Читать книгу A Season For Love - Bj James - Страница 10

“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.”