Reading it, Wyatt snorted.
Adelaide blushed in distress. “Obviously, this was taken the other day.”
“But not by Marco Maletti,” Hope said. “He wasn’t even in Laramie. He was off in Houston, chasing another story.”
Wyatt walked back and forth with Jake in his arms. He patted his son’s back gently. “Then who...?”
“An amateur who asked to be paid via an online money service with a shady reputation. At least that’s what my contact at the tabloid claims. It’s why the photos are so bad. But you can see they are authentic because this actually happened. Kyle did stop by to see Adelaide when she was in town the other day.”
“So we’re being followed by another paparazzo?” Wyatt theorized grimly.
“Or a wannabe,” Hope concluded. “All we know for certain is that this person wants the story to take a salacious turn.”
Adelaide looked like she was going to cry. “Oh no.”
“So now what?” Wyatt asked the highly efficient scandal manager.
Hope shut her tablet. “We stick to our plan. And keep feeding interesting, touchy-feely photos and positive stories to the tabloid press until interest fades.”
“Has anyone told Kyle McCabe?” Adelaide asked grimly.
Hope shook her head. “Not that I know of. I was alerted because I follow these things as part of my job.”
“I’ll do it,” Adelaide said. Before anyone else could offer, she grabbed her phone and stepped outside.
* * *
ADELAIDE CAME BACK IN, just as Hope and Lucille were leaving Wind River. “Talk to Kyle?” Wyatt asked.
She nodded tersely and walked over to the dual Pack ’N Plays. The twins were sound asleep. She stared down at their angelic faces, a faint smile on her face, admitting quietly, “He agreed with Hope, that it was likely the work of someone hoping to cash in or become part of the story, even vicariously.”
He followed her into the kitchen. “Was that all he said?”
“Aside from the usual, if anyone bothers us, notify law enforcement? Yes.” She took two thick hand-trimmed porterhouse steaks out of the package and put them into a glass baking dish. Then, turned to look at him, the walls going up around her heart as quickly and sturdily as ever. “Why?” she bit out.
Working to corral his disappointment, Wyatt came close enough to inhale her familiar womanly scent. “I’m just wondering why you stepped outside to make the call.”
Her head bent over the task, Adelaide seasoned the steaks with a spicy dry rub. “Because I feel like this is my problem to solve,” she retorted stubbornly.
Once again, she was pushing him away. “I disagree,” he countered quietly.
Her slender form stiff with tension, Adelaide swung back to face him. “If it weren’t for what my dad did, no one would give two spurs whether our two families get along or not. Yes, people who know us would be interested to find out we are married and have twins, but the news wouldn’t be written up in the press. We wouldn’t be forced to fight fire with fire and or have unknown paparazzo stalking us and anyone else who came into our path.”
“Like Kyle McCabe.”
Turbulent emotion filled her eyes. Her lower lip trembling, she admitted even more miserably, “Not to mention the fact that your entire family is now stuck doing damage control, right along with us!”
“They don’t mind. I don’t mind.”
“Well, I do!” She threw up her hands in frustration. “I hate the fact that my family has caused your family so much pain!”
“What happened last summer at the foundation is over, Adelaide.”
She sighed, closed her eyes, and shook her head. “Don’t you see?” she whispered, rubbing her temples. “It’ll never be over. Never!”
“Yes,” he said firmly, “it will.”
Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to believe him.
Luckily, her guilt and remorse about the past were things he could ease. Closing the distance between them, he wrapped his arms around her waist.
“First of all, you’re part of the Lockhart clan, too, now. And thanks to our marriage, have been for years. Even if we didn’t know it.” He buried his face in the fragrant softness of her hair, kissed her temple.
He paused to give her a long reassuring look. “Second, you don’t need to handle any of this alone. Not anymore. Not even the apologies.”
Adelaide gulped. Her eyes glistened moistly. “I was trying to protect you.”
Her vulnerability broke his heart. Wanting to do everything and anything he could to ease her hurt, Wyatt brought her closer still. “I don’t need your protection,” he told her gruffly.
He was strong enough to shield all of them from whatever came their way. He threaded one hand through her hair, looked down at the fiercely loving expression on her face. “What I need...what I have always needed...and wanted, Addie...is just you.”
Relief softened her slender frame. “Oh, Wyatt,” she admitted softly, “I need and want you, too.” She stroked her hands through his hair. “So much...”
He lowered his head, and kissed her passionately. To his delight, she kissed him right back, clinging to him with all she had, until all the walls she’d just erected came down, and the last of her inaccessibility faded.
Figuring it was time they took advantage of the peaceful interlude, Wyatt caught her beneath her knees. “And now, as long as the twins are still sleeping,” he teased, sweeping her gallantly up into his arms. He waggled his brows. “I have in mind something equally ‘relaxing’ we adults can do...”
She laughed shakily as he carried her up the stairs and dropped her down on the center of her queen-size bed.
“Mine?” she teased, knowing he liked space when he made love to her.
“This was closer,” he told her gruffly. When she looked at him like that, all soft and sexy and needy, he couldn’t wait any longer.
He stripped off her boots, jeans. Knelt on the bed to help her out of her pants, sweater and bra. She gasped as he kissed her again, ravenously, his hands discovering the deliciousness of her curves. Her nipples beading against the center of his palms, he moved lower. Past her navel. Lower still.
She arched as he caught the elastic edge of her panties in his teeth and brought it down. In a shockingly short time he had her naked and crying out.
His own body thrumming with need, he stripped down, found a condom and joined her on the bed.
“Let me.” Trembling, she rolled it on, then pushed him onto his back and swung her body lithely over his. Joyously, she moved to take him all the way inside. As their bodies merged, her eyes filled with an emotion that was as elusive as it was deep. The nameless ache within him spread, infiltrating his heart. Turning her, he moved over top of her, their mouths connecting as intimately as their bodies. Tongues twining, they kissed and kissed. His hands slid beneath her hips and he lifted her, going deeper, slower, then deeper again. With a soft, low groan, she rocked against him erotically, breathlessly. She shuddered in his arms. He plummeted right after her. They clung together, sharing the ecstasy, the peace.
Worried his weight might be too much for her, he rolled onto his back, taking her with him. Cuddling her close, he kissed her temple, ear, cheek. “For the record,” he whispered, savoring the increasing intimacy between them, “I adore you, too.”
* * *
ADELAIDE WOULD HAVE liked nothing more than to stay wrapped in his arms, their naked bodies entwined. But she had promised herself she was going to make him dinner. And with the twins newly asleep—five o’clock fast approaching—she needed to get started.
“Where are you going?” he asked huskily as she eased out of his arms.
Damned if the sight of him, sprawled naked in her bed, wasn’t the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. She pulled on her panties and s
ecured her bra. with him watching lustily all the while.
“I got steaks. Remember?”
When she bent to pick up her pants, a small velvet jeweler’s box tumbled out onto the floor.
He lifted a brow. “What have we here?”
Maybe there would be less pressure if she gave it to him now.
“Your Valentine’s Day gift.” She sat on the edge of the bed, pretending a casual ease she couldn’t begin to feel. She searched his eyes. “Want to open it now?”
“It’s February 12. I haven’t had time to pick up your gift yet.”
“So we’ll draw out the pleasure.”
His big body relaxed. “Well, now I’m curious.”
“It’s also sort of a fun anniversary gift,” she added nervously as he took the gift box. She hoped she hadn’t overstepped. “Practical, too. In the sense that maybe if we use them, we’ll get less questions at places like the pediatrician’s office. At least for the time being.”
His brow lifted.
Adelaide drew a breath. “I’ll be quiet now.”
Grinning sexily, he opened the lid. Looked inside at the two identical twisted tin-and-sterling-silver tenth anniversary rings that could easily double as wedding bands.
One for her.
One for him.
There was a moment when he didn’t move. At all. A moment where she wished they had never made a promise to consciously uncouple and then split up when the twins were older and the time was right.
But they had.
And with the secret she was still keeping from him, her father still on the loose, maybe even edging closer right this very second, she couldn’t ask him to put a halt on any divorce plans and really try to make their marriage work.
Then he looked up at her, his eyes dark with desire, and something else she couldn’t identify.
Something he, too, seemed reluctant to suggest, for fear it would somehow jinx the closeness they were already feeling, with every moment that passed.
“It’s just for now,” she said hastily.
“For appearances,” he confirmed, his expression even more tender, yet inscrutable.
“And fun.” And love... Because she was falling in love with him, all over again. And unless she was mistaken, he was beginning to want much more from her than they’d already agreed upon, too...
“This,” he said gruffly, as he slipped the larger band on his left hand, then put hers on her ring finger, “is a gift as perfect as you.”
There was only one problem with that, she thought, as Wyatt laid her down and made sweet and tender love to her all over again.
They had a lot going for them. A lot. But she wasn’t perfect. Not even close. Or she wouldn’t still be forced to keep so much from him.
Chapter Fourteen
“We may have a lead on the photo of you and Kyle McCabe,” Hope told Adelaide early Saturday morning as they worked to set up the go-fishing games at the Chili Festival.
Darcy lined up the troughs. “Tank told me that the guys at the WTWA have seen a guy who could be military veteran who might need help but is not yet ready to ask.”
Sage followed behind, filling the receptacles with water and plastic sea life. “I saw him, too.”
Adelaide tensed. “What did he look like?”
Sage grimaced as a cook-off participant went by with a great big bowl of freshly sliced onions. “I couldn’t see much of his face. He had on dark glasses and a hat pulled low over his eyes. But he had a kind of mangy-looking beard. Long salt-and-pepper hair in a braid that just reached his shoulders. I hate to say it, but he sort of looked—and smelled—homeless.”
That didn’t seem like her dad. He had always been meticulously dressed and groomed. Then again, the last photo she had seen of Paul had been as a beach bum. Could this be another disguise? Or someone else? “Was he dressed in camouflage?”
“No.” Sage unrolled the banner for the front of their fund-raising booth. “He wore faded jeans, a flannel shirt, an olive-green sweater and a really filthy shearling coat. Military-issue boots, bedroll and backpack, though.”
Sage straightened and massaged her lower back. “Nick said he went into Monroe’s and paid cash for some new wool hiking socks, and a couple of boxes of trail mix and protein bars.”
Molly turned to Darcy. “So why would anyone think he was the person who sent the photo to the tabloid?”
“’Cause he was carrying a cell phone,” she replied. “Tank said he always seems to have it out.”
“And while he was in the store with Nick, some of the customers were talking about all the paparazzo photos that had just appeared online, and they were speculating how much you could get paid for something like that,” Sage added.
Hope, who had been busy unpacking boxes, began setting up a second row of troughs. “It could have been one of the locals, then.”
“Except for one thing,” Darcy stated, adding more fish toys to the water. “The people of Laramie County take care of their own. I mean, they’ll all talk about what’s going on until the cows come home, but selling you out would go against the grain.”
Adelaide tried not to be paranoid. It wasn’t easy given the messages, the apprehension of her father’s accomplice, Mirabelle Fanning, and the bumper sticker that had appeared on her car while she was grocery shopping.
Plus, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was being followed. Although that was probably Marco Maletti, who was supposed to be surreptitiously taking more photos of them to generate positive press.
Adelaide paused to appreciate the smell of spicy chili, funnel cakes and corn dogs scenting the air. “When’s the last time anyone saw this guy?”
“A couple days ago,” Darcy said. She waved over a vendor and purchased a hot cup of coffee for everyone but Sage, who declined the offer. “When you were at the Lockhart Foundation, getting caught up on the books. And speaking of catching up on things,” Darcy said, pausing as she was in the act of handing over a disposable cup, “what do we have here on your left hand?”
Sage gasped. “Is that a wedding ring?”
Hope squinted. “Looks more like a roll of barbed wire molded into a band to me. What kind of metal is that?”
Adelaide fought back a self-conscious blush. “It’s a mixture of twisted tin and sterling silver. I got them for us for a combination ten-year anniversary and Valentine’s Day gift.”
Smiles all around. “What did he give you?” Molly teased.
Adelaide released a dreamy sigh. “Don’t know. He’s making me wait until this evening.”
“Ahhh,” everyone said in unison.
Wyatt walked along the midway. Catching them looking his way, he waved. “He looks so cute with Jenny and Jake in that kangaroo-pouch twin carrier.”
He sure did. Wyatt had foregone his usual Stetson, and his wheat-colored hair shone gold in the morning sunshine. To better accommodate the twins, he’d swapped out his usual denim jacket for a black fleece. The soft warm fabric molded his broad chest and provided a cozy resting place for the faces of their two twins, who were both busy snuggling against their daddy and looking around.
As their eyes caught, Adelaide and Wyatt exchanged smiles before he got waylaid again by another couple wanting to gush over the twins. “He’s on daddy detail this morning. Lucille is going to have them this afternoon while Wyatt and I do the cutting-horse training demonstration. And we’ll both have them this evening.”
“Sounds like things are looking up,” Hope said encouragingly.
They were. Adelaide just hoped nothing happened to mess it up.
“Oh, no.” Darcy looked around, then, through the empty boxes. “The gates are supposed to open any minute now, and I forgot to bring the boxes of prizes!”
“Where are they?” Adelaide asked.
“They’re in the white West Texas Warrior Assistance van. I parked it in the lot about ten rows back from the gate. They’re in the cargo area. They have WTWA written in red on them. And there’s a dolly there, too.”
“I’ll run and get them. You keep working on this.”
Darcy handed over the key. “You sure you don’t mind?”
Adelaide winked and shook her head. “The exercise will do me good.” She also needed to clear her head. All morning long she kept having this foreboding that all her worlds were about to collide, and it was ridiculous. Nothing bad was going to happen today.
Still, halfway there, she had the unsettling sensation she was being followed. She turned, saw nothing out of the ordinary, just festival-goers and volunteers moving through the parking lot to the gates of the fairgrounds.
With a deep breath, she shook it off and kept going.
She had just located the WTWA van when a man fitting the description of the homeless veteran stepped out in front of her, the intent expression on his weather-beaten face telling her their meeting was no accident. Her stomach roiled with nerves. “Can I help you?”
“Actually, Adelaide,” he returned with surprising confidence, “it’s more what I can do for you.”
* * *
THE PERSON IN front of her was a stranger. Unrecognizable. But she would know that voice anywhere. This was her secret wish and worst nightmare all rolled into one.
“Dad?” she asked hoarsely. He’d been a touristy beach bum in the last photo she’d seen. Now he was a down-on-his-luck ex-soldier, allegedly returning to his cowboy roots.
The man the world had once known as successful CFO Paul Smythe tipped his hat but kept a casual distance. His weathered lips formed an affectionate smile. “You look good, Adelaide.”
Still reeling from the shock, her knees began to wobble. Her dad looked so much older beneath the beard and long scraggly salt-and-pepper hair. As if whatever high he’d experienced after getting away with a fortune had faded fast.
The Texas Valentine Twins Page 16