Grady paled again. “Was a virgin? Oh, God,” he whispered. “What have you done?” He shook his head. “Sarah doesn’t have a calculating bone in her body. She fell in love with Delaney and Tucker so much that she was willing to marry a dead man to keep them safe.”
Alex used his fingers to knead his pounding temple. Dammit to hell. What had he done? And why in hell hadn’t the woman told him she didn’t drive?
Because she’d been scared to death, that’s why. She had just been accused of seducing him, then forcibly packed up and kicked out. Could it have happened exactly the way she had said it did? Had he been so stupid as to crawl into her bed, and they had started making love in their sleep?
Alex lowered his hands when he felt his father’s arms settle around him. “I can’t tell you what it means to have you home,” Grady whispered as Alex wrapped his own arms around his dad. “I thought I’d lost you. We all did, and a good part of us died with you.” Grady leaned back and looked at Alex with misting eyes. “You’re never leaving again.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Grady patted Alex’s back. “And now you’ll go find Sarah and fix this? You’ll bring her home where she belongs?”
Alex let out a resigned sigh. “I’ll fix it.”
Grady’s face finally relaxed into a smile. “I realize it must have been quite a shock, but marrying you to Sarah was the only thing I could think of to make sure we didn’t have to fight for Delaney and Tucker.”
Alex returned his smile. “Actually, it was a rather ingenious plan. I doubt you had much trouble talking Rogers into helping you?”
Grady walked over to the porch door. “Rory had one or two run-ins with Charlotte’s parents before they moved away. He was more than happy to help.”
Alex walked to the door Grady had opened and faced his father. “Sarah said she doesn’t want to be married any more than I do,” Alex told him. “So even though I’ll bring her back here, you can’t keep her as a daughter-in-law.”
Grady slapped Alex’s shoulder, leaving his hand there. “Now that you’re home, that’s between you and Sarah.”
Alex gave him a worried look. “Maybe you should be the one to go get her.”
Grady held up his hands, palms forward. “You kicked her out, you need to be the one to apologize and bring her home.”
“I was pretty hard on her, Dad. I said a few things I shouldn’t have.” He suddenly frowned. “How did you get in? I distinctly remember…ah, locking the door,” he finished lamely.
Grady pointed at the key in the lock. “We all carry keys now, after I suggested Sarah keep the doors locked when we’re not here. John Tate said there’s been some strangers hanging around Oak Grove and that the border patrol asked him to keep an eye on them.”
“The border patrol?”
Grady shrugged. “Beats me what it’s about. John said the men have been showing up and leaving several times over the last few months. They’re pretending to be hunters, but no one’s ever seen them come back to town with game they’ve shot.”
Alex spun on his heel and headed toward the great room.
“Where are you going? You have to go after Sarah.”
“She’s been gone three hours; another two minutes won’t hurt. I need to change into dry clothes,” Alex called over his shoulder as he pushed open the swinging door and jogged toward the stairs. Dammit, Sarah had been out there alone in the dark for more than three hours, and there were strange men hanging around who were of interest to the border patrol. But what worried Alex the most was that the Knight land sat directly between Oak Grove and the Canadian border.
He ran up the stairs and into the bathroom, chased four aspirins down his throat with a long drink of water, then strode to his bedroom, stripped out of his wet clothes, and threw them onto the bed—only to have a cloud of lavender buds shoot into the air and onto the floor. “Dammit,” he growled, trying to supplant his guilt with anger as he pulled on dry pants. “Nobody lets their mattresses breathe. This is not the Ritz!”
Alex laced his boots and threw on his shirt, buttoning it up as he ran back down the stairs and into the kitchen. “How far do you suppose a woman can get on foot in three hours?” he asked as he slipped on his jacket.
“In the dark, alone, and constantly looking over her shoulder because every little noise she hears scares her to death?” Grady returned. “Four, maybe five miles.”
“Then you should have passed her on your way in.”
“Not if she heard me coming and hid in the woods.” Grady sighed, his face softening. “Sarah’s a bit of a mouse, Alex. She’s been working here for nearly three months, and she isn’t anything like the other housekeepers we’ve had. It’s as if Sarah’s trying to be invisible while making everything perfect for us.” He looked back at Alex. “She’s always watching those crazy how-to shows on satellite television and practicing everything they preach to the point that it’s beginning to drive Ethan and Paul crazy. She’s got all our clothes, even our socks and underwear, sorted by color and season, she’s sewn new curtains for all the windows, and every night we sit down to a four-course meal.”
“So you’re saying her being a perfect housekeeper is driving everyone nuts?”
Grady nodded. “Well, yeah. Everyone is afraid to mention any little thing to her, for fear they’ll come home to find it fixed or improved. Hell, she even built a cupboard out by the hot tub for towels. We wrap the towels around ourselves to walk back to the house, and the next day they’re washed and folded and back in the cupboard when we go to use the tub again.”
“And this is bad…how?”
“Because she’s trying too damn hard,” Grady said with a scowl. “It’s as if Sarah’s only goal in life is to please everyone. She actually told me that making us happy makes her happy.” He stepped out onto the porch. “We’ve all tried to get her to stop fussing over the details and have a bit of fun, but she just laughs and says she is having fun.”
Alex stepped off the porch and turned to look at his father. “So do you want her to stay on as our housekeeper or not?”
“Sarah is the best thing that’s happened to this family since your mama died,” Grady said. “She just needs loosening up.” He suddenly smiled. “And if you’re even half the man I know you are, you’re exactly the person to do the loosening.”
Alex lifted a brow. “And if I don’t want to be that person?”
“You spend one month around Sarah and then ask me that.” He waved Alex away. “Just go find her and bring her back. I’ll call Ethan at Mary’s, and Delaney and Tucker will be here when you get back with Sarah. And Alex?”
“Yes?”
“You compose a damn good apology while you’re looking for her, and deliver it on your knees if you have to. Drunk or not, you don’t sleep with a woman, accuse her of treating you badly, and then kick her out into the night. You’d better hope she can forgive you.”
Alex hung his head. “I know. I’ll bring her back. You just have my babies here when I do.”
He ran to the first pickup in line, jumped in, started it up, and headed toward town. He would definitely get down on his knees, if that’s what it took to make Sarah believe he truly was sorry—about everything.
Finding Sarah was proving about as easy as finding a needle in a haystack, Alex discovered after thirty minutes and only four miles of driving. The ground was frozen solid, and he had a hard time seeing the infrequent clues that told him she had gotten even that far. Three times he had found a turned rock, crushed grass, or a broken bush where Sarah had gone into the woods, only to reemerge maybe thirty feet down the road. He’d discovered the first such sign about a mile from the house, not far from where their lane merged onto the main hauling artery. Alex had stopped and searched the woods for five minutes before he’d found where she had stepped back onto the road.
She’d done the same thing two more times. Grady’s passing had probably been one of those times, but who had been the second and third? Hunters he
ading out to get to their favorite spot before daybreak? Or the strangers in town?
At mile five, Alex saw where Sarah had gone into the woods yet again, only this time he didn’t see any sign that she had come back out. He continued driving around a curve before pulling the truck to the side of the road. He shut off the engine, got out, and quietly closed the door, then headed into the woods while keeping his eyes on the road.
In less then two minutes, Alex saw Sarah step out from behind a large tree, look up and down the road, and start walking toward Oak Grove again. He stood in the early-morning shadows, frozen in place, utterly ashamed of himself.
She was shivering, her large brown eyes sunken in her pale white face, her collar pulled up against her tangled hair, as she slowly made her way toward Oak Grove. She was wearing her backpack, but she wasn’t carrying her suitcase. Remembering how heavy it had felt when he’d carried it out of her bedroom, he guessed she’d stashed it in the woods during one of her detours.
Alex closed his eyes and hung his head. Damn, he was a bastard. The woman had walked five miles down a wilderness road in the freezing cold, most of it in the dead of night, just because he had been afraid of…of what? Her? Sarah didn’t even come up to his chin, and he outweighed her by at least sixty pounds.
Hell, Grady and John were right: he had judged Sarah simply based on his experiences with Charlotte. Without even knowing her, he had decided Sarah had seen their thousands of acres of timberland and thought her beauty and charm would be enough to get her a share of the Knight empire.
She didn’t look like much of a gold digger as she walked past him. She looked miserably cold and scared to death, if not completely defeated. Yeah, he was a bastard, all right. Alex waited until Sarah had disappeared around the corner before he stepped onto the road and silently followed her. When he rounded the corner, he found her stopped, staring at his truck. She turned and saw him, and her face paled even more the moment she realized who he was.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” he said from about fifty feet away. He lifted his hands from his sides in a helpless gesture. “I am truly sorry.”
If she hadn’t looked so unconvincingly brave and so damn cold that she couldn’t stop shivering, Alex would have smiled when she lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and gave him a glare that could have toasted them both. Then she simply turned away and continued walking down the road.
“You could have told me you don’t drive,” Alex said as he started after her, his longer strides slowly closing the distance between them. “I wouldn’t have thrown you out if I’d known you couldn’t drive yourself to Greenville.”
She kept silent and kept walking.
“Grady’s home, and he wants you to come back.”
Still no reaction.
“I want you to come back. And so do Delaney and Tucker.”
“Delaney and Tucker will be fine without me, now that you’re home,” she said without bothering to look over her shoulder.
Alex was within twenty feet of her now, and he noticed she’d picked up her pace a bit. “Grady’s waiting for you, and he’s probably going to put the turkey in the oven, and we’re all going to die of food poisoning tonight.”
She still kept walking and said nothing.
A floatplane suddenly buzzed overhead at treetop level, catching them both by surprise. Sarah stopped, tilted her head to watch it fly over, then turned to glare at Alex. “You just keep telling one lie after another, don’t you? They haven’t even made it home yet.”
“That’s Ethan, with Delaney and Tucker,” Alex explained. “Grady had them land in Oak Grove, and he borrowed the store owner’s truck and came home alone. Didn’t you see him drive by one of the times you hid in the woods?”
“Why would Grady have done that?”
“Because he knows me so well.”
“Because he knows you’re a shouting, lying jerk, you mean?”
Alex clasped his hands behind his back. “Yes, because he knows I get a bit loud when I’m angry.” He shook his head. “It’s all bluster, Sarah. I would never hurt a woman. Not intentionally,” he quickly clarified, dropping his hands to his sides. “I really am sorry for what happened. I never should have come to your bedroom, much less crawled into your bed. And being drunk is no excuse; I take full responsibility for what happened. I’m also sorry for how I reacted after. I shouldn’t have kicked you out in the middle of the night like that.”
She seemed to consider his apology, then obviously decided she didn’t believe him, because she turned away and started walking again. Alex took several long strides and caught up with her, grabbed the top of her backpack, and pulled her to a halt. She stood quietly, staring at the road in front of her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the back of her head. “I promise you, Sarah, I am not that person from last night or this morning. I’m really much better than that. Please come home.”
“Fine,” she said, still looking ahead. “I accept your apology, but I’m not going back. I’m going to Mary’s, and then I’m going home.”
“Home?”
“To Crag Island.”
Alex continued to talk to the back of her head, finding it easier for him and knowing it had to be easier for her. “Back to your isolated life on your isolated island?”
She pulled in a deep breath and let it out on a shuddering sigh. “I’m going home to regroup, and then I’m going to move…someplace,” she finished in a barely audible whisper. She stiffened. “Let me go.”
“Please,” he softly entreated. “Wait until spring. Give me until March—give us all until then. Regroup here, and if you still want to leave come March, then we’ll get a divorce, and I’ll take you back to Crag Island myself.”
She let out another shuddering sigh. “It will only make it harder on Delaney and Tucker if I stay all winter. It’s best if I leave while they have the excitement of your being back.”
He was getting absolutely nowhere, his patience was waning, and this was obviously a job for Grady. Alex lifted her backpack off, set it on the ground, then took off his jacket and settled it over her shoulders.
She immediately pulled the jacket around herself with a whispered “Thank you.”
“I think it’s only fair that you turn in your resignation to the man who hired you,” Alex said, turning her toward his truck. “If you want to quit, you tell Grady and Delaney and Tucker that you’re leaving. Then you can run back to your island.”
He guided Sarah around to the passenger side of his truck, opened the door, and lifted her in before she could do more than squeak in surprise. “I am dying to see my kids,” he said, handing her the buckle of her seat belt. He looked directly into her eyes. “Let me get home and see them, and this evening we’ll all sit down and have a talk. And if it’s decided that you’re leaving, one of us will take you back to Crag Island. Deal?”
Alex knew it was his mention of seeing Delaney and Tucker that got to her. She took the buckle from him and snapped it shut, and Alex quickly closed the door, ran back to get her pack, and jumped into the truck before she could change her mind. He made a three-point turn in the road and quickly brought the truck up to speed. “Where’s your suitcase?” he asked.
“In the woods, not far from ho—from your house. I left it at the base of a large tree near the turnoff.”
Alex slowed the truck a bit. “Are you okay?” he asked softly, watching the road. “I mean physically, did I…are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
She looked down at her lap, and Alex reached over and turned the heater fan on high. “Grady said you were married for, ah, eight years, I think. If that’s true, how come you were still a virgin?”
“Because I was married to a man who didn’t particularly like women,” she told her lap, her face going bright pink. She looked at Alex. “And if your next question is why did I marry Roland Banks, the answer is it’s none of your business.” She lifted her chin. “Anything else you want to know?”
Alex opened his mouth but just as quickly snapped it shut. He’d gotten her into the truck without any kicking and screaming, and he didn’t need to give her a reason to start walking to Oak Grove again the moment they got home. So he simply stepped down a little harder on the gas.
Grady had Sarah all wrong. She wasn’t a meek little mouse; she was quite possibly the most well-disguised tigress Alex had ever met. Under her eager-to-please exterior, he had seen several hints of a steel backbone.
Dammit, his father must have seen it, too. In the month he’d stayed at her inn, Grady had seen the real woman inside that beautiful body, and that’s why he’d brought Sarah home.
His father was always scheming. Always—which was why Alex broke into a cold sweat as he sped home. For all of Grady’s crazy ideas, the old man was almost never wrong when the final results came in. Hadn’t the Knight landholdings grown from two hundred thousand acres to five hundred thousand on Grady’s watch? Even when they hadn’t had two nickels to rub together, Grady had managed to keep buying land. Marrying their housekeeper to his dead son to protect Delaney and Tucker had been another one of his father’s brilliant schemes.
And Grady’s bringing Sarah here initially?
That’s what really worried Alex.
Chapter Six
A ll Sarah wanted to do was stand under a hot shower for three hours, crawl into her bed, and stay there for the next three months. But she had six very ecstatic people to feed, six mattresses covered with lavender buds to vacuum and make up, and probably a hundred dirty dishes to wash and put away after dinner.
She stood in the middle of her bedroom in a dazed stupor, staring at her wet bed as she listened to the shouts and squeals coming from down at the dock. The wet bed she understood; she’d had to dry out Paul’s mattress last month when Grady had abruptly awakened his youngest son the morning after Paul had fired one of their crew without discussing it with anyone.
The Seduction of His Wife Page 6
