by BJ James
Letting her look stray from his to the long slender fingers he raised to her, Valentina understood this was much more than innate gallantry. The mood had changed between them. If she took the hand he offered, it would be more than the simple joining of hands. Her heart pounded in erratic rhythm, her mouth turned dry. Something inside her seemed to tremble, poised and yearning, needing him, needing his strength and his wisdom, but afraid.
Trust. From the deepest recesses of her heart and mind, the word threaded through her thoughts.
This was about trust and trusting. She had given him her body and reveled in the gift of his. Stepping beyond the walls of a lifetime, she’d gone with him into new worlds. Now he would have the rest, that secret part of her she had never shared with another soul. Could she bare the darkness of her spirit? Would he turn away from her when he knew?
This was about trust.
With no guarantees.
For either of them.
Meeting his attending gaze, as she probed the glittering green depths, she laid her fingers in his palm. “No guarantees.”
His grip was hard and assuring. “We’ll take it as it happens.”
“What?” A word, a question, encompassing her fears and doubts.
“Whatever you wish. However you wish.”
“Can it be that simple? That easy?”
“If we let It.”
“How do we let anything happen?”
“By taking one day at a time.” Drawing her to him, he tucked her hand through the crook of his arm, holding it closely against him. “By living each day to the fullest and accepting what it brings. No regrets, no recriminations.”
“Pretending the past never existed?”
“No.” Rafe sighed and clasped her arm closer. “By accepting the past as only that—the past. Perhaps part and parcel of what we’ve become, but finished.”
Curls tumbled and shimmered as she turned her head in denial. “That can’t be possible.”
“It can be, and it is.” His grasp was comforting, his smile slow and charming. “Tonight you’ll see for yourself.”
Valentina’s brow lifted in speculation. “The mysterious dinner date, I suppose.”
“Bingo!” Before she could react, or ask the myriad questions this bit of intrigue provoked, he guided her firmly to the ramp that led to the dock. “Watch and listen tomght. Then decide for yourself how the past and its tragedies have affected Jeb and Nicky. Find the harm the past has done their love, if you can.”
Drawing Rafe to a halt with the pressure of her fingers, she turned to the view of Charleston Harbor. A tingle of surprise rushed through her as pieces of a puzzled fell into place. “Charleston,” she murmured. “Jeb Tanner and Nicole Callison.”
Rafe drew a long, gratified breath. He had gambled that within the secrecy of The Black Watch the legend of Jeb Tanner’s prowess as an agent and his love for Nicole lived on. A secret shared, but honored and guarded.
“Jeb and Nicole Callison Tanner,” he corrected quietly as the gamble was paid in recognition. Tucking her hand more securely over his arm, he walked with her to the boardwalk that linked the marina to land. The clack and creak of The Summer Girl bumping with the rhythm of the tide against her slip was lost in the hum of shore before he delivered the coup de grace. “They will be our host and hostess for the evening.”
The marina teemed with seagoing vessels of every sort and size. Yachts, houseboats, sloops, runabouts and dinghies. Even a johnboat or two rocked jauntily with each current. But there was little sign of their inhabitants. An occasional laborer could be seen polishing and cleaning, or attending some minor chore. But for the most part, the small inlet and the natural harbor it formed seemed to laze in burgeoning radiance of the sultry southern climate, untouched by the bustle of an active port of call.
From its lazy peace to a spectacular view of historic waterways, it projected the ambience of another time, another era, even the most modern and sumptuous of its indigene could never dispel. Perhaps it was that mood that made it seem natural that a horse-drawn carnage should wait in a fluted edge of shade, bordering the grounds of the marina.
The carriage was a phaeton, the horses a pair of matched bays with the massive shoulders and fragile ankles of racers. The driver lounging against a wheel was a beautiful young man with skin like black satin. Catching sight of them, he pushed away from the carriage to approach them.
A dove gray cutaway hugged his wide shoulders and lay smoothly over his thick chest. A pin-striped, double-breasted vest buttoned snugly at his narrow waist. Creased and satin-banded trousers brushed spit-shined slippers, while a starched white shirt and a foulard with a ruby winking in its folds completed his accoutrements. Tall and massive, with the gliding, measured stride of a dancer, he moved over dusty track and uneven pavement. Yet with the acrid smells of gasoline and oil and diesel fuel wafting around him, neither he nor his carriage seemed truly out of place or time.
Intersecting their path, he stopped a pace away, doffing a meticulously blocked top hat and executing a sweeping bow. “Would you be going into the city, sir?”
His voice was a rich bass rising from the deep well of his chest. Soft and cultured, there lurked a hint of merriment in it. But when he straightened, his bearing that of kings, his face was blandly expressionless. From this proximity, Valentina could see that silver tinged his temples and glittered here and there among dark, tight curls. A look of maturity and confidence marked his face, though the only lines were faint crinkles fanning from the corner of his eyes. Laugh lines, yet his gaze was grave.
With her arm pressed against Rafe’s side, and her fingertips lying at his wrist, she felt the leap of his pulse as he nodded his answer.
“Then perhaps you would choose to go in style. See the city as it should be seen. Hear a little of its history.” A gentle sales pitch, delivered with the panache of one who had done it countless times.
“I know the history of Charleston,” Rafe said bluntly.
“Ahh, perhaps you do, sir. But not as I would tell it.” Something like hidden laughter lurked in the softly accented tone.
Sensing more than the casual encounter merited, Valentina looked from one handsome man to the other. A little perplexed. keeping her own counsel and her silence, she waited and observed.
“Put your own spin on history, do you?” Rafe suggested more than asked.
“I prefer to call it factual narrative embellished with a touch of speculation and imagination for the enjoyment of my fares.” Almost as an afterthought the driver added, “Enlightenment and entertainment, sir.”
“And if I want neither enlightenment nor entertainment, why should I chose to ride in your carriage?”
“Because there’s no place more romantic than Charleston in the moonlight.”
“The sun is shining,” Rafe drawled wryly.
“Yes, sir, I believe it is.” The top hat was set at a rakish angle, the brim drawn down over his forehead. “But the day passes quickly.”
“While I keep you waiting and in need of a fare.”
“Exactly.”
“May I suppose that the need for a fare is what has you ranging so far afield, away from the city proper?”
A shrug lifted the shoulders of the gray cutaway. “Fares are dollars and cents, and you may think and suppose whatever you like. But you are in need of a ride, are you not?”
Valentina turned her gaze, again, from one man to the other. The strange conversation rivaled a tennis match, with each player serving zinging aces, one after the other. A curious gull swooped and curled, a darting shadow falling over them. Neither Rafe nor the driver noticed.
“We need a ride,” Rafe spoke again in the long, slow drawl. “But what if I’m not interested in moonlight and romance?”
“Then, sir,” the cultured tone, the perfect diction became a drawl mimicking Rafe’s, “with Miss O’Hara on your arm, I’d call you one helluva fool.”
Valentina smothered a gasp, surprised that a stranger k
new her name, that he would speak as he did to prospective fares he needed.
Rafe showed no sign of sharing her surprise. “A fool, huh?”
“In spades.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Then Rafe was releasing her, stepping away, his hand extended. “Jase.” The greeting became a long inspection from arm’s length, then an embrace, toppling the hat in the dust.
Backing away, the men smiled, then grinned, then laughed. Valentina was forgotten.
“Good Lord.” Rafe shook his head. “How long has it been?”
“Too long,” the man called Jase declared. “But I can see tune’s been good to you.”
“And to you. Miranda! How is she?”
“Randy’s fine. Finer than fine.”
“She’s in Paris? A buying trip for her store?”
“She was in Paris.”
“Until she heard about Jordana, and then she was on her way home, immediately,” Rafe suggested.
Jase laughed. “She would have been. Sooner than immediately, but there was a hitch. The airport was fogged in. All flights delayed. I thought she was going to start walking home.”
Rafe remembered the days before Jordana’s marriage to Patrick, when Miranda had been her companion, her friend, her eyes. “But she’s with Jordana now?”
“Has a cat got a tail? Is the sky blue? Are we being rude to your lady?”
“Yes, we are,” Rafe acknowledged. “But not for a moment longer.” Turning, taking her hand, he drew Valentina to him, and a circle of two became three.
“Miss O’Hara, Mr. Boone. Jason, Valentina.” The introduction accomplished, Rafe drew her closer, murmuring sotto voce, “Don’t be fooled by the act or the patter. Jason Boone owns a fleet of carriages and a stable of the most beautiful horses ever to work in harness. He needs more fares about as much as he needs another wife.”
Jase rolled his eyes and grinned again. “I thank God every day that Hattie Boone took me into her life, and that through her I met Patrick and Jordana, and Randy. But believe me, Randy Taylor is all the wife I want, or would ever want.” His grin widened. “To tell the truth, brother, she’s all I can handle.”
Rafe laughed at that, agreeing with a twinkle in his eyes. “Be careful, Jase. Your bride of...how many years?”
“Three,” Jase provided. “Three fiery, unpredictable, wonderful years.”
“Your bride of three fiery, unpredictable, wonderful years, once promised Patrick she would cut his heart out,”
“Only if he hurt Jordana deliberately,” the dark man interjected. “Be assured the same rule applies to any man or woman, when it comes to Cassie.”
“And Courtney.” Rafe put in. Bringing Valentina another inch closer, sweeping a clinging ebony tendril from her face, he said softly, “This time, for Courtney, thank God there was O’Hara.”
“Indeed.” Jase turned a beaming gaze toward her, his eyes thoughtful, almost purple in their darkness.
Hattie, Miranda, Cassie. The names rang in Valentina’s mind. She felt oddly detached, disoriented, as if she’d come into the middle of a story, with characters she’d yet to meet, but should know.
“Rafe,” Jase scolded. “What are we thinking? A poor example of Southern gentlemen we are! Keeping your lady standing in the sun and the dust, while we reminisce about old times and old friends. You have a couple of hours before your dinner engagement, the least we can do is show her the city. If we move along with it, that should save a half hour for the pièce de résistance. In the interim, if she’s interested, we can explain who’s on first.”
The remark left her blinking, wondering what baseball had to do with anyone and anything.
Catching sight of her perplexity, Rafe chuckled and led her to the carnage. “When you know Jase better, you’ll learn that the best comedy team that ever lived, in his estimation, was Abbott and Costello.”
“Who’s on first? I don’t know!” Valentina recalled the routine that was her father’s favorite. “I don’t know know’s on...” Laughing she cut short her recitation from the movie The Naughty Nineties. The very best of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.
Laughter drifted over the marina as Rafe helped her to the burnished leather of the phaeton’s seats. One look convinced her this was a carriage for special occasions, never making the rounds of Charleston’s narrow streets filled with visitors. Another mark of the respect and friendship she perceived.
Then Rafe was beside her, his hip and thigh brushing hers in close quarters, and she thought only of him.
After a deft check of horses and harnessing, as he swung into the driver’s seat and took up his whip, Jason Boone glanced over his shoulder. “Rafe, my man, none of us was taking bets that you’d ever settle down. But I think you’ve found the one. As smart as she is talented. Brave as she is beautiful—and she knows Abbott and Costello. Lord, man, she’s perfect. Don’t let her get away.”
The whip sang in the air, matched bays leapt into a steady trot. While Jase guided them from the marina to a street that would lead to the city, Rafe laced his fingers through Valentina’s and settled back, anticipating the rest of the show. As the countryside changed and the trappings of the city grew more frequent, he muttered only to himself, “Let O’Hara get away? Not if I can stop her.”
In a fraction less than an hour and a half, when he brought the team and carriage to a halt at the entrance of a narrow cul-de-sac, Jason Boone was as good as his word. Valentina had seen the city as never before, and learned that Hattie Boone was Jase’s adoptive mother and caretaker of Eden, Patrick McCallum’s island paradise. She knew that before Randy Taylor became Jase’s wife, she had been a bit of everything for Jordana, but a friend most of all. Cassie, Randy’s daughter, was more than Jase’s stepdaughter, she was the light of his soul.
“That’s it, kiddies—the tour.” Jase put away the tasseled whip and turned in his seat. “Next visit, there’ll be more. The really special stuff.” With a check of his watch, a grin, and a theatrical gesture, he announced, “And now, the pièce de résistance, Callison Gallery.”
Looking in the direction he indicated, Valentina saw a row of tiny shops, each with windows displaying its ware. Boutiques, antiques, candies, candles, and clothing. It was a pretty little side street of quaint storefronts and walled courtyards, ending at the door of dark wood and leaded glass, bearing the name of the gallery and its hours in discreet, curling script.
“Be warned, Valentina, a half hour won’t be nearly enough, and you’ll be tempted to linger. But, unless you want to play at being dreadfully Charlestonian and arrive fashionably late at the Tanners’...”
“We’ll be here, Jase,” Rafe promised. “At the appointed time.”
“Your chariot and its driver will be waiting.”
The street was as lovely and quaint up close as from a distance. The door to the gallery as subdued and classically elegant. As it swung open on well oiled hinges, a bell announced their arrival.
“Hello,” a cheerful voice called from the nether regions of the shop. “Make yourselves at home and I’ll be with you shortly.”
Almost before she finished speaking, before Valentina could take in the astonishing works of art scattered throughout the gallery, a woman hardly taller than a child came rushing to them.
“Rafe!” As portly as she was beautiful, the laughing bundle of energy launched herself into his arms. “You handsome devil! Where have you been for so long? And why did it take a near tragedy to bring you back to us?”
Not waiting for an answer, turning like a whirlwind, she faced Valentina. “And you!” she declared vehemently, tilting her head, studying the taller woman thoughtfully. “We’ve heard so many wonderful things about you. How can we ever thank you?”
“O’Hara, you’ve just met Annabelle Devereaux,” Rafe explained with a chuckle.
“Of course she has.” The copper-hued planes of Annabelle’s face curved into a smile. A Gypsy’s black mane fairly trembled in her delight. “Come,” she offered Valentina a
hand with magenta nails. “We’ll get better acquainted while I give you the fifty-cent safari through the gallery.”
With Annabelle chattering like a knowledgeable magpie and Rafe trailing behind, Valentina found the gallery fascinating. Nicole Callison Tanner had amassed an astonishing array of work, with each uniquely exhibited. An unintentional expression of her own talents.
“So,” Annabelle finished with a flourish. “If you had to choose, which would be your favorite?”
Valentina turned slowly, reviewing the exhibits. “It would be difficult to choose.”
“Jeb likes the wolf. Nicky, anything by Ashley Blackmon. And Rafe,” Annabelle’s fond glance swept over him, “everything and anything by Hunter Slade.”
“Indeed,” Valentina agreed, remembering the strong but innately lovely sculptures that were Hunter Slade’s. “Freedom, ” she said turning to a small bronze replica of a woman, her gown and long hair forever flying in an eternal wind, her arm raised to the sky, a seahawk lifting from her open palm. “I’ve never seen anything lovelier or more exhilarating than Freedom.”
“You’ve chosen my favorite, as well.” Enveloping Valentina in her bosomy embrace, Annabelle kissed her cheek. “I’m glad you’ve come and I hope you’ll become one of us.”
Before Valentina could respond, the little woman was spinning to Rafe, including him in her affections. “Much as I’d like you to stay, you’d better hurry along. Nicky has a wonderful dinner planned. It would be a shame to be late.”
Valentina was quiet as the door closed behind them, silencing the soft ring of the bell. With Rafe by her side, the day had been marvelous and full. An exciting adventure, leaving her with much to consider, much to think on.
In the hush of twilight, their footsteps sounded in cadence on ancient brick pavers. At the end of the darkening street, Jase and his chariot waited.
Ten
“Almost there, now,” Jase announced, his singsong bass a ripple in the silent restraint pervading the carnage.