A Season For Love

“Masked cowards,” Jericho snarled. “They hurt you, and they took something precious from us. They didn’t succeed in the rest, but their purpose was served.” His face turned grim with the memory of the night he found her on a darkened street, fighting for her life. A young girl, his girl, clothes torn half away, a gang of boys, with stocking caps hiding their faces, circling her like a pack of wolves. “In the end, you believed them. Not in me.”

“You were barely eighteen, Jericho. No matter what weight the Rivers name carried, no matter how strong and brave and honorable you were, you couldn’t change the prejudices of an aristocratic Southern town.” Maria stroked tangled sable locks from his forehead. “Darling, you still can’t.”

“That means you’re leaving again.”

“The story’s finished. There’s no more to be done here.”

“What about this?” Catching her wrist, he drew her hand from his hair. “What does it mean?” A bangle threaded through a tiny gold band, then soldered into an unbroken circle, hugged her wrist. He hadn’t spoken of it at the gala, or in the passion of the night. Now, as it glinted against the sheet, it took his breath away.

“A tribute.” Maria answered. “To a memory I’ll treasure forever.” A slight twist of her wrist and the matching band he wore lay as inexorably between them as the bangle. “Something beautiful that can only be a memory for both of us.”

“If you should fall in love again? What happens then, Maria Elena Rivers?”

The name she’d carried in her heart for years brought tears to her eyes. Blinking them away, she shook her head. “I won’t.”

He wouldn’t let it go at that. “And if I should?”

Pain clotted her throat. But because he deserved the life and love she couldn’t offer, she gave him the only answer she could. “When that time comes, I won’t stand in your way.”

Jericho Rivers laughed. But only a fool would hear humor in the sound. “In half a lifetime our paths have crossed twice, with the same culmination. One wonders if that should tell us something.”

“It does tell us something. We’re star-crossed lovers, destined to love forever yet never meant to be. Belle Terre was the wrong place, our teen years were the wrong time.”

“Do you ever wonder what might have happened if…?” Jericho’s voice drifted into silence, leaving the rest unsaid.

As if she could wish the past away, she nodded. “If my father hadn’t been that rare male of the Delacroix family? If he hadn’t loved Belle Terre too much to leave it despite its archaic prejudices? If he’d never fallen in love with my mother, and she with him? If neither of them had ever picked up a liquor bottle? But most of all, if we’d met in college as strangers. Or in another life? Yes,” she whispered softly. “I wonder. But—”

“But we didn’t,” he interrupted gently. “Instead we entered into a marriage that never began, yet never ends.”

“Never began, never ends, but offers rare days like this.”

Jericho smiled a real smile then, willing to leave the conundrum for another time. “So what do we do about it?”

“Well.” Maria pretended to consider the possibilities. “The day is hardly born, my bags are packed and my plane doesn’t leave until long after six. All that’s left to do is pick up the rental car from the museum parking lot.”

“It’s also Sunday,” Jericho contributed to the list of enticements. “My day off.” A glance at a bedside clock told the time. “That leaves us more than twelve precious hours. Any idea how we could spend it, Mrs. Rivers?”

“One.” Folding back the robe he wore, she slipped it from his shoulders and down his arms. “One very good idea, Sheriff Rivers.” As silk fell away with his impatient shrug, she drew him to the bed, asking wickedly, “What else would star-crossed lovers do with such rare and wondrous hours as these?”

“Twelve hours? Sweetheart,” Jericho groaned softly against her throat. “I don’t think I have the stamina.”

“Ah, my only love, you’ll never know until you try.”

His reply was a laugh and a kiss, as he began again a sweet, languid seduction. With tender restraint he caressed her, touching her face, stroking her hair, tracing the fan of her lashes as they lay against her cheeks. As if he’d never seen her or touched her before, he found the textures of her skin fascinating.

He was a man storing memories to last a lifetime, tracing the line and curve of her body, discovering once more his reasons for wanting her, for loving her. As she clung to him, her fleeting caresses driving him to the brink of distraction, he moved over her at last. For Jericho, the joining of his body with hers was as sweet as the first time, as poignant as if it were the last.

Then time and memory and reason ceased. There was only the passion of a man for a woman. And her need for him.

Like shadows cast against the fiery canvas of dawn he made love to her, and she to him. And when need was answered and passion spent, their passing brought peace and a quiet time to cherish.

Her head on his shoulder, his fingers woven through her hair, they lay in sun glow and contented stillness. Long into a drowsy silence, she stirred, her fingers trailed along his throat and over his chest. With a hushed, wordless sound, she kissed the heated curve of his throat, and sighed as she nestled against him.

Beyond tall doors, a breeze stirred, rich leaves of summer rustled in its promise of heat. A rising tide, tumbling sand and shells, added another note in summer’s waking song. In the peace, trills of drowsy, childish laughter were borne on the wind.

And somewhere in the distance, yet not too far, the cry of a fitful baby rose and ebbed, then was silent.

Maria tensed, the lazy caress that moved lightly over the contours of his throat and chest hesitated. She stared at sun-washed leaves, but in her mind she saw darkness, not the last of dawn. And glittering green fluttered against the backdrop of an endless sky, with blue turned as black as the night.

As black as the night those long years ago. The unspoken words sent a cold chill shuddering through her.

“Ah!” Her cry was torn from the depths of heartache. Her fingers curled into tight fists. “Damn them! Damn them!”

Jericho made no move to hold her, no effort to stave off the bitter, hurting rage. He knew where she’d gone. As he waited for the brewing storm to break, he knew why.

He better than anyone understood she needed this. The rage, the cleansing of silent hate. Only the unreal and inhuman wouldn’t. And Maria Elena Rivers was very real, very human.

“Were they there last night?”

Jericho only shook his head. She knew the answer as well as he. Perhaps, in her subconscious, better.

“Was there one who offered me a glass of champagne? Or asked me to dance? Dear God!” Bolting upright, she buried her face in her hands. After a time that seemed forever, she lifted her gaze to the light streaming through all doors. Shuddering, she whispered, “Did one of them touch me?

“I kept listening to voices, hoping I could recognize an inflection, a tone, even a word. Once I was so sure. Then I didn’t know.” She paused again, reliving the past through the tarnished splendor of the evening.

Hearing her terror, hurting for it, Jericho waited silently for the rest. His wait was not long.

“I looked into the eyes of every man who approached me, searching for guilt, regret, remorse. Maybe concern or fear. Even gloating.” Holding one hand before her, clasping it as if she held something abhorrent, she whispered, “For years I’ve tried to see a face hidden by the dark and the shadow of the tree—the face of the one boy whose mask I ripped off. But there’s never anything.

“Then, tonight, there was. Only a sensation of recognition. No one person, nothing concrete, only an air of discomfort. The smell of fear. Then it was gone.” A bitter laugh rattled in her throat. “I’m babbling, making no sense.”

Drawing her hands through her hair, sweeping it from her face, she hardly noticed when it fell against her throat and cheeks again. “Maybe I wanted it so badly I imagined it. Maybe—” Stopping short, her head jerked in violent denial. “No.”

Turning to him, not caring that the sheet slipped to her waist, she met his hurting gaze. “I’m not wrong. I don’t know who, perhaps I never will, but one or all of them were there tonight.”

Jericho drew a harsh, grating breath, desperate to hold her, to comfort her. But as much as he needed it, she needed the exorcism more. At last he said quietly, “You weren’t wrong.”

At the leap of surprise in her eyes, with two fingers he touched her cheek. “No, I don’t know who they are, but I know the type. Few of our classmates who are living in Belle Terre would have missed the celebration, or the chance to see you.”

“To discover what the tacky girl from the wrong family had become?” Maria wondered aloud. “Or testing my memory?”

“A little of both, I suspect.” She’d walked among her tormentors head high, a calm, gallant smile for everyone. What had the men who’d been the boys who hurt her thought? Had they gloated? Cringed in fear of recognition? And, Jericho wondered, had any felt remorse? “We’ll never know, sweetheart.”

“Unless I remember.” Taking his hand in hers, lacing her fingers through his, she recalled the gentleness of his touch, when others had been cruel. “But you don’t think I ever will, do you?”

“I’m sorry.” His thumb caressed the back of her hand, offering comfort for his doubt. “Not after such a long time.”

“She would be eighteen, and a summer girl, if they’d let her live.” Clinging to his hand and the stability of the present, in her mind she returned to a night so long ago. “The diner closed late, and I was hurrying to meet you on the beach. They were waiting, hidden in the shadows of the old oak. If I’d paid attention. If I’d been wary, she would have had a real birthday. Perhaps not the one we expected, but not the one they gave her.”

“What could you have watched for, Maria Elena? What should you have been wary of?” Jericho refused to let her shoulder any part of the blame for the miscarriage of their child. “Belle Terre was the safest of places then. A sleepy town of unlocked doors and open windows. No one could have anticipated or predicted what happened.

“If anyone is to blame, it would be me. Until your shift was done, I should have waited for you at the diner, not on the beach.”

“But you couldn’t have known,” Maria protested.

“No, I couldn’t.” Jericho made the point he intended as she rushed to defend him. “And neither could you.”

Maria sank into silence, a somber look replacing the joy of the hours before. Gradually her frown softened. “I went by the cemetery, I saw the flowers. I thought you might forget.”

“It isn’t a date I’m likely to forget.” Every year on a mid-summer evening, he visited the secluded spot. There was only a tiny stone, its inscription simply Baby Girl. This was how Maria Elena had wanted it. To protect herself, or him? Or even the baby? He’d never had the chance to ask. She’d been too physically and mentally wounded to question.

Then, before he knew it, before she was truly recovered from the ordeal, she had gone, leaving behind the horror of Belle Terre. Leaving him. For these years he’d accepted this as what she wanted. And for years he’d left a small bouquet on the tiny pauper’s grave.

“Thank you for that, Jericho.” After a moment she added, “It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the museum would open and I would catch the assignment at exactly this time.” Wearily, fatigue returning, her voice grew hoarse, her words an effort. “Or was it fate?”

Jericho didn’t answer. Drawing her into his arms, he held her while they watched the morning sky. Too soon she would be leaving. The horror of a gentle seventeen-year-old girl was still too strong. Too vivid. He was losing her again. But until then, he would hold her and keep her safe.

He sensed the exact moment she drowsed. Her body grew heavy, the hand clasping his uncurled. Her breaths slowed to a measured rhythm. And he hoped that just for a while, she could rest.

Jericho had drifted into a somnolent state himself, when the jangling chime of his doorbell roused him. Slipping his arms from Maria Elena and covering her carefully, he pulled on his discarded slacks, then hurried to answer the summons.

“Court!” The deputy’s normally spotless uniform was stained and smudged with soot. “What’s wrong?”

“A problem at the museum.”

“What sort of problem?”

“Just after dawn, a kid hot-wired a rental car in the museum parking lot. The culprit was the wannabe delinquent, Toby Parker.”

“And?”

“The car blew him across the lot. Lucky for the kid it did. He’s toasted around the edges and bruised, but he’ll see his day in court. The rental burned to a twisted heap.”

Startled, Jericho tried to think. “The museum isn’t officially open. Why would a rental car be left in the lot?” Abruptly, like a knife in his heart, he understood. Maria Elena.

“We found enough of the tag to trace. That’s how we know it was a rental. Ms. Delacroix’s.”

Jericho’s head cleared, his response was coolly concise. “You’ve secured the area? Everyone knows what to do?”

“Yes, sir. No one touches anything until you get there.”

“Good. Make sure nobody does. I’ll be five minutes behind you.” Closing the door after his deputy, Jericho stood with his hands on the heavy panels, his thoughts a morass of fear and worry. A light step and the rustle of cloth made him turn. Maria was there, in the bedroom doorway, a beautiful waif lost in the folds of his robe. The woman he loved, and must keep safe. “You heard?”

“I wondered what effect my homecoming might have on my old friends in Belle Terre.” She was ashen, but calm. “Now we know.”

“We don’t know anything yet,” Jericho contradicted. “Not even if it was a bomb. But whatever it was, it could have been gang related, targeting the kid who got singed. That it was your rental could be purely coincidence.”

“Gangs in Belle Terre?” Maria made a doubting grimace.

“Damn right. Belle Terre isn’t the sleepy, peaceful town you left eighteen years ago.”

“Perhaps not,” she conceded. “But you don’t believe the bomb in my car was a coincidence any more than I believe it.”

“I don’t know what I believe,” he admitted honestly. She was too astute not to recognize evasion. “We both know I can’t make a judgment until the investigation is complete. For that reason I’ll feel better when you’re on the plane and out of reach.”

“There’s just one catch, Jericho.”

His thoughts filled with the carnage she’d barely escaped, he looked at her, a questioning expression on his face.

“I won’t be on that plane.”

“Like hell you won’t.”

“Sorry, Sheriff.” Oblivious of his robe puddling at her feet and flowing inches beyond her hands, she crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb. In a voice that was ominously pleasant, she declared, “Until this is resolved, I’m staying in Belle Terre.”

“Dammit, Maria Elena…” He stopped as she slipped off his robe and let it fall at her feet. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting dressed.” Her comment was tossed over her shoulder as she walked away. “You should, too. Unless you plan to go in that particularly fetching, but unprofessional, state.”

“Go where? What state?”

“To a bombing, darling. I’ve no choice but my gown. But, as sheriff, do you really want to go in tuxedo slacks, looking exactly like you just spent hours making love to your wife?”

“My wife?”

“Until you find someone else.”

Jericho smiled hollowly. Maria Elena had just said the words he’d waited half his life to hear. At the time he least wanted to hear them. She shouldn’t stay. He wouldn’t let her if it was in his power to stop her. But even as he regretted her decision, he knew it was the decision he would have made.

To the world she was Maria Delacroix. To Jericho she was Maria Elena Rivers, a woman of extraordinary courage.

His wife.

“Until forever,” he promised grimly. “If I can keep you safe.”

Three

Maria Elena Delacroix Rivers moved like a cat. A very savvy cat who knew her way around the jungle. Any jungle. Even this one, and what it had become in an instant.

Her rental was a burned-out skeleton squatting in the nether regions of a long deserted parking lot. But, oddly, little around it showed more than the insidious signs of scorching from an intensely generated heat. Even the kid who’d decided to help himself to a joyride in the lone vehicle left unattended in the lot was okay. Just bruises, some burns, maybe a broken bone. A small price for a close call and a lesson, hopefully, well learned.

While rescue and police personnel dealt with the kid, Maria circled the car, studying it from every angle. As Maria studied the car, Jericho studied Maria.

Her work as a newscaster of no little fame also included quite a number of stints as a foreign correspondent. One such assignment had taken her to the Middle East. With her trusty microphone in hand, and her own personal camera never very far away, she’d put together riveting reports. With Pulitzer prize photographs thrown in for compassionate emphasis. Jericho remembered that many of her published photographs of that recent time portrayed scenes more than a little like this one.

“You’ve seen this before,” he surmised as her circling inspection brought her close.

Maria’s eyes narrowed, the piercing scrutiny of her gray, level gaze didn’t alter, or turn from the car. “Almost,” she answered softly. “But not quite.”

A special bomb squad had flown in from Columbia 150 miles from Belle Terre. These experts in every known method of blowing a person, place, or thing to kingdom come, had studied every inch of the car, the parking lot, and the museum—with more to come later. Yet it was Maria who commanded Jericho’s attention. Maria whose answers and opinions he sought. But this terse comment wasn’t enough.

“Explain,” Jericho said, softly. Very softly, but any who knew him would have recognized it as a tense command.

“It’s different from the bombings I’ve seen and photographed.” Maria turned now to look at him. “At first I thought he, whoever he might be, didn’t know his stuff.”

“And now?” Jericho had his own thoughts that had quickly grown into conviction. Now he wanted hers, with no other influence.

“Now I think he knew exactly what he was doing. The only thing he didn’t take into consideration, and couldn’t calculate, was our young car thief. Who just had the bad luck of being at the wrong place at the right time.”

“Then you don’t think the explosion occurred in tandem with ignition of the engine.”

“Only as a coincidence. If it was truly in tandem at all.” With splayed fingers, Maria combed the heavy wealth of her dark hair from her face and, again, didn’t seem to notice that it fell back exactly as it had been. “I’m betting your experts have already found a timer. Probably as part of an incendiary device attached within the necessary proximity of the fuel tank.”

Jericho’s head jerked once in admission, but he said nothing else. As intrigued as before, he watched and waited.

“This was meant to be a warning, Jericho.” Maria didn’t move this time as she raked the destroyed hull again with a narrowed stare. “Only a warning.” She looked to him then, reading his concurring thoughts on his darkly grim face. “But as warnings go, it was worse than stupid.”

Beyond the lift of a questioning brow barely visible beneath the tilt of his broad-brimmed hat, as sheriff, friend, and lover, he offered no opinion.

Maria crossed her arms beneath her breasts, mindful even in this lurid situation of the lingering tenderness left by the scrape of Jericho’s beard and the sweet tug of his suckling. Curbing a sense of mourning for the exuberant innocence of those recent hours, her gaze scoured over the blackened steel one more time before returning to his. Her voice was soft, a little strained as it echoed the bitterness in her eyes. “Whoever he is, he’s not only stupid, but a fool in the bargain.”

“Stupid for this single, senseless act, because he answered the most critical question you asked yourself last night.” Jericho spoke at last, quietly, with every trace of emotion carefully leached from his voice. “He was one of the patrons at the museum.”

“A patron of the past of Belle Terre.” The title seemed ludicrous given a less archaic past. A past that directly spawned this oblique attack. “A patron and a fool if he thinks that because I ran away once, I would again.

“Because things are different now,” she said, almost to herself. “I’m not that frightened young girl from the wrong side of town anymore. And it’s been a long time since I ran from anything.”

Except me, Jericho wanted to say.

Only hours ago he would have given his soul to keep Maria in Belle Terre. But he knew that neither his soul nor his love was enough. Now that the gauntlet had been thrown and taken up, he wondered if it would mean her life if she stayed.

“Sheriff Rivers.” Court Hamilton stood a pace away, a look of apology for intruding on an obviously intense conversation on his face. “Uncle…I’m sorry, sir. I meant, Captain Hamilton would like a word with you.”

Yancey Hamilton, head of the state’s special forces unit, was as much a gentleman as he was a professional. If he sent the deputy to interrupt what he would surely perceive as Jericho’s interview of the intended victim, it was because he’d made an important discovery, or arrived at a pertinent opinion. Maybe one Maria Elena shouldn’t hear. At least not just yet.

“Of course.” Turning from his deputy to Maria, Jericho took her hand in both of his. “Beyond what further study the special investigators might need, there’s nothing else to be done here. If you don’t mind, I’ll ask Deputy Hamilton to take you back to…”

“Back to the Inn at River Walk,” Maria inserted for him. For reasons she didn’t understand, and certainly couldn’t explain, she didn’t want to tarnish her memories of her night with Jericho with the shocking ugliness of the morning. “I have a room there. I was scheduled to check out this morning, but I doubt Eden Cade will object if I stay over for a bit longer.”

Jericho would have felt better if she were tucked away in the safety of his own home. Or better yet, if she were miles removed from any threat of danger. But this was neither the time nor the place to discuss what he wanted for her.

“The Inn at River Walk, then.” A frown channeled between his brows and deepened the lines at his eyes briefly before being chased away by a forced smile. Releasing her and stepping away, Jericho addressed his deputy. “Court, if you would, please escort Ms. Delacroix to her lodgings. Stay close, until Yancey and I have finished here and I’m free.”

Deputy Hamilton snapped to attention crisply. “Yes, sir.”

Maria realized then that he was probably one of Lady Mary’s students. As she had been, but not alongside her classmates. The genteel but impoverished old lady, with her bright, birdlike eyes and manner, had spent her life teaching proper decorum and protocol to the children of the respected and affluent families of Belle Terre. Then there was Maria Elena Delacroix, the descendant of a long line of beautiful courtesans.

But that was all part of the past. The distant past. Her past. Last night, for a little while, she’d hoped attitudes had changed, and who she’d been would be of little consequence.

Wrong? She’d never been more wrong. But she couldn’t and wouldn’t dwell on that now. Dismissing the intrusion of old memories, Maria focused her attention on Jericho.

He’d taken the time to dress in uniform. The austere lines of faultless dark khaki contributed even more to his air of extraordinary strength and quiet dedication. In black tie he’d been the epitome of the gracious Southern gentleman. In the dress of his profession, he became a cold-eyed, grim-faced veteran of the war against crime and disorder. Yet he delivered orders as if he were making a request. Orders surely more quickly obeyed for the manner in which they were given.