A Season For Love

“But there’s something that isn’t commonplace in any day.”

Because he’d been taught from birth that it was rude to point, Court only nodded. But even the nod was superfluous. Jericho hadn’t a doubt Court’s youthful gaze was as drawn to Maria Elena Delacroix as any male’s in the room.

“My sister says you were friends of Ms. Delacroix in school. When she was part of your class at the academy.”

Court was still in short pants when his sister was in high school—he wouldn’t remember that Maria Elena was looked upon as the sort proper young girls of Belle Terre’s society shunned. Jericho doubted the older sister ever deigned to speak to her. Most certainly there had been no friendship.

Even he hadn’t been the friend he should have. Remembering how he had failed her, his voice was grim. “We knew her. All of us.”

A smile of masculine appreciation firmly in place, Court’s gaze followed the elegantly clad woman as she detached herself from the crowd, stepped between satin curtains, and disappeared into the darkness beyond. “With a face and body like that, she must have been the most popular girl in the whole school. But I bet none of you expected she would become a famous newscaster.”

Jericho was silent as he remembered the sad young girl who sat apart in morning assembly and walked the halls of Belle Terre Academy alone. As the hurt, bruised look that had haunted him for years loomed in his mind, he replied in a low, thoughtful voice, “I don’t think any of us knew what to expect of Ms. Delacroix.” After a long moment he added, “We still don’t.”

Court Hamilton was like an eager puppy. Too exuberant, too excitable, and far too inquisitive. “It’s good to have her back, though. Isn’t it?”

Was it? Jericho wondered as he pondered the consequences of her return. What dormant fear had she wakened? What upheaval would this single night bring to settled lives? Who would suffer or profit most, the denizens of Belle Terre, or she?

Angry for the past, distracted by contemplations of the near future, he lashed out when he shouldn’t have. “Is that why you came up here, Hamilton? To gossip?”

Beyond a puzzled look, Court Hamilton did not react to the rare barb. “No, sir. I came to take a turn here in the crow’s nest. I thought there might be some folk you would like to speak with before the last dance.”

Ignoring Hamilton’s joking title for the alcove, Jericho glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight. The celebration would be ending shortly.

“Thank you, Court.” Jericho Rivers smiled, rancor gone, but with no humor touching his calm gray gaze. “There is someone.”

Descending the stairs with the distinctive and uncommon agility of an extraordinary athlete, despite a ravaged knee, in seconds he was paused on the landing. Towering above the tallest of the celebrants by inches, his thick, dark hair gleaming with the soft sheen of coal, in the spinning kaleidoscope of lights, the sheriff of Belle Terre stood observing the crowd.

Unlike Maria Delacroix, he was one of them by birth. Born into the mystique of the merit and excellence of history, a scion of influence and old money. Schooled in charm and gallantry, as handsome as Lucifer, as magnetic, he could have been the prince of society. Yet he held himself apart. Apart from the pretenses, from the bluster and posturing. Apart and immune even from the playful flirtations of its polished, sophisticated femmes fatales.

Handsome as sin, yet aloof. Indeed, he was an intriguing enigma, an everlasting challenge. But tonight, as his silver-gray gaze moved over the crowd, there was an unapproachable look about him that discouraged even the most persistent of covetous ladies.

When the slow, steady perusal was done, his concern for any breach of security in these last minutes of the gala was allayed. Only then did he move through the throng, a distinguished figure with an air of authority. His formal wear draping the striking breadth of his shoulders and the deep musculature of his chest only a bit more impeccably than the khaki uniform of his standard daily wear. Given his size, his astounding presence, and the look of haunting secrets in his level gray gaze, the merrymakers gave way as if he were a human tide.

Crossing the marble floor quickly, speaking pleasantly but abruptly disengaging himself from any insistent conversations, Jericho didn’t pause until he reached an open door.

As he stood, remembering, the orchestra finished the last of a Cole Porter classic. One of his favorites. He didn’t notice.

Into the lull, almost too quietly to be heard, he murmured, “Good evening, Maria Elena.”

Two

“Is it really, Sheriff Rivers?” She stood alone on the small gallery, her back to him, her hands gripping the massive balustrade the only sign of tension. The only sign that she waited for him. “A good evening, I mean.”

She faced him, her smile rueful, provocative. With the moonlit sea at her back and the wind teasing tendrils of midnight hair about her shoulders, she was the stuff of dreams and old memories.

“Pleasant enough.” Moving from the doorway, leaving the pomp and revelry of the gala behind him, Jericho crossed the shadowed space separating them. The scent of her perfume mingled with the night. A blended fragrance of sultry intoxication.

As he stood by her side, looking out at the surf, her cheek nearly brushed his shoulder. Tilting her head, she spoke softly. “It’s been a long time, Jericho.”

“Yes.” The word fell like a stone between them. With the music quieted, only the rhythm of distant waves washing over the shore breached a wall of silence.

The pale globe of a full moon rode low over the surf, its reflected light a river of silver brightening the night. Remembering the times he’d watched the same view from his own gallery with his mind wandering to the girl she’d been, Jericho waited. Feeling her gaze moving over him, contemplating, analyzing, he didn’t act or react. The first move would be hers.

Fronds of a palm brushed against a nearby wall. Rigging of beached sailboats clanked against masts. The engines of a freighter, barely a lighted dot against the horizon, thrummed for a moment on a gust, then faded into nothing as it passed.

As suddenly as it began, the muted cacophony ceased. Leaving behind a silence aching to be broken.

“I never expected to see you here again,” she said, at last, as the band played the first measure of “Goodnight Ladies.” “I never expected I would return to Belle Terre.”

“Nor did I.”

Laughing a breathy laugh, she shook her head. “Jericho Rivers, young Goliath and rare friend, still a man of few words.”

Shifting slightly, with his hand resting on the heavy iron of the gallery railing, from his great height he looked down at her. “What would you have me say, Maria Elena?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Why did you come?” His voice was deep, as mild as the night. As intriguing.

“This was an assignment. Only an assignment.”

“The opening of a museum devoted to the history of a small coastal town?” he scoffed. “Hardly a noteworthy event. Certainly nothing to merit the attention of a famous news personality.”

“Human interest, Jericho. The history of Belle Terre and its reverence for the past constitute human interest.”

“Ah-hh, of course. That is your forte, the element that sets you apart in your work and your photography. So, when our tidbit of publicity happened to stray across a strategic desk, someone recalled Belle Terre was your hometown. And voilá!—you’re here,” he surmised quietly. “Is that how it went?”

“Something like that.”

“You could have refused. Yet you didn’t.” There was a nuance of tenderness in his comment. Caught in a shaft of light, his face was barren of expression, but his gaze was turbulent.

The heat of that gaze reached into her, touching the secret, lonely places, waking needs and dreams she’d put aside. A gaze that set her heart beating so wildly, she feared it was visible beneath the clinging gown. Resting a hand on the curve of her shoulder, willing away tensions that had gathered and grown the whole evening, she moved her head in the barest denial. Her lips formed a silent no.

“Why? Why have you come, Maria Elena?” His voice dropped lower, even deeper. Yet the tone was no less compelling when he questioned again, “Why didn’t you refuse?”

A cloud passed over the moon, in the pale darkness the sound of the sea seemed muted. In a voice in keeping with the hush, she began as if by rote, “Reporting news is my job. I don’t choose the place. I simply go where it takes me. This time it brought me…”

Jericho moved closer, the subtle and familiar scent of him as compelling as his voice, as unsettling as a touch. Her tongue faltered on the beginning of a glib lie. The strange undercurrent in his questions, and a mood she didn’t understand, simmered scarcely below a debonair veneer. Not sure how to respond or react, picking up a lost thread, she began again. “This time it brought me…”

“Home,” he provided the word she never intended, in a voice unlike any she’d ever heard. The storm was gone from his gaze. The battle he’d fought with himself had ended. When he looked at her there was only tenderness. “Home to Belle Terre. Home to me.”

“No!” Her denial was a strangled cry. The hand at her shoulder clenched and slipped to her breast. With a sweep of her lashes, shielding her from his riveting gaze, she turned her face away. A long breath shuddered through her, the pulse at her throat hammered as if her heart would race into madness. With a low moan, she lurched forward, desperate, intent on fleeing.

Maria was quick. Jericho was quicker. His hand flashed past her, closing, as the other, over the railing. Holding her in that imprisoning space, yet not touching her, he bent to her. “Stay.”

“I can’t.” Her voice was low and unsteady. “The rest of the crew will be looking for me.”

“To go back to the inn?” He moved another subtle step, his body brushed hers. The heat of him surrounded her. “To sleep alone?”