Night Music

Music Washed Over Him, Ebbing

And Flowing Like The Tide.

As the piano fell silent, one note lingering in the night, Devlin knew he’d been given a rare insight into the heart of Kathleen Moira Gallagher, agent of the Black Watch, now simply a grieving woman whose soul stumbled.

When he had followed her to Summer Island, it was to quiet a need he thought had died forever. To subdue a faltering, resurrected impulse to ease the hurts of others, to make himself believe that he could lead her back to the life she should have.

And without intending it, he’d found himself on this part of the shore, sitting at the base of zigzagging steps leading where he’d never meant to go.

To Kate…

Dear Reader,

This April of our 20th anniversary year, Silhouette will continue to shower you with powerful, passionate, provocative love stories!

Cait London offers an irresistible MAN OF THE MONTH, Last Dance, which also launches her brand-new miniseries FREEDOM VALLEY. Sparks fly when a strong woman tries to fight her feelings for the rugged man who’s returned from her past. Night Music is another winner from BJ James’s popular BLACK WATCH series. Read this touching story about two wounded souls who find redeeming love in each other’s arms.

Anne Marie Winston returns to Desire with her emotionally provocative Seduction, Cowboy Style, about an alpha male cowboy who seeks revenge by seducing his enemy’s sister. In The Barons of Texas: Jill by Fayrene Preston, THE BARONS OF TEXAS miniseries offers another feisty sister, and the sexy Texan who claims her.

Desire’s theme promotion THE BABY BANK, in which interesting events occur on the way to the sperm bank, continues with Katherine Garbera’s Her Baby’s Father. And Barbara McCauley’s scandalously sexy miniseries SECRETS! offers another tantalizing tale with Callan’s Proposition, featuring a boss who masquerades as his secretary’s fiancé.

Please join in the celebration of Silhouette’s 20th anniversary by indulging in all six Desire titles—which will fulfill your every desire!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Night Music

BJ James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

BJ JAMES

married her high school sweetheart straight out of college and soon found that books were delightful companions during her lonely nights as a doctor’s wife. But she never dreamed she’d be more than a reader, never expected to be one of the blessed, letting her imagination soar, weaving magic of her own.

BJ has twice been honored by the Georgia Romance Writers with their prestigious Maggie Award for Best Short Contemporary Romance. She has also received the following awards from Romantic Times Magazine: Critic’s Choice Award of 1994-1995, Career Achievement Award for Series Storyteller of the Year and Best Desire of 1994-1995 for The Saint of Bourbon Street.

Contents

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Foreword

In desperate answer to a need prompted by changing times and mores, Simon McKinzie, dedicated and uncompromising leader of The Black Watch, has been called upon by the president of the United States to form a more covert and more dangerous division of his most clandestine clan. Ranging the world in ongoing assembly of this unique unit, he has gathered and will gather in the elite among the elite—those born with the gift or the curse of skills transcending the norm. Men and women who bring extraordinary and uncommon talents in answer to extraordinary and uncommon demands. They are, in most cases, men and women who have plummeted to the brink of hell because of their talents. Tortured souls who have stared down into the maw of destruction, been burned by its fires, yet have come back, better, surer, stronger. Driven and colder.

As officially nameless as The Black Watch, to those few who have had misfortune and need of calling on their dark service, they are known as Simon’s chosen… Simon’s Marauders.

Prologue

Out of the dawn a screaming wind snaked over frigid mountain slopes. A faceless, formless leviathan hurling snow and ice with the force to flay skin and flesh to the bone.

A killing madness.

Death, dressed in white.

Within a bulwark of twisted metal and scorched canvas, sheltered by ramparts of boulders, a man and a woman lay prone, bodies entwined. She was fragile. Her hair, a mass of auburn falling from a knitted cap, trailed over his arm to mingle like fire into ice. He was lean and rugged, his skin darkened by wind and weather. His hair, thick and close-cut, was as black as snow was white.

Holding her, offering what warmth he could, he whispered to her. His lips moving against bright curls, his breath skimming a waxen cheek. While he soothed her with nonsense and promises, a wall of snow built slowly at their backs. The malicious gift of a monster, bringing a modicum of protection, even as it concealed evidence of the charred, shattered plane, its pilot, and his sole passenger.

Yet, the wall would be one more buffer of hope against the storm. Hope, buying time. Time to survive, perhaps time to die.

She was a stranger to the mountain. Content to stay behind each time a plane lifted off filled with climbers her husband hoped to guide to the summit, she couldn’t know the gravity of their situation. For as long as he could keep it that way, she wouldn’t. This he’d promised from the first. Not as her pilot, but as a friend.

For three days, he’d kept his promise. He would keep it to the end. As long as there was a shred of hope, she, above all, would cling to the will to live.

“Maybe long enough for a miracle.” He didn’t realize he’d fallen silent, listening to the wind. Or that he’d spoken again. His voice was rough, but something in it touched a chord.

Rousing, she looked at him through feverish eyes. Struggling to one elbow, she tried to concentrate. “Jock?”

The mistake sent an icy dread through him. Hallucination; she was deteriorating more than he feared. But he wouldn’t give up hope. Not yet. “Shh.” With the back of a hand whitened by cold he traced the curve of her cheek. “We’ll talk when the storm calms.”

As if she didn’t hear him, catching his hand, turning his palm to her glazed gaze, she whispered, “You’re hurt?”

Realizing she hadn’t the breath for more, he assured her. “The burns will heal.”

“Burns? How?” The words were a gasp, the effort a struggle.

“Grabbed something hot.” Heartened by this lucid perception, as he took back his hand he added in a wry understatement, “Something I knew was hot.”

She laughed feebly. A caricature of the sound that brightened the lives of all who knew her. Caressing his face with fingers tipped by nails gone black, she whispered, “My fearless Jock. You never…” Each word was a ragged wheeze as she fought for breaths that never seemed to reach her lungs. Her gaze drifted. As she lost her point of focus, her eyes rolled back, nearly disappearing within their sockets.

“Joy!” Willing her to hear, he muttered, “Tell me.” Afraid before if she squandered precious strength to speak, he was more afraid now if she couldn’t. While the screech of the wind and a mad flap of canvas quieted, he brushed her cheek with his and kissed her temple as Jock would. “Talk to me, Joy.”

With her breathing eased in the lessened force of the wind, a tiny bit of the color returned to her face. Her lips moved, then there were words. “Never…” The chuckle was half cough, yet still her trademark laugh. “Never learn, Jockolove.”

“No, Joyful girl.” He was Devlin O’Hara, not Jock. But if it would help, he would be the person she desperately needed him to be. Murmuring the endearment he’d heard so many times, he slipped into the role of lover, for a friend. “That’s why I need you.”

She nodded, her chin resting so long against her chest, he feared she wouldn’t lift her head again. Recalling the name that defined her, he prompted softly, “Joyful?”

Lashes fluttering against her cheeks, she tried another laugh. As Joy always laughed, even in the worst of times. “Still here.” Her voice grew clearer. A fit of shivering abated, as if her body hadn’t the strength for more than one exertion. But when she lifted her gaze there was light, the illumination of a kind soul and happy heart. “Couldn’t wait for you to come down the slope. Couldn’t wait to tell you.”

“What was so important, sweet Joyful?”

As if it would listen, the wind calmed again, then ceased. From their paltry shelter, he looked on a desert of white. With every jagged pile of stone, every jutting rock obliterated by snow.

Silence, as deep as the peak was tall, crackled in still air. Wrapping her tighter in tattered clothing he’d managed to snatch from the burning plane, he lowered her to a makeshift pallet. With his arms cradling her, he waited.

So long after his question that he thought she’d drifted away, in a voice filled with a wonder, she told a labored story.

He didn’t mean to interrupt the broken flow, nor shatter the whispered hope, but once his control slipped. Jerking back, he stared down at her. “God help me! I didn’t know.”

The palm of her hand folded over his lips, her fingers curled around his chin. “Don’t! I know I promised, but the doctor thinks the damage the rheumatic fever…”

As her voice gathered strength, he listened to lilting words grotesquely at odds with the gray cast of her skin and the rattle of each hard-won breath. As mute as stone, as grave, he learned of the risk she’d taken to make this ill-fated flight.

Long after her story was finished, he held her. Long after she slept an unnatural sleep, he watched over her as he had for days. Finally he slept, as well.

When he woke, the day was brighter, impossibly tranquil. His first thought was of Joy. Touching her throat, he checked her pulse. The beat of her heart was erratic. But that it beat at all was cause for celebration.

Stimulated by a surge of adrenaline, an insightful mind began to function positively. What he’d perceived as the final disaster, he recognized as a final gift of the mountain.

Extracting himself from her embrace, praying one breath would follow another, he waited until a mild restlessness subsided. Reluctant to leave, certain he must if she would have any chance of living out a dream, he turned abruptly. Stepping from their shelter, pausing only to orient himself, he set his plan in motion.

Later, taxed beyond human endurance, with the sweat of his struggle turned to dangerous rime beneath his clothing, he staggered back to shelter. Back to Joy.

She neither woke nor stirred as he gathered her to him. Soon he was as silent, as still.

He didn’t wake when the Lama, a high-altitude rescue helicopter, passed over. Nor when it returned to fly so low its blades swept away the message stamped into rare loose snow. He didn’t wake when the first of its team reached the shelter. Nor did he hear the jubilant cry, “Survivors. Good God! We have survivors!”

In the midst of the exhilaration of four dedicated men, only a voice he knew and a hand gripping his arm roused him. But as numb senses rallied, eyes burned by glare wouldn’t see. “Jock?”

“Yes, Dev.”

The familiar voice echoed in the darkness of his mind. “I tried to keep her warm.”

“I know.” No one among the search team, least of all Jock Bohannon, could believe this man had done as much as he had, as long as he had. The message was a wonder in itself. “Give her to me, Dev. We have to get you out of here.”

He pulled away, his befuddled mind clinging doggedly to his one purpose. “I have to take care of Joy.”

“You have. Now let me.”

“Jock?” Memory sparked, the veil began to lift. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about her heart.”

“She didn’t want you to. She didn’t want anyone to know.” Carefully prizing burned, frostbitten hands from their burden, Jock took his wife into his arms. “I’ll take care of her now.”

“The cold hurts. Don’t let her be cold.”

“She won’t ever be cold again.” There were tears on Jock Bohannon’s craggy face as he whispered, “I promise.”

When the Lama lifted from the mountain, and while the wounded man slept, the rescue team looked down on a pitiful shelter built by horrendously burned hands. Once again, against impossible odds, one of the extraordinary men known as Alaska’s Denali fliers had accomplished an incredible feat.

Devlin O’Hara had beaten the mountain. But fate had played the last hand, sending a second freak storm to the lowlands, grounding the Lama’s desperate last-ditch search for an hour.

An hour too long, a grieving Jock Bohannon thought as he caressed his wife’s still face. An hour too late.

One

“Mayday! Mayday! We’re going down.”

As sweat beaded his forehead and plastered shaggy hair to his rigid throat, Devlin O’Hara shivered. Muscles tensed. Scarred hands curled into fists. “We’re breaking up.” His tone turned guttural. His body arched, from a straining throat rose a desperate cry. “Fire! We have a fire.”

Then the night was still. In utter calm, a waning moon cast pale patterns over a rippled expanse of white. Silence deepened.

Then it began. The shivering, the hushed plea.

“Please.” Shivering became shudders. “Oh, God! Too high, too cold.” A body honed to muscle and sinew tensed.

“No!” Lurching upright, his eyes flickered open, ending a remembered nightmare. As he stared through the birth of dawn, a frozen mountain slope faded, becoming his childhood bedroom.

Throwing a soaked sheet aside, unmindful of his nakedness, he walked to the open window. Flinging the curtain aside, bathed in the nuance of daybreak, Devlin O’Hara watched as crimson streaked across the horizon, painting the bay in dark fire.

An autumn sunrise over the Chesapeake, one of his favorite memories, in his favorite place, his favorite season.

The house was tranquil, but its dignified repose would be short-lived. His family would be waking with the sun, eager for the adventure of a new day. The joyful adventure of coming together.

In growing numbers, with various names, but O’Haras still, they had come. And, for a while, they would be simply family. Mavis and Keegan asked nothing more of their unique brood than this time.

He hadn’t planned this visit. He hadn’t planned anything beyond making it through each minute of each day for months. Yet, on the eve of the appointed time, he found himself packing, then taking leave of many friends…and one nemesis.

But now he knew there was no escape. The deadly beauty and tragedy of the mountain went with him wherever he might go. Even here. This sanctuary of sanctuaries was no longer his.

Denali lived in his days and nights. And Joy died.

They always would.

Wearily, Devlin closed the curtain on a new day on the Chesapeake. He didn’t deserve this place or this family.

He shouldn’t have come.

“So, what do you think?” Leaning against the antique frame of leaded windows, Valentina O’Hara Courtenay stared through polished panes, pondering her own question.

Anyone but an O’Hara would have been awed by the house and the charm of the view. But to the five siblings gathered for the annual reunion, it was simply home. And, sometimes, sanctuary.

From the look of the man who walked the shore that lay beyond the lawn, it was the latter he needed. If he didn’t flee, he would be here two weeks. But could an autumn fortnight spent by the Chesapeake resolve the troubles plaguing Devlin?

“I don’t care what he says, he isn’t fine,” she declared, facing her younger sister. “He’s too quiet. Too alone.”

“Val, no one walks away from the loss of a friend unscathed,” Patience reminded gently. “Five months isn’t nearly long enough to console one who cares as deeply as Devlin.”

“Of course not,” Val conceded. “It’s natural he still grieves. But you can’t believe that’s all it is any more than I do.”

“No.” Patience sighed. “And it isn’t his hands. His next lady love should find the scars interesting more than ugly.”

“If there is one,” Val drawled as she prowled the room.

“There’s always a lady in Devlin’s life, Val.”

“Precisely.” Val leaped on the comment. “Until now.”

The point made, both fell silent. Restlessly, Valentina paced, only to pause before a wall of family portraits. Studying each, she named them in order, eldest to youngest. “Look at us. Devlin, Kieran, Tynan, Valentina, Patience, eternally sixteen.”

“Only in portraits.” Far into her third pregnancy, Patience felt much older than sixteen.

Valentina hardly heard. “No more than a year or two separates either of us from the next. We look and think alike, up to a point. With Devlin as our standard. We wanted to be like him. Beautiful Devlin, of the blackest hair, the bluest eyes.”

“Yet it was never as much that he was oldest, or how he looked, as his kindness and caring, and courage.” Patience smiled, remembering. “Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

“Superman,” Valentina agreed fondly. “Bigger than life. His smile quicker, his passion greater, his heart most tender.”

“Now he rarely smiles,” Patience observed sadly. “If he feels anything, it doesn’t show.”

“Or the reverse?” Valentina ventured. “Is what he’s feeling so awful, he dares not let us see?”

“But we’re family, Val. If he’s hurting, we can help.”

“Can we?” Valentina turned from the window. “Perhaps the mountain took something from him only he can get back.”

Patience understood her sister’s logic, Devlin’s behavior was strange. They were accustomed to his solitary disappearances. But if there was ever trouble, he found a way to communicate, to reassure his family. With the crash, there had been only silence.

Months later, he’d written, saying he wouldn’t make the family gathering. Only then had he spoken of the crash and Joy.

Despite their worry about his uncharacteristic behavior, keeping a childhood rule that still guided their lives, no one questioned, no one interfered. No one understood.

Until he’d walked through the door two days before, weary, thin, dreadfully haggard, no one expected to see him. In a way, Patience thought, none of them had. The real Devlin bore little resemblance to the grim specter who haunted the shore.

“He’s like a stranger.” Devlin had moved from sight, but Valentina knew he hadn’t gone far. His reluctance to leave the house and grounds, or to mingle with his own, was patent. “I suspect he feels like a stranger even to himself.”

Patience sighed. “I don’t understand.”

“Hopefully we will soon.” Val grimaced. “I broke the rule.”

There were few rules within the family, and Patience knew instinctively which her sister had broken. “What have you done?”

“I’m interfering. I called Simon.”

Patience nodded. Who else would Val call? Simon McKinzie, commander of The Black Watch and the most powerful man in covert operations, could unearth the problem. “When will you know?”

“He promised by two.”

Patience glanced at a clock. “Less than five minutes.”

Valentina caught an uneven breath. “Was I wrong? None of us has ever intruded so blatantly before.”

“You weren’t wrong. Even though he needs someone, Devlin’s shut us out. No,” Patience repeated firmly. “You weren’t wrong.”

“He might hate me.”

Stretching out her hand, Patience waited until Valentina clasped it in her own. “Devlin could never hate you. He may not be happy with this at first, but in the end, he’ll thank you for having the wisdom to know when a rule should be broken. As I do.”

In concert, the clock boomed the hour, and within a cabinet housing instruments of modern technology, a fax machine chattered. Both women froze, hands clenched. It was only when the machine fell silent that their fingers drifted apart.

Valentina moved to the cabinet to take out the printed sheet. Turning, she came to Patience and, in deference to the concern she saw on her sister’s face, laid the document before her.

Patience read slowly, carefully, with the gleam of tears in her eyes before she was half through. When she finished, wordlessly, she returned the single sheet to Valentina.

Valentina absorbed each word. Contained here were the facts that had changed her brother into a man she didn’t know. As Patience had, she read slowly, carefully. Finally, with a heavy heart, she tucked away the report that changed all the rules. “I’m not sorry anymore. Now I know what to do.”

“How can I help?”

Valentina’s lips lifted in a smile. “You’ve done enough by listening and supporting my choice. But there is one more favor.”

“Anything.”

“If you would make my excuses, for the rest of the day.”

Patience nodded shrewdly. “You’re leaving the island.”

“As soon as possible.”

“Where will you go?”

With an elegant lift of her shoulders, Valentina asked, “Where would I go with a problem of this sort?”

“To Simon,” Patience supplied softly.

“Good afternoon, Simon.”

When the door to his private office opened unannounced, Simon McKinzie knew who his intruder would be. No one else among The Black Watch would dare such a bold act.

“Ahh. Mrs. Courtenay, I thought you had retired.” Leaning back in his chair, he glared at her. “What happened to knocking?”

“I have. And what happened to ‘Good afternoon’?”

“Perhaps it went the way of knocking before entering.”

Valentina had the grace to be truly contrite. “I’m sorry, but there’s a problem only you can help resolve.”

Simon took stock. Who among his agents was facing personal problems? Before retiring from The Watch, Valentina had possessed a magical radar when it came to sensing troubles within the organization. “What is it now?” he asked. “Or should I say who?”

“My brother.”

“By my count, you have three, missy.”

“It’s Devlin.”

“Devlin isn’t one of mine.” Though not from lack of trying, Simon admitted. Devlin O’Hara was perfect for The Watch. But beyond the rare assignment, he eluded its persuasive leader.

“He has been, on occasion.”

Simon had leaned back until his chair teetered on two legs. Now it banged down. “How the devil could you know that?”

Despite her worry, Val laughed. “Lucky guess.”

“Remind me not to play poker with you,” he grumbled.

“Consider yourself reminded.” Advancing to the desk, she leaned closer. “Will you help?”

“Sorry, missy, that’s impossible. In the first place…”

Valentina caught his hand in hers. Folding each finger to form the fist he would have made with each of five points, she held it tightly. Every agent knew the gesture. “Simon, there is no first place, or fifth. This is Devlin, the strongest and best of us.”

Simon nodded as she released his fist. “Denali.”

Of course he knew. He would have gathered the information himself. “Then you understand the problem.”

“I know the facts and ramifications,” he corrected. “I’m sure no one understands the problem, or the solution as you do.”