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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.”
“Oh.” Cleo kneeled again, putting one hand on Ethan’s shoulder. They were face-to-face, and hers was full of concern and sadness. “I’m so sorry, Ethan.”
He looked at her steadily, and suddenly she dropped her hand and jumped to her feet. “Well, well.” Something was making her very nervous, and he wondered if she’d figured out what he was about to ask.
She swallowed. “So now you’re back in Montana,” she said briskly. “The ATI Com-Sokia deal again?”
Ethan captured her hand and stood. “I’ve been thinking about another kind of merger altogether.”
She swallowed again, but didn’t say a word.
“I need something from you, Cleo.”
“Me?” Her voice sounded breathless and her hand tried to slip from his. “What could I possibly do for you?”
Ethan held her fingers firmly. “You could marry me, Cleo.”
Marry him. Marry Ethan.
Cleo’s heart lurched, as if it were trying to find a way out of her chest. “Are you kidding?” she said, her voice sounding very far away.
Ethan’s blue eyes were scarily solemn. “Not kidding.”
Cleo’s heart pitched again, like a boat ready to capsize. Marry Ethan? This whole episode was like something out of a fantasy, a too familiar fantasy born the first moment she’d seen Ethan last winter. A fantasy that had only grown in detail and proportion every time she’d encountered him after that.
But the reality of Ethan was right in front of her, too close, really. She could smell his delicious, sophisticated scent and see new lines of tiredness, or grief maybe, etched around his serious mouth. His sister had died. He had a baby now.
Little Jonah was real, too. Cleo looked down at the sweet baby, snoozing in his carrier. With his blond hair and the blue eyes she’d glimpsed, he could really be Ethan’s.
A husband. A child. Ethan and Jonah.
