A Season For Love
Bj James
Eighteen years ago, a terrible tragedy forced Maria Delacroix to flee Belle Torre– and Sheriff Jericho Rivers, her first love. Now she was finally back in Jericho' s warm embrace, but someone from the past was determined to destroy her. Both her life and her heart were in mortal danger…With her provocative smile and midnight hair, Maria was lovelier than ever. Jericho would do whatever it took to keep her safe– and to keep her in Belle Terre, at his side. So as Christmas approached, he vowed to offer Maria a season for love… one that would last for the rest of their lives.
“You Don’t Want To Hear It? Tough.
“You asked the question, Mr. Sheriff Jericho Rivers, so you’re going to know who my lovers were. You’re going to hear how they looked, and how they made me feel.”
Maria could’ve sworn his handsome, weathered face paled.
As her body responded to his heated, possessive look, she caught back an unsteady sigh and launched into her answer.
“My legion of lovers are all of a type. All are kind. Gentle. All dark, stronger than the strongest oak and taller than the sky. They all have eyes as silvery gray as a stormy sea. And they come to me in the night, wherever I am. Africa. Egypt. China. Russia. Belle Terre.
“They come to me only in my wishes and my dreams.” Her free hand trailed over his jaw, her fingertips lingered at his mouth. “Because all my lovers are you, Jericho. Wherever I am, wherever I go, only you.”
Dear Reader,
The year 2000 has been a special time for Silhouette, as we’ve celebrated our 20th anniversary. Readers from all over the world have written to tell us what they love about our books, and we’d like to share with you part of a letter from Carolyn Dann of Grand Bend, Ontario, who’s a fan of Silhouette Desire. Carolyn wrote, “I like the storylines…the characters…the front covers… All the characters in the books are the kind of people you like to read about. They’re all down-to-earth, everyday people.” And as a grand finale to our anniversary year, Silhouette Desire offers six of your favorite authors for an especially memorable month’s worth of passionate, powerful, provocative reading!
We begin the lineup with the always wonderful Barbara Boswell’s MAN OF THE MONTH, Irresistible You, in which a single woman nine months pregnant meets her perfect hero while on jury duty. The incomparable Cait London continues her exciting miniseries FREEDOM VALLEY with Slow Fever. Against a beautiful Montana backdrop, the oldest Bennett sister is courted by a man who spurned her in their teenage years. And A Season for Love, in which Sheriff Jericho Rivers regains his lost love, continues the new miniseries MEN OF BELLE TERRE by beloved author BJ James.
Don’t miss the thrilling conclusion to the Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS in Peggy Moreland’s Groom of Fortune. Elizabeth Bevarly will delight you with Monahan’s Gamble. And Expecting the Boss’s Baby is the launch title of Leanne Banks’s new miniseries, MILLION DOLLAR MEN, which offers wealthy, philanthropic bachelors guaranteed to seduce you.
We hope all readers of Silhouette Desire will treasure the gift of this special month.
Happy holidays!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
A Season for Love
Bj James
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my parents, with love
BJ JAMES’
first book for Silhouette Desire was published in February 1987. Her second Desire 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
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
One
He watched her.
From a small alcove above the atrium of the sprawling museum, he could see every patron and every celebrant, read the nuance of each gesture or expression. But it was only she who had the power to captivate. Only this woman who fascinated.
As he watched, music and laughter filled the grand hall from marble floor to gold leaf ceiling. Dancers, resplendent beneath the light of 18th-century chandeliers, reflected in one ornate mirror after another. Antique blue satin draping doors opening onto small galleries shimmered as darkly as the sea beyond.
The atrium was magnificent, an exquisite replica of the past the very cliquish Southern town of Belle Terre revered. In all its rich, Low Country grandeur, this was the heart of the museum, the piéce de résistance. An ironic setting for the beautiful woman.
There was a time she wouldn’t have been welcome. Venerable denizens greeting her familiarly tonight wouldn’t have spoken to her on the street. Men strutting in dusted-off tuxedos, lusting for a word or a smile, in the past lusted only for her nubile body.
She’d been brutalized and reviled by Belle Terre. Yet she moved among its self-appointed aristocracy graciously, as if she were one of them and had always been.
Politely refusing hors d’oeuvres, flutes of champagne, and invitations to dance by the dozens, she accepted the fawning acclaim, yet remained quietly aloof. In a gown that flowed like liquid gold about her, tastefully revealing the qualities that once sparked scorn and lechery, Maria Elena Delacroix, the outcast of Belle Terre, held court with the regal dignity of a queen.
Most of the men in the room were half in love with her. And one completely, irrevocably.
“Sheriff Rivers.”
Turning at the sound of his name, Jericho Rivers found Harcourt Kerwin Hamilton IV, better known as Court, and more recently as Deputy Hamilton, poised on the top step of the curving stair. “Something wrong, Court?”
“No, sir.” Moving to the sheriff’s side, Court looked out over the atrium. “It’s a grand affair. Grandmère says parties like this were common in her day.”
Grandmère. Jericho smiled at the term, a part of the pretentious idiom of the historical coastal town. The only name he’d been allowed to call his own grandmother. “I imagine a lot of things that are rare now were commonplace in her day.”
“But there’s something that isn’t commonplace in any day.”
Because he’d been taught from birth that it was rude to point, Court only nodded. But even the nod was superfluous. Jericho hadn’t a doubt Court’s youthful gaze was as drawn to Maria Elena Delacroix as any male’s in the room.
“My sister says you were friends of Ms. Delacroix in school. When she was part of your class at the academy.”
Court was still in short pants when his sister was in high school—he wouldn’t remember that Maria Elena was looked upon as the sort proper young girls of Belle Terre’s society shunned. Jericho doubted the older sister ever deigned to speak to her. Most certainly there had been no friendship.
Even he hadn’t been the friend he should have. Remembering how he had failed her, his voice was grim. “We knew her. All of us.”
A smile of masculine appreciation firmly in place, Court’s gaze followed the elegantly clad woman as she detached herself from the crowd, stepped between satin curtains, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. “With a face and body like that, she must have been the most popular girl in the whole school. But I bet none of you expected she would become a famous newscaster.”
Jericho was silent as he remembered the sad young girl who sat apart in morning assembly and walked the halls of Belle Terre Academy alone. As the hurt, bruised look that had haunted him for years loomed in his mind, he replied in a low, thoughtful voice, “I don’t think any of us knew what to expect of Ms. Delacroix.” After a long moment he added, “We still don’t.”
Court Hamilton was like an eager puppy. Too exuberant, too excitable, and far too inquisitive. “It’s good to have her back, though. Isn’t it?”
Was it? Jericho wondered as he pondered the consequences of her return. What dormant fear had she wakened? What upheaval would this single night bring to settled lives? Who would suffer or profit most, the denizens of Belle Terre, or she?
Angry for the past, distracted by contemplations of the near future, he lashed out when he shouldn’t have. “Is that why you came up here, Hamilton? To gossip?”
Beyond a puzzled look, Court Hamilton did not react to the rare barb. “No, sir. I came to take a turn here in the crow’s nest. I thought there might be some folk you would like to speak with before the last dance.”
Ignoring Hamilton’s joking title for the alcove, Jericho glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight. The celebration would be ending shortly.
“Thank you, Court.” Jericho Rivers smiled, rancor gone, but with no humor touching his calm gray gaze. “There is someone.”
Descending the stairs with the distinctive and uncommon agility of an extraordinary athlete, despite a ravaged knee, in seconds he was paused on the landing. Towering above the tallest of the celebrants by inches, his thick, dark hair gleaming with the soft sheen of coal, in the spinning kaleidoscope of lights, the sheriff of Belle Terre stood observing the crowd.
Unlike Maria Delacroix, he was one of them by birth. Born into the mystique of the merit and excellence of history, a scion of influence and old money. Schooled in charm and gallantry, as handsome as Lucifer, as magnetic, he could have been the prince of society. Yet he held himself apart. Apart from the pretenses, from the bluster and posturing. Apart and immune even from the playful flirtations of its polished, sophisticated femmes fatales.
Handsome as sin, yet aloof. Indeed, he was an intriguing enigma, an everlasting challenge. But tonight, as his silver-gray gaze moved over the crowd, there was an unapproachable look about him that discouraged even the most persistent of covetous ladies.
When the slow, steady perusal was done, his concern for any breach of security in these last minutes of the gala was allayed. Only then did he move through the throng, a distinguished figure with an air of authority. His formal wear draping the striking breadth of his shoulders and the deep musculature of his chest only a bit more impeccably than the khaki uniform of his standard daily wear. Given his size, his astounding presence, and the look of haunting secrets in his level gray gaze, the merrymakers gave way as if he were a human tide.
Crossing the marble floor quickly, speaking pleasantly but abruptly disengaging himself from any insistent conversations, Jericho didn’t pause until he reached an open door.
As he stood, remembering, the orchestra finished the last of a Cole Porter classic. One of his favorites. He didn’t notice.
Into the lull, almost too quietly to be heard, he murmured, “Good evening, Maria Elena.”
Two
“Is it really, Sheriff Rivers?” She stood alone on the small gallery, her back to him, her hands gripping the massive balustrade the only sign of tension. The only sign that she waited for him. “A good evening, I mean.”
She faced him, her smile rueful, provocative. With the moonlit sea at her back and the wind teasing tendrils of midnight hair about her shoulders, she was the stuff of dreams and old memories.
“Pleasant enough.” Moving from the doorway, leaving the pomp and revelry of the gala behind him, Jericho crossed the shadowed space separating them. The scent of her perfume mingled with the night. A blended fragrance of sultry intoxication.
As he stood by her side, looking out at the surf, her cheek nearly brushed his shoulder. Tilting her head, she spoke softly. “It’s been a long time, Jericho.”
“Yes.” The word fell like a stone between them. With the music quieted, only the rhythm of distant waves washing over the shore breached a wall of silence.
The pale globe of a full moon rode low over the surf, its reflected light a river of silver brightening the night. Remembering the times he’d watched the same view from his own gallery with his mind wandering to the girl she’d been, Jericho waited. Feeling her gaze moving over him, contemplating, analyzing, he didn’t act or react. The first move would be hers.
Fronds of a palm brushed against a nearby wall. Rigging of beached sailboats clanked against masts. The engines of a freighter, barely a lighted dot against the horizon, thrummed for a moment on a gust, then faded into nothing as it passed.
As suddenly as it began, the muted cacophony ceased. Leaving behind a silence aching to be broken.
“I never expected to see you here again,” she said, at last, as the band played the first measure of “Goodnight Ladies.” “I never expected I would return to Belle Terre.”
“Nor did I.”
Laughing a breathy laugh, she shook her head. “Jericho Rivers, young Goliath and rare friend, still a man of few words.”
Shifting slightly, with his hand resting on the heavy iron of the gallery railing, from his great height he looked down at her. “What would you have me say, Maria Elena?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why did you come?” His voice was deep, as mild as the night. As intriguing.
“This was an assignment. Only an assignment.”
“The opening of a museum devoted to the history of a small coastal town?” he scoffed. “Hardly a noteworthy event. Certainly nothing to merit the attention of a famous news personality.”
“Human interest, Jericho. The history of Belle Terre and its reverence for the past constitute human interest.”
“Ah-hh, of course. That is your forte, the element that sets you apart in your work and your photography. So, when our tidbit of publicity happened to stray across a strategic desk, someone recalled Belle Terre was your hometown. And voilá!—you’re here,” he surmised quietly. “Is that how it went?”
“Something like that.”
“You could have refused. Yet you didn’t.” There was a nuance of tenderness in his comment. Caught in a shaft of light, his face was barren of expression, but his gaze was turbulent.
The heat of that gaze reached into her, touching the secret, lonely places, waking needs and dreams she’d put aside. A gaze that set her heart beating so wildly, she feared it was visible beneath the clinging gown. Resting a hand on the curve of her shoulder, willing away tensions that had gathered and grown the whole evening, she moved her head in the barest denial. Her lips formed a silent no.
“Why? Why have you come, Maria Elena?” His voice dropped lower, even deeper. Yet the tone was no less compelling when he questioned again, “Why didn’t you refuse?”
A cloud passed over the moon, in the pale darkness the sound of the sea seemed muted. In a voice in keeping with the hush, she began as if by rote, “Reporting news is my job. I don’t choose the place. I simply go where it takes me. This time it brought me…”
Jericho moved closer, the subtle and familiar scent of him as compelling as his voice, as unsettling as a touch. Her tongue faltered on the beginning of a glib lie. The strange undercurrent in his questions, and a mood she didn’t understand, simmered scarcely below a debonair veneer. Not sure how to respond or react, picking up a lost thread, she began again. “This time it brought me…”
“Home,” he provided the word she never intended, in a voice unlike any she’d ever heard. The storm was gone from his gaze. The battle he’d fought with himself had ended. When he looked at her there was only tenderness. “Home to Belle Terre. Home to me.”
“No!” Her denial was a strangled cry. The hand at her shoulder clenched and slipped to her breast. With a sweep of her lashes, shielding her from his riveting gaze, she turned her face away. A long breath shuddered through her, the pulse at her throat hammered as if her heart would race into madness. With a low moan, she lurched forward, desperate, intent on fleeing.
Maria was quick. Jericho was quicker. His hand flashed past her, closing, as the other, over the railing. Holding her in that imprisoning space, yet not touching her, he bent to her. “Stay.”
“I can’t.” Her voice was low and unsteady. “The rest of the crew will be looking for me.”
“To go back to the inn?” He moved another subtle step, his body brushed hers. The heat of him surrounded her. “To sleep alone?”
“Yes,” she flung at him. “Alone!”
“That’s what you want?” His left hand curled at her waist. With his right he turned her face to his. One gray gaze dueled with another. “Is it, truly, Mary Elena?”
Gathering courage, she glared into his probing stare. “I came to fulfill an assignment, Jericho, nothing more. When and with whom I sleep isn’t a concern.”
“Liar.” The word had the ring of an endearment as his lips slanted in a patient smile. Looking away from her stormy scowl, his gaze moved down her throat to the shadowed cleft of her demure décolletage. “Isn’t that why you wore a gown that clings like liquid gold and blazes like fire? Why have you waited alone on the gallery, except to drive me to this?”
“I came back to Belle Terre on assignment. Not home. Not to you.” The litany of her denial fell from rigid lips. When she would have looked away again, the curve of his palm about her cheek stopped her. “Don’t, Jericho.” Anger blazed out of desperation. “I came to gather news. I don’t want this. I…I don’t want you.”
“No?” He smiled in sympathy as she fought the battle he’d fought for hours. His fingertips drifted down her cheek and throat to the pulsing hollow at its base. “Then what does this mean?”
Catching his roving fingers in hers, changing his focus and avoiding his question, with thumb and forefinger she turned the scarred and worn gold band he wore. “And this?” she whispered. “A wedding band, worn on your right hand? What does it mean?”
Closing his fist over hers, lifting their joined hands, he stroked the flesh of her wrists with his lips before he met her gaze again. “It means whatever you want it to mean, Maria Elena. As little or as much and for as long. Perhaps just for the night.”
With a low sound that might have been laughter were it not for the raw note of pain, she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “Damn you, Jericho. Damn you to hell and back. Eighteen years, and then this.”
“I take that as a yes.” Burying his hand in the dark wealth of her hair, sending the anchoring pins flying, he waited in simmering, barely contained impatience.
Raising her face to his, with her hair tumbling from the glamorous coiffeur as if it had waited as impatiently for his plundering caress, she whispered, “Yes.” Then again, “Yes!”
Finding strength in fury and need, a whisper became a low cry: “Damn you, Jericho!” Hands sliding over his jacket and the smooth tucks of his shirt, she circled his nape with clasping fingers. Drawing his mouth to hers, she whispered. “In hell or heaven, after all the years, why is it always you? Always only Jericho, with no thought of tomorrow.”
“Hell will come soon enough, my love.” Sweeping her into his embrace, he pledged, “But for tonight, I promise only heaven.”
Maria slept. Like a child too tired to toss or turn, she lay half curled on her side, her hair spread in dark rivulets over his pillow, a hand tucked beneath her chin. But it was more than a long night of unquenchable passion that caused the exhaustion marking her face and body. Far more than exhaustion that made her sleep too tense, too still, too guarded.
The first glint of dawn filtering into his bedroom woke him. Concern kept him sitting by the bed keeping watch as she slept. With each precious second, as the day grew older and first light touched the room, he worried it would disturb her. Yet he dared not risk the clatter of closing row after row of shutters.
Twice, while he watched, she frowned and tossed her head, muttering in a language he didn’t understand. Twice he caught the sliding sheet, drawing it over her naked breasts again. Returning to his chair each time with the ache of desire, he knew wherever sleep had taken her, it wasn’t to him and the night they shared.
“I want it all, sweetheart. The night, the day, your dreams. You, Maria Elena…waking or sleeping.” His voice was hushed, though there was no one to hear.
Unable to resist temptation, he took her hand in his and was surprised when her frown faded. When, unconsciously soothed by his touch, the unnatural tension of her sleep grew restful, then serene. Lacing the fingers of both hands around hers, he leaned his forehead against them and closed his burning eyes.
Perhaps he slept, steeped in the scent of her, locked away from all but the muffled sounds of a world not yet awake. Perhaps he only slipped into waking dreams as he remembered the night, the darkness, the dusky room spangled with wisps of moonlight. Soft sighs and shuddering breaths. Wandering, wondering touches, hungering kisses lingering long and deep. Low sweet cries speaking more than words.
The caress of her body gliding over his. The tease of her swaying breasts as she leaned over him discovering the changes time and manhood had wrought in the boy who had been her first lover.
The fall of her tears as she kissed the pallid scars of too many surgeries on his knee. The catch in her breathing as he drew her from her exploration, cradling her breasts in his palms, cherishing nipples furled like new rosebuds with his lips and tongue.
In his drowsy, waking dream, he remembered the play of light and darkness veiling her in tantalizing mystery as her long legs twined about him. He would remember forever the thrust of her body accepting him, enfolding him, taking him deep inside her.
He remembered the clasping heat, the sweet caressing strokes soothing him, comforting him. Maria driving him mad with delight, with ecstasy. And as he’d dreamed she would one day, with love.
“Jericho?” The whispered word and the brush of fingertips skimming over his hair brought him back.
Lifting his head, his gaze collided with Maria’s. Neither spoke. As her questing fingers grew still, neither moved.
After a moment, she smiled a contented smile. “Jericho.”
Dropping a kiss on her knuckles, he said, “Good morning, Maria Elena.”
Tracing the line of his lips, her smile softened. “Maria Elena. Only you call me that. To the rest of the world I’m simply Maria, and sometimes, Ms. Delacroix.”
“What would you have me call you?”
“I like how you say my name.” A wandering caress trailed from his face to the hands that encircled hers. Her smile wavered. “I thought I dreamed you.”
“I’m real, my love.”
“In a world of arrogant pretense, you were always my anchor, always my courage. My only reality.”
“You left me.” His voice was tender and accusing.
“It was for the best, Jericho. If I’d stayed, what would I have become? What would you?” Taking her hand from his, clutching the sheet, she sat up. Bracing against the bed, she looked around, remembering more than seeing the bold masculinity of the room. The neutral decor in ever-darkening tones, the perfect refuge for the quiet times of this worldly man who had been the boy she’d loved.
“You were a Rivers. With all the confidence the name commands, you knew who you were, and understood what you could be. I was a Delacroix. Until I left Belle Terre, I never understood I could be more than the outcast’s brat. More than a girl with courtesan’s blood in her veins. No better than a courtesan herself, in the eyes of Belle Terre’s very proper society.
“Loving you was an impossible fairy tale that ended the night I was attacked. When the boys finished teaching me my place, one threatened rape. He was, as he saw it, only hurrying along the inevitable. Making clear to me what I could expect, what I would be, if I stayed in Belle Terre.”
“Masked cowards,” Jericho snarled. “They hurt you, and they took something precious from us. They didn’t succeed in the rest, but their purpose was served.” His face turned grim with the memory of the night he found her on a darkened street, fighting for her life. A young girl, his girl, clothes torn half away, a gang of boys, with stocking caps hiding their faces, circling her like a pack of wolves. “In the end, you believed them. Not in me.”
“You were barely eighteen, Jericho. No matter what weight the Rivers name carried, no matter how strong and brave and honorable you were, you couldn’t change the prejudices of an aristocratic Southern town.” Maria stroked tangled sable locks from his forehead. “Darling, you still can’t.”
“That means you’re leaving again.”
“The story’s finished. There’s no more to be done here.”
“What about this?” Catching her wrist, he drew her hand from his hair. “What does it mean?” A bangle threaded through a tiny gold band, then soldered into an unbroken circle, hugged her wrist. He hadn’t spoken of it at the gala, or in the passion of the night. Now, as it glinted against the sheet, it took his breath away.
“A tribute.” Maria answered. “To a memory I’ll treasure forever.” A slight twist of her wrist and the matching band he wore lay as inexorably between them as the bangle. “Something beautiful that can only be a memory for both of us.”
“If you should fall in love again? What happens then, Maria Elena Rivers?”
The name she’d carried in her heart for years brought tears to her eyes. Blinking them away, she shook her head. “I won’t.”
He wouldn’t let it go at that. “And if I should?”
Pain clotted her throat. But because he deserved the life and love she couldn’t offer, she gave him the only answer she could. “When that time comes, I won’t stand in your way.”
Jericho Rivers laughed. But only a fool would hear humor in the sound. “In half a lifetime our paths have crossed twice, with the same culmination. One wonders if that should tell us something.”
“It does tell us something. We’re star-crossed lovers, destined to love forever yet never meant to be. Belle Terre was the wrong place, our teen years were the wrong time.”
“Do you ever wonder what might have happened if…?” Jericho’s voice drifted into silence, leaving the rest unsaid.
As if she could wish the past away, she nodded. “If my father hadn’t been that rare male of the Delacroix family? If he hadn’t loved Belle Terre too much to leave it despite its archaic prejudices? If he’d never fallen in love with my mother, and she with him? If neither of them had ever picked up a liquor bottle? But most of all, if we’d met in college as strangers. Or in another life? Yes,” she whispered softly. “I wonder. But—”
“But we didn’t,” he interrupted gently. “Instead we entered into a marriage that never began, yet never ends.”
“Never began, never ends, but offers rare days like this.”
Jericho smiled a real smile then, willing to leave the conundrum for another time. “So what do we do about it?”
“Well.” Maria pretended to consider the possibilities. “The day is hardly born, my bags are packed and my plane doesn’t leave until long after six. All that’s left to do is pick up the rental car from the museum parking lot.”
“It’s also Sunday,” Jericho contributed to the list of enticements. “My day off.” A glance at a bedside clock told the time. “That leaves us more than twelve precious hours. Any idea how we could spend it, Mrs. Rivers?”
“One.” Folding back the robe he wore, she slipped it from his shoulders and down his arms. “One very good idea, Sheriff Rivers.” As silk fell away with his impatient shrug, she drew him to the bed, asking wickedly, “What else would star-crossed lovers do with such rare and wondrous hours as these?”
“Twelve hours? Sweetheart,” Jericho groaned softly against her throat. “I don’t think I have the stamina.”
“Ah, my only love, you’ll never know until you try.”
His reply was a laugh and a kiss, as he began again a sweet, languid seduction. With tender restraint he caressed her, touching her face, stroking her hair, tracing the fan of her lashes as they lay against her cheeks. As if he’d never seen her or touched her before, he found the textures of her skin fascinating.
He was a man storing memories to last a lifetime, tracing the line and curve of her body, discovering once more his reasons for wanting her, for loving her. As she clung to him, her fleeting caresses driving him to the brink of distraction, he moved over her at last. For Jericho, the joining of his body with hers was as sweet as the first time, as poignant as if it were the last.
Then time and memory and reason ceased. There was only the passion of a man for a woman. And her need for him.
Like shadows cast against the fiery canvas of dawn he made love to her, and she to him. And when need was answered and passion spent, their passing brought peace and a quiet time to cherish.
Her head on his shoulder, his fingers woven through her hair, they lay in sun glow and contented stillness. Long into a drowsy silence, she stirred, her fingers trailed along his throat and over his chest. With a hushed, wordless sound, she kissed the heated curve of his throat, and sighed as she nestled against him.
Beyond tall doors, a breeze stirred, rich leaves of summer rustled in its promise of heat. A rising tide, tumbling sand and shells, added another note in summer’s waking song. In the peace, trills of drowsy, childish laughter were borne on the wind.
And somewhere in the distance, yet not too far, the cry of a fitful baby rose and ebbed, then was silent.
Maria tensed, the lazy caress that moved lightly over the contours of his throat and chest hesitated. She stared at sun-washed leaves, but in her mind she saw darkness, not the last of dawn. And glittering green fluttered against the backdrop of an endless sky, with blue turned as black as the night.
As black as the night those long years ago. The unspoken words sent a cold chill shuddering through her.
“Ah!” Her cry was torn from the depths of heartache. Her fingers curled into tight fists. “Damn them! Damn them!”
Jericho made no move to hold her, no effort to stave off the bitter, hurting rage. He knew where she’d gone. As he waited for the brewing storm to break, he knew why.
He better than anyone understood she needed this. The rage, the cleansing of silent hate. Only the unreal and inhuman wouldn’t. And Maria Elena Rivers was very real, very human.
“Were they there last night?”
Jericho only shook his head. She knew the answer as well as he. Perhaps, in her subconscious, better.
“Was there one who offered me a glass of champagne? Or asked me to dance? Dear God!” Bolting upright, she buried her face in her hands. After a time that seemed forever, she lifted her gaze to the light streaming through all doors. Shuddering, she whispered, “Did one of them touch me?
“I kept listening to voices, hoping I could recognize an inflection, a tone, even a word. Once I was so sure. Then I didn’t know.” She paused again, reliving the past through the tarnished splendor of the evening.
Hearing her terror, hurting for it, Jericho waited silently for the rest. His wait was not long.
“I looked into the eyes of every man who approached me, searching for guilt, regret, remorse. Maybe concern or fear. Even gloating.” Holding one hand before her, clasping it as if she held something abhorrent, she whispered, “For years I’ve tried to see a face hidden by the dark and the shadow of the tree—the face of the one boy whose mask I ripped off. But there’s never anything.
“Then, tonight, there was. Only a sensation of recognition. No one person, nothing concrete, only an air of discomfort. The smell of fear. Then it was gone.” A bitter laugh rattled in her throat. “I’m babbling, making no sense.”
Drawing her hands through her hair, sweeping it from her face, she hardly noticed when it fell against her throat and cheeks again. “Maybe I wanted it so badly I imagined it. Maybe—” Stopping short, her head jerked in violent denial. “No.”
Turning to him, not caring that the sheet slipped to her waist, she met his hurting gaze. “I’m not wrong. I don’t know who, perhaps I never will, but one or all of them were there tonight.”
Jericho drew a harsh, grating breath, desperate to hold her, to comfort her. But as much as he needed it, she needed the exorcism more. At last he said quietly, “You weren’t wrong.”
At the leap of surprise in her eyes, with two fingers he touched her cheek. “No, I don’t know who they are, but I know the type. Few of our classmates who are living in Belle Terre would have missed the celebration, or the chance to see you.”
“To discover what the tacky girl from the wrong family had become?” Maria wondered aloud. “Or testing my memory?”
“A little of both, I suspect.” She’d walked among her tormentors head high, a calm, gallant smile for everyone. What had the men who’d been the boys who hurt her thought? Had they gloated? Cringed in fear of recognition? And, Jericho wondered, had any felt remorse? “We’ll never know, sweetheart.”
“Unless I remember.” Taking his hand in hers, lacing her fingers through his, she recalled the gentleness of his touch, when others had been cruel. “But you don’t think I ever will, do you?”
“I’m sorry.” His thumb caressed the back of her hand, offering comfort for his doubt. “Not after such a long time.”
“She would be eighteen, and a summer girl, if they’d let her live.” Clinging to his hand and the stability of the present, in her mind she returned to a night so long ago. “The diner closed late, and I was hurrying to meet you on the beach. They were waiting, hidden in the shadows of the old oak. If I’d paid attention. If I’d been wary, she would have had a real birthday. Perhaps not the one we expected, but not the one they gave her.”
“What could you have watched for, Maria Elena? What should you have been wary of?” Jericho refused to let her shoulder any part of the blame for the miscarriage of their child. “Belle Terre was the safest of places then. A sleepy town of unlocked doors and open windows. No one could have anticipated or predicted what happened.
“If anyone is to blame, it would be me. Until your shift was done, I should have waited for you at the diner, not on the beach.”
“But you couldn’t have known,” Maria protested.
“No, I couldn’t.” Jericho made the point he intended as she rushed to defend him. “And neither could you.”
Maria sank into silence, a somber look replacing the joy of the hours before. Gradually her frown softened. “I went by the cemetery, I saw the flowers. I thought you might forget.”
“It isn’t a date I’m likely to forget.” Every year on a mid-summer evening, he visited the secluded spot. There was only a tiny stone, its inscription simply Baby Girl. This was how Maria Elena had wanted it. To protect herself, or him? Or even the baby? He’d never had the chance to ask. She’d been too physically and mentally wounded to question.
Then, before he knew it, before she was truly recovered from the ordeal, she had gone, leaving behind the horror of Belle Terre. Leaving him. For these years he’d accepted this as what she wanted. And for years he’d left a small bouquet on the tiny pauper’s grave.
“Thank you for that, Jericho.” After a moment she added, “It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the museum would open and I would catch the assignment at exactly this time.” Wearily, fatigue returning, her voice grew hoarse, her words an effort. “Or was it fate?”
Jericho didn’t answer. Drawing her into his arms, he held her while they watched the morning sky. Too soon she would be leaving. The horror of a gentle seventeen-year-old girl was still too strong. Too vivid. He was losing her again. But until then, he would hold her and keep her safe.
He sensed the exact moment she drowsed. Her body grew heavy, the hand clasping his uncurled. Her breaths slowed to a measured rhythm. And he hoped that just for a while, she could rest.
Jericho had drifted into a somnolent state himself, when the jangling chime of his doorbell roused him. Slipping his arms from Maria Elena and covering her carefully, he pulled on his discarded slacks, then hurried to answer the summons.
“Court!” The deputy’s normally spotless uniform was stained and smudged with soot. “What’s wrong?”
“A problem at the museum.”
“What sort of problem?”
“Just after dawn, a kid hot-wired a rental car in the museum parking lot. The culprit was the wannabe delinquent, Toby Parker.”
“And?”
“The car blew him across the lot. Lucky for the kid it did. He’s toasted around the edges and bruised, but he’ll see his day in court. The rental burned to a twisted heap.”
Startled, Jericho tried to think. “The museum isn’t officially open. Why would a rental car be left in the lot?” Abruptly, like a knife in his heart, he understood. Maria Elena.
“We found enough of the tag to trace. That’s how we know it was a rental. Ms. Delacroix’s.”
Jericho’s head cleared, his response was coolly concise. “You’ve secured the area? Everyone knows what to do?”
“Yes, sir. No one touches anything until you get there.”
“Good. Make sure nobody does. I’ll be five minutes behind you.” Closing the door after his deputy, Jericho stood with his hands on the heavy panels, his thoughts a morass of fear and worry. A light step and the rustle of cloth made him turn. Maria was there, in the bedroom doorway, a beautiful waif lost in the folds of his robe. The woman he loved, and must keep safe. “You heard?”
“I wondered what effect my homecoming might have on my old friends in Belle Terre.” She was ashen, but calm. “Now we know.”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Jericho contradicted. “Not even if it was a bomb. But whatever it was, it could have been gang related, targeting the kid who got singed. That it was your rental could be purely coincidence.”
“Gangs in Belle Terre?” Maria made a doubting grimace.
“Damn right. Belle Terre isn’t the sleepy, peaceful town you left eighteen years ago.”
“Perhaps not,” she conceded. “But you don’t believe the bomb in my car was a coincidence any more than I believe it.”
“I don’t know what I believe,” he admitted honestly. She was too astute not to recognize evasion. “We both know I can’t make a judgment until the investigation is complete. For that reason I’ll feel better when you’re on the plane and out of reach.”
“There’s just one catch, Jericho.”
His thoughts filled with the carnage she’d barely escaped, he looked at her, a questioning expression on his face.
“I won’t be on that plane.”
“Like hell you won’t.”
“Sorry, Sheriff.” Oblivious of his robe puddling at her feet and flowing inches beyond her hands, she crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb. In a voice that was ominously pleasant, she declared, “Until this is resolved, I’m staying in Belle Terre.”
“Dammit, Maria Elena…” He stopped as she slipped off his robe and let it fall at her feet. “What are you doing?”
“I’m getting dressed.” Her comment was tossed over her shoulder as she walked away. “You should, too. Unless you plan to go in that particularly fetching, but unprofessional, state.”
“Go where? What state?”
“To a bombing, darling. I’ve no choice but my gown. But, as sheriff, do you really want to go in tuxedo slacks, looking exactly like you just spent hours making love to your wife?”
“My wife?”
“Until you find someone else.”
Jericho smiled hollowly. Maria Elena had just said the words he’d waited half his life to hear. At the time he least wanted to hear them. She shouldn’t stay. He wouldn’t let her if it was in his power to stop her. But even as he regretted her decision, he knew it was the decision he would have made.
To the world she was Maria Delacroix. To Jericho she was Maria Elena Rivers, a woman of extraordinary courage.
His wife.
“Until forever,” he promised grimly. “If I can keep you safe.”
Three
Maria Elena Delacroix Rivers moved like a cat. A very savvy cat who knew her way around the jungle. Any jungle. Even this one, and what it had become in an instant.
Her rental was a burned-out skeleton squatting in the nether regions of a long deserted parking lot. But, oddly, little around it showed more than the insidious signs of scorching from an intensely generated heat. Even the kid who’d decided to help himself to a joyride in the lone vehicle left unattended in the lot was okay. Just bruises, some burns, maybe a broken bone. A small price for a close call and a lesson, hopefully, well learned.
While rescue and police personnel dealt with the kid, Maria circled the car, studying it from every angle. As Maria studied the car, Jericho studied Maria.
Her work as a newscaster of no little fame also included quite a number of stints as a foreign correspondent. One such assignment had taken her to the Middle East. With her trusty microphone in hand, and her own personal camera never very far away, she’d put together riveting reports. With Pulitzer prize photographs thrown in for compassionate emphasis. Jericho remembered that many of her published photographs of that recent time portrayed scenes more than a little like this one.
“You’ve seen this before,” he surmised as her circling inspection brought her close.
Maria’s eyes narrowed, the piercing scrutiny of her gray, level gaze didn’t alter, or turn from the car. “Almost,” she answered softly. “But not quite.”
A special bomb squad had flown in from Columbia 150 miles from Belle Terre. These experts in every known method of blowing a person, place, or thing to kingdom come, had studied every inch of the car, the parking lot, and the museum—with more to come later. Yet it was Maria who commanded Jericho’s attention. Maria whose answers and opinions he sought. But this terse comment wasn’t enough.
“Explain,” Jericho said, softly. Very softly, but any who knew him would have recognized it as a tense command.
“It’s different from the bombings I’ve seen and photographed.” Maria turned now to look at him. “At first I thought he, whoever he might be, didn’t know his stuff.”
“And now?” Jericho had his own thoughts that had quickly grown into conviction. Now he wanted hers, with no other influence.
“Now I think he knew exactly what he was doing. The only thing he didn’t take into consideration, and couldn’t calculate, was our young car thief. Who just had the bad luck of being at the wrong place at the right time.”
“Then you don’t think the explosion occurred in tandem with ignition of the engine.”
“Only as a coincidence. If it was truly in tandem at all.” With splayed fingers, Maria combed the heavy wealth of her dark hair from her face and, again, didn’t seem to notice that it fell back exactly as it had been. “I’m betting your experts have already found a timer. Probably as part of an incendiary device attached within the necessary proximity of the fuel tank.”
Jericho’s head jerked once in admission, but he said nothing else. As intrigued as before, he watched and waited.
“This was meant to be a warning, Jericho.” Maria didn’t move this time as she raked the destroyed hull again with a narrowed stare. “Only a warning.” She looked to him then, reading his concurring thoughts on his darkly grim face. “But as warnings go, it was worse than stupid.”
Beyond the lift of a questioning brow barely visible beneath the tilt of his broad-brimmed hat, as sheriff, friend, and lover, he offered no opinion.
Maria crossed her arms beneath her breasts, mindful even in this lurid situation of the lingering tenderness left by the scrape of Jericho’s beard and the sweet tug of his suckling. Curbing a sense of mourning for the exuberant innocence of those recent hours, her gaze scoured over the blackened steel one more time before returning to his. Her voice was soft, a little strained as it echoed the bitterness in her eyes. “Whoever he is, he’s not only stupid, but a fool in the bargain.”
“Stupid for this single, senseless act, because he answered the most critical question you asked yourself last night.” Jericho spoke at last, quietly, with every trace of emotion carefully leached from his voice. “He was one of the patrons at the museum.”
“A patron of the past of Belle Terre.” The title seemed ludicrous given a less archaic past. A past that directly spawned this oblique attack. “A patron and a fool if he thinks that because I ran away once, I would again.
“Because things are different now,” she said, almost to herself. “I’m not that frightened young girl from the wrong side of town anymore. And it’s been a long time since I ran from anything.”
Except me, Jericho wanted to say.
Only hours ago he would have given his soul to keep Maria in Belle Terre. But he knew that neither his soul nor his love was enough. Now that the gauntlet had been thrown and taken up, he wondered if it would mean her life if she stayed.
“Sheriff Rivers.” Court Hamilton stood a pace away, a look of apology for intruding on an obviously intense conversation on his face. “Uncle…I’m sorry, sir. I meant, Captain Hamilton would like a word with you.”
Yancey Hamilton, head of the state’s special forces unit, was as much a gentleman as he was a professional. If he sent the deputy to interrupt what he would surely perceive as Jericho’s interview of the intended victim, it was because he’d made an important discovery, or arrived at a pertinent opinion. Maybe one Maria Elena shouldn’t hear. At least not just yet.
“Of course.” Turning from his deputy to Maria, Jericho took her hand in both of his. “Beyond what further study the special investigators might need, there’s nothing else to be done here. If you don’t mind, I’ll ask Deputy Hamilton to take you back to…”
“Back to the Inn at River Walk,” Maria inserted for him. For reasons she didn’t understand, and certainly couldn’t explain, she didn’t want to tarnish her memories of her night with Jericho with the shocking ugliness of the morning. “I have a room there. I was scheduled to check out this morning, but I doubt Eden Cade will object if I stay over for a bit longer.”
Jericho would have felt better if she were tucked away in the safety of his own home. Or better yet, if she were miles removed from any threat of danger. But this was neither the time nor the place to discuss what he wanted for her.
“The Inn at River Walk, then.” A frown channeled between his brows and deepened the lines at his eyes briefly before being chased away by a forced smile. Releasing her and stepping away, Jericho addressed his deputy. “Court, if you would, please escort Ms. Delacroix to her lodgings. Stay close, until Yancey and I have finished here and I’m free.”
Deputy Hamilton snapped to attention crisply. “Yes, sir.”
Maria realized then that he was probably one of Lady Mary’s students. As she had been, but not alongside her classmates. The genteel but impoverished old lady, with her bright, birdlike eyes and manner, had spent her life teaching proper decorum and protocol to the children of the respected and affluent families of Belle Terre. Then there was Maria Elena Delacroix, the descendant of a long line of beautiful courtesans.
But that was all part of the past. The distant past. Her past. Last night, for a little while, she’d hoped attitudes had changed, and who she’d been would be of little consequence.
Wrong? She’d never been more wrong. But she couldn’t and wouldn’t dwell on that now. Dismissing the intrusion of old memories, Maria focused her attention on Jericho.
He’d taken the time to dress in uniform. The austere lines of faultless dark khaki contributed even more to his air of extraordinary strength and quiet dedication. In black tie he’d been the epitome of the gracious Southern gentleman. In the dress of his profession, he became a cold-eyed, grim-faced veteran of the war against crime and disorder. Yet he delivered orders as if he were making a request. Orders surely more quickly obeyed for the manner in which they were given.
Maria’s life in Belle Terre and afterward had made her cynical. The eye of her camera saw with compassion. Her own eyes, her heart, her soul, did not. On the other hand, Jericho, she suspected, was that rare, indomitable professional in whom compassion and gentleness still lived and thrived, and ruled.
He’d proved that in the gentle way he’d made love to her, with no condemnation for her desertion, no bitterness for the lost years. What sort of man was this? Maria wondered as she asked, “You’ll call me when you have a definitive report?”
Beyond taking her hand, Jericho hadn’t touched her since they’d arrived at the parking lot. He’d offered no explanation for the fact that they’d arrived together. With one steady, challenging look from him, no one dared comment that Maria still wore the gown of flowing gold, sparkling brighter in the morning sun than it had in the muted light of the museum. With his own circumspect behavior and the dare in his unflinching stare, he’d protected her from any threat of gossip. Now or later. For she knew intuitively, and from the respect shown by Jericho’s men, there would be no scandalized or secret lecherous whispers behind shielding hands.
Now, with the gentle cupping of his palm against her cheek, Jericho broke his own unspoken rule of discretion. “I promise. But I’ll do better than call, Maria Elena. I’ll drop by the inn when we’ve done all we can here.”
Maria wanted to cover his hand with her own, keeping his touch. More than that, she wanted to turn her mouth into his palm and with her lips trace the hard, calloused strength. She wanted to watch his eyes as she touched her tongue to that dark, gentle hollow the calluses protected. As he had protected her when she was seventeen.
As he would protect her now.
As if he read her thoughts, he leaned close, his breath a warm caress against her cheek. “Go along with young Court, love. There’s nothing more to fear. For now.”
“I know.” She did stroke his hand then, in gratitude. She did brush her lips over the pad of his thumb, briefly. Too briefly. But with it a thunderbolt of desire struck as ungoverned and as stunning as if it were the first time.
For Jericho, too, she realized, for his gray gaze darkened and his breath stuttered. But it was only a heartbeat before his teeth clamped together with such force a muscle flickered like the lightning of this sensual, sexual storm.
“Go,” he managed hoarsely. His right hand, with the burnished gold band gleaming, fell from the soft allure of her lips. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”
Maria only nodded, her eyes and her heart too full of her need for him to speak. With one smoldering look, she turned. Taking the arm Deputy Hamilton gallantly extended, like a queen she glided through the gathering crowd, oblivious of the rapt gazes of Jericho’s trusted friends and fascinated colleagues.
The sun was almost gone when Jericho climbed the steps that would lead to the entry of River Walk. He’d wakened with the sun and Maria…now he would end a long, grueling day with them. He’d been longer at the museum than he expected. Worse, this first and crucial investigation had yielded far less than he hoped.
The only conclusion anyone set forth with any confidence was that the person, or persons, who constructed the simple device then, on a gamble, set it for an hour it would be unlikely anyone would be near, meant no harm to anyone.
“This time,” Jericho muttered, as he opened the massive leaded glass door leading to the reception room of the inn.
This time. But what about the next? Or the next? Having failed in scaring Maria away, would this frantically desperate man try again? And again, if he must?
Jericho had wanted Maria to stay. More than anything in all his life, he’d needed her to stay, to build a life with him. Now, torn and hurt by the logic, he knew she must go.
“Jericho?” Eden Cade paused in the doorway of the reception room, a covered tray in her hands. Her welcoming smile was worried. “We’d almost given up on you for dinner.”
“Tonight? Dinner with you and Adams?” Jericho searched his mind, wondering if he’d forgotten an invitation. But surely he hadn’t—no one ever passed up a chance for a meal at the Inn at River Walk. Then, again, maybe he had forgotten. Since he’d learned Maria would be covering the opening at the museum for her network, he’d thought of nothing else.
“Heavens, no,” Eden exclaimed. “Adams isn’t here.” With an amused and glowing glance at the slight protrusion of her stomach, she laughed aloud. “He’s been rushing around for a week now, taking care of anything and everything he thinks might need his attention before the baby comes.”
“So soon?” Eden was carrying small, but that small? Jericho frowned, wondering if he’d miscounted, or mixed up the date Adams had announced for the birth of his child.
Eden laughed again, and Jericho had never seen this always beautiful woman so beautiful. “Of course not. But tell that to Adams. He plans to have a clean slate for the next three months so he can join with Cullen in driving me crazy. In fact, if either my husband or my chief steward saw this tray in my hand, both would very likely suffer from a dire case of apoplexy.”
Jericho grinned. He could easily believe it of both men. Adams Cade, inventor and businessman par excellence, had been a friend all his life. But when Adams returned to Belle Terre and married Eden, all his successes paled in comparison. It was the same with Cullen. When he’d come with Eden to Belle Terre, no one expected the massive islander to be happy here. But soon it was obvious that the native of the Marquesas Islands had transferred his undying loyalty from Nicholas Claibourne and the islands to Eden, Nicholas’s widow. Loyalty that remained unswerving in her marriage to Adams, her first and true and everlasting love.
Any other time, Jericho would have chuckled at the idea of Cullen, the only man he knew who was nearly as big as he, acting the lady’s maid for a gloriously pregnant Eden Cade. But now, his mind was too full of Maria. Too full, and too worried even to celebrate the joy and wonder of the coming birth of a child the most revered medical minds of the world had believed could never be conceived.
“Forgive me, Eden.” Jericho felt a sudden twinge for his neglectful preoccupation. “Let me take that.”
“Surely.” Eden relinquished the tray graciously. “And thank you, Jericho.”
“Where would you like me to take it?”
“Actually, your arrival was perfectly timed.” With a hand at his shoulder, she led him to the small elevator Adams had just installed. “I was taking the tray to the third floor.”
“The top?” Once Eden had kept her apartment on the top floor. To afford both herself and the guests of the inn more privacy. But after their marriage, she and Adams had chosen to live in the river cottage, a secluded and private residence on the grounds of River Walk. “I thought…”
“That Adams and I live in the cottage?” Eden paused before the elevator, pressed a small button and, by a newly acquired habit, folded her arms protectively over her stomach. “We do.”
The door of the elevator slid open without a sound. It was typical of Adams that it would work perfectly and unobtrusively. When, with gentlemanly courtesy, Jericho waited for Eden to precede him, she shook her head. “I’m not going.”
“No?”
With another shake of her head, her smile widened. “I was going to keep Maria Elena company for a bit. But now that you’re here, she won’t need my company. Cullen’s with her now. He took the liberty of bullying poor Court Hamilton into agreeing to watch the grounds. But I imagine Maria’s self-appointed guardian will relinquish his post while you’re with her.”
“Cullen’s watching over Maria Elena, on the third floor?”
“Of course. It was his idea that Maria should move to the third floor. Then he insisted that he should keep watch over her until we know more about the explosion. It was also his idea that the chef should prepare a cold dinner for two—for when you managed to get away. So.” Eden stepped back from the door. With a wave and a twinkle in her eyes, she murmured, “Enjoy, old friend. Be as happy tonight as you can.”
The elevator moved soundlessly and quickly, then stopped without a jolt. The door slid open as silently. Cullen was there in the foyer, far bigger than the chair that surely creaked under his weight. A book on Southern gardening lay open on his knees, and a pair of fragile half glasses perched haphazardly on his broad nose.
A smile lit the islander’s face when he recognized Maria’s visitor. As a blunt finger slanted a warning for quiet across finely shaped lips, Jericho knew that fatigue and the stress of the day had likely demanded its due.
“Maria Elena’s sleeping?”
A tilt of his head was Cullen’s only response.
“Then I’ll watch over her now, Cullen. Until she wakes.”
Rising from his chair, with his gardening book folded under his arm, the islander opened the door that would lead to the suite where Maria had been kept safe. Jericho stepped through and turned, the tray still in his hands. “Thank you, Cullen, for everything.”
Cullen smiled and stepped into the elevator. With his huge hand he kept the door ajar. “Keeping watch was my pleasure, Sheriff. Miss Delacroix reminds me of Miss Eden.” His words were a low rumble, meant only for Jericho. “A brave woman, but deeply hurt by life, and sad.”
“Her name is Rivers, Cullen. Maria Elena Rivers. We were married eighteen years ago.” Jericho should have been surprised that he’d said the words. He wasn’t. But the last sin that could be laid at Cullen’s door was gossip. The man held his confidences as determinedly as a clam.
The islander’s smile gleamed brighter, with no trace of surprise. “Then, now that you’re here, perhaps Mrs. Rivers’s sadness will ease. As it did for Miss Eden when Adams came home to her.”
Cullen took his hand away. The door began to close. “Have a good night, sir. Rest assured I won’t be far away.”
Jericho had no chance to acknowledge the islander’s assurance, but he knew Cullen well enough to know he didn’t expect a response. Instead he closed the door, set the supper tray on the nearest table, and went in search of Maria.
The suite was typically Eden. Large rooms, minimally but elegantly appointed. And, of course, there were flowers. In every alcove there was whatever arrangement the space and design could accommodate. Yet even in that, Eden’s taste and preference erred on the side of pleasing rather than overwhelming. But that there were flowers was the important factor.
Maria Elena loved flowers. Jericho liked to think their little girl would have loved them as well.
The bedroom was darkened by closed shutters. The massive bed, lying in disarray, was empty. His seeking gaze followed a muted beam of light to Maria.
She stood before a narrow door, its shutter half open, letting the light of the setting sun spill through it. Maria wore a gown and a robe of silk that gleamed in the little light like a pale emerald. Her arms were crossed beneath her breasts, the tousled mass of her hair tumbled against her cheek as she stared down on the gardens of River Walk.
“Have you considered how ironic it is, after all these years, and all that’s happened, that I’m here, Jericho?”
Jericho had paused where he was. He had no idea how she knew she wasn’t alone, or even who waited in the doorway. Perhaps the cadence of his quiet step? A familiar scent? The sixth sense of lovers with its knowing recognition?
“Do you mean here in Belle Terre? Here at River Walk? Or on Fancy Row?” he asked softly, though he was sure he knew.
“Fancy Row—that says it all, doesn’t it?” She turned to him then, and he saw that if she’d slept, it hadn’t been restful. “Fancy for the sort of women who lived here. The mistresses of wealthy planters who kept them in luxury and dressed them like queens, yet wouldn’t recognize either the women or the children they bore them. Row, because even these homes among the finest in the city didn’t deserve the respect of having a street.”
“What you say was true, but no more,” he countered as she paced toward him, the gown skimming her knees, the robe swaying over her unbound breasts. “Times change, Maria Elena. So do people.”
“Do they?” In a familiar gesture, she threaded her fingers through her hair, combing it back from her face. Before her hand had moved completely away, the dark strands were falling again in a veil over her cheek. “There are those who will think it’s fitting that I’m staying here. The child of a Delacroix, living on the street where the Delacroix courtesans plied their sinful trade.”
“Legend has it the Delacroix were the most beautiful, most accomplished women in the low country. A prize for one man to claim. Even to duel for, Maria Elena. Yet you paint them as whores, little better than streetwalkers going from man to man.”
“Not from man to man,” Maria corrected bitterly. “To the highest bidder.”
“To one man, to whom each was faithful,” he reminded.
“For whom they bore illegitimate children. Always to be known as Delacroix, never by their father’s name.”
“Keeping a mistress, being a mistress, was an accepted practice of the time, my love. But nothing to do with you.” He would have reached out to take her in his arms, but he knew that in this mood, she would reject him.
“You’re wrong, Jericho. It has everything to do with me. I’m a Delacroix, a reminder of an accepted but unsavory custom. In Belle Terre, nothing is ever forgotten. Why else did I lose our child?”
“They were just boys, Maria Elena. Certainly misguided, certainly cruel. But still boys. Foolish, thoughtless boys.”
“And bigots,” Maria snapped. With her arms clutched ever more tightly about her, she turned her back on him. “Like all the good citizens of Belle Terre.”
Jericho hadn’t bothered to change out of his uniform, but his broad-brimmed hat had been left downstairs. Now, in frustration, he scrubbed a hand over his eyes and his forehead, dislodging a dark lock that drifted over his temple. Letting his hand fall away in a loosely curled fist, he asked softly, “Does that sweeping opinion include me? Or Eden? How about Adams and his brothers? Or Lady Mary? Have you forgotten she was kind to you?”
Her back was still turned to him. When her tirade began, her shoulders had been stiffly erect. Now they curled as if she flinched from the acrimony of her bitter judgment.
“Does it, Maria Elena? Are we all intolerant snobs, simply because we aren’t all descendants of the Delacroix beauties? Have you forgotten that your lost summer girl was my little girl and my loss, as well?”
“I…no.” Keeping her back to him, she shook her head slowly, then fell silent to stand mutely in sunset.
In the broken denial, Jericho heard the threat of tears. He had to go to her then. Nothing on earth could have stopped him from holding her. Not even fear of rejection. Nor rejection itself.
Yet when he gathered her in his embrace, she turned to him, her arms hard about him, her mouth lifting greedily to his.
With Maria the initiator and the leader, their kiss was long and wild and deep. Her teeth nipped at his lips, but only for her tongue to soothe the hurt. Her hands slipped between the crush of their bodies to slide over his chest, his throat. Circling to his nape, her fingers tangled in the dark hair brushing his collar, but only to drag him fiercely down to her. She couldn’t get him close enough. The teasing caress of probing, twining tongues wasn’t deep enough, hard enough.
“More,” she muttered as she released the clutch of his hair, and turned her attention to the buttons of his shirt. “I want to feel you. I want the touch of your skin on mine. I want your hands on me. I want you. Only and forever, you.”
“No, my love. No.” He caught her hands, pinning them between the unyielding musculature of his chest and the enticing softness of her breasts. “I’m sooty. I stink of smoke and grease.”
“You’re Jericho. That’s all that matters.” As she whispered the last, she leaned to kiss their joined hands. Then, slowly, her head lifted and she rose on tiptoe to touch her lips to the pulse that fluttered like a captured bird at the hollow of his throat. The touch of her tongue sent the heat of an inferno racing from his throat to pool hot and heavy in his groin.
Then, she lifted her head to let her gaze reach into his. In the half light of twilight in an ever-darkening room, he saw that her eyes of shimmering silver were filled with fear. Not fear of dying, but of never having truly lived.
She wanted him now, as an affirmation of life. In her eyes he saw grief for the little life they’d lost, for the life they’d never had together, even the life they might never have. But this moment was theirs. No one and nothing could take it from them.
“Yes.” He answered the question she hadn’t asked, except with her eyes. “Yes.”
In a single motion he nearly ripped her nightclothes from her body. Before the emerald silk could pool at her feet, he swept her into his arms to stalk the length of the room. Laying her gently on the bed, he straightened to tear away his own clothes.
She watched him. As buttons ripped from their moorings, her gaze raked over every inch of exposed flesh. Next his belt was flung away. The snap at the waist of his trousers opened, the zipper growled. As if by magic, trousers and boots and every shred of clothing were gone from him.
He towered over her, all six and a half manly feet of Jericho Rivers. So handsome, so aroused, so ready. He wanted her. He needed her more than he’d ever wanted, ever needed, before. Yet with all the strength and reason he possessed, he waited.
Maria understood. She must set the pace. Allowing herself one last worshiping look, she opened her arms, whispering, “Make me feel real, Jericho. Teach me to be glad I’m alive.”
Then he came down to her. There was no seduction, no foreplay. The time for that had passed. Maria Elena wanted what he wanted. She needed what he needed—his body joining with hers, stroking hers, hard, fast, deep. Over and over again until their bodies lifted and arched seeking even more.
He didn’t think of hurting her. He didn’t feel her nails tearing across his shoulders and down his chest. He only heard her whisper yes, and yes, and yes, as he gathered her wrists in his hands and pinned them over her head.
With her hands held captive as she arched to meet the power of his thrust, he bent to kiss her breast. Yet despite their madness, his suckling was as gentle as their mating was fierce.
Her breasts were fragrant from the bath oils for which the Inn at River Walk was famous. Their flavor gathered in his lungs, on his skin, and his tongue. Flavors and scents that banished the acrid memory of explosives and fire. There was no car, no young thief, no burned hulk. Only a man and a woman. Only Jericho and Maria Elena.
When he bent to suckle for the last time, he felt the first beginning shudders clasping him. Then she was struggling to free her hands, but only to draw his mouth to hers. Only to mate with him with lips and tongue, as she had with soul and body.
This had begun out of unfathomed need. As coupling in animal heat. As lust. As sex. But it was cleansing passion and abiding love that drew them to its splendid conclusion.
As she wrapped him in that splendor, giving of herself even as she took from him, she was his friend, the center of his universe. His reason for living.
The woman he loved.
His wife.
Four
Jericho woke with the dawn, out of habit and custom. As he had before, he sat by Maria’s bed watching her sleep, while memories swirled through his mind. Not just memories of the night, but of their years as children and teens in Belle Terre.
In the pall of those long-ago memories, a smile bearing no trace of humor or joy twisted his lips and turned his eyes to seething pits. He’d known Maria Elena Delacroix almost all his life. And loved her passionately and hopelessly for nineteen of those years. Sometimes, as now, he suspected he had loved her even longer.
During the night, they’d roused, showered together and made love again. Now, as she slept, with her drying hair rippling over the pillow, in spite of telltale marks of intemperate passion, it was the innocence of a frightened girl he saw. An exquisite young girl eager to be accepted, eager to be liked.
But that was before she truly understood what it meant to be a Delacroix. Especially in Belle Terre. Before she discovered she would never be forgiven for the perceived sins of any number of distant grandmothers, aunts, and cousins. Before she realized that being smarter and more beautiful than the other girls of Belle Terre Academy, and a Delacroix, was an unforgivable combination.
The first time he’d seen her, she was a scrawny little thing, with changeable gray eyes too big for her face, and a wealth of shiny hair as black as sin. She was just ten, a brand-new student at the academy. More than a little lost and confused, and totally overwhelmed by the affluence of her new surroundings. He was eleven, almost twelve, a veteran of six years at the private academy.
While she was unbelievably tiny, he was already the biggest kid his side of high school. So, on her first day, when she’d fumbled unfamiliarly with her locker, spilling her new books all over the hall, it seemed natural that he would pick them up, then offer to carry them as he showed her to her first class.
That was the beginning of “Jericho and Maria.” Out of a simple courtesy that was second nature to a tenderhearted boy, grew a unique friendship that forged a lasting bond.
There were repercussions from the beginning. Some vicious teasing, hate-filled remarks. Later, he understood that his classmates were parroting parental attitudes. A few of the boys scoffed at him for liking any girl. But especially the new girl, whom everyone seemed to be certain shouldn’t be attending the academy at all.
But even at eleven, almost twelve, Jericho had liked her smile. He liked the serious gaze that always seemed to find him, no matter where he was or what he was doing. He liked pretty Maria and her eyes and her smile more than he hated the teasing.
He knew she was different from the other girls. He knew there was something more than the unspoken class system of the proud Southern town that set her apart. But Jericho’s mother was a Yankee and a maverick, the only black mark against the most aristocratic Rivers name. In her own words, Leah Rivers didn’t give “a cup of tea in hell” for the townfolk’s preoccupation with whose father was who and had what. She didn’t care whose long-lost ancestor had signed what document or led what cavalry charge where. She found the deadly serious celebration of family connections and claim of old money foolish and intolerably arrogant.
In an inexplicable peculiarity of the cliquish Southern town, this very disdain made Leah Rivers one of Belle Terre’s most respected women. Because she practiced her beliefs, judging people by their own accomplishments, Jericho never understood the parroted slurs. It was a classmate who enlightened him, whispering behind a shielding hand a tale of half truths and embellished lies of what the Delacroix women had been nearly a century before.
It was then he’d visited his grandmother. His father’s mother, Grandmère Rivers, as she preferred to be addressed. More than an equal and a match for her daughter-in-law in brutal frankness, this proud and patrician old lady was, nevertheless, the revered ruler of society in Belle Terre. But, as she warned him in the course of their talk, even she couldn’t control the misguided cruelties and injustices of prejudice.
He was thirteen the day of their talk, and admittedly naive. But before she was through, he understood the facts, the myths, the foibles, and the pain of the wealthy Southern gentleman’s penchant for keeping a mistress and even a second family. He understood that once it had been a common, expected social institution.
Grandmère had saved the Delacroix women for last. With her back ramrod straight and her chin tilted, she’d spoken of a family of daughters. Girls of lesser means, noticed first for their comeliness, then their innate soft-spoken gentility. Traits that became consistent as their name and beauty became legend.
They were few, their intelligence and style always unique. Making their liaisons the most sought after, bringing the highest prices on the bidders’s market. Eventually it became an accepted fact that the prettiest Delacroix girlchild would be groomed from birth to be a courtesan. Yet, only if the young woman accepted the terms of the bidder. If she accepted, the relationship would be permanent.
“It was rare, almost unheard of, that a Delacroix ever had more than one lover,” Grandmère emphasized. “Beyond his wife, neither would her patron.
“Not a good practice, Jericho.” Almost too softly to be heard, she added, “But not the worst that could have happened for all who were involved either.”
There was more, Jericho remembered. Over lemonade and Grandmère’s special sugar cookies, she explained many customs of the past. Some good. Some bad. Some a mix of both. Some silly. Some confusing. Some surprising.
But the greatest shock of all was learning that his own grandfather, in the course of a life cut short, had kept a mistress.
“Ah, yes,” Grandmère assured him. “She was a pretty little thing. Not big and horsey as I. Your grandfather kept her in exquisite style for years. With my blessing. But, thank God, there were no children.”
Faded eyes that once had been the exact color of his own, searched his face. “Rest assured, Jericho, my sweet boy, you have no secret uncles, or aunts, or cousins strolling the streets of Belle Terre. Your grandfather might have been a bounder, he might have thrown away half a fortune, his excesses might have led to an early death, but, in the little he did right, a second family was not an added complication.”
“Didn’t you care, Grandmère?”
He could still remember how his voice trembled when he thought of how the man who had never been more to him than a portrait over the dining room mantle and a name on a gravestone must have hurt this grand and beloved lady.
But when she’d glimpsed his sickened expression, Letitia Rivers had taken his face between her pale beringed hands, saying the words he had never forgotten.
“Jericho, my sweet child, your not-so-dear departed grandfather is proof one’s station in life does not guarantee a good and wise, or even a kind, person. That you must always understand.
“But most important, you must know and believe that your grandfather’s having kept a mistress doesn’t make you a bad person. No more that the Delacroix women having been mistresses makes your little friend anything but what she is—a sweet, beautiful, and intelligent child.”
“Then I should keep on being her friend, Grandmère?” he asked, too preoccupied by all she’d told him to wonder how at seventy-two Letitia Rivers could know that Maria Elena was sweet, beautiful, intelligent, or anything at all.
When he remembered later, he’d shrugged it off. After all, in his eyes, Grandmère Rivers, grand dame of Belle Terre society, knew everything.
She’d peered at him over the lorgnette she stubbornly preferred to glasses. As if she’d assessed his courage and approved, at last, she nodded. “Of course you should.”
“Good,” he replied as he leaned to kiss her wrinkled cheek, “’cause I intended to all along.”
Grandmère Rivers chuckled, delighted with him. As he left the room, she called after him, “Bring little Miss Delacroix by to see me one day. We’ll have lemonade and sugar cookies.”
“I will,” he promised.
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