by Diana Palmer
She held on for dear life. “If you go, I’m going with you,” she said involuntarily, her face flushed, her eyes sparkling with feeling.
“That’s what I came all this way to hear,” he said in a harsh undertone. “It took you long enough!”
She burrowed against him and his arms came around to enfold her. “I’m still afraid, Luke,” she whispered.
“Everyone’s afraid. Not only of falling in love, but of getting married, having children. These are big steps, important steps. People who aren’t afraid to take them are the ones who end up divorced and miserable. You have to be sure, but even then, it’s a risk.”
“I’m willing to take it, if you are,” she said after a minute.
His arms contracted again as he bent over her head and rocked her against him. “I’ve been willing to take it since the first time I saw you,” he breathed. “I’ve spent my life waiting for a woman I could live with. And you didn’t even like me!”
She laughed with delight. “Only at first,” she protested.
“Ha!” he murmured. “You fought me every step of the way.” He lifted his head to look down at her. “Jacobsville can always use a good public defender,” he said firmly. “There are kids in trouble everywhere.”
She smiled ruefully. “I was hedging,” she confessed. “I couldn’t bear the thought of being near you all the time if…well, if I was the only one who felt this way.”
“Which way?” he asked in a soft, sensuous tone.
She stared at his tie. It was blue and had a paisley pattern—very nice. His thumbs jabbed her gently in the ribs.
“Which way?” he persisted.
She leaned her forehead against him. “I love you.”
There was a long, ominous silence. She lifted her head apprehensively and saw his eyes. They were such a vivid blue that they almost glowed. She got barely a glimpse of them before they closed as he lifted her against him and kissed her again. Under his breath, she heard him repeat the words back to her. And then, she stopped trying to hear anything except the beat of her own heart.
Long, tempestuous minutes later, he looked down at her, where she lay in the crook of his arm on the sofa, her body soft and fluid against his, her dress unfastened, her hair disheveled. His shirt was open, too, the tie long gone, and her fingers played lazily through the wedge of blond hair on his chest.
“We were going out to eat,” she reminded him.
“To hell with food. I’m not hungry.”
“Well, I am,” she said, laughing. “Especially now.”
He traced a slow pattern on the lace of her bra. “Spoilsport,” he murmured. “Just when I’m getting to know all about you.”
She laughed again, moving his hand aside so that she could button up her dress again. “You stop that,” she teased.
“Stop? I haven’t even gotten started!” he protested.
“There’s plenty of time for all that,” she reminded him. She searched his blue eyes. “I want a white wedding. Do you mind?”
“I want a white wedding, too,” he agreed, smiling at her. “We’ll have the works, a best man, a best woman, a flower girl—my niece, of course,” he added with a chuckle.
“I’ll have my sister-in-law for matron of honor. Best woman,” she scoffed, and broke up laughing at the thought of pretty Marianne in a suit and bow tie.
“It will be an occasion,” he said. “And then we’ll raise cattle and look after kids and grow old together.”
She snuggled close to him, so happy that she could barely contain it all. “I love the way that sounds.”
“So do I. But we’ll grow old slowly, if you don’t mind. I’ve got a lot of ginger left in me, yet.”
“I noticed,” she said demurely.
He loomed over her with intent. “Did you, now?” he murmured, his eyes drawing over her sensually.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He smiled slowly. “I love you, too.”
It was the last thing they said for a long time.
The wedding was truly a Jacobsville occasion. Everybody came, even glowering Cy Parks, who wore a suit and brought a wedding present. Ward Jessup and a very pregnant Marianne were present, along with Marianne’s Aunt Lillian. Elysia Craig Walker and her husband, Tom, welcomed Belinda into the family, and their daughter Crissy acted as flower girl. Belinda was exquisite in a white lace gown with a train and a delicate lace veil. She carried a bouquet of white rosebuds and she wept when her devastatingly handsome new husband lifted the veil and saw her for the first time as his wife.
Outside the church, the Craig ranch’s cowboys made a double line and threw confetti as the happy couple erupted from the front entrance. One of the cowboys had just graduated from high school and was the newest employee on the place. He wore a ten-gallon hat, a red bandanna, boots, jeans, a chambray shirt and a huge toothy smile—and his name was Edward Kells.
The happy couple waved at him as they rushed past to the limousine that would take them to the ranch to change clothes before they went on to the reception Matt Caldwell was hosting for them at his elegant mansion on the outskirts of Jacobsville.
They piled into the car and the driver pulled away from the curb.
Luke looked at Belinda with his whole heart in his eyes. “The best day of my life,” he murmured, “Mrs. Craig.”
“And the best day of mine, Mr. Craig,” she echoed.
The words exemplified their vow of love. He drew her close and kissed her. Behind them, the crowd drew in on itself to rehash the details of the elegant society wedding. But inside the limousine, two pairs of sparkling eyes were already looking ahead to a bright and beautiful future.
CHRISTOPHER
“But there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream.”
—Thomas Moore
Love’s Young Dream
Chapter One
Tansy Deverell was missing again. In fact, she’d been missing for a week. It disturbed Christopher Deverell when he couldn’t find his mother, who was in her seventies. More particularly, it disturbed him when the famous Lassiter Detective Agency of Houston, Texas, couldn’t find her. Chris had come home from a trip to Spain to find the family in an uproar over the matriarch’s disappearance. Tansy was known for her madcap lifestyle, and she tended to cause scandals wherever she went.
Chris’s older brother, Logan, lived in Houston with his wife, Kit, and their new son, Bryce. Since Logan’s marriage, Tansy had become even wilder than usual. She was a diabetic who was on insulin and had to watch her diet very carefully, and Chris worried that she might indulge too much in her travels. Her last escapade had almost landed her in a harem in the Middle East. For a woman in her early seventies, Tandy was adventurous indeed. Old age, she often said, would have to run very fast in order to catch up with her. She wasn’t kidding.
On a whim, Chris had traveled to Jacobsville, Texas, to see his cousin Emmett Deverell. In the past, nobody visited Emmett unless they were nuts, but now that Emmett had married Melody and they’d settled down nicely with his three children from his first marriage, Emmett had mellowed. He managed a ranch for Ted Regan, in which he now had a partnership. Things were looking prosperous there, and Tansy might have detoured to visit them. But she hadn’t. Chris met with disappointment. Emmett hadn’t seen nor heard from Tansy in months.
Chris drove into town and had lunch at the local high-class restaurant, sitting alone at a corner table with his steak and salad while he brooded about his mother. Logan hadn’t been overly concerned. It was amusing how the brothers had changed over the years. In the past, Logan was the straitlaced, worrying one. Now, he was more relaxed and less anxious, especially since his marriage. On the other hand, Chris had been almost as madcap as their mother when he was younger, and women had passed through his life like butterflies. He was thirty-three, and a devastating automobile accident had left him with a different view of the world. His once-handsome face was now less pleasing to the eye, two long fu
rrows having been carved into one lean cheek by shattered glass. He’d lost the sight in one eye, although plastic surgery had spared him deformity. But nothing seemed to erase the scars completely, and he was too weary of hospitals and skin grafts to pursue them further.
He wasn’t repulsive by any stretch of the imagination. His smooth olive complexion was enhanced by liquid black eyes with thick black lashes and eyebrows, and a chiseled mouth that was more sardonic than amused most of the time. He had a lean face and a tall, lean, muscular body that was more attractive than ever since his weeks of sailing near the coast of Spain with an old friend. He enjoyed the challenge of the sea, where he could pit his muscle against the waves and wind. A man with as much money as he’d inherited from his father could do whatever pleased him. Unlike Logan, who enjoyed working at the family investment firm, Chris had invested his inheritance in multinational corporations and tripled it in less than ten years. He could live comfortably off the interest, and he’d never found an adequate reason to work a routine job. He dabbled in designing yachts with the friend with whom he’d been sailing in Spain. His ideas were innovative, and one of his designs had taken its owner into the finals of the America’s Cup race. He was paid for that idea, and for several others that had sold well.
He watched his investments like a hawk. But increasing his means no longer satisfied him. The carefree bachelor’s existence that was such fun in his early twenties was distasteful to him now. He no longer sized up women as potential conquests or enjoyed the attention of pretty fortune-hunters. He felt jaded and life was suddenly empty.
He fingered his coffee cup absently, the motion bringing the waitress with a refill.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asked pleasantly, sizing up his expensive suit and shoes with practiced expertise.
He shook his head. “Thanks. I’m fine.”
He didn’t encourage her to stay and chat. She was young and pretty, but so were dozens of other women. He envied Logan his family life. Maybe marriage wasn’t so bad a thing. Certainly that baby was a delightful little bundle. Chris had never been around children much, but he adored his new nephew and spent a lot of time shopping for educational toys to bring him. That had amused Tansy, who’d suggested that Chris get married and have children of his own.
He’d only shrugged it off with a smile. He’d never had a serious relationship with a woman. His romantic encounters over the years had been light and pleasant and brief. Now he felt as if he’d missed something. Except for his friend who built yachts, he had no one who was close to him. Most of his old girlfriends were married. He traveled alone, ate alone, slept alone. He felt ancient, especially since the wreck.
“Excuse me, but aren’t you Christopher Deverell?”
The voice was quiet, unhurried, with a pleasant huskiness. He turned his head to find the face that went with it. Not bad, he thought. Pale gray eyes, pretty complexion, rounded chin, bow mouth, short blond hair with a wave over the pencil-thin eyebrow.
She looked like something out of the thirties, he mused.
“How would you know who I am?” he asked indifferently.
“It’s my job.” She produced a pad and pen. “I work for the Weatherby News Service. We’re not as big as the Associated Press, but we’re working hard to catch up,” she added with a faint smile. The smile faded quickly. “We’re trying to locate your mother, as it happens.”
He lifted his hot coffee to his mouth. “Join the club.”
“She’s gone into hiding,” she continued. “Not that I blame her, under the circumstances, but—”
“Sit down,” he said curtly. “You’re on my blind side.”
“Your…what?”
He turned his head and looked fully at her, so that she could see the extent of the damage the accident had done to his once-handsome face. The black eye in the socket above the two deep scars and just below a smaller one stared straight ahead, but without sight. The nerve damage had been extensive.
She caught her breath audibly and sat down, visibly flustered. “I’m sorry!” she said. “I didn’t realize…”
“Most people don’t, until they look at me for a while,” he added with a mocking smile. He leaned back in the chair, pulling his jacket away from the thin white shirt that covered his broad, hair-roughened chest. In the position, the muscles were visible, and the woman quickly averted her eyes, as if looking at him that way embarrassed her.
“About your mother,” she continued.
“First things first. Who are you?”
She hesitated. “I’m Della Larson.”
He nodded. “Do you have some idea where my mother might be?”
“Of course.” She turned back a few pages in the small flip notebook. “When last seen, she was in a little town just outside London, called Back Wallop.” She glanced at him. “That’s a village.”
“And what would she be doing there?”
“That’s where he lives,” she replied, surprised.
“He, who?” he asked with a broad scowl.
“Look here, she’s your mother,” she returned. “Don’t you know that she was involved with an MP?”
“A Member of Parliament?” he exclaimed.
“Oh, yes, Lord Cecil Harvey. He belonged to the House of Lords and was a relative of the Windsors.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you don’t know this!”
“I’ve been on holiday in Spain,” he said.
“It’s been all over the tabloids,” she continued.
His face hardened. “I don’t read the scandal sheets,” he said tersely.
“Considering how many times you’re featured in them, I guess not,” she agreed pleasantly. “You had the front page of most of them for two weeks when that Italian countess accused you of fathering her child—”
“We were discussing my mother,” he interrupted curtly.
She grimaced. “Sorry. I guess that hit a nerve. Anyway, Mrs. Deverell was photographed coming out of a London hotel with Lord Harvey. There were rumors that he was going to divorce his wife and marry her.”
He put the coffee cup down audibly. “My mother?”
“Your mother.” She studied him curiously. “You don’t look at all like her,” she commented. “She has blue eyes and a very fair complexion, almost girlishly pretty.”
“My brother and I take after our father. He was Spanish.”
“Spanish?” She frowned and flipped quickly through the notebook. “That’s not what I was told. They said your father was French, a member of the nobility.”
“Our stepfather was French,” he returned, and refused to even think of the man, despite the many years it had been since he’d seen him. “Our father died when I was pretty young. Tansy remarried. Several times,” he added drolly and picked up his coffee cup again.
“Oh, I see.” She was watching him closely. “Why isn’t your father mentioned?”
He chuckled. “He was a minor businessman until he bought a few cheap shares of stock and put them away in a safe-deposit box. Long after his death, the box was discovered and opened, and Logan and I inherited a small fortune.”
“What was the stock?” she asked suspiciously.
He lifted the coffee cup to his chiseled mouth. “Standard Oil.”
She grinned at him. “Amazing foresight.”
He shook his head. “Sheer, damned luck. He didn’t know beans about investments.”
“They say your brother does. And so do you.”
He chuckled. “I dabble. Not much.” His dark eyes narrowed. “Why are you trying to track down Tansy?”
“Why do you call her Tansy instead of ‘Mother’?”
“She isn’t old enough emotionally to be anyone’s mother,” he said simply. “Logan and I grew up trying to keep her out of trouble, with occasional and brief assistance from her five husbands.”
“Five?” She glanced at her notes. “I only found four.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
She finger
ed the notebook and stared at it instead of him. “I blew a story, a really big one. I’m going to get fired unless I can make amends somehow. I can’t lose my job. I have…responsibilities.” She lifted her pale eyes to his. “I want to find your mother before the rest of the media can. I want an exclusive interview.”
“Ask her for one.”
“I can’t find her. She’s left Back Wallop and nobody knows where she went.”
He finished his coffee. “Don’t look at me. I can’t find her, either, not even with the help of the best detective agency in the state.”
She gnawed her lower lip worriedly. “I guess it’s understandable that she wouldn’t want to be found.”
“Thank you for noticing,” he said in a tone that dripped sarcasm. “A woman being accused of breaking up a marriage wouldn’t rush to find the media.”
Her eyebrows went up. They were pencil thin, very dark despite her blond hair, and quite interesting. “That’s not why she’s running, of course.”
“It isn’t?”
She sighed heavily. “Mr. Deverell, I already know the truth. There’s no sense in pretending you don’t know what’s going on.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Have it your own way.” She put the pad into her large purse and stood up, slinging it over her shoulder.
“Giving up so soon?” he taunted.
“I’ve got to get to England before somebody beats me to the story. It will make my career if I can get it before the others do.”
He stared at her with something like contempt. “By all means, ruin a life. You and your colleagues put a high price on your own careers, don’t you? Nobody else’s pain or suffering is too much to ask.”
She flushed. “You make us sound perverted.”
“I don’t, actually.” His eyes darkened. “You are perverted. All of you.”
She stiffened. “We don’t make the news.”