Cleo didn’t even know how to describe it to her mother. But one evening last January she’d wandered through the living room, her gaze on the magazine in her hand. Completely by accident, she’d smacked into Ethan, his gaze apparently distracted by the magazine in his hand. Bump.
Their gazes had met.
Her heart had landed at his feet.
Still without looking at her mother, Cleo now ran one finger around the rim of her mug. “Mama, why did you marry Daddy?” Cleo could barely remember her father, Ty Monroe, who had died in a car accident when she was a young child. Her memory held nothing at all of her parents’ relationship.
“Not for the best reasons,” Celeste said quietly.
Cleo looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”
Celeste sighed and gave a little smile. “The past just doesn’t want to leave me alone.”
“Oh, Mama.” Cleo put out her hand, not wanting to cause her mother any discomfort. “We don’t need to talk about it.”
Celeste smiled again. “Maybe we do. I think it’s time to shed light into some very dark corners.”
“Mama…” Cleo said doubtfully.
Celeste patted Cleo’s hand. “I think you need to hear this as much as I need to say it.”
Cleo still had her doubts. But she set her tea on the tray and relaxed against the cushions of the love seat. “I’m listening.”
Celeste took a sip from her mug. “You know about my older brother Jeremiah, about the kind of selfish, controlling man he was. After our father died, he took over the lives of us three sisters, of Blanche, Yvette and me. I don’t know if it was out of a sense of protectiveness or just because he liked manipulating people.”
“But, Mama, why didn’t you and Aunt Yvette and Aunt Blanche break free of him?”
Celeste shook her head. “It seems like we should have, doesn’t it? And Yvette did. She moved to Bozeman to get her teaching degree. But those were different times for most women, sweetie. We were expected to live under Jeremiah’s rule—and his thumb—until we married.”
“You told me once that you received three marriage proposals when you were in your twenties. You weren’t tempted to accept one of them to get away from Jeremiah?”
Celeste smiled sadly. “Perhaps I should have. But I was waiting for…magic, I suppose.”
Magic. Cleo knew all about that. It was one accidental meeting and then one heart lost. “But you didn’t find it with Daddy, either?”
“I wish I could say I did, sweetie.” Celeste lifted a hand to run her palm over Cleo’s hair. “But as I got older, Jeremiah’s reins on me became tighter and tighter. On Blanche, too.”
Celeste lapsed into silence, and Cleo saw her forehead pleat, as if she were trying to figure out a puzzle or trying to remember a particularly fuzzy memory. “Then,” Celeste went on, her gaze distant, “Raven disappeared. You know, Raven Hunter, the man Blanche loved and your cousin Summer’s father. After Raven was gone, living with my brother became unbearable for me. Jeremiah always telling me what to do, how I should think, what I should say.”
“Oh, Mama.” Cleo hated the distress in her mother’s voice. She couldn’t imagine being treated that way by family, not when hers had always been unfailingly supportive and loving.
Celeste ran another gentle hand over Cleo’s hair. “You know, that time is all so murky for me. But I do remember Jeremiah introducing me to Ty—your father. He was charming and he made me feel pretty and special.” She smiled. “Your father was a good man, Cleo. Never doubt that. I just think he deserved more than a wife who wanted to move away from her brother more than she wanted him.”
Cleo sighed. “So you think a marriage can’t work without that…magic you were talking about?” And what about one-sided magic? How far could that take a marriage?
“I think a marriage takes more than magic. It takes patience and compromise and understanding.” Celeste chuckled. “But I’m sure the magic makes all that compromise a little easier to swallow.”
Cleo thought back to her childhood. She remembered the shape of her father’s face and his smile, and then she remembered him smiling at her mother. “Daddy loved you, though, Mama. I’m certain of it.”
Celeste nodded. “At first sight, he always said.”
At first sight. Maybe it was a family trait. Or a family weakness. “But maybe one-sided magic is enough.” Cleo spoke almost to herself.
“Well,” Celeste answered, “I personally think that the magic takes two.”
Cleo was unconvinced. Because what she felt was definitely magical, and Ethan fought feeling anything at all toward her.
She picked up her mug of tea, cold now, and sipped anyway. How could she have fallen in love at first sight with such a man?
A beautiful man.
A successful, hardworking man.
A man willing to sacrifice his own life style and convenience for the good of his sister’s orphaned son.
Maybe loving Ethan wasn’t so irrational, after all. Would those first feelings of attraction have survived if he were something less? And, anyway…
Cleo looked over at her mother who regarded her with an almost pitying gaze. “You don’t just stop loving someone, do you, Mama?” Some messes just couldn’t be cleared away by wishing them gone. “Just because it’s not convenient or it’s too difficult, it just doesn’t stop, does it?”
Celeste’s fingers were warm against Cleo’s cheek. “I don’t think so, sweetie.”
After realizing that she couldn’t stop loving Ethan even if she wanted to, Cleo decided her best course was to live up to her reputation and be sensible and practical about her convenient marriage. But it took a toll on her to remain calm and cool around him, so she was almost grateful when a few days later he announced he had to take another trip. Though Cleo had left a napping Jonah with Ethan a couple of times and biked into town to work for a few hours, most of her days were filled with the unrelenting awkwardness between them.
The one good thing she’d managed was to dodge the terrible truth of her cooking prowess—er, lack thereof—by volunteering to taste test a bunch of recipes Jasmine was working on. Every night she and Ethan sat down to a shared silence made enjoyable only by the wonderful stuff she picked up from the B and B’s kitchen every afternoon.
So her mouth was full of some sort of delicious pasta when he said he was leaving the next morning, and she merely nodded. It was a darn good show of practicality.
She was just as cool when she followed him to the front door the next day. Wearing another one of his great suits and gripping his brief case and one of those carry-on bags that only a man would find large enough, he was inches of irresistible deal-maker. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching out and brushing a nonexistent piece of lint from the right shoulder of his gray suit.
He abruptly halted, then turned around.
Caught off guard, Cleo walked right into him.
He dropped his brief case and caught her around the waist, as if to steady her.
She wasn’t going to fall. That had already happened, of course, months ago.
But instead of stepping away, Cleo looked up at Ethan. He still held her lightly, and there was a fluttering in her belly where their bodies met.
“Cleo,” he started. “I wish—”
In his crib down the hall, Jonah began fussing. Cleo turned her head, then looked back at Ethan. “Naptime’s over early.”
“He can wait a minute.” Ethan tightened his hold on her waist. “I want you to know—”
The baby’s fussing turned to crying.
Cleo tried ignoring the sound, but then broke from Ethan’s embrace. “I’m sorry,” she said, stepping away. She called softly down the hall, “Hang in there, buddy. Mommy’s coming.”
And at that one word—at “mommy”—the air became thick.
Mommy.
As if in slow motion, Cleo turned her head to see what Ethan made of her instinctive word. Maybe he hadn’t heard it. Maybe he would resent he
r assumption.
Or maybe he would burn her with the bright, blazing blue that was in his eyes.
The rest of him had gone to stone, everything except for the hot intensity of his gaze. She felt the heat on her face, on her body. It wrapped around her like a binding.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely.
The words released her from the strange spell. She hurried down the hall, not even aware that Jonah was no longer crying until she entered his darkened room to discover he’d gone back to sleep.
Maybe she should stay in the baby’s room until Ethan left. But that was cowardly. Worse, it would deny her one last glimpse of Ethan, and she was too weak to deny herself that, no matter how calm and cool she struggled to be.
And she wanted to gauge again what he thought of her calling herself Jonah’s mommy.
He was still standing in the small foyer, exactly as she had left him. When she reappeared, he bent to pick up his brief case. “Everything okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “He drifted off again.”
The heat was gone from Ethan’s eyes. “I know you’ll take good care of him.”
“Of course I will.”
“Goodbye, Cleo.”
She smiled, and then he turned and stepped toward the door. With her feet rooted to the floor, she watched him turn the knob, and then he dropped his brief case again and slid that improbably small carry-on off his shoulder.
The movements surprised her into retreating a step, but it didn’t matter, because in milliseconds he caught up with her. “Cleo,” he said, fisting his hand in the hair at the back of her head. He pulled gently, tilting up her face. “I don’t want to leave you. Not without this.”
And then he kissed her.
His mouth came down on hers, no softness in it whatsoever, and she opened up to him because there was nothing else but to give in to the demand of Ethan’s tongue.
He filled her, hot and strong, and she leaned into his body, trying to get closer, closer, closer.
His groan was low and needy and she felt it purr against her breastbone. Cleo closed her eyes, thinking only of his indescribable taste when a shiver skittered over her spine and unmistakable passion rose again.
Only Ethan made her burn. Only Ethan could cause this sweet neediness to bubble inside her blood.
His mouth lifted off hers and she moaned, but he ignored her complaint, and pulled her head back farther so that he could kiss her neck. She felt the wet brush of his tongue below her ear and shuddered.
“Ethan,” she whispered.
He came back to her mouth, biting gently at her lower lip. “I’ve got to get going,” he said around another deep kiss.
She leaned harder against him and curled her arms around his neck. “No.”
He groaned again, another purr against her breasts. “I need to make my plane.”
“No,” she said again.
He kissed her nose, then pulled back just enough to see her face. “If I get out of here now, it will be better for both of us.”
Cleo stubbornly shook her head. “No.”
“That’s what you should be saying to me, Cleo. To what I want.”
“No.” She tightened her arms around his neck.
He groaned again, his expression half frustrated, half amused. “Cleo, I really, really have to leave. I hate it, I swear to God I do, but I don’t have any choice.”
He was right, of course. Meetings had been scheduled, appointments set. After one more delicious moment pressed against his body, she dropped her arms and sighed.
“All right.” Despite how mad it made her, she felt tears sting the corners of her eyes.
To hide them, she looked down at her long skirt, as if inspecting for wrinkles. Cool and collected, right? That was what she’d promised herself to be. “Never say that I’m not sensible.”
Two fingers caught her chin, tilted it up. “Oh, Cleo,” he said quietly. “I could say that, and so, so much more.”
With that surprising remark and one last kiss, he was gone.
But the surprises didn’t end there. Before five o’clock that afternoon, a deliveryman shocked the heck out of her. Ethan had sent her another gift.
But nothing practical this time. The present was from one of her favorite shops in Bozeman. Inside a ridiculously tiny box was a heartbreakingly lovely crystal unicorn. She’d never seen anything like it. No bigger than a charm, it was strung on a delicate gold box chain.
The accompanying card wasn’t in Ethan’s handwriting—obviously he’d ordered it over the phone and paid a mint to have it delivered the same day—but Cleo held it against her heart anyway. Because the only thing the card said was “You.”
And though she didn’t believe for a minute that Ethan considered her as rare and beautiful, as delicate and light-catching as the crystal unicorn, a sensible, practical woman such as Cleo Monroe—Cleo Redford—appreciated the thought.
Cleo wore the unicorn every day. Later that week, she was sitting at her desk at Bean sprouts, absently fingering the crystal charm when a commotion in the reception area of the day care center caught her attention. Alarmed, Cleo first scooped Jonah up from his crib in the corner of her office and then stuck her head out her door.
A gaggle of strangers was insisting on speaking with her, while a just-as-insistent Nancy refused to open the waist-high swinging gate that led into the center.
Cleo put all her toddler-management skills into her voice. “What’s the problem?” she called coolly as she approached Nancy.
Before the other woman could answer, she handed Jonah to her friend and asked her to take him into the break room. Then Cleo turned to the impatient group, placing her hand firmly on the swinging gate. “I’m Cleo Kincaid Monroe. Cleo Redford. What can I do for you?”
A blonde with a helmet hairdo and a sapphire suit stepped forward. “Elaine Eaton of KMNT, Ms. Monroe. Would you mind if I brought a camera crew inside?”
Cleo blinked. “I’d mind very much. There are small children here and I don’t want them to be disturbed. What’s this all about?”
Another reporter stepped up, aggressive and unsmiling. “You did say Cleo Kincaid Monroe?” he asked. “Niece of Jeremiah and Yvette Kincaid? Daughter of Celeste?”
Icy apprehension crawled down Cleo’s back. On the desk nearby, a phone started ringing. “Celeste is my mother,” she said. “Has something happened? Is she hurt?”
“What do you know about the skeleton?” asked the man.
“What?” Cleo said. Another line began ringing, and the phone’s flashing lights jangled like her nerves. Skeleton? “What has happened to my mother?”
The man ignored her again. “We’re looking for a comment from a Kincaid family member.”
Forcing herself to stay calm, Cleo moved over to the desk and picked up the receiver. Ignoring the ringing, she punched a free line and speed-dialed the bed-and-break fast. Busy signal.
The back of her neck as hot as the chill running down her spine was cold, Cleo turned to the group of strangers. “Is there something wrong with my mother?”
“As far as we know, your mother’s fine,” Helmet Head said, looking marginally sympathetic. “We want to know what Jeremiah Kincaid’s family has to say about the skeleton.”
“The skeleton?” The skeleton. The apprehension suddenly lifted and Cleo let out a shaky laugh. “This must be some mistake. You’re talking about the Laughing Horse skeleton? We don’t know anything.”
Helmet Head lifted perfectly arched brows. “Are you sure about that?”
Cleo refused to let herself be scared again. “Of course. Now, I need to ask you people to leave—”
The aggressive man had pulled out a small notebook. “That’s what you want us to print? That you don’t know anything? Do you speak for your aunt and mother, too?”
Cleo stared. “I don’t want you to print anything. I don’t even know why you’re asking me these questions. Now, if you won’t leave my property, I’m going to have to—”
/> “Call the sheriff?” A new voice came from behind the small crowd of reporters. “I can save you the trouble, Cleo.”
Over the heads of the strangers, Cleo spied the tall, dark figure of Sheriff Rafe Rawlings, the sharp creases of his uniform and the set of his face stating he was all business. She could kiss him. “I’m having a little problem, Rafe,” she called. “Maybe you could help.”
With his usual commanding, unsmiling demeanor, Rafe merely half turned to hold open the Beansprouts’s front door. “Ladies, gentlemen, Ms. Monroe has asked you to leave.” When they scurried toward him instead of immediately departing, he held up his free hand. “And I’m only here to pick up my daughter, not to answer any questions.” One more pointed look, and the group moved outside, muttering.
Rafe quickly pulled the door shut.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Cleo perched on the edge of the reception desk, then looked at her watch. “It’s a little early for you to pick up Skye from the arts and crafts program. Did someone call you?”
He nodded. “Nancy, and then Jasmine.”
Cleo closed her eyes. “What’s going on, Rafe?”
He grimaced. “Maybe we should go somewhere private.”
Apprehensive once more, Cleo unlocked the swinging gate and led the way to her office. Once inside, Rafe shut the door and they sat beside each other on the chairs in front of her desk.
Cleo swallowed. “Why were the reporters here, Rafe? How does that skeleton found on the Laughing Horse property have anything to do with us?”
“It was actually found on Kincaid property, Cleo,” Rafe corrected. He quickly reminded her that the construction had been halted on the resort, not the casino, when the skeleton had been discovered during excavation a couple of weeks before.
Rafe gave the next details in a matter-of-fact voice. “It took a little time, but we finally tracked down some dental records. The bones belong to Raven Hunter.”
Raven Hunter. The name echoed in Cleo’s mind and her stomach clenched into a tight fist. “Mama’s going to be very upset,” she said. And her mother already was upset, with those nightmares continuing to plague her. “Summer, too.”
The Marriage Maker Page 10