Walking into the kitchen, she didn’t see Tyler until she heard his sudden intake of breath. He was sitting in the dark in the breakfast room. Rising slowly to his feet, he glared at her. There was something so menacing about him standing there in his bare feet, his chest bare and the three-day stubble darkening his cheeks. A pair of drawstring sweat pants rode low on his narrow hips. It was apparent he’d lost weight.
“When were you going to tell me, Dana?”
She stared at him as if he were a stranger. “What?”
He moved closer, literally stalking her, but she refused to move. Tyler Cole had to know he couldn’t intimidate her.
Reaching out, he placed his hand over her belly. She looked at his hand before tilting her chin. “How did you know?”
A half smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “I’m a doctor, and I’m your husband. I happen to know your body.” His hand moved up over the lace on her nightgown to cradle a breast—one that was fuller, heavier.
He quickly calculated the last time Dana had had a menstrual flow. “You should give birth before the end of March.”
She placed her hands over his. “I wanted to tell you, Tyler, when I realized I hadn’t gotten my period, but it was never the right time.”
Vertical lines appeared between his eyes. “What do you mean about the right time? Despite what’s going on in our lives at this very moment, it is the right time.” Closing her eyes, she smiled the most beautiful he’d ever seen.
“I knew if I told you, you probably would’ve tried to stop me from continuing my project.”
“You’ve got that right.”
She opened her eyes. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“You’re very close to uncovering the truth, baby. Very, very close, or someone wouldn’t be working so hard to destroy my career and my reputation. The only way they can hurt you is through me.”
She touched his mouth with her fingertips. Seconds later her mouth replaced her fingers. “I came down here because I want a glass of water,” she said.
“Sit down. I’ll get it for you.”
She moved to chair and sat down at the same time a loud popping sound exploded in the air. One moment she was sitting. Then she sprawled facedown on the floor, Tyler’s weight bearing down on her.
“Tyler!”
“Don’t move, baby.”
“What was that?”
“Someone just shot at us through the window.”
“No!”
“Don’t panic. I’m going to try to get to the telephone to call the police. I don’t want you to move.”
She squirmed under him. “Tyler!”
“Don’t move!”
“Whoever it is will see you.”
“No, they won’t. I’m going to crawl into the bathroom.”
“What the hell do you want to do that for? There’s no phone in the bathroom!”
“Yes, there is. I left one of the cordless in there.”
Raising her head slightly, she tried to see his face. “What were you doing with a telephone in the bathroom?”
“Don’t ask, Dana.”
She lay motionless while Tyler eased off her body and slithered along the floor in the direction of the bathroom. A small scream escaped her parted lip with the sound of breaking glass.
Dana lost track of time as she lay on the cool tiles. Without warning, the track lights over the sink went dark. “Tyler! Where are you?” She’d whispered, but her voice sounded unusually loud in the stillness.
“I’m here. The police are coming.” His hands roved her over body, searching for her hand. “I’m going to get you upstairs where it’s safer.”
“No, Tyler. I’m not going to leave you here alone.”
“I’m going to be all right.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I have a gun in the library.”
“What are you doing with a gun?”
“I’m going to get it and pop whoever the hell it is that’s shooting at us. I’m going to count to three, then I’m going to pick you up and sprint for the staircase.”
Dana hesitated. She didn’t want to leave Tyler, didn’t want him to leave her. But she had to trust him, enough to believe he would protect her, keep her safe. “Okay.”
Tyler breathed out a sigh before he began counting. He hadn’t expected Dana to cooperate. “One … two … three.”
Gathering her in his arms, he adjusted her weight, and then moved quickly across the kitchen. A barrage of bullets smashed windows, slivers of glass spraying walls and floors like confetti.
Tyler sprinted up the staircase, breathing heavily. It wasn’t the added weight of carrying Dana that made it hard for him to catch his breath, but fear. Someone wanted to kill him and Dana. Her probing into a long-ago murder trial had spooked a murderer—someone who had actually gotten away with murder until now.
Billy Clark had sent the pasted-up threat to a crime lab for fingerprints. The result had been negative. Whoever had composed the threat had taken great care to wear gloves. The cut-up letters were from a variety of printed matter: magazines, newspapers, books.
Tyler had had Eugene Payton present the letter to the judge as evidence that someone wanted to threaten, blackmail, or possibly harm Dana or himself. The letter and the fact that he’d never been arrested had become the deciding factors for the judge’s decision to set bail.
Tyler made it up the staircase to temporary safety. Dana’s labored breathing echoed his as he left her in the landing at the top of the narrow stairs off the sitting room.
“Stay here, baby. I don’t want you to come down until I come back for you.”
Reaching out for him with trembling hands, Dana sank her nails into the flesh covering his broad shoulders. “You better come back, Tyler. I’m not going to raise this baby without you.”
“And you won’t,” he promised. He gave her a hard kiss, then was gone, melting like a specter into the darkness.
She sat on the floor, the coolness of the wood seeping through the delicate fabric of her nightgown. A light from a full moon poured through the tiny window above her. She’d always loved full moons, but tonight it had become a natural beacon for whoever was firing at her house. The person could see in, while making it impossible for Tyler to see out.
Time and events had reversed themselves. Twenty-two years ago, she lay in her bedroom praying her parents would stop fighting, withdraw their threats, while now she sat on a wood floor, praying that the father of the child in her womb would not forfeit his life to a crazed lunatic who’d murdered before and had no qualms about murdering again.
Pulling her knees to her chest, Dana wondered who it could have been who hated Alicia that much to take her life, the life of the tiny one in her womb, and in the end cause Harry to end his life so tragically. She sat in the same position so long, her legs began to cramp.
What seemed like hours later, when in reality it was only ten minutes later, she heard movement and footsteps below her. Pushing to her feet, she stood, waiting for whatever it was that awaited her.
Pulling her shoulders back, she raised her chin and stared at the space at the top of the stairs. She held her breath, her lungs laboring, until she spied the head of the man who’d captured her heart with a single glance, her black knight.
“Tyler.” His name slipped out unbidden as she launched herself against his chest.
Gathering her to his chest, he rubbed her back in a comforting gesture. “It’s over, baby. Twenty-two years of deceit, disgrace, and duplicity ended tonight.”
Suddenly, the burning need to discover who’d murdered Alicia Sutton no longer mattered as Dana clung to her husband. Clearing her family name no longer mattered. None of it mattered because she was home.
Tyler Simmons Cole was home.
He was the family she needed to sustain her until she was reunited with her ancestors in the next life.
Epilogue
A year later …
Dana sat in her garden, h
er son cradled to her full breasts. Closing her eyes, she smiled, enjoying the pull of his tiny mouth on her flesh as he drank greedily.
The madness and mayhem threatening his life had ended the night his father became aware that he lay beneath her heart. Billy Clark had arrived at the house, along with several law officers from a neighboring town, to find a gunman shooting at the house belonging to Dr. Tyler and Mrs. Dana Cole.
The gunman had surrendered without a struggle. He’d been more than willing to tell who’d hired him to kill the local doctor and his wife. After being read his Miranda rights, the man shocked the law officials when he revealed he’d been hired by Mrs. Ross Wilson, Sr., to kill Dana.
A warrant was sworn out for the arrest of Lucinda Wilson, who on advice of counsel, confessed to a secret she’d harbored for more than thirty years: Her husband, not Harry Nichols, had fathered Dana Alicia Nichols.
Married and the father of a young son, Ross had not been able to resist the flirtatious Alicia Sutton. However, when the beautiful teenager found herself pregnant, Ross turned his back on her. She, needing a father for the child growing rapidly in her womb, turned her attention to Dr. Harry Nichols. Harry, unable to father a child because he’d contracted mumps during puberty, accepted Alicia as his wife and the child she carried as his.
Alicia and Harry’s marriage was perfect until Ross decided he wanted Alicia again. His own marriage floundering, when Alicia came to Ross for the second time with the news she was pregnant with his child, Ross asked Lucinda for a divorce.
However, Mrs. Lucinda Wilson refused to give up her status in a town where she’d become a social grande dame. It was Lucinda who’d walked into Harry’s house and shot Alicia as she lay sleeping. It was she who’d paid someone to torch Raven’s Crest. It was she who’d paid the then-deputy sheriff to hang Harry Nichols in his cell, making it look like a suicide.
Lucinda accepted a plea bargain rather than face the humiliation of a trial. She was sentenced a life sentence in a state prison in a remote part of the state.
Ross Wilson, Sr., was given five years probation for paying an illegitimate niece to accuse Dr. Tyler Cole of rape.
Twana Singleton served six months in a local jail for perjury.
And R.W., Ross Wilson, Jr., abandoned his plan to seek political office. He waited until his mother was transported to prison, then left Hillsboro, declaring passionately he would never return.
Dana had several years before she had to decide whether to tell her son that his grandfather was not Dr. Harry Nichols, but Ross Wilson, Sr.
Running a fingertip over his black curly hair, she smiled at the peaceful expression on her son’s face. Martin Diaz Cole II had decided to compromise—he’d inherited his father’s hair color and dimples, and his mother’s brilliant jewel-like golden eyes.
A shadow fell across her, and she glanced up to find Tyler standing several feet away, smiling. He was close to completing his second year in his medical study to lower the infant-mortality rates in Hillsboro. So far, he hadn’t lost a baby.
He’d spent most of his inheritance building a hospital in Hillsboro. The anticipated date for completing the building of the Dr. Silas Nichols—SCC Hospital was the end of the year.
The Coles had come through as anonymous donors when they pledged a hundred million dollars to honor the memory of Samuel Claridge Cole.
Returning her husband’s smile, Dana nodded. “I’m ready.” She and Tyler were going to West Palm Beach, Florida, to introduce a future patriarch to his family.
This family gathering was to become an exceptionally joyous occasion because of three new babies. Michael and Jolene had welcomed a son, Joshua Michael Kirkland; Silah and Arianna a daughter: Marguerite Selima Kadir; and then there was their own Martin Diaz Cole II.
Dana handed Tyler his son, covered her breasts, and then grasped his free hand as he pulled her to her feet. Hand in hand, they walked to the car parked in the driveway, where a driver waited to take them to the airport.
Dana glanced at the detached guest house, smiling. The furniture that had been in Georgia Sutton’s house now filled the rooms. Her grandmother’s beloved clock graced the entryway of the main house, chiming the hour and half hour as it had done for more than a century. The little house on the dead-end street had been sold.
Dana hadn’t known her return to Hillsboro would change her life—for the better. She slipped into the backseat of the limousine, holding out her arms for her son. Tyler handed her Martin, slipping in beside her. The driver closed the door, took his seat behind the wheel, and drove away from Nichols Landing.
After the birth of his son Tyler had changed his mind, deciding to name his property. After all, Hillsboro was his home for the present. He knew one day he and Dana would relocate to West Palm Beach, but he hoped that day would not come for a long time—a very, very long time.
Dropping an arm over her shoulders, he lowered his head, kissing her tenderly.
His life was perfect because he’d become his father’s son. I’m going to have a piece of everything I want. Some of it may not work out, but I’m still going to have a piece of it anyway.
His everything was Dana Alicia Nichols Cole.
About the Author
Rochelle Alers has been hailed by readers and booksellers alike as one of today’s most prolific and popular African American authors of romance and women’s fiction.
With more than sixty titles and nearly two million copies of her novels in print, Ms. Alers is a regular on the Waldenbooks, Borders and Essence bestseller lists, regularly chosen by Black Expressions Book Club, and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Emma Award, Vivian Stephens Award for Excellence in Romance Writing, the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award and the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Award.
She is a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., Iota Theta Zeta Chapter and her interests include gourmet cooking and traveling.
A full-time writer, Ms. Alers lives in a charming hamlet on Long Island.
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