CLUB TIMES

For Members’ Eyes Only

Which Carson Has Been Playing in the Wainwrights’ Sandbox?

I’m not pulling a fast one over on you, members. One of our elders saw some, ahem, cozy behavior between a certain Carson cowboy and a “bookish” Wainwright female not too long ago. Now, I don’t want to start World War III here, but I’m just saying that some Carson-Wainwrights sure ain’t feudin’! The betting pool for which Wainwright and which Carson will take place in the Yellow Rose Café after the lunch shift this coming Sunday. We hope you understand that this is all in good fun, members. We don’t want to aggravate Archy Wainwright’s ticker or Ford Carson’s cholesterol count.

As usual, we’re holding our candlelight vigil for valuable member Luke Callaghan’s safe return from wherever he is. The little scamp is probably in some hot air balloon wafting over Japan, with a harem to boot! Phone home, Luke!

Of course you know it’s not our place to poke into anyone’s affairs, but does anyone know why Carl Bridges has been so grouchy lately? He almost bit one nameless club employee’s head off for pouring his coffee too slowly. We’re not here to judge; it’s just that we care about our members. On a related note, do y’all remember Carl Bridges’s scallawag son, Dylan? Now there’s a handsome buck who’s always up to no good. Wonder what he’s doing now….

As always, members, make your best stop of the day right here at the Lone Star Country Club!

About the Author

MARIE FERRARELLA

began writing when she was eleven. She began selling many years after that. Along the way, she acquired a master’s in Shakespearean Comedy, a husband and two kids [in that order]—the dog came later. She sold her first romance in November of 1981. The road from there to here has a hundred and thirty-eight more sales to it, with a hundred and twenty being to Silhouette. She’s been fortunate enough to have received several RITA® nominations over the years, with one win for Father Goose [in the Traditional Category]. Marie hopes to be found one day—many, many years from now—slumped over her computer, writing to the last moment…with a smile on her face.

She found working on the LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB series especially fun since she originally learned how to speak English by watching old John Wayne movies on Channel 13 and has loved Westerns and anything with a western flavor ever since.

Texas Rose
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Welcome to the

Where Texas society reigns supreme—and appearances are everything.

The search for Baby Lena’s parents continue—and scandal spreads like wildfire through Mission Creek….

Matt Carson: Although he is the target of the Wainwrights’ wrath for ruining their daughter’s sterling reputation, nothing is going to stop this spurned cowboy from reclaiming his true love. Even if it means following her to the bright lights of New York City.

Rose Wainwright: When her forbidden tryst with her family’s most hated enemy results in a shocking development, Rose makes the ultimate sacrifice to protect the man she cherishes. But the truth has a way of coming out….

The Undercover Investigation: Is the Mafia behind the anonymous threats that Haley Mercado’s trusted friend and secret cohort has been receiving? Residents beware: the Texas underworld might be on the verge of wreaking more havoc in Mission Creek!

To Margaret O’Neill Marbury,

for all the headaches

she endured.

Love,

Marie

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

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

One

“Whose is it, girl?”

Archy Wainwright’s question exploded like thunder, swallowing up the deathlike silence that had come a moment before. Stunned silence had been the initial reaction to Rose’s quietly spoken announcement, delivered at the dining room table where her father, sister and brother had gathered for dinner.

The announcement had been an unwilling one on her part. If she’d had her choice, Rose Wainwright would have opted to spare her family the news altogether. Being told that his unmarried, thirty-year-old librarian daughter was pregnant wasn’t exactly something a father wanted to hear—least of all the stern, volatile Archy Wainwright, respected land baron of one of the two oldest families in Mission Creek, Texas.

But it wasn’t as if this was something that could remain a secret indefinitely. Even now, only six weeks along, Rose was certain she was going to begin showing at any moment. Despite her small waist. Despite the fact that her clothes still all fit just the way they always had. She felt pregnant. Hugely so.

Maybe it was the overwhelming weight of her secret that made her feel this way.

Or maybe it was because her world had been set on its ear ever since she’d stood in the bathroom within her wing of the sprawling ranch house, holding her breath, waiting for a small stick to decide her fate.

No, Rose amended, that wasn’t really true. Her world had been upended ever since she’d first succumbed to Matt’s charms and fallen in love with him. Ever since she’d first laid eyes on him. He’d leaned over the library counter and asked, with that devil of a twinkle in his beautiful blue eyes, if he could take out anything he found within the library. When she’d answered a tentative, “Yes,” he’d put his hand on hers and said that what he really wanted to take out was the librarian.

Rose remembered blushing to the roots of her jet-black hair. Even so, she’d taken exception to Matt’s unabashed flirtation. She’d been schooled to be cautious because he was, after all, who he was. A Carson. The enemy. Forbidden fruit.

At least, for a Wainwright girl. Or a Wainwright woman, as she now most definitely was.

Where had her mind been? she upbraided herself, watching as her father’s complexion turned from mildly ruddy to deeply red. What could she have possibly been thinking, falling for Matt Carson? Making love with Matt Carson? Was she completely insane?

Yes, yes, she was, Rose thought. Completely and utterly insane. Insane about him. But that didn’t change anything. Not the situation, not the outcome. She, a Wainwright, was pregnant by a Carson.

And nobody was ever going to find out that part.

Standing in her bathroom, she’d dropped the stick into the trash can, crumpled to the floor herself and cried her heart out. Then she’d placed her hand over her too flat belly and wept some more for the child who was to be born. The child she already loved.

Even though she couldn’t hide the fact that she was pregnant and becoming more so with each passing tick of the clock, Rose was determined to protect those she loved by not telling them who the father was. All those she loved, including Matt. It would only add to everyone’s grief.

Not telling meant withstanding her father’s tongue-lashing. It meant enduring the stony stare of her older brother, Justin, who also just happened to be the sheriff of Mission Ridge, the small town that the vast Wainwright ranch bordered. It meant withstanding her younger sister Susan’s incredulous look.

But there was no other way. She had already made up her mind to have this baby. Alone. Telling her own father that her baby’s father was Matt Carson would unleash a torrent of trouble that could only be equaled to the tumultuous origins of the feud that had separated the two once-friendly families and placed them on opposing ends of everything for the past seventy-five years.

Because it was unthinkable for a Carson and a Wainwright to actually entertain the idea of marriage, she deliberately hadn’t told Matt that she was carrying his baby. She’d been afraid that he’d do something stupid, such as marry her because of the baby and estrange himself from his family. It was a guilt she felt unequal to bearing.

And worse still, she’d been afraid to tell him because she couldn’t bear the thought that he might turn his back on her and tell her she was on her own. That getting pregnant was her fault, despite the precautions she’d taken. It was better to suppose, but not have the actual confirmation.

Though the thought of bearing Matt’s child had drawn her closer to him emotionally, she had gone out of her way to instigate an argument that had led to the end of their clandestine affair.

Remembering that day, the day she’d broken it off, was painful. She’d lied for the first time in her adult life and told Matt that she wasn’t excited by the thought of being with him any longer. That she was bored of it all and of him.

The words had tasted bitter in her mouth. Bitterer still had been enduring the look she’d seen in his eyes. His beautiful blue eyes had pain in them. Pain she had put there.

But there had been nothing else for her to do.

Rose clenched her hands in her lap as she stared up into the face of the first man she had ever loved: her father.

Archy rubbed his chest in small, concentric circles, his eyes pinning her to her chair, as if willing his daughter to answer.

“Well?” he demanded when she made no response. “Who’s the tomcat who’s been sniffing around your skirts, girl? What’s the name of the man whose hide I’m going to nail to the barn door?” His eyes became small slits beneath his bushy eyebrows. “Out with it, Rosie. I’ll make him wish he was never born.”

She lifted her chin. She’d always been a dutiful daughter, but that didn’t mean that her spine had the consistency of wet spaghetti. She was, above all else, her father’s daughter and could be just as stubborn as he was. “No.”

“No?” Archy thundered in stunned disbelief. Rose had never been this blatantly defiant before, never challenged his authority.

Susan and Justin exchanged looks, waiting for the inevitable fallout.

Archy stared dumbfounded at his firstborn daughter. It had been only yesterday that he’d held that tiny, fragile little life in his large hands, amazed that something so tiny had such a will to live. Rose Ann Wainwright had been a preemie, born two months before she was scheduled to appear. The doctor had given her only a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the first forty-eight hours.

His Texas Rose had fooled them all. She’d not only lived, but thrived. Rosie was the quietest of them all, but he had always known there was a vein of stubbornness beneath the quiet.

Still, she’d been obedient to a fault, and he had to secretly admit that he liked it that way. This refusal to answer was the last thing he would have expected from her. The rebelliousness he saw in her eyes took him completely by surprise.

Surprise gave way to anger. “What in Sam Hill do you mean, ‘no’?”

Rose clenched her hands harder. This was for everyone’s good, she kept telling herself. She had to stay strong, had to refuse to give up Matt’s name.

“Just that. No.” She raised her chin, aware of the fact that her brother and sister were staring at her as if she’d suddenly turned into a giant condor right in front of their eyes. Her voice gained strength and volume as she continued. “No, I won’t tell you who the father is. No, I won’t be marrying him. And no, I won’t let you bully anyone in my name.”

“Our name, girl, our name,” Archy reminded his daughter heatedly, his eyes as dark as the sky just before a Texas twister. “You’re not some mongrel puppy, you’re a Wainwright. Damn it, girl, that means something around here.”

She refused to look away, even though she wanted nothing more. But now wasn’t the time to be a coward. She had to stand her ground. For her baby’s sake. And for her father’s.

“I know that, Dad.”

Archy struggled to control his outrage and his pain. “No, I don’t think you do. If you did, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself in this state.” With effort, his voice softened as he looked at her. “Are you sure, girl? You look so damn thin. Maybe it’s just a mistake. You know, with the calendar.”

“No,” she replied quietly, “it’s not a mistake with the calendar.”

Rose watched her father’s face fall. She knew she was taking away his last line of defense, his last hope. The euphemistic way he attempted to tiptoe around the delicate subject of monthly cycles touched her. Ordinarily her father had the finesse of a wrangler. If Archy Wainwright couldn’t rope it and brand it, he couldn’t deal with it.

But in his own clumsy way, he was trying.

And in his own clumsy way, Rose knew her father loved her. No matter how much fire he breathed and how loud he got. He didn’t know how to show affection, only unadulterated anger.

Archy’s face fell a full two inches. “Then you really are—?”

Her heart ached for him and if she could have gotten around the truth, she would have. “Yes, I really am.”

Archy felt numb from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes. Numb, like the time his brother had accidentally dropped his rifle and shot him in the hip and shock had set in. “And you’re keeping it?”

The question was half-rhetorical—because he was fairly confident that she wasn’t the kind to simply wash away a life—and half stunned that his baby, his daughter, was carrying another man’s seed. An unknown man at that. It took his very breath away.

Rose raised her eyes to her father’s face without saying a word. She didn’t have to. The look in her eyes said it all.

Archy blew out a long breath in frustration as diverging thoughts in his mind warred with his heart. How did he keep her protected from damning public opinion now that she’d gone and done this?

“Good,” he barked, “because that’s a life you’ve got inside you and it’s half a Wainwright. But it’s the other half I’m concerned about. Why won’t you tell me who the father is, girl?”

Rose felt like crying and screaming. Ever since this baby had been formed, her emotions seemed to have settled on a constant roller-coaster ride that refused to come to a stop.

“Because you’d kill him and then Justin would have to arrest you,” Susan spoke up, coming to her older sister’s defense.

Under his breath Archy said something unintelligible and best not repeated. He waved an impatient hand at Rose, then looked at his son.

“Talk some sense into her, Justin. She’s got an obligation to tell me who the young whelp is who did this to her.”

He made it sound as if she’d been attacked instead of enjoying the most beautiful experience of her life. Rose felt the hair on the back of her neck rising.

“Did it ever occur to you that we did this to each other?” she asked evenly.

A fresh wave of thunder descended across her father’s brow. “What did you say?”

There was a dangerous note in his voice and at any other time she might have backed off. But this time she had to take a stand.

“This is a love child, Dad.” Her mouth was dry as she tried to make her point. “That means that the baby’s father and I made—”

Archy quickly cut her off. “I don’t want to hear it,” he bellowed. “Besides,” he scoffed, “what do you know about love? You’ve always got your head stuck in some book.”

Justin laughed shortly. He’d always known there was more to Rose than his father gave her credit for. Still waters ran deep.

“Well, her head wasn’t in a book at least one time,” he commented. His father looked at him sharply. Trouble was definitely brewing and he was going to get caught in the middle. “Rosie, tell him who it is before he rides off into town with his twelve gauge under his arm, threatening to shoot every man above the age of puberty.”

Rose pressed her lips together. There was no way he was getting the information out of her. For all she knew, her father could kill Matt with his bare hands. And then someone from the Carsons would kill him and so on, perpetuating the awful feud.

“It’s my business, Dad. I’m a grown woman and I don’t have to tell you if I don’t want to.”

Justin nodded thoughtfully. “She has a point.”

Archy had expected support from Justin, not dissent. “She has a bun in the oven, boy, and that’s a Wainwright oven,” Archy bellowed. “I’m not going to become the laughingstock of the county, with people whispering about us behind our backs.”

Susan rolled her eyes. Her father was too provincial for her to endure. “This is the twenty-first century, Dad. Nobody throws rocks at virgins who fall from grace anymore.”

He looked at her sharply. “Stop right there, Suzy girl, or I’ll have your brother lock you up in your room until you get so old, you’ll be storing your teeth in a glass next to your bed.”

This was going nowhere. Upset, Rose threw down her napkin and got to her feet, ready to run out. “You’re impossible.”

Her father rounded the table like a long-distance sprinter and headed her off. For his age and size, he was still surprisingly agile. He caught her by the shoulders before she could leave the room.

Justin was on his feet, ready to intervene if it came down to that. For now, he kept his peace.

“I’m head of this damn family and I still have a say in what goes on in it. Now tell me who this son of a bitch is who doesn’t have enough guts to face me like a man.”

She looked at his hands on either side of her. Suddenly aware of what he was doing, Archy dropped them to his sides.

Only then did she volunteer any more information. “He doesn’t know.”

Archy’s mouth dropped open as he stared at her. “What is he, stupid?”

She felt very protective of Matt. “I didn’t tell him.”

Archy didn’t understand her. In the world he dealt with, a man was supposed to pull his own weight and own up to his responsibilities. To do that, he couldn’t be kept in the dark. Unless there was more to this than she was telling him. She had been abused, he thought suddenly.

“Why?”

She wished her father would drop this already. “That’s my business.”

“And what happens within this family is mine.” He paused, gathering himself. Knowing that, at least for the time being, it was useless to keep hitting his head against a wall, he backed off. Just a little. “Well, I’m not going to have people flapping their jaws about you like you were common trash. You’re going to live with my sister until this blows over.”

“This isn’t going to ‘blow over,’ Dad,” Justin pointed out patiently. “Rosie’s having the baby.”

Archy waved a hand at his son. “Don’t lecture to me, boy. I know that. That’s just something I’ll have to deal with later.”

You’re not going to have to deal with it, Dad, I am, Rose thought. But saying so out loud would only add fuel to the fire right now. She had to choose her battles.

“But Aunt Beth is in New York,” Rose protested.

Archy loomed over his daughter, in no mood to put up with any more opposition. He’d endured all he was about to from Rose.

“So?” he demanded.

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she didn’t want to go to New York, but then Rose thought better of it. Maybe distance from everything and everyone was the best way for her to go right now.

Rose had remained under her father’s roof all of her life. She liked being in the thick of things, close to those she loved, and had no desire to take flight the way so many others had. But now she couldn’t go on living here with her father’s accusatory looks. More important, she couldn’t remain in Mission Creek, running the risk of bumping into Matt when she least expected it.

If he saw her pregnant, there’d be no question in his mind that it was his. If he did do the so-called honorable thing and asked her to marry him, she might not have the strength to say no. And then there’d be a showdown between the two men she loved most: her father and Matt. That was something she definitely didn’t want to have on her conscience.

“So I’ll pack,” Rose finally said. With that, she turned on her heel, leaving the other members of her family looking at one another in mute surprise and confusion.

“In a real short amount of time, Rosie’s gotten to be a very contrary girl,” Archy muttered more to himself than to the others at the table. “Even when she’s doing what you think you want her to.” He shook his head. “Just like her mother.”

“What the hell’s gotten into you?” Flynt Carson asked as he stormed into the stables. He looked at his younger brother, waiting for a response.

He didn’t like the one he got.

Matt continued cleaning his tack. He’d been doing it for the past hour. It beat running his Jeep into the ground. Matt rubbed a narrow edge on the saddle. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Flynt glossed over the denial as if it’d never been spoken. He’d watched his even-tempered brother grow progressively surlier with each passing day for the past two weeks. Something was definitely going on.

“Hell, you never were a sweet-tempered kind of guy, but these days, if I were a stray dog or small child, I’d stay out of your way before you kicked me.”

Matt snorted. “Wise thought.” He stopped to pick up another cloth.

Flynt placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, forcing him to stop and look at him.

“Something’s bothering you.”

Matt knew Flynt meant well, but this wasn’t something he could share. Not with any of them. He shrugged off his brother’s hand and went back to polishing the tack. He was starting to wear the leather away. “Nothing I want to talk about.”

Flynt repositioned himself so that he was in Matt’s line of vision. “Maybe so, but the rest of us are getting caught in the fallout of that less-than-sweet disposition of yours and we’re not going to take it for long.”

Matt arched a brow in his brother’s direction. “Then stay out of my way.”

“Not always possible.” As a rule, Flynt didn’t meddle. But family meant bending rules. “Look, if it’s about a woman—”

Matt looked at him sharply, the stilled cloth hanging in his hand. “What makes you think it’s a woman?”

He’d hit a nerve, Flynt thought. The rumors about his younger brother and a so-called mystery woman were true, after all. Compassion nudged at him.

“I know the signs. Nothing like a woman to scramble up your insides worse than two eggs tossed into a blender. Way I see it, a fella’s got only a handful of choices—you either marry her, put her in her place, or forget about her.” And then, because the situation was a difficult one, Flynt added, “But do one of those things before the rest of us decide to form a lynch mob and put you out of our misery.”

Matt tossed the cloth aside and sighed. “It’s not that simple.”

There was sympathy in Flynt’s dark eyes. “I’m listening.”

Matt was tempted, but he knew it would be a mistake. The affair had begun in secrecy and they’d both been aware of the consequences. “I’m not talking.”

Flynt lost his temper. “Damn it, when did you get this obstinate?”

Matt bent to pick up the cloth again. He had to keep busy, even doing mindless chores. “Runs in the family.”

“There’s not going to be a family if we have to kill you.” The smile faded. It looked as if his asocial brother had fallen and fallen hard. Why else would he be agonizing this way? This mystery woman of his had to be something else again. “Really, Matt, if it’s serious enough to have you this chewed up inside, then maybe you should try to untangle whatever differences you’ve come up with and make peace with her.”

Matt laughed shortly. “There’s peace, all right. She dumped me.”

Flynt looked at him, dumbfound. “Dumped you? You mean she has taste?” He slipped his arm around Matt’s shoulders in a silent show of camaraderie. “Sorry, that just came out. Then maybe you’re better off without her.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to convince myself.” And he wasn’t getting anywhere. All he could think about was Rose.

“Haven’t been having much luck, I take it?”

Matt sighed. “None at all. I think about her and my insides pinch.”

Flynt nodded. He’d been at the same junction himself and knew how awful it could be. “That’s either love, or you’ve been buying your underwear a size too small.”

“Real nice, Flynt. Maybe the ladies church group will embroider that on some kitchen towels.”

“Look, it’s easy enough to confuse lust with that other L-word that’s hard for us Carsons to say. Give it some time. If it’s the first, it’ll blow over. If it’s the second, it’ll get worse.”

Matt’s eyes met his brother’s. “It already is worse.”

He’d always been the straightforward one. “Then what are you doing sitting here talking to me? Go and tell her. Who is she, by the way?”

He didn’t know if Flynt was being clever, or just asking. In either case, Matt couldn’t tell him. He sighed and shook his head.

“Okay, don’t tell me. But do something about it because, like I said, little brother, your days are numbered if you don’t find that sunny disposition of yours again.” Above everything, Flynt knew when to back off. He crossed to the stable entrance and then paused to add, “Just a word to the wise.”

Matt said nothing. He was back to polishing his tack. And wishing he’d never set foot in that damn library and set his heart on the librarian. He should have stuck to cattle.

Two

“Well, good news, Harrison,” Ben Ashton announced, sticking his head into the local district attorney’s office after the latter had offered an absently voiced, “Come in.”

D.A. Spence Harrison’s relaxed demeanor immediately disappeared. The private investigator wasn’t stopping by to exchange thoughts about a case coming to trial, he was here on a far more personal matter. A matter that had involved Spence and three of his closest friends, all because they’d had the unfortunate luck of being on the ninth tee of the Lone Star Country Club golf course the Sunday that the baby had been discovered.

Spence and his friends found the baby, crying and wet from a recent christening by the course’s sprinkling system. The chance watering had inadvertently all but obliterated the note that had been pinned to the baby’s blanket, a note that had, from all appearances, been addressed to the baby’s father.

Because it was known that they frequently played at this time, they’d each been held suspect as the baby’s father. The best way he knew of to eliminate suspicion, though, was voluntary DNA testing. Flynt Carson had decided that he needed to be the one to care for the baby. Child Protective Services had taken his DNA first and run it by a lab. Flynt wasn’t the father.

Unwilling to have even a hint of scandal hovering over him, especially in view of his future aspirations, Spence had volunteered to be tested next.

Obviously, Ashton had the results in his possession now. He tried to read the private investigator’s face, attempting to decide whether the smile there meant that the search had come to an end by some other means, or simply that his DNA test had been negative. He knew that there was no way on earth there was even a close match. This was not his baby.

Spence suppressed a sigh. He was due for some good news. He gestured to the chair in front of his mahogany desk.

Ashton shook his head. “Can’t stay, Harrison. Just came by to tell you that you’re not the baby’s father.”

Spence fixed the other man with a look. “I could have told you that.”

“You did.” The detective’s reminder was droll. “But the police department likes to see proof and verify things for themselves.”

Spence supposed that was what he and the others were paying this man for. To play the devil’s advocate on their behalf as well as to find the identity of the baby’s parents. He leaned back in his chair. “So who are you going to verify next?”

They both knew the answer to that. “With you and Carson in the clear, that leaves Tyler Murdoch and Michael O’Day.”

Poor Michael, Spence thought. When they’d tapped him to fill Luke Callaghan’s place to round out the foursome, the man had undoubtedly thought he was in for a morning of relaxation. With Luke away, gallivanting to places only the incredibly rich had the privilege to go to at a moment’s notice, it seemed like an innocent enough thing to do. Michael hadn’t known what he was in for. It could be that Michael O’Day just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or not. Either way, things had to be done by the book. That meant checking out a man whose history with the group did not go back nearly as far as the rest of them.

When Ashton began to leave, Spence asked, “Want my prediction?”

The P.I. paused in the doorway, politely waiting.

“You’re not going to find a match. You’re wasting your time.”

“But I’m not,” Ashton pointed out. “We need to prove that none of you is the baby’s father, that it was sheer coincidence that you found her when and where you did, at a time and place the four of you are known to be every Sunday.” The detective smiled. “Besides, it’s what you’re paying me for.”

Spence nodded. “Yes, I guess we are. Sorry if I sounded testy just then. This whole thing…” He waved his hand, letting the sentence just fade away. He couldn’t put his restlessness into words. Spence looked back down at the brief he’d been reading when the private investigator had walked in. The meeting was over. “Keep me posted, Ben.”

“Count on it.”

The door closed firmly in his wake.

Spence reached for the phone to tell Tyler to expect Ashton soon. Instinct told him Tyler would be next on the investigator’s list rather than Michael. It stood to reason. The man was trying to beat the police department to the punch and clear Tyler before any gossip via the news media took hold. Nothing the news media liked better than to find dirt sticking to a group of ex-combat heroes who’d managed to return from the Gulf War and work their way back into the civilian world, garnering money and prestige along the way.

Everyone loved a hero. And for some unknown reason, everyone loved finding tarnish on that same hero, Spence mused.

With a sigh, he began hitting the familiar keys on the keypad.

“So you’ve got everything you’ll need?”

Rose stopped folding a blouse she knew she couldn’t wear much longer and turned around. Her father was standing in the doorway of her bedroom.

A tall, still athletically built man, Archy Wainwright looked a little lost for a moment, despite his stately stature. For a second she entertained a flash-back. When she was a little girl she’d always thought of her father as being a giant of a man.

Too bad childhood didn’t last longer, she thought sadly.

He’d shrunk a little in her eyes these past few months. Not because of any affliction of age, but because she knew how adamant her father was about the feud, a feud that had begun years before he was born and pitted their family against the Carsons on things that were only hearsay. The feud that was responsible for separating her from the man she loved.

If things had been different…

But they weren’t, she told herself sternly, and she was strong enough to deal with that.

She hoped.

Rose dropped the blouse into the open suitcase. It was one of three spread out on top of her queen-size bed in various stages of being packed.

“Yes, I have everything.”

Her voice was cold, Archy thought. He wasn’t used to that. Not from Rose. He cleared his throat. “When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” she said crisply, as if they weren’t discussing her exile but some short vacation from which she’d be back before her bed was cold. She paused, then added more softly, “I thought I’d go into Mission Creek and have a last look around when I’m finished.”

Archy nodded. He wasn’t a sentimental man, but he understood the need for it. “Need me to drive you?”

She didn’t think that being with her father in close quarters for any length of time was wise right now. Besides, she wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Thoughts that involved Matt and the places they’d secretly met over the past few months. Months she intended to cherish despite the outcome of their affair.

“No. I can still drive.”

Archy began to retreat, common sense telling him that it was best not to say anything else. But common sense gave way to filial passion. He wanted to make sense out of all this, and he couldn’t.

“What were you thinking, girl? Didn’t we enter into this at all for you?”

She straightened her shoulders, feeling under attack. “No,” she replied simply. “You didn’t. You don’t govern my every waking moment, Dad. Just like I don’t govern yours.”

Archy’s anger stirred. There was no comparing the two of them. “You’re a child, I’m an adult.”

In years gone by, just the hint of anger across her father’s brow was enough to send her scurrying away. But she wasn’t six anymore.

“Wrong, we’re both adults and free to do what we choose.” She raised her chin proudly, knowing she was doing the right thing. “And free to bear up to the consequences of those choices.”

Archy resorted to an age-old defense. “You’re breaking your mother’s heart.”

It took effort not to laugh at that. How could he throw her mother up to her, after what he’d done himself? Her mother had divorced him and moved out years ago because of his transgression and had only recently returned to care for her ailing mother. Kate Wainwright now spent part of her time living on the vast ranch in a small cabin her father had built for her.

“I suspect you took care of that long before I did.” She saw her father’s face turn red and knew he was struggling with choice words he didn’t want to say to her. “See, I can play the guilt game, too, Dad. And it doesn’t do either one of us a bit of good.”

Like fire flashing in a pan only to be smothered by a lid, his anger dissipated, replaced by memories he didn’t feel equipped to deal with at this time. He wasn’t a man who liked to get sloppy. Archy took his firstborn daughter into his arms. “If you need anything…”

She understood what he was trying to tell her. Rose nodded, her soft hair brushing against his broad chest as she returned his embrace.

“I’ll know who to call.”

Afraid emotion would get the better of him, Archy left the room before either one of them could say another thing.

The bartender straightened the name tag on her blouse that proclaimed to anyone who passed through the doors of the Lone Star Country Club that she was Daisy. Daisy Parker was the name she’d taken to keep her own identity a secret until she could safely reveal who she really was. Those who mattered would be surprised to discover that beneath the dyed blond hair and the slightly altered appearance—thanks to a plastic surgeon in London—was a woman who had grown up among them as Haley Mercado. The same Haley Mercado whose family had ties to the Texas mob. The mob that was now after her.

Turning around, she went to take the order of the customer she’d heard come in. A woman, by the sound of the heels clicking on the Spanish tile.

Haley put on her brightest smile and walked up to the woman she recognized as Rose Wainwright.

“Why the long face, honey?” she asked in the deep Texas twang she’d affected.

Rose slid onto the stool and looked around the almost-empty room. “Just taking a last look around.”

Haley cocked her head, hair that had once been a midnight-black but was now a golden blond brushing against her shoulder. “You going somewhere?”

Rose nodded and took a deep breath before saying, “New York.”

She didn’t sound very happy about it, Haley thought. “Business or pleasure?”

“A little bit of both.” She laughed softly to herself. “A little of neither.”

Haley saw her boss pass by the entrance to the lounge and nodded in his direction. Not twenty minutes ago he’d unwittingly enabled her to gather more information by asking her to tend bar for a big private party on Thursday night. The more she unobtrusively circulated, the more information the wire she wore would pick up. With any luck, the ordeal she was enduring would be over soon.

Haley felt rather bad that Rose’s privacy was being invaded this way, but it couldn’t be helped. The young woman did look as if she needed to talk. “So, what’s your pleasure? The usual?”

Rose shook her head. “No. I’ll just have a ginger ale.”

The last two times she’d seen Rose, the older Wainwright daughter had ordered a white wine. Haley’s brow arched. “That’s even tamer than usual. Sure you don’t want any wine?”

Rose shook her head. “I need a clear head.”

Haley reached behind her on the bar, extracting a bottle of ginger ale. Twisting off the top, she poured the contents into a glass. “I’ve never seen you imbibe too much.”

“Well, I’ve turned over a new leaf,” Rose replied.

Haley set down the near-empty bottle. “New York and ginger ale. Any other new things?”

Rose pressed her lips together, seeming to be deep in thought.

“No, that’s it for now.” Rose wrapped her hand around the chunky glass that Daisy had placed in front of her on the counter.

“You don’t look very happy about going.”

She waved a hand. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

This wasn’t the kind of thing the FBI was hoping for when they wired Haley. None of what this unhappy young woman had to say would help her reach her own goal, that of reclaiming her life. But the sadness in Rose’s eyes spoke to her.

She leaned forward, placing a hand on top of Rose’s. “Honey, if you ever need someone to just listen, you know where to find me.”

Rose smiled, obviously touched by the offer. “Thanks, but like I said, I’m going to New York.”

“They’ve these newfangled things they call telephones. People talk into them and people on the other end can hear every word. Imagine that.”

Rose laughed.

Haley smiled, her eyes crinkling. At least she’d done one good deed today. “That’s better.”

Matt finally understood the old, trite saying. He understood what it meant to be at wit’s end, because he was at the end of his.

He had no idea what to do.

After deciding that Flynt was right, that he should take the bull by the horns before he allowed it to ram right through him, he’d gone to see Rose.

But she was gone.

She wasn’t at the library, wasn’t anywhere in town. And when he’d finally broken down and called her house, the woman who had answered the telephone informed him that Rose wasn’t available. No details, nothing. Impatient, he’d asked when she would be back. The only answer he got was that information was unavailable at this time. Then the phone had gone dead.

He’d slammed down the receiver. What kind of garbage was that?

Unavailable.

That was the whole problem. Rose was supposed to be unavailable to him because he was a Carson. But she hadn’t been. She’d been like fireflies and light. Magic. Pure magic in his arms, in his bed. The memory of making love with her into the wee hours of the morning clung to him tenaciously, coloring every moment of his day and night.

He couldn’t go on this way.

Damn it, a man should be able to shake off anything, but he couldn’t seem to shake off the effect she’d had on him. He needed to tell her that. To find her and talk to her face-to-face.

It couldn’t just end like this, as if it hadn’t meant anything.

It wasn’t his ego that was at stake, it was his heart. Why couldn’t she see that? She’d been so bright, so insightful about everything else, how could she not know what her leaving would do to him?

He’d tried to talk himself into believing that this had been just a fling, an affair. But it was a lie and he knew it from the start.

He needed a drink. A tall, stiff one.

Matt stormed into the Lone Star Country Club Men’s Grill and planted himself on a stool at the bar. Because of the bomb that had gone off months earlier, the Men’s Grill was under construction, forcing the patrons into temporary quarters.

He scowled into the mirror.

Amid a barful of customers, Haley saw him. Flynt Carson’s younger brother. Flynt had been one of her brother Ricky’s best friends before life had conspired against them and sent them in separate directions.

She made her way over to Matt, she on her side of the bar, he on his.

“Hi, handsome. A smile will really dress up that pretty face of yours.”

Without asking, the bartender set a whiskey neat down in front of him.

Matt accepted the drink with a slight nod of his head. “Thanks, Daisy. But I don’t have anything to smile about.” Throwing back the contents of the shot glass, he set it down empty on the counter a moment later. “Hit me again.”

Daisy reached for the bottle and poured. “Hey, go slow on that. Don’t want to make extra work for the sheriff now, do we? What’s the problem?”

He raised his eyes to hers. Suddenly he missed Rose’s eyes. He cursed her soul to hell for what she’d done to him. “Nothing,” he muttered moodily. “Everything.”

“That about covers it.” Haley watched him down the second drink and held off offering the third. At this pace, Matt Carson was working himself up for one powerful hangover.

“Yeah.” He laughed without any humor. “I thought I had all the bases covered, too.” He stared down at the empty glass—empty, like the way he felt. “But she fooled me.”

“She?”

Matt nodded, hating this impotent way he felt. Where the hell was she? He leaned in over the counter, his voice low. The bartender was forced to lean forward to hear him.

“She’s gone. I can’t find her anywhere.”

Haley thought back to the woman who had been in the Grill two days prior. With the same troubled look in her eyes. It didn’t take a genius to make the connection.

“She?” Daisy asked. “That wouldn’t be Rose Wainwright, now, would it?”

Matt looked at her sharply, then glanced around to see if anyone had overheard. Not likely, not in this din. “How did you—?”

Daisy’s mouth curved in a comforting smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to anyone. I know all about that family feud of yours. Big waste of time if you ask me. But no one’s asking me.”

The hell with the feud, the hell with everything else except the woman who’d twisted his gut up so bad, it felt like a pretzel. “I’m asking you about Rose. Was she here? When? What did she say?”

The bartender nodded. “Day before yesterday. And she said she was leaving.”

“Leaving?” Then he was right, she had gone. “Where did she say she was going?”

“New York.”

“‘New York’?” he echoed.

His first inclination was to say she had to be mistaken. New York wasn’t the kind of place someone like Rose would go. But then he remembered. She had an aunt who lived in Manhattan. Beth Wainwright, that was her name.

Relief swept over him like a giant wave. Rose hadn’t just disappeared into thin air. He knew where she was. And he was going to get her back. Grateful for the help, Matt leaned over the counter, took hold of Daisy’s shoulders and kissed her soundly on the mouth.

“Thanks.”

She pretended to fan herself. “Don’t mention it.” And then she winked. “Pleasant though that was, that doesn’t take the place of a tip, you know.”

Standing up, Matt pulled a twenty out of his wallet and tossed it onto the counter. “Keep the change,” he told her. “And thanks.”

For the first time in two days he knew where he was going.

The doorbell pealed incessantly, intruding into the mood that was enshrouding Rose.

Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to shake loose of it. It hung about her like a coat of heavy iron malle. Her aunt had been nothing short of wonderful, insisting on taking her “fun” places, as she called them, and determined to make her smile. Rose tried her best not to show the older woman how deeply unhappy she was, but she had a feeling she wasn’t fooling her.

She supposed that eventually the raging battle would die down to an occasional minor skirmish and Matt Carson would entirely cease to matter. In about a million years or so.

“Would you get that, darling? I have my hands full of caviar,” Beth called from the kitchen.

Rose didn’t even stop to ask. Her aunt’s eccentricities were becoming normal.

Though she didn’t feel like talking to anyone, she couldn’t very well return Beth’s kindness with surliness.

“Of course.”

She supposed, she thought as she turned the lock and pulled on the doorknob, that she should welcome any distraction.

Except this one.

Rose’s mouth fell open.

Matt Carson was standing in her aunt’s doorway.

Three

Matt’s was the last face Rose had expected to see in New York. For a split second she thought she was hallucinating. Her head and heart were so full of him that she thought she was just projecting his likeness onto someone else.

But he was real.

And he was here.

It took several beats to get her flustered heart under control. She willed herself to remain calm. “What are you doing here?”

The entire trip from Texas he’d rehearsed what he’d say to her, editing, augmenting, changing words up until the very last moment. Now that he was standing in front of her, his mind went blank and he said the first thing that came to him. The truth.

“Looking for you.”

She wasn’t going to fall into his arms, she wasn’t. That would only set her back. She’d gone through this once, said goodbye and ended it. She wasn’t up to dancing the same slow dance again.

“Well, you found me.” She gripped the doorknob tightly, ready to swing the door closed. “Now go away.”

It was the wrong thing to say. He felt his anger, his hurt, flare up dangerously high. “I am not going to go away. Hell, woman, I’ve come over a thousand miles to talk to you.”

He was standing there, looking better than any man had a right to. All she wanted to do was to throw her arms around him and tell him she was carrying his baby. Their baby.

Somehow, she found the strength not to.

“Then you wasted your time and your money because there’s nothing to talk about.” She squared her shoulders, doing her best to sound cold, but hating the way the words tasted in her mouth. Telling herself that it was all for the best was wearing very thin. “I said it all back in Mission Creek.”

Matt’s eyes narrowed. He struggled not to push his way in. He hadn’t come all this way to frighten her, but he hadn’t made the journey just to turn around and go home again, either.

“You might have said it all back there, but I didn’t. I—”

He stopped as a petite, buxomy, dark-haired woman dressed in a black caftan with royal-blue dragons across it came to the door. Her heart-shaped face lit up as she looked at him, a twinkle shining in both dark eyes. “Is there a problem, dear?”

Her words were addressed to Rose, but her eyes never left him. Matt felt as if he were being literally, smilingly dissected, inch by inch.

“My, my, my, who is this handsome devil?” The woman laughed softly, leaning forward, her hand on his arm. “If you’re selling subscriptions, sign me up for a half dozen magazines. Better yet, why don’t you come in and try to convince me to buy more?”

Oh God, no, Rose thought frantically, that was the last thing she wanted. “Aunt Beth, this is—” Rose stopped, feeling shaky inside.

It had to be the pregnancy, she thought in desperation, praying she wouldn’t do something dumb like faint until after Matt was gone. Her head was spinning and she was struggling to keep the world in focus.

“I know who he is, dear,” Beth said, managing to come off serene and flirtatious at the same time. She winked at Matt.

She’d had the complete story out of her niece within less than an hour of her arrival two days ago. Beth prided herself on getting people to talk to her, even when they were reluctant to do so. Especially when they were reluctant to do so. She firmly believed that secrets were best borne when they were shared. That went double for disturbing ones and she knew that this unplanned pregnancy had disturbed Rose’s life greatly.

“With those beautiful blue eyes and that handsome, rugged face, he could only be one of Ford Carson’s boys. Judging your age…” Beth cocked her head, pretending to scrutinize him, knowing that Rose would hate to have her divulge that she’d told her all about Matt and her delicate condition, a condition Beth knew he was completely unaware of. “I’d say you must be Matt.”

Matt stared at the flamboyantly dressed woman at Rose’s elbow. She looked to be exactly as Rose had once described her to be: one of those ageless women who had been everywhere, done everything. He knew that she was Archy Wainwright’s older sister, which had to put her somewhere in her early sixties at the very least, but she wore her age well and almost seamlessly so. He could detect no wrinkles and only a few lines around her mouth, which Rose had once said Beth called laugh lines.

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, don’t just stand out there in the cold hallway, honey.” Beth took a step toward him to pull him into the vast six-room Central Park West apartment. “Come on in and make yourself at home.”

“He was just going,” Rose insisted, looking at Matt for corroboration. She wished from the bottom of her heart that he hadn’t come.

Was she really that eager to get rid of him? Was he just a poor, lovesick idiot wearing his heart on his sleeve for the first time? He had nothing to go by, no ruler to measure any of this with. He’d never felt for any other woman what he did for Rose. But it seemed to be one-sided, after all.

“Oh, but he can’t go,” Beth informed her sweetly. “He’s only just now come.” Calling an end to the discussion, Beth threaded her arms through Matt’s, two heavy bejeweled hands crossing over each other to hold him in place. “Now come inside and take a load off those dusty boots of yours.”

His arm held prisoner, Matt had no choice but to allow himself to be drawn into the apartment.

As he crossed the threshold, Matt looked around, slightly dazed. He had no idea that anything like this could exist in a city as crowded and noisy as the one he’d just walked through and left twenty floors below. The tremendous living room with its vaulted ceilings had modern furniture and an incredibly white rug that ran the expanse of the room. On the walls were framed photographs of Beth with celebrities and an assortment of husbands and several publicity shots from her acting career. He could feel the woman’s vitality fairly leaping from every one.

Mindful of his boots, Matt looked down at the rug. It was as pristine as an untouched beach. “How do you keep it so white?”

The wink Beth gave him was nothing short of outrageous. He had a feeling the woman had been dynamite in her younger years, and probably still was a force to be reckoned with.

“You can manage anything with enough money, honey.”

He didn’t know about that. Money certainly wouldn’t win him the woman he loved.

“Come.” Beth coaxed him over to the ice-blue Italian leather sofa. “Sit.”

Rose knew that Beth meant well, but this was getting severely out of hand. She looked pointedly at her aunt. “Aunt Beth, can I please see you?”

Making herself comfortable beside Matt, Beth looked up at her niece. “You see me now, dear.”

Rose nodded toward the hallway beyond the living room. “In another room.”

Matt inclined his head toward Beth. “I think she means without me.”

Beth nodded. “I think so, too, dear. Always been a stubborn girl. But take it from me, she’s worth waiting for.” Rising, she patted his hand and then turned toward Rose, her caftan sweeping majestically. There was a patient look on her face. “All right, dear, I’m all yours. What room would you like to go to?”

“The den,” Rose told her. The den, at least, had a door she could close. She didn’t want her words being overheard by Matt.

Damn it, she was here as much to get over him as to spare her family any embarrassment because of her condition. Why did he have to show up and send her back to square one?

Who are you kidding? a small voice mocked Rose as she led the way to her aunt’s den. You’re not anywhere near even started getting over him.

She knew it was the truth. She hadn’t really begun getting over him. But she didn’t have a prayer of getting started while he was still here. To get rid of him, she had to get her aunt to stop trying to make him so comfortable.

Walking into the den, she waited for her aunt to cross the threshold before closing the door firmly behind her.

Beth turned around and looked at her niece patiently. In a gesture that was reminiscent of her theatrical days, she spread her arms wide. “All right, dear, here I am. What is it you want to say to me?”

Not for the world did she want to hurt her aunt’s feelings. But Beth had to be made to understand. “I don’t want you encouraging him to stay.”

Beth laughed and shook her head. “He doesn’t need my encouragement, dear. He’s come all this way on his own.” She sighed the way she did when she read the last page of a good romance novel. “Just to see you.”

Agitated, frustrated, Rose began to pace. “But I don’t want to see him.”

Beth gave her a funny little look, becoming serious. Her voice was soft, almost hypnotic in its sincerity. “Yes, you do.”

This was hard enough on her without having to argue about it. “Aunt Beth.”

Beth had no children of her own, aside from a grown stepson by one of her late husbands. Gregory was in Chile on an oil rigger. She’d never had an opportunity to mother him, so she focused all that untapped motherly instinct on Rose.

“Give it some time, dear. Away from the others. There’s a real spark between the two of you. I saw it the second you looked at each other. Hell, I felt it clear across the room.”

Rose didn’t ordinarily contradict anyone in her family, but her own need to survive had changed some of the rules. “You were in the other room the second we looked at each other,” she pointed out.

As with most of her life, Beth shifted course to accommodate the current. “Like I said, I felt it. And the spark went on long enough for me to walk into the room.” She took her niece’s hand between both of hers, forcing Rose to look at her. “Sweetheart, don’t let some silly feud that has nothing to do with either one of you ruin what could be a beautiful future.”

Rose sighed, pulling her hand away. “It’s not just the feud, Aunt Beth. And even if it was, it’s not silly to my father.”

Beth snorted, waving a dismissive hand. “Archy always was incredibly loyal to all the wrong things.” She slipped a conspiratorial arm around Rose’s slim shoulders, reaching up a little as she did so. Rose was a good three inches taller than her. “Darling, do you think that if the woman he loved was a Carson, he’d let some ancient feud stand in his way?” She laughed, remembering the man her brother used to be before stability and age had forced him to bury his wild streak. “Not when he was Matt’s age. Your father was a hellion back then. If he’d fallen for a Carson—”

“But he didn’t,” Rose pointed out. “I did.” And that made all the difference in the world.

Beth smiled from ear to ear, resting her case. “Uhhuh, see, you admit it.”

The woman had tricked her, Rose thought. She might be eccentric, but that didn’t mean Beth wasn’t crafty. “Maybe,” she partially conceded. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t realize it’s a mistake.”

The look in Beth’s eyes, as violet as Rose’s, became dreamy as she remembered some of her earlier marriages and affairs.

“Love is never a mistake, dear. You’re like Romeo and Juliet.” She gave her a confident look. “Except you’re going to have a happier ending.”

Rose could have sworn Beth was making her a promise, but that was impossible. No one could promise that. She knew better.

“No, we’re just going to have an ending,” she said firmly. “Starting here and now.”

Beth opened the door and was already beginning to walk away. “Can’t hear you, dear. You must be talking into my bad ear.”

Rose raised a suspicious brow. “You told me it was the other ear yesterday.”

Beth turned toward her, unfazed. “These things have a tendency to switch, Rose, honey. You know how eccentric I am.”

Moving quickly, Rose placed herself in front of her aunt. Beth wasn’t going to leave the room until she promised not to interfere.

“Aunt Beth, do you remember the details of the feud?”

“Remember it?” She laughed. “It was drummed into my head almost every day when I was a child. I was ten years old before I realized it wasn’t one of Aesop’s fables.”

Rose took hold of her aunt’s broader shoulders to hold her in place. “All right, then, remember how Jace Carson proposed to the mayor’s daughter just because he thought she was going to have his baby? He didn’t love her, but he was ready to do the honorable thing.”

Beth held up a finger, interrupting. “He didn’t, though. The baby turned out to be the gardener’s. The mayor’s daughter was afraid her father wouldn’t approve of him, so she kept it a secret until she couldn’t contain it any longer, then blamed Jace. But everything turned out all right, except for poor Lou Lou.” She’d always wanted to write a play about the feud and play the part of Lou Lou Wainwright, the woman who committed suicide when she found she couldn’t marry her lifelong sweetheart, Jace Carson, and started off the feud.

Beth was straying off the path. Rose quickly redirected her attention to what she was trying to say. “The point is, Jace was going to marry her to do the right thing.”

Beth looked at her niece, trying to second-guess her. “And you’re afraid that if Matt knows, that’s what he’s going to do.”

“Exactly.”

Funny how two people could be in love, Beth thought, and still be so blind about the other person. It rather reminded her of the way she and Garrison had been about each other.

Beth quickly caught herself before her thoughts took her off in another direction.

“Not that I don’t think your young man isn’t honorable, dear, but I don’t think anyone could make him do what he didn’t want to do.”

“That’s just the point,” Rose insisted. “He’d want to be honorable.”

Beth cocked her head, trying to follow Rose’s thinking. “And you don’t want him honorable?”

“I don’t want him marrying me to be honorable, or to give the baby a name.” She swung around to face Beth as she made her point. “I want him to marry me because he loves me, because he wants a baby with me, not because he accepts me for his wife because I happen to be the mother of his baby. Do you see the difference, Aunt Beth?”

“Yes, I do. And if you don’t think that that boy loves you down to the soles of his worn cowboy boots, then you and I need to have a serious conversation.”

Rose held up her hand. “No, no more talking. Please. I just want him to leave so I can get on with my life.”

Beth was thoroughly convinced that young people didn’t know how to love these days. They kept insisting on getting in their own way.

“Now that I’ve had a gander at that boy, Rose, it doesn’t seem like much of a life without him.”

Before Rose could launch into another argument, Beth left the den and swept majestically into the living room.

She beamed down at Matt, who immediately rose in his seat. Good looking and polite. She knew a great catch when she saw one. The thing of it was, to make Rose realize it, too.

“Sorry to leave you alone for so long, Matt.” Beth saw that he’d opened the gold-bound book on the coffee table and had been leafing through it. She jumped at her opportunity. “Oh, you’ve found my scrapbook.”

Nostalgia had her sinking down beside him on the sofa, ready to page through the book with him.

Only sheer will restrained Matt from doing a double take. The page opened in front of him was of an apparently nude, nubile woman who had strategically arranged feathers to cover all the important places. He looked from the page to Beth.

“This is you?” he asked.

“Yes.” She was eighteen then and fresh from the ranch. It seemed like a million years ago now. And just like only yesterday. “I was on Broadway. Off-Broadway, actually. Way off.” She’d worked her way up to the legitimate theater, and acquired many wonderful memories and almost as many men along the way. Beth sighed. “It’s been a wonderful life.” And then she smiled at Matt. “But you’re not here to listen to me reminisce.”

It occurred to him that he felt comfortable with this woman he’d never met before. As comfortable with Beth Wainwright Montgomery Cannon Williams Smith, et cetera as he was with Rose, or had been before she’d dumped him. Maybe it was a family trait, he reasoned. Although Rose was far less outgoing and flamboyant than her aunt. Truthfully, he was glad of that, because if she’d been like Beth, he would have had to stand in line instead of keeping her all for himself.

Matt sensed an ally in Beth and as such, felt that it was only smart to encourage her to continue. “No, please, go ahead.”

Beth patted his hand, her violet eyes sparkling like newly uncorked champagne poured into a fluted glass. “Not just handsome, but smart, too.” She laughed as she looked at Rose over Matt’s head. “This one’s a charmer, Rose.”

“Yes,” Rose said, looking pointedly at Matt. “But charm eventually wears thin.”

The remark hit him straight in his heart, like a well-aimed arrow. What was he doing here, humbling himself in front of a woman who had walked out on him, who’d all but told him that she’d had her fun, but the excitement was gone and now it was time to return to their previous lives?

Where the hell was his pride?

“Since I’m here,” he heard himself saying, “I might as well take a long overdue vacation. But this place is so damn confusing,” he confided to Beth, ignoring Rose completely, “I’m going to need someone to be my guide.” He waited for the offer he thought was inevitable. When it didn’t come from Beth, he urged, “How about you? Are you up for it?”

To his surprise, Beth shook her head. “Oh, my dear, I would be more than up for it, but I’m right in the middle of teaching an acting class.” Then she beamed as if suddenly struck by a thought that he suspected had been there all along. “But Rose is free.”

He spared Rose a glance. “I don’t expect she knows very much of the city.”

“She knows a great deal more than you give her credit for, Matt.”

He shifted in his seat, turning to look at Rose who was on his other side. Was it his imagination, or did she suddenly look pale? “All right, how about it? Will you show me around?”

Why were they playing these games? Why couldn’t he just go home? “You don’t really want to see the city,” Rose replied.

Matt could feel his temper heating again. There was no doubt about it, Rose could set him off like nobody he knew.

“I said I did, didn’t I? Why do you always have to contradict what I say?”

She was in no mood to be diplomatic. “Maybe it’s because you never say what you mean.”

Beth clapped her hands together three times before she managed to get their attention.

“Children, children, stop fighting this instant and make nice or I’ll send you both to your rooms without any supper.” A complete pushover, even in jest, she rethought that. “Well, that’s too harsh, but without dessert at any rate.” She winked.

Rose folded her hands in front of her and let out a deep breath. She supposed she had sounded like a child, arguing just now. And since it looked as if Matt wasn’t about to leave unless she agreed to some kind of a tour of the city, she decided that this was the lesser of all evils.

“All right, I’ll show you around the city if that’s what you really want.”

“I always love a warm invitation,” he said sarcastically.

Beth intervened. “Make up and say yes, dear, before I show you your room.”

Almost in shock, Rose stared at Beth and then Matt, praying that Beth was using some like of poetic license. “He’s staying here?”

“Well, there was a suitcase in the hall next to his foot and I assumed it was his,” Beth told her.

It could stay in the hallway for all Rose cared—along with him. “Just because he has a suitcase doesn’t mean he has to put it here. This isn’t a hotel.” The moment she said it, she regretted it, knowing what was coming.

Beth didn’t disappoint her. “No, of course not, but I took you in, didn’t I?”

Rose tried to rally and dig herself out of the hole she’d fallen into. “I’m family.”

Beth merely nodded sagely. Her near-death experience on the operating table several years ago had made her reestablish communication between herself and a higher power.

“We’re all one big family in God’s eyes, dear.” She turned to Matt. “And Matt obviously needs a room, don’t you, dear?”

He rose to his feet. “I was going to a hotel.”

Leaning on the arm of the sofa, Beth pushed herself upright. “I’ll save you the trouble. Third door on the left. Guest bedroom. I love having guests,” she confided.

“Ms. Wainwright—”

“Call me Beth, please. And I won’t hear another word about it. Keep arguing and you’ll hurt my feelings. You wouldn’t want to do that, now, would you?”

Matt shook his head in compliance, but Rose opened her mouth to protest. “But—”

“Good.” Rose clapped her hands together. “Then it’s settled. You’re staying. It’s a big apartment. We won’t get in each other’s way.”

Unless, of course, I orchestrate something, Beth added silently.

Four

Rose was keenly aware that Matt was in the next room, settling in.

There was another guest bedroom on the other side of her aunt’s room. Why hadn’t Beth given him that one? Why the one next to hers? What was she trying to do to her? Rose thought moodily. It was hard enough dealing with emotions and hormones that were completely out of kilter because of her condition without having to put up with barbarians not only at the gate, but storming through those same gates, as well.

Matt had told Beth that he was planning to stay in New York about a week or two. He’d been looking at Rose when he’d said it, as if the length of time depended strictly on her.

If that was the case, he should be on a plane for home right now, Rose thought, frustrated.

Making up her mind to convince Beth to withdraw her invitation to Matt, Rose left her bedroom and went looking for her aunt.

Instead she ran into a mini army of people carrying covered dishes toward the terrace.

Following their path with her eyes, Rose found Beth. She was holding court on the terrace. Right in the middle of things, as always, stood Beth, pointing and issuing soft-spoken orders like a general mantled in a flowing caftan.

Rose stepped out of the way of a young, trim-waisted man in black livery carrying a small box. Feeling like someone in the middle of Atlantis moments before the fatal earthquake, she made a beeline for her aunt.

“Aunt Beth, what is all this?”

“Right there will be fine, dear,” she said to the young woman with the salad bowl. Beth spared Rose a quick glance over her shoulder. “Why, it’s dinner, darling. What does it look like?”

There were crystal goblets, a very fancy bottle of what appeared to be ginger ale, another of champagne. Covered entrée dishes sat atop a table graced with a cream-colored lace cloth and overlooking the park that dusk was slowly covering.

“Throwing a couple of steaks in the frying pan and tossing in a salad is dinner,” Rose informed her. “This is a conspiracy.”

Beth laughed and patted Rose’s cheek. “Nonsense, Rose, there’s no conspiracy.” She leaned into her niece, lowering her voice. “You know, it’s a known fact that some women in your condition start becoming paranoid.”

Rose stiffened and turned around, looking toward the living room to make sure that Matt wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity.

“Aunt Beth—” she said between clenched teeth. This was supposed to remain a family secret and here Beth was, talking about it in the middle of a circus of strangers.

Beth lowered her voice even more. “I’m whispering, honey. Even you can’t hear me.” She came to attention as another man came out on the terrace with a small, narrow box in his hands. “Oh, put that right there. I’ll take care of it.”

Ignoring the crisis Rose was going through, Beth began putting out long, tapered candles.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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