Children of Destiny Books 1-3 (Texas: Children of Destiny Book 9)

by Ann Major

  TEXAS: CHILDREN OF DESTINY

  Books 1-3

  Collection

  By

  Ann Major

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  PASSION’S CHILD

  TEXAS: CHILDREN OF DESTINY

  BOOK 1

  DESTINY’S CHILD

  TEXAS: CHILDREN OF DESTINY

  BOOK 2

  NIGHT CHILD

  TEXAS: CHILDREN OF DESTINY

  BOOK 3

  PASSION’S CHILD

  TEXAS: CHILDREN OF DESTINY

  BOOK 1

  Ann Major

  Prologue

  Death hovered like a dark angel in the closed, airless room. There was no escape. For either of them.

  Her shoulders stiff with fatigue, her body numb, Amy sat huddled beside her sister’s bed where Lorrie lay groaning in labor. With each contraction, Lorrie’s feverish hand clamped around Amy’s in a bone-crushing vise.

  Through a mist of tears, Amy watched the snow outside blowing in the field between the trees. Oh, where was Dr. Pierce? Was he really making a house call to treat an injured fisherman as his loyal nurse had sworn, a bit too fervently, hours ago? Or was he comfortably ensconced on one of the frayed red leather stools at Big John’s Tavern, getting himself stumbling drunk, his frequent condition by this time most Saturday afternoons? Or was his battered Fiat stalled on the side of some bleak highway in the snow? Since he wasn’t answering his mobile, there was no way to know.

  An icy wind swept off the Pacific, up the high, barren cliffs and moaned in the forlorn grove of stunted trees outside the window of the tiny clinic.

  Amy bit her lip, almost welcoming the discomfort of Lorrie’s fingers cutting into her own again. The pain seemed little enough compared to what Lorrie was going through—little enough since everything that had happened to Lorrie was Amy’s fault.

  And Nick’s.

  One couldn’t very well forget that there was always a man responsible for every baby born. Nick had seduced and abandoned sixteen-year-old Lorrie.

  Amy hated Nicholas Browning for what he had done to her little sister. If only they’d never met him. If only they hadn’t both been foolish enough to fall in love with him.

  Amy’s stricken gaze flickered fearfully to Lorrie. Her face was so still and so translucently pale she barely looked alive. Purple shadows lay beneath her eyes. Wet gossamer strands of inky, dark hair were glued to her bloodless cheeks.

  As Amy gently brushed her sister’s matted hair away from her hot sticky face, Lorrie whimpered pitifully.

  “Amy! Oh, Amy, it hurts!” she sobbed. “It hurts!” She tightened her grip on Amy’s wrist and pulled her closer. Lorrie’s eyes were wild and glazed. “Amy, am I dying?”

  Amy suppressed a shudder. “Of course not, darling. I’m here, and I’m going to take care of you and the baby.”

  “How?” came a threadlike whisper.

  The single word echoed in Amy’s heart. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll finish school and find a way to make enough money to support us all. I promise.”

  “Oh, I—I wish I was like you—brave and strong, but ever since Mama died, I’ve been scared of just about everything. Like now,” Lorrie whispered. “Am I dying?”

  “No! Of course not!” Amy couldn’t bear looking into her sister’s terrified eyes because when she did, she lost her nerve too. “Hush, darling,” she murmured in a low, strangled tone.

  The trees outside nearly bent in two. Snow began to swirl.

  Amy was wondering why she’d ever considered this godforsaken fishing village clinging to the ocean’s edge in northern California a haven. It seemed a hellish prison now. But six months ago, when she’d been afraid Lorrie might do something desperate if she didn’t get her out of L.A., Amy had convinced Lorrie that the only solution to their problem was for them to switch identities and come here, for Lorrie to have her baby in secrecy and give it to Amy to raise. Thus Amy had bleached her own black hair platinum blond, the same shade as Lorrie’s, and Lorrie had dyed hers black. They had masqueraded as each other. When they returned to L.A. after the baby’s birth, Amy, not Lorrie, would claim the child as her own and raise it.

  It had been a nightmare hiding here; a nightmare keeping Lorrie from going crazy with boredom and doing something desperate again; a nightmare evading the townspeople’s prying curiosity. There was one nurse who’d somehow figured out the truth, and Amy worried that Nick might trace them here and charm the nurse into confiding in him.

  Lorrie’s frail body tensed in a rigor of pain, and she let out a scream that seemed to be wrenched from the depths of misery. For a moment Amy was so frightened that the breath went out of her lungs. Then Lorrie crushed her bruised hand so tightly she winced.

  How long did it take for a baby to come? It seemed to Amy that Lorrie had been lying in that bed for days rather than hours, beads of perspiration soaking her dull black hair as she writhed.

  Amy felt for Lorrie’s pulse. It seemed weak and fluttery, and Amy didn’t like the way her sister had begun to lie listlessly between the pains. Her face was as gray as the winter sky outside, and her breathing was growing fainter. She was losing what strength she had.

  If the doctor didn’t come... If the baby wasn’t born soon...

  The blood was thudding in Amy’s ears so loudly she could hardly think. Something had to be done, and quickly.

  Carefully, Amy disengaged Lorrie’s fingers from her wrist and made a dash toward the door. Just as she reached it, Dr. Pierce opened it and stepped inside. The nurse, aware of Amy’s anxiety, came in with him, hovering beside him protectively.

  His thin body was bent over like a crane’s, and he moved with brittle, birdlike motions.

  “Where have you been?” Amy cried.

  Dr. Pierce looked at her with faded blue eyes. “Trying to save a dying man.”

  Amy heard the sense of failure in his contrite tone and said nothing more as he moved past her to examine Lorrie.

  Dear God, let him save Lorrie, Amy thought.

  At last he turned and whispered a battery of orders to his nurse. “The baby’s in breach position. Take her into the delivery room.”

  The faded eyes rested briefly on Amy, but she was too numb for her mind to frame a question.

  Lorrie’s lips quivered as she was wheeled away from Amy, but when Amy tried to follow the stretcher, the nurse gently restrained her.

  Alone, Amy sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands in despair as she listened to her sister’s muffled screams coming from inside the delivery room.

  It seemed to Amy that she was outside the delivery room for an eternity, keeping her silent vigil, praying feverishly to God and chewing her lip until it was raw.

  During the awful hell of that waiting, one thought reeled through her tired mind. If Lorrie and the baby lived, no matter how desperate Amy might become, no matter how rich he was, she would never ask Nicholas Browning for help. She would protect Lorrie and the baby from him with her own life if necessary.

  Once Amy had loved him, but he had broken her heart and turned her love to desperate hate. He had nearly destroyed her sister.

  Amy knew it would be hard raising a child alone, without a father, but she was determined to succeed.

  She was just as determined to hate Nicholas Browning until the day she died.

  One

  Damn! Nick had known Amy was trouble from the first minute he’d laid eye
s on her seven years ago. She was still trouble, and she always would be.

  Nicholas Browning was standing in his darkened office that overlooked the marina. He stood alone, a golden colossus of a man, staring unseeingly out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the purple sky and the gray froth of wind-whipped waves on San Francisco Bay. His black mood mirrored the turbulence of the weather outside.

  Although he’d shut his door, the faint sounds of Christmas music and his staff’s laughter filtered into the room. He didn’t much like Christmas decorations or music.

  Nick was president of South Sails, a world-famous sail loft owned by his cousin, Sebastian Jacobs. Nick’s office was extravagantly decorated. Sumptuous red Persian carpets lay over gleaming parquet floors. Leather chairs and sofas surrounded his immense desk. Twin Chinese statues of apple-green jade guarded the doors. It was an office meant to impress, and it did. The man to whom it belonged was rich, successful, and proud of it. He worked hard and thought he deserved to live well.

  At twenty-nine, Nick was proud of his accomplishments. Against one wall his sailing trophies gleamed from glass shelves—two Olympic silver medals in the Sailing class and his three trophies for J-24 championships occupied positions of prominence. Above them were framed photographs of several America’s Cup contenders and their colorful spinnakers. The largest picture was of Nick, at the helm of America’s Lady, Sebastian’s challenger in the last America’s Cup campaign.

  Nick loved sailboats and he loved racing them. He liked designing and manufacturing sails and he prided himself in being the best at everything he did. Most men with an all-consuming passion for both their work and their play were happy men.

  But he had never been like most men.

  Nick didn’t hear the Christmas carols. He was lost in his own thoughts. He remained at the windows, his muscular body tense, his emotions quietly controlled.

  “Damn!” He expelled the curse in a taut whisper. How was it possible that one woman could bring him so much pain?

  It was almost Christmas and, as usual, he was running away because for him the holiday season was the loneliest time of the year. Not that he was a man who ran away from many things. Not that he would have admitted his feelings to anyone.

  Nicholas Browning had been born a bastard, and he’d learned a long time ago how to conceal loneliness behind a stubborn wall of defiant pride.

  Nick jammed doubled fists into his trousers and watched the white yachts straining at their dock lines as the fierce winds began to whistle through their shrouds.

  Everything had been so simple until Marcie brought him his mail.

  Tomorrow Nick had been planning to leave for Australia to sail Sebastian’s brand new high-performance yacht in the six-hundred-and-thirty-mile Sydney-to-Hobart Race and in its associated Southern Cross Cup Series. That was why Marcie had organized the early “bon voyage” Christmas party next door.

  Nick went back to his desk and sat down in the leather chair behind it. On the smooth, varnished surface were neat stacks of checks he’d signed as well as invoices, letters, and file folders.

  He switched on his digital voice recorder then abruptly turned it off again. He couldn’t work. All he could think of was Amy.

  Amy! Dear God! Why couldn’t he forget her and accept their separation the way she had?

  Because he wasn’t made of ice the way she was—damn it! Because he’d married her for the right reasons, and she’d married him for the wrong ones.

  His eyes strayed to the two pieces of personal correspondence that had arrived today. Inside Sebastian’s Christmas card, he’d enclosed a picture of Amy sailing her catamaran with Triple. Sebastian’s brief note said that Amy had sent the photo in her Christmas card to him. Amy worked for Sebastian, too, and though she had nothing to do with the South Sails operation, she was one of Sebastian’s most valuable executives.

  It infuriated Nick that she treated Sebastian like family while ignoring her own husband. Amy had been Nick’s wife for more than five years, and never once since their separation had she willingly corresponded with him.

  Why the hell did he still care? Why didn’t he make it easy for her to divorce him? Nick picked up the picture. He would have given anything to feel indifferent toward her, but the mere sight of her laughing, upturned face sent his pulse thudding with a violent mixture of unwanted emotions.

  She hadn’t smiled at him like that in years! He stared at the glossy image of a slim young woman strapped into a trapeze, hiking out with only her feet against the side of the boat. A soaked, long-sleeved white T-shirt was plastered to her body. The water made it transparent so that the lines of her bikini were clearly visible. Not that Amy usually wore a bikini in public or ever wanted herself to be photographed in one. She was prim and proper to the core.

  His gaze swept over her full breasts, down her flat belly, down the curving length of her brown legs. Memories of her supple body beneath his, her arms wrapped around him, her hands clinging, her soft voice crying out assailed him.

  Once she’d been his to touch, to caress, to love. Once he’d made her forget how improper it was for a lady to go wild in bed. Then he’d lost her—completely, irrevocably—and he still didn’t know why. Maybe that was the reason he couldn’t let her go.

  In the picture, her long black hair flew about her neck and face in lustrous tangles. Usually she wore it primly secured at the nape of her neck in that tight little knot he detested. He remembered the perfumed scent of her hair—the silken feel of it against his cheek as it fanned out over his white pillow. The last time he’d slept with her had been two years ago. She’d come alone to San Francisco for his younger brother Jack’s funeral, and when Nick had turned to her in his uncontrollable grief, she’d ended up in his bed. But the next morning she’d left him, and her determination to have nothing to do with him had seemed even stronger than before.

  Why, damn it? Why?

  In the photograph, Triple was at the helm—Triple who was only six years old—and the catamaran was difficult for even a man to manage. Nick felt a surge of paternal pride as he examined the image of his sturdy little boy. Triple’s jaw was squared with determination, every muscle in his small body straining as he gripped the tiller and fought to control the boat.

  For all her coldness as a wife, at least Amy was a warm and dedicated mother. Triple wasn’t an easy child. He was bold and precocious, and he had a peculiar penchant for bringing disaster on himself by tackling tasks too difficult for him. He’d been christened Michael John Browning. From the crib he’d been three times as much trouble as an ordinary child would be, and from a multitude of mischievous activities he’d derived his nickname, Triple Trouble, which had long since been shortened to Triple.

  The hastily scrawled inscription at the bottom of the picture read:

  Dear Sebastian,

  This was taken right before Triple lost hold of the tiller and we capsized. Triple got pretty mad when we landed in the water.

  Love, Amy

  Nick smiled. He always got mad at himself when he made mistakes sailing. Jack had been like that, too. Nick cut the painful thought short. He still found it hard to accept losing Jack.

  Nick forced himself to set the picture aside. There was no use torturing himself by looking at it. He’d made a bargain to stay out of their lives for eleven months out of the year. But every July, Triple was his for the whole month. But only for July. The rest of the year Nick tried to forget he had a family. Of course, he sent cards and small gifts on holidays, but he’d learned he was happier if he put Amy and Triple out of his mind and concentrated on his work.

  Nick knew she didn’t want him. Sometimes he wondered if she ever had. Had Amy done all of it only because he was rich and she’d been after money, dropping him when she’d seen a way to make use of Sebastian instead—and have her independence, too?

  Nick picked up the Christmas card that Triple had sent and studied his son’s scribbled, misspelled message once more.

  All I want fro
Christmas is to see yuo, Dad. Love, Triple.

  Every time Nick reread the brief note, he knew that he felt the same about Triple. It was hell having a son, and yet not having him. Hell, flying to the other side of the world to race a sailboat when all he really wanted to do was spend time with Triple.

  The spelling mistakes pulled at something else inside Nick. Triple had inherited dyslexia from him. His case wasn’t as severe as Nick’s had been. Lots of first graders mixed up letters, but Nick knew from experience how much more difficult it was going to be for Triple to learn to read and spell. More than anything, Nick wished he could be there to help him.

  But that simply wasn’t possible. Amy would never allow it.

  Anger ripped through Nick. Triple’s card was a plea for love. Only someone with a heart of stone could ignore it.

  Who did she think she was? Triple was his son, too, and it was Christmas.

  Nick glanced at his watch. It was nearly four. Triple was probably home already for the holidays, but Amy would still be at work.

  To hell with her.

  Nick reached for the telephone and punched the buttons briskly. Even though he rarely called Triple, he knew the number by heart.

  “Hello...” The vibrant feminine greeting was a husky caress. The unexpected sound of Amy’s voice jarred his nervous system.

  She had been expecting someone, someone she obviously wanted to talk to. Was it another man?

  The muscles in Nick’s stomach contracted sharply at the thought.

  “Hello,” she repeated, still sounding friendly, though a little uncertain.

  He imagined her sitting rigidly at her desk in that austere little office in her Malibu home. He had bought her that house and she’d said she hated it because it was too extravagant—like him.

  She was probably wearing a suit made of stiff material buttoned tightly to her throat—something she’d bought on sale somewhere. Her hair would be pulled back in that awful little bun.