by BJ James
Then Adams saw her. Eden, more lovely than he remembered, wearing a gown that was the stuff of dreams. A sleek, regal column, the beguiling hue of river mist at sunset. Lavender, yet darker, and more luminous than violet. Like a richly glowing sheath of gossamer, the clinging fabric shaped her breasts, nipped in at her waist, then flowed discreetly over slim hips to fall to her ankles. Straps so thin they might have been illusion held a discreetly provocative deécolletage.
She wore her hair gathered in a mass of loose curls at her crown, with tendrils beginning to tumble from the clasp of pearls, amethyst and gold. A sophisticated style, yet inviting his touch, as the golden-brown strands skimmed over her bare shoulders, teasing all the scented places Adams longed to kiss.
But even as drifting curls made their alluring declaration, there was more. An exquisitely matched string of pearls banded by matching beads of amethyst and gold flowed from her neck to her waist in muted radiance. And as pearls and gold and stone caressed her breasts with each subtle sway of her body, no man who still lived could forget that beneath the elegance and the polish, Eden Claibourne was all woman.
Obviously no man had, and Adams felt the insidious twist of jealousy as he watched one gallant after another kiss her cheek or her hand. An older, distinguished gentleman sent jealousy spiraling into anger by kissing her first, then drawing her into a long embrace. It did nothing to soothe his temper that the gentleman greeted a number of ladies in the same fashion.
Threading his way through what had quickly become a crowd, he acknowledged salutations with the dismissive charm that had served him well in many tense boardroom exchanges. Deftly resisting being drawn into conversations, he arrived at last to stand before Eden.
“Adams!” Her face was alight with pleasure. “You came. I thought you wouldn’t. I was afraid you would think you shouldn’t.”
“I tried not to come. I knew I shouldn’t.” He smiled ruefully, unable to take his gaze from her.
“I’m glad.” Eden reached out to take his hands. Stifling a sharply indrawn breath, she turned them in hers, studying his palms and the calluses that were spawning calluses, the bruises, the torn nails and the angry scratch along one thumb. When she released him at last and lifted her eyes to meet his, there was a mist of tears gathering on her lashes. “Your poor hands. Jefferson said you were stringing fences on the back pastures, hoping cattle might provide a steady revenue.”
“We have been. We are,” Adams said as he dared brush a gentle fingertip over her lashes. Catching a droplet that glistened like a jewel against his skin and folding the minute bit of moisture into his palm, he murmured, “Sweetheart, there’s nothing wrong with my hands that hasn’t been wrong with them before. More times than I can remember.”
“I know.” Eden’s voice was unsteady, barely more than a whisper. “I just wasn’t prepared—”
The string quartet chose that moment to end a short break. The music was soft, as perfect an accompaniment for the gala and for Eden as the garden setting.
“I should leave you to your guests.” Adams intended to distance himself from her. Instead, on impulse, he drew her to him, his head dipping to hers. His breath was warm on her face as he whispered, “Happy birthday, my beautiful Eden.”
He meant only to graze her cheek with his lips, but in a slow, mesmerizing turn of her head, Eden offered her mouth. A temptation too sweet to resist, anywhere, anytime.
His lips brushed hers, hungering but not daring to take more. As he drew away, Eden’s fingers curled at his neck, keeping him. “Stay. Stay with me tonight.”
Adam’s heart quickened. The force of it threatened the wall of his chest. “No, Eden.”
The palm of her free hand curved around his mouth. “Just for the duration of the party.” Her look was pleading. “I know you’re convinced people will talk. I know you don’t want them to link you to me. But they will, Adams. No matter what we do.
“What the gossips don’t see or hear, they’ll invent. So why not let them speak the truth when it’s time to gossip?” Her fingers traced the shape of his lips in a caress as tempting as a kiss. “Are a few rumors a price too dear to pay for an innocent evening spent in each other’s company? We were friends most of our lives. Can’t we be friends again? Just friends. Just for tonight?”
She fell silent, waiting, never looking away from Adams. For Eden there was no one else in the garden. This was her birthday, and the answer he might give could be the best gift of all.
All she needed was there in her eyes, in the soft shape of her mouth. Only a fool couldn’t see. Only a fool would refuse.
Adams Cade had been many things. A fool wasn’t one of them. “Yes, love.” The words were little more that the stirring of a breath. “I’ll stay. Until the last guest is gone, I’ll stay.”
Eden’s smile, the warmth of her touch as she slid her hand into the bend of the arm he offered, was worth any risk. But, Adams wondered, would he agree at another, saner time?
“A number of your old classmates are here. Cullen has already warned me that most of them are anxious to speak with you.” She looked up at him in the flicker of candlelight just gaining strength as twilight began its descent into darkness. “Would you mind so much?”
“I don’t mind.” He’d expected he would, but unwise as it was, with Eden at his side, matters of lamentable proportions were insignificant. “Who’s here? I’ve seen Jericho, of course.”
“Come with me, Adams, and I’ll show you.” She moved with him, a vision dressed in twilight. Her fingers curved in subtle possession at his elbow. The softness of her breasts brushing his arm was a whisper of enchantment and remembered madness. Her laughter was low, unconsciously seductive. For the first time in weeks and for this little time, Eden Claibourne was happy.
As they strolled along the edge of the crowd, Eden named names, telling him a little about each person she identified. But in the end, Adams matched faces to names without erring.
“Blaine.” Hands met in a delighted slap of flesh against flesh as he encountered the first of a number of old friends after too many years. “How are you? How is little Melanie? Though I don’t suppose she’s so little anymore.”
Eden was younger, but she remembered that Blaine Ellington and a girl she couldn’t recall married young and had a baby girl before graduating from high school. And it was obvious that Adams recalled everything.
Blaine answered, plainly flattered that Adams remembered. “She’s nineteen.”
“Nineteen?” Adams’ brows lifted. “I know it’s a cliché, but they do grow up fast. And Cindy?”
“We divorced ten years ago. Neither Melanie nor I have had contact with her since.”
That first conversation set the pattern. Everyone was eager to speak with him. No one presumed. No one judged. Adams was tireless and remained faultless in his recognition and recollections. The party became a subtle celebration of the return of Adams Cade, and he was too gracious to interrupt the stream of well-wishers or those who came to reminisce. It was Eden who finally called a halt.
“I think this is my dance.” Slipping a hand into one of Adams’, she turned a blinding smile on the gathered group. “If you will excuse us?”
Eden led him to the courtyard square. As she went into his arms, her body moving with his, the smile she saved for him was poignant and tender. “They love you, Adams. No one judges you. Not one of the old friends you met tonight believes you could be capable of what Junior Rabb claimed and accused you of. I saw it in their faces and heard it in their voices.”
“What you saw was Lady Mary’s teaching coming to the fore.” Holding her close, he swung her into a graceful turn, released her and drew her back, keeping her a bit closer.
“Lady Mary’s good work aside, it was more than that.”
“Sweetheart.” His head bent to hers. His lips skimmed her brow. “Do me a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Shut up and let me dance, just with you.”
Eden’s he
art skipped a beat with the suggestive innuendo. Then, delighted, she threw back her head and laughed, drawing all eyes to them. “Indeed, yes.” Softly, her cheek brushing the lapel of his jacket, she whispered, “It would be my pleasure, dear sir.”
“No, love,” Adams said as their bodies moved in concert, so closely the gown of dark, misty lavender was only the prelude to seduction. “The pleasure is mine.”
If any attention hadn’t been riveted on them, Eden’s laughter drew it now, like a magnet. Even Cullen and Merrie and the rest of the wait staff paused to watch.
At that particular moment, the rest of the Cades had shaken free of their respective adoring coteries and gathered at a table apart. A table bearing, along with a massive flower arrangement, a spectacular bowl filled with Cullen’s punch. An exotic, gleaming liquid so darkly red it was almost black.
“Look at them,” Jackson said as he held a cup inches from his mouth and nose. “They move together like one person.”
“Like they belong together,” Lincoln added.
“As they should have been for the past thirteen years.” Jefferson’s voice was strained, bitter, but neither Lincoln nor Jackson commented.
“What’s with you, Jeffie?” Jackson asked around a first swallow of punch that almost choked him. When he could speak again, it was to say to Jefferson, “You should be dancing. Lord knows, you wouldn’t lack for partners, if you’d give the ladies a second look.”
“Not tonight.” With a grimace, Jefferson brushed off the remark. “Too many butterflies. I keep wondering what Eden will say when Cullen unveils the portrait. What if she hates it?”
“She won’t.” Lincoln snagged a cup from the table, deciding to brave the punch since Jackson was still on his feet.
“You can’t say that for sure any more than I can,” Jefferson shot back.
“Yes, we can.” Jackson tried another sip, which went down more easily. Smiling lazily and swirling the dark-ruby liquid in the delicate crystal, he looked back at Jefferson. “Lincoln and I are far better judges of your work than you are.”
“Right.” Lincoln’s voice was raw as he pressed a hand against his stomach as if expecting a hole to appear at any moment. “You’re concerned—it’s natural. But if you take a few sips of Cullen’s witch-doctor brew, I guarantee you won’t have any butterflies. Fried ones, maybe. But nothing fluttering.”
Jefferson laughed then, and his mood eased as both brothers intended. This repartee, or one similar, accompanied the first sips of Cullen’s special punch at each of the last seven birthdays Eden had celebrated at River Walk.
Filling his cup to capacity, Jefferson drank it in one effort. Keeping his face straight, and in a voice almost unaffected, he teased, “If you can’t take it, good brothers, there’s a table or two along the way. One even has lemonade.”
Then he grimaced, his startlingly handsome face twisting in a mask of horror. “But you’re right, Lincoln. No butterflies. Now it’s the flames of Hades, instead.”
“But you love it. You’re even safe, as long as it doesn’t eat through the crystal.” Cullen stepped into their midst, towering over even Lincoln by half a foot. “Also, you’re all right about one thing or another.”
In a rare breach of his own etiquette, Cullen filled a cup for himself and drank it as if it were water. Setting the cup down and wiping his mouth, he reiterated, “Yes, Adams and Mistress Eden do move like one. Yes, they belong together. Yes, if circumstances had been different, they should have been together all these years. But I wouldn’t be here, then. And we wouldn’t be unveiling this portrait tonight.” Taking a watch from his pocket, he returned it after a glance. “Right now.”
“You’re ready?” Jefferson realized he was wrong—the butterflies had survived the witch doctor’s brew.
“Give us five minutes,” Cullen said. “Then get your brother and Mistress and come along.”
When the islander left them, moving through the crowd like a rogue wave among ripples, Jackson drawled in a lazy tone, “Cullen must have tasted the punch a little too much as he was mixing it. He’s positively loquacious tonight. I don’t think I’ve heard him say that many words at one time since he came to Belle Terre with Eden.”
“‘Loquacious’?” Lincoln rolled his eyes and winked at Jefferson. “He must not be the only one affected by the punch. Did our brother say ‘loquacious’?”
“Aw, guys,” Jackson protested. “It’s a good word.”
“And a long one.” Jefferson was smiling once again, as his brothers intended.
By word of mouth or by magic— Adams never knew for certain—the celebrants began to gravitate toward a particularly secluded part of the gardens. Where, cloistered by giant oaks weeping with Spanish moss and alight with torches turning evening to midday, an easel of dark wood waited. Flanked by clusters of clipped hollies and pots of heavy-headed hydrangeas, its drape of midnight velvet captured the flickering light, drawing cries of appreciation from the ladies.
But no one was more awestruck than Eden. She turned to Adams as if he knew the answers to dozens of unasked questions. But he only gave a small nod and a lift of his brows in innocence. Even Jefferson appeared equally uninformed as Cullen stepped forward to stand with one hand resting on the easel.
“Once in a great while a beautiful creature and a great talent come together in the same place and time.” The islander’s gaze touched on Jefferson, then on Eden. “When that unique meeting occurs, we are blessed with great pleasures such as this.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Eden Roberts Claibourne, as painted by Thomas Jefferson Cade,” Cullen said simply as he drew the drape from the easel, revealing a girl wrapped in the magic of a misty garden. A young girl in a white, flowing gown, almost, yet not quite, a woman. A girl with tousled golden curls and the wonder of love in her soft gray eyes. Eden, as she’d looked on the night of her debut. Before Adams had been taken from her.
After one collective gasp, the garden was quiet. Then the whispers began, and the applause.
Eden stood rooted, her hand clasping Adams’, her gaze seeking Jefferson. Then, with a smile from Adams, she was crossing the little space separating her from Jefferson. Taking his hands in both of hers, she rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she drew away. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never looked so beautiful.”
“You did. You would, if the past were different.” Jefferson’s gaze met hers. “You can now, if you make it happen.”
“You know, don’t you?”
“That you love my brother?” Jefferson inclined his head only slightly, his smile bittersweet. “I’ve always known.”
“You painted me as you thought I would look if all the dreams I’ve dreamed could come true.”
“I painted the girl who became a woman who goes on with her life, and yet waits for her lover to make her complete.” His grasp tightened over hers. “It can be, Eden. All that’s gone on before tonight could be resolved if Adams would—”
“Jefferson!” Lady Mary tapped him on the shoulder with her cane, ending the conversation. “Well—” the small lady peered up at him intensely “—have I not preached for years that you’re wasting a God-given talent by burying yourself in the swamps?”
A palsied wave recalled Jefferson’s attention to Eden’s portrait. “Does this not prove my point?”
Eden heard no more as she was drawn into a circle of curious friends. “No, I didn’t pose for the painting.” She addressed the most common questions. “And yes, I was as surprised as anyone.”
Over the heads of those who gathered around her, Eden smiled at Adams. A smile that took his breath away. A smile that drew his gaze back to the portrait where Eden looked out on the world exactly as she’d just looked at him.
A smile that sent all his good intentions into nothing. With ill-disguised unrest, he waited and he watched. Until Jefferson joined him. “Well, brother,” Jefferson said in low tones, “what do you think?”
Throwing
an arm around the younger man’s shoulders, Adams drew him into a hard, quick embrace. “I think you’ve one helluva talent, Jeffie, and Lady Mary is right—you’re wasting it by burying yourself in the swamp, and even at Belle Reve.”
“Where else would I go, Adams?” Jefferson’s expression was instantly grim. “What else can I do?”
“No, Jeffie.” Adams clasped a hand around his brother’s neck, shaking him gently, as if he could shake reason into him. “The question is, what can’t you do? If you stop locking yourself and your talent away from the world.”
“Gus needed me. He still needs me.”
“Gus is on the mend. He was lucky this time. If he takes better care of himself, there’s a good chance there won’t be another stroke. Particularly since Belle Reve is solvent and back in good repair.”
“Thanks to you, Adams. With your hard work and the money from the merger you poured into the coffers of Belle Reve, you’ve made it right again.” Jefferson looked from the portrait to Eden, then back to Adams. “As you’ve always done, at great cost to your own dreams.”
“That means you aren’t allowed your own? That you can’t have what you dream about?” Adams knew he was losing the battle. And this wasn’t the time or place for more persuasive discussions. “Never mind, I know your answer. But look at what you’ve done. The most modest man in the world would admit there’s amazing talent in Eden’s portrait.
“Lincoln and Jackson said she didn’t pose, and probably there were no photos. You did this from memory.” Adams cast an admiring glance in the direction of the portrait. Even her picture could set his heart racing. “I don’t know how you managed it with so little time, yet you captured something remarkable and unique.”
