by Sharon Swan
But she wouldn’t be carried off to bed for a repeat performance, she vowed. Not tonight. Not until she’d found out a few things.
She wasn’t sure how much time passed before the bedroom door opened and Dev walked in. “I thought you might be in bed,” he said quietly, shutting the door behind him. He wore the same closed expression that had become so familiar that day.
Amanda folded her arms under her breasts, deciding there was no point in beating around the bush. “Neither of us is going to bed until you tell me what’s bothering you.” It was as firm a statement as she could make it.
He studied her for a long moment, as though gauging the strength of her will. “Why do I have the feeling you’re not backing down on that come hell or high water?” he asked at last.
“Because it’s the truth.”
After another moment of sheer silence, he heaved a gusty sigh, crossed the room, and settled himself in the overstuffed chair beside hers. “It would be simpler if we just went to bed. Sure I can’t convince you?”
Sitting forward, she ignored that question in favor of her own. “What’s wrong?”
He leaned back and stacked a booted foot on a denim-clad knee. “Well, for starters,” he said, “I had a run-in with our mayor while I was at the park this morning. He started touting the virtues of his idea to build a hotel on park land, and I basically told him I thought his plan stunk.”
That news came as a surprise to Amanda. Several people in town had been vocal about their opposition to the hotel, but not the Heartbreaker Saloon’s owner. “As far as I know, you’ve never voiced that opinion before.”
“It was a first,” he agreed. “Bobby didn’t take kindly to it, either.”
“No, I can imagine he wouldn’t.” She paused, sure there had to be more to the story to produce the reaction it had. For starters. That’s what he’d said a minute ago, she reminded herself. “And then what happened?”
His jaw tightened. “Bobby took off in a snit, but not before getting in a pointed dig about the good-for-nothing Devlins.” He crossed his arms over the row of silver snaps down the front of his stonewashed-blue shirt. “Cripes, I grew up hearing variations on the same theme. Not that I helped matters any back then, I’ll admit, by sticking my chin out every time it happened and just looking for ways to get into more trouble.”
“Yes, and from all of the stories I’ve heard, you generally found it,” she allowed, deciding to go with the simple truth. “But that all changed years ago.”
Although he chuckled low in his throat, the sound held little humor. “That’s what I told myself when I bought the Heartbreaker, that I was turning my life around. After today, though, I’m more of the opinion that I’ll never really escape.”
His last words captured her attention. “Escape?” she repeated quietly.
“What I came from.”
What I came from. Amanda frowned as that stark statement echoed in her mind. “If you mean your family background,” she said after a moment, “regardless of whatever comment the mayor made, none of that applies to you now. It’s all in the past.”
Dev gave his head a slow shake. “Trouble is, it’s not all in the past. I found that out today.” He hesitated for the barest instant, then continued. “The kids and I stopped at the post office on our way to the diner. There was a letter from my brother waiting for me.”
Her frown deepened. Whatever that letter had contained, she reflected, it had to be far from good news. In fact, she was all but positive that this was what had put that set-in-stone expression on her husband’s face earlier.
“How is your brother?” she asked, keeping her tone mild.
His unflinching gaze met hers. “Not great. He’s in jail in Nevada after being convicted on several counts of burglary last year. A sneak thief, that’s how Jed Jr. wound up. Just,” he added with a rueful twist of his lips, “what more than a few folks in this town would once have expected of a no-account Devlin.”
Amanda took in what he’d told her and sought a response. “You’re not your brother,” she said at last. “Or anyone else in your family, for that matter. You’re you.”
“Humph.” He raised a hand and ran it through his hair. “That sounds so reasonable when you say it, but you’re not coming from the same place I am, believe me. You’re a Bradley, after all. The good citizens of Jester—at least some of them—must have figured you married beneath you when you picked me for a husband.”
There’d been a time when she wouldn’t have so much as considered the possibility of defending someone she’d regarded as her cross to bear. Now her spine straightened in the blink of an eye. “If anyone is ever so foolish as to say anything along those lines to me,” she huffed out, “I’ll set them straight in a hurry.”
That had his mouth slanting up at the tips. “Thanks. I appreciate it.” Then even that faint smile she’d won from him disappeared. “Nonetheless, we both know the Bradleys and the Devlins are an unlikely mix, to say the least.”
Again Amanda found herself groping for a response. “My own family had its less-than-sterling moments,” she reminded him. It had taken months, she recalled, for gossip to die down after Sherman Bradley had run off with Rita Winslow.
As if he knew full well what she was thinking, Dev said, “I suppose everyone’s allowed one case of bad judgment, no matter how many tongues it sets wagging. My relatives, on the other hand, seem to have made a career of getting themselves talked about. And now we’ve got a jailbird in the Devlin clan—a first even for us, I have to concede.”
With that, he surged to his feet and began to pace, as though unable to sit still any longer. The soft glow of the small lamp Amanda had switched on earlier emphasized the hard lines of his face. “Hell, if there is such a thing as bad blood,” he said, “I guess I’ve got my share.”
Amanda heard the disgust clear in his voice. But it was the thin edge of despair underscoring it that tugged at something deep at the core of her.
His earlier comment about his fading hopes for escape had been no idle one, she realized. He truly was beginning to believe he’d never be able to live down a family history familiar to many of Jester’s residents. For the first time she recognized how important that had become to him. Despite the fact that his last name was Devlin, he wanted the town’s respect. The same basic respect she herself had always enjoyed…as a Bradley.
He had no way of knowing that the Bradleys and Devlins had more in common than he could ever have imagined. Of all of Jester’s citizens, only she knew that.
So do you tell him?
Amanda released a long breath, wondering if she could do it, if she could share what she’d been determined to keep private ever since the phone call from the lawyer in Pine Run telling her about her sisters and brothers while also offering some tragic news about her—their—father.
And, as informative as that conversation had been, it wasn’t even the whole of it, she acknowledged. For years—ten years to be exact—she’d kept to herself some candid facts her dying mother had passed along to her. Again they related to her father, and again Sherman Bradley’s daughter had deemed them too personal to reveal.
It wouldn’t be easy to break her silence now, she knew. But then, could she take the easy way out and leave the man who continued to pace in front of her clueless when revealing a few unwelcome truths might help him?
No, she decided, taking the easy way out simply wouldn’t work. Not tonight.
“I know it must have been a quite a jolt to find out about your brother,” she said at last, “but you’re not the only one in this room who has a convicted criminal in the family.”
He halted in midstep and looked down at her with a puzzled frown. “What do you mean?”
Her gaze locked with his. “I mean,” she told him, “that my father died in prison.”
Chapter Eleven
Dev went stock-still as every muscle in his body tensed for a humming instant. Maybe he hadn’t heard right, was his first thought. Bu
t, hard on the heels of that reflection, the stark look clear as glass in Amanda’s eyes told him he had.
“Your dad went to jail,” he said, making it a statement rather than question.
“Yes.” Her gaze didn’t waver. “He was convicted of embezzling money from a bank he worked for in Minnesota. I found out about it at the same time I learned of the children he’d fathered after he left Montana.”
Hunkering down in one slow motion, he cupped his palms around knees covered by the clinging folds of the dusky rose robe he liked to see his wife wearing—almost he much as he liked taking it off her. But he wasn’t thinking about that now.
“It must have been a shock,” he said as gently as he could manage.
“In some ways it was,” she replied, setting her far smaller hands on top of his. “And it some ways it wasn’t.”
He couldn’t figure that one out. “Why weren’t you shocked straight through?”
“Because my father had a gambling addiction. In fact, he’d had it for years before he even went to Minnesota.”
Dev felt his brows hike up of their own accord. “Well, I’ll be damned. I never so much as suspected that,” he admitted with blunt directness.
“Neither did I,” she acknowledged with equal frankness. “I didn’t know it until I came home from college to be with my mother during her last illness. I’d wondered why Mom didn’t seem quite as amazed as everyone else when my father ran off. A part of me almost resented the fact that she took it as calmly as she did. He was barely gone when she started making plans to work out of our home as a seamstress to supplement what money my father left her.”
Amanda drew in a quiet breath. “Then, shortly before she died, she took me into her confidence, and I discovered that she hadn’t had it easy being married to a man who not only secretly craved risks, but who it was risky to rely on—something my mother recognized even before my father ran off without a word.”
“Well, I’ll be dam—” Dev started to say one more time.
“There’s more,” Amanda told him, breaking in. “You may as well know that my father didn’t buy the space next to the Heartbreaker from your uncle for investment purposes as most people, including me, believed at the time. According to my mother, he won it in a private poker game that took place one night after the saloon was closed with your uncle and some of his friends, all of whom have long since left town.”
Well, in a way that made sense, Dev thought, recalling how his uncle had always shied away from discussing that “sale.” Back then, he’d assumed his father’s younger brother had simply needed a quick influx of cash. Now he knew the saloon’s former owner, who’d prided himself at being handy with a deck of cards, was reluctant to reveal to his nephew—or anyone else—that he’d been bested by Amanda’s father.
“You didn’t have to tell me all this,” he said, more than suspecting how difficult it must been for her.
“No,” she acknowledged, still looking straight into his eyes, “but I couldn’t let you go on thinking that you’re the only one in town with a thief for a relative. The fact that my father’s crime was a white-collar version he finally resorted to because he couldn’t kick his gambling habit makes little difference. In the end, your brother and my father both stole something that didn’t belong to them.”
She pulled her hands from his and set them back in her lap. “And who knows, maybe your brother will see things in a different light by the time he’s released and not end up as my father did, withering away in a matter of months because he simply couldn’t stand being behind bars and thinking about what he’d done to himself and the new family he formed after leaving Jester.”
Dev straightened to his full height and took a short step back. “Thanks for telling me.”
She rose from the chair. “Did it help?”
“Yeah, it did,” he replied as he slid his arms around her waist and pulled her to him, recognizing it was the sheer truth. He felt better—a lot better—than he had in several long and dismal hours.
And he owed it all to his wife.
Maybe that was why he felt not only better but closer to her, as well. Not just physically, but…Hell, he couldn’t describe it. He wanted her, that much he knew full well. Now, though, something was telling him that somewhere along the way he’d started needing her, too.
He’d wanted other women in the past. He’d be lying through his teeth if he said otherwise. Needing a woman, however, was a whole different story, especially when only one particular female seemed to be able to fill the bill.
“Can we go to bed now?” he asked as the familiar wanting and the brand-new need joined forces to jump-start his pulse.
A wry smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Are you sleepy?”
“Not hardly.” His voice had gone from low to downright husky in a split second.
Something that might have been amusement began to dance in her eyes. “I could fix you a cup of warm milk.”
“I’m already warm,” he told her. He switched their positions in one swift turn and started walking her backward toward his goal. “In fact, my temperature’s on the rise.”
“Could be a fever.”
He kept them moving. “Oh, it’s a fever, all right. And I’m counting on you to do something about it.”
“Hmm.” She came up against the bed. “Maybe we should get you out of your clothes first.”
“Good thinking.”
Her fingers went to work on the snaps of his shirt. It wasn’t long before she had it off him. “Your boots should probably come next. Why don’t you sit on the bed and I’ll deal with them?”
He wasn’t about to argue. He was too busy being aroused by the fact that she seemed far from reluctant to strip him down to bare skin. He’d usually been the one to take the lead and undress them both. This, he decided, made a damn fine change of pace.
“Time to stretch out on the bed,” Amanda told him moments later as she finished her task by sending his dark briefs dropping to the floor.
He flipped the bedspread back and did as instructed, then watched as she removed her robe and nightgown. He tried not to let himself get too churned up at the sight of all the creamy skin being gradually revealed. He wanted to take this slow and easy and make it last.
Then she eased herself down on top of him and he wondered if slow was that important, after all. “You feel so soft and smooth,” he told her, clutching her gently curved hips to hold her fast to him.
She propped her elbows on his chest. “You feel rock solid—” she wiggled a little “—all over.”
He sucked in a ragged breath. “If I take charge, this is going to be over in one minute flat. How about if I just lay back and let you ravish me?”
“Ravish you?” She mulled that idea over and began to look intrigued. “I suppose it could have its merits.”
“Definitely,” he assured her.
She hesitated for a scant second, then nodded. “All right, I’ll do my best.”
And she did.
First with her small hands, then with her soft lips, she brought him to the brink of losing his control, until he was grasping the sheets with hard fists in a bid to hang on, just hang on for a little while longer. The most male parts of him didn’t help matters by silently urging him to bring things to a satisfying conclusion—now. Finally, he groped to retrieve a foil packet from the nightstand drawer and swiftly dealt with protection.
“Time for me to ravish you,” he told the petite woman who’d done a masterful job of pushing him to the edge. Then his hands and mouth got to work, winning him quiet murmurs, then outright moans, until at last he pulled her under him and sank into her with one sure thrust. Oh, yeah, he thought. This was where he wanted to be. Craved to be.
Had to be.
It was Amanda’s turn to draw in a ragged breath. As always, the sensations he could produce deep inside her threatened her ability to think. And she wanted to think, wanted to remember every detail of making love with him this time.
Because this time was different.
She wasn’t sure how she knew that, she only knew she did. Perhaps it was because they’d opened up to each other and shared some confidences tonight—confidences of the most private and personal kind. Perhaps that was it.
One thing for certain, as she’d expected, it hadn’t been easy to reveal those facts about her father. Still, she had no regrets, even though it somehow made their joining now seem more intimate in a way that could pose a threat to more than her capacity to think. It could, in fact, put her resolve to guard her emotions where this man was concerned in danger.
Don’t let yourself be swayed too much by what he can make you feel, the voice of reason said, and she couldn’t ignore the wisdom of those words.
But oh, he felt so good. So right.
So…special.
“Are you following me here?” Dev asked, his voice a rough whisper at her ear.
For some reason, that made her grin. “I’m right behind you.”
He picked up the pace, rapidly increasing the rhythm of their mutual movements. “Time to close the gap.”
“It’s closing,” she said, her grin fading as something began to tighten in her most secret places. Her breath quickened. Her heart thumped.
His own heart thundered against his ribs as he pressed his chest to her breasts, flattening her against the mattress. “I want you screaming when it hits.”
“I can’t,” she got out on a quiet gasp. “I’ll wake up Betsy.”
“No, you won’t.” His lips moved to cover hers. “Scream into my mouth.”
And, in a matter of moments, she did exactly that as everything inside her seemed to burst into a million pieces.
He swallowed her sharp cry, then picked up the pace yet again, until he stiffened at last and shuddered in her arms. And now she was the one who swallowed his low shout before he collapsed on top of her.