Chase finally spoke, breaking into her reverie, and it was his turn to surprise her. "When I first saw you flying down the hill, with your hair streaming out behind you and your feet barely touching the ground, you reminded me of some wild thing— an untamed creature, free of any earthly constraints."
Listening to him speak, it seemed that, just for a moment, his voice had held a different inflection, brief though it had been. Trinity wasn’t sure what it had meant, if anything. When he continued, his voice was low and cool again, but his eyes burned his desire through the silver night, reaching out to her with a disturbing intensity, weakening her knees and heating her lower limbs.
"And then, when you reached the pier, flinging off your gown and standing still as if you were. . . inhaling the night, do you know what I was thinking?"
"No," she whispered, her legs suddenly weak.
"I was thinking what a beautiful body you had and wondering what it would feel like under me, with those long, lovely legs of yours wrapped around my back."
"Don’t say those things," Trinity gasped in faint protest.
But it was really too late for any form of protest, because his words had reached out and covered her with a spell of fascination and, when he took her in his arms this time, there was no thought of a fight.
The kiss did not ignite sparks, because it didn’t have to. She was already aflame with her own perception of his verbal pictures, and there was no thought as the kiss deepened and went on and on, thrusting through all restraints occasioned by the situation.
The moon could have fallen from the sky and Trinity would never have noticed. She was totally absorbed in the raspiness of his tongue against hers, and the heat of his hands through the thin damp cotton of her gown.
There was no reason why this man’s kisses should excite her, but they did—ridiculously so, unbearably so. His musky male scent swirled through the air around them, mingling with her perfume and wrapping them both in the sweetness of the night.
And when he finally broke the kiss off, she was totally disoriented. Worse, he knew it. But his hands on her shoulders kept her steady until her equilibrium returned.
Trinity looked up at the man in front of her and saw a complete stranger, to whom, at their first meeting, she had responded with an inexplicable passion. It didn’t make a lot of sense, and she needed time to think, away from his magnetic pull.
"I’ve got to get back to the house," she choked, turning and running back up the slope, not stopping until she got to her room.
Lying in her bed a few minutes later, she thought about her perplexing encounter down by the pool. Could she blame it on the enticing allure of the moonlight? She didn’t really know. But she could recall every detail about Chase Colfax: How he had tasted, how he had smelled and how he had made her feel.
She wasn’t a silly teenager experiencing the first stir of passion. She had known desire before, but not on this scale. It was an obvious chemical reaction, and whether they would feel the same explosive attraction to each other the next time they met remained to be seen.
Their encounter had been scandalous and it had been intriguing, and Trinity fell asleep, dreaming of a strange, hard man with silver-white hair and ice-blue eyes.
Chapter Two
By midmorning the next day. Trinity had already been up and working for hours, doing her best to forget about the man who had so successfully dominated her dreams throughout the night.
Washing dishes, she watched while her golden-haired daughter painstakingly cut out cookies with a star-shaped cookie cutter. "That’s really good, sweetheart," she encouraged absently.
Having enjoyed every minute of Stephanie’s young life, it was hard for her to realize that her little girl was nearly four years old now. Trinity had a teaching degree, but she had made up her mind not to work away from their home until Stephanie was older and in school. Even though Stephanie didn’t have a father, Trinity was still determined to give her as secure a start in life as possible.
"When can we ice these cookies, Mommy?"
"I’ll put a batch in the oven right now," she answered, matching her actions to her words, "and then, when the boys get here, Tray can help you."
Her three nephews were going to stay with them for the night while her sister and her husband went into Dallas on business.
"I don’t think I can wait," Stephanie told her importantly. She had been working on the cookies for quite some time. "When will they be here?"
"Any minute now."
And sure enough, about that time, Larry, with his thinning brown hair askew and his wire-rimmed glasses smudged, walked in the back door, carrying nine-month-old Joshua under one arm and nearly two year-old Anthony under the other.
"Mornin’, babe. Are you ready for the little monsters?"
"Hey, you be careful who you call little monsters! Those are my nephews, and in my family, we don’t have anything but little angels. Isn’t that right, Joshua?"
Trinity smiled at the little boy as she took him from his daddy’s arm. "How’s my handsome fella?" she asked him, walking over to the kitchen table and sitting down. Joshua cooed a silly little smile up at her. He was such a happy baby, and she just loved to cuddle him.
Her sister’s three children were all very comfortable in Trinity’s home, having spent so much time there, and the reverse was also true. There were times when Trinity thought Stephanie would be quite happy to live permanently with Sissy and her brood.
Larry set Anthony on the floor and walked over to the stove to help himself to a cup of coffee. "I see icing cookies is on the agenda for the day." He grinned, spying the muffin pan—with each muffin hole full of a different color icing, which Trinity had made out of powdered sugar and food coloring—and the little paint brushes by the side of the pan.
"Of course. I keep telling you, the trick is to keep them busy." Her kitchen was old-fashioned but big, and she had set up a card table in one corner of it for the cookie making. "Where’s Sissy? Is she getting ready for the trip into the big city?"
Her sister’s name was Sabine. Their parents had loved the slow, moody rivers of east Texas and had graced their daughters with two of their names, but Trinity had been born five years after her sister, and, as a baby, she had not been able to pronounce the name Sabine. As a result, "Sissy" had evolved and stuck.
Larry rolled his eyes. "She’s home, making fudge."
"The trip’s bothering her, right?" Trinity laughed indulgently.
Larry and Trinity both knew that whenever Sissy was upset about something, she invariably made fudge.
"Yep, you know your sister. Even though she knows you take as good care of the boys as she does, she hates leaving them, even for one night."
"Don’t worry. The trip will be great for her, and once y’all get on the road, she’ll be okay."
Larry was a successful mystery writer, and even though he loved the seclusion of the country for writing, he had to make periodic trips into Dallas to see his agent. Larry refused to fly. Consequently, his agent made the concession to his star client’s idiosyncrasies and flew in from New York upon request. Larry was that successful.
Their conversation was interrupted by a five-year-old bundle of energy named Tray bursting in the back door. Again, Tray was a nickname, since the boy had been named after his father, Lawrence Breedlove II, making Tray the third.
"Hi, sweetheart. How were the hens? Did you get all the eggs?" Trinity asked, noticing that Tray was carrying a small basket. He took a proprietary interest in the hens and always inspected the hen house the moment he arrived. He loved to help Trinity feed the hens and collect the eggs.
"No. There were more, but I couldn’t carry all of them," he informed her, carefully putting the basket on the counter.
"Well, come here and give your Aunt Trinity a big hug, and then you can help Stephanie paint the cookies with icing. Later, we’ll go get the rest of the eggs."
Running promptly over to her, Tray planted a great big juicy ki
ss on her cheek and then went tearing off to the corner of the room where Stephanie sat, diligently cutting out more cookies, this time with a cookie cutter in the shape of a clown.
Trinity got up, plopped Joshua in his father’s lap and took a tray of newly baked cookies and the pan of icing over to the table, giving the two small cousins instructions. "Go to it, kids. Ice them while they’re hot, and be sure to change brushes every time you change colors."
On her way back to Larry, Trinity scooped up Anthony, who had been sitting on the floor playing with a truck. "How’s my baby today?" she asked him, and in his own fashion he tried to tell her.
"Co’d," he said, pointing to his runny red nose.
"Oh, nooo! Anthony has a cold?"
Anthony nodded emphatically, happy to have his aunt’s undivided attention.
"I bet a few cookies would help that cold feel better. What do you think?"
"Cokie," Anthony repeated happily.
"Okay," Trinity said, carrying him over to the card table, "you sit here and watch Tray and Stephanie ice these cookies, and when they’re finished, you can have one." She handed him a cookie cutter of a Santa Claus and a ball of dough to keep his hands busy and then walked over to the stove to pour herself a cup of coffee.
"So"— she viewed her brother-in-law teasingly— "what fiendishly convoluted plot have you come up with for your next book?" Larry’s mysteries were famous for their diabolically weird twists, and Trinity loved kidding him about them.
"The perfect crime!" Larry wiggled his eyebrows at her. "The killer stabs his victim with an icicle, and when the icicle melts, presto—no murder weapon."
Trinity pretended fascination. "What brilliance! Don’t tell me, let me guess—they find the suspect’s freezer full of icicles."
"Hey, that’s no fair," he protested, his brown eyes laughing at her from behind his glasses. "You’re getting too good!"
"I don’t think that’s too original, hon. You’re slipping. I’m sure I read that plot years ago in a how-to-kill-your-brother-in-law book."
"Damn! I hope my agent doesn’t read that book. Then he’ll know all of my secrets."
"You’re not going to tell me about your next plot, are you?"
"That’s right. You can buy the book when it comes out. I need the royalties."
"Yeah, sure you do." She laughed. "Like another hole in your head. Come on, Larry, tell the truth. You haven’t thought up your next plot yet, have you?"
"No, I haven’t," he agreed cheerfully. "Actually, I haven’t done a good ax murder in a while, and I thought the subject might have unexplored possibilities."
"Ugh, Larry! Sometimes I worry about Sissy and the boys living with you. You are just too weird!"
"Weird but loveable," he amended, then changed the subject. "What have you been up to in the last day or so?"
Larry constantly worried about her living alone and kept close tabs on her, but he tried not to be too obvious about it.
"Oh, the usual. I finally got the fall garden in."
She wanted to tell him about her meeting with Chase Colfax, but she knew Larry well enough to know that she should ease into the subject. He would have a "hizzy fit" if he knew there had been a stranger anywhere near her property. Not to mention what actually happened with that stranger. If she couldn’t explain it to herself, she certainly couldn’t explain it to Larry.
"You had to do it by yourself, didn’t you? You couldn’t have waited for Bob to come down and help." His tone was one of resignation as he named the man who worked for him.
"I don’t need any help. Besides, you know I like to do things by myself."
"What I know is that you’re stubborn as hell. So . . . what else has been happening?" Larry was watching her closely. "Something must have. You’ve been fidgeting like a cat walking over a stack of hot bricks for the last five minutes."
"Did you notice the full moon last night?" Trinity sidestepped the question casually.
"No, I was sleeping, and you should have been, too. Were you sick?"
"No, Larry, I wasn’t sick. Honestly! You are worse than a mother hen. It was just too beautiful a night to sleep, and if you had any soul at all, you would have noticed."
"Sissy loves me," he observed with fake injured pride.
"For some obscure reason, I do, too, but that’s beside the point."
"So what is the point?"
Larry wasn’t a famous author for nothing. He had a rare insight into people that never ceased to amaze her.
She gave up. "I met someone down by the pool last night."
"What?" Larry nearly came up out of his chair. "Why didn’t you tell me this right away?"
"Here . . . give me that baby before he comes to bodily harm," Trinity demanded, taking Joshua out of Larry’s clutches and sitting back down at the table.
"It wasn’t any big deal," she stated, feigning a nonchalance that she didn’t feel. "He said his name was Chase Colfax." She had no intention of telling him the true nature of their encounter.
"No big deal!" Larry exploded. "Good grief! Half of east Texas has been trying to meet Chase Colfax, and you calmly tell me you met him down by the pool!"
"Well, yes." She was a little bewildered by Larry’s words. "He said he bought the Karnes place for some sort of temporary headquarters."
"And it never occurred to you to wonder what kind of headquarters? Wasn’t his name at all familiar to you? Where have you been these last few months?" Larry banged his fist on the kitchen table, causing Joshua to jump in her arms.
"Which question do you want me to answer first?" she asked dryly, appeasing Joshua with some plastic measuring spoons.
"Honestly." Larry shook his head in disbelief. "It’s no wonder I worry about you. You wake up in a new world every morning!"
"You know that’s not true," she corrected defensively. "I’ve been busy. Mrs. Janis wanted her quilt order finished the day before she gave it to me, and I have been working nonstop on it— besides everything else I do around here. Anyway, just exactly who is Chase Colfax and why has everyone been trying to meet him? And," she tacked on as an afterthought, "why can’t they meet him?" It had seemed incredibly simple to her.
"He comes from somewhere up north," Larry began heavily, "and he has taken Texas by storm. He started in Houston, getting involved in offshore drilling and establishing a huge new oil refinery on the Gulf Coast. Now he has moved his way up to Dallas. He’s been there for a while, and, by all accounts, he has Dallas eating out of the palm of his hand. I think he has out-Texaned the Texans, being three moves ahead of them in their own field—energy—and they are fascinated."
"Okay . . . but what’s he doing here, and what is all the uproar about?"
"He’s in the area to set up a monstrous coal-gasification plant."
"Oh, no! Not strip mining?" Trinity exclaimed, thinking of how the surface method of mining could destroy the land, turning once-fertile fields into a stark, barren landscape.
"Yeah, but don’t worry. The main area of activity will be at least thirty miles away, and it won’t be coming in this direction."
"Well, I suppose it will be a boon to the area . . . Jobs, housing, and all of that," she said uncertainly, trying to be fair but hating the thought. "What else do you know about him?"
"You listen to me, babe"—Larry pointed a bony finger at her—"stay away from him!"
"For someone who expresses himself so brilliantly on paper, you can sure be vague at times," she said wryly. "Why don’t you just spit it out! Don’t be shy. What are you trying to say?"
"Let me put it another way, my dear. He eats little girls like you for breakfast."
"Larry, I am twenty-five years old," she stated with loving exasperation. "Just because I was sixteen when you married Sissy doesn’t mean I stayed that young girl you first knew. I have a little girl of my own now, you know."
Without a doubt, he knew very well. Larry and Sissy had given up their home in Europe when they had heard that Trinity was pregna
nt and alone and her dad sick, coming home to lend their considerable moral support and help.
"You can save your protests. I know good and damned well that you’re a full-grown woman—too independent for your own good and with a courage that scares the hell out of me. Even though I don’t like to admit it, you can take care of yourself—in most cases. But this man is different."
"Why? How could you possibly object to someone you’ve never met?"
"They say he has gray hair?" Larry returned abruptly.
It was a statement and a question and a condemnation all rolled up into one, and Trinity was even more puzzled. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but remember. "It’s really more silver-white—like the color of last night." She seemed to have no control over the softness that crept into her voice at the memory, but she could have bitten her tongue off when she saw Larry’s eyes narrow.
"Whatever the hell color it is." he growled. "It’s prematurely gray. Do you understand? Premature! Chase Colfax has seen everything there is to see, has had everything he ever wanted to have and has done everything there is to do—and he’s only thirty-six."
Trinity couldn’t help but ask, "Is he married?"
"No!" Larry glared at her. "And he has a deadly reputation where women are concerned. His affairs are short and sweet—he gets bored very easily and walks away without a backward glance."
"Is he going to settle here?"
"I have the terrible feeling I’m not getting through to you." Larry groaned, rubbing his hand across his pleated forehead.
"Just tell me what you know," Trinity wheedled.
"No! He won’t settle here. He never settles in any one spot. He usually stays in one place just long enough to get moving whatever project he is currently involved with, makes more money than you and I will ever see in a lifetime, and then he moves on. And I don’t think he’s too anxious to make friends here. The old Karnes place is heavily guarded."
"Guarded?" Trinity was astonished. "Against what?"
"Against anyone who might intrude upon his privacy. He only ventures out in public when it is advantageous to him. He’s not exactly reclusive, just selective. He commutes back and forth to his Dallas headquarters by helicopter."
Silver Miracles Page 2