Gray released his breath. “Listen, I know it looks bad, but it’s not what it seems. If it were, do you think I’d have spent the last seven days looking for Clara or flying to Montana, then to New Mexico to speak with her?”
The look in her eyes gentled and turned contemplative. She opened the screen door and allowed him to enter the house.
“Clara’s in the back yard, but I swear to God, if you hurt her any more than you have already, I’ll smack you upside the head with my frying pan.”
Gray stepped onto the patio. Clara sat in a swing chair reading to a little girl of about three. His chest tightened at the image of Clara’s arm wrapped around the child, heads bent over the book.
Stella called to her daughter. “Kim, the cookies are done, come help me put them up.”
Gray was vaguely aware of the child scooting off the swing and going into the house. He saw only Clara.
Clara put the book down and stood. The line of her mouth thinned with anger and betrayal. “What are you doing here? Surely you don’t expect me to provide the case of beer, too.”
A cold knot formed in his stomach. He’d known it wouldn’t be easy, but he had hoped all was not lost. He knew she’d felt something for him. If only she would let him explain, give him a second chance.
“Would you believe me if I told you there was never any bet?”
She lifted her chin. “I heard the message, Gray.”
“Yes, I know.” He glanced away from her and noticed the toys strewn across the yard, the swing set and kiddie pool.
Not until he’d met Clara had he realized how much he wanted a wife, a family and a home. Not until she’d left had he realized how much he wanted those things with her.
“It was a bet we made in college, when we were young and stupid.” He looked at her. “But I swear I never made it with Benny concerning you. He made a joke about it, something about old times, when he called to tell me he was sending someone to do an article on my resort. But I ignored him and made no response. I guess he took that as acquiescence.”
“He told you I was an Ice Princess.” She moved across the patio to the far side, her back to him.
He turned to watch her. She stood proud, but he could feel her pain. He wanted to envelop her in his arms.
“Yes, he did, but the minute I set eyes on you, I knew he was wrong. Benny’s still an adolescent. He only sees women in tunnel vision and if they don’t fit in that tunnel, they aren’t worth bothering with.”
She faced him. “And how do you see women?”
“Before you, I was too busy trying to survive to see women as anything other than fulfilling a need for companionship.”
She nodded. He knew she understood the struggle his life had been. They had discussed their lives growing up.
“And how do you see women now?” she asked, leaning a hip against the railing and crossing her arms under her breasts.
“I still see most of them as nothing more than momentary companions. All except you.” He dared to take a step toward her. “I see you as a permanent fixture in my life. It’s been a living hell without you this past week, Clara. I felt I’d go out of my mind at the thought of never seeing you again.”
He stopped his advance when his chest brushed her arms.
“I didn’t sleep with you because of some stupid bet Benny thought we’d made, Clara. I made love to you because I love you, and whether it was the magic of that Blue Moon or the magic of you, I don’t know and I don’t care. Tell me you don’t love me and I’ll leave you alone forever.”
A spark of an indefinable emotion lit her eyes. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
His heart sank to his stomach. He’d lost her.
“I can’t tell you I don’t love you, Gray, because I do. I love you so much it hurts.”
Several seconds passed before he understood her words, understood what they meant. He pulled her into an embrace. Her arms went around his neck and their lips touched in a gentle caress.
“Clara, say it again.”
He felt her smile against his lips. “I love you, Grayson Everett.”
“I love you, too, Clara Barnes.”
He kissed her with the passion and magic promised by the Blue Moon. In his heart, he knew those wishes had brought them together, but their own passion, magic and love would last forever.
* * * *
Visit M. J.‘s website at
www.mjsager.com
Suddenly You
by Jaquelin Lorin
Present Day
Delta Queen
“Jolie, don’t worry about it. Your father’s sick, what else could you do?”
Celine Chauvin pressed her cell phone tighter to her ear to hear Jolie’s regrets for standing her up on their vacation. A sultry summer breeze wafted off the Mississippi River over the quarterdeck of the Delta Queen and tossed a long dark strand of Celine’s hair over her bare shoulder. She caught the strand and twisted the tight curls around her finger. “I’ll be fine, really.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’ll be in your element floating on the Mississippi in that relic. I still wish you’d traded your tickets in for a trip to a resort with sunny white sand and lots of blue ocean.”
“And hunks?”
Jolie laughed. “Well I didn’t say that, did I?”
“You didn’t have to.”
“You have to admit,” she said, “single hotties aren’t likely taking their summer vacations on riverboat cruises that feature the Big Band Era. I’m not sure how I let you talk me into going with you in the first place—except I was curious of the fate that would have you, of all people, winning a riverboat excursion.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The breeze ruffled the hem of Celine’s red cocktail dress and tugged at her hair again.
“It means you need to get out of those history books and breathe air from the real world once in a while, Celine. Clear out the paint fumes, give yourself a chance to meet someone. I mean, it’s not like Mr. G. is going to come waltzing into the Grand Ballroom and sweep you off your feet.”
“I’m not daft to think he would, Jolie. Besides, you’re the one who calls him Mr. Gorgeous, not me.” Jolie was always teasing her, as though Celine’s tenacious effort to find out who the man was in the portrait she’d been painstakingly restoring for months was something more than academic fascination. “You know as well as I do, the painting is over a hundred years old.” The cell phone signal was getting weak.
“Have fun, Celine,” Jolie answered, sounding resigned to ending the discussion. “And, if you meet Mr. G., tell him I said hello.”
Celine sighed and tucked the cell phone back into her evening bag. She leaned against the guardrail post across the deck from her room. Soft strains of the old song, Blue Moon, played, drifting out to her from the Delta Queen’s Grand Ballroom. She wondered if they played it because there really was a Blue Moon tonight or because the soulful melody belonged to the Big Band Era.
“You saw me standing alone, without a love of my own,” the singer crooned.
The moon Celine stared at was full, its light spilling onto the river in a shimmer. It was as white and bright as ever. Blue Moon was an astrological term. Only on the rarest occasions did a moon ever turn truly blue.
The song intertwined with the hypnotic thrum of the engines and the sound of the waterfall, perpetuated by the Queen’s paddlewheel. It did evoke a certain sense of history. After all, the riverboat had been making its excursions along the river since the 1920s, its design reminiscent of times even farther back than that. To times as far back as Mr. Gorgeous himself.
No matter Jolie’s teasing, Celine didn’t expect Mr. Gorgeous to come sweeping into the ballroom nor anywhere else. His portrait was one of the Toussant collection donated to the Louisiana Museum of Art. Celine and Jolie were part of the team assigned the task of restoring them. Celine had been given the portrait of the man whose identity was still unknown even
after months of pouring through Louisiana archives.
Likely in his mid thirties, his manner of dress dated him to the 1870s. Jolie had dubbed him Mr. Gorgeous, Mr. G for short, and soon the entire team simply referred to him as Mr. G.
Well he certainly was gorgeous with his dark, strong features, broad shoulders and nearly black hair. And when she looked into his green eyes while she worked on the painting, Celine felt the strangest attraction stirring in her. Jolie had called her on it tonight and Celine had lied in denying it.
She sighed again and reached to restively finger her mother’s antique opal pendant that she always wore over her heart. Yes, Celine Chauvin was just the kind of girl that could fall in love with a mystery man in a hundred and thirty year old painting if she wasn’t careful. After all, it was safe wasn’t it? You couldn’t lose what you were never going to have in the first place.
All she’d lost in her life rushed to mind: her father when she was too young to remember, then her mother when she was only eleven. Her grief had made her a shy child who didn’t make close friends. Ma mam Mignon, who finished raising her, passed away only a month before last summer’s storm took the dear woman’s house. And Celine refused to think of Charles, who had broken their engagement.
Yes, it had felt safe to throw her heart into her work, but this phase of it would soon be over. The Toussant project was nearly complete. Many of the team would be moving on, Jolie one of them. Their friendship might have only just begun to have depth, but it was enough for Celine to feel the impending loss.
Her thoughts quickly shifted back to the project and to the portrait of her mystery man. Diversion was a tactic of her mind. Better to keep the mind too busy to agree with her heart. So, she let herself mull around the question of who he was again, set her mind to page through the archives of her memory. She would miss him when the project ended. Those green eyes had burned a place into her soul she’d not likely forget.
What would it be like to look into them in reality? The thought stirred something deep within. She couldn’t stop thinking of him—or the drawing power of his image. How would it be to know his smile? To know him? Would she lose her heart in a moment to this gorgeous man before she knew the first thing about him?
“I wish I knew,” she whispered to the Blue Moon.
The breeze shifted and the opal pendant grew warm in her fingers. “I wish I could discover who he is. Learn why he has this effect on me.”
The moon strangely seemed to pulsate with blue hues. The air around Celine shimmered with a chill then warmed again, the opal searing with a heat that made her drop it. She felt dizzy and her vision blurred. The quarterdeck shifted, looking like a double exposed photograph—two different images merging, then separating. The deck shuddered, the engines rumbled like twin heartbeats. Then the images merged again, returning to one.
Suddenly, nothing Celine was looking at was the same. She was still on a riverboat, but she’d swear on Ma mam Mignon’s rosary she was no longer on the Delta Queen.
The quarterdeck was wider, the scrollwork on the rails different. A couple, standing a few yards away, hadn’t been there before. Their clothing appeared authentic to the nineteenth century. Celine had studied the period long enough to know.
Her stomach turned an uneasy flip.
The woman glanced around the man’s shoulder, her eyes widening when she spied Celine. She looked disapproving and faint at the same time. The man followed her gaze and Celine instantly felt too scantily dressed. She wore a low cut, form fitting cocktail dress that gently flowed out from her hips to the scarf cut hem. Daringly red, it would be scandalous for the nineteenth century. The man scowled at Celine before scuttling his companion across the deck and into one of the staterooms.
I’m dreaming, she thought. I must be. Suddenly, nothing made sense.
“See here. Where’d you come from?” a man’s voice sounded behind her.
Celine turned and found a fellow that looked as if he’d stepped right out of her reference books. Or staggered out of them more like it. He smelled of stale liquor.
“You’re a bit daring to be out on deck in your petticoat,” he leered. “Not that I don’t like it.”
“I … I was just going back to my room,” she stammered, then nearly ran to the door, which was too different to be right. It was locked. She pressed her hands against it, trying to draw in air, trying to calm herself. Until she felt the man’s presence at her back and his fingers riffle her hair.
Dream or no, Celine bolted down the quarterdeck. When she realized he followed, she frantically tried to open doors and called to the occupants for help. Her assailant reached out and nearly caught her by the hair. With a shriek she bolted again, jerking out of his reach only to slam into the hard muscled chest of another man. The man’s arm went around her, locking her against him. He was shirtless. Her breast and her sleeveless arm were crushed against his bare skin. She couldn’t see his face for the night shadows, only that he at least wore his trousers. She tried to pull away, but he held her fast.
The stranger’s deep voice vibrated from his chest against her sending shivers of fear trembling through her. She was caught in his powerful grasp and try as she might, he wasn’t letting go. “Mr. Amos,” he said, “is there a problem?”
The tremor of fear in Mr. Amos’s voice did not bode well for Celine. “Uh, no sir. The … um … lady just misunderstood my intent.”
“And so, I must have misunderstood as well. But we shall not discuss in her hearing the impression you have left on me. You will, however, be discussing this with Captain White come morning. Meanwhile, I think you should go sleep it off.”
Mr. Amos gulped in agreement as Celine’s newest concern swept her into his room and latched the door behind them.
Celine ripped out of his grasp, but he blocked the door. She was practically hyperventilating from the threatening advantage this nearly naked hunk had over her, but when she raised her eyes to take in his face, the world tilted and her legs gave way beneath her.
Mr. Gorgeous caught her before she hit the floor.
He saw her to a chair, then knelt solicitously before her. Soft lamplight reflected off his green eyes with almost the same light the artist had managed to capture in the portrait. Like green brands of fire they sent molten tremors through every feminine sensibility Celine possessed.
“You should calm yourself,” he said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Who are you?” She asked, trying not to think of how many times she’d murmured that question while she sorted through Louisiana’s archives.
“Rhys Butler.”
Something hysterical sounded in the laugh she gave. “Of course. I’ve somehow conjured you up. Are you sure you don’t mean Rhett Butler?”
He looked at her rather skeptically. “No, the name is Rhys. Who is Rhett Butler?”
Celine laughed hysterically again. His response was to pour a drink and shove it into her hands even as she drawled in her best southern accent, “Why, Rhett Butler is just a figment of some woman’s imagination as I expect you are mine.”
“Drink,” he commanded and when she did he said, “Now suppose you tell me what you’re doing out on deck dressed in such a manner?”
The amber liquid matched the fire Mr. G. Rhys Butler stirred in her. Dream or not, his close proximity was more heady than the drink. And what if it wasn’t a dream? What if somehow she’d been propelled backward in time? Into his world? How would she answer? Well, in my world this scant little cocktail dress is not at all indecent? Sexy, but not indecent?
Not even in a dream would she say that to him.
Besides, no matter how out of place her surroundings, Rhys Butler couldn’t feel more real. And he was still practically undressed. She was still locked in the room with him. Maybe she was ill or somehow drugged. He might have slipped something in her drink tonight to take advantage. She couldn’t let him know she was entirely defenseless.
So, she lied. “My boyfriend locked me out
of our room.”
“Boyfriend?” He frowned in what looked like abject disapproval then slid his fingers under the opal dangling from her neck.
He seemed to recognize it. His fingers rested against her bare skin, their heat making her feel weak in the knees again, the touch of them, his very presence exuding male energy, irresistible, magnetic. He dizzied her senses. He seemed very, very real. It was a good thing she was already sitting down.
“And did your ‘boyfriend’ give you this?”
“No,” she answered, incensed by his accusing tone. “It was my mother’s. She was an antique dealer. Ma mam Mignon put it in my hands the day she died.”
“Ferrell sent you here to spy on me, didn’t he?”
With each passing moment, Celine’s clarity of mind returned, yet all the details screamed that she was somehow in the 1870s. Especially the likeness of Rhys Butler to the man in the Toussant portrait.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said.
“Yes, you do. But you can tell Thomas Ferrell your little ruse isn’t going to work.” Rhys caught her by the arm, lifted her from the chair and propelled her toward the door. “And in case you didn’t know it, that little bauble you’re wearing belongs to Mrs. Ferrell. The scoundrel she married likely stole it from her. It was foolish of him to let you wear it here.”
His free hand was on the doorknob and Celine saw the certainty of being tossed back onto the unfamiliar quarterdeck. She managed to twist herself between him and the door.
“Wait!” she begged with such desperation it arrested his actions. He was just inches from her in all his threatening male bareness. “Please, whatever you think, it’s not true. I swear it on my grandmother’s rosary! She gave me the necklace the day my mother died. I don’t know this Mr. Ferrell you speak of. I don’t have anywhere to go if you toss me out.”
He exhaled a long, indecisive breath.
“Please, Rhys.”
Moved by the woman’s desperate plea, Rhys reached forward a finger and with the smallest twist let her curls wrap around it. He drew it down and watched them pull silkily away. He had no reason to believe her—except for the inexplicable look in her eyes. “What’s your name?”
Blue Moon Magic Page 14
