Children of Dynasty
Page 32
Rory stood behind her and slipped his arms around her. “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.”
“It’s been a tough day, well, more than a day.”
“Do you think there’s any hope for our fathers?”
Mariah’s eyes filled with tears. There was no telling how a truce might work, but this first step made her feel that mountains were not too much to scale.
She stroked Rory’s hand on her waist. “I hope they can put some things behind them.”
She and Rory needed the wisdom of both these men if they were to make a go of CGI. “You remember telling me the chairman of First California said it was a shame John and Dad would be lost to the developers’ community.”
“Hmmm,” he murmured at her neck.
“What if they’re not lost? What if they both sit on the CGI board of directors?”
Rory straightened and pondered. “I know I could use the help.”
“Let’s ask them.” The idea of their fathers finding reconciliation might be too much to hope for, but she dared to wish they’d made a start.
“I just hope my folks …” Rory broke off.
“Maybe they can work something out. He did say he loved her.”
“She’s pretty upset over Catharine and those flowers,” Rory countered.
Mariah pulled away and turned to face him. “It’s not just the flowers. She’s a woman who feels beaten out by a ghost. It’s amazing how they all act as though she died only yesterday.”
He was silent for a moment. “Think about it. It was eight years ago when we met, and I can see you on that dock in the rain as if it were this morning.”
He took her hand and tugged her toward the French doors to his balcony. Outside, the June air was soft.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Rory said urgently. “In a lot of ways, I’ve been as big a fool as Dad was.”
She put her fingers to his lips. “You don’t have to …”
“Shhh,” he caught her hand and kissed it.
His warm mouth sent a melting feeling through her. Her heart set up a deep pounding that she felt whenever something important was about to happen.
She looked up at him, at his familiar tall frame and warm brown eyes that promised everything he had when they were younger, yet so much more.
“Mariah, I know now I was afraid to let myself feel. I don’t know why I’ve held back and lied to myself about it. You’ve been a part of me all these years, but I buried it. It all came back the day I heard about the accident and ran down the streets looking for you.”
Putting her hands into the silky hair at the nape of his neck, Mariah whispered his name.
It reminded her of the first time he’d held her, but there was so much more. Instead of the tremulous passion of discovery, there was her deep and complex caring for the man she’d married.
“I love you,” he said close beside her ear.
A floodgate opened, a willful desire to be swept away if Rory was truly no longer afraid of commitment. “Oh, Rory, I love you, too.”
He pulled back and smiled at her. “I’ll never let you forget you told my father before you told me.”
She tapped his breastbone with her index finger. “Don’t give me that. You knew I loved you last night after we got married.”
His grin widened. “Busted. I was going to tell you this morning, but after your dad called, the mood wasn’t right.”
He dragged her back against him and she felt a shift in him, to awareness that her body was against the length of his. She felt it, too, as the banked embers of their last lovemaking began to smoulder. Soon, those sparks would flare into a conflagration.
She turned her eyes toward the sea. The Golden Gate spanned the narrows, a ribbon studded with the lights of people going places. It reminded her of the evening she’d stepped out onto Davis’s terrace, just before Rory and she were reunited. Oceangoing ships headed out to sea, but Mariah no longer wanted to escape on one.
She was where she belonged, as she and Rory set their sights on the limitless horizon.
Christine Carroll writing as Linda Jacobs
SUMMER OF FIRE
LINDA JACOBS
It is 1988, and Yellowstone Park is on fire.
Among the thousands of summer warriors battling to save America’s crown jewel, is single mother Clare Chance. Having just watched her best friend, a fellow Texas firefighter, die in a roof collapse, she has fled to Montana to try and put the memory behind her. She’s not the only one fighting personal demons as well as the fiery dragon threatening to consume the park.
There’s Chris Deering, a Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot, seeking his next adrenaline high and a good time that doesn’t include his wife, and Ranger Steve Haywood, a man scarred by the loss of his wife and baby in a plane crash. They rally ‘round Clare when tragedy strikes yet again, and she loses a young soldier to a firestorm.
Three flawed, wounded people; one horrific blaze. Its tentacles are encircling the park, coming ever closer, threatening to cut them off. The landmark Old Faithful Inn and Park Headquarters at Mammoth are under siege, and now there’s a helicopter down, missing, somewhere in the path of the conflagration. And Clare’s daughter is on it …
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Michelle Perry
Cain & Abel
She fooled him once …
In Los Angeles an unexpected pregnancy sparks a daring plan of escape for a brutally battered wife. Jessica Ramsey fakes her death and flees to Tennessee to build a new life for herself and her unborn son.
But nobody fools Cole Ramsey twice …
Five years later, a chance encounter has destroyed Jessica’s carefully cultivated anonymity. She thought at first Cole had found her, but it was his twin, Alex, who unwittingly unmasked her charade. Now she must trust him to save her from Cole’s wrath. But the twins are bound by blood. Will it prove stronger than the fragile relationship building between Alex and Jessica? Or will a third time be a deadly charm?
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The Keeners
Maura D. Shaw
The rough beauty of County Clare is seventeen-year-old Margaret Meehan’s whole world, and it is nearly perfect. Her family is well and thriving, farming Ireland’s staple crop. She expects to marry handsome Tom Riordan, raise their children, and live in a cottage across the lane from her best friend, Kitty Dooley. She has found her calling and is apprenticed to the old keener Nuala Lynch. Together they keen for the dead, wailing the grief and pain of the bereaved in hopes of healing their sorrow. Margaret’s life is full of hope, full of purpose.
But the year is 1846. The potato blight has returned. Pitiful harvests rot overnight and the people are dying. Ireland is dying. And Margaret cannot keen for an entire country.
Out of devastation, Margaret Meehan’s tale begins. Leaving her decimated family, the tragic Kitty, and the death of dreams behind, she flees with her husband, now a wanted man, to America. In Troy, New York, where pig iron, starched collars, and union banners herald the success of Irish immigrants, Margaret discovers something even more precious than a new life and modest prosperity. She finds the heart and soul of Ireland. And she finds it in the voice of …
The Keeners …
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KEY OF SEA
MARY STELLA
In her youth, Dora Lee Hanson set her dreams on distant goals. A more exciting life waited, if not over the rainbow, then at least somewhere out of the quiet Florida Keys. The twenty-something beauty left home for a modeling career, but a wealthy magnate swept her off her ostrich-plumed mules. Unfortunately,
after more than a dozen years of marriage, the wicked wretch kicked her to the curb. Facing a very uncertain future, she returns to her beloved grandfather and the home she eagerly left behind all those years before.
Successful Keys fishing guide Bobby Daulton has the life he always intended, with one notable exception. He never caught Dora Lee, the love of his youth. After all these years, he never expected her to blow back into his world with tornado force, but he’s a far cry from the kid who once let her slip the line and escape.
When an ex-trophy wife with a mid-life crisis hooks up with the hot guy whose heart she unknowingly broke years before, the passionate pair rock more than the romance boat. Dora Lee has her eye on a brand new dream. Bobby has his eye on Dora. He’s fallen for her again, hook, line and sinker, and this time she won’t swim away.
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Jinxed
by
Beth Ciotta
Since the day beautiful socialite Afia St. John was born, her life has been plagued with bad luck. After losing her father and two older husbands in “freak” accidents, Afia now discovers her business manager has absconded with her fortune. Vowing not to rely on another man to guide her life, Afia refuses her godfathers’ help, and jumps at an unexpected job with the Leeds Investigations.
With a pregnant, broke, sister, and an investigation agency in the red, control-freak Jake Leeds can’t turn down the hefty but secret retainer offered by Afia’s godfather for hiring her. Quickly seeing beyond her poor business skills, wacky superstitions and sensationalized personal history, he realizes Afia is as generous in the heart as she is misunderstood. But life is never easy for the woman born on Friday the 13th. Will the sexy PI be the good luck charm that puts her on a winning streak or, like everything else in her life, will their relationship wind up Jinxed?
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