A Season For Love

A Season For Love
Bj James

Eighteen years ago, a terrible tragedy forced Maria Delacroix to flee Belle Torre– and Sheriff Jericho Rivers, her first love. Now she was finally back in Jericho' s warm embrace, but someone from the past was determined to destroy her. Both her life and her heart were in mortal danger…With her provocative smile and midnight hair, Maria was lovelier than ever. Jericho would do whatever it took to keep her safe– and to keep her in Belle Terre, at his side. So as Christmas approached, he vowed to offer Maria a season for love… one that would last for the rest of their lives.

“You Don’t Want To Hear It? Tough.

“You asked the question, Mr. Sheriff Jericho Rivers, so you’re going to know who my lovers were. You’re going to hear how they looked, and how they made me feel.”

Maria could’ve sworn his handsome, weathered face paled.

As her body responded to his heated, possessive look, she caught back an unsteady sigh and launched into her answer.

“My legion of lovers are all of a type. All are kind. Gentle. All dark, stronger than the strongest oak and taller than the sky. They all have eyes as silvery gray as a stormy sea. And they come to me in the night, wherever I am. Africa. Egypt. China. Russia. Belle Terre.

“They come to me only in my wishes and my dreams.” Her free hand trailed over his jaw, her fingertips lingered at his mouth. “Because all my lovers are you, Jericho. Wherever I am, wherever I go, only you.”

Dear Reader,

The year 2000 has been a special time for Silhouette, as we’ve celebrated our 20th anniversary. Readers from all over the world have written to tell us what they love about our books, and we’d like to share with you part of a letter from Carolyn Dann of Grand Bend, Ontario, who’s a fan of Silhouette Desire. Carolyn wrote, “I like the storylines…the characters…the front covers… All the characters in the books are the kind of people you like to read about. They’re all down-to-earth, everyday people.” And as a grand finale to our anniversary year, Silhouette Desire offers six of your favorite authors for an especially memorable month’s worth of passionate, powerful, provocative reading!

We begin the lineup with the always wonderful Barbara Boswell’s MAN OF THE MONTH, Irresistible You, in which a single woman nine months pregnant meets her perfect hero while on jury duty. The incomparable Cait London continues her exciting miniseries FREEDOM VALLEY with Slow Fever. Against a beautiful Montana backdrop, the oldest Bennett sister is courted by a man who spurned her in their teenage years. And A Season for Love, in which Sheriff Jericho Rivers regains his lost love, continues the new miniseries MEN OF BELLE TERRE by beloved author BJ James.

Don’t miss the thrilling conclusion to the Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS in Peggy Moreland’s Groom of Fortune. Elizabeth Bevarly will delight you with Monahan’s Gamble. And Expecting the Boss’s Baby is the launch title of Leanne Banks’s new miniseries, MILLION DOLLAR MEN, which offers wealthy, philanthropic bachelors guaranteed to seduce you.

We hope all readers of Silhouette Desire will treasure the gift of this special month.

Happy holidays!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

A Season for Love

Bj James

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To my parents, with love

BJ JAMES’

first book for Silhouette Desire was published in February 1987. Her second Desire garnered for BJ a second Maggie, the coveted award of the Georgia Romance Writers. Through the years there have been other awards and nominations for awards, including, from Romantic Times Magazine, Reviewer’s Choice, Career Achievement, Best Desire and Best Series Romance of the Year. In that time, her books have appeared regularly on a number of bestseller lists, among them Waldenbooks and USA Today.

On a personal note, BJ and her physician husband have three sons and two grandsons. While her address reads Mooreboro, this is only the origin of a mail route passing through the countryside. A small village set in the foothills of western North Carolina is her home.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

One

He watched her.

From a small alcove above the atrium of the sprawling museum, he could see every patron and every celebrant, read the nuance of each gesture or expression. But it was only she who had the power to captivate. Only this woman who fascinated.

As he watched, music and laughter filled the grand hall from marble floor to gold leaf ceiling. Dancers, resplendent beneath the light of 18th-century chandeliers, reflected in one ornate mirror after another. Antique blue satin draping doors opening onto small galleries shimmered as darkly as the sea beyond.

The atrium was magnificent, an exquisite replica of the past the very cliquish Southern town of Belle Terre revered. In all its rich, Low Country grandeur, this was the heart of the museum, the piéce de résistance. An ironic setting for the beautiful woman.

There was a time she wouldn’t have been welcome. Venerable denizens greeting her familiarly tonight wouldn’t have spoken to her on the street. Men strutting in dusted-off tuxedos, lusting for a word or a smile, in the past lusted only for her nubile body.

She’d been brutalized and reviled by Belle Terre. Yet she moved among its self-appointed aristocracy graciously, as if she were one of them and had always been.

Politely refusing hors d’oeuvres, flutes of champagne, and invitations to dance by the dozens, she accepted the fawning acclaim, yet remained quietly aloof. In a gown that flowed like liquid gold about her, tastefully revealing the qualities that once sparked scorn and lechery, Maria Elena Delacroix, the outcast of Belle Terre, held court with the regal dignity of a queen.

Most of the men in the room were half in love with her. And one completely, irrevocably.

“Sheriff Rivers.”

Turning at the sound of his name, Jericho Rivers found Harcourt Kerwin Hamilton IV, better known as Court, and more recently as Deputy Hamilton, poised on the top step of the curving stair. “Something wrong, Court?”

“No, sir.” Moving to the sheriff’s side, Court looked out over the atrium. “It’s a grand affair. Grandmère says parties like this were common in her day.”

Grandmère. Jericho smiled at the term, a part of the pretentious idiom of the historical coastal town. The only name he’d been allowed to call his own grandmother. “I imagine a lot of things that are rare now were commonplace in her day.”