The Marriage Maker

Letting herself think only of coffee, she swore she could almost smell it as she pushed the swinging door that led into the kitchen.

Celeste blinked in the dazzling overhead light. The room was bright, there was coffee already brewed, and she wasn’t going to keep her insomnia a secret because it seemed another Monroe woman shared it.

“Mama!” Celeste’s twenty-seven-year-old daughter Cleo looked up from the mug she’d been frowning at.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” Celeste crossed the hardwood floor in the direction of the scarred oval table where Cleo was sitting. “You’re looking at that coffee as if it’s your worst enemy.”

Cleo’s full lips raised in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “It is my coffee, after all, Mama, not Jasmine’s.”

Well, her younger daughter was undoubtedly a master in the kitchen, but Celeste knew Cleo was just avoiding the real question. “C’mon, sweetie, this is your mother you’re talking to. You don’t usually have trouble sleeping.”

Cleo’s eyebrows came together in concern. “No, it’s you that usually can’t get any rest. Another nightmare?”

Celeste gestured with her hand as if to brush the subject away. She didn’t want to discuss it. “I’m asking what’s keeping you awake.”

There was a long pause, then Cleo looked balefully back down at her coffee mug. “Bean sprouts. I’m worried about the day care center.”

Celeste let the admission go for a moment and moved to the counter to pour herself some of Cleo’s less-than-stellar coffee. She was proud of her daughter’s success as the director of the day care center and knew that Cleo also took a lot of pride in what she did. The man she leased the building from had told Cleo last week he was going to sell the property as soon as possible. With her lease agreement up for renewal, Cleo had a legitimate worry that her business might not survive.

“You haven’t found another possible site, honey?” Celeste added a dash of milk to her mug then held the hot ceramic against the knuckles of her left hand. Their deep arthritic ache was as unpleasantly familiar as the dream that brought it about.

“Nothing,” Cleo said, shrugging. “And Gene came by again yesterday. He’s putting up a For Sale sign next week.”

Celeste came forward to lay a hand on top of her daughter’s head. “Maybe he won’t find anyone interested in buying.”

“Mmm.”

Celeste’s eyes narrowed. If she had to guess, she would say that Cleo wasn’t thinking about Beansprouts or For Sale signs or anything to do with business. There was a sad, faraway but dreamy look in her daughter’s beautiful violet eyes. “This is about something else. Something besides Bean sprouts.”

Cleo didn’t look up.

Celeste’s heart squeezed, and she used her aching left hand to tilt up her daughter’s chin. “Oh, Cleo,” she said. “This isn’t about him, is it? He’s been gone three months, sweetie. You wouldn’t still be mooning over a man like Ethan Redford?”

A new voice broke in. “Of course Cleo’s not mooning over Ethan, Mama. Cleo is much too sensible, much too practical to be letting a big shot, here-today-gone-tomorrow man like Ethan Redford even give her heart a tickle.”

Celeste chuckled as her younger daughter Jasmine glided into the room. At twenty-three, with her short-cropped black hair and a slender face, she looked too fresh and wide-awake for five-thirty in the morning. “You’re up early.”

“Mmm.” She took one sniff at the coffee carafe, grimaced in mock disgust, then dumped its contents into the sink. “Cleo would be in a better mood if she could learn to make better coffee.”

Since Jasmine’s coffee was universally acclaimed as fabulous—as well as anything else she created in the kitchen—neither Cleo nor Celeste bothered disagreeing with her. As a matter of fact, Cleo only said, “Sit down, Mama,” and then took both their mugs to the sink. She poured out the contents, then set the cups on the counter to wait for her sister’s heaven-blessed brew.

She gave Jasmine a significant look. “Mama had another nightmare.”

Both young women turned toward her. Celeste froze under her daughters’ worried gazes. “No—” But she stopped, because they were pointedly looking at her hands, and she realized she’d been massaging the painful left one with her right. She sighed.

“Please, girls, let’s talk about something else,” she pleaded. Talking about her nightmare might allow that disturbing, unnameable emotion she was keeping under strict control to rise again. “Please.”

Jasmine surrendered first, sliding her gaze toward her more voluptuous sister. “Okay, Mama.” She grinned, that devilish grin of a younger sibling who knows just how to push the older one’s buttons—and revels in it. “Let’s talk about what’s bugging Cleo.”

“Watch it,” Cleo threatened. “I can still hide your Barbie dolls, brat.” She propped her hands on her hips.

Jasmine’s grin widened. “I’ve hidden them from you. At your insistence, I recycle, Cleo. I compost our kitchen scraps. I’d never wear fur. But you’re not going to make me give up my precious fashion dolls. Uh-uh.”

Before Cleo could retort, the kitchen’s back door opened and Frannie, Celeste’s niece, stepped over the thresh old. In a brown, knee-length business suit that matched the brown of her hair and the brown of her eyes, she looked completely prepared for another day in her job as a loan officer at the White horn Savings and Loan.

At five-nine, Frannie towered over her cousins. In a familiar morning ritual, she automatically took the cup of coffee Cleo poured for her. “What are we talking about?” She lived at her parents’ house, located just behind the B and B.

Jasmine started bustling around the kitchen, getting ready for the break fast she’d serve the guests. “Fashion, I’d guess you’d say.”

Frannie touched the brown tortoiseshell clip that held her hair at the back of her neck. She sighed. “I guess that lets me out, then.”

Jasmine shook her head. “Only because you won’t let me make you over, Frannie. If you’d just give yourself a chance, you’d be stunning.”

Frannie flushed. “Let’s talk about something else.”

That mischievous smile twitched at Jasmine’s lips again. Uh-oh, Celeste thought. Prepare yourself, Cleo.

“We could go back to discussing Cleo’s love life,” Jasmine said, taking eggs out of the refrigerator.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Cleo’s face blushed just as pink as Frannie’s.

Jasmine acted as if she hadn’t heard her. “Mama wondered if maybe Cleo was still smitten with that Ethan Redford who was here three months ago.”

Frannie blinked owlishly. “Who?”

“You remember.” Jasmine took the juicer out of a lower cupboard. “He took Cleo out a couple of times, and I admit the looks he gave her could have melted that old wallpaper off the downstairs hallway, but then he just—poof!—left White horn. What do you think? Is Cleo in need of romantic repair?”

“Of course not.” Frannie blinked again and her voice was absolutely certain. “Cleo is much, much too practical to make any kind of romantic mistake.”

“Sensible, too. You missed sensible, Frannie,” Cleo added. Her face had regained its normal color and her voice was without animation.

Something in the nonemotion of Cleo’s voice niggled at Celeste and her mother radar went on the alert. “Cleo, sweetie—”

“Good morning!” The back door had opened again to admit Frannie’s parents, Celeste’s sister Yvette and her husband, Edward Hannon. The smell of a cool spring morning accompanied them as they headed for the countertop and Jasmine’s coffee.

The girls exchanged plea san tries with the new arrivals, and soon they were all savoring their morning ritual. Jasmine continued preparing break fast for the guests, but the rest of them took their places around the large kitchen table. Edward unfolded the newspaper and smiled at the faces circling him. “And a good morning it is. No better way for a man to start the day than with a glimpse of the harem that has kept him happy all these years.”

Celeste joined the others in the groan that in variably accompanied Edward’s usual comment. Someone wished that David, Frannie’s brother, was around to keep his father in check.

Thinking of her nephew, Celeste could only wish David was nearby, too. An FBI agent in Atlanta, Georgia, he hadn’t made it to Montana for a visit in too long. And she needed her loved ones around her. The nightmares were trying to tell her something about the past, and she felt certain she’d need all those she held dear when the day of reckoning came.

Yvette touched Celeste’s arm. “Are you all right?”

“She had another rough night,” Cleo said.

Celeste felt like a specimen in a bottle with five sets of serious eyes regarding her. That desperate, unnamed emotion swirled up inside her like a tornado, and she had to take a deep breath to find the strength to push it back down. “But I’m looking forward to an interesting day,” she said firmly. “Edward, tell us some good news.”

With one more searching look at her face, Edward smoothed the front page absently, then bent his head. “Well,” he said, smoothing the paper again. “Lyle Brooks finally broke ground for that resort/casino complex he’s been talking up all over town.”

Celeste frowned. That young man was some sort of kin on the Kincaid side and she’d never felt comfortable around him. “But isn’t the casino part of the Laughing Horse Reservation? How is Lyle involved?”

It was banker Frannie who answered. “Because Indian laws allow gambling, the casino will be on the Laughing Horse reservation, Aunt Celeste. But the accompanying resort will be on Kincaid land. Lyle’s put together the financing for both projects.” She didn’t look any more at ease about the young man than Celeste felt. “In ten years the whole thing will move out of Kincaid/Laughing Horse hands and into those of a joint corporation, headed by Lyle.”

Celeste should have been happy that they were off the subject of her nightmares, but suddenly the whole notion of Lyle and the disturbance of Kincaid land chilled her. A shiver racked her body. Yvette’s hand moved across the table to cover Celeste’s left one, the ache in it more pronounced than usual.

“Celeste, what’s the matter?” Yvette asked.

Another shiver rattled over Celeste’s spine. “There’s just something about Lyle I don’t like,” she said to her sister. “Maybe it’s because he reminds me of Jeremiah.”

At the mention of their elder brother’s name, silence fell around the table. When he’d been murdered, the violence had been shocking, but they hadn’t mourned him. He’d been cold and controlling all his life.

Celeste took a long breath, sorry to have brought her brother’s name into their warm circle. She looked from face to face, trying to gauge their moods. Edward and Yvette were concerned about her, she could see, while Frannie looked almost embarrassed. Standing behind Cleo, two worry lines bisected Jasmine’s smooth forehead. And Cleo—her beautiful, motherly Cleo—looked ready to fight tigers on Celeste’s behalf. But even underneath all her bristling protectiveness Celeste sensed in her older daughter another kind of sadness…

Yvette squeezed Celeste’s hand. “We love you,” she said.

Oh. And she loved them all and wanted them so much to be happy. With her right hand she lifted her coffee cup to her mouth, intent on moistening her throat to tell them so.

But the coffee sloshed over her hand instead, and she didn’t even notice the slight scald, because suddenly that frightening maelstrom of emotion, that nightmare hangover, rose up within her once again. There was no controlling it.

She looked around at the faces of her family, but the feeling stayed, pulsing inside her.

It was powerful and dark and she finally, finally, knew its terrifying name.

The emotion that always remained with her after the horrible dream was…shame.

Celeste dropped her gaze, unable to meet the eyes of her caring, beloved family. Because just as certain as she was that it was shame trying to claw its way out of her heart, she was quite sure her family would condemn her if they knew that long ago she had…she had…

What?

Oh, God. Despite the acknowledgment of that feeling of shame, despite thirty years of terror-filled nights, Celeste just didn’t know.

She didn’t know what terrifying, shameful thing she had done.

Two

Ethan Redford sat in his newly purchased Range Rover outside White horn, Montana’s Bean sprouts day care center. Out his tinted windows he had a perfect view of the center’s fenced playground. Under the watchful gaze of several women he didn’t recognize, little kids built sandcastles, slid down a wavy slide, made imaginary meals in a gaily painted playhouse. Pleasing though the sight was, Ethan’s fingertips drummed the saddle-colored leather armrest.

He was stalling.

As humbling as the confession might be, he had to admit to himself that the idea of confronting Cleo Monroe after his abrupt, three-month absence was making his palms sweat. Hell! And this from a man who’d faced down his drunken, raging father at nine years old and brokered his first multimillion-dollar merger at thirty.

He rubbed his hands against his deliberately casual khaki slacks. Though the deal he wanted to propose today was the most important of his life, he knew it wasn’t the moment for an Armani suit and his best silk tie. For Cleo, he needed to appear approachable instead of powerful. Friendly, not frightening.

Cleo.

As if thinking her name had summoned her, the woman he’d been fantasizing about for three months stepped from the back door of the stucco building onto the fenced play yard. Instantly she was surrounded, little kids clamoring for her attention, little hands patting her legs, little fingers grabbing her hands.

Kind of like what he wanted to do. Grabbing her sounded good to him, too.

Ethan closed his eyes and groaned, remembering the sweet, silky feel of Cleo’s skin. He saw the voluptuous rise of her breasts over her lacy bra and felt again the tremors shaking her body as he brushed his thumbs over her nipples. He groaned again.

When he’d left Cleo that night, he’d considered himself pretty damn heroic for backing away from the wildfire of their mutual physical attraction. He hadn’t wanted to lead her on. She was the marrying kind, and he wasn’t. She deserved a man prepared for the type of family life she undoubtedly desired, and that hadn’t been him, by any means.

Fate must be laughing its head off about right now.

To the faint echoes of its capricious guffaws, Ethan forced himself out of his car and then reached into the rear seat for what had brought him from Houston back to White horn, back to Cleo. He wrestled a bit with the latch that released the baby carrier from its car seat base, letting loose a soft curse.

Guilt gave him a little jab and he quickly apologized to the blond, wide-eyed baby staring up at him. “Sorry, Jonah.” And sorry to you too, Della. The boy’s mother wouldn’t appreciate the child’s first word being something better suited to a locker room than a nursery. He took a breath, pushing away the pain that came when he thought of Della. The only thing he could do for her now was to take care of Jonah.

That was where Cleo came in.

At the reception desk inside Bean sprouts, Ethan asked to speak with the center’s director—Cleo. The young receptionist gave him a friendly smile and after rising from her chair to peek at Jonah, told Ethan they didn’t take children until they were two years old. She would be happy to place his name on their waiting list.

Ethan bared his teeth in what he hoped would pass for a smile, and mildly asked once again to see the Bean sprouts director. When the still-friendly but outright curious receptionist gave in and showed him into a small office, she asked his name.

Ethan told her he wanted to keep it a surprise.

He sure as hell hoped Cleo liked surprises.

When she walked through the office door, it was obvious she didn’t. As she caught sight of him, her feet stopped before the rest of her body did and she grabbed the doorjamb to keep herself from pitching forward. Expressions chased them selves across her face. Ethan couldn’t separate them all—but the last one he read loud and clear.

It was as cool and distant as her voice. “Ethan Redford,” she said as if he’d never tasted the hot wetness of her mouth. Then her gaze dropped to the infant carrier he held against his chest as if it were a shield. She blinked, shook her head a little, blinked again.

“Who? What?” Her cheeks flushed a deep pink. “Oh,” she said.

Oh? What did she mean by that significant oh? And then it hit him.

Uh-oh.

“The baby’s not mine,” he said quickly. But then he had to correct himself. “Well, he is mine, but—” From the look on her face this wasn’t going well. He sighed. “It’s complicated.”

Cleo took a breath and Ethan pretended he wasn’t aware of the way her breasts pressed against the long-sleeved white T-shirt she wore. “What do you want, Ethan?”

He sighed again. “That’s complicated, too.” The smile he gave her was supposed to be charming, but she looked distinctly unmoved. “Could we talk?”

With a little roll of one of her shoulders, she fully entered the room and shut the office door behind her. Then she walked past him, the familiar, delicate flower scent of her perfume brushing by him nonchalantly. Cleo’s T-shirt was tucked into a long denim skirt that showed off her small waist and rounded hips and he had to look away until she was completely seated behind her desk.

She linked her fingers on the surface of a blotter-size calendar full of notations in neat, rounded handwriting. “What would you like to say, Ethan?”

He’d like to say he wished like hell they’d not been interrupted by her mother’s nightmare that evening. He’d like to say that he’d been thinking of her kisses, of her skin, of the beauty of her wavy, russet hair for the past three months. He’d like to say that even in the midst of grief and worry, the memory of her smile and laughter had been a warm beacon.

Instead he sat in a chair across from her, the infant carrier resting on his knees. “This is my nephew, Jonah,” he said simply. “And the day I left your mother’s bed-and-break fast, I was called away because Jonah’s mother, my sister, had been the victim of a carjacking.”

One of Cleo’s hands rose to cover her mouth.

He went on doggedly. It wasn’t an easy story to tell. “I probably should have left you some word, or called you when I reached Houston, but all I could think about was Della and Jonah. She was in intensive care with head injuries and Jonah was missing.”

“Oh, my Lord,” Cleo whispered. Suddenly she wasn’t in her chair, but kneeling beside Ethan, her attention focused on the baby. One fingertip stroked his nephew’s downy head. Her gaze turned Ethan’s way. In her violet eyes was the sudden awareness that his story didn’t have a happy-ever-after. “But the baby was found.”

Ethan nodded. “In an alley, in Della’s abandoned car.” His hand curled into a fist, as the useless waste of the tragedy cut through him again like an acid burn. “Two days later the carjacker was killed in a police shoot-out. A day after that, my sister died.” His voice was hoarse.

“Oh, Ethan.” Cleo’s warm hand covered his fist and he closed his eyes, her touch soothing and so damn welcome. “You must have loved her very much.”

“She was my little sister.” He opened his eyes and saw Cleo still kneeling between Jonah and him, one hand touching his, one hand on the baby’s hair, linking all three of them together.

Just as he knew she would.

“Tell me about her, Ethan. You never even mentioned to me you had a sister.”

Guilt stabbed him again. When he’d been in Montana three months ago he’d been carefully impersonal with Cleo. To tell the truth, he was carefully impersonal with everyone, but Cleo was the kind of woman who invited you to bare your soul. And because he’d been interested only in baring her body, he’d steered completely clear of anything that would even vaguely hint of any deeper intimacy.

But things were different now. Everything was different. Not him, though. He hadn’t changed. But his needs had. So that meant telling Cleo what she wanted to know.

He cleared his throat. “Della was twenty-nine years old. She worked for me, at my office in Houston.”

Cleo looked at little Jonah and smiled. “Was she blond like you?”

He pictured his sister in his mind. Not as he’d last seen her, her head swathed in bandages, bruises on her face and tubes everywhere, but as she’d been before the carjacking. “She was tiny, shorter than you, and she did have blond hair. After Jonah was born, she cut it short as a boy’s.”

Cleo nodded solemnly. “Easy to take care of.”

“She was easy to take care of.” Ethan broke off, suddenly embarrassed. Yeah, he missed his sister, but he wasn’t about to get all maudlin in front of Cleo.

Maybe she sensed his reluctance, because she turned her attention back to the baby. “How old is he?”

“Seven months,” Ethan replied.

“And where’s Jonah’s father?”

“His biological father abandoned both Della and the baby before Jonah was born. They were engaged, but let’s just say Della found it a little…distressing when Drake gave her a black eye instead of a welcome home kiss one evening.” Ethan and Della knew a lot about black eyes and the kind of men who dispensed them.

“She decided that she and the baby were better off without him and he didn’t put up a fuss.” With Ethan there, backing Della up, the cowardly bastard wouldn’t have dared.

“And now that Della’s…gone?” Cleo asked quietly.

“As far as Drake’s concerned, Della and Jonah were gone from his life a long time ago.” Ethan paused, because now they were getting to the important part. “I’m Jonah’s f—”

Damn. He ran his hand through his hair. It was hard to say the word because he’d never considered himself suited to the job.

Cleo rose and leaned against the back of her desk, smiling a little as she looked down at Ethan. “His f—?” she asked, her almost-teasing voice easing the moment. “His what? Feet? Fiddle? Filly?”

Ethan’s lips twitched and his brows came together. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Montana lady, but this city boy seems to recall that a filly is a female horse, right?”

At her little nod he couldn’t resist reaching out to stroke one finger against the back of her hand. “Well, now, Cleo, you gotta know I’m all man, don’t you?”

Her face pinkened and she snatched her hand away, and for the first time in months, Ethan’s mood lightened. Cleo. God, it was right to come back to her. When his lawyer had made what should have been an outrageous suggestion, he’d instantly thought of her, of her wavy hair, of her warm touch, of the way she looked at him.

And the lawyer’s suggestion was what he had to tell Cleo about now. Jonah had drifted off to sleep and Ethan carefully moved the carrier to the carpet beside him. He casually rested his hands on the arms of his chair, though the situation he found himself in was anything but casual.

“I’m Jonah’s family now,” Ethan said. “Nothing and no one is going to take him away from me. Della named me as his legal guardian.” He paused.

“I think I hear a but,” Cleo said slowly.

He nodded. “After Della…died, I hired a nanny right away. I was able to postpone the deal I had going on here in White horn, but there were a couple of others I couldn’t put off. You know what that means.”

“You were out of town a lot.”

Ethan stared down at the sleeping baby. “Yes. But I was cutting my trips as close to the bone as possible and the nanny was working out fine. Then Drake’s parents entered the picture.”

“The baby’s grandparents.”

Ethan nodded. “They’re rich, they’re socially prominent and they don’t think much of me as Jonah’s…father since I’m away from him so much.”

“But the nanny—”

“Isn’t a mother.” Ethan looked up into Cleo’s unsuspecting but sympathetic violet eyes. “They’re suing for custody of Jonah.”