The Redemption Of Jefferson Cade
Bj James
If ever you need me…I'll come for you. - Jefferson Cade, Prince Charming in blue jeansFour years ago, Marissa Alexandre and Jefferson Cade shared sweet passion in the wilds of Belle Terre. But Marissa was promised to another, and she'd left - taking Jefferson's heart with her. Now, the only woman he'd ever loved was in danger.Protecting Marissa from a murderous drug lord proved less challenging than healing the shadows of the past. But Jefferson was determined to rekindle Marissa's ardor…and this time he'd never let her go.
“What Could This Be?” Jefferson Murmured.
The last envelope bore a name. His name, written in a hand he knew. For one stunned moment Jefferson thought it was a cruel hoax. When he drew out two sheets of paper, he knew it wasn’t. The first was newspaper. The second a plain white sheet torn raggedly from a tablet. One line was written across the sheet in the same familiar hand.
Catching an unsteady breath, Jefferson read the written words out loud. His own words, spoken just once, long ago.
If you ever need me…
A promise to keep. A promise only Marissa would know.
“I’ll come for you,” he finished.
Marissa was alive. Given the subterfuge of the message, she was in danger. She needed help. She needed Jefferson Cade.
Dear Reader,
Ring in the New Year with the hottest new love stories from Silhouette Desire! The Redemption of Jefferson Cade by BJ James is our MAN OF THE MONTH. In this latest installment of MEN OF BELLE TERRE, the youngest Cade overcomes both external and internal obstacles to regain his lost love. And be sure to read the launch book in Desire’s first yearlong continuity series, DYNASTIES: THE CONNELLYS. In Tall, Dark & Royal, bestselling author Leanne Banks introduces a prominent Chicago family linked to European royals.
Anne Marie Winston offers another winner with Billionaire Bachelors: Ryan, a BABY BANK story featuring twin babies. In The Tycoon’s Temptation by Katherine Garbera, a jaded billionaire discovers the greater rewards of love, while Kristi Gold’s Dr. Dangerous discovers he’s addicted to a certain physical therapist’s personal approach to healing in this launch book of Kristi’s MARRYING AN M.D. miniseries. And Metsy Hingle bring us Navy SEAL Dad, a BACHELORS & BABIES story.
Start the year off right by savoring all six of these passionate, powerful and provocative romances from Silhouette Desire!
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
The Redemption of Jefferson Cade
BJ James
BJ JAMES’
first book for Silhouette Desire was published in February 1987. Her second Desire novel garnered for BJ a second Maggie, the coveted award of the Georgia Romance Writers. Through the years there have been other awards and nominations for awards, including, from Romantic Times Magazine, Reviewer’s Choice, Career Achievement, Best Desire and Best Series Romance of the Year. In that time, her books have appeared regularly on a number of bestseller lists, among them Waldenbooks and USA Today.
On a personal note, BJ and her physician husband have three sons and two grandsons. While her address reads Mooreboro, this is only the origin of a mail route passing through the countryside. A small village set in the foothills of western North Carolina is her home.
Contents
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Foreword
In the coastal Lowcountry of South Carolina, where the fresh waters of winding rivers flow into the sea, there is an Eden of unmatched wonders. In this mix of waters and along the shores by which they carve their paths, life is rich and varied. The land is one of uncommon contrasts, with sandy, sea-swept beaches, mysterious swamps, teeming marshes bounded by ancient maritime forests. And a multitude of creatures abide in each.
In this realm of palms and palmettos, estuaries and rivers, shaded by towering live oaks draped in ghostly Spanish moss, lies Belle Terre. Like an exquisite pearl set among emeralds and sapphires, with its name the small antebellum city describes its province. As it describes itself.
Belle Terre, beautiful land. A beautiful city.
A very proper, very elegant, beautiful city. A gift for the soul. An exquisite mélange for the senses. With ancient and grand structures in varying states of repair and disrepair set along tree-lined, cobbled streets. With narrow, gated gardens lush with such greenery as resurrection and cinnamon ferns. And all of it wrapped in the lingering scent of camellias, azaleas, jessamine and magnolias.
Steeped in an aura of history, its culture and customs influenced by plantations that once abounded in the Lowcountry, as it clings to its past, Belle Terre is a province of contradictions. Within its society one will find arrogance abiding with humility, cruelty with kindness, insolence with gentility, honor with depravity, and hatred with love.
As ever when the senses are whetted and emotions untamed, in Belle Terre there will be passion, romance, and scandal.
Prologue
The wilderness was his sanctuary. As a boy he’d come in search of solace. As a man he came for peace.
From his vantage among the trees, Jefferson Cade looked over a swampy Eden. A land few knew as he knew it. The land of his heart. One of strange, erratic temperament, as now. For even as he waited, its mood altered. Dormant air grew sultry. Moisture permeated each breath and burnished all it touched in a heated mist. The day, and the hideaway tucked among the limbs of the moss strewn tree, were held in the thrall of a lowcountry summer.
Far below the tree house, at the edge of a pond, a fish jumped, startling a fawn just dipping his head to drink. Jefferson smiled as the tiny creature danced away. A smile that vanished as he glimpsed the woman half hidden in the shadow of a palmetto.
Caught by her stillness, he waited. As she watched the fawn, he saw how much she’d changed, yet remained the same. When she’d first come from Argentina to live, to study, and absorb the graces still surviving in the quaint city of Belle Terre, she’d been a girl on the verge of womanhood. Now the tomboy who hunted, fished, and handled horses as well as any man, had indeed become a beautiful woman. And his best friend.
“Marissa.” She couldn’t have heard, yet her eyes lifted to his. And, as she came to him, he whispered, “Marissa Claire.”
A half hour of silence later, Jefferson abandoned his pen and sketch pad. Moving to Marissa’s side he sat on the tree house floor, wondering what trouble had drawn her to him.
This meeting had begun strangely. After a subdued greeting and a strained smile, she’d barely spoken. Conversation had never been necessary between them. Yet now her silence was unbearable.
Leaning on an elbow, he stared down at a beguiling woman who lay as if she were sleeping. But he knew her body language too well not to read the wakeful tension. As patience deserted him, he tugged a stray curl. “Hey, lazybones, want to go fishing?”
Reluctantly her dark gaze met his. Knowing the time for pretense was past, but not ready to speak, she looked away.
Jefferson had never seen her so distant. It was rare that she would call him at midday asking that he meet her here. Rare that she barely greeted him then withdrew. Something was wrong. “What is it, Marissa? Why did you ask me to come here?”
When her reply was only a shrug, he lapsed again into silent contemplation. She was Marissa Claire Alexandre. Merrie to all but him, for whom the name hadn’t fit. An inexplicable perception he couldn’t explain to any but himself.
Four years before, she’d come to Belle Terre. Sent from the Alexandre estancia by a father determined to tame his daredevil daughter. Guided by Eden Cade, Marissa was to learn the ways of Southern ladies. Lessons she’d mastered perfectly, yet never lost her love of country life, or her passion for horses.
In the beginning their friendship was based on mutual admiration of their unique skill with horses. From that beginning came a deepening of common interests. As good friends became confidants, it was to him she turned in happy or troubled times.
But Marissa was only twenty-one, eight years younger than he. A disparity he never forgot, even as the remarkable girl became a remarkable woman—and Jefferson Cade, once forever immune, had fallen deeply in love with her. Deeply but in vain. In denial of all he felt, he survived by reminding himself the woman within the alluring body loved him as a friend.
Too soon even that would be taken from him. From the first, the plan was clear. Marissa would spend five years in her mother’s homeland. Then she was to return to Argentina to honor obligations she neither explained nor discussed. Jefferson had learned to live with the inevitable. Time in hand was too precious to waste agonizing over the time to come. And if friendship was all he could have, he would be a friend in every need.
Besieged by desire, but setting the sorrow of it aside, he turned her face to him. “Hey,” he questioned as he saw tears in her dark eyes. “What is it, sweetheart? How can I help?”
Marissa stared up at him, memorizing each handsome feature. She knew Jefferson had never understood the charisma of his smile, the power of his kindness. In all their years of friendship, he hadn’t known of her dual dilemma. When he’d urged her to spend more time with classmates and teased that she would never find her Prince Charming in the wilds with him, he didn’t understand she was promised to a much older man.
A promise she must honor. Though she’d found her prince where Jefferson said she couldn’t, she would keep her father’s word. And leave her heart in Prince Charming’s keeping.
As always in his strong presence, she found her own strength. Catching his wrist, she pressed her cheek in his palm. “There’s no help for a day that was preordained. I knew it would come, but not so soon.”
Slipping the scarf from her hair, he smoothed dark, silky tresses with his fingers. “What day, Marissa?”
“The day I say goodbye.”
He went totally still. “But you have another year.”
“That was the agreement. But now it’s different.” Her voice broke. “I’ve been called home.”
He wondered what agreement, but only asked, “When?”
Tears she’d denied flooded her eyes. “I leave tomorrow.”
Jefferson tensed. Then he drew her to him, embracing her in futile denial. “Not yet. Not so soon.”
Her arms crept around him, her head rested over his heart. She would remember this moment and treasure it. Someday she would tell the children she might have about this enchanting place, and of the man whose creation the tree house had been.
If she had sons, she would speak of his ruggedness, his adventures, and his communion with the wilderness. If she had daughters, she would tell them of the tenderness of a beautiful man, and would wonder if they looked into her heart and saw the truth.
But that lay in the future, that didn’t begin until tomorrow. Until then, she had this one, last day with Jefferson.
His chest rose and fell beneath her cheek as it nestled against the hard muscles. His hands at her shoulders moved her from his embrace. His shadowed stare moved over her face, lingering at her mouth, her eyes. Seeing what he hadn’t let himself see before. Believing what he hadn’t dared believe.
“Dear God,” he whispered, with regret for lost time, lost love.
Marissa didn’t flinch or turn away. For once, she wouldn’t hide what she felt for him.
Jefferson’s heart filled with hope. “Don’t go, Marissa.” Softly he spoke words he never expected to say. “Stay with me.”
In his face she saw despair, honor, a friend’s love. With a sigh she spoke the truth. “I can’t. There is a man, my father owes him a great deal. In return, I was promised to him long ago.”
“Promised to him?” Whatever he expected, it was never this. “Do you love him? Have I misread what I see in your eyes?”
Marissa felt the lash of his anger and forgave it. “I hardly know him. The betrothal was a business arrangement. He wanted a wife one day. It was decided I would be that wife.”
“In return for what?” Jefferson’s clasp on her shoulders seared into her flesh. “What do you get out of this arrangement?”
“I get nothing, Jefferson. But because of me, my father and mother can keep their life as it is.”
“Your life and you were traded for wealth, to insure a lifestyle?” He spat the words. “Your father would do that?”
“For money, power, the lifestyle? Yes.” Marissa was calm beneath his angry glare. “It’s the way of the wealthy, bartering lives, love, even children. My father was desperate. My mother’s health was failing. It was for her sake he negotiated this time in Belle Terre. In the bargain, I was to bring the expected graces to the marriage. And who better than Eden to teach me? Now, as a point of honor, my father is impatient to resolve the debt.”
“Honor?” Disgust seethed in Jefferson. Disgust she didn’t deserve. She loved her mother and her father. She was so young at the time, what choice was there for her? Deep in his soul, he understood. But understanding couldn’t ease the anguish.
“Arranged marriages aren’t uncommon in my land and families like mine. All my father has ever known is abundant wealth. As young as I was, even I could see the more extravagant the lifestyle, the less one can fathom living a lesser existence. In your world, the arrangement is despicable. In my father’s, he has done his best for his family. I could defy him and refuse to honor his word. But, because my mother’s illness is slowly debilitating and will likely continue for years, I won’t try.”
Jefferson drew a breath. An unsteady hand caressed her face. Softly, he said, “Then tell me how I can help you now.”
Marissa’s lips brushed the heel of his hand. Her steady gaze held his. “You could make love to me.”
His chest felt like a vise. If his mind reeled, now it spun into dementia. “No,” he heard himself say, though there was nothing he wanted more than to make love to her. “You don’t know what you’re asking. You haven’t considered the repercussions.”
“You’re wrong, my dearest friend. I know exactly what I’m asking. I’ve considered every repercussion. What I’m expected to do, what I will do, is for my family.” Touching his face, she let her drifting fingertips linger at his mouth. “This, I ask for me.”
Curling her fingers into a fist, she stared at her hand, and thought of his. Strong, hard, roughened by calluses, yet beautiful. And even in passion his touch would be gentle.
“What crime is it to learn of love from a man who cares? What sin to want you, Jefferson? I do, you know,” she whispered.
Jefferson clung to one last shred of sanity. “You…”
“Don’t!” A fingertip stopped his words. “Don’t tell me I don’t know what I want, what I need. You haven’t misread anything and I’m not asking for forever. But for my first time, I need to feel your hands on my body. Only yours.
“I can’t change the path of my life. But I can survive it if you give me this to remember. If you pretend for a little while that you love me as more than a friend.”
“No.” Though he drew away from her and rose to stand at his full height, he meant only that he wouldn’t be pretending. Marissa didn’t understand. As hurt gathered the eyes, right or wrong, he knew he couldn’t deny her. Or himself.
There was so much more he wanted to say, but he couldn’t think. He couldn’t be wise or pragmatic. He could only love her.
“Marissa.” He called her name, only her name. Yet beneath the storm of emotions lay an unspoken question as his slowly extended hand offered her a chance to back away. His riveted look moved from his own roughened fingers to her face. As a bewildered frown marred her brow, he spoke again. “Take my hand, sweetheart. But only if you truly want me. Only if you’re sure.”
In a subtle change, hope shone in her eyes. “I’m sure, Jefferson.” As she took his hand, her resolve was strong. “I’ve never been more sure in my life.”
As clasped hands held fast, drawing her up to his embrace, he knew there were questions to ask. Warnings to give. But common sense was lost as he reveled in holding her. Then into his own silence, he breathed a surrendering word. A curse? A prayer? Not even Jefferson knew. The battle was done. There was no going back.
In the stillness he undressed her, and the discarding of each garment became an exquisite seduction. Each button slipped free, unveiling her body inch by inch, inviting a touch, a kiss.
When she was cloaked only in sun-spangled shadows and the dark cascade of her hair, he discovered she was more beautiful than he’d dreamed. More desirable. With a final caress, his hands fell away to attend the task of undressing himself.
When the last of his own clothing was cast away, seeing the apprehension of innocence, taking her hands in his, he brought them to his mouth. Lips and breath warming her cold fingers, he murmured, “Don’t be afraid, Marissa.”
Bringing her nearer, he bent to kiss the tender flesh beneath her ear. As she murmured an indistinct sound of pleasure, he let his fingertips stray over her throat and down. When his hands closed over her breasts, his palms teasing their tips, the nipples hardened, as his own body had, with desire.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said one last time.
Marissa’s answer was a whisper as he drew her down to the floor. “Never with you, Jefferson.” When his lips followed the path of his touch she cried again, “Never with you.”
A virile man, Jefferson was far from innocent. He knew how to tantalize, how to excite, as he took Marissa with him from one degree of longing to another. Erotic forays discovered where to stroke, when to kiss, when to suckle, leaving her desperate for more, yet wondering how there could ever be. Then he tapped a secret well of unthinking hunger that spiraled into impassioned madness, intensifying every need.
Always before, he was the sole maker of madness. Once passion had sufficed. But with the coherent thought he could manage beneath her touch, he knew passion for passion’s sake would never be enough again. And, as he found himself falling deeper beneath her spell, nor would anyone but Marissa.
He’d never wanted forever. He wanted it now. But in its stead, he would make for her a beautiful memory to take to a new life. And for himself, a dream. The only forever he could have.
Swept into the madness, a gentle man became more gentle. When she called his name in a voice husky with desire, there was no past, no future. They were only a man and a woman trembling on the edge of a world where neither had gone, and would never go again.
Drawing away, he looked down at her. “Even the making of a beautiful memory can be painful. But only once.” Sealing his promise with a kiss, he came down to her, whispering, “Only once.”
In a day bright and hot, a cry sounded as moisture laden air painted joining bodies in a sheen of gossamer. Then there was only a sigh of welcome as Jefferson went with Marissa into the last of rapture…while the world waited.
The splash wasn’t enough to wake him, but it did. As naturally as breathing, he reached for Marissa. He was alone. In her place lay the scarf he’d taken from her hair. Sliding on his jeans, he moved to the ladder that led to the ground.
“No,” Marissa called from the water’s edge. “Don’t come down, Jefferson. I don’t think I could bear to leave if you do.”
“Don’t go,” he pleaded, though he knew it was futile.
Marissa didn’t answer. As he stopped short of the first rung, she turned to toss a stone into the pond. The water’s surface was calm before she spoke again. “This day and this place have been magic. So I thought the pond could be a wishing well. It was greedy of me, but I’ve made two wishes.”
“What did you wish, Marissa?”
When she looked up at him, her smile was bittersweet. “First I wished you wouldn’t forget me.”
Jefferson said nothing. It was a wish already granted. How could a man forget a woman like Marissa? “And the second?”
“The impossible.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be, sweetheart.”
Her smile faltered. “You’re wrong, my beloved friend. Though I’ve wished with all my heart, how could we meet again?”
A knife in his heart couldn’t hurt as much. “Wishing wells grant three wishes. Will you wish again?”
“Yes.” The stone was already in her hand.
“Will you tell me the last?”
“Not this time. Not this wish.”
Jefferson didn’t pry. And though he knew what would follow the splash of the last stone, he wasn’t ready for it.
“Goodbye, Jefferson Cade.” Her voice was soft, her words halting. “I won’t forget you. I won’t forget this day.”
“Marissa.” He waited until she turned back, until their eyes met. “If ever you need me…I’ll come for you.”
“I know,” she acknowledged and turned away again.
He wanted to call out to her, to ask her again to stay. Instead, as silent as the wilderness, he watched her go.
At the far shore, she stopped and raised a hand. It was then the storm for which the land waited lashed out in a blinding bolt of lightning and a rumble of thunder. When the world was quiet again, the path was empty. Marissa had gone from his life.
Heavy rain was falling when Jefferson paused at the edge of the clearing. Through the downpour, his gaze sought the half-hidden bower where he’d made love to Marissa Claire Alexandre.
His sketch pad shielded by his body, a keepsake folded against his heart, he committed to memory this place. He would paint it, melding sketches and memories. Someday.
Rain fell harder, spattering over the pond like stones in a wishing well. “One wish is true, Marissa.”
Lightning flickered, thunder growled. As quickly as it came, the rain stopped. As a mist shrouded the land, Jefferson waited for one more glimpse that never came. It didn’t matter.
“I won’t forget.”
When he turned away, though the wilderness had been an abiding part of his life, he knew it could never be the same.
He wouldn’t come again.
One
“Well, hello, handsome.” The greeting, addressing the lone patron at the bar, was lilting and feminine. Teasing a favorite customer.
Setting his glass aside, a hand automatically going to his Stetson, Jefferson Cade smiled. A brush of his fingers tilting the tan brim accompanied a pleasant greeting as teasing. “Afternoon, Miss Cristal.”
As she laughed in pleasure at the Western gallantry spoken in a Southern drawl, Cristal Lane slipped her arm through his. “What brings a Southern gentleman like you into town today?”
In this land of old ranches and older family names, with time measured in half centuries, if not centuries, Cristal was counted as new to Arizona. But Jefferson considered the remark conversation, not a question, for she’d owned the most popular saloon in Silverton years enough to know the spring stock show held annually in the town attracted ranchers from miles around. As it had drawn him from the Broken Spur of Sunrise Canyon.
But Cristal was also familiar enough with his reclusive lifestyle to believe the show, itself, would not merit one of his rare visits. As she silently signaled for the bartender to refresh the drink he’d hardly touched, Jefferson wasn’t surprised when she suggested, quietly, “Someone must be offering a spectacular horse to tempt you from your hideout.”
“Think so?” Shifting his gaze from her, he nodded his thanks to the bartender, then folded his hands around the glass.
Her shrewd study drifted away to assess the needs of customers. Satisfied everyone was content, she looked again at the handsome Southerner, and inevitably at his hands.
As with everything about Jefferson Cade, his hands were intriguing. Weathered, callused, the hands of a working man, an artist. A mix of rugged elegance and gentle strength. One of the times he’d been in town and stayed late to walk her home after closing, she’d teased him about his hands. He’d only laughed when she’d called them fascinating, saying it was natural that any living, breathing female would wonder about his touch.
He’d asked what female? For in the four years since he’d returned to Arizona to work for Jake Benedict at the Rafter B, then Steve Cody at the Broken Spur, he’d done no more than speak a few pleasantries to any woman. Beyond the routine associations of ranching, he was happiest living his reclusive life.
“Do I think so? Yes,” she murmured to his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “It must be one helluva horse.”
Her use of the rare profanity recalled a late-night talk when she’d ventured another startling opinion.
It must’ve been one helluva woman who spoiled all the rest of womankind for you, Jefferson Cade. She’d made the statement, then never mentioned it again. But he knew she was remembering the night and her words as her eyes probed his.
Jefferson held her gaze for a long moment, then turned his face away. A virile face maturity had made more attractive, and the new touch of silver in his dark blond hair only complemented. His mouth was solemn now. Beneath the brim of the Stetson, his downswept lashes shielded his eyes. But if his head had lifted and if his lips tilted in a smile that touched his eyes, it would still make an attractive man startlingly handsome.
He was immune, not a fool. He knew he’d caught the attention of a number of the female population of Silverton in the early days of his return. But he never acknowledged the most blatant flirtation with more than a courtly smile and a pleasant greeting. He became a master at making the most brazen feel he was flattered and perplexed by the advances, a gallantry that, at first, had an opposite effect than the one he wanted. But through the years, as even the most determined found him ever elusive, his would-be lovers became friendly acquaintances, if not friends.
Though she teased about his charm, Cristal’s interest was platonic. As he recognized her honesty and wisdom, she became a close friend. A rare and trusted confidante.
“If not for a particular horse, you wouldn’t be here, would you, Jefferson? There’s nothing else in your life. You won’t let there be, because of a woman.” Cristal voiced a long-standing concern, exercising the privilege of friendship.
Only the narrowing of his eyes signaled this subject was off-limits. For once, Cristal wasn’t to be deterred. “Do you ever get her out of your mind or your heart? This woman you loved and lost…do you ever stop thinking about her? Can you stop? Or do you spend each waking moment remembering how she looked, how she smiled, the way she walked? The fragrance of her hair?”
Jefferson didn’t respond. Then, pushing away from the bar, his expression unreadable, he looked down at her. “What I’m thinking and remembering,” he said as courteously as if she weren’t prying, “is that it’s time to see a man about a horse.”
Fingers at his hat brim, a charming smile, a low, “Miss Cristal,” and she was left to watch him walk away. Long after he stepped through the door and disappeared into the crowd, no less concerned she stared at the space where he’d been.
“Cristal,” a raucous voice called. “How about a song?”
“Sure, Hal.” She didn’t need to look around to recognize a regular customer. “What would you like to hear?”
“No preference, honey,” he answered. “Just sing.”
With a last glance at the empty doorway, Cristal crossed the room. Despite the tightening in her throat, leaning over the piano player, aptly named Sam, she whispered in his ear. When he nodded, she looked over the room, her smile touched with sadness for a lonely man. “How about this one? An oldie for a friend.”
As the melancholy chords of the introduction ended, wondering what intuition dictated the old tune, she sang of a lady’s choice to leave the man who loved her.
“Easy girl. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Not anymore.” In a soothing singsong, Jefferson coaxed the nervous mare from the trailer. As she stepped down the ramp, ears flicking in suspicion, he didn’t blame her. Even for a high-strung filly who hadn’t been mishandled, the unfamiliar surroundings and the noise of the stock show would’ve been excuse enough for being skittish.
When she’d come on the market as a difficult horse offered at a nominal fee, the most uninformed judge of horses could see promise. Which, given the bargain price, sent up a red flag that warned labeling her difficult was an understatement. Jefferson had driven to her home stable for a preliminary look, taking Sandy Gannon, foreman of the Rafter B and an expert judge of horses, with him for a second opinion. Both agreed the filly was of a bloodline and a quality Steve Cody would approve.
When the seller questioned who could tame the filly, Sandy replied that if Jeff Cade couldn’t, then it couldn’t be done.
“Let’s hope Sandy knows what he’s talking about,” Jefferson crooned to the filly when she finally stood on the ground. The truth was, Sandy knew exactly what he was saying when he praised the Southerner. Before assuming duties at the Broken Spur, Jefferson had spent the last two of three years at the Rafter B as second in command. Though he’d made a show of grumbling over losing a good horseman, Sandy had backed Steve and his wife Savannah’s choice.
Now, Jefferson had lived and worked in Sunrise Canyon for more than a year, loving each solitary day. “So will you, girl,” he promised as he led the filly to a stall. “Some folks think it’s lonely in the canyon, but it isn’t. You’ll see.”
Realizing he was talking to a horse that would run with Steve’s small herd, he laughed. A sound too rare in his life. “A stranger would think the loneliness has driven me bonkers. When it’s driven me a little saner, instead.”
His string of chatter elicited a low whinny and a nudge, and he knew his faith in the filly hadn’t been misplaced. Stroking her, he murmured, “You’ll be happy here, girl. One day soon, when we know what fits, we’ll choose a name for you.”
Slipping a bar over the stall door, he made a quick check of the other horses and stepped outside. After a long day and a four-hour drive across the surrounding Benedict land, it was good to steal a minute to watch the moon rise.
In daylight or darkness, the canyon was beautiful. When he’d come to Arizona as a teenage runaway he’d been too young and his life too chaotic to appreciate the stark magnificence of the land. Ten years later, when he’d left the lowcountry again—running away as an adult—he hadn’t expected to find anything to equal the lovely land he left behind.
He was wrong. As an adult with an artist’s eye, he recognized the different degrees of beauty, the different kinds.
The desert was his home now. Though he knew he could never go back, the lowcountry had been in his mind recently. Perhaps because, after years of neglect, he’d taken out his sketches and in the long winter darkness, he’d begun to paint again.
A painting waited now on the easel. The light wasn’t so good in the renovated cabin, but it didn’t matter. Painting was something he did for himself. A final healing, an exorcism.
Abandoning the soothing sight of the canyon in moonlight, he returned to the truck to retrieve his mail. No one wrote to him but family. Though he treasured the snapshots and letters, days could pass before he made a mail run. Given the size of the packet the postmaster’d had waiting for him, the time had been even longer.
Jefferson cared deeply for his brothers, and he was never truly out of touch. The family knew to contact the Rafter B in emergencies. Sandy would relay any messages by telephone or rider. No phone calls, no rider meant everyone was well and safe.
Tucking the packet under his arm, as the door of the truck closed, he whistled. Two clear notes sounded in the failing light, answered by a bark and the pad of racing feet. As he braced himself, a dark shape launched itself like a bullet at his chest.
Letters scattered in the dust as Jefferson went down. A massive creature blacker than the night stood over him. Gleaming teeth bared in a grin, a long, pink tongue lapped at his face.
Laughing, pushing the great dog aside, Jefferson muttered, “If that means you’re glad to see me, Satan, I hope you won’t be quite so glad next time.”
Satan barked and danced away. Normally with his sentry duty done, he was ready to play. This night, as if he would hurry his master to abandon the game by helping him to stand, the dog grabbed his hand between his teeth. The slightest pressure could have caused injury but, as with all creatures trained by Jefferson, despite his fierce look Satan was as gentle as his master.
The mock attack was a game, begun when Jefferson was new to the canyon and Satan a puppy with too much energy. Soon the dog should be taught the game was too dangerous. “Someone could misunderstand and put a bullet in your head.” Jefferson cuffed him gently in a signal to let go. “Might bend the bullet.”
Satan trotted away again in the prance common to Doberman pinschers everywhere. Stopping short, his dark eyes on his master’s face, he made a sound Jefferson interpreted as canine impatience.
“Not funny?” Rising, the human side of the conversation dusted off his clothes. Gathering the mail, he declared in an understatement, “Considering that I would miss you, tonight’s a good time to stop the game. As you obviously have.”
In the gloom settling over the canyon, he almost missed one piece of mail. Satan’s pawing interest, combined with the dull glint of its metal clasp caught his attention. Without both, the brown envelope would have blended with the shadowed Arizona dust. Perhaps to be discovered in morning light. Perhaps not.
Hefting it, he judged its weight. More than a letter, with only a blurred postmark. No return address. “What could this be?”
Satan barked and paced toward the cabin. “You’re right,” Jefferson agreed. “I should go inside and have a look.”
Normally the Doberman refused to come inside. Tonight, he slipped past Jefferson when the door opened. Rather than stretching out on the hearth as usual in his rare sorties in the cabin, he streaked through the main room to the bedroom.
“Come away, Satan,” Jefferson scolded as the dog scratched at the bedside table. “There’s nothing here.”
Nothing but a keepsake from his past, Jefferson amended as he herded the dog from the room. “Lie by the hearth,” he directed. “After I check the mail, we’ll have supper.”
Satan obeyed, instantly. Containing his agitation, he tucked his nose beneath his paws. His dark eyes were white-rimmed beneath the pupils as he tracked each move his master made.
Jefferson sat at the table. Spreading mail over it, he plucked the brown envelope from the jumble. Satan whimpered. “Hey.” Jefferson moved it left, then right. Only Satan’s eyes turned, never leaving the letter. “What about this worries you?”
Jefferson believed animals possessed unique senses, perceiving more than the human mind could begin to conceive. Some would laugh, others would scoff at the idea, but he’d seen this anticipation too often in the wilderness to not believe it.
He’d seen it before in Satan when a rattler had crawled into a stall, striking a colt. Though little more than a pup, the dog had clawed at the cabin door, waking Jefferson, demanding his attention. Then he’d torn a pair of jeans as he’d dragged his master to the barn. Because of Satan, the colt was alive. Because of Satan, Jefferson opened the envelope with trepidation.
“What the devil?” he tore open another envelope.
When he moved past the surprise of discovering one unmarked envelope inside another, he almost pitched the whole package in the trash as a joke. Recalling Satan’s reaction, he continued.
The next envelope, the last, bore a name. His name, written in a hand he knew. For one stunned moment he thought it was a cruel hoax. Next he questioned how it could be. When he drew out two sheets of paper, he knew it wasn’t. The first was newspaper. The second a plain, white sheet torn raggedly from a tablet. One line was written across the sheet in the same familiar hand.
His own hand shaking, for longer than he knew, Jefferson stared down at it, tracing each letter, each word, with his startled gaze. Catching an unsteady breath, an unforgettable fragrance filling his lungs, touching his heart, he read the written words out loud. His own words, spoken just once, long ago.
If ever you need me…
A promise made. A promise to keep. But how?
The answer lay in the second sheet. A month-old newspaper article. “‘The search for the plane of Paulo Rei has been terminated,’” he read, then read again. “‘On board were Señor Rei, his wife, the former Marissa Claire Alexandre, and her parents.’”
There was more, a detailed description of the Reis and their lives. But Jefferson’s voice stumbled to a halt. Papers fluttered to the floor. As his gaze lifted to the portrait over the mantel, he recited the only line that mattered in a lifeless voice, “‘It has been determined there could be no survivors.’”
No survivors. The words were a cry in his mind. Words that made no sense. Trying to find sanity in it, he read his own words again. A promise only Marissa would know.
But a part of him couldn’t comprehend or separate truth from fiction. Was it a charade? A ghoulish trick? Or was it real?
If it was real, why was it assumed Marissa had been on the plane? If it wasn’t she who had sent the letter, then who?
His thoughts were a whirligig, going ’round and ’round, always ending in the same place, the same thought, the same denial. No one but Marissa could have sent the letter. It had to be. It must be. For, if she hadn’t, it would mean she was dead.
“No!” Jefferson refused to believe. “I would know. The world wouldn’t feel right without Marissa.”
But how could he be sure? How could he know he wasn’t persuading himself to believe what he needed to believe?
“Satan!” The name was spoken without thought or conscious volition. But as he heard it, Jefferson knew it was the way. Rigid as stone, the dog had watched. Now he came to attention, awaiting the command that always followed his name spoken in that tone. Jefferson smiled, a humorless tilt of his lips. Recognizing the stance, he gave the expected command. “Stay.”
Certain Satan would obey, he returned to his bedroom. Opening the drawer by the bedside table, he drew out a scarf. A square of silk filled with memories.
Marissa’s scarf. A memento of a day never forgotten.
How many times had he seen her wear it? How often had he thought how pretty the bright color was lying against her nape, holding back her dark hair? Why, when he wanted to so badly, had he never dared fling it away to wrap himself in the spill of silken locks?
How could her perfume linger so long, a reminder of the day he’d lived the dream he hadn’t dared?
“The day I made love to Marissa.”
As the floodgates opened, memories he’d never allowed himself to dwell on came rushing in wistful vignettes….
Marissa riding as only Marissa could, her body moving in perfect harmony with the horse.
Marissa with a rifle in her hand, the dedicated hunter who could track anything, but could never pull the trigger.
Marissa picking an orchid to celebrate sighting an eagle.
Marissa that last day. Sad, solemn, walking through sunlight and shadow to come to him. The wistful woman he’d loved for longer than he would admit, wanting him, as he’d wanted her.
Marissa, the innocent, teaching him what love should be. Wishing he couldn’t forget her, and that they would meet again. Leaving with a wish unspoken, a secret he would never know.
Marissa, her hand raised in farewell, disappearing in the blinding furor of a storm.
“Dear God.” Jefferson clutched the scarf. Every moment he’d locked away in the back of his mind was as fresh, as real as the day it happened. Though he truly couldn’t forget on a subconscious level, he’d thought time had eased the bittersweet ache of mingled pain and joy. Proof in point, the portrait of Marissa hanging over the cabin’s single fireplace.
The painting had been a satisfying exercise, one he believed had leeched away regrets, pain, longing.
“Fool.” It would never end. Cristal’s shot in the dark was more intuitive than he’d let himself admit. No matter the games he played, no matter how deeply he hid his head in the sand, what he felt for Marissa was too vibrant to tame into memory.
As the guilt that plagued him for his part in sending his brother Adams to prison, never truly eased. Guilt that ruled and changed his life. Because of his teenage folly and what it had taken from Adams, he was never quite at home with his own family. His peace and refuge was the swamp. Then came the hurt of losing Marissa, and even the swamp was no longer a place of peace.
“Losing her made it all too…” Jefferson didn’t have the right word. Nothing was quite enough. Lashes drifting briefly to his cheeks, he stood remembering regret, helplessness. Pain.
“Too much,” he whispered, understanding at last. He’d never analyzed the truth of why he’d fled the lowcountry the second time. He knew now it had been because of a morass of unresolved guilt and loss and grief. Arizona offered solitude, a different sort of peace. Here there was no one to hurt. No one to lose. No one he might fail. “Until now,” he said softly. “If this is Marissa.”
It was. He knew it in his very soul. But an expert second opinion wouldn’t hurt. “Come, Satan.”
With a surge of impatience, he barely waited for the dog to stand obediently by his side. Bending down, he held the scarf before the sensitive black nose. “Fetch.”
The Doberman bounded away. Jefferson had barely moved to the doorway, when Satan returned. The page from a tablet was clasped in his mouth. Taking it from the sharp teeth, praising the dog with a stroking touch, Jefferson knew Satan’s instincts, and his, had been vindicated. The scent that lingered on the scarf and the message was the same.
Marissa was alive.
Stunned, his mind a morass of grief and relief—relief that she was alive, grief for all she’d been through, all she’d lost—he couldn’t think. Like a sleepwalker, he returned to the table and sat down. How long he sat there, staring up at Marissa’s portrait, he would never know. Time had no meaning. Nothing mattered but that Marissa was alive.
“Why contact me, sweetheart? Why in such troubled times?” The sound of his own voice was a wake-up call. Suddenly, as with a man who lived by his wits, his mind was keen, perceptive, and considering each point and question. The most important was answered by his own promise. This was more than the call of grief.
If ever you need me… “I’ll come for you,” he finished. A promise recalled, but deliberately left unsaid.
Marissa was alive. Given the subterfuge of the message, she was in danger. She needed help. She needed Jefferson Cade. “But where are you, sweetheart? What clue did you…” His voice stumbled as he remembered the scrap of newspaper falling to the floor. Instinct told him he would find the answers there.
Minutes later, Jefferson was on the telephone that had gathered dust during his tenure at the Broken Spur. In rare impatience, he paced back and forth as far as the cord would allow while he waited for his call to be put through.
When Jericho Rivers, sheriff of Belle Terre, responded, Jefferson spoke tersely. “I’m coming to the lowcountry, to Belle Terre. I need to meet with you and Yancey Hamilton.”
Jericho was known for his instincts and Jefferson was grateful for them now. Perhaps it was his tone, that he had called the sheriff rather than his own brothers, or simply that he was returning to Belle Terre, but for whatever reason, the sheriff only asked the particulars—when, where, how soon—and no more.
One step had been taken, leaving two more in the form of local calls. One to Sandy Gannon that would elicit no more questions than the call to Jericho. Jefferson trusted both men to do what was needed, when, and for however long.
The final call was to the airlines. The first stage of his arrangements was complete when he sat before a fireplace without fire. A letter had changed his brother Lincoln’s life. Now a letter had done the same for his. Laying a hand on the Doberman’s dark head, he muttered, “Sandy’s sending someone to look after the ranch and you. But I’ll be back, Satan. I don’t know when, or what will have changed, but I’ll be back.”
On a windswept plain, a solitary woman walked through a waking world. Wind tore at her clothes and tangled in her hair, but she didn’t notice. Had she noticed, she wouldn’t care.
Once she’d been at home and happy in this sparsely populated land. A place of towering mountains and endless deserts, of sprawling plains and rocky coastlines. Once she’d loved the still beauty of wild places sheltered from the wind. Once she’d waited in wonder for that moment when birdsong heralded the incipient day, then fell silent in the breathless trembling time when the sun lifted above distant, wind-scoured hills and bathed the world in a shower of light.
Once she’d loved so many things about this land. Now as she walked, cloaked in a mantle of solitude, waiting for another day that would be no more to her than simply another day, her sense of aloneness intensified. There was no beauty for her grief-stricken eyes. No serenity in a serene world. Not for her.
Never again for Marissa Claire Alexandre Rei in this land called Silver by the first conquistadores.
“Argentina,” she whispered as she paused in this sleepless hour, to stare at an untamed plain that in the half light had no beginning, no end. “A land of grief and loss.”
A hand closed over her shoulder, its warmth driving away the chill of the wind. “Are you all right, little Rissa?”
His voice was deep and quiet, his English excellent and only a little accented by the speech patterns of Spanish, his first language. His touch hadn’t startled her. Before he’d spoken, she’d known he had come to join her. “I’m fine, Juan.” Her brown eyes, turned black in the paling of dawn, met eyes as black. “Fine.”
“Who do you convince, querida?” he asked gently as his hand moved from her shoulder. “Yourself, or me?”
She laughed, a bleak sound. “Obviously no one.”
“You walk now because you don’t sleep,” Juan suggested, moving with her as she began to walk again. “Not because you love the land at dawn as you once did.”
Marissa didn’t speak. She didn’t look at this man she’d known all her life. The first to take her up on a horse, when he was in his teens and she was five. He was the first to instill in her a love of horses and riding. Juan Elia was a modern-day gaucho. A true descendant of Argentina’s famed, wandering horsemen. With the coming of the estancias, the ranches, the wandering had ceased. Gauchos had settled down to work for the families of the estancias, as the Elia family had worked for countless years for her father’s family. The life of the gaucho had changed, but the indomitable spirit hadn’t been lost, nor the horsemanship.
Nor the loyalty that kept him here in a secret camp on the plain, rather than at home with his wife and three-year-old son.
“It isn’t the same,” she answered at last. “Nothing is as it was in the days when you brought me here as a young girl. When we rode like Cossacks over the plain.”
“In the days when you wanted to be a real gaucho and wander the land?” Juan chuckled. “Before your mother and father sent you to the United States to become a Southern lady.”
“Does growing up tarnish everything, Juan?”
He stopped her then. A touch at her cheek turned her to him. The sun was just lifting over the crest of a hill, in the sudden sliver of light his Native American heritage was visible in a face that had gown more handsome with time. “Death and guilt have tarnished this land for you. Deaths you couldn’t prevent. Guilt you shouldn’t bear.”
“I was supposed to be on that plane.”
“But, because of a sick child, my child, you weren’t. You didn’t send your mother and your father and your husband to their deaths, querida. Whoever planted the bomb did that.”
“Because the plane disappeared off radar so abruptly doesn’t mean it was a bomb.” Marissa didn’t want to believe explosives had blasted her husband’s plane from the sky. Believing would lay the blame even more irrevocably at her door.
“I know,” Juan said adamantly. “Just as I know who.” Softly, he added, “As I know why.”
“No.” Marissa tried to turn away. Juan wouldn’t let her.
“This is no more your fault than any of the rest. You were married to a man more than twice your age. If love was lacking, loyalty was not. You have no reason to accuse yourself.
“If a man of power covets all your husband has, his business, his land, his wife, the sin isn’t yours. If he tries to coerce your husband to become a part of something evil, it isn’t your fault. If this man decrees all you love and you must be punished for being honorable and loyal to the principles of a lifetime, it isn’t your dishonor. If he carries out his threat in a way most horrible, the crime is his, not yours.
“My child lives because of your goodness. Your family died at the hand of an evil man. There is no connection.”
“That a bomb caused the crash was a passing speculation, dismissed as quickly,” Marissa reminded him.
“Yes,” Juan admitted. “But there was the threat. And all who knew have been silenced. Or so he believes.”
“Then, if Menendez should discover I’m alive, that would mean he would also have discovered you’ve hidden me and given me shelter. What more proof would he need to suspect you know everything? Then, my dear friend, your life would be at risk, as well.” Fear trembled in her voice for this trusted man who was more like a cherished brother than a friend.
“No, querida,” Juan soothed. “To the world, I am merely a gaucho who lived and worked on your father’s estancia. Who would suspect an enduring friendship begun between a girl of five and a boy of sixteen? Who would believe such a grand lady as Señora Rei helped to bring my long-awaited first child into the world. Or that the name he bears is in her honor?”
“But if they should…”
“You will be gone from here long before that could happen. And when you’re gone, we’ll be as we were. My Marta, Alejandro, and I,” he promised. “And you, Rissa? You will be safe.”
Marissa brushed a forearm across her brow as if she would shield eyes that had known too many tears. “Will Jefferson come? After so long will he remember a promise? Will he care?”
“If he is even half the man you spoke of, he will remember, he will care, and he will come.”
“We can’t be sure he got a message passed through so many hands. If he did, was it too cryptic? The article on the back of the newspaper may mean nothing to him. He might not read it.”
“He will read it, querida. He will read each word over and over again. Because he knows he must understand, he won’t stop until he does. He will see the marks and make words of them. Then, he will come to the estancia, and Marta will do the rest.”
“After that can you be safe, Juan? You or your family?”
“Yes,” he assured her as he smiled at a secret thought.
We will be safe and you, Marissa, will be in the arms of the man you love, at last.
Two
“What the hell is this about?”
If Jefferson expected an answer, the buffeting thunder of the helicopter would have made it incomprehensible. With it, the pilot who had introduced himself as Rick Cahill and a friend of Jericho Rivers’s, though courteous and efficient, was closemouthed. His eyes, cold steel, never wavered from the sky.
As he’d watched the helicopter fly fast and low through the canyon at dawn, Jefferson had known it was in the hands of an expert. When the monstrous machine touched down as gently as a dragonfly, he suspected the pilot could fly anything, anywhere.
“With his eyes closed.” The growled assessment drew the pilot’s attention. A riveting gaze turned. A lifted brow as black as shorn, curling hair, was the only variant in a calm expression.
Leaving his silence unbroken, Jefferson answered the question in those keen eyes with a shrug and looked away. But not before he wondered again at the strange turn of events.
Within hours of opening Marissa’s cryptic message, his ordered life had spiraled into quiet chaos. Plans made, airline reservations secured, the ranch bedded down for the night, he’d been packing a duffel when the telephone rang. Alarmed, he’d answered abruptly. The caller’s voice was familiar, stunned recognition came with Billy Blackhawk’s official preamble and statement of the purpose of his call. Though the sheriff of Silverton was far from a stranger, Jefferson would have questioned the message he’d relayed, were it not for his mention of Jericho.
Even then, he’d found it difficult to forego questions. But on the strength of Jericho’s name and Billy Blackhawk’s reputation, he had. Billy’s promise that everything would be explained when he arrived at an undisclosed destination didn’t ease his wariness. An astute judgment warned that questioning Rick Cahill would be useless. Preserving the silence between them, Jefferson stared out the window. That the helicopter was capable of astonishing speeds was evident. As they flew toward the sun and deeper into the day, one color of the earth segued into another in the blink of an eye.
When the chopper landed on an isolated airfield, Jefferson assumed it was to refuel. Instead, Cahill tossed the duffel to the tarmac, signaled his passenger should follow, and climbed from the cockpit.
In a ground-eating jog, Cahill approached the hangar. With a scarred hand, he signaled Jefferson to wait while he entered a small door and disappeared inside. Sooner than anticipated, the hangar doors rumbled open, and Cahill stepped out, a grin turning the steel of his eyes to smoke. “We made it.”
“Made what?” Jefferson asked as he joined Cahill.
“This destination, undisturbed. Which we hope means no one traced the letter to you or the Broken Spur.”
“Undisturbed.” Blue eyes narrowed. “By whom? Why?”
Cahill’s grin faded. “The same people who shot Paulo Rei’s plane out of the sky. Why can be better answered when we reach our final destination.”
Shuddering in renewed horror, Jefferson kept silent.
“The crew will be back shortly. To return the chopper to its owner, now that its maintenance is finished.” Another grin ghosted over the pilot’s lips. “We should be gone before then.”
“In that.” Jefferson spoke of a small jet. “Which, I suppose, has been sent for maintenance that will never take place.”
“Actually, the jet is for sale. The prospective buyer has taken it for a test flight and evaluation.”
Jefferson nodded. “Too bad he isn’t going to buy.”
“Yeah.” Respect gleamed in Cahill’s eyes.
In the air, Rick Cahill was less guarded, but just as intent. While the jet streaked toward the east and a clandestine meeting, Jefferson thought of a plane the world assumed Marissa was aboard. And that Rick claimed had been blasted from the sky.
Questions teemed in Jefferson’s mind. They went unvoiced. When the jet was traded for another helicopter, time zones had been crossed and daylight had burned away like a candle. But the terrain was green and mountainous now. He needed no answers to know this was the last of a convoluted journey.
Rick flew with the same skill and concentration, skimming through mountain passes as he followed the snaking path of a river. At a waterfall he banked and climbed, then dropped into a valley crisscrossed by creeks and a river filled by another waterfall. The tin roofs of two buildings gleamed in the sun. The helicopter hovered, then set down with an ease that recalled the canyon landing.
Jericho was there, flanked by Simon McKinzie whom Jefferson had met only once. Tall and massive, a lean Goliath whose mix of French and Native American heritage was evident in his chiseled features and gleaming black hair, the sheriff should have dwarfed the older man. But on the strength of that single meeting at Jericho’s wedding, Jefferson had discovered no one could overshadow the silver-haired, bull-shouldered McKinzie. A man who wore the mantle of honor and authority as naturally as most men wore their own skins.
Yancey Hamilton, once Belle Terre’s bad boy and now a man with mysterious and powerful associations—associations that prompted Jefferson’s call for his help—waited a little distance away. Ethan Garrett, except for Simon the most unexpected element in this mix of different and unique men, stood by Yancey. Yet, on second thought, Ethan—who was the brother of Jefferson’s own brother’s wife and a man given to protracted, unexplained absences—fit perfectly in this mix of competent, enigmatic men. Men, Jefferson knew in a glance, for whom danger was a way of life. And honor their reason for being.
“Quite a welcoming committee,” he observed. “Because of the Argentine connection?”
“Is that a question?” Rick asked.
“An observation, Rick.”
“That’s what I thought. You know everybody?”
Jefferson’s gaze returned to the impressive gathering. “Except for Mr. McKinzie, I thought I did. Now I’m not so sure.”
Rick rose from his seat. “They’re still the men you knew, but you’re about to see another side of all of us. The side Simon McKinzie saw when he recruited us for The Black Watch.”
“Gentlemen.” Simon McKinzie addressed the men gathered in the office of his mountain retreat. A place where The Black Watch came only rarely. Even more rarely, civilians, as he considered those not a part of the clandestine government organization that he had formed by order of a past president, and had solely controlled in the many years since. “Summing up. According to his ongoing dossier, in aspiring to become the next drug czar of the world, Vicente Menendez was determined to buy certain connections in Argentina as an alternate route of distribution through virgin territory. He chose an older man, thinking he would be more vulnerable. But, Menendez didn’t reckon with the integrity and iron will of Paulo Rei. Nor was he prepared for a woman as spectacularly beautiful and accomplished as Rei’s wife.
“Señora Rei would be remembered by all of you as Merrie Alexandre. To all but Jefferson. To whom, I’m told, she has always been Marissa Claire, her true, given name. Then, there’s Rick, of course, who hasn’t met the charming lady. A condition we should rectify, hopefully and soon. Any questions, thus far?”
No one spoke and Simon continued. “Menendez assumed, for a price, not only would Rei’s honor be for sale, so would his young wife. We suspect that in underestimating his prey, Menendez revealed more of his operation than was prudent. Before he had understood Rei was a man whose honor was priceless, as was his wife’s loyalty. After the brief suspicion of a bomb, we have reason to believe that fearing exposure and infuriated by Señora Rei’s rejection, Menendez ordered their plane shot down over the sea.
“This was purely speculation based on the suspicions of an informant. Until Jefferson called Jericho, we had no reason to think Marissa Rei was alive. Even if we had, we wouldn’t have known where to look for her. Now we do. Because Jefferson recognized the need for secrecy, we just might succeed.”
“So, we’re going after her.” Playing devil’s advocate, Rick Cahill locked stares with Simon. “Why?”
“Because she’s an American citizen, born in America of an American mother. Because Menendez is also an American, one who destroys lives for profit. Because I want him.” A cold stare turned colder. “Does that answer the question?”
Without waiting for a response, Simon looked at his men. Each of whom possessed unique talents, unique abilities, and infinite loyalty. “So we go?”
“We go.” Rick spoke first. A surprise to no one, including Jefferson, who had learned many surprising things this day.
The land was rugged and breathtaking and vast. The sturdy horse he’d been provided was an excellent mount. The trail he rode was not difficult if ridden with concentration and caution. At his back, but beyond sight, lay the Alexandres’s Argentine estancia, an oasis in the heart of a plain. Ahead, the Patagonian Alps, a part of the continent-spanning Andes, sprawled like sleeping giants. That the woman who was his guide knew the land and its irregularities was immediately apparent. Jefferson’s only chore was to follow and keep Simon’s timetable.
So, ever cognizant of the hour, he followed and worried about what he would find at their destination. And what would happen to the good people who had helped Marissa when she and he, and Simon’s men of The Black Watch were gone.
Go with caution to the Alexandre estancia, to Marta Elia, wife of the foreman. Horses and a guide will be provided. The rest we leave to you.
The scant message that brought him here was a brand in his mind. One he would never forget. As he would never forget Marta Elia and her husband Juan. Marissa’s allies who offered secret sanctuary to a friend with no concern for the trouble they might bring down on themselves.
“If Menendez finds out…if he finds them…” Jefferson didn’t want to think of it. Instead he fixed his gaze on Marta’s back, and on little Alejandro, her three-year-old son, who clung like a limpet to her waist. When she’d ridden into the copse of stunted trees where she’d directed him to wait, he hadn’t expected she would be his guide, nor that she would bring the child.
At first, given the obvious need for both speed and secrecy, he was disturbed by the boy’s presence. But he needn’t have been. Alejandro had ridden for hours beneath the blazing sun and had never complained. As the terrain gave way to a series of small rocky hillocks to climb and descend, the trail required more attention. But not so much that Jefferson didn’t wonder how it would be to have such a son. Or perhaps a daughter.
He would have been startled at a thought so foreign to what he expected his life to be, if Marta hadn’t slowed her horse and announced quietly, “We are here, señor.”
The plain was still and quiet but for the hum of the ever-blowing wind. Nothing moved in the empty expanse, and for all the hours of their ride, the mountains seemed no closer. The stark beauty Jefferson had found in the land was only cruel and harsh as fear closed about his heart like an icy fist.
Had Marta made a mistake? Was this not the rendezvous? Or had something gone wrong? Menendez?
“Marissa.” A shudder shook Jefferson’s lean, hard frame. Her name was a strangled whisper caught in the wind. And not even the blaze of the sun could warm him.
Then the bulky figure of a man was rising from an overgrown outcrop of stone where there should be none. He did not wear the celebrated ballooning pants of the gaucho. But his shaggy, dark hair just visible beneath his flat brimmed hat, his handsome features and demeanor left little doubt that he was one of the renowned horsemen of the Argentine pampas.
He carried no weapons but the tools of his work. Yet Jefferson didn’t question that he was a man who would protect what was his, or that his name was Juan. A shattered breath later, Marissa stepped from the curtain of scraggly vegetation that rimmed the stones, and out of Juan Elia’s shadow.
“I’m here, Jefferson.” Her voice was music.
As he heard her, Jefferson’s labored breath caught in his lungs. His mouth went dry, even as his heart lurched in an uneven rhythm. A woman so different from the woman he remembered, but still so beautiful, waited beneath his startled stare.
Her long brown hair had been cut shorter. No scarf held the sleek, sophisticated mane in check as it brushed the line of her shoulders. Beneath the low-tipped brim of a hat similar to that of her companion’s, her face was angular and too thin, revealing bone structure that promised lasting beauty in happiness or grief, old or young. Her eyes were shadowed and veiled as she held his gaze.
On a glance he had seen that she was too slender, too worn by her ordeal. Trousers of dark leather clung to her long legs and brushed the toes of her boots, making a tall woman seem taller, a slender woman, more slender. A lighter vest hung open over a soft shirt and brushed the belt buckled at her waist.
Marissa, dressed as he’d seen her hundreds of times. As strong as he knew she would be. Resting an unsteady hand on the pommel of his saddle, vaguely aware that Marta, Juan, and even Alejandro watched him, and waited, he asked, “Are you all right?”
Her eyelids swept down, shielding her eyes from his. Her lashes brushed the line of her cheekbone. But neither they nor the shadow of her hat could hide the toll of tragedy.
Then, as a strong woman rediscovered her faltering stamina, her lashes swept up. As her dark gaze met his again, her somber lips tilted in a wavering smile. “I will be,” she said in barely more than a whisper. “Now that you’re here.”
Now that you’re here. The words he didn’t know he’d waited for, spoken in the voice of the cultured woman. But with the wistfulness of the girl he’d first loved.
In a fluid dismount, Jefferson was out of the saddle and on the ground and Marissa was in his arms. “You’re safe now, sweetheart,” he promised against her hair as her hat went spinning in the wind and the dust.
Burrowing deeper into his embrace, her forehead against his shoulder, Marissa breathed in the familiar scent of him and reveled in his gentle touch. The scent she’d never forgotten. The touch that filled her dreams. “I was afraid you might not care. That you wouldn’t come.”
Moving her away only a little, a knuckle beneath her chin lifted her face and her gaze to his. “I promised, Marissa. Remember? If ever you need me…”
“I’ll come for you,” she finished for him as he intended she should. “And now you have. I should never have doubted a promise made by such a special friend. No matter how long ago.” Her laugh was low, a trembling sound, and there were tears on her cheeks. “First Juan and Marta, and now you, Jefferson. Friends risking your lives for mine. It’s more than I deserve. You’re all so much more than I deserve.”
“No.” Jefferson gathered her back to him, to hide the tears he couldn’t bear to see. “Never more than that.”
As he held Marissa, Jefferson was aware that Juan and Marta had moved away. Stealing rare moments for themselves even as they were giving reunited friends time alone. But only a little time, for in the distance he heard the rhythmic throb of a helicopter. The percussions of the blades grew closer and louder each passing minute. Though he didn’t want to let her go, there were duties to attend. Decisions to be made.
Releasing Marissa, but taking her hand, he went with her to Juan and Marta as they stood by the mass of stones. It was then Jefferson realized that rather than random rubble, they were part of the ruins of a structure. A home once, perhaps. One, he suspected, that served again as shelter.
Shelter for Marissa in the weeks since the crash of Paulo Rei’s plane. But what shelter would there be for this small family? Who would be their allies? If danger threatened, how could those who would repay their kindness help? Jefferson knew the collective answer to his question. Simon and the men and women of The Black Watch would offer and insure sanctuary for the Elias as the Elias offered sanctuary to Marissa. So would Jefferson Cade.
Addressing Juan and Marta, he spoke into the escalating cacophony. “The men for whom we wait are coming. There will be room in the helicopter for both of you and your son. It won’t be safe here if it’s discovered Marissa wasn’t on the plane and that you helped her.
“If you come with us, Simon assures safe passage into our country. With that, I promise a home and work for Juan with my brothers in the southeast. Or, if he chooses, with me in the west. Above all, we pledge you will be safe.”
Juan had turned to face Jefferson and Marissa. With Alejandro in his arms, his eyes dwelt on the face of the young woman he had known all her life. “Marta and I understand the danger. We have from the first.”
“Then you know it’s impossible for you to stay.” Jefferson met a dark gaze that took his measure.
“Do you understand the danger if we go, Señor Cade?” Juan countered, as he put his son down to play.
“You’re afraid that if you and Marta and Alejandro disappear there will be an investigation. Possibly raising suspicions that could lead to speculations about me.” Marissa’s hand grew taut in Jefferson’s as she saw beyond grief and guilt to the magnitude of what her friends had risked to help her.
“Any investigation will bring outsiders to the estancia, querida. People who will question, perhaps too skillfully. And someone will remember you were here, helping Marta with Alejandro’s illness when it was thought you were on the plane. The time and place and circumstances will be investigated, and someone will realize the value of what he or she knows.” Leaving the rest of his warning unsaid, Juan drew a harsh breath.
“Menendez has already proven his influence and his power. Someone will talk. For money, or in pain. Then he will search for you.” The gaucho’s darkly weathered face was grim. “The rotten threads of his ugly empire reach far and wide. His thugs know how to make the most unwilling speak. Wherever you are he will find you. And if he cannot take you, he will kill you, Rissa.”
“That’s the chance I prefer. The chance I would gladly take. Looking over my shoulder, waiting for Menendez would be easier than living in fear of what could happen to you and Marta, and to Alejandro.” Marissa looked from Juan to Marta, to Alejandro who played quietly in the dust. “He’s the child I couldn’t have, I won’t risk losing him.”
“This is our country.” Juan was adamant. “The estancia has been my home. If we stay, no suspicions will be aroused. The only newcomers will be those who inherit what your father left. We will be as safe here as anywhere, once you’re gone.”
“You don’t think someone might remember, as you say, and talk to the new owners?” Jefferson drew Marissa back to him. With his arm resting across her shoulder, he discovered the brush of the tips of her hair against his wrist had the power to tantalize, even in times of crisis.
“We are an isolated people, caring little for what happens in the world beyond the plain. The news of the crash and the suspicion of a bomb came first to me. Marissa was already in hiding before I spoke of the deaths to anyone. For all those of the estancia know, she had gone to join her family on the plane.
“Later, on the occasion of my visits here, Marta made sensible, believable explanations.” Juan’s look met Jefferson’s, daring him to doubt Marta. “As she convinced the curious you were an American journalist seeking a story, Señor Cade.”
“It’s too flimsy, Juan. You can’t trust that no one will question the timing.” It was naive of the gaucho to believe he could protect Marissa so easily. But Jefferson realized he couldn’t convince this most stubborn man of it. A man who didn’t want to uproot his family and turn his back on the only way of life he’d ever known any less than he wanted to see Marissa hurt.
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