Nan Ryan

by Written in the Stars

  A bitter gust of wind from the north rattled the panes of ice-crusted glass in the French doors before him. The chill knifed right through his aching heart. Star leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared at the carpet between his shoes.

  He shot to his feet. He’d behaved like the lovesick fool long enough. Time to get on with the business at hand. He had a trip to make. An appointment to keep.

  Star left the library, strode hurriedly down the long corridor and into his bedroom. He headed straight for his dressing room, reached up to take a brown leather suitcase from an overhead shelf. When he swung the case down, he accidentally snagged a hanging garment on one of the case’s silver locks.

  A shimmering evening gown rustled to the floor at his feet. A gown whose color reminded him irresistibly of a pair of violet eyes whose power over him he had wished to deny. Star dropped the luggage, crouched down on his heels, and picked up the fallen gown.

  Damn her, she was everywhere he turned!

  Gently fingering the gown’s violet bodice, Star shook his head. To find just the right gown, he’d called on an old lover. The fiery red-haired Rita had been clearly disappointed when he told her he’d fallen in love, planned to marry.

  But she’d been one hell of a good sport when he asked where he could purchase an exquisite evening gown for his bride-to-be.

  “You won’t find what you’re looking for in Virginia City,” Rita told him, “But you’re in luck. I bought dozens of fabulous gowns on my last Paris trip, most of which I’ve never worn.” When he immediately chose the violet taffeta to match Diane’s eyes, Rita had tossed her flaming hair and said, “Yes, of course. I picked this gown with you in mind.” She laughed and added, “Not exactly the way I’d planned on showing it to you.”

  Star rose to his feet, lifted the rustling violet gown up to his face, and inhaled deeply. His chest tightened. He opened his hands, let the gown fall to his feet, and kicked it aside.

  Diane Buchannan was just what he’d known her to be from the beginning. A spoiled beauty too easily bored. A delectable creature who collected and discarded hearts for the sake of amusement. Another in the long line of pale beauties seeking a forbidden thrill for a short time, then running back to safety when the newness wore off.

  The hell with her.

  Star jerked up the brown leather suitcase and started packing. He had a train to catch.

  Time had run out.

  Tomorrow was the first of November. At the stroke of midnight the man who had been buying up all the Colonel’s debt would foreclose. Own it all, lock, stock, and barrel.

  The hated Pawnee Bill.

  Pacing restlessly in her dim boardinghouse room, Diane had never spent a more miserable day in her life. She’d awakened to another bleak, cheerless morning. The early edition of the San Francisco Chronicle had been left under her door as usual.

  She had yanked it up, just as always, hoping to read something that might spark an idea, bring to mind a possible money source she’d not yet tried. Instead she’d seen —in the society column—an item that added to her sense of despair: “… handsome Nevada mining magnate Benjamin Star was spotted quietly checking into the Palace Hotel last evening.…”

  Dropping the newspaper as if it were hot, trembling with emotion, Diane had told herself she wouldn’t think about it She had enough on her mind. She knew exactly what he was doing in the city! He’d come to join his partner in crime, Pawnee Bill!

  Just minutes after that blow the Colonel, acting mysterious, had come to tell her he was going into San Francisco alone. And when she’d announced she was going with him, he refused, put his foot down.

  So she’d been left to worry and wonder and walk the floor all day.

  Diane was still worrying and wondering and walking the floor when at long last—shortly before four o’clock in the afternoon—the Colonel rapped loudly on her door.

  She flew across the room, her questioning eyes on him, her heart in her throat. He sauntered into the room with barely a limp, his shoulders thrown back. His blue eyes held a twinkle that had been missing for weeks. He looked very much like the cat who had just swallowed the canary.

  Something had happened, she could tell by his self-satisfied expression. Did she dare hope? Had the deadline been extended? Expectantly she waited for him to speak.

  The Colonel unhurriedly crossed the dreary room, lowered himself down into the one chair by the window. Diane anxiously followed.

  “Well?” she prompted, hands on hips.

  “I’ve a bit of news,” he finally said, and then paused dramatically. Diane, nodding eagerly, was tempted to shake him!

  “Yes, go on, go on,” she said, tensed, tingling from head to toe.

  “Now don’t rush me, Diane.”

  “Nobody’s rushing you!” She glared down at him. Still he said nothing. She erupted irritably. “Spit it out, will you, Colonel?”

  Unruffled, he gave her a cherubic grin, reached inside his coat pocket, withdrew his spectacles, and carefully put them on, making a big show of adjusting the left earpiece. Then, with great flourish, he withdrew from the coat pocket a folded thick legal-looking document.

  He chuckled happily while Diane’s violet eyes darkened to purple, snapping with interest and annoyance. Finally he told his impatient granddaughter exactly what had happened in San Francisco.

  The Colonel’s attorney had been contacted by the attorney of a “show business angel” who desired anonymity. The unnamed patron had bought up all the show’s outstanding debts from Pawnee Bill. Had opened a line of credit at the Union Pacific Bank. Had agreed to fund the purchase of needed new rolling stock. The angel had saved the show in the eleventh hour!

  Delighted yet skeptical, Diane grilled her grandfather, cross-examining him like a prosecuting attorney. Why had this angel done such a thing? What were his motives? What was the catch? How much of the show did the Colonel have to give away in return for the cash? What percentage? Was he certain Pawnee Bill was not behind the whole scheme? Sure it wasn’t some shady deal that in actuality was a ruse to steal the show?

  Diane badgered him, but the Colonel had an answer for every question. Save one. He had given up nothing. The show remained solely his. He had only to meet the terms of the contract. He had agreed to pay back the loan —at a fair interest rate—but not until the show was in the black. Quite honestly he was as puzzled as she at this surprising turn of events. The identity of their benefactor was a complete mystery.

  “Who knows the reason, Diane?” said the Colonel. “Maybe I actually have a guardian angel and he’s—”

  “It’s time to go, you two.” Ruth Buchannan stood in the doorway, adjusting her hat. “We’re going to be late if we don’t hurry.”

  “Coming, dear,” said the beaming Colonel. He folded the contract, slipped it back inside his breast pocket, patted it happily, and crossed to his wife.

  As she followed, Diane’s high brow was slightly puckered. “This is all too much. I just can’t see why … the contracts, Colonel? Whose name is on the contracts?”

  “Just the attorney, Diane,” he said over his shoulder, “and the title of a corporation.”

  “What’s the corporation called?”

  “Stardust.”

  Chapter 47

  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of God to unite this man and this woman in the state of holy matrimony.…”

  Diane’s smile was genuine as she watched the happy pair becoming man and wife. Texas Kate looked amazingly youthful and pretty in a pale peach wedding dress with her brownish gray hair curled tightly around her face and a bridal bouquet of pale purple hothouse orchids clutched in her hands.

  Shorty was the shy, nervous bridegroom. Hair slicked back, face shiny clean, he wore a dark western-cut suit, stiff-collared white shirt, and bow tie. His hands were folded before him, and his left leg shook so badly his low-riding trousers rippled visibly.

  Diane’s fond gaze shifted to the granite-fac
ed best man. Ancient Eyes wore a solemn expression, as befitted the occasion. Wedding ring gripped tightly in his arthritic hand, the aged Ute chieftain appeared to be almost his old powerful self again. Diane was relieved.

  He had been so thin and haggard the first time she’d visited him in the Oakland hospital. When she’d walked into his room ahead of the Colonel, she’d read in his black eyes that he had never told what had happened. She’d quickly put her finger perpendicular to her lips and silently signaled “shhh.” He blinked in relieved acknowledgment.

  “… And do you, William, take Katherine, to be your lawful wedded wife?”

  “I do,” Shorty said. His scrubbed-clean face turned beet red, but his voice was firm and clear.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

  Diane, along with all the other well-wishers, threw rice as the laughing pair rushed down the church steps into the foggy afternoon. Her hand raised, she was suddenly struck with a bolt out of the blue.

  Stardust.

  The Colonel had said the Stardust Corporation had bailed them out! In a flash of vivid remembrance she recalled old Golden Star telling of the mother who’d left her behind when she was a child. Stardust! Golden Star’s mother was named Stardust.

  Diane’s rice-filled hand lowered as her heart began to pound. Was it possible? Had she totally misjudged Star? Had she made the biggest mistake of her life? Had she wrongly accused him of seeking revenge when all he’d ever meant to do was help?

  More of Golden Star’s words came to her. Clearly, as if the old Indian woman were standing beside her: “If Starkeeper knew someone was sick or in trouble, he would go out and help. He had that in his blood.”

  “Diane! Diane!” Pulled back to the present, she looked up to see the smiling bride calling her name. “Diane, you ready?” Kate lifted her bridal bouquet. “Here goes. Catch!”

  Texas Kate tossed the bouquet directly to Diane. Rice spilled from Diane’s hand as she automatically reached up and caught the orchid bouquet. Everyone applauded and whistled.

  Texas Kate shouted, “You’re all invited to the reception over at the boardinghouse. Let’s go cut that wedding cake!”

  The eager crowd streamed down the wooden sidewalk behind the bride and groom. Diane anxiously searched out her grandparents.

  “There’s someplace I have to go, something I have to do,” she told them quickly. “Make my apologies to Kate and Shorty.”

  She gave them no time to reply. The aging pair looked at each other as their independent granddaughter turned and sprinted away, racing toward the waterfront, the bridal bouquet clutched tightly in her hand.

  Fog hung like limp gauze over the bare-limbed trees as Diane ran anxiously down to the docks. She made it just as the ferry was starting to back away. Out of breath, heart racing, she lifted her long skirts and leaped onto the moving deck as the ferry’s whistle blew a deafening warning.

  There were almost no passengers. A few people were scattered around, collars turned up against the chill wind. Diane was oblivious of the cold and fog and damp. She rushed eagerly forward to stand alone up at the bow. Clutching the railing with one hand, the bridal bouquet with the other, she threw back her head and laughed gaily as the steam-driven ferry plowed through the murky waters of the bay.

  The winds tossed loose locks of her hair about her head and pressed her clothes against her body. Sprays of salt water stung her face.

  Diane didn’t care.

  Her heart sang with hope. She braced her feet slightly apart and rode the up and down waves of the choppy bay, her shining violet eyes fixed on the lighted city looming ahead through the fog. There in the middle of that big, blazing city was Starkeeper, and she …

  “I say there, old sport, mind if I join you?” Diane’s head turned. A fog-shrouded figure, obviously in his cups, was weaving unsteadily toward her. He wore a silk top hat, a billowing black opera cape, and a lopsided smile. Managing to maneuver up to the bow’s rail, he gripped it and asked, “Do you feel the floor moving? Could it be one of those fearsome quakes one reads about?”

  Diane smiled at the drunken Englishman. “No. We’re on a ferryboat. That’s the turbines. We’re moving.”

  “Ah! Thank goodness,” he said, nodding, then asked, “And where, if I may ask, are we bound?”

  “San Francisco.” Diane chuckled as his look of puzzlement changed to one of delight.

  “Splendid. A dynamic city. By Jove, if I’m not mistaken, I know some chaps there. Might just pop in on them.” Diane continued to smile. “And you, my dear?” He bobbed his hatted head at the bridal bouquet she held. “Getting married?”

  “I hope so,” she readily admitted. “I’m not sure.”

  “Shall we find out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your young man is in San Francisco?”

  “He is.”

  “Throw the bridal bouquet into the bay. If it floats in toward the Embarcadero, you will be married. If it is carried back to Oakland …”

  Diane tossed the bouquet into the dark, swirling waters of the bay. She watched with rising despair as the sodden bouquet, riding the ferry’s wake, was carried back toward the port of Oakland. The drunken Englishman saw what was happening. He lifted his hands and covered his eyes.

  Leaning anxiously over the rail, Diane squinted. The small bouquet was barely visible through the dense fog. Suddenly the trailing winds freshened, and the bridal bouquet was borne steadily in toward the San Francisco docks.

  “You can look now!” Diane happily told her companion.

  The Englishman’s hands came down. He smiled and said in clipped Oxford tones, “I say then, my dear, may I be the first to kiss the bonny bride?”

  At the Palace Hotel Diane hurriedly crossed the opulent atrium lobby to the long marble counter. A uniformed employee looked up and smiled.

  “Benjamin Star,” she casually said, favoring him with a winning smile. “Ben’s expecting me. In his usual suite, I presume.”

  “Yes, miss. Just as always. Corner suite eight-one-four.”

  In the elevator Diane nervously rehearsed all the things she would say to Star. She stepped into the silent eighth-floor corridor and saw a white-jacketed waiter carrying a covered silver tray. The waiter stopped before the door of suite 814.

  “Wait!” Diane called, hurried forward, smiled, and took the tray from the surprised waiter. “I’ll take that. I’m going inside.”

  “But—but—” He reached out for the tray.

  “No bother, really.” She withheld it. “Thank you, and good evening.”

  He frowned, shook his head, and walked away.

  Releasing a breath, Diane balanced the tray on one spread hand and knocked firmly on the door.

  “It’s open,” came that low, familiar voice from inside, and Diane felt her knees turn to water.

  She eased open the tall white door and stepped into the large, lavish suite.

  “Just put it there on the table.”

  Those same low, flat tones, and Diane, nodding foolishly, looked frantically about, searching for the voice’s owner. Her breath caught in her throat when at last she caught sight of him. Outdoors on the balcony.

  Carefully she placed the tray on a marble-topped table, expecting Star to turn any second and see her. She waited, staring at him, unable to take her eyes off him.

  He turned his head slightly and was silhouetted for a moment against the rust-orange glow of the city lights.

  “Star.” Her lips formed his name, but no sound came.

  Suddenly, now that she was in the room with him, all the things she had thought of to say disappeared from her mind.

  He was so magnetically attractive, so strikingly handsome standing there with the wind lifting locks of his blue-black hair and billowing his soft silk shirt out from his back. There was still that fierce masculinity about him, and Diane could hardly keep from running, flinging herself into his arms.

  “Star.” She audibly spoke his name and s
aw the wide shoulders immediately tense beneath the white silken shirt, the dark head lift.

  Slowly he turned to look at her.

  An unguarded smile, a brief flicker of recognition in his dark navy eyes, then that forbidding mask fell into place. Animal appeal and cold fury radiated from him. He said nothing. He turned his back on her.

  With her pulse pounding in her throat and temples, Diane crossed the spacious sitting room. She stepped out onto the broad balcony. She stood directly behind Star, less than six feet away.

  Star felt her presence, knew she was there. He clamped his teeth tightly together, purposely locked his weakened knees, and gripped the balcony railing for support. He vainly wished that his heart would not beat so feverishly. Wished his palms would not perspire. Wished his legs would not experience this awful pins-and-needles sensation.

  He wished she would go away.

  Diane moved closer.

  She gently eased her arms around him, locked her hands in front of him, and laid her cheek on his back. She felt the immediate tensing of his muscles, heard his sharp intake of air.

  “If you’re ever in my arms again,” she said softly, carefully repeating the words he’d once spoken to her, “just one word will do it. The word is no. No. That’s all you have to say. No. If you mean it, say it. No. And I will stop.”

  Long seconds passed.

  Slowly Star turned in her arms. His dark, tortured eyes met hers. His lean brown hands visibly shook as they lifted to tenderly cup her upturned face. A boyish smile finally lifted the corners of his cruelly sensual mouth.

  “Yes,” he said, his low voice rough with emotion. “The word is yes. Yes, Diane, my darling. Yes.”

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