by Brenda Joyce
"I had not realized there was a 'you and Francesca,' " he murmured. "Except in a particular fairy tale." He gave her a look.
She folded her arms tightly across her chest. "Don't start now, please."
Her tone had been pleading; his expression softened.
"I want you to stay away from her," Bragg said harshly. "She is too good for the likes of you—and you damn well know it."
Hart looked at his half brother as if he were an annoying mosquito that had dared to appear within his mosquito netting.
Francesca moved closer to them. "Please, stop it. Not now, not today." More tears threatened to rise. "Today I cannot watch the two of you carry on like small jealous boys."
They both ignored her, of course. Hart smiled, more coldly than before, at his brother. "I am well aware of the fact that I am hardly fit for Francesca to wipe her boots upon," he said softly. "But fortunately, she is somewhat fond of me, and we are friends—whether you like it or not."
Bragg became still. He was furious. "And what do you think to gain from your friendship with Francesca?" he demanded.
"Far more than you think to gain from your friendship," he said.
Bragg took a swing. Hart ducked. Francesca shouted at them both, "What do the two of you think you are doing?"
"I think you heard him; he hardly has friendship in mind," Bragg gritted.
Hart appeared amused. "I find it interesting, the interpretation you put upon my words."
Francesca touched him; he sighed and backed off. She turned to Bragg. "You should go. Mother is very upset." She gave him a significant we-will-speak-later look. "And don't worry about Calder. We are friends, truly."
Bragg managed to tear his gaze from Hart. He was incredulous. "When will you see the truth? When you let go of your utter naiveté? Hart has no scruples, none. And he does not have friends, Francesca." He turned coldly to Hart. "Correct me if I am wrong, Calder?"
Hart was as calm as Bragg was not. "Francesca is the first."
Bragg faced her with an I-told-you-so look. "You are deceiving yourself if you think it is friendship which he wants from you," he said very softly.
Francesca simply could not argue over this subject now. She took his hand and kissed his cheek, her lips lingering and firm. And she gripped his palm tightly, as if it were the line to a life preserver and she were floundering in a tempestuous sea. But then again, that was exactly how she felt. "Don't worry," she said as softly. "Not about Calder."
He softened, understanding her completely—they had their own relationship to unravel, and the advent of his wife into their lives. She knew he was an instant from pulling her close, but he glanced at the door, as did she. It remained wide open.
Hart made a disparaging sound.
Bragg gave him a hard glance. "Stay away from her," he said again. "And if you ever touch a hair on her head, you will be very sorry indeed." He gave Francesca another look and strode out, rather angrily.
Francesca felt all of her strength draining away. She took a deep breath, looked up, and found Hart studying her intently.
"I take it that your tragic love affair is not going well?" he asked simply, with no mockery and no cruelty.
She shook her head. "You were right. I was wrong. Please do not say I told you so, and please, do not smirk."
"I am too fond of you to gloat," he said, and he reached out with a rueful smile and touched her cheek. Then he dropped his hand.
Her skin tingled where his fingers had grazed it. She walked quickly away.
"You can run, but you cannot hide," he said softly. "Not from me."
She whirled. "What does that mean?" she cried with real panic.
"It means I have not forgotten our discussion of a few days ago, even if you have. It means we both know that there is more here than meets the eye."
"I am not up to this!" she cried. And she had never meant her words more earnestly.
"I take it your love story is taking an unexpected and unscripted turn for the worse?" His brows arched.
She sat down hard on an ottoman. "Leigh Anne, came here."
"I see." He strolled closer but did not sit. She hated it when he chose to loom over her, a tower of male strength and power. "Care to talk about it? I am sorry," he added.
"I do not want your pity," she said firmly.
"And you do not have it!" he exclaimed. "Why would anyone, least of all I, pity you?"
She had to smile, just a little. "You know, Calder, sometimes you actually say the right thing."
He grinned. "But not often."
"No, not often," she said, her smile slipping. She looked up at him, careful not to inventory his body. "And that is why we are friends. I can always count on the truth from you, even when it is unpleasant."
He stared.
She felt herself beginning to flush. "What is it?"
His jaw flexed visibly. "Rick is right," he said. And the color above his cheekbones began to change; Francesca thought he might be blushing, but surely, she was mistaken.
But a pink cast now colored his cheeks.
She stood. "Calder?"
He gave her a look that she could not decipher, one so grim and determined that his eyes had turned to forged steel, and he turned and paced back and forth across the salon, twice.
She watched him warily. He reminded her of a wild animal, locked up for far too long in a cage. "Calder? What do you mean?"
He came to stand before her. He made her feel five feet tall. "Rick is right. My intentions are not platonic ones."
His meaning was a blow; her heart stopped; she gasped. "What?"
"I do believe you heard my every word," he said, but he was not wry. His gaze was brilliant with resolve and intensity, and he was frightening her.
Yet every inch of her body was painfully alive. She wet her lips. "You intend to seduce me?"
His gaze widened; he laughed, the sound incredulous but harsh. "I intend to marry you," he said.
She thought she had misheard. "What? "
"I intend to marry you." He gave her a strange look. "I intend to make you my wife."
TWO HOURS LATER
There was a knock on the door, but she did not hear it. She was faint. She sat on the sofa, unmoving, although her mind was racing at impossible speeds. The salon was all darkness and shadow except for the single lamp that had been on when she had first walked in, earlier in the evening. How could this be happening? Calder, is this a jest?
I would never joke about this subject, and certainly not with you.
Francesca could not recall the rest of their conversation, if indeed, it had continued at all. He had left shortly afterward, telling her that he would call on her the next day or the day after that—as casually as if he had not just said he wanted to make her his wife. Had he dropped a cannonball in the center of the room, one that had exploded, she could not be more shocked.
Calder Hart intended to marry her. Had he lost his mind?
And what about Bragg? She loved him. She always would. She loved his brother.
I intend to marry you.
I am sick of it, him, the two of you?
Afraid of the real woman inside of yourself? .. . It is not me you are afraid of.
Francesca clapped her hand over her ears, but that would not stop his soft, sexual voice from invading her thoughts, her mind. How could this be happening? How?
And she recalled the steely look in his eyes, and fear and panic overcame her. She had never seen such determination, and recalling it, she felt powerless, as if she were in the path of a cyclone, and incapable of moving even a single step out of the way.
Marry Calder Hart? It was absurd!
An image flashed in her mind, of her in a wedding dress, in Hart's arms, on his big four-poster bed.
She shuddered and suddenly felt as if she had been propelled, against her will, to the edge of a terrible precipice. Because marrying Calder Hart was no different from crawling to the very edge of a tree's limb as someone began to saw
through it. It was only a matter of time before that limb went crashing to the earth, with her on it in all of her bridal finery.
She closed her eyes tightly and faced a terrible truth. He could undo her body with a single word, a single look, but that was not love. When he walked into a room she became breathless and frightened all at once, but that was not love.
The man she loved was married, a man she could never have.
The arithmetic was extraordinarily simple—why hadn't she done the math sooner? She could not marry without love, Bragg was already married; therefore, she was not marrying anyone, not ever, and that included Calder Hart. Because she was the kind of woman to only give her heart away once and forever.
It struck her then that her worries were groundless. Hart was not going to drag her screaming and kicking in protest down the aisle. All she had to do was go to him and explain herself. She would tell him that although Leigh Anne had returned to Bragg, that could not, and would not, change her heart. Her heart would always belong to Bragg, and because of that, she was not ever going to marry anyone. And she would also remind him of the fact that he was dead set against marriage, period. She would remind him of his innate inclination to remain a single and notorious bachelor, in the strongest manner possible. She might even briefly point out that he had had a temporary lapse in sanity. After all, they hardly were suitable as a couple; they had very little in common! In fact, undoubtedly by the time she got to this last point they would be sipping his finest Scotch whiskey and laughing over the absurdity of it all. They would discuss his true nature and her resolve and then they would realize that their friendship was perfect as it was. They would laugh about his sudden peculiar urge to wed her—of all women! And everything would go back to the way it had been until a few hours ago.
Thank God.
She laughed in utter relief.
Tomorrow morning, first thing, she would go to his house and resolve the entire affair!
Francesca started from the salon and bumped into her father in the hall. "Papa?" She sensed he was looking for her. He did not look pleased.
"You have a telephone call, Francesca. It is Rick."
She stiffened, all of her relief vanishing, although she could not think why. Hadn't he said he would telephone her later? But just then, she had been ready to slip up to her room with some hot tea and perhaps a piece of terribly decadent chocolate cake. Crawling into bed seemed the perfect anecdote to the extremely frightful day.
She thanked her father, changed direction, and hurried into the library. The receiver was off the hook, on his desk. She lifted it to her ear. "Bragg?"
"There has been another act of vandalism, Francesca," he said without preamble.
She clutched the receiver. "Another art studio?" she gasped, instantly thinking of the shambles Sarah's studio had been in when she had first seen it. And she kept thinking about all that dark red paint that had looked exactly like blood.
"Yes, and it has been thoroughly destroyed, in a similar manner to Sarah's studio, but in a more extreme way. It gets worse," he added.
"How can it be worse?" she whispered, already sensing what was to come.
"The artist was a young woman, just a few years older than Sarah."
Her heart lurched. "Was?"
There was a pause. "She has been murdered," he said.
Francesca forgot to breathe. "Where are you?"
"At headquarters. Francesca, I need you."
"I'll be right there," she said, and she hung up the telephone. A killer was on the loose, and if her instincts were serving her correctly, Sarah's life might very well be in danger. There was no time now to dwell upon Hart's odd proposal, even if she could not quite get over it.
Suddenly Francesca shuddered. If Bragg ever found out that Hart had proposed, all hell would break loose.
And then her determination and good sense returned. Bragg must never find out, and tomorrow she would set the record straight with Calder Hart. Oh yes, she would.
But right now, she had a murder to solve.
