Betrayed by Love

by Diana Palmer

  “Imagine, you and Uncle Jacob getting married,” Margo whispered during a brief pause in Kate’s bedroom. “I thought you hated each other.”

  “So did we,” Kate grinned, changing into a pink dress for the small reception. There wasn’t time for a honeymoon, but it didn’t matter. Jacob had promised her Paris in the spring.

  “Did you notice that elderly woman in the audience—the one with the blue hat? I thought she was Ben Hamlin’s sister, but nobody seems to know her.”

  Kate pursed her lips. She’d noticed the woman, all right. There had been something vaguely familiar about her. Perhaps she was an old neighbor who’d moved away, or some acquaintance of the family.

  “Speak of the devil,” Margo murmured wickedly when they opened the door and saw the heavyset woman in the blue hat coming toward the bedroom. She had on just a touch of makeup, and she was rather attractive even for her age. She was nervous, too, twisting a handkerchief out of shape in her slender hands.

  “Kathryn?”

  Kate blinked. So the woman did know her. “Yes?”

  “Excuse me, I’ll go find David,” Margo said and left the room.

  The woman in the hat searched eyes as green as her own. “You don’t know me, do you?” she asked hesitantly and her eyes brimmed with tears. “How could I expect you to? He stole you away from me when you were just a baby….”

  Kate’s eyes widened. She stared at the older version of herself. No wonder the woman had seemed so familiar. All the long years of hatred and bitterness and anguish came back and boiled over.

  “You deserted us,” Kate accused furiously. “You left us, and he beat me, he beat Tom!”

  The older woman stared at her helplessly with tears stinging down her cheeks. She tried to speak, failed, tried again. “He stole you, Kathryn. Took you away and hid you, and I had nothing. No money, no place to live… I’d sneaked away to get a lawyer, so I could divorce him and get custody of you and Tom. There was a man, a sweet, gentle man, who wanted you both and would have been so good to us after that…that creature your father became—” She sobbed and caught her breath. “I had it all worked out, and then he found out, and before I could get back out to the farm, he was gone.” She pressed the handkerchief against her eyes. “He was gone with both my babies, and I didn’t even have the price of a bus ticket to try and find you.”

  Kate heard the words with a sense of unreality. She stared at her mother blankly. This wasn’t how her poor, tormented father had related the past.

  “He…stole us?”

  “Stole you, my sweet,” the older woman said huskily. She stared at her daughter with eyes full of pride and love and pain. “I waited tables in a bar for two years to save enough money to start looking, but by then it was too late.”

  “And the man, the one you were going to marry?” Kate prodded.

  “I turned him away,” came the unexpected reply. “I had a horrible feeling about what you and Tom were going through, Kathryn. How could I be so callous as to build my happiness on your pain?”

  Kate took a slow breath, vaguely aware of Jacob watching from the other room. She searched her mother’s eyes. “You’ve been alone all this time?”

  “All this time,” her mother replied softly. “I’d already exhausted all the government agencies, and I’d long ago forgotten that your father’s mother lived in South Dakota. He’d hardly ever mentioned her. And then, your new husband came into the restaurant where I work and told me that you and Tom were alive and that he’d bring me to see you.” The tears started again through a smile. “I haven’t stopped crying for days. I don’t care if you hate me; it’s enough just to be able to look at you.”

  “Oh, Mama, don’t—”

  Kate went into the older woman’s arms as if there hadn’t been a single day between the past and the present. She rocked her, comforted her, and felt the pain slowly dissolving as she realized what it must have been like all the long years. At least she’d had Tom. Their mother had had no one, only a terrible fear for her children and loneliness.

  Tom was beside Jacob now, grinning, and when Kate saw him, she realized that the two of them must have been plotting this together. When Tom joined them, their mother drew him close, too.

  “My boy,” she wept. “My baby boy. When I first saw you, I could hardly believe so much time had passed. And now I’ve found you, and Kate, and it’s like a dream. Like another dream, and I’m so afraid I’ll wake up, as I usually do, and find you gone.”

  “We won’t be gone, Mama.” Tom laughed. “Neither will you. Kate and I will shuttle you back and forth between South Dakota and New York for a while before we let you go home.”

  “Of course we will,” Kate agreed, pulling back to borrow her mother’s handkerchief and dry her red eyes.

  “I’d love that,” their mother said, beaming. “I really would. And then I think I may say yes to the man who’s been proposing for the past twenty-two years—”

  Kate gasped. “He’s still waiting for you, after all these years?”

  “Love doesn’t wear out, Katie,” her mother said with a wise, world-weary smile. “Not if it’s real. Yes. He’s still waiting. And so was I, until I found my babies.”

  “Some babies.” Tom grinned at his sister.

  “Speaking of which,” Jacob mused, joining them to slide a possessive arm around Kate’s shoulders, “I hope you like grandchildren. Kate and I have a large family in mind.”

  “I’d love that.” Mrs. Walker sighed, glancing from one to the other. “And right now, I’d like to wash my face. I must look a mess.”

  “You look just like your children to me,” Jacob replied, “but help yourself.”

  “Yes, and then hurry back. We’ve got so much to talk about,” Kate said gently.

  “I’ll do that.” Mrs. Walker touched Kate’s hair, and Tom’s cheek, and went off into the bedroom, sniffling a little.

  “Oh, Jacob,” Kate sighed, studying her new husband. “How long did you plan this?”

  “A couple of weeks. Tom helped.” He smiled. “We thought you might want to see what having a mother was like.”

  “I’m so glad,” she said warmly, and hugged Tom. “Isn’t she nice?”

  “Our mother would have to be,” Tom chided. “Now, excuse me while I grab some punch. My throat’s apt to get dry from talking so much when we start this new family reunion.”

  “Are you happy?” Jacob asked quietly, studying Kate. “It was a hell of a gamble, but it seems to have come off without a hitch.”

  “For all those years, I blamed her when she was as miserable as we were.” She sighed, staring up at him. “How could I have been so blind?”

  “Aren’t we all blind, from time to time?” he asked. He touched her hair softly, loving its silky feel. She was beautiful in her neat dress, and he looked as if he could die just looking at her. She was his now, and all the barriers seemed to come down at once. He drew her to one side of the hall, away from prying eyes, and held her there.

  “I was blind about you, wasn’t I, Kate? I never had any idea how much you cared about me until I saw all those photos you kept of me….” He took a steadying breath and his jaw tautened. “My God,” he breathed, his hands hurting her a little where they held her upper arms, “you’ll never know what I went through those first twenty-four hours after you were shot. My world went black. If anything had happened to you, I don’t know how in hell I’d have stayed alive.”

  She wasn’t sure that she was hearing him. Her eyes stared blankly at his hard face, hanging on every word.

  “You felt responsible,” she whispered. “There was no need to feel that way.”

  “I…loved you,” he whispered, biting off the words with a kind of pain he couldn’t hold back any longer. His gaze fell to her bodice, so that she wouldn’t see his eyes. “For a long time. But I’d seen what love did to men, giving women a hold. My own mother tormented Hank half to death because he loved her. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. So I c
onvinced myself it was only desire, and once I had you, it would fade away.”

  He laughed bitterly, lifting tormented eyes to hers. “But it didn’t get better, Kate. I went home and got drunk and stayed drunk, and still I could hear you crying.” He shifted restlessly, his eyes hungry on her rapt face. “And then I was going to go back and have it out, but you got shot. Then Tom told me everything.” His eyes closed. “And the light went out of the world.”

  She touched his face tentatively, hesitantly, her fingers trembling. “Oh, Jacob!”

  His eyes opened, blazing with possession. “I love you,” he whispered roughly. “I always have. So you see, Kate, there’s not really much danger of my falling in love with anyone else.”

  She didn’t try to answer. She reached up and put her mouth softly against his hard one. He lifted her against him and held her. He kissed her and she responded with all the lonely hunger of all the long years. His arms were bruising, and she welcomed their involuntary fierceness, because she understood the passion they were betraying. She felt it, too, burned with it, ached with it, and her mouth demanded as much as his own. She moaned suddenly, her legs beginning to tremble, and he pulled back.

  His hard face was taut with passion. “I want you,” he whispered roughly. “I want you the way it was that day in the front seat of my car, so tender and slow that I thought I’d die of the pleasure. I want to make love with you and know that you love me as much as I love you.”

  She touched her mouth to his chin, his neck, trembling with shared emotion. “I want that, too,” she breathed. “I never dreamed it would happen, that you’d be able to care for me, ever.”

  His hands smoothed her dark hair, ruffling it. “Not even when I showed you your picture in my wallet?” he murmured against her throat.

  “That was the only hope I had,” she whispered. “That, and the way you practically threw Roger Dean out of my room in the hospital.”

  He lifted his hand, his eyes fierce. “I wanted to throw him out the window,” he returned. “You were mine. I didn’t want any other man near you.”

  “There never will be.” She sighed. She leaned back against his encircling arms. “I like children,” she said.

  He smiled. “So do I.”

  She smiled slowly. “Well?”

  “Don’t tempt me,” he muttered, bending to kiss her hungrily. “Wedding guests never go home,” he groaned.

  “You’re the one who insisted on inviting so many,” she whispered against his lips.

  “Damn my own stupidity,” he murmured.

  “We can have punch and cake—”

  “I don’t want punch and cake. I want acres of bed and you in the middle of it, even if all we do is hold each other….”

  “Now cut that out, you two,” Tom called. His mother was holding his arm as he confronted Jacob and Kate with a mischievous grin. “You’ve got your whole lives to do that, but only a few precious hours to spend with your family before I spirit Mom off to New York with me.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Jacob said, damping down the fires. He smiled warmly at Kate. “We have the rest of our lives together.”

  Kate pushed back her disheveled hair, never more beautiful, with her green eyes sparkling and her face bright with love and laughter. “What a beautiful thought,” she whispered to Jacob.

  He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Isn’t it, though?” he said with a grin. And as he led her along the hall behind Tom and Mrs. Walker, Kate felt as if she were walking on dreams the whole way.

  * * * * *

  Epilogue

  Jenna reached down to give Black Satin a reassuring pat. This was it. They’d made it through the preliminary rounds of competition with flying colors and gained an automatic berth in the National Reining Horse Association Futurity finals. Only one ride separated them from the championship.

  When she heard their names come across the loud speaker, she took a deep breath. “We’re playing with the big boys now, Satin. Let’s show them what you can do.”

  Riding against veterans with more than a quarter of a century of experience under their belts, Jenna walked Satin into the brightly lit show ring, his blue-black coat gleaming. The texture of the ground in the arena was excellent, and she knew early on they were in complete control.

  The NRHA pattern called for eight spins, then large and small circles in each direction. The stallion executed them flawlessly, and it appeared his hindquarters dropped from beneath him as he came to a sliding stop. The ride was picture-perfect, and as they left the arena, Jenna knew they’d won the prize.

  Passing the box seats, her gaze searched out and found Flint among the spectators giving her and Black Satin a standing ovation. Ryan and Cooper stood beside him, but she barely noticed. Flint’s smile held her captive. All the pride and happiness for the win were there, but more than that, his expression revealed all his love for her.

  * * *

  Later in the hotel room Flint held Jenna close. He ran his finger along the neckband of her turquoise nightshirt. “Darlin’, you know what I like best about your nightshirts?”

  “What?” she asked, snuggling against him.

  “I love taking them off you.” When he started to do just that, Jenna stopped him.

  “Did you notice what this one says?”

  He kissed the pulse at the base of her throat. “No.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  He glanced at the garment. An arrow pointed down to the word Baby Buckaroo.

  Jenna reached for his hand to place it on her flat stomach. “You told me one time that T-shirt slogans were based on fact.”

  He slipped his hand beneath the hem of the shirt. “Do you have something you’d like to tell me, Mrs. McCray?”

  “You know that little getaway we had a couple of months ago at the Circle S shack to celebrate our one-year anniversary?”

  He nodded.

  “You gave me more that weekend than just a wonderful memory. You gave me a baby. In about seven months you’re going to be a daddy again, Flint.”

  Emotion like he’d never known welled up inside. “Ryan is going to be thrilled.”

  Jenna nodded. “He’s been asking me when he’s going to get a brother to play with.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if he got a little sister,” Flint said, his hand caressing his wife’s warm flesh. “A little girl who looks just like her mother.”

  “Boy or girl, this time you won’t be cheated the way you were with Ryan. You’ll be there for everything. We’ll go to childbirth classes—”

  “Now hold it, darlin’. I’m not sure—”

  “You hold it, cowboy.” She poked his chest with her finger. “This was a joint effort. We got me into this, and we are going to get me out of it. Together.”

  Unable to stop grinning, Flint held her gaze and caught her hand in his. “Together, darlin’.” He kissed the finger she’d used to make her point. “Always together.”

  * * * * *

  Read on for an excerpt from

  UNTAMED

  by New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Diana Palmer

  UNTAMED by Diana Palmer

  Excerpt

  Copyright © 2015 by Diana Palmer

  Clarisse walked into the building where the awards were being held, and several pair of male eyes went immediately to her slender, beautiful figure in the clinging white dress she wore. Her blond hair curled toward her face like feathers, emphasizing her exquisite bone structure, her perfect skin and teeth, her wide blue eyes. She was a beauty. In the gown, she looked like some Grecian goddess come down to earth to taunt mortals.

  She didn’t even notice the attention she was getting. Her eyes were on the podium where the General would speak. There was an orchestra. It was playing soft, easy-listening sort of music while people gathered in small groups to converse. Most of the conversation was in Spanish here, not Portuguese, because Spanish was Barrera’s official language.

  She smiled sadly at the lit
tle cliques. To Clarisse, who was always alone, it seemed like just one more gathering where she’d stand by herself while men tried to entice her. Sometimes she hated the way she looked. She didn’t want male attention.

  She paused by a table where drinks were being served when her arm was taken by a tall man she recognized as one of General Machado’s advisers. He smiled at her. “We were hoping that you would come, Miss Carrington,” he said in softly accented English. “We have the other honorees backstage. The awards ceremony will be first, followed by dancing and drinking and utter pandemonium,” he chuckled.

  She smiled up at him. “The pandemonium sounds nice. They shouldn’t have done this for me,” she added. “I didn’t really do anything except get shot and captured.”

  He turned and smiled down at her. “You did a great deal more than that. All of us who live here are grateful to you and the others, for giving us back our country.”

  “Are Peg and Winslow here?” she asked hopefully.

  “Alas, no,” he replied solemnly. “Her father had to have surgery, just a minor thing, but they were both uncomfortable with the idea of not going to sit with him.”

  “That’s like Peg,” she said softly, and smiled. “She’s such a sweet person.”

  “She thinks quite highly of you, as well, as does her husband. And El General, of course,” he added with a chuckle.

  “Where is the general?” she wondered.

  He nodded his head toward where a tall, distinguished Latin man in a dinner jacket towered over a tall brunette in a striking blue gown.

  “It’s Maddie!” she exclaimed. “She treated Eduardo Boas, who was shot before I was kidnapped.”

  “Yes. She and the general are, I believe, getting married soon,” he whispered, laughing at her delighted smile. “But you must not mention this. I am not supposed to know.”

  She smiled up at him. “I know absolutely nothing. I swear,” she added facetiously.

  “Not true, Tat. You’re plenty smart enough,” came a deep, husky voice from behind her.

  Her blood froze. Her heart started doing the tango. She didn’t want to turn around. She hadn’t dreamed that he’d show up.