A Season For Love

Maria’s life in Belle Terre and afterward had made her cynical. The eye of her camera saw with compassion. Her own eyes, her heart, her soul, did not. On the other hand, Jericho, she suspected, was that rare, indomitable professional in whom compassion and gentleness still lived and thrived, and ruled.

He’d proved that in the gentle way he’d made love to her, with no condemnation for her desertion, no bitterness for the lost years. What sort of man was this? Maria wondered as she asked, “You’ll call me when you have a definitive report?”

Beyond taking her hand, Jericho hadn’t touched her since they’d arrived at the parking lot. He’d offered no explanation for the fact that they’d arrived together. With one steady, challenging look from him, no one dared comment that Maria still wore the gown of flowing gold, sparkling brighter in the morning sun than it had in the muted light of the museum. With his own circumspect behavior and the dare in his unflinching stare, he’d protected her from any threat of gossip. Now or later. For she knew intuitively, and from the respect shown by Jericho’s men, there would be no scandalized or secret lecherous whispers behind shielding hands.

Now, with the gentle cupping of his palm against her cheek, Jericho broke his own unspoken rule of discretion. “I promise. But I’ll do better than call, Maria Elena. I’ll drop by the inn when we’ve done all we can here.”

Maria wanted to cover his hand with her own, keeping his touch. More than that, she wanted to turn her mouth into his palm and with her lips trace the hard, calloused strength. She wanted to watch his eyes as she touched her tongue to that dark, gentle hollow the calluses protected. As he had protected her when she was seventeen.

As he would protect her now.

As if he read her thoughts, he leaned close, his breath a warm caress against her cheek. “Go along with young Court, love. There’s nothing more to fear. For now.”

“I know.” She did stroke his hand then, in gratitude. She did brush her lips over the pad of his thumb, briefly. Too briefly. But with it a thunderbolt of desire struck as ungoverned and as stunning as if it were the first time.

For Jericho, too, she realized, for his gray gaze darkened and his breath stuttered. But it was only a heartbeat before his teeth clamped together with such force a muscle flickered like the lightning of this sensual, sexual storm.

“Go,” he managed hoarsely. His right hand, with the burnished gold band gleaming, fell from the soft allure of her lips. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

Maria only nodded, her eyes and her heart too full of her need for him to speak. With one smoldering look, she turned. Taking the arm Deputy Hamilton gallantly extended, like a queen she glided through the gathering crowd, oblivious of the rapt gazes of Jericho’s trusted friends and fascinated colleagues.

The sun was almost gone when Jericho climbed the steps that would lead to the entry of River Walk. He’d wakened with the sun and Maria…now he would end a long, grueling day with them. He’d been longer at the museum than he expected. Worse, this first and crucial investigation had yielded far less than he hoped.

The only conclusion anyone set forth with any confidence was that the person, or persons, who constructed the simple device then, on a gamble, set it for an hour it would be unlikely anyone would be near, meant no harm to anyone.

“This time,” Jericho muttered, as he opened the massive leaded glass door leading to the reception room of the inn.

This time. But what about the next? Or the next? Having failed in scaring Maria away, would this frantically desperate man try again? And again, if he must?

Jericho had wanted Maria to stay. More than anything in all his life, he’d needed her to stay, to build a life with him. Now, torn and hurt by the logic, he knew she must go.

“Jericho?” Eden Cade paused in the doorway of the reception room, a covered tray in her hands. Her welcoming smile was worried. “We’d almost given up on you for dinner.”

“Tonight? Dinner with you and Adams?” Jericho searched his mind, wondering if he’d forgotten an invitation. But surely he hadn’t—no one ever passed up a chance for a meal at the Inn at River Walk. Then, again, maybe he had forgotten. Since he’d learned Maria would be covering the opening at the museum for her network, he’d thought of nothing else.

“Heavens, no,” Eden exclaimed. “Adams isn’t here.” With an amused and glowing glance at the slight protrusion of her stomach, she laughed aloud. “He’s been rushing around for a week now, taking care of anything and everything he thinks might need his attention before the baby comes.”

“So soon?” Eden was carrying small, but that small? Jericho frowned, wondering if he’d miscounted, or mixed up the date Adams had announced for the birth of his child.

Eden laughed again, and Jericho had never seen this always beautiful woman so beautiful. “Of course not. But tell that to Adams. He plans to have a clean slate for the next three months so he can join with Cullen in driving me crazy. In fact, if either my husband or my chief steward saw this tray in my hand, both would very likely suffer from a dire case of apoplexy.”

Jericho grinned. He could easily believe it of both men. Adams Cade, inventor and businessman par excellence, had been a friend all his life. But when Adams returned to Belle Terre and married Eden, all his successes paled in comparison. It was the same with Cullen. When he’d come with Eden to Belle Terre, no one expected the massive islander to be happy here. But soon it was obvious that the native of the Marquesas Islands had transferred his undying loyalty from Nicholas Claibourne and the islands to Eden, Nicholas’s widow. Loyalty that remained unswerving in her marriage to Adams, her first and true and everlasting love.

Any other time, Jericho would have chuckled at the idea of Cullen, the only man he knew who was nearly as big as he, acting the lady’s maid for a gloriously pregnant Eden Cade. But now, his mind was too full of Maria. Too full, and too worried even to celebrate the joy and wonder of the coming birth of a child the most revered medical minds of the world had believed could never be conceived.

“Forgive me, Eden.” Jericho felt a sudden twinge for his neglectful preoccupation. “Let me take that.”

“Surely.” Eden relinquished the tray graciously. “And thank you, Jericho.”

“Where would you like me to take it?”

“Actually, your arrival was perfectly timed.” With a hand at his shoulder, she led him to the small elevator Adams had just installed. “I was taking the tray to the third floor.”

“The top?” Once Eden had kept her apartment on the top floor. To afford both herself and the guests of the inn more privacy. But after their marriage, she and Adams had chosen to live in the river cottage, a secluded and private residence on the grounds of River Walk. “I thought…”

“That Adams and I live in the cottage?” Eden paused before the elevator, pressed a small button and, by a newly acquired habit, folded her arms protectively over her stomach. “We do.”

The door of the elevator slid open without a sound. It was typical of Adams that it would work perfectly and unobtrusively. When, with gentlemanly courtesy, Jericho waited for Eden to precede him, she shook her head. “I’m not going.”

“No?”

With another shake of her head, her smile widened. “I was going to keep Maria Elena company for a bit. But now that you’re here, she won’t need my company. Cullen’s with her now. He took the liberty of bullying poor Court Hamilton into agreeing to watch the grounds. But I imagine Maria’s self-appointed guardian will relinquish his post while you’re with her.”

“Cullen’s watching over Maria Elena, on the third floor?”

“Of course. It was his idea that Maria should move to the third floor. Then he insisted that he should keep watch over her until we know more about the explosion. It was also his idea that the chef should prepare a cold dinner for two—for when you managed to get away. So.” Eden stepped back from the door. With a wave and a twinkle in her eyes, she murmured, “Enjoy, old friend. Be as happy tonight as you can.”

The elevator moved soundlessly and quickly, then stopped without a jolt. The door slid open as silently. Cullen was there in the foyer, far bigger than the chair that surely creaked under his weight. A book on Southern gardening lay open on his knees, and a pair of fragile half glasses perched haphazardly on his broad nose.

A smile lit the islander’s face when he recognized Maria’s visitor. As a blunt finger slanted a warning for quiet across finely shaped lips, Jericho knew that fatigue and the stress of the day had likely demanded its due.

“Maria Elena’s sleeping?”

A tilt of his head was Cullen’s only response.

“Then I’ll watch over her now, Cullen. Until she wakes.”

Rising from his chair, with his gardening book folded under his arm, the islander opened the door that would lead to the suite where Maria had been kept safe. Jericho stepped through and turned, the tray still in his hands. “Thank you, Cullen, for everything.”

Cullen smiled and stepped into the elevator. With his huge hand he kept the door ajar. “Keeping watch was my pleasure, Sheriff. Miss Delacroix reminds me of Miss Eden.” His words were a low rumble, meant only for Jericho. “A brave woman, but deeply hurt by life, and sad.”

“Her name is Rivers, Cullen. Maria Elena Rivers. We were married eighteen years ago.” Jericho should have been surprised that he’d said the words. He wasn’t. But the last sin that could be laid at Cullen’s door was gossip. The man held his confidences as determinedly as a clam.

The islander’s smile gleamed brighter, with no trace of surprise. “Then, now that you’re here, perhaps Mrs. Rivers’s sadness will ease. As it did for Miss Eden when Adams came home to her.”

Cullen took his hand away. The door began to close. “Have a good night, sir. Rest assured I won’t be far away.”

Jericho had no chance to acknowledge the islander’s assurance, but he knew Cullen well enough to know he didn’t expect a response. Instead he closed the door, set the supper tray on the nearest table, and went in search of Maria.

The suite was typically Eden. Large rooms, minimally but elegantly appointed. And, of course, there were flowers. In every alcove there was whatever arrangement the space and design could accommodate. Yet even in that, Eden’s taste and preference erred on the side of pleasing rather than overwhelming. But that there were flowers was the important factor.

Maria Elena loved flowers. Jericho liked to think their little girl would have loved them as well.

The bedroom was darkened by closed shutters. The massive bed, lying in disarray, was empty. His seeking gaze followed a muted beam of light to Maria.

She stood before a narrow door, its shutter half open, letting the light of the setting sun spill through it. Maria wore a gown and a robe of silk that gleamed in the little light like a pale emerald. Her arms were crossed beneath her breasts, the tousled mass of her hair tumbled against her cheek as she stared down on the gardens of River Walk.

“Have you considered how ironic it is, after all these years, and all that’s happened, that I’m here, Jericho?”

Jericho had paused where he was. He had no idea how she knew she wasn’t alone, or even who waited in the doorway. Perhaps the cadence of his quiet step? A familiar scent? The sixth sense of lovers with its knowing recognition?

“Do you mean here in Belle Terre? Here at River Walk? Or on Fancy Row?” he asked softly, though he was sure he knew.

“Fancy Row—that says it all, doesn’t it?” She turned to him then, and he saw that if she’d slept, it hadn’t been restful. “Fancy for the sort of women who lived here. The mistresses of wealthy planters who kept them in luxury and dressed them like queens, yet wouldn’t recognize either the women or the children they bore them. Row, because even these homes among the finest in the city didn’t deserve the respect of having a street.”

“What you say was true, but no more,” he countered as she paced toward him, the gown skimming her knees, the robe swaying over her unbound breasts. “Times change, Maria Elena. So do people.”

“Do they?” In a familiar gesture, she threaded her fingers through her hair, combing it back from her face. Before her hand had moved completely away, the dark strands were falling again in a veil over her cheek. “There are those who will think it’s fitting that I’m staying here. The child of a Delacroix, living on the street where the Delacroix courtesans plied their sinful trade.”

“Legend has it the Delacroix were the most beautiful, most accomplished women in the low country. A prize for one man to claim. Even to duel for, Maria Elena. Yet you paint them as whores, little better than streetwalkers going from man to man.”

“Not from man to man,” Maria corrected bitterly. “To the highest bidder.”

“To one man, to whom each was faithful,” he reminded.

“For whom they bore illegitimate children. Always to be known as Delacroix, never by their father’s name.”

“Keeping a mistress, being a mistress, was an accepted practice of the time, my love. But nothing to do with you.” He would have reached out to take her in his arms, but he knew that in this mood, she would reject him.

“You’re wrong, Jericho. It has everything to do with me. I’m a Delacroix, a reminder of an accepted but unsavory custom. In Belle Terre, nothing is ever forgotten. Why else did I lose our child?”

“They were just boys, Maria Elena. Certainly misguided, certainly cruel. But still boys. Foolish, thoughtless boys.”

“And bigots,” Maria snapped. With her arms clutched ever more tightly about her, she turned her back on him. “Like all the good citizens of Belle Terre.”

Jericho hadn’t bothered to change out of his uniform, but his broad-brimmed hat had been left downstairs. Now, in frustration, he scrubbed a hand over his eyes and his forehead, dislodging a dark lock that drifted over his temple. Letting his hand fall away in a loosely curled fist, he asked softly, “Does that sweeping opinion include me? Or Eden? How about Adams and his brothers? Or Lady Mary? Have you forgotten she was kind to you?”

Her back was still turned to him. When her tirade began, her shoulders had been stiffly erect. Now they curled as if she flinched from the acrimony of her bitter judgment.

“Does it, Maria Elena? Are we all intolerant snobs, simply because we aren’t all descendants of the Delacroix beauties? Have you forgotten that your lost summer girl was my little girl and my loss, as well?”

“I…no.” Keeping her back to him, she shook her head slowly, then fell silent to stand mutely in sunset.

In the broken denial, Jericho heard the threat of tears. He had to go to her then. Nothing on earth could have stopped him from holding her. Not even fear of rejection. Nor rejection itself.

Yet when he gathered her in his embrace, she turned to him, her arms hard about him, her mouth lifting greedily to his.

With Maria the initiator and the leader, their kiss was long and wild and deep. Her teeth nipped at his lips, but only for her tongue to soothe the hurt. Her hands slipped between the crush of their bodies to slide over his chest, his throat. Circling to his nape, her fingers tangled in the dark hair brushing his collar, but only to drag him fiercely down to her. She couldn’t get him close enough. The teasing caress of probing, twining tongues wasn’t deep enough, hard enough.

“More,” she muttered as she released the clutch of his hair, and turned her attention to the buttons of his shirt. “I want to feel you. I want the touch of your skin on mine. I want your hands on me. I want you. Only and forever, you.”

“No, my love. No.” He caught her hands, pinning them between the unyielding musculature of his chest and the enticing softness of her breasts. “I’m sooty. I stink of smoke and grease.”

“You’re Jericho. That’s all that matters.” As she whispered the last, she leaned to kiss their joined hands. Then, slowly, her head lifted and she rose on tiptoe to touch her lips to the pulse that fluttered like a captured bird at the hollow of his throat. The touch of her tongue sent the heat of an inferno racing from his throat to pool hot and heavy in his groin.

Then, she lifted her head to let her gaze reach into his. In the half light of twilight in an ever-darkening room, he saw that her eyes of shimmering silver were filled with fear. Not fear of dying, but of never having truly lived.

She wanted him now, as an affirmation of life. In her eyes he saw grief for the little life they’d lost, for the life they’d never had together, even the life they might never have. But this moment was theirs. No one and nothing could take it from them.

“Yes.” He answered the question she hadn’t asked, except with her eyes. “Yes.”

In a single motion he nearly ripped her nightclothes from her body. Before the emerald silk could pool at her feet, he swept her into his arms to stalk the length of the room. Laying her gently on the bed, he straightened to tear away his own clothes.

She watched him. As buttons ripped from their moorings, her gaze raked over every inch of exposed flesh. Next his belt was flung away. The snap at the waist of his trousers opened, the zipper growled. As if by magic, trousers and boots and every shred of clothing were gone from him.

He towered over her, all six and a half manly feet of Jericho Rivers. So handsome, so aroused, so ready. He wanted her. He needed her more than he’d ever wanted, ever needed, before. Yet with all the strength and reason he possessed, he waited.

Maria understood. She must set the pace. Allowing herself one last worshiping look, she opened her arms, whispering, “Make me feel real, Jericho. Teach me to be glad I’m alive.”

Then he came down to her. There was no seduction, no foreplay. The time for that had passed. Maria Elena wanted what he wanted. She needed what he needed—his body joining with hers, stroking hers, hard, fast, deep. Over and over again until their bodies lifted and arched seeking even more.

He didn’t think of hurting her. He didn’t feel her nails tearing across his shoulders and down his chest. He only heard her whisper yes, and yes, and yes, as he gathered her wrists in his hands and pinned them over her head.

With her hands held captive as she arched to meet the power of his thrust, he bent to kiss her breast. Yet despite their madness, his suckling was as gentle as their mating was fierce.

Her breasts were fragrant from the bath oils for which the Inn at River Walk was famous. Their flavor gathered in his lungs, on his skin, and his tongue. Flavors and scents that banished the acrid memory of explosives and fire. There was no car, no young thief, no burned hulk. Only a man and a woman. Only Jericho and Maria Elena.

When he bent to suckle for the last time, he felt the first beginning shudders clasping him. Then she was struggling to free her hands, but only to draw his mouth to hers. Only to mate with him with lips and tongue, as she had with soul and body.

This had begun out of unfathomed need. As coupling in animal heat. As lust. As sex. But it was cleansing passion and abiding love that drew them to its splendid conclusion.

As she wrapped him in that splendor, giving of herself even as she took from him, she was his friend, the center of his universe. His reason for living.

The woman he loved.

His wife.

Four

Jericho woke with the dawn, out of habit and custom. As he had before, he sat by Maria’s bed watching her sleep, while memories swirled through his mind. Not just memories of the night, but of their years as children and teens in Belle Terre.

In the pall of those long-ago memories, a smile bearing no trace of humor or joy twisted his lips and turned his eyes to seething pits. He’d known Maria Elena Delacroix almost all his life. And loved her passionately and hopelessly for nineteen of those years. Sometimes, as now, he suspected he had loved her even longer.

During the night, they’d roused, showered together and made love again. Now, as she slept, with her drying hair rippling over the pillow, in spite of telltale marks of intemperate passion, it was the innocence of a frightened girl he saw. An exquisite young girl eager to be accepted, eager to be liked.

But that was before she truly understood what it meant to be a Delacroix. Especially in Belle Terre. Before she discovered she would never be forgiven for the perceived sins of any number of distant grandmothers, aunts, and cousins. Before she realized that being smarter and more beautiful than the other girls of Belle Terre Academy, and a Delacroix, was an unforgivable combination.

The first time he’d seen her, she was a scrawny little thing, with changeable gray eyes too big for her face, and a wealth of shiny hair as black as sin. She was just ten, a brand-new student at the academy. More than a little lost and confused, and totally overwhelmed by the affluence of her new surroundings. He was eleven, almost twelve, a veteran of six years at the private academy.

While she was unbelievably tiny, he was already the biggest kid his side of high school. So, on her first day, when she’d fumbled unfamiliarly with her locker, spilling her new books all over the hall, it seemed natural that he would pick them up, then offer to carry them as he showed her to her first class.

That was the beginning of “Jericho and Maria.” Out of a simple courtesy that was second nature to a tenderhearted boy, grew a unique friendship that forged a lasting bond.

There were repercussions from the beginning. Some vicious teasing, hate-filled remarks. Later, he understood that his classmates were parroting parental attitudes. A few of the boys scoffed at him for liking any girl. But especially the new girl, whom everyone seemed to be certain shouldn’t be attending the academy at all.

But even at eleven, almost twelve, Jericho had liked her smile. He liked the serious gaze that always seemed to find him, no matter where he was or what he was doing. He liked pretty Maria and her eyes and her smile more than he hated the teasing.

He knew she was different from the other girls. He knew there was something more than the unspoken class system of the proud Southern town that set her apart. But Jericho’s mother was a Yankee and a maverick, the only black mark against the most aristocratic Rivers name. In her own words, Leah Rivers didn’t give “a cup of tea in hell” for the townfolk’s preoccupation with whose father was who and had what. She didn’t care whose long-lost ancestor had signed what document or led what cavalry charge where. She found the deadly serious celebration of family connections and claim of old money foolish and intolerably arrogant.

In an inexplicable peculiarity of the cliquish Southern town, this very disdain made Leah Rivers one of Belle Terre’s most respected women. Because she practiced her beliefs, judging people by their own accomplishments, Jericho never understood the parroted slurs. It was a classmate who enlightened him, whispering behind a shielding hand a tale of half truths and embellished lies of what the Delacroix women had been nearly a century before.

It was then he’d visited his grandmother. His father’s mother, Grandmère Rivers, as she preferred to be addressed. More than an equal and a match for her daughter-in-law in brutal frankness, this proud and patrician old lady was, nevertheless, the revered ruler of society in Belle Terre. But, as she warned him in the course of their talk, even she couldn’t control the misguided cruelties and injustices of prejudice.

He was thirteen the day of their talk, and admittedly naive. But before she was through, he understood the facts, the myths, the foibles, and the pain of the wealthy Southern gentleman’s penchant for keeping a mistress and even a second family. He understood that once it had been a common, expected social institution.