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A Season For Love
Bj James
Eighteen years ago, a terrible tragedy forced Maria Delacroix to flee Belle Torre– and Sheriff Jericho Rivers, her first love. Now she was finally back in Jericho' s warm embrace, but someone from the past was determined to destroy her. Both her life and her heart were in mortal danger…With her provocative smile and midnight hair, Maria was lovelier than ever. Jericho would do whatever it took to keep her safe– and to keep her in Belle Terre, at his side. So as Christmas approached, he vowed to offer Maria a season for love… one that would last for the rest of their lives.
“You Don’t Want To Hear It? Tough.
“You asked the question, Mr. Sheriff Jericho Rivers, so you’re going to know who my lovers were. You’re going to hear how they looked, and how they made me feel.”
Maria could’ve sworn his handsome, weathered face paled.
As her body responded to his heated, possessive look, she caught back an unsteady sigh and launched into her answer.
“My legion of lovers are all of a type. All are kind. Gentle. All dark, stronger than the strongest oak and taller than the sky. They all have eyes as silvery gray as a stormy sea. And they come to me in the night, wherever I am. Africa. Egypt. China. Russia. Belle Terre.
“They come to me only in my wishes and my dreams.” Her free hand trailed over his jaw, her fingertips lingered at his mouth. “Because all my lovers are you, Jericho. Wherever I am, wherever I go, only you.”
Dear Reader,
The year 2000 has been a special time for Silhouette, as we’ve celebrated our 20th anniversary. Readers from all over the world have written to tell us what they love about our books, and we’d like to share with you part of a letter from Carolyn Dann of Grand Bend, Ontario, who’s a fan of Silhouette Desire. Carolyn wrote, “I like the storylines…the characters…the front covers… All the characters in the books are the kind of people you like to read about. They’re all down-to-earth, everyday people.” And as a grand finale to our anniversary year, Silhouette Desire offers six of your favorite authors for an especially memorable month’s worth of passionate, powerful, provocative reading!
We begin the lineup with the always wonderful Barbara Boswell’s MAN OF THE MONTH, Irresistible You, in which a single woman nine months pregnant meets her perfect hero while on jury duty. The incomparable Cait London continues her exciting miniseries FREEDOM VALLEY with Slow Fever. Against a beautiful Montana backdrop, the oldest Bennett sister is courted by a man who spurned her in their teenage years. And A Season for Love, in which Sheriff Jericho Rivers regains his lost love, continues the new miniseries MEN OF BELLE TERRE by beloved author BJ James.
Don’t miss the thrilling conclusion to the Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS in Peggy Moreland’s Groom of Fortune. Elizabeth Bevarly will delight you with Monahan’s Gamble. And Expecting the Boss’s Baby is the launch title of Leanne Banks’s new miniseries, MILLION DOLLAR MEN, which offers wealthy, philanthropic bachelors guaranteed to seduce you.
We hope all readers of Silhouette Desire will treasure the gift of this special month.
Happy holidays!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
A Season for Love
Bj James
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my parents, with love
BJ JAMES’
first book for Silhouette Desire was published in February 1987. Her second Desire garnered for BJ a second Maggie, the coveted award of the Georgia Romance Writers. Through the years there have been other awards and nominations for awards, including, from Romantic Times Magazine, Reviewer’s Choice, Career Achievement, Best Desire and Best Series Romance of the Year. In that time, her books have appeared regularly on a number of bestseller lists, among them Waldenbooks and USA Today.
On a personal note, BJ and her physician husband have three sons and two grandsons. While her address reads Mooreboro, this is only the origin of a mail route passing through the countryside. A small village set in the foothills of western North Carolina is her home.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
One
He watched her.
From a small alcove above the atrium of the sprawling museum, he could see every patron and every celebrant, read the nuance of each gesture or expression. But it was only she who had the power to captivate. Only this woman who fascinated.
As he watched, music and laughter filled the grand hall from marble floor to gold leaf ceiling. Dancers, resplendent beneath the light of 18th-century chandeliers, reflected in one ornate mirror after another. Antique blue satin draping doors opening onto small galleries shimmered as darkly as the sea beyond.
The atrium was magnificent, an exquisite replica of the past the very cliquish Southern town of Belle Terre revered. In all its rich, Low Country grandeur, this was the heart of the museum, the piéce de résistance. An ironic setting for the beautiful woman.
There was a time she wouldn’t have been welcome. Venerable denizens greeting her familiarly tonight wouldn’t have spoken to her on the street. Men strutting in dusted-off tuxedos, lusting for a word or a smile, in the past lusted only for her nubile body.
She’d been brutalized and reviled by Belle Terre. Yet she moved among its self-appointed aristocracy graciously, as if she were one of them and had always been.
Politely refusing hors d’oeuvres, flutes of champagne, and invitations to dance by the dozens, she accepted the fawning acclaim, yet remained quietly aloof. In a gown that flowed like liquid gold about her, tastefully revealing the qualities that once sparked scorn and lechery, Maria Elena Delacroix, the outcast of Belle Terre, held court with the regal dignity of a queen.
Most of the men in the room were half in love with her. And one completely, irrevocably.
“Sheriff Rivers.”
Turning at the sound of his name, Jericho Rivers found Harcourt Kerwin Hamilton IV, better known as Court, and more recently as Deputy Hamilton, poised on the top step of the curving stair. “Something wrong, Court?”
“No, sir.” Moving to the sheriff’s side, Court looked out over the atrium. “It’s a grand affair. Grandmère says parties like this were common in her day.”
Grandmère. Jericho smiled at the term, a part of the pretentious idiom of the historical coastal town. The only name he’d been allowed to call his own grandmother. “I imagine a lot of things that are rare now were commonplace in her day.”
“But there’s something that isn’t commonplace in any day.”
Because he’d been taught from birth that it was rude to point, Court only nodded. But even the nod was superfluous. Jericho hadn’t a doubt Court’s youthful gaze was as drawn to Maria Elena Delacroix as any male’s in the room.
“My sister says you were friends of Ms. Delacroix in school. When she was part of your class at the academy.”
Court was still in short pants when his sister was in high school—he wouldn’t remember that Maria Elena was looked upon as the sort proper young girls of Belle Terre’s society shunned. Jericho doubted the older sister ever deigned to speak to her. Most certainly there had been no friendship.
Even he hadn’t been the friend he should have. Remembering how he had failed her, his voice was grim. “We knew her. All of us.”
A smile of masculine appreciation firmly in place, Court’s gaze followed the elegantly clad woman as she detached herself from the crowd, stepped between satin curtains, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. “With a face and body like that, she must have been the most popular girl in the whole school. But I bet none of you expected she would become a famous newscaster.”
Jericho was silent as he remembered the sad young girl who sat apart in morning assembly and walked the halls of Belle Terre Academy alone. As the hurt, bruised look that had haunted him for years loomed in his mind, he replied in a low, thoughtful voice, “I don’t think any of us knew what to expect of Ms. Delacroix.” After a long moment he added, “We still don’t.”
Court Hamilton was like an eager puppy. Too exuberant, too excitable, and far too inquisitive. “It’s good to have her back, though. Isn’t it?”
Was it? Jericho wondered as he pondered the consequences of her return. What dormant fear had she wakened? What upheaval would this single night bring to settled lives? Who would suffer or profit most, the denizens of Belle Terre, or she?
Angry for the past, distracted by contemplations of the near future, he lashed out when he shouldn’t have. “Is that why you came up here, Hamilton? To gossip?”
Beyond a puzzled look, Court Hamilton did not react to the rare barb. “No, sir. I came to take a turn here in the crow’s nest. I thought there might be some folk you would like to speak with before the last dance.”
Ignoring Hamilton’s joking title for the alcove, Jericho glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight. The celebration would be ending shortly.
“Thank you, Court.” Jericho Rivers smiled, rancor gone, but with no humor touching his calm gray gaze. “There is someone.”
Descending the stairs with the distinctive and uncommon agility of an extraordinary athlete, despite a ravaged knee, in seconds he was paused on the landing. Towering above the tallest of the celebrants by inches, his thick, dark hair gleaming with the soft sheen of coal, in the spinning kaleidoscope of lights, the sheriff of Belle Terre stood observing the crowd.
Unlike Maria Delacroix, he was one of them by birth. Born into the mystique of the merit and excellence of history, a scion of influence and old money. Schooled in charm and gallantry, as handsome as Lucifer, as magnetic, he could have been the prince of society. Yet he held himself apart. Apart from the pretenses, from the bluster and posturing. Apart and immune even from the playful flirtations of its polished, sophisticated femmes fatales.
Handsome as sin, yet aloof. Indeed, he was an intriguing enigma, an everlasting challenge. But tonight, as his silver-gray gaze moved over the crowd, there was an unapproachable look about him that discouraged even the most persistent of covetous ladies.
When the slow, steady perusal was done, his concern for any breach of security in these last minutes of the gala was allayed. Only then did he move through the throng, a distinguished figure with an air of authority. His formal wear draping the striking breadth of his shoulders and the deep musculature of his chest only a bit more impeccably than the khaki uniform of his standard daily wear. Given his size, his astounding presence, and the look of haunting secrets in his level gray gaze, the merrymakers gave way as if he were a human tide.
Crossing the marble floor quickly, speaking pleasantly but abruptly disengaging himself from any insistent conversations, Jericho didn’t pause until he reached an open door.
As he stood, remembering, the orchestra finished the last of a Cole Porter classic. One of his favorites. He didn’t notice.
Into the lull, almost too quietly to be heard, he murmured, “Good evening, Maria Elena.”
Two
“Is it really, Sheriff Rivers?” She stood alone on the small gallery, her back to him, her hands gripping the massive balustrade the only sign of tension. The only sign that she waited for him. “A good evening, I mean.”
She faced him, her smile rueful, provocative. With the moonlit sea at her back and the wind teasing tendrils of midnight hair about her shoulders, she was the stuff of dreams and old memories.
“Pleasant enough.” Moving from the doorway, leaving the pomp and revelry of the gala behind him, Jericho crossed the shadowed space separating them. The scent of her perfume mingled with the night. A blended fragrance of sultry intoxication.
As he stood by her side, looking out at the surf, her cheek nearly brushed his shoulder. Tilting her head, she spoke softly. “It’s been a long time, Jericho.”
“Yes.” The word fell like a stone between them. With the music quieted, only the rhythm of distant waves washing over the shore breached a wall of silence.
The pale globe of a full moon rode low over the surf, its reflected light a river of silver brightening the night. Remembering the times he’d watched the same view from his own gallery with his mind wandering to the girl she’d been, Jericho waited. Feeling her gaze moving over him, contemplating, analyzing, he didn’t act or react. The first move would be hers.
Fronds of a palm brushed against a nearby wall. Rigging of beached sailboats clanked against masts. The engines of a freighter, barely a lighted dot against the horizon, thrummed for a moment on a gust, then faded into nothing as it passed.
As suddenly as it began, the muted cacophony ceased. Leaving behind a silence aching to be broken.
“I never expected to see you here again,” she said, at last, as the band played the first measure of “Goodnight Ladies.” “I never expected I would return to Belle Terre.”
“Nor did I.”
Laughing a breathy laugh, she shook her head. “Jericho Rivers, young Goliath and rare friend, still a man of few words.”
Shifting slightly, with his hand resting on the heavy iron of the gallery railing, from his great height he looked down at her. “What would you have me say, Maria Elena?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why did you come?” His voice was deep, as mild as the night. As intriguing.
“This was an assignment. Only an assignment.”
“The opening of a museum devoted to the history of a small coastal town?” he scoffed. “Hardly a noteworthy event. Certainly nothing to merit the attention of a famous news personality.”
“Human interest, Jericho. The history of Belle Terre and its reverence for the past constitute human interest.”
“Ah-hh, of course. That is your forte, the element that sets you apart in your work and your photography. So, when our tidbit of publicity happened to stray across a strategic desk, someone recalled Belle Terre was your hometown. And voilá!—you’re here,” he surmised quietly. “Is that how it went?”
“Something like that.”
“You could have refused. Yet you didn’t.” There was a nuance of tenderness in his comment. Caught in a shaft of light, his face was barren of expression, but his gaze was turbulent.
The heat of that gaze reached into her, touching the secret, lonely places, waking needs and dreams she’d put aside. A gaze that set her heart beating so wildly, she feared it was visible beneath the clinging gown. Resting a hand on the curve of her shoulder, willing away tensions that had gathered and grown the whole evening, she moved her head in the barest denial. Her lips formed a silent no.
“Why? Why have you come, Maria Elena?” His voice dropped lower, even deeper. Yet the tone was no less compelling when he questioned again, “Why didn’t you refuse?”
A cloud passed over the moon, in the pale darkness the sound of the sea seemed muted. In a voice in keeping with the hush, she began as if by rote, “Reporting news is my job. I don’t choose the place. I simply go where it takes me. This time it brought me…”
Jericho moved closer, the subtle and familiar scent of him as compelling as his voice, as unsettling as a touch. Her tongue faltered on the beginning of a glib lie. The strange undercurrent in his questions, and a mood she didn’t understand, simmered scarcely below a debonair veneer. Not sure how to respond or react, picking up a lost thread, she began again. “This time it brought me…”
“Home,” he provided the word she never intended, in a voice unlike any she’d ever heard. The storm was gone from his gaze. The battle he’d fought with himself had ended. When he looked at her there was only tenderness. “Home to Belle Terre. Home to me.”
“No!” Her denial was a strangled cry. The hand at her shoulder clenched and slipped to her breast. With a sweep of her lashes, shielding her from his riveting gaze, she turned her face away. A long breath shuddered through her, the pulse at her throat hammered as if her heart would race into madness. With a low moan, she lurched forward, desperate, intent on fleeing.
Maria was quick. Jericho was quicker. His hand flashed past her, closing, as the other, over the railing. Holding her in that imprisoning space, yet not touching her, he bent to her. “Stay.”
“I can’t.” Her voice was low and unsteady. “The rest of the crew will be looking for me.”
“To go back to the inn?” He moved another subtle step, his body brushed hers. The heat of him surrounded her. “To sleep alone?”
