Leta walked to the door and opened it with a ready smile for Colby Lane. And found herself looking straight into the eye of a man she hadn’t seen face-to-face in thirty-six years.
Matt Holden matched her face against his memories of a young, slight, beautiful woman whose eyes loved him every time they looked at him. His heart spun like a cartwheel in his chest.
“Cecily said it was Colby,” Leta said unsteadily.
“Strange. She phoned me and asked if I was free this evening.” His broad shoulders shrugged and he smiled faintly. “I’m free every evening.”
“That doesn’t sound like the life of a playboy widower,” Leta said caustically.
“My wife was a vampire,” he said. “She sucked me dry of life and hope. Her drinking wore me down. Her death was a relief for both of us. Do I get to come in?” he added, glancing down the hall. “I’m going to collect dust if I stand out here much longer, and I’m hungry. A sack of McDonald’s hamburgers and fries doesn’t do a lot for me.”
“I hear it’s a presidential favorite,” Cecily mused, joining them. “Come in, Senator Holden.”
“It was Matt before,” he pointed out. “Or are you trying to butter me up for a bigger donation to the museum?”
She shrugged. “Pick a reason.”
He looked at Leta, who was uncomfortable. “Well, at least you can’t hang up on me here. You’ll be glad to know that our son isn’t speaking to me. He isn’t speaking to you, either, or so he said,” he added. “I suppose he won’t talk to you?” he added to Cecily.
“He said goodbye very finally, after telling me that I was an idiot to think he’d change his mind and want to marry me just because he turned out to have mixed blood,” she said, not relating the shocking intimacy that had prefaced his remarks.
“I’ll punch him for that,” Matt said darkly.
“Ex-special forces,” Leta spoke up with a faint attempt at humor, nodding toward Matt. “He was in uniform when we went on our first date.”
“You wore a white cotton dress with a tiered skirt,” he recalled, “and let your hair down. Hair…”
He turned back to Cecily and grimaced. “Good God, what did you do that for?”
“Tate likes long hair, that’s what I did it for,” she said, venom in her whole look. “I can’t wait for him to see it, even if I have to settle for sending him a photo!”
“I hope you never get mad at me,” Matt said.
“Fat chance.
What a curse, to want only one person.”
He drew her into his arms and kissed her again, hungrily. “What a glorious blessing, to want only one person and be wanted back, even after thirty-six long years,” he whispered.
How is Tate?”
He dropped into the chair across from her with an irritated sound. “Well, he isn’t the man I used to know.”
Her eyes held a soft sadness. “You don’t know why, Colby.”
“Like to bet?” he asked with a wry grin. “He called Matt Holden everything except a man, and then he stared on his mother. He was livid that she’d kept the truth about his real father from him all those years, and that she hung up on him when he called to get the truth out of her. But he was even madder when he found out that she’d moved into Holden’s house and was living with him. He called her a name I won’t repeat.”
“What happened?” Cecily prompted impatiently when he paused.
“Senator Holden knocked him over the sofa. Leta got in the way and broke it up, but Tate left in a red rage, swearing that he’d never speak to either of them again.”
It was no less than she’d expected, having known Tate for so many years. But she felt sorry for Leta and Matt. “Do you know where he went?” she asked.
“He didn’t say. I wasn’t willing to risk asking him, either,” he added ruefully. “Tate and I have had our differences lately.”
“What a mess.”
“It’ll blow over,” he said. “People get mad, they get over it.”
“Tate doesn’t.”
“Well, he can work on joining the human race, can’t he?
Pity Matt didn’t help him through a window instead of over a sofa,” she grumbled. “He needs an attitude adjustment.
Diana PalmerGo ahead. Ask me who the father is.”
He only smiled. “Do I look that stupid to you?”
She pushed back her short hair with a sigh. “He doesn’t know, and you’re not to tell him. In English, Apache or Lakota,” she emphasized, covering all her bases.
He nodded. “What are you going to do?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she confessed. “I only used the home-pregnancy test this morning, but I was pretty sure before then. I’ve got to find a place to live where Leta won’t see me for a while. I can’t risk having her tell Tate.” She glanced at him. “Where were you all this time?” she wanted to know.
“Sitting calmly in a wing chair sipping coffee and trying to look invisible.” He lifted his eyebrows at her disbelieving expression. “Somebody had to keep his head.”
“There’s an old saying that, if you can keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs, you don’t have a clue what’s going on,” she misquoted.
“Could be. But I’m not sporting a bruised face, like some I could name.” He leaned forward. “Want to marry me?”
“Thanks, Colby,” she said softly. “I really mean it. But it wouldn’t be fair to any of us. Especially you.”
He folded his arms and leaned back. “The offer doesn’t have a time limit. I really do love children.
I made decaf,” he said. “Caffeine isn’t good for you.”
“Thank you, Mama Lane.”
He made a face at her. “Tate and I used to share everything. Let him go off in a snit. I’ll share his baby. If he doesn’t come back, I’ll appropriate it, and you.”
“That’s one area where all your commando skills will fail, dear man,” she said affectionately. “I like you very much, and you can be baby’s godfather. But I’m raising this child myself.”
“Godfather.” He was savoring the word when the toast popped up.
“Bad choice of words,” she murmured. “I wouldn’t want to give you any bad ideas. I don’t want my child outfitted in a fedora and a machine gun.”
“Commando godfathers are a different breed.”
“Black bags and camo gear aren’t much better,” she informed him.
“Spoilsport. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Hanging in the shower trying to dry out.
You’re a worse punishment than even he deserves, lady,” she bit off as she turned away from the phone. “I wouldn’t wish you on my worst enemy!”
The phone rang again and she picked it up, ready to give Audrey a fierce piece of her mind. But it was a journalist wanting to know if the story in the tabloids was true, about Tate and Cecily being lovers when she was still in school.
“It most certainly is not,” she said curtly. “But I’ll tell you what is. Tate Winthrop is marrying Washington socialite Miss Audrey Gannon at Christmas. You can print that, with my blessing!” And she hung up again.
Be careful. Be extra careful.”
“I will. You do the same,” she added with a chuckle.
“I’m a tough old bird,” he told her. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t still be alive in the first place,” he assured her. “You eat properly and take your prenatal vitamins.”
“Stop mothering me,” she muttered.
He grinned. “Somebody has to. See you, kid.
She wasn’t sure when she realized that she wasn’t alone. She’d heard a louder murmur from the crowd outside, but she hadn’t connected it with the door opening. She looked over her shoulder and saw Tate standing against the back wall. He was wearing one of those Armani suits that looked so splendid on his lithe build, and he had his trenchcoat over one arm. He was leaning back, glaring at the ceremony. Something was different about him, but Cecily couldn’t think what. It wasn’t the vivid bruise high up on his cheek where Matt had hit him. But it was something…Then it dawned on her. His hair was cut short, like her own. He glared at her.
Cecily wasn’t going to cower in her seat and let him think she was afraid to face him. Mindful of the solemnity of the occasion, she got up and joined Tate by the door.
“So you actually came. Bruises and all,” she whispered with a faintly mocking smile, eyeing the very prominent green-and-yellow patch on his jaw that Matt Holden had put there.
He looked down at her from turbulent black eyes. He didn’t reply for a minute while he studied her, taking in the differences in her appearance, too. His eyes narrowed on her short hair. She thought his eyelids flinched, but it might have been the light.
His eyes went back to the ceremony. He didn’t say another word. He didn’t really need to. He’d cut his hair. In his culture-the one that part of him still belonged to-cutting the hair was a sign of grief.
She could feel the way it was hurting him to know that the people he loved most in the world had lied to him. She wanted to tell him that the pain would ease day by day, that it was better to know the truth than go through life living a lie. She wanted to tell him that having a foot in two cultures wasn’t the end of the world. But he stood there like a painted stone statue, his jaw so tense that the muscles in it were noticeable. He refused to acknowledge her presence at all.
“Congratulations on your engagement, by the way,” she said without a trace of bitterness in her tone. “I’m very happy for you.”
His eyes met hers evenly. “That isn’t what you told the press,” he said in a cold undertone. “I’m amazed that you’d go to such lengths to get back at me.”
“What lengths?” she asked.
“Planting that story in the tabloids,” he returned. “I could hate you for that.”
The teenage sex slave story, she guessed. She glared back at him. “And I could hate you, for believing I would do something so underhanded,” she returned.
He scowled down at her. The anger he felt was almost tangible. She’d sold him out in every way possible and now she’d embarrassed him publicly, again, first by confessing to the media that she’d been his teenage lover-a load of bull if ever there was one. Then she’d compounded it by adding that he was marrying Audrey at Christmas. He wondered how she could be so vindictive. Audrey was sticking to him like glue and she’d told everyone about the wedding. Not that many people hadn’t read it already in the papers. He felt sick all over. He wouldn’t have Audrey at any price. Not that he was about to confess that to Cecily now, after she’d sold him out.
He started to speak, but he thought better of it, and turned his angry eyes back toward the couple at the altar.
After a minute, Cecily turned and went back to her seat. She didn’t look at him again.
I’m not leaving you alone, even with a good shadow,” he said firmly. “So either you move in with me, or I sleep on the couch here. Your choice.”
“Where will Audrey sleep?” she asked coldly.
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