Paper Rose

by Diana Palmer

  “I thought I’d get you to put Colby Lane on the payroll.” He held up his hand when Pierce looked thunderous. “He’s stopped drinking,” he told him. “Cecily got him into therapy. He’s not the man he was.”

  “You’re sure of that?” Pierce wanted to know.

  Tate smiled. “I’m sure.”

  “Okay. But if he ever throws a punch at me again, he’ll be smiling on the inside of his mouth!”

  Tate chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ll give him a call before I leave town.”

  Colby was quietly shocked to find Tate not only at his door the next morning, but smiling. He was expecting an armed assault following their recent telephone conversation. “I’m here with a job offer.”

  Colby’s dark eyes narrowed. “Does it come with a cyanide capsule?” he asked warily.

  Tate clapped the other man on the shoulder. “I’m sorry about the way I’ve treated you. I haven’t been thinking straight. I’m obliged to you for telling me the truth about Cecily.”

  “You know the baby’s yours, I gather?”

  Tate nodded. “I’m on my way to Tennessee to bring her home,” he replied.

  Colby’s eyes twinkled. “Does she know this?”

  “Not yet. I’m saving it for a surprise.”

  “I imagine you’re the one who’s going to get the surprise,” Colby informed him. “She’s changed a lot in the past few weeks.”

  “I noticed.” Tate leaned against the wall near the door. “I’ve got a job for you.”

  “You want me to go to Tennessee?” Colby murmured dryly.

  “In your dreams, Lane,” Tate returned. “No, not that. I want you to head up my security force for Pierce Hutton while I’m away.”

  Colby looked around the room. “Maybe I’m hallucinating.”

  “You and my father,” Tate muttered, shaking his head. “Listen, I’ve changed.”

  “Into what?”

  “Pay attention. It’s a good job. You’ll have regular hours. You can learn to sleep without a gun under your pillow. You won’t lose any more arms.” He added thoughtfully, “I’ve been a bad friend. I was jealous of you.”

  “But why?” Colby wanted to know. “Cecily is special. I look out for her, period. There’s never been a day since I met her when she wasn’t in love with you, or a time when I didn’t know it.”

  Tate felt warmth spread through his body at the remark. “I’ve given her hell. She may not feel that way, now.”

  “You can’t kill love,” Colby said heavily. “I know. I’ve tried.”

  Tate felt sorry for the man. He didn’t know how to put it into words.

  Colby shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve learned to live with my ghosts, thanks to that psychologist Cecily pushed me into seeing.” He scowled. “She keeps snakes, can you imagine? I used to see mine crawling out of whiskey bottles, but hers are real.”

  “Maybe she’s allergic to fur,” Tate pointed out.

  Colby chuckled. “Who knows. When do I start?” he added.

  “Today.” He produced a mobile phone and dialed a number. “I’m sending Colby Lane over. He’s my relief while I’m away. If you have any problems, report them to him.”

  He nodded as the person on the other end of the line replied in the affirmative. He closed up the phone. “Okay, here’s what you need to do…”

  Two hours later, he was on a plane for Nashville. The flight had been delayed due to snow and sleet, and he was impatient. He was irritated beyond belief by the time the flight disembarked at the Nashville airport. He went straight to the rental car desk and got a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Then he set out, in the snow, for Cullenville.

  The museum was easy to find—it was right downtown, past one of the town’s two stoplights. There he asked for directions to Cecily’s house and was told that she had a rental house two doors down. The museum secretary looked at him with pure awe.

  “Are you a relative of her late husband?” the woman asked.

  His eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It must be so hard for her, pregnant and just widowed,” the middle-aged woman continued. “We’ve all done what we could to make her happy here. Mr. Johnson, the curator, is a widower himself. He’s already sweet on her. But you’re probably anxious to see Mrs. Peterson. Shall I ring her and let her know you’re coming?”

  Tate’s eyes were blazing. “No,” he said with forced politeness. “I want to surprise her!”

  He stalked out, leaving the rented vehicle where it was as he trudged through the small layer of snow and glared contemptuously at the cars sliding around in the street as they passed. This little bit of snow was nothing compared to the six-foot snowdrifts on the reservation. Southerners, he considered, must not get much winter precipitation if this little bit of white dust paralyzed traffic!

  As for Cecily’s mythical dead husband, he considered, going up the walkway to the small brick structure where she lived, he was about to make a startling, resurrected appearance!

  He knocked on the door and waited.

  There was an irritated murmur beyond the closed door and the sound of a lock being unfastened. The door opened and a wan Cecily looked straight into his eyes.

  He managed to get inside the screen door and catch her before she passed out.

  She came to on the sofa with Tate sitting beside her, smoothing back her disheveled hair. The nausea climbed into her throat and, fortunately, stayed there. She looked at him with helpless delight, wishing she could hide what the sight of him was doing to her after so many empty, lonely weeks.

  He didn’t speak. He touched her hair, her forehead, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, with fingers that seemed bent on memorizing her. Then his hands went to the robe carelessly fastened over her cotton nightdress and pushed it aside. He touched her belly, his face radiant as he registered the very visible and tangible signs of her condition.

  “When did we make him?” he asked without preamble.

  She felt her world dissolve. He knew about the baby. Of course. That was why he was here.

  He met her eyes, found hostility and bitter disillusionment in them. His hand pressed down over her belly. “I would have come even if I hadn’t known about the baby,” he said at once.

  “The baby is mine.”

  “And mine.”

  “Audrey is not getting her avaricious little hands on my child…!”

  His hand held her down firmly. “I am not marrying Audrey,” he said through his teeth. “As if I would! She’s in a treatment center. She was bombed out of her mind on drugs. She confessed that she’d planted all the stories in the tabloids and blamed you.”

  “Wh…what?” she stammered, horrified.

  Tate let out a long breath. “Cecily, she’s unbalanced. She was spewing lies and the media gobbled them down whole. I never had plans to marry her, regardless of what I let you think. I rejected her and she was out for revenge. It was never more than that.”

  His hand felt odd against her swollen belly. She started to speak at the same moment that the baby suddenly moved.

  Tate’s hand jerked back as if it had been stung. He stared at her stomach with pure horror as it fluttered again.

  She couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing.

  “Is that…normal?” he wanted to know.

  “It’s a baby,” she said softly. “They move around. He kicks a little. Not much, just yet, but as he grows, he’ll get stronger.”

  “I never realized…” He drew in a long breath and put his hand back against her body. “Cecily, does it hurt you when he…” He hesitated. His black, stunned eyes met hers. “He?”

  She nodded.

  “They can tell, so soon?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “They did an ultrasound.”

  His fingers became caressing. A son. He was going to have a son. He swallowed. It was a shock. He hadn’t thought past her pregnancy, but now he realized that there was going to be a miniature version of himself and Cecily, a child who would embody the trait
s of all his ancestors. All his ancestors. It made him feel humble.

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  He glared into her eyes. “Not with any help from you, let me tell you! It took me forever to track down the driver who brought you to Nashville. He was off on extended sick leave, and it wasn’t until this week that anybody remembered he’d worked that route before Christmas.”

  She averted her eyes. “I didn’t want to be found.”

  “So I noticed. But you have been, and you’re damned well coming home,” he said furiously. “I’m damned if I’m going to leave you here at the mercy of people who go nuts over an inch of snow!”

  She sat up, displacing his hand, noticed that she was too close to him for comfort, swung her legs off the sofa and got up. “I’m not going as far as the mailbox with you!” she told him flatly. “I’ve made a new life for myself here, and I’m staying!”

  “That’s what you think.” He got up, too, and went toward the bedroom. He found her suitcase minutes later, threw it open on the bed and started filling it.

  “I’m not going with you,” she told him flatly. “You can pack. You can even take the suitcase and all my clothes. But I’m not leaving. This is my life now. You have no place in it!”

  He whirled. He was furious. “You’re carrying my child!”

  The sight of him was killing her. She loved him, wanted him, needed him, but he was here only out of a sense of duty, maybe even out of guilt. She knew he didn’t want ties or commitments; he’d said so often enough. He didn’t love her, either, and that was the coldest knowledge of all.

  “Colby asked me to marry him for the baby’s sake,” she said bitterly. “Maybe I should have.”

  “Over my dead body,” he assured her.

  She winced. “This is why I didn’t want you to know,” she said in a wobbly tone. “You’re doing exactly what I expected you’d do. I’m a responsibility all over again, a duty, a liability!”

  She didn’t even cry normally, he was thinking as he watched the tears run silently, in waves, down her pale cheeks.

  He stopped packing and moved to stand just in front of her, his face drawn and somber as he searched for the words to tell her why he was really here.

  She bit her lower lip in a vain effort to stem the tears. “Please go away,” she whispered. “Leave me in peace.”

  He scowled. “Cecily…”

  “Please, Tate,” she pleaded gently. “Just go home and forget that you know where I am. I’ve broken all my ties in Washington, I’ve put it all behind me. It’s just me and the baby now…”

  “You and the baby and your mythical dead husband,” he shot back. “What do I have to do to get through to you?”

  “There’s nothing you can do.” She searched his hard face. “You have no idea what limitations a baby would place on you, how it would change your life. You’re used to being a loner. You don’t share your feelings, your fears, your dreams with anyone. You live alone and you like it. Babies cry at all hours, they have to constantly be watched and fussed over. You’d resent the noise, and the constraint, and the lack of privacy.” She turned away. “In time, you’d hate us both for being in your way.”

  He felt sick to the soles of his shoes as he watched her walk back into the living room. “You don’t think I want you and the baby?”

  She laughed mirthlessly. “Everything you’ve said and done for the past eight years has shown me that you don’t want a close relationship with a woman. Especially, me.”

  He stuck his hands into the pockets of his slacks and frowned, searching for the right words. “You know why I pushed you away, Cecily,” he said quietly. “Not only were we, as I thought at the time, from different cultural backgrounds, I’d been in the position of a guardian to you. It would have been like taking advantage of an affection you couldn’t help.”

  She was staring out the window at the snow with her arms folded. Her back looked abnormally rigid. “I wasn’t beautiful enough for you.”

  Nothing had ever hurt him as much as that simple, painfully honest remark. He just looked at her, speechless. To him, she was the most beautiful woman on earth, inside and out, especially in her present condition.

  She turned with a sad smile on her face. “If you’re worried about whoever tried to run me down, I’ve had no problems since I’ve been here. I don’t think there will be any more attempts on my life. You can safely leave me where I am. I’m happy here, Tate. I’ll let you know when the baby comes,” she added quietly. “Certainly, you’ll have access to him any time you like.”

  Doors were closing. Walls were going up around her. He clenched his teeth together in impotent fury.

  “I want you,” he said forcefully, which was not at all what he wanted to say.

  “I don’t want you,” she replied, lying through her teeth. She wasn’t about to become an obligation again. She even smiled. “Thanks for coming to see about me. I’ll phone Leta when she and Matt come home from Nassau.”

  “They’re already home,” he said flatly. “I’ve been to make peace with them.”

  “Have you?” She smiled gently. “I’m glad. I’m so glad. It broke Leta’s heart that you wouldn’t speak to her.”

  “What do you think it’s going to do to her when she hears that you won’t marry the father of your child?”

  She gaped at him. “She…knows?”

  “They both know, Cecily,” he returned. “They were looking forward to making a fuss over you.” He turned toward the door, bristling with hurt pride and rejection. “You can call my mother and tell her yourself that you aren’t coming back. Then you can live here alone in the middle of ‘blizzard country,’ and I wish you well.” He turned at the door with his black eyes flashing. “As for me, hell will freeze over before I come near you again!”

  He went out and slammed the door. Cecily stared after him with her heart in her throat. Why was he so angry that she’d relieved him of any obligations about the baby? He couldn’t want her for herself. If he had, if he’d had any real feeling for her, he’d have married her years ago. It was only the baby.

  She let the tears rush down her face again with pure misery as she heard the four-wheel drive roar out of the driveway and accelerate down the road. She hoped he didn’t run over anybody. Her hand went to her stomach and she remembered with anguish the look on his face when he’d put his big, strong hand over his child. She’d sent him away for the sake of his own happiness, didn’t he know that? She supposed it was just hurt pride that had caused his outburst. But she wished he hadn’t come. It would be so much harder to live here now that she could see him in this house, in these rooms, and be haunted by the memory of him all over again. He wouldn’t come back. She’d burned her bridges. There was no way to rebuild them.

  Tate got as far as the rented vehicle and slammed his hand hard against the roof, scattering the light covering of snow where his hand hit. He’d lost his temper. That was the last thing he should have done, especially with a pregnant woman who already felt rejected and unappealing. He sighed angrily, staring back toward the house. Well, he couldn’t upset her any more than he already had, not today. He’d get a room at the local motel, stash his equipment and come back here on foot. He’d lived on instinct for a long time. He had finely honed reflexes and he sometimes played hunches that seemed illogical to his colleagues. But he sensed somehow that Cecily was in danger, that Gabrini was around, close, somewhere. Feeling that way, there was no chance in hell that he was going away until Cecily was safe. Cecily, and his baby.

  He wondered if he could have been wrong for once as he huddled in a strategically placed appliance carton near Cecily’s back stoop. Snow was falling again. He was cramped with his long legs shoved into barely half the required space, and it was cold.

  He looked around him at the light covering of snow and regretted his first impression of the way the south behaved in a little icy precipitation. He’d been listening to his police scanner with an earphone and what he lea
rned was a little humbling. There had been ten wrecks since he’d been in town, one of them fatal. It occurred to him that people in South Dakota learned to cope with snow because it came and stayed all winter. Here, where there were only a handful of days in the winter when ice or snow fell, people didn’t know how to drive in it. He was sad for the families of the two people who had died in wrecks. He thought about how he’d feel if he lost Cecily, and his heart almost stopped in his chest. She’d been part of him for so long that it would be unbearable to contemplate the rest of his life without her.

  A sound caught his attention. It wasn’t much of a sound. Just a faint crunch, the sound a foot might make in a patch of ice. His hand went to the .45 automatic he carried in a shoulder holster. He tugged it out, gently, and waited for the loud noise of a passing truck to reach its peak before he cocked it and thumbed off the safety. Wearing black, even a full face mask, he was well camouflaged here by the garbage can.

  It was a good thing that he was, too. A small man in dark clothing wearing a face mask like his was approaching the darkened house with an object in his hand that could only be a weapon.

  He was good, Tate thought angrily. He moved like an animal, in short, uneven steps that wouldn’t have alerted a deer deep in the forest, not the rhythmic movement of a human walk. He looked around him carefully and kept to the shadows. It was painfully apparent to Tate, who would know, that the man had stalked human game before with deadly intent.

  He didn’t bother to try the back door. He went to a low window where the kitchen was and, still watching stealthily, unfastened the screen and jimmied the window latch. On a moonless night, which this was, with only patches of ice to reflect the little bit of light coming from the street in front of the house, the man was practically invisible.

  Tate’s heart pounded violently. An adrenaline rush tautened every muscle in his body. He wanted to fire now, to prevent there being any small chance that Cecily would be harmed. But he had to have proof. So far the man had done nothing except force open a window. He had to be in the house before Tate could act. And then he’d have to act quickly, or perhaps cost Cecily her life. The thought stiffened his resolve. All his training, all his covert skills, had combined to lead him to this one brief span of time, when he alone could save the mother of his child from certain death. He couldn’t afford one single lapse now. He watched, waiting for the moment to strike.