For Now and Forever

by Diana Palmer

  “It does sound interesting,” Professor Sterline remarked, his eyes lighting up at any mention of his subject. “Magnolia Gardens is in South Carolina, you know, and there’s a fascinating story behind it. It seems that...”

  The girls weren’t in time to stop him, so they sat quietly and listened with grave courtesy while Professor Sterline gave them the long history of the Civil War in South Carolina. Maggie didn’t usually hear many of his lectures since she’d moved into her own apartment; she spent the night only when her sister was in town so the three of them could have some time together.

  That night Maggie lay awake a long time, her mind full of Saxon Tremayne. The trip back to South Carolina was one she’d rather not have made, but she couldn’t deny Lisa that small sacrifice. Besides, if Saxon hadn’t come after her head in eight months, it was unlikely that he’d still be in the mood for retribution.

  That had disappointed her in one minor way. She’d wanted him to come after her—for any reason, even revenge. In her mind she could see those tawny eyes watching her, studying her, in a face as broad and tanned as a Roman’s, his size setting him apart as much as his air of authority. He was a striking man: rugged, commanding, with a voice like rich, dark velvet when he spoke softly. Not a day had gone by that she hadn’t thought about him, missed him, wondered if he’d forgiven her for what he’d thought she’d done. If only she could write and explain. Perhaps now that his black temper had cooled, she could reason with him, tell him the truth. But if he was still angry, writing to him could be a monumental mistake. She’d never talked about her hometown; there had never been the opportunity. He knew she was from Georgia, but not where, and she was faintly glad. Saxon never hesitated to use his power. He wouldn’t have batted an eye at buying out the newspaper to fire her. And there were other, less pleasant ways he could have chosen to get even with her.

  She rolled over, burying her hot face in the cool pillow. Perhaps it was best this way. What did she have in common with a millionaire, after all? Even if she’d caught Saxon’s eye, he’d probably have had no use for her past his bedroom. He wasn’t a man to form permanent relationships; his mind was devoted entirely to business. If only she could forget.

  This trip with Lisa would take her mind off it at least. And certainly being around Randy’s fiery brother would keep her occupied. She smiled secretly. Hawk sounded like the bird of prey from which his nickname undoubtedly came, sharp and deadly. She was intrigued already by Lisa’s description of him. How dreadful to have had so much, and lose it through blindness. She wondered idly if she might be able to get through that layer of fierce bitterness and help the poor lion find peace.

  It was a tempting thought. She closed her eyes on it and drifted slowly off to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWO

  RANDOLPH STEELE WAS every bit the dish Lisa had described. He was tall, whipcord slim, with dark hair and an olive complexion, and blue eyes under impossibly thick eyelashes. He had a live-wire personality, and it was obvious from the moment he met them at the Greenville airport that Lisa had his whole heart.

  He kissed her with gusto, then stood back to study her petite figure with eyes that spoke volumes before he turned to extend a hand to Maggie.

  “You must be the big sister,” he said. “As you have probably already deduced, I am the fiancé.”

  “I had a sneaking hunch you weren’t a total stranger,” Maggie replied, giving his hand a firm warm shake. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Maggie’s a reporter, you know,” Lisa burst out enthusiastically. “She writes for our local paper!”

  “Will you be quiet?” Maggie groaned, whirling around in frustrated embarrassment with her hands clasped behind her head. “You know I don’t like to talk about what I do!”

  “Your guilty secret is safe with me,” Randy replied, leading them out to the parking lot with a suitcase in either hand. “And, kidding aside, you’d better keep it a secret from Hawk. He hates reporters.”

  “Was your mother frightened by one before she gave birth to him?” Maggie asked with a grin.

  Randy laughed at that. “Not my mother. Hawk is my stepbrother. In a sense he and his father married me and my mother. Steele Manor was Mother’s, of course, but Hawk controls the family finances. Mother is a dear, but a bit frivolous, and she has no business head.”

  “Your stepbrother must be pretty smart,” Lisa said.

  “Brilliant,” Randy corrected. He paused beside an elegant deep burgundy Lincoln town car and after the bags had been safely stored in the trunk, asked the women to come inside—Lisa on the passenger side and Maggie in the back—before he slid in under the wheel.

  “What does he do?” Lisa asked.

  “He’s a businessman. Or he was,” Randy corrected sadly. “When his father died, he took over all the family holdings, and there were a lot of them. He was constantly on the move up until the accident.”

  Lisa reached out and caught Randy’s free hand as he pulled the car out into traffic and headed it out of Greenville. Maggie, who’d only been to Greenville once before, was fascinated by the blend of historical buildings and modern ones, the sprawling downtown mall and the unusual street signs as well as the surprising small-town look of the downtown area, all set against the distant backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  “What kind of business is the family in?” Maggie asked politely, her eyes roving everywhere as they moved out of town.

  “Textiles,” Randy replied, shooting a smile and a wink toward Lisa.

  “What a coincidence,” Lisa cooed. “Maggie used to write about them a lot in her old job, before she came home. She was a—”

  “Do shut up, darling,” Maggie told her younger sister with a sweet smile, “or I’ll tape up your mouth. Randy doesn’t want to hear about my whole history. I’m sure he’s much more interested in yours.”

  Besides, she added silently, if his people are in textiles and he learns why I left Jarrettsville, he might know Saxon Tremayne and let it slip. And that kind of trouble I don’t need!

  “You’re so modest,” Lisa complained. “Why don’t you want people to know you write? Besides, Randy’s family...almost,” she added shyly.

  He squeezed her hand. “Very almost. All we have to do is figure a way out of this mess my family’s in.” He sighed. “I just can’t leave Mother here with Hawk. It would be like sacrificing her. His temper was always formidable, but since the accident he’s been like a wild man. One nurse left the house at three o’clock in the morning in her nightgown. In her nightgown! The police stopped her, of course, and wanted an explanation. They called the house, and we cleared up the misunderstanding. Hawk gets violent headaches sometimes at night, he went to ask her for an injection, and she thought he wanted something quite different.” He laughed shortly. “Anyway it embarrassed Mother to tears. She couldn’t face her garden club the next day, and she’s hardly been out of the house since.”

  Mrs. Steele sounded like a sparrow turned loose in a cage with an eagle. How hard it must be for her to live with her volatile stepson and retain her sanity, Maggie thought.

  “Couldn’t you find a former combat nurse?” Lisa teased.

  “We did, don’t laugh,” he replied with a wicked, smile. “A crusty old ex-lieutenant who’d been in the WACs. She lasted a week. You think I’m joking. When you meet Hawk, you’ll see that I’m not.”

  “Is there any hope that they might be able to restore his sight surgically?” Maggie asked gently.

  “Not really. It would be much too dangerous. Hawk won’t even talk about it.”

  “How did it happen?” Maggie asked softly.

  “Hawk served two tours in Vietnam. He earned that nickname because he never missed with an M1 rifle. It’s rather ironic that he didn’t lose his sight over there when he caught the shrapnel in his head. The doctor explained to me that the shrapnel had lodged near the base of the frontal l
obe of his brain, but didn’t impair him in any way until it was dislodged eight months ago in that wreck and blinded him. The best he can hope for now is that the shrapnel will someday shift again and relieve the pressure on his optic nerve.” Randy sighed. “If he hadn’t been in such a temper, it never would have happened. He has monumental control usually. But he’d had a hell of a lot of pressure, what with the newspaper story and the union going out on a wildcat strike, and then the ultimatum by the environmental people. He’d just called a meeting on it and was rushing to the plant on a rain-slick highway when the car went into a skid.” He shrugged. “The problem solved itself, of course, when the union and the state people realized that the solution was almost in operation. A tempest in a teapot, as they say. A quiet disaster.”

  Scandal. Environmental people. Story. Maggie went rigid in the back seat.

  “Funny,” Lisa murmured. “Maggie wrote a story about some textile company, didn’t you, Maggie? Dad said something about it in passing...”

  Randy laughed and shook his head as he turned into a side road. “Maggie wouldn’t write that kind of story, I don’t think. My God, Hawk went right through the ceiling over it. It was a pack of lies, and I’ll never know how it got into print. Two reporters were fired over it, as I recall, but the main culprit got away. Hawk would have crucified her if he hadn’t been blinded. He was out for blood.”

  Maggie felt as if she were smothering—choking, dying. It was like some horrible dream, and she couldn’t wake up from it.

  “What is your stepbrother’s name?” Maggie asked in a husky whisper. “His real name?”

  “Hawk? His name is Saxon,” Randy told her matter-of-factly. “Saxon Tremayne.”

  Maggie’s breath seemed to trap itself in her throat, so that it could neither back up nor go forward. She wanted to throw herself out of the car, to run, to escape. But the Lincoln was already winding up the long paved driveway to the Steeles’ Victorian home, fronted by a garden that must have been glorious in the spring.

  “Your mother’s name...isn’t Steele,” Maggie said weakly.

  “No, it’s Tremayne,” Randy agreed, missing the panic in his green-eyed passenger’s face. “I kept my father’s name, so lots of people assume that hers is still Steele too. What do you think of my home, darling?” he asked Lisa, who was equally unaware of Maggie’s buried terrors.

  “I love it,” Lisa sighed dreamily, studying the front of the massive house with its gingerbread woodwork, long front porch with white furniture, and neatly trimmed surrounding shrubs and trees.

  “I hoped you would,” he murmured softly.

  A dainty little blonde maid opened the door for them.

  “Is Mother home, Grace?” Randy asked her with a pleasant smile.

  “Mrs. Tremayne is in the living room, sir,” came the sweet reply, joined by a wistful glance as she watched him enter the wide hall with Lisa on his arm.

  “Thanks,” he murmured, leading the women to the entrance of the spacious Early American–style room with champagne-colored draperies and a huge stone fireplace with two high-backed chairs facing it. A fire was glowing brightly in the hearth, warming the room against the chill of autumn.

  Maggie’s hunted eyes roamed around as she searched wildly for a way to go home. She couldn’t stay here. Not now.

  Sandra Tremayne rose as they entered the room, a small, thin little woman with clouds of tinted blond hair and eyes the gray of a winter sky. She stood up to envelop her tall son in her arms, a cloud of delicious perfume drifting around her like the pale blue dress she was wearing with her white pearls.

  “You must be Lisa,” she said softly after she’d welcomed Randy, smiling shyly at the young woman at his side.

  “I am,” Lisa said, smiling back. “Randy’s told me so much about you, I couldn’t wait to meet you. And I do love your home.”

  “I’m fond of it, too, especially in the spring. And this must be Maggie,” she added with a smile in the brunette’s direction.

  Maggie extended her hand and found it gripped warmly. “I’m glad to meet you,” she replied courteously.

  “I’ve looked forward to this,” Sandra confided. “Your rooms are all ready for you, and—”

  “I can’t stay,” Maggie blurted out, ignoring Lisa’s shocked expression. “I just remembered, I’d promised to cover a story tonight, and I really can’t go back on my word. I’ll have to fly back, and perhaps I can come back down tomorrow,” she said in a panicky tone, her voice rising. “Randy, would you mind driving me back to the airport? Or if not, I can get a cab... I’m so sorry,” she added quickly, thinking, I’m going to make it, I’m going to get away before Saxon knows I’m here, before—

  “Surely you aren’t leaving when you’ve only just arrived?” came a deep unmistakable voice from an armchair near the hearth, one of two with their backs to the hall.

  Maggie had heard that velvety voice in her dreams. She’d missed it, feared it, agonized over it in the past several months. And now all her worst fears had come to pass. She’d run away, but fate had caught her and flung her back in Saxon’s path with a relentless flick of its cruel hand. It was too late to run anymore.

  Saxon stood up slowly, as big and imposing as she remembered him. He seemed a little paler—his shaggy dark hair was in need of a trim—but basically he was the same man.

  He held on to the back of the chair with a big broad-fingered hand, a ruby ring glittering on a little finger, and stared in the direction of the voices. He wasn’t wearing dark glasses, and he wasn’t carrying a cane. And all his scars, like Maggie’s, seemed to be beneath the exterior.

  “H-hello, Mr. Tremayne,” Maggie said unsteadily, wishing she had the back of a chair for support.

  “Come here,” he said without preamble, while three pairs of eyes watched the byplay, fascinated.

  Licking her dry lips, Maggie walked gingerly to his chair and stopped just a yard away from him.

  “You’re not afraid of the blind man, are you?” he asked with a bitter laugh.

  “Don’t...” she whispered shakily, her eyes running over his broad, leonine face hungrily.

  “Saxon...” his stepmother began nervously.

  “You didn’t recognize the name?” Saxon asked, raising his voice. “Surely I’ve cursed it enough! Maggie Sterline. Sterline, dammit!”

  Randy whistled through his teeth, tossing a sympathetic look toward Maggie. “I thought the name sounded familiar.” He groaned, drawing Lisa close. “Oh, Lord, love, we’re in for it now.”

  “Poor Maggie,” Lisa murmured, aching for her sister. “If only I’d known. She never said anything to me!”

  “She probably didn’t connect Hawk with Saxon,” Randy said, sighing. “I never called him by name around you either. What a hell of a coincidence.”

  “Here on a visit, Miss Sterline?” Saxon asked her, venom in his deep voice, in the tawny, sightless eyes. “I hope you packed a bag, because you’re staying for a while.”

  “I...am?” she echoed weakly. She wasn’t easily intimidated, but there was something in Saxon Tremayne that demanded obedience, and she gave it.

  “You sound nervous, Maggie,” he said, a giant cat playing with its prey. “Don’t panic. It’s all worked itself out, and I’ve got bigger things on my mind than stripping the skin from your lovely body. Pull up a chair and sit down. Randy, Mother...close the door on your way out,” he added pointedly—not asking, telling.

  Randy and Mrs. Tremayne visibly relaxed, and Lisa sighed thankfully. They slipped out the door, closing it gently behind them.

  Saxon sat back down in his chair, and Maggie perched on just the edge of the other one, watching him. She couldn’t help noticing how the faint gold specks in his black smoking jacket brought out the gold in his tawny eyes; how the fabric stretched sensuously over his massive chest, which tapered to a flat stomach and broad, powerful thig
hs. He was forty, but it didn’t show in that athletic body; only in the silvering at his temples and the new lines in his hard face.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” he asked shortly. “Your sister and my stepbrother.”

  “Are you going to break them up?” she asked quietly.

  “That depends on you, honey,” he said in a voice she didn’t like. “Randy can’t buy a shoelace without my signature until he reaches twenty-five. That’s two more years. Do you think they can wait that long?”

  “That would be cruel...”

  “I’m a cruel man,” he said curtly. “Women like you have made me wary. Why did you come here?” he added bluntly.

  “I didn’t know who you were,” she replied simply.

  “You didn’t connect Steele and Tremayne, I gather? I don’t suppose I ever mentioned it when we were together.” He leaned back, his face going even harder in memory. “I was fascinated by you, Little Miss Journalist, did you know that? I could look at you and ache all over.”

  She gaped at him. She’d never realized he felt anything but courtesy for her.

  “Tongue-tied?” he growled. “Don’t let your imagination loose. I was attracted, I’d have liked to get you into my bed for a night or two, but that was as far as it went. Reporters weren’t my cup of tea even before you sold me out to your scandal sheet.”

  “I didn’t!” she protested, sitting straighter.

  “Oh, hell, I don’t even care anymore,” he ground out. “It’s too late for all that. I’m blind.”

  She closed her eyes on the flat statement. Blind. Blind. It echoed in her mind like a chant, “I’m sorry,” she managed to say.

  “Thank you,” he replied coolly. “That helps a hell of a lot.”

  “I didn’t make the roads slick,” she cried.

  “You wrote the story.”

  “No, I didn’t, I swear I didn’t. It was a mix-up in the bylines,” she said, trying desperately to convince him.