by BJ James
“I painted her as I know she would look if we could put the past behind us,” Jefferson declared quietly.
“I think maybe we can, Jeffie.” Adams placed a hand on Jefferson’s shoulder. “Junior’s been quiet for so long I’ve begun to hope the vandalism of the cottage was his one great act of bravado. I’ve found myself thinking maybe he’s realized his vendetta isn’t worth its cost.
“This party, with the reception I’ve been given by the people who matter, and now the portrait, your portrait of Eden, have shown me that, just maybe, I can come home again.”
“Gus’ attitude hasn’t changed, Adams. Even as hard as you’ve worked, and with his suspicions about the source of the money, he hasn’t changed how he feels about you.”
“It matters,” Adams admitted. “I won’t tell you it doesn’t. But one opinion, even that of the father who labeled me an outcast, isn’t the most important factor in my life, at last.”
“No.” Jefferson smiled. “The important factor in your life is standing by the fountain. If you’ve got half the sense I think, you won’t keep her waiting another minute.”
“I second that motion.” Jackson flung an arm around the shoulders of the youngest and the oldest of his brothers. “In fact, if I had someone like Eden waiting for me, I would run, not walk, to the nearest—”
“Whoa, Red, there may be delicate ears about.” Lincoln completed the circle. “But I do make the motion unanimous.”
“Then what am I waiting for?” Adams wondered aloud.
“Beats me,” Jackson, ever the one to have the last word, drawled and grinned.
Eden had managed to extricate herself from the crowd that had gathered around her and the portrait. For a while Jefferson answered questions regarding the painting. After he excused himself, leaving the limelight solely to Eden, there was little she could add. Yet she couldn’t quite convince the determinedly curious that she’d known nothing of this wonderful gift. Ultimately, though, even the most persistent admitted defeat and let her walk away.
Now she stood alone by a small fountain, letting the sound of the water and the mesmerizing motion fill the waiting with a measure of peace. Adams hands spanning her waist, drawing her back against him, came as no surprise. She’d known he would come. From the moment he’d looked at her as she stood by the portrait, it was for this she waited.
As she leaned into his embrace, she realized the expensive scent of the staid and scrupulously groomed businessman was no more. The too-proper man who felt he must prove himself and his worth to the world in every way was gone at last.
This was Adams, still splendid, still wonderful, a little less perfect. Adams, with his dark hair not quite so neat, his expression not so controlled. Adams, who smelled of fresh air, lingering sunshine and a hint of soap. Adams.
“I know it’s your party,” he murmured into her hair, “but do you suppose we could shock the good citizens of Belle Terre by ducking out for a while?”
Turning in his embrace, Eden linked her hands at his nape. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Know anyplace in particular?” He teased a drifting curl with a soft breath.
“Cullen suggested you might like to see the refurbishing we’ve done to the river cottage.”
“The river cottage, huh?” Adams’ smile was in his voice.
“Just in case you might, he left a bottle of champagne cooling in the bedroom.” There was matching laughter in Eden. “To toast my birthday.”
“Ah, yes, your birthday. I didn’t buy you a gift.” He kissed her eyes, her nose, the corners of her mouth. But when she would have returned his kisses, he drew away. “Can you forgive me?”
“I’m sure we’ll think of some way you might redeem yourself.” Eden let her hands slide over the pleats of his shirt and down his vest. Slipping her arm around him, she walked with him along the sheltered path to the cottage.
Neither saw Cullen step from the shadows, smile his rare smile and station himself squarely in the path Eden and Adams had taken. An immovable force no one would challenge.
Adams expected a twinge of grief for the destruction he’d brought down on the cottage. But the repairs were too complete and the night too splendid for regret of any sort.
“Your father’s collections.” Taking first one decoy from a shelf and then another, he inspected each. “As good as before.”
“Cullen found someone to restore them.” Eden moved to his side, thankful Cullen understood it would be good for Adams to see the vandal had done no lasting harm. “He found others to restore the paintings and even the fabrics. The glass and a few insignificant objects were all that couldn’t be restored or repaired. So, your former abode, my dear Adams.” A slow, sweeping gesture accompanied the endearment. “Yes, as good as before.
“But—” a tilt of her head sent another lock tumbling from the clasp in her hair “—must we spend what’s left of the evening discussing the cottage?” Tossing him a mischievous smile, she crossed to the bedroom door. “If you can’t think of anything better, I’ll have a glass of champagne. Talking is thirsty work.”
“We have a few things to discuss other than the cottage.” Catching her wrist, he drew her back to him. “Such as this.”
Looping a finger under a corded strap of her gown, he traced its path from her shoulder to the swell of her breasts. “Do they serve a purpose, or are they merely tantalizing decoration?”
“Oh, they have a purpose, I assure you.” Eden shivered as his knuckle traced the same path as before, ending again only inches from the tips of her breasts.
“Something to drive me mad, like the dress?” he suggested softly. “That was the reason for this intriguing bit of lavender, was it not? To fascinate and entice, until I couldn’t remember any promise I’d made to myself. Was that it, my love?”
“Yes.” Her voice was breathless. The pulse at her temple and her throat told him she had been caught in her own web.
“And now, sweet Eden? When your spell is complete, what now?” Abandoning the whimsical straps, his fingertips danced across the edge of the bodice of her gown, tarrying at the cleft of her breasts to stroke the silky flesh of their rising curves. When she shivered and caught back a moan, he chuckled in wicked delight. “A weaver of magic caught in a spell of her own making? I wonder, what must she do?”
“This.” As he had, she looped a finger beneath one lavender strap and then the other. With her arms crossed over her breasts and her palms moving in tantalizing increments down her arms, she slipped the dress from her body. When it dropped to the floor in a bright, shimmering puddle, she wore only pearls and a G-string of the sort that had left her body tanned and little marred. As slowly, as provocatively, never taking her gaze from his, Eden lifted her hands to her hair.
“Let me.” Not moving, Adams awaited her answer.
Eden let her hands fall to her sides. She stood, unabashed, beneath the plundering possession of his gaze. As before, the time for modesty had long passed.
Adams opened the clasp, letting her hair slip free. Loose curls of darkly burnished gold tumbled around her shoulders, down her back and over her breasts. Tangling his fingers in the gleaming mane, he tilted her face to his, taking her mouth in a deep, waiting kiss. Then he was touching her, stroking her hair, caressing her face, her throat, her body. A slight hesitation at her waist, and the last scrap of clothing that hid her from his possession fell away.
“Eden.” Only her name, but as much part of his mind-shattering kiss as his suckling lips.
With her last shred of sanity, Eden whispered in quiet joy, “You aren’t leaving. You wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be touching me, you wouldn’t be making love to me, if you were.”
“No, love.” Adams swept her into his arms. “I’m not going anywhere but to the bedroom, with you.”
“This is your gift to me?”
“Yes,” he promised. “And to myself.”
In a darkened room, far from the merrymakers and the revelers, an outca
st learned he wasn’t an outcast, and would never be, as long as there was love in the eyes and the heart of the only person who’d ever really mattered. In her arms a once gentle man, who learned to be harsh and hard in a world that demanded it as the price of survival, discovered that the gentleness in him truly hadn’t died.
As she drew him down to her, he believed, at last, that the man he might have been had only waited for her tender touch, her sweet kiss and her unquestioning trust to live again.
As he believed in her caress he found peace.
In her murmured, “I love you, Adams,” breathed against his lips, he found his soul.
In the sweet welcome of her body he found hope and dreams of the future.
Eden was his future and all he would ever want.
“Yes, Eden,” he whispered from the depths of a healing heart. “My only love.”
Ten
“What the devil!” Adams nearly stood on the brakes, sending the car into a skid only an expert hand could have saved. When Jackson’s vehicle rocked to a stop, Jackson, Jefferson and Lincoln were staring with him at a red sky at midnight.
Eden’s party had ended at midnight, and Adams was made designated driver and butt of all teasing. Now everyone was cold sober and deadly serious.
“Fire,” Lincoln whispered. “A big one.”
“River Trace or the barn.” Jackson’s terse response was strained through taut lips. “Maybe both.”
“The horses.” Jefferson voiced the anguish of all.
“Maybe it’s not too late.” His foot to the floor, Adams sped down the road. When he made the final turn into River Trace, towering flames licked the night sky.
They could hear the horses’ frantic screams before Adams halted the car by the inferno. The barn was in full blaze. Miraculously, with weather that turned the countryside to tinder, the house was unharmed.
As they exited the car with doors flung open, a few steps made it clear the cries of the horses didn’t come from the barn. Jackson pointed to a pasture where his animals reared and raced along fences.
Spinning around, he stared at the barn, a burning skeleton. “Somebody saved them. The whole herd.”
“That somebody!” Adams shouted above the crash of falling timbers, drawing their attention back to the house.
“Merrie.” Jefferson was the first to reach her. Taking the hose from her, he kept the spray on the house. “Are you hurt?”
Obviously exhausted, Eden’s young charge cried out her assurance over the furor. Then there was no more time for conversation or explanations. The horses were safe. The barn was beyond saving. But the house could go yet. As they joined in the fight, the Cades knew Merrie’s efforts were heroic, but might have only delayed the inevitable in the battle still ahead.
“Why were you here?” The barn was a smoldering pyre. Jackson and Lincoln were checking the horses, and Adams sat at the kitchen table, cleaning a burn on Merrie Alexandre’s wrist. “Lucky for Jackson that you were. But why?”
“I like horses better than parties.” Merrie shrugged prettily despite the layer of soot that covered her. “When my duties were done at the inn, I came to talk to the horses. I hope Mr. Jackson doesn’t mind.”
Jefferson set a glass of cold water before her. “Mind? I would think he’s more in the mood to kiss you.”
“No, thank you.” Merrie shook her head, sending curls flying from the bandanna that had protected her hair. “I don’t care for kissing.”
“Unless it’s a horse,” Adams ventured with a smile.
The wail of a siren forestalled Merrie’s reply.
“The local fire department, and unless I miss my guess, Jericho won’t be far behind.” Jefferson slid the glass closer to the girl. “Better drink this. You’ll be explaining all over again about being in the stall with the stallion and hearing, but not seeing, whoever it was that started the fire.
“Jericho’s thorough—he’ll want every detail.” Jefferson grimaced as he remembered Merrie’s story. “Down to the cut telephone lines, how you managed to coax a stable of frightened horses from a burning barn. And why you thought to keep the hose on the house to prevent it from going up in smoke like the barn.”
“You’re exhausted, Merrie. I’ll fill him in as best I can. Then the questioning will go quicker for you.” Adams laid aside the ointment scavenged from Jackson’s medicine cabinet, patted Merrie’s shoulder and left the table. His weary look met his brother’s over her dark head. “Jefferson?”
“I’ll look after her, Adams.” Jefferson’s steady regard didn’t falter. “Go meet Jericho. Tell him what he needs to know.”
Thirteen days later Jericho tossed the report detailing the fire at River Trace on his desk. “Every expert at our disposal crawled over Jackson’s barn for weeks. The final analysis tells the what, where and how of the fire. But not who started it.”
“We know who started it, Jericho.” Adams stared out a window that looked over the main street of Belle Terre.
“What we know doesn’t matter, Adams. I can’t arrest Junior Rabb without proof.”
“So he’ll just keep striking out at me and anyone close to me as long as I’m here. Always with his iron-clad alibi.”
“He’ll trip up,” Jericho declared in a low growl. “Sooner or later he’ll make a mistake.”
“Maybe, but I can’t take the chance he might hurt someone before sooner or later comes.”
“Your family,” Jericho supplied. “And Eden.”
Adams didn’t look away from the window. “I worry most about her. My brothers can take care of themselves.”
“Eden has Cullen. He would be a powerful deterrent even for a swamp rat like Junior Rabb. But,” Jericho added thoughtfully, “he can’t be with her every minute of every day.”
“There’s a better solution.” Adams crossed to the desk, faced Jericho squarely. “One I should have taken weeks ago.”
“Leave Belle Terre.” As sheriff, Jericho knew this was the logical conclusion. Rabb had bothered none of the Cades until Adams came home. “What about Gus and the plantation?”
“Gus is improving daily. Once the hospital sent out nurses he couldn’t bully and he started behaving himself, his progress has been phenomenal. Belle Reve’s solvent for the moment. And, as ironic as it sounds, after a controlled burn, in a year or two enough timber can be harvested off some of the back acres to keep a sensibly managed operation going for years.”
Adams shrugged, his face was grim. “I could have left weeks ago, but I thought—”
“Eden,” Jericho called her name, explaining everything.
“Yeah.” Adams looked again to the window. “Eden.”
“Have you told her?”
“I’ve only seen her once since the fire. She came to River Trace. I asked her not to come again.”
“So when will you tell her?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll tell her then.”
The chair squeaked as Jericho leaned forward. “A little abrupt, isn’t it? This is going to hurt her enough as it is.”
“I know.” Adams stared at his fisted hands as if he didn’t know what to do with them. “Short of going after Rabb and risking that the added strain might kill my father, there’s nothing else I can do. The quicker I go, the quicker the vendetta will end.”
“Goes against the grain, walking away from a fight, doesn’t it? I can’t recall that you ever started a fight in the old days. But you sure as hell never walked away from one.” Jericho watched Adams closely, hoping for a reaction that never came.
“This isn’t the old days. There’s more at stake than what I want. For the sake of the innocents, my only option is to say goodbye. Starting now.” Extending his hand, Adams smiled wryly when the sheriff’s large hand engulfed his briefly. “You’re the only person I know who’s bigger than Cullen. Will you help him take care of her?”
“You know I will.”
“I guess I do.” Adams opened the office door.
“Adams.”
Jericho waited until he had his friend’s undivided attention. “You never stopped by for that talk I wanted to have about the night all this with Junior Rabb began.”
“There was no need, Jericho. It’s all in the report. I don’t have anything to add.” Adams smiled one last time, a smile that didn’t touch his eyes, and closed the door behind him.
Adams paused on the walk, staring up at the marvelous old house. Once River Walk had belonged to Eden’s ancestors. This street of old houses had been the showplace of wealthy planters’ infidelity. Fancy Row, named for the scandalous reputation of the ladies who occupied them, not the architecture.
Belle Terre was steeped in its own history, with a character of its own. He would miss it. Where else would a man with the pompous name of Caesar Augustus Cade name his sons after John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson? “Where but in a land that could spawn a town like Belle Terre?”
Adams hadn’t expected to fall in love again in Belle Terre. Or with it. But he had. He never expected to regret leaving it. Yet he did. He must. And it was time.
Crossing the walk, he climbed the steps. At the door he halted. It was morning. The gardens would be drenched with dew. Eden would be gathering flowers. Descending the steps, he circled the house and opened the garden gate. Eden was there, a basket of freshly cut hydrangeas swinging from her wrist. Her image was imprinted in his memory, yet he always forgot how beautiful she was. Only in the eye of the beholder, she would scoff. But to this beholder, who loved her more than life, she was beautiful.
“Adams?” Her voice was breathless and pleased at once. Then she saw the perfect suit, the perfect tie. The too rigidly perfect man who had taken her lover’s place.
The basket fell to the ground. Lavender and rose-colored blooms spilled at her feet. Adams saw the color wash from her face, and tears mist her eyes.
“You’ve come to say goodbye.”
“Yes.” Adams flinched. It hurt to see her like this.
“Why?” Before he could answer, she shook her head.
