“Arrogant man.” She gave a haughty sniff. “Doesn’t the Navy expect you to be gracious on the field of victory?”
Her body and her orgasms might have been a field of victory today, but only temporarily. He’d won the battle, true, but until Miranda opened up and shared her feelings with him, he hadn’t won this war.
Until he understood what had prompted her game of endless foreplay, he wouldn’t make love to her. No matter how much he ached to.
And he ached, big-time.
“I won,” he said with a shrug. “I get to choose the time and the place.”
“Should I be scared?”
“I didn’t threaten to treat you like a king.”
“Had you worried there, hmm?”
He shrugged, still not sure she’d been bluffing. “Would you have really brought that thing to bed if you’d won?”
“Only if it would bring you pleasure.” Her eyes sparkled, a striking contrast to her creamy skin and glossy hair. “Would you let me bring it to bed?”
“If it would bring you pleasure.”
Turning her face, she pressed her mouth to his wrist, a gentle kiss that made his blood sizzle. “So you are an accommodating husband.”
“I’ve got a long way to go to live up to my accommodating wife.”
The expression softening her features reassured him he would ultimately win this war. And when he did, Troy would claim the spoils on her gorgeous field of victory.
He still had a few weapons tucked away inside the Polar Bear Pack pockets. Some thick velvet ropes to tie her up with…or maybe he should let her tie him up. Miranda enjoyed being in charge, too, and he was so horny now, he’d need restraints to keep his hands off her.
Oh, he looked forward to savoring his victory.
“So, Mrs. Knight. Why are you sitting here staring at a blank computer screen?”
“I can’t seem to make myself boot the computer.”
“Time to put your money where your mouth is, hmm?”
“It’s harder than I thought it would be.” She stared up at him, frowning. “I’m having second thoughts about whether or not we’re doing the right thing.”
“Worried about what you might find?”
She nodded. “Whatever my grandfather is hiding must be big. He’d never keep a secret otherwise. Do I really want to know, let alone be responsible for the possible consequences? That didn’t seem to bother Victoria and Laura. It bothers me. A lot.”
“The risks aside, they only wanted to find out so they knew how to handle your mothers. If you think you can reason with your grandfather and get him to cooperate without knowing what happened, then go for it.” Brushing the glossy curls behind her shoulder, he leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “It all boils down to mission objective. If you’re content with your parents showing up for Victoria’s wedding then let’s drop the search.”
“That’s the problem, Troy. In her column tomorrow, Victoria will announce her plans for the double wedding. We’re talking major uproar here. Grandfather has already made a stand with her. She’s agreed to stop searching but she still won’t get what she wants.”
“The family back together.”
Miranda nodded. “I understand where she’s coming from. She wants our mother to have her sister back in her life so she can go off to Vegas and not feel like she’s abandoning Mother.”
“It’s not that much to ask, you know.”
“No, not for a normal family, I suppose.”
He’d been the one to point that out. “So, we’re back to mission objective.”
The shadows he saw in her sapphire gaze made him want to wipe her aches away, make her smile. “My grandfather lied to me. How do I know that Victoria wouldn’t have gotten what she wanted if I’d have backed her up instead of going to him?”
“History. You did what you thought was best and in all fairness, it really was the sanest thing to do.”
“Sane doesn’t seem to be on the schedule around this place,” she said dryly. “Laura’s serving up magic and miracles, and Victoria’s jumped on for the ride.”
He didn’t hear censure in her voice, just irony. That, at least, was a step in the right direction. “I think Laura’s been accomplishing some of both. Perhaps she can deliver some more.”
“Here’s hoping. Once Victoria runs her column, this whole situation is bound to change. People around here lap up any mention of the Fords and the Grangers. Grandfather won’t be happy, and Victoria knows it. She’s backing him into a corner.”
“Then she must be willing to live with the consequences.”
Miranda nodded. “She’s already reconciled herself to spending her wedding day feeling guilty for making this family rift even worse.”
“So what are we going to do? I’m with you no matter what.”
“I know,” she said softly.
He recognized the way she steeled herself to commit to a course, seemed to draw strength from his presence. He liked that she’d shared her second thoughts with him, too. She was opening up and that was all he wanted. To be included in the process. To get a chance to support her the way she always supported him.
Troy knew the moment she made her decision. She inhaled deeply and her face etched in steely determination.
“Let’s do it.” She reached down to press the computer’s power button. “My sister’s wedding is in our hands, and we’re going to look out for her.”
We.
Hearing that one word tumble from her luscious lips made this unsatisfied ache in his crotch worth every ounce of his restraint. He knew reaching this decision hadn’t been easy.
“We will,” he said simply.
She replied by reaching to touch his arm, a simple touch that spanned the distance better than words ever could.
“Thank you for helping me. Not just for digging up information on my grandfather but for abandoning me with Victoria earlier.”
“Abandoning you?” He scowled. “I was right outside the door. You’d have called if you needed me.”
“I know, and I appreciate you being there.”
It never failed to amaze him how one tender look and a thank you could affect him. Living up to Miranda’s expectations always made him prouder than even defending his country. “That’s what husbands do.”
“And I love you for being such a good one.”
He leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, unable to resist the desire to touch her, to indulge himself in the simple pleasure of being together, to feel her hair against his mouth and inhale that lightly floral fragrance that haunted his fantasies when they were apart.
“So where do you want to start?” He knew she needed to take the lead, to trust he’d be by her side no matter what.
“If my grandfather was a BEL who worked in occupied France,” she said, pulling up the hotel’s Internet access, “then we have evidence to support the authenticity of the first marriage license.”
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“I happened to have studied pre-law. And let’s not forget that both my parents are lawyers.”
“The senator could have met your grandmother in France while he was stationed there.”
She nodded. “My grandmother is the key here, Troy. We need to know more about her.”
“Agreed. But Victoria and Laura hit a dead end with Laura Russell. We need to know about Laure Roussell.”
Troy frowned at the computer monitor. “Yes, but without Victoria, how can we access the databases that’ll give us this sort of information about a French citizen?”
She nodded absently, keying in an URL into the browser. “What about the genealogy sites? There’s got to be information about the family online. That’ll be a place to start.”
“Good idea.” Hiking a knee up onto the desk, he swiveled around to watch her as she waited for a popular search engine to produce the results of some genealogy sites.
She bristled with intensity, an almost impatience as she ma
nipulated her way through the Internet, quickly scanning and evaluating information before she decided the value of a site and moved on.
He loved her focus and intelligence. She’d always intended to go to law school, but had postponed her plans to marry him. And now that Troy thought about it, he hadn’t heard her mention anything about resuming her studies in a long time.
Something about that bothered him, and he wasn’t sure what. He knew logistics had been partially at fault for the delay. She’d wanted to wait until they’d gotten settled after the wedding before committing to the amount of energy law school would take. Then his orders had taken them from one coast to the other.
But they’d lived in Norfolk before their move to San Diego over a year ago, and he couldn’t recall Miranda once mentioning feeling settled enough to tackle law school. Here was another reminder about how he hadn’t been paying close enough attention to anything but his work.
And another clue he’d missed.
“I need more information.” Miranda leaned back in her chair and glanced up at him. “Roussell isn’t an uncommon name. I need to narrow my search, but I don’t know anything about my grandmother. My mother just doesn’t talk about her. I really don’t think she remembers much. She was so young. Everything I know is just…stuff. Laura was the one compiling things her mother had said.”
He motioned her to get up. “Let me on to my e-mail account. With any luck, your sister and Laura will have forwarded their information before your grandfather called this morning.”
Troy suspected the posts would be there because he’d asked Laura to forward the information when he’d called her earlier. He’d also asked her to contact Adam and have him do the same. Troy logged on to his account, and sure enough, she’d accomplished another miracle. The posts were there. He made a mental note to remember that she and Dale got a decent wedding gift as thanks.
He quickly cut and paste the body of the e-mails into a Word document, so Miranda didn’t notice the date and times of the posts, all of which had arrived after Victoria’s visit.
“Looks like we’ve got some good stuff here,” he said.
Leaning over his shoulder, Miranda peered at the screen, and he scrolled down the page taking in names, places, proposed dates that Laura had cataloged for their easy perusal.
One such item caught Miranda’s attention.
“Look at this, Troy. I had no idea my grandmother painted, but Laura mentions it right there.” She gave a laugh. “I suppose that explains Laura’s mother and her interest.”
“Makes me wonder why the senator would have opposed her career choice, doesn’t it?” Troy scanned down the page to read the notes Adam had forwarded. “And look at this. Apparently Victoria knew. She wrote that your grandmother’s portraits started all the trouble in the first place. The senator claims she wanted her work destroyed in the event of her death, and Laura’s mother didn’t believe him. Your mother never mentioned any of this to you?”
“I never asked,” she said, and he thought he heard a hint of sadness in her voice. “Why would I bring up a painful subject just to satisfy my curiosity?”
But obviously Victoria had, and he cast her a side-long glance, looking for some clue to her mood about her sister.
She just looked sad. And Troy wasn’t surprised she’d reined in her own curiosity. That was Miranda—more caring and more generous to others than she was to herself. She looked out for the people she loved, which might explain why she was so select about who she cared for.
It was another realization about his wife that he’d missed, one he’d have to make a place for. She’d just mentioned her job as a sister. He had a responsibility as her husband to look out for her as much as she did for him.
“Wait a minute, Troy…” She trailed off with a look of comprehension dawning. Suddenly she slid into his lap and commandeered the keyboard. “Here, let me in.”
Troy obliged, hiking her up higher to savor the full effects of her curvy bottom. She didn’t seem to notice, so he pressed his advantage by looping his arms around her waist as she worked her way to a search engine to take another look.
“I saw a reference on one of these sites to a Roussell who was a painter.” She maneuvered her way back through the history of the sites she’d visited. “Darn, I don’t remember which one. It was just a mention, but it caught my eye.”
“Run a fresh search,” he suggested, taking the opportunity to massage the tense muscles in her shoulders and neck.
“Oh, that feels nice,” she said before the Web kicked back enough hits to make her groan.
She searched through site after site that combined their keywords in any manner and even ran across several Roussells advertising printing and painting businesses before finally finding what she was looking for—a news item from a regional publication about a painting by a local artist housed in a private collection.
“Here it is,” Miranda said, and Troy paused in his ministrations long enough to read the small piece, amazed she’d even noticed it. “Jean-Luc Roussell was a local artist from a village in the south of France, a farmer who’d gained renown for his landscapes in the early part of the last century.”
“What’s so interesting about him?” Troy left Miranda to scan the article as he began work again on her shoulders.
“This article is about one of his pieces being donated to a local museum. Oh, I see what’s interesting.” She sat upright as the piece caught her attention. “This is the only known painting of Jean-Luc Roussell’s left in existence.”
“What happened to the rest of them?”
“I’m not sure—no, here it is.” Scrolling down on the screen, she scanned the plain unformatted text of the old article. “Apparently Jean-Luc Roussell was a war hero for refusing to let enemy soldiers commandeer his farm for their headquarters. They burned his art studio to the ground, murdered him then used his farm as their headquarters anyway. From what it says here, the enemy soldiers were ordered to destroy any of Roussell’s work they came across as they ransacked the area to set an example.”
“How did this painting survive?”
“Roussell gave it to his housekeeper as a birthday gift before the war began. She hid it, and after her death, her family donated it to their museum as part of local history.” She sighed as she enlarged the image on the monitor. “Look at this piece. How sad that his art was destroyed.”
Troy held no illusions about war. He believed in diplomacy above all else, but until that mentality translated globally, until differing principles and intolerance yielded to compromise and understanding, and above all respect, there would be a need for men like him to fight and defend their country.
“At least there’s one left.”
Often that was as good as it got. How many wars had destroyed entire cultures until all that remained was a memory that evolved into legend as generations passed?
“Such a shame—” Suddenly she sat bolt upright, almost colliding her head with his. “I don’t believe this.”
“What?”
“Look at the signature, Troy.”
Peering over her shoulder, he glanced at the signature in the corner of the piece, which would have been indecipherable had she not enlarged the browser’s view. The colorful landscape had been distorted by the enlargement, breaking into blurry pixels of bright colors, but the signature had swelled enough to make out the initials J.L.R. slashed in bold strokes over a symbol of a faint silver lion’s head.
“I see it. What’s so significant?”
Leaning back, she glanced up at him, and he couldn’t miss the surprise in her eyes. “You see that lion’s head?”
He nodded.
“It’s the one imprinted on the head of my grandfather’s cane.”
14
MIRANDA LED TROY through the halls of Westfalls Academy, assailed by a past she hadn’t thought of in forever. She’d reigned like a queen here once upon a time, but the halls now seemed smaller somehow, a casualty of perspective and age.
Troy gave a low whistle. “Highbrow place.”
“True enough.” She led him past the administrative offices where Laura’s mother had worked through their school years.
The job had allowed Suzanne Granger to pay for her daughter’s education and to be an active presence to ensure Laura was treated fairly and with respect. While her presence had accomplished that goal with the faculty, to Miranda’s knowledge, it hadn’t done a thing to facilitate Laura’s acceptance among the student body.
Laura Granger, known among the student body as the strange ranger, had always been the odd one out. She’d had her circle of friends through the years, a group who hadn’t fit into the mainstream any better than she did.
But now Miranda felt a lot more understanding about what it must have been like growing up so out of the loop. The school of life had taught her empathy. And what was really important.
Slipping her hand in Troy’s, she walked along at his side, grateful for the lesson.
“Do you think your old art teacher will be able to help us?” he asked.
“If anyone can tell us what that symbol stands for, Mrs. Wellesley can. She’s been on the faculty here forever. Although, I’m sure she wouldn’t appreciate me phrasing it that way, or you calling her an ‘old’ art teacher, either.”
Troy smiled. “I’m enjoying this blast from the past. Why haven’t you ever brought me here before?”
“Westfalls was a long time ago.” And she was glad to keep it there.
She wasn’t especially proud of herself when she remembered her behavior toward Laura. While Miranda had never participated in any sort of physical action against her, she now knew how much being left out could hurt, and she cringed when recalling her intolerance and unkindness, the way she’d always excluded Laura.
And not because of dislike, either. Laura was right in this regard. They hadn’t known each other at all. If by some miracle this family managed to moved past its problems, Miranda would put forth an effort to formulate another opinion of Laura—this time her own.
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