by Meg Lacey
“Well,” Jackson murmured, cupping her cheek, “in that case…”
“Stop it, Jackson.”
“But last night you were—”
“Teasing.”
“Teasing?” Jackson seemed taken aback.
Raven gave an airy wave. “The strip-poker suggestion was just something one says.”
Jackson shook his head. “I don’t know anyone who just says that.”
“Then you know a boring group of people, darling.” She had tried for lightness, but still floored by her phone conversation, realized she sounded more impatient than she’d intended.
“But—”
“Besides, you were involved elsewhere, remember? Or wasn’t that you who cuddled Lorianne and almost carried her to her room?”
“That didn’t mean anything,” he said with a fierce headshake. “And I wasn’t cuddling her.”
He looked so like a guilty little boy that Raven couldn’t resist teasing him. “It looked like cuddling.”
“No. No, you’re wrong. Lorianne and I are like…like….” He stopped, completely confused. “Maybe brother and sister.”
“I have to admit, you two fight like you’re related. But are you sure that down deep you don’t feel something stronger? Something you haven’t realized because you’re so used to having her around?”
Raven had no idea why she was pursuing this line of conversation. It was in her own best interest to have Jackson focus on her, not Lorianne. Her father had made that clear. In more ways than one. Too bad she couldn’t go through with it.
Jackson was quiet for a moment, then his face brightened as if the sun had just come out from behind a cloud. “Are you jealous?”
“What?”
“Is that what all this is about? Why you’re pretending to be involved with Nicholas. Were you afraid I wasn’t becoming serious about our relationship? Afraid I’ll question it because my family isn’t happy about it?”
“Where on earth did you get such an idiotic idea?”
He looked away, searching for inspiration, but finding none, faced her square on. “I spoke with your father earlier.”
“You said that.”
“What I didn’t say is we talked for quite a while. I needed some advice. God knows my father isn’t going to give it to me.”
“You asked my father for advice?”
“Sure. He’s your father. He knows you better than anyone.”
If only it were the truth, Raven thought. She’d just realized how little he did know her. Or she him.
“I told him about what’s been going on here. About your engagement to Nicholas—”
Now her father’s conversation made more sense to Raven. “Let me guess. He said I was using Nicholas because of you? To make you commit?”
“Yes.” He stroked his cheek. “I was a bit surprised, though. I’ve dropped enough hints so I didn’t see why you—”
Raven sank into a chair. “Oh God, this is all such a mess. It was supposed to be fun and now…”
Jackson went down on one knee beside her. “Don’t worry, darling—”
“Well, well, isn’t this a cozy little scene,” Nicholas said, entering as silent as a jaguar, closing the door behind him. “You’re not proposing too, are you, Jackson?”
Raven could only stare at him as Jackson bristled and rose to his feet. “Raven is upset.”
Nicholas sent Raven a probing stare. “I’ll take over from here, Exeter.”
“The hell you will.”
Nicholas stalked over to Jackson. “Find your own woman.”
“I have.”
Rising to her feet, Raven demanded, “Stop it, stop it. I’ve had enough.” She poked Jackson in the chest then drilled a look at Nicholas. “Between you, and you, and my father, I’ve had my fill of men today.”
Both men looked as if the carpet had jumped up and bit them in the butt when Raven swept to the door.
“Wait a minute, Raven,” Nicholas said, “I want to—”
She turned to face them both. “I don’t care what you want. Or you either, Jackson. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of all of it. I have feelings, you know. I’m not a bit of fluff to be bargained over—no matter what anyone thinks.” She punctuated her exit by stepping into the hall and slamming the door.
Raven left silence behind her in the library.
Nicholas couldn’t get her final comment or her expression out of his mind.
Jackson exhaled, “Whew, I didn’t mean to—”
Thrusting his hand through his hair, Nicholas turned to face him. “It wasn’t your fault. There’s a lot here you don’t understand.”
“And you do, I suppose?”
Nicholas stared at the door. “Yes, I think I do.”
“I care about her, you know.”
“I know you do, Jackson.”
“She’s like an exotic flower I found by accident and I…must have it.”
For the first time since he’d come into the room, Nicholas smiled, saying gently, “Exotic flowers don’t always flourish when you replant them, no matter how much TLC you give them. You’d be better off with a sweet-smelling garden rose.”
Jackson’s lips thinned. “Christ, you sound like my father. Let me guess. Like Lorianne?”
“Maybe. She’s both hardy and sweet enough.”
His glance heated as he faced Nicholas. “How do you know that? What have you—”
Nicholas laughed. “You know, you’d better make up your mind which woman you really want. The way I see it, your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”
“Lorianne is the closest thing to a sister I have. I want to be sure no one takes advantage of her.”
“Jackson, I think Lorianne is perfectly capable of looking after herself.”
“No,” Jackson denied with a sharp shake, “she’s always relied on me to—”
Nicholas clasped Jackson’s shoulder. “It’s time you wake up, before someone forces your eyes open. You might not like the results.”
“What results?”
Nicholas glanced toward the doorway through which Raven had exited. “It’s pretty damn easy to lose something when you’re careless and not aware it’s what you want more than anything in the world.”
“What would you know about that? You seem to have it all.”
Nicholas glanced at him. “You think so? Then you’re even more blind than I thought. Are you sure you’re not hanging on to Raven to settle a score with your father?”
Jackson stiffened. “What makes you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Nicholas rolled his eyes. “Maybe it’s the way your backs arch like two alley cats every time you have a conversation.”
“You don’t have conversations with my father. Instead you get—” He caught himself.
“Get what? Orders?”
Jackson waved off the question. “Forget it. What would you know about it anyway?”
“Plenty. You think you’re the only one who’s had a problem? Time was I’d have given anything for the opportunity to rub my father’s nose in it.” For a moment Nicholas was silent, his inner vision dark with bad memories. He blinked hard before staring again at Jackson. “Trust me, there are other more satisfying ways to assert your independence. You just have to step up, then take the risk.”
“I have to step up? That’s real good, Nick,” Jackson flashed back. “What about you? Any idiot can see you’ve got something big going with my father. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Nicholas felt the guilty arrow hit the bull’s-eye. He tried to keep it from showing. “I’m here for Raven.”
“For what purpose? Love or business?” Jackson narrowed his eyes, his gaze too knowing to suit Nicholas.
“What do you think?”
“My father loves to make money. You’ve got the same reputation.”
It might have started that way, Nicholas thought, but somewhere along the line… He set his jaw, adopting a “don’t mess with me tone”. “Nothing is what
it seems.”
Jackson smiled as if he knew he’d found a weak spot. “What do you think will happen if Raven finds out?”
“There’s nothing to find out.” Nicholas prayed he could tell Raven the truth before she found out another way.
Jackson’s expression hardened, revealing the man he could become rather than the one he seemed at the moment. “Each of us is playing both ends of the rope, don’t you think?”
Nicholas winced. And Raven’s caught in the middle.
“So, the question before us is—” Jackson rocked back on his heels as if he was already addressing a session of congress, “how strong is the rope and who’s going to get hurt when it breaks?”
Lips thinning as he met Jackson’s stare, Nicholas commented, “Like it or not, your father’s right, Jackson. You could make an excellent politician someday.”
“Or a ruthless businessman like you and dear old Dad,” he zinged right back.
“Touché.” With that reality grinding into his brain, Nicholas spun on his heel and left to find Raven, leaving a grim Jackson behind him.
Bundled in her coat and mittens, Raven escaped from the house. She had no idea where she was going, just knew she needed space and solitude.
Her father’s voice replayed in her ear. “I’m having some financial difficulties and Nicholas has refused to offer the family’s help.”
Raven shivered and pulled her coat closer as she walked over the hard-packed snow on the driveway with phrases of the conversation replaying—”may lose our home, your mother and sisters in hysterics.” Her father’s conversation was topped off by an ultimatum, followed by his voice softening to a soft stroke as he said, “Jackson said he hopes to marry you. That would make me so happy, Little Bird.”
Little Bird. How many years has it been since he called me that?
She glanced around the snow-covered landscape. It looked so beautiful, so peaceful, with all scars and blemishes hidden by pure white. People could be like that too. Then the covering melted and you were smacked with the hidden reality, whether you wanted it or not.
Raven strode off the driveway, making her way into the woods that surrounded the estate. She picked a path and climbed small hills, wound around fallen-branch barricades and lurched through snowdrifts until she stopped to catch her breath. She closed her eyes, breathing heavily, as she sought a place to hide, a place where she wouldn’t have to face the things that could hurt. When she opened them again, she saw an old abandoned barn at the edge of a field. The barn at Ravens Nest, along with the library and the woods, had been another one of her childhood refuges. There among the animals, she could feel safe, appreciated and loved.
Raven trudged across the field and slipped inside the doors to find herself in an area that was now used as storage. In every direction were bales of hay, grain and old farm equipment. She made her way down the aisle to the horse stalls. There were no names on the beams above these spaces as there were in J.R. Exeter’s stables. The animals that had resided here didn’t merit remembrance. In her eyes, that made the barn all the more precious. To date, her life had been made up of the importance of a family name and what you possessed as the only measure of value. How strange to discover in this abandoned place that she’d now rather people knew her for what she might accomplish someday.
She wandered into one of the stalls at the back of the barn. The back wall was piled with bales of straw, which kept out the weather, making the space warm and cozy. Piled against the neat stacks was a pile of hay covered with a crumpled quilt. She paused, looking around.
“Hello?” she called. “Is anyone here?”
Silence answered her.
Raven smiled as she bent over to smooth the quilt. She studied the quilted pattern. A “Drunkard’s Path“, she thought it was called, so named because the fabric patterns meandered in a haphazard way across the material. Similar to her own life, she thought pulling off her hat, scarf and gloves as she sat down. Her fingers played with the material beneath her, wondering how it had come to be here. Perhaps young lovers were meeting in this barn, or a traveler forgot it? Did they wander here just as she had, seeking—
Raven yelped as the quilt moved beneath her hand. Scrambling to the other side of the blanket, she stared at the restless lump praying, “God, don’t be a rat.”
Two big ears followed by a pointed face with whiskers and sleepy blue eyes emerged. “Meow,” the kitten complained, its appearance followed by more small movements and a chorus of mews.
Raven clapped her hands and flipped the blanket back to reveal the straw beneath cradling the small litter of kittens. “Oh, aren’t you cute?” She reached for the scruffy black and white kitten that’d first awakened. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?”
Judging by the disgruntled answer, she had.
“Where’s your mama?” she asked, looking around. “Out hunting?”
“Probably,” Nicholas answered, looming in the doorway.
“Ohmigod,” Raven gasped. “Will you quit doing that? You scared twelve years off my life.”
“Sorry,” he said as he drew off his mittens and scarf, tucking them into his pocket.
“How’d you find me?”
“I tracked you.”
“Like a boy scout, you mean?”
He chuckled. “Hardly that. You left footprints in the snow that a blindfolded hound dog with a cold could follow.”
“Oh.” She buried her nose in the kitten’s soft fur. “Now that you’ve found me, go away.”
“That’s not very friendly.”
“I don’t want to be friendly. I want to be alone.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? I can be alone if I want to. You aren’t the boss of me,” she muttered, her bottom lip jutting forward like a stubborn child.
Nicholas laughed. “That takes me back. You used to say that every time I saw you when we were younger.”
She flashed him a glance. “Still goes.”
“How about a truce?”
“Go away, Nicholas.”
Instead he sat on the quilt next to her. “Why? Because of last night? Or something else?”
“I don’t want to talk about last night.” She did, but she didn’t know how to start the conversation, especially now that she had more pressing things on her mind.
“I do.”
“No,” she stated. “Maybe I don’t want to talk about last night because of the way you reacted this morning in the drawing room.” Of course she did want to talk about what had happened last night, but on her own terms, so she tried to put him on the defensive.
He looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled. “Lorianne, you mean?”
She seized on the diversion so she didn’t have to discuss either her father’s phone call or the one Nicholas had with him earlier. “Lorianne is different than I thought.”
“I agree.”
“Well-bred, respectable, even gutsy, I think. She’d be a very good match for any important man, like yourself or—”
“Uh-huh. There’s only one problem.” His fingertip tilted her chin and turned it in his direction. “She’s not you.”
Raven was silent for a moment, confused by the warmth and longing in his eyes. She couldn’t face it, not when she wanted him so much. “No. I have a feeling she’s a lot more than I am in many ways.”
“Don’t say things like that.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t have to be, Raven.”
Her mouth drooped, with regret this time. “No, but let’s face it, my life hasn’t made much of an impression so far.”
Nicholas chuckled as he traced his finger over her full bottom lip, making her shiver. “I’m not sure I’d put it that way, sweetheart.”
“I don’t mean trying to get attention any way I could.” She shrugged, trying to slough it off. “Which I accomplished beyond my wildest dreams.”
“You’re still young and sowing wild oats. Others have done it.” His expr
ession darkened for a moment, “Some still are.”
“Some, such as…?” She gave him an opening to mention her father, since he’d practically dropped the subject in her lap. He didn’t take it. She turned to face him, the words finally bursting out of her as if they were jet-propelled. “You called my father a wastrel, and said I’ve been following in his footsteps.”
Lifting an amused eyebrow, he leaned back a bit. “A wastrel? That’s a bit eighteenth century, don’t you think?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. Did you call him a wastrel?”
“I used a more modern term, but yes.”
“I see.”
“I doubt it,” he commented, ignoring her glare. “What else did your father say?”
“That he went down on his knees, begged you to lend him money and keep our family from ruin, but you laughed at him and refused. Is that true also?”
“Yes, I refused,” he answered in a careful tone. “But I wasn’t laughing. Far from it.”
“Then we have nothing more to say to each other, do we?”
“Yes, we do. You need to understand why I said no.”
“Besides the fact that you consider my father an idiot for making some bad investments?”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you’d better ask him the rest of it?”
“What rest of it?”
Nicholas shook his head. “No, I don’t want to—”
“Are you talking about my father’s former business manager? The one Daddy discovered was abusing his trust.”
“Abusing how?”
“Hiding money, getting involved in risky deals, that sort of thing.”
“You got that from your father too?”
“Yes. He was very truthful about all of it.”
“Oh he was, was he?”
“Yes,” Raven said, with an emphatic toss of her hair. “He even went so far as to give his blessing to my marrying Jackson so I’d be taken care of as I deserved since he’d let me and the rest of the family down so terribly.”
Lips twisted, Nicholas stared back at her. “That’s noble of him.”
“Don’t you sneer at my father. Don’t you dare.”
He grabbed her arms, pulling her toward him. “Raven, for once in your life, stop hiding and face the truth.”