Jason came to a screeching halt in front of his condo.
* * *
Sobbing, Elizabeth lay curled on the bed in her own bedroom, propped in a nest of pillows. So deep was her anguish, she wondered if she’d be able to go on living. Of course, for the sake of the baby, she’d stay alive, but to live, to really live, the way she had been with Jason... That just didn’t seem to be in the cards for her.
Tissues wadded in both fists, she dabbed at the various streams that leaked from her eyes and lamented over future plans never to be fulfilled for the second time in less than a year. Face red, eyes puffy, she stifled a keening wail with her hands. Oh, Lord, why? Why me?
Sybil had been right, of course.
What had she been thinking? She should have known that Jason’s family would never have accepted her. Not considering the history. There was far too much bad blood between the Mansfields and the Coltons.
And if the bad blood wasn’t enough, surely pregnancy would kill the welcoming committee. The very idea that she’d come waltzing in, in this condition, and join the Colton clan was ludicrous. Protectively, Elizabeth patted the side of her belly.
“But that’s okay,” she murmured to her baby. “None of this is your fault, sweet potato.” All over again, the tears squeezed from her lashes and rained down her cheeks. “It’s just you and me, buddy. Just us against the mean old world.”
Jason came tearing into his condo, fearing the worst. “Elizabeth?” he shouted, searching first the living room, and then the kitchen. The oven and all burners had been carefully turned off. Cold food had been stored in the refrigerator, the drainboard had been wiped down and the dishwasher loaded. Strange.
“Elizabeth?”
No answer. He blazed through the dining room, back through the living room and down the hall, frantically calling her name as he went. “Elizabeth! Answer me, honey! Where are you? Are you all right?”
Still no answer. After a thorough search that did not even yield her purse, Jason began to fear the worst. She’d had gone into labor and had somehow made it to the hospital. Yanking his cell phone from his pocket, he jabbed in the hospital’s number and impatiently waited to be transferred to maternity.
Elizabeth was not there.
Nor was anyone answering to her description. Neither had any accident or emergency birth been reported to 911 or the local police department. None of Elizabeth’s friends, including Savannah, had heard from her, either.
Slowly, Jason hung up and his natural fear turned to dread. She’d left, but not because of the baby. Deep down in his heart, he knew she’d left because of the secret she’d been harboring.
Old tapes of Angie’s deception and multitudinous lies began to play in his head. Like mercury in the desert, Jason felt his blood pressure begin to rise, and his heart to throb in his ears. Slamming his front door behind him, he jumped into his Jaguar and, tires squealing, backed out of his driveway and into the street.
Once and for all, Jason knew it was time to get to the bottom of this secret. Then, when they’d had it out, they could forgive and forget and—in the grand style of Sybil Colton—get on with their damned lives.
Jason found Elizabeth curled in a nest of pillows on her bed. Tear tracks were evident on her cheeks, and her eyes, closed as she slumbered, were darkly shadowed against her pale skin. Slowly Jason eased onto the edge of her mattress and stroked tendrils of her silky brown hair away from her face.
She was such an angel.
Right then and there he vowed that no matter how terrible her secret was, he would learn to cope. His heart seized with love. He couldn’t live without her, or the baby.
Elizabeth’s eyes fluttered open, and she cried out when she saw him. “Oh, Jason.” Throwing back the light comforter, she sat up and threw herself into his waiting arms.
Without words, they came together, an urgency to their kisses that left them both winded. After a bit, Jason pushed farther back onto the mattress and cradled Elizabeth in his lap. He nuzzled her hair, her cheeks, her neck and, rocking her gently, shushed her ragged hiccups.
She rubbed her face against his shirt and then clutching the placket in her fists, looked up at him through bleary eyes.
“I was so worried about you,” he whispered, bringing his nose to hers. ‘‘Why did you leave?’’
“B-because,” she blubbered, “I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“How you would react.”
“To what?” He braced himself. This was it. He was on the verge of losing everything.
“To the fact that I’m a Mansfield.”
“Right.” That part he knew. He ran his hand from her shoulder, down her arm and then laced his fingers with hers. Lightly he kissed her knuckles and again waited for the other shoe to drop. “I know who you are, sweetheart. What I don’t know is why you’re so afraid.”
“I’m afraid because I’m a Mansfield. Sybil was so upset. I knew she would be. They will all be, when they find out.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, Jason, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I should have, I know, but it’s just that I’d gone and fallen in love with you, and I didn’t want to rock the boat with something that I hoped didn’t really matter anymore.”
“What doesn’t matter anymore?” Jason’s confusion increased with her convoluted explanation.
“But it does matter, don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t see!”
“I was afraid of that.” Her lips trembled as she beseeched him, “Please forgive me.” Her sobs began afresh.
Jason still didn’t have a clue what she was talking about His brow furrowed, he stared down into her red-rimmed eyes and wondered what the devil her maiden name—and his cranky grandmother—had to do with anything.
“I forgive you,” he began, and tipped up her chin with his finger. “But please explain to me, why does being a Mansfield have anything to do with us?”
“The feud! Katherine? William?”
Expression blank, Jason racked his brain for a clue to what she was talking about. He shrugged and Elizabeth continued her attempts to jog his memory.
“Three hundred years ago? William Colton dumped Katherine Mansfield?”
“Okay...”
Elizabeth grabbed his arm and gave it a shake. “Surely you’ve heard about the great Colton-Mansfield feud.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “It vaguely rings a bell, but I fail to see what it has to do with you and me.”
“You really don’t know?” She sniffed and rubbed her eyes.
“No.”
A slow smile began to push at her lips, and before he could figure out what had just transpired, she began to laugh. Or maybe she was crying with a smile on her face. It was hard to tell.
Jason peered into her face. Hopefully, this was a good sign. “Would you mind letting me in on the joke?”
She giggled and sobbed and sniffed and rubbed her face against his shirt. “Oh, Jason. It’s such a long story, I—” She threw her hands up and sagged against him.
“Honey, I’m dying here. Could you give me the abridged version?”
She nodded and, arching against him, brushed her lips against his. “I’m sorry. Okay.”
With a heavy sigh, Elizabeth plunged into the sordid history of the Mansfield-Colton families, hitting the highlights for the sake of expedience.
“And then, after you’d left for the hospital, Sybil called back and left a message for you.”
Jason groaned. “What’d she say?”
“That she forbids your fraternizing with a Mansfield and that she’s going to get on her jet and come over here and smack you.” Once again, Elizabeth’s face crumpled. “Oh, Jason, she’s right. Your family would never accept me.”
He cupped her cheeks in his hands. “You think I’d give up you and the baby, because my grandmother is hung up on some ancient family feud?” He leaned back and gave vent to his laughter. “Oh, Elizabeth, who cares what happened three hundred years ago
between two stubborn families in the midst of an idiotic grudge match? Listen. I happen to know that Sybil is the only one who cares about this stuff anymore.”
“But how? How do you know?”
“I know because I just told my mom and dad that I’m going to ask a certain—and very pregnant— Elizabeth Mansfield to be my wife today.”
“You did?” She stared at him, agog. “W-what did they say?”
“They told me to give you this.” He kissed both her cheeks. “They will all love you, Sybil included, for who you are. The way I do.”
“You love me?”
“I love you, with all my heart. And I want you and the baby and me to be a family. And I want this Mansfield—” he placed a firm hand on the baby “—to be born a Colton.”
Fresh tears, this time of joy, brimmed in her eyes and threatened to spill over her lashes.
Jason stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Elizabeth, I want to do this right.” He nudged her off his lap and fished in his pocket for a slim jewelry box.
“What’s this?” Elizabeth whispered.
From the velvet-lined box, Jason withdrew a stunning necklace, all pillow-shaped sapphires, surrounded by diamonds and linked together to form a choker.
Elizabeth gasped at the beauty and felt tingles of recognition race up and down her spine. There was something so familiar about this necklace.
Moving off the edge of the bed, Jason dropped to his knees and took her hand in his. “My great-great-great-great-great-great—” he stopped and counted on his fingers. “Was that seven greats? No, six, okay, great-grandfather gave this necklace to my great-times-seven grandmother.”
“I know,” Elizabeth whispered and grasped his wrists in her hands.
“You know?”
“Yes! Because this is the same exact necklace that he gave my ancestor, Katherine Mansfield, three hundred years ago!” At his puzzled expression, she continued. “My great-grandmother wrote all about it in a journal she kept, chronicling the feud between our families. Legend has it that on the eve of their wedding, William Colton put the necklace on Kath-erine’s neck and the sapphires stopped sparkling. He took it as an omen and called off the wedding.”
“He gave up a life with a dishy Mansfield babe? What a fool.”
“Well, not really. From what I’ve heard, Katherine wasn’t all that nice.”
“Oh. And I guess there is the fact that if he’d gone through with that wedding, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
Elizabeth pouted. “That would be very, very sad indeed.”
Jason clasped her hands. “Elizabeth Mansfield, say you’ll marry me and put an end to this horrible, never-ending feud.”
His expression was at the same time playful and hopeful, and Elizabeth had no intention of resisting.
“Hmm.” She pretended to weigh his proposal. “I’ll marry you only on the condition that I pass the acid test.”
“Sybil will love you, once she gets to know you.”
“Not her, silly. The necklace. Help me put it on, please.”
His fingers shook as he locked the clasp at the back of her neck.
“Do they sparkle?” she whispered, for a moment wondering if the curse was still in effect.
Jason took a deep breath, and a slow smile pushed lines into the corners of his eyes. “Blindingly.” He reached up and pushed her hair away from her face. “But they will never be able to compete with the emerald of your eyes. Elizabeth Mansfield, marry me.”
Laughing, Elizabeth threw herself into his arms. “Yes, I’ll marry you. But you’ll have to deal with telling your grandmother that not only am I a Mansfield, but I’m pregnant.” She giggled. “That ought to have her flying out here without benefit of a plane.”
Jason’s laughter mingled with hers. “Don’t worry. Her bark is much worse than her bite. When she learns that you’re about to make her a great-grandmother, she’ll love you. Almost as much as I do.”
Look for the first book in
THE COLTONS
series in June 2001:
BELOVED WOLF
by Kasey Michaels
Chapter 1
Joe Colton burst from the elevator before the doors had fully opened and raced down the corridor toward the nurses’ station, his foster son, River James, right behind him. They’d flown from the family ranch in Prosperino, River at the controls, within an hour of the phone call from the San Francisco police, arriving shortly before dawn.
“My daughter—Sophie Colton,” Joe demanded of the unit clerk, who was otherwise occupied in filing her nails. “What room is she in?”
The young woman looked up at him blankly. “Colton? I don’t think we don’t have a Colton.” She swiveled in her chair, spoke to a nurse who’d just come into the station. “Mary, do we have a Colton?”
The nurse stepped forward, looking at Joe. “May I ask who you are, sir?”
“I’m her father, damn it!” Joe exploded, his large frame looking more menacing than paternal at the moment, his nearly sixty years having made small impact on him other than to dust some silver in his dark-brown hair.
River took off his worn cowboy hat, put a hand on his foster father’s arm and smiled at the nurse. “Senator Colton is a little upset, ma’am,” he said, being his most charming at the same time he emphasized the word senator, even if Joe had left national government office years earlier. “His daughter was mugged last evening. Colton. Sophie Colton.”
It might have been the dropping of Joe Colton’s title, or it might have been River’s lazy smile, but Mary quickly stepped out from behind the desk, asking the two men to follow her down the corridor.
“I’m sorry, Senator,” Mary said as they walked, ‘‘but your daughter was the victim of a crime. We can’t be too careful. She came back from surgery a little over an hour ago, and is probably sleeping, but I can tell you that she made it through the surgery without incident. Have you been apprised of her injuries?”
“Oh, God.” Joe stopped, put a hand to his mouth, turned away from the nurse. Obviously the long night had taken its toll. That, River thought, and the fact that Meredith Colton, Sophie’s mother, hadn’t seen any reason to accompany her husband to San Francisco.
“Yes, we have, but we’d like to hear a recap from you, if you don’t mind,” River said, stepping up, taking over for this so very strong man who had already buried one child. River knew he couldn’t understand all that Joe must have been going through since the call about Sophie had come in to the ranch, but he had a pretty good idea that the man had been living in his own special hell; reliving the call about Michael, fearing the worst for his daughter.
River, however, had been more mad than frightened, once he’d spoken to the patient liaison at the hospital, who had assured him that Sophie’s injuries, although extensive, were not life threatening. While Joe Colton had sat in the back of the small private jet, praying for his daughter, River had been at the controls, wishing himself in San Francisco so that he could knock down Chet Wallace. Then pick him up, knock him down again. And again.
Joe collected himself, motioned for the nurse to continue down the hallway.
“She suffered a mild concussion, Senator,” Mary told them, stopping in front of Room 305, her hand on the metal door plate. “I want to prepare you for that, as she may be confused for a while once she wakes. Plus, she’s got lots of scrapes and bruises, from her contact with a brick wall, as I understand it, and the gravel in the alley—those have been cleaned up, of course. And there are some fairly deep scratches on her...on her chest. They’ll be painful, but aren’t serious, and we’ve already begun treatment with antibiotics. We can’t be too careful with human bites or scratches. I—I’m sorry.”
The bastard had bitten her? River hadn’t known that part, wished Joe didn’t have to know that part.
Joe moaned low in his throat. River squeezed his work-hard hands into fists.
Mary continued, “The orthopods put her knee back together—torn Med
ial meniscus, which is fairly common—but she’s in a J-brace and on crutches for at least five or six weeks, and then will need some pretty extensive rehab. And,” she added, sighing, “Dr. Hardy, chief of reconstructive surgery, sewed up the knife gash on her face. She’ll need follow-up surgery, at least that’s what’s on Dr. Hardy’s post-op notes, but at least she’s been put back together. It’s a miracle the knife didn’t hit any large blood vessels or nerves. Still, even though the cut wasn’t dangerously deep, it took over one hundred stitches to close her up again.”
“Oh, God,” Joe said, pleaded. “My baby. My beautiful, beautiful baby.”
River clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt. Sophie. Beautiful, beautiful Sophie. Dragged into an alley. Mauled, beaten, cut, damn near killed. And for no reason, no reason at all. Just because a bastard high on drugs had gone berserk. Just because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now her entire life had been altered, changed forever.
“I think we’re prepared to see her now, ma’am,” River said, motioning for the nurse to step back so that he and Joe could enter Sophie’s room. “We promise not to disturb her.”
“Certainly, sir—Senator,” Mary agreed, then walked past them, back to the nurses’ station.
“Ready, Joe?” River asked, a hand on his foster father’s back.
“No,” Joe told him, his voice so low River had to lean close to hear him. “A parent is never ready to see his child lying in a hospital bed.” He lifted his head, took a deep breath. “But let’s do it.”
River pushed open the door, let Joe precede him into the room, then followed after him. He didn’t want to see Sophie this way, injured, helpless. That’s not how he had seen her when he’d first come to live at the ranch and she’d chased after him until he’d let down his guard, let her into his life. His Sophie, four years his junior—which had been such a huge gap when they were younger. The angry young man and the awkward, braces-on-her-teeth, skinned-knees, pigtailed, hero-worshiping kid.
She’d driven him crazy, made him angry. Gotten under his skin. Wormed her way into his bruised, battered and wary heart.
And then she’d grown up.
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