Terms of Surrender

by Janet Dailey

  “I told him you would.” She searched his face for some clue to confirm her belief, but his impassive features yielded nothing. “You will, won’t you?”

  “We need time.” The washcloth stopped caressing her and began to scrub, echoing the roughness in his reply.

  Angie caught at his wrist, checking his motion. “How long before I can see her, Deke?” If he loved her, he wouldn’t keep her separated from Lindy. She had to test him.

  “Don’t push it, Angie,” he warned, a flare of anger in his gray eyes.

  But she persisted, because she had to know how he felt toward her—if he cared. “Christmas is coming. I will see her before then, won’t I?” Her blue eyes were rounded in silent appeal.

  The muscles along his jaw bunched as it tightened. All in one motion, Deke pulled away and rolled to his feet, towering above her. “Dammit, I said don’t push it!” The washcloth was hurled into the bathwater, its resultant splash punctuating his angry statement.

  Instinctively Angie recoiled from the spray. When she looked back, Deke was striding from the room, grabbing his hat off the doorknob as he went by. For a second, she was too stunned to move.

  “Deke!” But even as she called him, Angie knew he wouldn’t come back. Even if it showed a shameless lack of pride, she didn’t want him to leave, not as long as there was a breath of a chance for them.

  Stepping hurriedly out of the slippery tub, she pulled the thick bath towel off the rack and made a haphazard attempt to dry the water dripping from her. Then she was running after him, wrapping the towel around her as she went.

  “Deke!” Her heart pounded in her throat until it ached. Angie raced down the hallway through the living room to the door standing open at the top of the stairs. “Deke!” But he wasn’t in sight. She stopped, realizing she hadn’t been quick enough to catch him. Tears burned the back of her eyes as she turned away from the stairs.

  A brief movement in the living room caught her eye. Deke was standing by the drink cabinet with a glass in his hand. For a second Angie thought he was a figment of her imagination, but the hard feel of his eyes was real. She crossed the space between them in a wild daze.

  “I thought you’d gone,” Angie murmured.

  “I should have.” Deke bolted down the drink as if to put out a fire raging inside of him, then studied the bottom of the empty glass with grim absorption.

  She lowered her gaze to his shirt front. “I’m glad you didn’t.” Her voice wavered with relief.

  The glass was set aside. “Are you?” His hands moved to the towel where it was tucked around her. Deke loosened it and let it fall to the floor. Then he placed his hands high on her ribcage and covered the button-points of her breasts with his thumbs. “Why don’t you show me how glad you are?” he challenged huskily.

  Angie couldn’t breathe. She was dimly aware of the sun’s setting rays streaming in through the windows which meant the drapes were open. Anyone could see in.

  “Deke, the windows . . . the neighbors ...” She was too rawly aware of awakened desire to put the words together in a sentence.

  “To hell with the neighbors,” he muttered, but he picked her up and carried her out of the living room away from any peeping eyes. He set her down in the middle of the bedroom. “I’m always undressing you,” Deke stated. “This time you’re going to undress me.”

  Her fingers trembled at the new experience as she reached to unfasten his shirt buttons.

  Chapter Ten

  Something fresh and sparkling entered their relationship. Angie wasn’t sure whether love had given her a new outlook or they had reached a higher plateau. Deke seemed less reserved. His lazy smile appeared more often and sometimes his eyes gleamed with possessive gentleness. Yet Lindy remained a forbidden topic, and Angie was too insecure to broach it and risk losing what little she had.

  Two days into December, a weather front moved in. A cold wind moaned outside the kitchen windows while Angie fixed breakfast for the two of them. In Texas vernacular, it was known as a “blue norther” that swept down from the northern plains. They usually accused the “snowbirds” coming south for the winter of leaving the gate open and letting the cold weather through.

  “Do you want to go to the beach this morning?” Deke asked when Angie set their plates of pancakes and sausage on the counter.

  The invitation took her by surprise. They’d never done anything together in the daytime. Deke had always left right after breakfast, and she didn’t see him again until night. She was thrown by this proposed change in their routine. There was confusion in her look.

  “Don’t you have to leave?” She watched him casually spreading butter between his pancakes.

  There was a vague lift of his shoulders. “Not necessarily.” He poured maple syrup over the stack and passed the syrup pitcher to Angie. “The boys can handle things at the ranch for one morning.” It was a weekday, Angie realized, so Lindy would be at school. “If you don’t want to go, that’s all right.”

  “I do.” She didn’t want him to doubt that.

  His glance roamed over her in warm approval before he shifted his attention to the food. “You’ll have to dress warm. It’ll be blustery on the island.”

  “I will.”

  Her hooded windbreaker was lined for warmth. Under it, Angie wore a turtleneck sweater of black wool, while the heavy fabric of her light blue corduroys offered protection for her legs. With thick socks and rubber-soled walking shoes, she was ready to combat the elements.

  Deke looked equally prepared in his own way as he sat behind the wheel of the car. His hat was pushed low and straight on his head. The western cut of his corduroy jacket was lined with sheepskin, leather patches on the sleeves at the elbows, and the collar was turned up in expectation of the wind. Dark blue Levis and boots completed his outfit.

  The ferry chugged its way across the channel to its slip on Mustang Island, carrying only a handful of cars on its short journey, to the resort town of Port Aransas. Gray clouds rolled and tumbled in the skies overhead, blown by the strong north wind. A few seagulls struggled against it, pushed to a standstill before surrendering and soaring away on its currents. On previous trips to the island seven years ago, Angie remembered porpoises looping through the water alongside the ferry to usher it across the channel. She spied none in the waters today. They’d be back, when the front had blown through and the Texas winter sun returned.

  As the ferry nosed into its slip, there was a brief scurry of activity to make it fast. Deke started the car’s engine in preparation to disembark. A few minutes later, they were rolling off. Mustang Island was a barrier island, one of a string that protects the Gulf coastline of Texas. They turned on the road leading to the long stretch of sandy beach on the Gulf side of the island.

  It was practically deserted except for a few hardy souls. The fair-weather fishermen were not to be seen, and shell-collectors were waiting for a warmer day to venture on the sands. They drove on the firmly packed sand, a foaming gray-green surf sending curling waves crashing into shore on one side and creamy sand dunes with tall stands of sea oats rising in mounds on the other. Past the fishing piers, the cabanas and bathhouses, Deke found an empty stretch of beach and parked the car.

  His glance slid to Angie. “Want to walk awhile?”

  “Sure.” She climbed out on the passenger side and walked around the car to join him.

  The wind nipped at her face. Deke waited while she put her hood up and tied the string under her chin, then he took her hand to walk along the beach. The heavy surf drowned out all other sound as it pounded the sand. With the turbulent sea, the rolling gray clouds, and the blustery wind, there was something raw and wild about the morning—and they had it all to themselves.

  They stayed close to the tidewater mark out of the reach of the waves. Driftwood—pieces of lumber and trees—were scattered on the shore, stringy with seaweed and barnacles. Pieces of brittle sand dollars, angel-wings and shark-eyes dotted the sand, along with other mollusk s
hells. The sea was giving up its treasures, surrendering them at the feet of the island.

  The weathered trunk of a long-dead tree lay high on the beach, the charred remnants of some camper’s fire in front of it. The elements had smoothed the trunk’s surface, turning it into a natural bench. Deke led her to it.

  “Let’s sit down,” he suggested.

  With their backs to the wind, they sat on the log and faced the rolling Gulf seas. Deke put his arm around her and gathered her against the shelter of his chest and shoulder, locking his hands around her middle. Angie rested her head against him.

  “Remember when you found that rock with the fossilized remains of a scorpion out here in the dunes,” she recalled. “I wonder how it got here?”

  “It’s hard to say.” Deke didn’t venture a guess.

  “I suppose,” she murmured absently.

  “Angie.” His voice was low, distantly contemplative. “Why didn’t you come to me when you found out you were pregnant that summer? Why did your aunt and my parents know about it before I did?”

  He was breaking all the rules by bringing up the past. Angie floundered in the sudden turnabout. “I wasn’t sure I was pregnant. When I started getting sick in the mornings, my aunt got suspicious and hustled me off to a doctor. She called your parents before I had a chance to tell you. Then all three of you came over.” It wasn’t a pleasant memory.

  “I remember.” Deke sounded grim. “All the while they were discussing you and your ’condition,’ you wouldn’t even look at me. Why?”

  She recalled the stark embarrassment of that afternoon. The burning heat of it swept over her again and she moved out of his arms to stand and let the norther wrap its cool wind around her. Angie heard the crunch of sand under his boots and knew he was behind her.

  “I was ashamed,” she finally answered his question. “They were talking about us. And they knew you and I had—” Even now she couldn’t say it.

  “—that you and I had made love.” Deke filled in the blank for her. “Were you ashamed that they knew?”

  “Yes, I was ashamed.” Angie lowered her head. “I was seventeen. I’d always been taught only bad girls did things like that.” She blinked at the tears stinging her eyes. “I was confused and frightened. And you seemed so angry that day.” Angie thought back to his first question and turned around to face him. “Were you angry because I hadn’t told you first?”

  “Probably.” He was studying her with a faintly narrowed look, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. “What did you think had made me angry?”

  “I thought you were mad because I was pregnant—because you had to marry me.” Angie looked away and tucked a strand of hair inside the hood that the wind had whipped free.

  “I said I was willing to marry you,” Deke reminded her.

  “I know what you said,” Angie countered. “But you also told me the day we were married that you wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been pregnant.”

  “Not then.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets to grip her shoulders. “You were too young. I would rather have waited until you were older. I should never had laid my hands on you in the first place, but once I did, I couldn’t keep them off you, so you got pregnant.” His features darkened with intensity as his gaze pierced her. “Did you ever love me, Angie?” There was a desperate anger in him to know the answer.

  “Deke, I did.” She moved into his arms, sliding her hands around his middle and pressing her cheek against the rough corduroy of his jacket. “I do,” she whispered against the cloth, but it muffled her words.

  His hand crooked under her chin and lifted it. When his mouth descended onto hers, his hard masculine lips were cool against hers, but they gradually became a source of heat that burned through her. It welded them together for a long moment, erasing some of the scars from old wounds that had not completely healed until now.

  When they drew apart, Angie curved her hand to his jaw, reveling in its strength. Deke captured her hand and pressed his mouth to her fingers, then he enclosed it between both of his hands.

  “Your hands are cold,” he murmured with a warm glitter in his look.

  “So are yours,” Angie countered softly.

  “Maybe we’d better walk back to the car,” he suggested and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pointing her back the way they’d come.

  Distance made the car seem small. Angie hadn’t realized they’d walked so far. They didn’t hurry.

  The sun was warm on her back as Angie leaned into the car to reach the packages in the back seat. The “blue norther” had moved out of the area several days ago, replaced by summerlike weather. With her arms and hands full of packages, Angie closed the car door with a push of her hip.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” A neighbor remarked.

  Angie looked up and smiled an agreement at the elderly woman puttering in the flowerbed next door. “It certainly is.”

  “I see you’ve been doing some Christmas shopping.” The woman’s sharp eyes had spotted the corner of a holiday-wrapped box sticking out of a sack. “Did you go to Corpus?” she asked with friendly curiosity, shortening the name of the closest large city, Corpus Christi.

  “Yes.” She had gone on somewhat of a shopping spree, buying Christmas gifts for Deke, Lindy and Marissa. Angie was getting excited about Christmas for the first time in quite awhile. “I’d better get these in the house.” She had spoken to the woman several times in the past week, but it was usually just a casual greeting and an odd comment about the weather. She didn’t expect any differently this time.

  “Excuse me,” the woman called her back when Angie would have started to the door. “I’ve been trying to remember where I’d seen you before. Aren’t you Lillie Franklin’s niece?”

  “Yes, she was my aunt,” Angie admitted.

  “You spent the summer with her a few years back,” the woman recalled clearly now. “You and Deke Blackwood were quite thick then, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.” She felt self-conscious, aware that the neighbor had to have noticed Deke’s nightly coming and going.

  “I remember at the time, Lillie was worried that the two of you were getting too serious, but I reminded her how intense summer romances always seemed.” A reminiscent smile touched her mouth. “As it turns out, I was partially right. It wasn’t too long after you left that young Blackwood got married. Of course, his poor wife died giving birth to their child.”

  “So I heard,” Angie murmured uncomfortably.

  The woman was too caught up in her recollections of the past to notice Angie’s unease. “Her death was quite a shock to him. For several summers, he was brooding and withdrawn. Every time Harold and I saw him, he was alone.” A thoughtful frown creased her forehead. “Sometimes when you see a person out walking, you don’t think anything about it. They’re just walking somewhere. You don’t think of them as being sad or lonely. But there was a quality about young Blackwood. You sensed he had lost some vital part of his life. I guess there are two kinds of alone,” she concluded.

  “Perhaps there are,” Angie agreed.

  A knowing twinkle brightened the woman’s gaze as she eyed Angie curiously. “It seems that you’ve managed to rekindle that old romance since you’ve returned. Young Black-wood is here frequently. I hope you’re able to help him get over his late wife.”

  “I hope so, too.” What an impossible situation. How could she explain to the woman that she and Deke’s supposedly dead wife were the same person?

  “Are you just visiting or will you be staying for awhile?” the elderly neighbor asked inquisitively.

  “It hasn’t been decided.” Angie sought an excuse to break away from this conversation. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I really have to go.”

  “It’s nearly dinner time, isn’t it?” the woman realized. “Come over for coffee some morning.”

  “Thanks.” Angie hurried toward the front door before anything more was said.

  When Deke arrived that evening,
Angie was setting the table. She gave him a smile as he entered the dining room and continued laying out the silverware settings.

  “What’s this?” He picked up one of the Christmas presents from the stack on the bureau where a nativity scene was displayed. “Have you been shopping?”

  “Yes, I went into Corpus Christi today,” she replied absently.

  “You didn’t mention anything about going this morning,” Deke frowned, lifting a curious eyebrow.

  “It was too nice a day to stay home,” she explained the impulse.

  “What time did you get back?” He wandered over to the table, stopping on the opposite side from her.

  “I’m not sure. Around four, I think. The lady next door was working in her yard when I drove in. I talked to her for awhile before I came in. It was after four then,” Angie told him.

  “Mrs. Osborne?”

  “She didn’t tell me her name.” She smoothed her hands over her skirt, suddenly nervous about the question she was going to ask. “Deke, why did you tell everybody that your wife died?”

  His glance flicked over her, becoming remote. “I believe I said Lindy’s mother died.”

  “It’s the same thing,” Angie countered with sudden impatience.

  “I chose to differentiate,” he stated.

  “Why? It’s me. I’m one in the same person.” It was difficult for her to accept that Deke had cut her out of his life that way. “Why did you have to say I was dead?”

  “Because I didn’t want my daughter to know that her mother hadn’t wanted her!” he flared. “Lindy had done nothing to deserve that kind of cold-hearted rejection except to be born, so I saw no reason for her to suffer from it.”

  “It wasn’t cold-hearted,” Angie protested.

  “How was Lindy to know that? How can a mere child understand why the mother who is supposed to love her doesn’t even want to be a part of her life?” His hands gripped the straight back of a chair, all his muscles showing the tension of anger.

  “But I did love her—and I do love her,” she insisted. “Can’t you see that?”