Tantalizing Maria
Page 15
Jeff sighed. “You’re telling me. If I never find myself staring down the barrel of a gun again, it’ll be too soon.” He clasped Maria’s hand in his.
A phone buzzed from the kitchen.
Maria stood. “That’s my cell. It’s in my purse in the kitchen. I’ll just be a minute.” She hurried to the kitchen and grabbed the phone out of her purse. Angie.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she said into the phone.
“Oh, Mama, thank goodness.” Angie sounded out of breath. “You’ll never guess what we found!”
Maria’s heart hammered. She’d had more than enough excitement for one day. “Is everything all right? Is the baby all right?”
“Yes, yes, Little Jeff is fine. As you know, though, we’re doing some remodeling of the old house, and they just started taking out the big wall in the master bedroom.”
Angie was always changing things or moving things. She’d done it since she was a little girl. The old ranch house at Bay Crossing was beautiful just as it was. Maria had lived there herself with Wayne and the kids until she’d inherited Cha Cha from her great-uncle and the family had moved east. But leave it to Angie, always having to have her way. Maria smiled into the phone. Angie was just Angie, and Maria wouldn’t have her any other way.
“Yes?”
“So they’re taking out the drywall, and guess what they found inside the large back wall?”
“I couldn’t possibly guess.”
“A safe.”
A safe? Something niggled in Maria’s brain. Wayne had mentioned a safe once—that his Grandpa had kept behind on old Impressionist painting in his bedroom. But by the time Wayne and she moved into the house, the safe gone.
Or rather…drywalled over.
“Do you know the combination, Mama? Did Daddy ever tell you?”
“No, he didn’t, Angie. We didn’t even know the safe was still there.”
“We’ll pull it out of the wall and take it somewhere to have it opened,” Angie said. “I can’t begin to guess what might be inside.”
“Whatever’s inside belongs to your brother and sister as well as to you. And to your Uncle Je— Er, your father.”
“Of course, I know that, Mama.” Angie scoffed. “You give me so little credit sometimes.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. Sometimes I forget how much you’ve changed in the past couple years. I couldn’t be more proud of you.”
Jeff walked into the kitchen. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, it’s Angie,” she said to Jeff. “Hold on a minute, sweetheart,” she said into the phone. She turned to Jeff. “You’ll never guess what happened. They found your grandfather’s old bedroom safe while they were tearing down walls.”
Jeff’s mouth dropped open. “You mean, you never knew about it?”
“No, I did. Wayne told me, but by the time we moved into the house it was gone. Turns out your grandfather built a wall over it. Wayne just assumed he’d gotten rid of it. Angie’s going to take it to a locksmith to have it opened.”
Jeff smiled. “She doesn’t have to. I know the combination.”
* * *
“I can’t believe your grandfather walled that safe up,” Maria said.
“He must have gotten a little weird in the head at the end,” Jeff said. “Did Wayne ever say he was going senile or anything?”
“As you know, he died a few years after Wayne and I got married, and I never noticed anything strange. If Wayne did, he never mentioned it, other than to say he was always a little weird in the head.”
Jeff thought for a moment. Then, “Grandpa definitely had his own way of doing things. He hated banks, so he kept most of his cash in the house in two safes in his office. No one ever knew what was in the bedroom safe. Until now.”
“That explains the stock certificates,” Maria said. “He wanted them in his possession rather than in an account somewhere.”
Jeff nodded. He couldn’t believe it himself. The safe held sixty-year-old stock certificates in an electronics company that had split so many times they were now worth millions. Plus ownership interests in several silver mines throughout Colorado.
But that wasn’t the real treasure. For Jeff, the ultimate riches lay in the will dated a few months before Grandpa’s death, giving Jeff back his inheritance, along with a letter, handwritten by his grandfather, forgiving him. Why Norman had walled up the safe and decided not to make the new will public, Jeff would never know, but at least he knew his grandfather had been thinking about forgiving him. That meant the world.
He took Maria’s hand and looked into her dark eyes. “Mia, I love you.”
“I love you too, Jeff. So much.”
His heart warmed and he said the words he’d been waiting to say for thirty-three years.
“Please, be my wife. I don’t want to waste another minute of the second chance we’ve been given.”
Epilogue
Maria looked into Jeff’s eyes as they finally separated after a deep and passionate first kiss as husband and wife.
Therapy was going well. Jeff had been going twice a week for two months now, and Maria had joined him for a few sessions. They both had a lot to work out, not the least of which was their recent run-in with Chuck, who was back behind bars, as was Max. She looked around at their small gathering. Angie and Rafe with Little Jeff, now two months old and just starting to smile. Harper and Amber, who had recently announced their own good news. And Catie and Chad with eighteen-month-old Violet. Catie’s two brothers-in-law, Dallas and Zach McCray, were also there with their families, and Amber’s father, retired bronc buster Thunder Morgan. That was all—a perfect small wedding.
The minister laughed. “Now that the bride and groom have managed to unclench, I am happy to present to you Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Bay.”
The applause was thundering. She and Jeff smiled at each other and then walked down the aisle…toward their life together.
The End
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Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Tantalizing Maria. If you want to find out about my current backlist and future releases, please like my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HelenHardt and join my mailing list: http://helenhardt.com/signup/. I often do giveaways. If you’re a fan and would like to join my street team to help spread the word about my books, you can do so here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hardtandsoul/. I regularly do awesome giveaways for my street team members.
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Helen
Also by Helen Hardt
The Sex and the Season Series:
Lily and the Duke
Rose in Bloom
Lady Alexandra’s Lover
Sophie’s Voice
The Perils of Patricia (coming soon)
* * *
The Temptation Saga:
Tempting Dusty
Teasing Annie
Taking Catie
Taming Angelina
Treasuring Amber
Trusting Sydney
Tantalizing Maria
* * *
Daughters of the Prairie:
The Outlaw’s Angel
Lessons of the Heart
Song of the Raven
* * *
The Steel Brothers Saga:
Craving
Obsession
Possession
Melt (December 20th, 2016)
Burn (February 14, 2017)
Surrender (May 16, 2017)
* * *
The Cougar Chronicles:
The Cowboy and the Cougar
Calendar Boy
* * *
Collections:
Destination Desire
Her Two Lovers
* * *
Non-Fi
ction:
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Acknowledgments
Tantalizing Maria, the long-awaited seventh book in The Temptation Saga, tells the past and present story of Angie’s parents, Maria Gomez Bay and Jeff Bay. Its structure is a bit different from the previous books in the series, and I hope you enjoy it.
So many people helped along the way in bringing this book to you. Thanks so much to my talented editors, Celina Summers and Michele Hamner Moore, my eagle-eyed proofreaders Tanya Kaanta, Amy Grishman, Scott Saunders, and Chrissie Saunders, and to all the people at Waterhouse Press—David Grishman, Meredith Wild, Shayla Fereshetian, Jonathan Mac, Kurt Vachon, Yvonne Ellis. Your expertise and guidance are most appreciated.
Thank you to my amazing street team, Hardt and Soul, for your endless support of my work. You’re the best!
And thanks most of all to you, the readers, who clamored for more Temptation Saga! The series ends here…for now.
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Helen Hardt’s passion for the written word began with the books her mother read to her at bedtime. She wrote her first story at age six and hasn’t stopped since. In addition to being an award winning author of contemporary and historical romance and erotica, she’s a mother, a black belt in Taekwondo, a grammar geek, an appreciator of fine red wine, and a lover of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. She writes from her home in Colorado, where she lives with her family. Helen loves to hear from readers.
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