Men Made in America Mega-Bundle
Page 143
“Just a few moments ago. I’m sorry, had you planned to see him off?”
Ben’s face was grim. “We had hoped to. We had an important message for him.”
A relieved smile lit Father Gruning’s swarthy face. “Oh, well, that’s no problem. He’ll be staying over in Los Angeles for a night. We can get in touch with airport security and they’ll pass the message along.”
Rachel’s heart screamed no, but her mouth was silent. She stood there, unmoving, brown eyes huge in her pale, haunted face, and waited for the words to come that would end everything.
Ben stood very still. He could feel the tension and panic radiate from the slender figure beside him, feel her love and despair washing over him in waves. Drowning him, washing him clean of the bitter twist of pain and rage that had eaten away at him for fifteen years. Emmett Chandler had destroyed many lives that day so long ago through his thoughtless idealism. How could he think he was any better when he was about to destroy just as completely and far more ruthlessly?
Krissy was long gone, a gentle, worshipful child who had lived far too short a time. Would she worship him any longer if she knew his unceasing quest for revenge, which he’d self-righteously labeled justice? He doubted it. And somehow, as he tried to conjure up the reproachful figure of his innocent younger sister, all he could see was Rachel, her huge eyes watching him, waiting for him to destroy their lives. And he couldn’t do it. Krissy was dead, and it was past time for him to let her go. Rachel was alive, beside him, and the choice was clear.
There was a long, torturous pause. Rachel looked up to see Ben’s eyes on her, distant and unreadable. And then his mouth twisted in a wry, self-mocking smile. “I guess that won’t be necessary,” he said, taking Rachel’s limp hand in his icy one. “I imagine he’ll be in touch this time next year.”
Father Gruning didn’t pretend to understand, just nodded cheerfully. “I’m sure he’ll be sorry he missed you.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Ben drawled, his grip tightening on Rachel’s hand.
“That reminds me…. You wouldn’t by any chance be Rachel Chandler?” the priest inquired.
“Yes.” The word came out strangled and rusty.
Father Gruning beamed. “Well, this is convenient. Father Frank left a package for you. He said to tell you he meant to give it to you yesterday, but he forgot. I have it someplace….” He was rummaging through his pockets, finally coming up with a small, gaily wrapped package no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. “Here it is. Well, that saves me a trip. Though I wouldn’t have minded—anything for Frank. We were in seminary together, fourteen years ago, and a kinder, more decent guy I have yet to meet. I’ll miss him,” the priest sighed, pushing his glasses further up on his nose.
“Did he pay you to say that?” Ben drawled.
Father Gruning looked startled, almost dropping the package before placing it in Ben’s large, outstretched hand. “I beg your pardon?”
Ben’s smile was faint. “Just kidding, Father. Good luck in your new parish.” He turned and moved away, still holding Rachel’s numb hand tightly in his.
“Oh, if Frank should get in touch, should I give him your regards?” Father Gruning inquired distantly.
Ben managed a wicked, mocking grin. “Do that, Father. Tell him Ben O’Hanlon wishes him well. Come on, Rachel.”
He didn’t say a word as they made their way back out of the terminal, only relinquishing his hold on her hand when he started the car. He dropped the small package in her lap, put the car in gear, and started driving.
He didn’t stop until they reached the secluded beach where he had first taught her how to snorkel. He put the elderly Land Rover in Park, leaned back against the seat, and draped his hands across the steering wheel. His tough, graceful body still radiated tension, and she sat there, unmoving, not knowing what to say, what to do to break the silence.
And then he let out a deep sigh, and with it the anger and tension seemed to drain from his body. He turned then, a warm, free smile reaching his hazel eyes. “I love you too,” he said simply. And she went into his arms, as sweetly and trustingly as a child. Or a woman in love.
They held each other for a long, healing eternity, and the relief and love flowed between them like the tide. She wanted to move even closer to him, and she shifted, pressing against his enveloping warmth, when the small package on her lap slipped to the floor. Slowly, reluctantly he released her, nodding toward the small package. “Aren’t you going to open that?”
She stared at it, curious and a little afraid. She didn’t want to bring Emmett back between them, but the soothing hand on the back of her neck reassured her. “Go ahead, Rachel. It’s okay. It’ll be another butterfly, won’t it?”
Her fingers were clumsy with the ribbon, ripping the paper nervously. “It should be. For fifteen years he’s sent them to me.” She dropped the top of the box onto the seat beside her, staring in wonder inside the box. “Oh, Ben,” she whispered.
He looked down. Nestled in the box were two crystal butterflies, dancing together in a perfect flight of love. Trust Emmett, he thought wryly. Reaching out, he put his arm around Rachel’s shoulders, drawing her against him.
She came happily, resting her head against his chest, the butterflies still clasped loosely in her hand. “I guess Emmett approves,” he said softly.
She looked at them for a moment longer, a smile lighting her face. “I guess he does.” And then she closed the box, putting them away, turning a look of such love and joy on him that it took his breath away. “Let’s go home, Ben.”
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
It was Rachel Chandler O’Hanlon’s twenty-ninth birthday, a cold day in April. The dirt on the winding gravel drive scrunched beneath her heavy boots as she climbed back up to the house from the mailbox, and the wind bit through the heavy woolen sweater she’d filched from her husband that morning. The small package was there, regular as clockwork, postmarked El Salvador.
“Did it come?” Ben poked his head around the corner of their rambling, always-under-construction house. He was in the midst of adding a mysterious wing of rooms off their bedroom and, as always, refused hired help, making do with the intermittent visits of newspaper friends. He looked tough and lean and fit in his faded jeans and flannel shirt, and she smiled brilliantly at him.
“Of course. Direct from El Salvador.”
He moved forward onto the deck, untying the nail apron and dropping it on the railing. “I really wondered whether we’d ever hear from him. For months I’ve been expecting a letter, a message, something. But not a word, even when Emmett Chandler was declared legally dead and the inheritance split among your family.”
“I wasn’t surprised,” Rachel said serenely. “He isn’t Emmett any more, he’s Father Frank. There’d be no reason to get in touch with us. Besides, he probably thinks you still might turn him in.”
“Don’t tempt me,” he growled. “Open it up.” He slid an arm around her in spite of his gruff tone, watching with interest as she tore off the heavy wrappings.
“Oh-oh,” she murmured, looking into the box.
Ben grinned. “A baby crystal butterfly to match the two larger ones. Do you suppose he’s trying to tell us something?”
“Well, he is a priest, you know. It’s his duty to encourage people to procreate,” she replied, keeping her eyes averted. It was something she had wanted so very much, she’d been afraid to bring it up, and now Emmett, with his usual lack of timing, had done it for her. She could only hope the ensuing discussion wasn’t going to ruin her birthday.
“That reminds me,” Ben whispered in her ear, that slow, sexy drawl, demoralizing as always. “Would you like your birthday present?”
She smiled up at him. “What is it? A table saw?”
“I thought you liked the belt sander I gave you for Christmas?” he protested.
“I did, I did. Even if you use it more than I do. But twenty-nine is getting pe
rilously close to thirty, and I’m feeling a little ancient this morning. I hope you have something to make me feel more youthful.”
“I have just the thing. We’re going back to the cottage on Kauai for two weeks.” His hand was kneading the small of her back in that way of his that never failed to make her knees weak.
“Ben!” she turned an overjoyed face to him. “When can we go?”
“I thought next week. The book’s coming out on the fifteenth, and I wanted to make myself scarce when it did. A lot of people are going to be pretty unhappy with the way I portrayed the American government in the sixties. And they’re not going to be much happier with the radicals. I thought it would be a perfect time to go back to the cottage—there are a lot of things I still want to try there.”
“Like what?”
His hand had slipped lower, beneath the waistband of her jeans, and she leaned back against him, sighing.
Turning her around, he pulled her into his arms, pressing her hips against his. “Like making love on the beach. We never did, you know.”
She made a face. “Sounds uncomfortable. All that sand ground into your skin.”
His grin was a savage slash of white in his tanned face. “I’ll be on the bottom,” he said, biting her lower lip with a sudden, darting move.
“That sounds like an offer I can’t refuse,” she murmured against his mouth, her arms encircling his waist. “Why the sudden interest in the great outdoors?”
“I want to make babies with you by the ocean,” he whispered, and her heart leaped. “Lots and lots of babies.” His mouth trailed damp, nibbling kisses along her cheek, ending with her delicate earlobe. His teeth sank in, lightly, and she moaned. “What do you think I’ve been building?”
“Another bathroom?” she murmured dazedly against his hair.
She felt his slight headshake. “A nursery. That is”—he pulled away, looking down at her with a smug grin—“if you want one.”
He knew her far too well. “I want one,” she said. “Can we make babies in the ocean, too?”
“We can only try,” he murmured wickedly. “And I promise to have the house finished by the time you’re three months along.”
“Sure you will,” she said, knowing of old how long it took him to finish anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t work hard; he was just easily distracted. With Ben’s arm tightly encircling Rachel’s waist, they strolled back into the house, heading for one more distraction. Her forehead was wrinkled with concentration, and he paused outside the doorless entrance to their bedroom to look down at her.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he queried, cocking his head to one side.
Reaching up on tiptoes, she brushed her mouth against his. “I was just wondering whether we could make babies in the hammock.” And she joined him in his shout of laughter before tumbling onto the unmade bed.
Love by Proxy
by Diana Palmer
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
One
Amelia Glenn tugged her beige trench coat closer around her body and tried not to giggle as she got off the elevator on the fourteenth floor of the Chicago office building. If only her fellow office workers at the agricultural equipment company could see her like this! The way that deathly dull job had been going lately, this was more a holiday than a favor for a friend.
She heard her bangles bunch at her wrists with a metallic ring and had to stand very still until they stopped, aware of curious stares from the two businessmen who’d come up with her on the elevator. Wouldn’t they pass out if they knew what was under her coat!
She walked down the hall looking for office suite 1411, where she was due to deliver a special message. Ordinarily, Kerrie did this particular one, but she was out sick and Amanda had been recruited by her friend Marla Sayers to fill in. Marla’s boyfriend was going to play a joke on his associate. It was only one message, after all, and Amelia did have the body for it, or so she was assured.
She was lean and tanned from head to toe, with a figure that could have modeled bikinis year-round. Her long, dark hair swung thickly as she walked, and her pale, dancing eyes were framed by black lashes, in a face whose features were as perfect as a cameo. She could have passed for a teenager.
There was, oddly, no one at the receptionist’s desk when she walked in. Perhaps she was at lunch. Amelia laughed and started toward the office door. She gathered her nerve, because she’d never done this particular stunt before, pinned a smile to her full lips and breezed in.
Apparently there was a small conference going on. A big, very cold-looking man in a patterned shirt and no jacket was leaning over a graph of some kind on a huge oak desk. Around it were two shorter, paler men, hanging on every word. Amelia hadn’t expected Wentworth Carson to be so big. He was as formidable as Marla’s boyfriend had described him. All business, ice cold, nothing in him to attract a woman. Yes, she could have recognized him in a crowd. He wasn’t handsome, not one bit. He had a big nose and bushy eyebrows and a pugnacious chin, and he looked more like a wrestler than an executive. He fit her nebulous image of a construction magnate all the way down to his big feet.
“Yes?” the big man asked coldly, looking up with eyes that were every bit as dark as the straight black hair that fell forward onto a broad forehead.
Amelia smiled wickedly. “Message for you, sir,” she said. And she let the coat drop.
The two men grouped around the desk stared, gaping, with appreciative smiles and big eyes. The bigger man stood erect and looked angry.
Amelia had a passable voice—no threat to the Met, of course, put passable. She began to gyrate in her outlandish belly dancer’s costume to the tune of the birthday song, inching slowly closer to the big, dark man.
He didn’t look very receptive. In fact, he looked as if he’d like to pitch her out the window. That was even better. She laughed huskily as she went closer, her hips twitching, her skirts flying, her arms uplifted with the small cymbals on her fingers to show the high, soft curve of her breasts in their metallic casings.
“Happy birthday, honey,” she added at the end, and just for pure spite, she went on tiptoe to kiss him full on his hard, chiseled mouth with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.
He kept his eyes open. His big body was rigid and he didn’t move, not an eyelash, not a finger, not a breath. His mouth was hard and slightly cool, and totally unresponsive. He allowed the blatant caress for an instant, and then his huge, warm hands caught her bare waist and set her roughly on her feet. They released her immediately, as if he didn’t like the feel of her taut, warm skin.
“What the hell kind of joke is this?” he asked coldly.
“It’s a birthday greeting,” she said, trying not to show how she really felt. Most people reacted in the spirit of fun that the messages intended, but it was a fact that this man wasn’t going to appreciate the offbeat humor of his partner. She almost felt sorry for him. But she had to tell. It was part of the job.
“From whom?” he persisted, oblivious to the amused looks of his co-workers.
“Your partner, Andrew Dedham,” she said.
“Then the joke is on him,” he said coldly. “Because today is not my birthday.”
She glared at him. “Then why didn’t you say so at the beginning?” she challenged. “You surely didn’t think I came in off the streets selling magazine subscriptions!”
His heavy brows lifted. “I wouldn’t buy that kind of magazine,” he said curtly.
Her eyes narrowed icily. “Why not, you look as if you could use some tutoring,” she returned. “Frozen clean through, are we?” she added with a cold smile.
He seemed to grow three inches. “Whatever I am is none of your bus
iness. And if you aren’t out that door in three minutes flat, I’ll have you arrested for soliciting.”
“I am not a prostitute,” she told him, sliding into her coat. “But if I were, honey, you wouldn’t be rich enough!”
“I wouldn’t be desperate enough,” he corrected. “Out.”
Just like that, as if she were a dog! She stared holes in him, but he only folded his arms over his formidable chest and glared back. Her eyes fell. She’d never encountered anybody like this giant dead fish, and she never wanted to again. From now on, Marla could do her own messages!
“When you do have your birthday, Mr. North Pole,” Amelia said at the door, “I hope your birthday cake explodes in your face!”
“Just make sure you don’t jump out of it,” he returned coldly.
“I couldn’t,” she replied with a sweet smile. “The heat from all the candles would burn me alive!”
And she closed the door with a hard slam. Her hands trembled as she refastened the coat.
The receptionist came back in with a tray of Styrofoam cups obviously filled with coffee. She smiled in a friendly way. “Are you waiting to see Mr. Carson?” she asked. “Sorry I wasn’t here, I just sneaked out to get them some coffee.”
She remembered belatedly the name of this building. “The…Carson Building…wouldn’t be…?” Amelia faltered.
“Yes, it would. Named for the late Angus. Did you want to see Mr. Carson?”
“I already have,” Amanda said with a rueful laugh. “His poor wife.”
The receptionist blinked. “Wife?”
Amelia was already at the other door, but she turned. “Isn’t he married?”
“Not him,” came the laughing reply. “There isn’t a woman anywhere brave enough.”
“I understand exactly what you mean. So long.”