The Rebel's Return

by Gina Wilkins

  They were here—alone

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  They were here—alone

  And it was Christmas—which had nothing to do with anything, except that Rachel was suddenly tempted to give herself a gift she’d been wanting for years.

  Somehow, Lucas’s right hand slipped between them, closing gently around her left breast. Rachel caught her breath as shattering sensations coursed through her. Lucas pushed the lace cup of her bra out of the way, giving him better access to her sensitized nipple. She arched restlessly, her right knee bending, sliding up his leg.

  “You used to slap my hand when I did this,” Lucas said, circling his thumb in a way that made her gasp.

  “Now I’ll slap it if you stop,” she murmured.

  His husky chuckle was a sweet reward. Lucas’s laughter was so rare these days. Suddenly his eyes darkened with an almost feral hunger and he rolled, pulling her beneath him on the hard stone floor. “I’ve dreamed about having you, here, like this,” he muttered. “I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you. I’ve never stopped wanting you.”

  Rachel reached up with both hands to pull his mouth down to hers. “I want you, too,” she whispered. “Make love with me, Lucas.”

  Dear Reader,

  I have always loved Christmas. The traditions, the music, the decorations, the food, the smells—and the special significance of the holiday—everything about the season appeals to me. When I finished the first three books of the Southern Scandals series, I knew I would have to bring Emily’s long-lost brother home to clear his name. The McBride family simply wasn’t complete without him. And what better time than Christmas for reunions and redemption?

  The “scandalous” McBrides have become very special to me during this series and I hate to leave them. Maybe I’ll visit them again someday. In the meantime, enjoy watching Lucas, the wildest of the McBrides, give the gossips of Honoria a Christmas they’ll never forget.

  Wishing you a season filled with joy and romance,

  Gina Wilkins

  P.S. For those of you who missed any of the previous books in the Southern Scandals trilogy, you can order #668 Seducing Savannah, #676 Tempting Tara, or #684 Enticing Emily from the Customer Service Center. See details below.

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  Gina Wilkins

  THE REBEL’S RETURN

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  1

  LUCAS MCBRIDE had spent the past fourteen Christmases alone. And he’d had every intention of spending this one the same way. But that was before a two-month-old article in the Honoria Gazette had brought him back to Honoria, Georgia, a town he’d once vowed never to set foot in again.

  Strung with multicolored Christmas lights, even the oldest part of downtown Honoria looked festive. Enormous wreaths made of tinsel hung from each lamppost. As he drove down Main Street, deserted on this Sunday evening only five days before Christmas, Lucas looked behind the decorations to note that many of the twenties-era buildings were unoccupied, the windows boarded up or gapingly empty. The few remaining establishments looked as though they struggled to survive. A Revitalize Downtown poster fluttered halfheartedly on a pole beneath a glittering wreath.

  He passed the corner of Main and Oak, where he and his teenage buddies used to hang out on Saturday nights, smoking cigarettes and trying not to look too anxious to meet the girls who cruised by in their daddies’ cars. The alley behind the old, empty hardware store brought back memories of a fight Lucas and his pals had gotten into with a bunch of football jocks from rival Campbellville. Chief Packer had broken up the melee and hauled all the participants to the city jail.

  Lucas had spent that night in a cell. His father had been the only one who hadn’t come to bail out his son.

  It was the first night Lucas had spent in jail, but it hadn’t been the last. Chief Packer had made arresting Lucas a hobby after that.

  At the end of the block sat what had once been the old soda shop. Lucas had met Rachel Jennings there.

  She’d been seventeen, he’d been nineteen. During the next ten months, they’d come to see themselves like Romeo and Juliet, kept apart by old family feuds. They’d met in secret, heightening the romantic thrill of their trysts. No one had been aware of their feelings for each other—until Rachel’s brother Roger had found out about them.

  Few of the townspeople would have imagined that the fiery-tempered bad boy, Lucas McBride, had a hidden streak of romanticism. But the events that had eventually run him out of town had destroyed whatever idealism he’d once possessed, just as time had decayed the buildings of old downtown Honoria.

  Lucas had driven through the west part of town earlier, and had hardly recognized the heavily developed area with its shopping strips and fast-food restaurants and service stations and car-sales lots. He still remembered when his uncle Caleb had taken him deer hunting in the woods that had once stood there.

  Progress, he thought, looking at the sadly dignified brick building that had once held the old fiveand-dime store, wasn’t all it cracked up to be.

  Seeing the changes in his former hometown inevitably made him think of what else had changed since he’d left in the middle of that spring night so long ago. His father was dead now. His cousins scattered. His baby sister a grown woman. And Rachel...

  As always, he pushed back his thoughts of Rachel into the darkest part of his mind, along with the other painful memories of his past. At least he wouldn’t have to face her on this reluctant visit. He knew she’d moved away from Honoria not long after he had.

  Out of old, half-forgotten habit, he turned right on Maple Street, thinking he’d drive past the high school and see if that had changed as much as everything else. Almost immediately, he saw a flashing blue light reflected in his rearview mirror. The dark-colored Jeep had pulled out of nowhere and was now right on Lucas’s rear bumper, the light flashing from its dash identifying it as a police officer’s vehicle.

  Hell. Lucas had been back in Honoria less than two hours and already he was being hassled by the local authorities.

  Apparently, some things hadn’t changed at all.

  He drove into the deserted parking lot of an auto-repair shop and stopped beneath a street lamp decorated with a glowing, horn-blowing Christmas angel. He rolled down the driver’s side window and pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans, extracting his driver’s license from its plastic sleeve. He’d been through this drill enough to know what to do.

  The thirty-something officer was dressed in civies—a heavy denim jacket over a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. He held a badge in his hand to identify himself.

  “License and registration, please,” he said in a low drawl that marked him as a native Southerner.

  Lucas held the license out the open window. “What did I do?”

  “Did you happen to notice that you turned the wrong way on a one-way street?” the officer asked dryly as he pulled a
penlight out of his pocket and aimed it at the driver’s license.

  “Maple’s one way now? Hell, I didn’t notice.” Lucas glanced automatically toward the street, wincing when he saw the prominently displayed one-way arrow at the exit of the parking lot.

  The officer looked at the license in his hand, then seemed to go very still. His voice held a note of strain when he asked, “You’re Lucas McBride?”

  Lucas knew this guy hadn’t been around fifteen years ago. Did they instruct all new cops to be on alert for Lucas McBride, in the unlikely event that he ever reappeared?

  “Yeah, I’m McBride. What of it?”

  The officer sighed. “I can’t give you a ticket tonight.”

  Startled, Lucas scowled suspiciously. “Why not?”

  “I’m marrying your sister in a couple of weeks.”

  Lucas’s hands went slack on the steering wheel. “Well, hell.”

  The officer tossed the driver’s license back through the window.

  “That’s about the size of it,” he muttered. And he didn’t sound any happier about the situation than Lucas was.

  LUCAS DREW a deep breath as he stared at the house in which he’d spent the first twenty years of his life. Though multicolored Christmas lights glowed from the eaves, and porch lights burned on either side of the front door, the night’s darkness wrapped around the place like a heavy blanket that might have seemed cozy to some, but had ultimately felt smothering to Lucas.

  “It looks the same as I remember it.”

  Wade Davenport nodded. “It needs some maintenance. I’ll be taking care of that when I move in.”

  “You and Emily are going to live here when you’re married?”

  “Yes.”

  His gaze still focused darkly on that white-frame, black-shuttered house with its wraparound porch and winter-browned lawn, Lucas muttered, “Are you sure that’s such a good idea? No marriage has ever lasted long in this house.”

  “We intend to change that.”

  Lucas had a sudden urge to climb back in his car and speed away, as fast as he’d driven when he’d made his escape fifteen years earlier. He’d made a mistake coming back here. Emily was obviously safe and well, busy with her own plans. She was marrying a cop, going on with her life. She probably hadn’t given her long-lost half brother more than a passing thought in years.

  He’d been a fool to let a strange compulsion draw him back here—a vague, unsettling feeling that Emily was in trouble, that she needed him. It was obvious that he’d been wrong.

  He took a step back toward his car. “It’s too late for an unannounced visit. Tell Emily I’ll give her a call sometime, okay?”

  “If I let you leave now, she’d never forgive me.” Wade’s voice was even, but there was a faint hint of steel beneath the easy drawl. “I think it’d be better if we just go on in.”

  Lucas narrowed his eyes. Davenport had insisted on following Lucas to the old homestead after he’d stopped him on Maple Street. “Why are you so determined for me to see her tonight?”

  “Because I want to be there when you talk to her.” Wade crossed his arms over his solid chest and leveled a look at Lucas, his brown eyes glittering in the gleam of security lighting, his face shadowed.

  Lucas lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t trust me?”

  Wade shrugged.

  Running a hand through his hair, Lucas released a deep breath. “I suppose you’ve heard about me.”

  “A few things.”

  “None of them particularly flattering, I’m sure.”

  “Let’s just say no one’s suggested naming a street after you.”

  A dry chuckle escaped him. “Can’t see that ever happening around here.”

  Davenport motioned toward the house. “After you.”

  Glaring, Lucas took a reluctant step forward. “Never did like cops,” he muttered.

  “From what I’ve heard, the feeling’s been mutual,” Wade replied dryly.

  Ringing Emily’s doorbell was one of the hardest things Lucas had done in fifteen years. Well aware of the cop hovering behind him, Lucas wished himself any place but here, still cursing himself for giving in to the impulse to return home.

  Emily had been eleven years old the last time he’d seen her. He’d been twenty. She probably wouldn’t recognize the thirty-five-year-old man on her doorstep. And she had no reason to welcome him back into her life.

  He’d left without even telling her goodbye.

  The door opened. The young woman who stood framed in the doorway had curly, golden-blond hair, big blue eyes and fair skin lightly dusted across the nose with faint, gold freckles.

  Though time had wrought its changes in her, Lucas would have known her anywhere.

  She’d become a beautiful young woman. And it made him ache to look at her and think of all the years of her life he’d missed.

  It had been his choice to leave. Given the same circumstances, he knew he would do the same thing again. But that didn’t mean he had no regrets.

  The smile of welcome she’d worn for her fiancé faded when she saw Lucas. Her forehead creased with a puzzled frown. “Wade? Is this a friend of yours?”

  Lucas stepped more fully into the light. “Hello, Emily.”

  She studied him another moment, then stiffened. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Lucas?”

  He nodded, rather surprised that she’d identified him so quickly. She’d been just a little girl....

  Prepared for anger, antagonism, or worse, indifference, Lucas was caught totally off guard when she threw herself against him, her arms in a stranglehold around his neck. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered into his ear.

  His arms closed automatically around her. His mind went temporarily blank. Of all the scenarios he’d imagined when Emily first saw him, this hadn’t been one of them.

  He felt his throat tighten. It had been a long time since he’d been hugged so warmly. Since he’d been hugged at all, for that matter. And, damn...it felt pretty good.

  “I take it you’re glad to see him?”

  Wade’s dry question made Emily finally draw back. She released Lucas and turned to give her fiancé an equally fervent hug. “You found my brother for me. Oh, Wade, thank you. What a wonderful Christmas present.”

  Wade gave Lucas a rueful look over her head. “As much as I’d like to claim credit for making you this happy, I’m afraid I can’t. I had nothing to do with your brother showing up.”

  Emily pulled back to look questioningly from Wade to Lucas and back again. “Oh. I just assumed—”

  Wade draped an arm over her shoulders. “Let’s go inside and talk about it. It’s too cold for you to be out here without a jacket.”

  “Yes, of course. Come in, both of you.”

  She reached to take Lucas’s hand, pulling him inside as if she was afraid he’d take off if she let go. “Oh, Lucas, it’s so good to have you home.”

  Home. The word made him frown again as he stepped over the threshold. This hadn’t been his home for a very long time.

  Funny how little had changed, though, he thought as he looked around the living room. The couch and chairs were new since he was here last, but the wooden tables and the old sideboard covered with photographs had been here as long as he could remember. A fresh-cut fir, almost sagging beneath the weight of the many ornaments hanging from its branches, stood in the big window, the same place they’d always put their Christmas trees.

  “So you and Lucas just happened to arrive at the same time?” Emily asked Wade.

  Wade chuckled. “Actually, he and I met on Maple Street. He thought he could get away with driving the wrong way on a one-way street.”

  Emily laughed. “Maple was made one-way five or six years ago, Lucas.”

  “Yes, I know that now.” He turned to face his sister, studying the changes in her. “You look... great,” he said lamely, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans in an awkward gesture that mirrored his discomfort.

  She beame
d at him, her face still flushed with excitement. “Thank you. You look exactly the same as I remember you.”

  Time had obviously played tricks with Emily’s memory. Lucas was well aware that he bore little resemblance to the skinny twenty-year-old he’d once been.

  Emily had just started to speak again when they were suddenly interrupted by a child’s voice. “Daddy! Miss Em—er—Mom and me had hot fudge sundaes for dessert. With whipped cream and cherries on top!”

  A snub-nosed boy with flame-red hair wrapped his arms around Wade’s waist. “And we watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman . Who’s that?”

  Since the question was asked without a pause for breath, it took the adults a beat to catch up.

  Emily spoke first. “This is my brother, Lucas McBride. Lucas, this is Clay Davenport.”

  Looked as though Lucas’s little sister was about to become a stepmom. Lucas was finding it hard to adjust to so many changes at once. “Nice to meet you, Clay.”

  The boy studied him curiously. “You’re her brother?”

  “Yes.” Lucas saw no reason to explain that he and Emily shared the same father, but different mothers, making them half siblings.

  “She told me she had a brother, but she hasn’t seen you in a long time. Where’ve you been?” the boy asked with the simple directness of childhood.

  Lucas felt the corners of his mouth twitch with a slight smile. “Here and there.”

  “Does this mean you’re my uncle?”

  Lucas was struck by the question. He’d never been anyone’s uncle before. “I suppose I will be, after my sister and your dad are married.”

  “Cool. I’m getting a new bike for Christmas.”

  That easily, the boy had accepted Lucas’s presence.