her eyes fell on her Louis Vuitton handbag. Brandon kept telling her to sell it. It would look ridiculous on the farm, she knew. It had been a gift from Eduardo last Christmas. Totally unnecessary, she’d wept, amazed that he’d noticed her gaze lingering upon the shop window months before. I reward those who are loyal to me, Callie, Eduardo had replied. A woman like you comes along only once in a lifetime.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Callie turned her face upward, feeling the first cool raindrops against her skin. Such a ridiculous trophy, a three-thousand-dollar handbag, but it had been a hard-won symbol of her hours of devotion, of their partnership. But Brandon was right. She should just sell it. She was done with Eduardo. With New York. Done with everything she’d once loved.

  Except this baby.

  A low roll of thunder mingled with the honk of taxis and distant police sirens on Seventh Avenue and the hiss from the subway vent at the end of the street. She heard another car pull down the street. It stopped, and she heard a door slam. Brandon had returned with the rental car. It was time to marry him and start the two-day journey to North Dakota. Forcing her lips into a smile, she opened her eyes.

  Eduardo Cruz stood beside his dark Mercedes sedan, powerful and broad-shouldered in an impeccable black suit.

  The blood drained from Callie’s cheeks.

  “Eduardo,” she breathed, starting to rise. She stopped herself. Maybe he couldn’t see her pregnant belly. She prayed he couldn’t. Wrapping her arms loosely over her knees, she stammered, “What are you doing here?”