Winter Roses Part 7

Stuart scowled at her. "What the h.e.l.l do you need with a cattle dog?"

"It's not for me," she replied. "There's a sweet little girl on my ward who has to have a tumor removed from her brain. She's scared to death. I asked her parents what might help her att.i.tude, and they said she'd always wanted a border collie. It might be just what she needs to come through the surgery. You see," she added sadly, "they don't know if it's malignant yet."

"How old is she?" Ivy asked.

"Ten."

Ivy winced. "What a terrible age to have something so deadly."

"At least she'll have something to look forward to," Stuart added. "You really are a jewel, Merrie."

She made an affectionate face at him. "So are you. Now let's dance or eat or something so we don't burst into tears and embarra.s.s Ivy."

He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow and gave Ivy a mischievous look. "G.o.d forbid that we should embarra.s.s her." He put down his coffee cup. "Dancing seems more sensible."

He took Ivy's gla.s.s of punch and put it down, only to draw her back onto the dance floor.

It was the sweetest evening of Ivy's life. She danced almost exclusively with Stuart, and he didn't seem to mind that people were watching them with fond amus.e.m.e.nt. It was well-known that Stuart played the field, and that Ivy didn't date anyone. The attention Stuart was showing her raised eyebrows.

Merrie didn't lack for partners, either, but she seemed subdued since Hayes had left. Ivy wondered if there wasn't something smoldering under Merrie's pa.s.sive expression that led back to that old crush she'd had on Hayes.

When it came time to leave, Merrie informed Stuart that she was going to ride home with one of the Bates twins, who pa.s.sed right by their house. She didn't give a reason, but Stuart didn't ask for one, either. He linked his fingers into Ivy's and drew her outside to his big, sleek Jaguar.

"I can't remember when I've enjoyed a party more," he remarked.

"It was fun," she agreed, smiling. "I don't get out much at night. Usually I'm trying to keep up with the accounts, including doing estimated taxes for all my clients four times a year. It keeps me close to home."

"You and Merrie have lost touch since she went to work in San Antonio."

"A little, maybe," she replied. "But Merrie is still the best friend I have. That doesn't go away, even when we don't see each other for months at a time."

He was quiet for a minute. "Have you heard from Rachel?" he asked.

She drew in a painful breath. "Yes. Last week."

"How was she?"

She wondered why he was asking her questions about her sister, whom he hated. "Pretty much the same, I guess." Except that she was steadily higher than a kite when she called Ivy, and she was running around with someone else's rich husband, she added silently.

He shot a glance at her. "That isn't what I hear."

Her heart welled up in her throat. She'd forgotten that he moved in the same circles as other rich, successful men. Rachel's garden slug of a boyfriend knew such people in New York. Stuart might even know Rachel's latest lover. "What do you hear?" she asked.

"That she's about to create a media sensation," he said flatly. "Which is why I brought Merrie to the dance. Hayes mentioned that he was bringing you, and I wanted to talk to you without the whole town knowing. Your boardinghouse isn't private enough, and my Mrs. Rhodes is a terrible gossip. That left me looking for a neutral spot. Here it is."

Her heart was hammering. Rachel again. It was always something, her whole life. Would she ever be free of her sister's messy problems?

"Don't look like that," he said curtly. "I know you don't have any influence on her. I just don't want you to be surprised by some enthusiastic journalist out of the blue, asking you personal questions about your sister for print. Scandals pay well, especially if the victim's relatives can be shocked into a printable reaction."

She put her face in her hands. "How bad is it?" she asked.

"Bad enough." He pulled the car off the main road onto a dirt road and cut off the engine. When she looked around, disturbed, he added, "This is on my land. I don't want to sit in front of Mrs. Brown's boardinghouse and have curtains fluttering the whole time we're talking." He freed his seat belt and turned to her, one arm curved around the back of her bucket seat. "You need to know what you're up against before the story hits the tabloids."

She grimaced. Tippy Moore had gone through the tabloid mills before her marriage to Cash Grier. So had Leslie, Matt Caldwell's wife. She knew the devastating effect they could have on people's lives. But she never dreamed that she could become a victim of them. Surely Rachel's sister wouldn't be interesting news to anyone? On the other hand, Rachel had actually landed a few roles on Broadway, despite her drug habit, and one review had called her talent "promising." After years of auditions, it seemed that Rachel might actually make it as an actress. But Stuart looked uncomfortable.

"Tell me," she prodded gently.

"She's been supplying drugs to an elderly recluse who fancies himself in love with her," he replied curtly. "The problem is that he's recently married to a former beauty queen who doesn't want to share him and his fortune with anyone, least of all a minor actress with a drug dealer for a boyfriend. A mutual friend says she's about to go public with the story. If she does, it will ruin Rachel's chances of any more roles on Broadway, and it may put her drug-dealing boyfriend in prison. It might even put her there, if the wife decides to go public with what her very expensive private detective dug up on Rachel. She found a connection to some very big drug lords across the border; some of the same ones Hayes and Cash and Cobb of the DEA are trying to catch."

By now, Ivy was noticeably pale despite the semidarkness of the front seats. That message Rachel had given her for the baker had been code, after all. Her sister was a drug dealer. Her heart ran away with fear. She pulled at a curl beside her ear. "I wonder if I could get lost in the Amazon jungle before Rachel gets it in the neck?"

"You'd have to come home one day. Running away never solved a problem."

She leaned back against the seat, sick to her soul. In a small town like Jacobsville, a tabloid story would be a gossip fest. There wouldn't be a place she could go where people wouldn't be talking about her.

She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a sudden chill.

"Rachel told a lot of lies about you around town, when you were in high school," he said after a minute, his eyes narrow and thoughtful. "She fed me a dose of them, too. I actually believed her, until two years ago. But just the same, I made sure that she left town."

She felt her cheeks go hot, and she hoped he couldn't see. So that was why Rachel had gone away so suddenly, why her att.i.tude toward Ivy had changed. She thought Stuart was protecting her little sister, and she was jealous!

"Copper Coltrain says that you were in his office frequently with injuries from 'falls' when you were in school," he persisted.

Her heart jumped. "I was clumsy," she said quickly.

"Bull! Your father drank to excess and Rachel fed him the same lies she fed other people about you," he countered. "She bragged about getting you in trouble with your father. It suited her to have you constantly out of favor, so that she'd inherit everything. Which she did."

The news that he knew all her problems, although she'd secretly suspected as much, made her sick. "Dad thought she was wonderful."

"Yes, and he was fairly certain that you weren't his child."

She gasped aloud, her eyes as wide as saucers. "What?!"

"I didn't think you knew that," he murmured, watching her. "Rachel said that your mother told her, before she died, that she'd had an affair and you were the result."

Of all the things Rachel had done to her, that was the absolute worst. She couldn't even find words to express how horrified she was. "Is it...is it true?" she asked unsteadily.

He was hesitant. "I don't know. There's an easy way to find out, if you want to know for sure. If you can get a hair from your father's brush, or if Coltrain has a blood sample from him on file, we can have a DNA profile done. If there isn't a sample, but if Coltrain has his blood type on file, we can have your blood typed. Paternity can be determined by blood groups. It won't prove anything for sure, unless we could get a DNA sample from your father, but it would at least show if you could have been your father's child."

"You'd do that, for me?" she asked, surprised at his indulgence.

"Of course," he said matter-of-factly.

It was a lot to swallow at once. No wonder her father had been so brutal to her! He thought she wasn't his child. And Rachel had used that knowledge--if it wasn't a lie--to cheat Ivy out of anything that belonged to her family. Rachel had inherited it all, and sold it all.

"She must hate me," Ivy said aloud.

"She was jealous of you," he corrected flatly.

"Oh, sure, I'm such a peach of a beauty, why wouldn't she be?" she asked sarcastically.

He reached out and tugged a lock of her hair. "Stop that. You're no ugly duckling, except in your own mind. But I wasn't talking about looks. Rachel was jealous because of the way you are with people. You're always looking for the best in people, making them feel good about themselves, making them feel important. You never gossip or tell lies, and you're always around if anyone's in trouble or grieving. Rachel has never given a d.a.m.n for anyone except herself. You made her feel inferior, and she hated you for it."

"She was beautiful," she said. "All the boys loved her."

"Even boys you tried to date," he added, as if he knew. He nodded. "Yes, I heard about that, too. Rachel delighted in stealing away any boy you brought home. She turned your girlfriends against you, everyone except Merrie. She told Merrie some whoppers about your social life." He looked away, his body stiffening. It didn't take a mind reader to know that Merrie had repeated the lies to him.

"I'm amazed you didn't forbid Merrie to have anything to do with me."

"I did," he said surprisingly, glancing at her. "She wouldn't listen, of course. And I stopped pressuring her about it when I realized how badly Rachel had lied about your character."

She knew what he was talking about, and it made her uneasy. He was remembering what a novice she was in a man's arms.

"Copper doesn't usually talk about patients," he continued. "But we're second cousins as well as good friends, and I've felt responsible for you since your father's death. He thought I should know about your home life. Just in case Rachel ever came down here and tried to start trouble. He didn't know I'd already gotten the news from a private detective I hired."

She couldn't look at him. It felt as if all the bruises and lacerations were plainly visible to anyone looking.

"You've never talked about it, have you?"

She shook her head. "Not even to Merrie."

"Merrie is more perceptive than you realize. She knew why you covered your legs when you went to school. You didn't want anyone to see the bruises he left on you with that doubled-up belt."

She bit her lower lip and looked up at him. She was remembering what Merrie had said about his own childhood, and how his father had punished him for refusing to give his life to football.

"You got your share, too, didn't you?" she asked quietly.

He hesitated for a moment. His dark brows drew together. "Yes," he replied finally. "I've never talked about it to anyone outside my family. The memories sting, even now."

"They would have locked my father up and thrown away the key if he'd done it today."

"Mine, too," he agreed. He smiled faintly. "Our fathers would probably be occupying adjoining jail cells." He sighed and traced a pattern at her throat, making her heartbeat throb. "n.o.body's using a belt on my kids."

"Mine, either," she replied at once.

He smiled down at her. "We're all products of our upbringing. Pity we don't get to choose our relatives."

"You can say that again." She searched his eyes. "Rachel isn't afraid of anything except losing her chance to act in a starring role on Broadway. But if she gets caught up in a public scandal, it will kill her career stone dead. And she might go to prison for drug dealing. I don't know what she'd do if she had all that to contend with. She's not very strong emotionally."

"Only when she's on the receiving end," he agreed. "But she chose her own path, Ivy. We all do. Then we take the consequences of those choices."

She c.o.c.ked her head. "What path did you choose that had consequences?"

"It was one I didn't choose," he said enigmatically. His hand slid under the silken fist of hair at her nape, warm and strong. "But we've done enough talking for one night."

As he spoke, he tugged her face gently under his. "Don't panic," he whispered against her mouth as his lips teased at it. "There are some things you just can't do in bucket seats..."

She went under in a daze of throbbing pleasure. It was like the first time he'd held her and kissed her, but much more explosive. The long years between kisses made her bold, made her hungry. She slid her arms around his neck and opened her mouth under his. He groaned. A shudder went through him. He hesitated, but only for a split second. Then he gathered her up whole and dragged her over the console and into his lap, and the kisses grew harder and more insistent.

She felt his big hand under the neckline of her gown, gently tracing patterns down into the soft flesh under her bra. She gasped.

He lifted his head and looked into her wide, shocked eyes, with affectionate amus.e.m.e.nt. "Think of it as exploration into new territory," he teased gently. "You've got a lot of catching up to do."

"And you're offering to guide me through the undergrowth?" she gasped.

"Frilly undergrowth," he murmured, looking down at the quick beat of her heart that was echoed in the trembling of her bodice as her pulse increased madly.

"I'm not sure," she began breathlessly.

"Neither am I," he agreed as he bent again to her mouth. "But it's been a long, dry spell and I've waited as long as I can and stay sane."

While she was trying to figure that out, his mouth opened on her parted lips and his hand trespa.s.sed right under her bra onto her soft flesh with a sureness and mastery that chased any thought of protest right out of her head. She clung to him and gave in to the sweetness of the moment.

CHAPTER SIX.

JUST as Ivy was seeing stars, there was the purr of a big cat somewhere in the jungle of pleasure she was exploring.

Stuart must have heard it, too, because he raised his head and frowned as he looked into the rearview mirror. "I don't believe it!" he burst out.

She followed his gaze and saw flas.h.i.+ng blue lights coming at breakneck speed right down the dirt road behind them.

"Hayes!" he muttered, and let out a word that made her blush.

The all-white Jacobs County Sheriff's car pulled up past them, whipped around, and came back again, so that Hayes and Stuart were facing each other through open drivers' windows. In the time it had taken Hayes to turn around, Ivy had slid discreetly back into her own seat, straightened her clothing and smoothed her hair. She was grateful that it was dark, so that Hayes wouldn't be able to see the lingering traces of Stuart's demanding pa.s.sion on her lips and hair.

"Aren't you a little far out of your territory?" Stuart drawled. "This is my land."

Hayes just stared at him. "We flushed a drug transport with three armed men inside," he said at once. "We got two of them, but one escaped not far from here. He's carrying an automatic weapon."

"Good G.o.d," Stuart exclaimed.

"I didn't think he'd be driving a Jag," he continued dryly, "but you can't rule out a carjacking. And this car was all alone in a field." He scowled. "What the h.e.l.l are the two of you doing out here?"

"Talking about DNA profiles," Stuart shot back.

Hayes pursed his lips. "Oooookay," he said, but clearly not believing it. "Just the same, I'd take her home, if I were you. These guys don't play nice. One of my deputies is in the emergency room with a bullet in his hip."

"I hope you get them," Stuart said.

"Me, too. See you."