A Season For Love

“But we didn’t,” he interrupted gently. “Instead we entered into a marriage that never began, yet never ends.”

“Never began, never ends, but offers rare days like this.”

Jericho smiled a real smile then, willing to leave the conundrum for another time. “So what do we do about it?”

“Well.” Maria pretended to consider the possibilities. “The day is hardly born, my bags are packed and my plane doesn’t leave until long after six. All that’s left to do is pick up the rental car from the museum parking lot.”

“It’s also Sunday,” Jericho contributed to the list of enticements. “My day off.” A glance at a bedside clock told the time. “That leaves us more than twelve precious hours. Any idea how we could spend it, Mrs. Rivers?”

“One.” Folding back the robe he wore, she slipped it from his shoulders and down his arms. “One very good idea, Sheriff Rivers.” As silk fell away with his impatient shrug, she drew him to the bed, asking wickedly, “What else would star-crossed lovers do with such rare and wondrous hours as these?”

“Twelve hours? Sweetheart,” Jericho groaned softly against her throat. “I don’t think I have the stamina.”

“Ah, my only love, you’ll never know until you try.”

His reply was a laugh and a kiss, as he began again a sweet, languid seduction. With tender restraint he caressed her, touching her face, stroking her hair, tracing the fan of her lashes as they lay against her cheeks. As if he’d never seen her or touched her before, he found the textures of her skin fascinating.

He was a man storing memories to last a lifetime, tracing the line and curve of her body, discovering once more his reasons for wanting her, for loving her. As she clung to him, her fleeting caresses driving him to the brink of distraction, he moved over her at last. For Jericho, the joining of his body with hers was as sweet as the first time, as poignant as if it were the last.

Then time and memory and reason ceased. There was only the passion of a man for a woman. And her need for him.

Like shadows cast against the fiery canvas of dawn he made love to her, and she to him. And when need was answered and passion spent, their passing brought peace and a quiet time to cherish.

Her head on his shoulder, his fingers woven through her hair, they lay in sun glow and contented stillness. Long into a drowsy silence, she stirred, her fingers trailed along his throat and over his chest. With a hushed, wordless sound, she kissed the heated curve of his throat, and sighed as she nestled against him.

Beyond tall doors, a breeze stirred, rich leaves of summer rustled in its promise of heat. A rising tide, tumbling sand and shells, added another note in summer’s waking song. In the peace, trills of drowsy, childish laughter were borne on the wind.

And somewhere in the distance, yet not too far, the cry of a fitful baby rose and ebbed, then was silent.

Maria tensed, the lazy caress that moved lightly over the contours of his throat and chest hesitated. She stared at sun-washed leaves, but in her mind she saw darkness, not the last of dawn. And glittering green fluttered against the backdrop of an endless sky, with blue turned as black as the night.

As black as the night those long years ago. The unspoken words sent a cold chill shuddering through her.

“Ah!” Her cry was torn from the depths of heartache. Her fingers curled into tight fists. “Damn them! Damn them!”

Jericho made no move to hold her, no effort to stave off the bitter, hurting rage. He knew where she’d gone. As he waited for the brewing storm to break, he knew why.

He better than anyone understood she needed this. The rage, the cleansing of silent hate. Only the unreal and inhuman wouldn’t. And Maria Elena Rivers was very real, very human.

“Were they there last night?”

Jericho only shook his head. She knew the answer as well as he. Perhaps, in her subconscious, better.

“Was there one who offered me a glass of champagne? Or asked me to dance? Dear God!” Bolting upright, she buried her face in her hands. After a time that seemed forever, she lifted her gaze to the light streaming through all doors. Shuddering, she whispered, “Did one of them touch me?

“I kept listening to voices, hoping I could recognize an inflection, a tone, even a word. Once I was so sure. Then I didn’t know.” She paused again, reliving the past through the tarnished splendor of the evening.

Hearing her terror, hurting for it, Jericho waited silently for the rest. His wait was not long.

“I looked into the eyes of every man who approached me, searching for guilt, regret, remorse. Maybe concern or fear. Even gloating.” Holding one hand before her, clasping it as if she held something abhorrent, she whispered, “For years I’ve tried to see a face hidden by the dark and the shadow of the tree—the face of the one boy whose mask I ripped off. But there’s never anything.

“Then, tonight, there was. Only a sensation of recognition. No one person, nothing concrete, only an air of discomfort. The smell of fear. Then it was gone.” A bitter laugh rattled in her throat. “I’m babbling, making no sense.”

Drawing her hands through her hair, sweeping it from her face, she hardly noticed when it fell against her throat and cheeks again. “Maybe I wanted it so badly I imagined it. Maybe—” Stopping short, her head jerked in violent denial. “No.”

Turning to him, not caring that the sheet slipped to her waist, she met his hurting gaze. “I’m not wrong. I don’t know who, perhaps I never will, but one or all of them were there tonight.”

Jericho drew a harsh, grating breath, desperate to hold her, to comfort her. But as much as he needed it, she needed the exorcism more. At last he said quietly, “You weren’t wrong.”

At the leap of surprise in her eyes, with two fingers he touched her cheek. “No, I don’t know who they are, but I know the type. Few of our classmates who are living in Belle Terre would have missed the celebration, or the chance to see you.”

“To discover what the tacky girl from the wrong family had become?” Maria wondered aloud. “Or testing my memory?”

“A little of both, I suspect.” She’d walked among her tormentors head high, a calm, gallant smile for everyone. What had the men who’d been the boys who hurt her thought? Had they gloated? Cringed in fear of recognition? And, Jericho wondered, had any felt remorse? “We’ll never know, sweetheart.”

“Unless I remember.” Taking his hand in hers, lacing her fingers through his, she recalled the gentleness of his touch, when others had been cruel. “But you don’t think I ever will, do you?”

“I’m sorry.” His thumb caressed the back of her hand, offering comfort for his doubt. “Not after such a long time.”

“She would be eighteen, and a summer girl, if they’d let her live.” Clinging to his hand and the stability of the present, in her mind she returned to a night so long ago. “The diner closed late, and I was hurrying to meet you on the beach. They were waiting, hidden in the shadows of the old oak. If I’d paid attention. If I’d been wary, she would have had a real birthday. Perhaps not the one we expected, but not the one they gave her.”

“What could you have watched for, Maria Elena? What should you have been wary of?” Jericho refused to let her shoulder any part of the blame for the miscarriage of their child. “Belle Terre was the safest of places then. A sleepy town of unlocked doors and open windows. No one could have anticipated or predicted what happened.

“If anyone is to blame, it would be me. Until your shift was done, I should have waited for you at the diner, not on the beach.”

“But you couldn’t have known,” Maria protested.

“No, I couldn’t.” Jericho made the point he intended as she rushed to defend him. “And neither could you.”

Maria sank into silence, a somber look replacing the joy of the hours before. Gradually her frown softened. “I went by the cemetery, I saw the flowers. I thought you might forget.”

“It isn’t a date I’m likely to forget.” Every year on a mid-summer evening, he visited the secluded spot. There was only a tiny stone, its inscription simply Baby Girl. This was how Maria Elena had wanted it. To protect herself, or him? Or even the baby? He’d never had the chance to ask. She’d been too physically and mentally wounded to question.

Then, before he knew it, before she was truly recovered from the ordeal, she had gone, leaving behind the horror of Belle Terre. Leaving him. For these years he’d accepted this as what she wanted. And for years he’d left a small bouquet on the tiny pauper’s grave.

“Thank you for that, Jericho.” After a moment she added, “It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the museum would open and I would catch the assignment at exactly this time.” Wearily, fatigue returning, her voice grew hoarse, her words an effort. “Or was it fate?”

Jericho didn’t answer. Drawing her into his arms, he held her while they watched the morning sky. Too soon she would be leaving. The horror of a gentle seventeen-year-old girl was still too strong. Too vivid. He was losing her again. But until then, he would hold her and keep her safe.

He sensed the exact moment she drowsed. Her body grew heavy, the hand clasping his uncurled. Her breaths slowed to a measured rhythm. And he hoped that just for a while, she could rest.

Jericho had drifted into a somnolent state himself, when the jangling chime of his doorbell roused him. Slipping his arms from Maria Elena and covering her carefully, he pulled on his discarded slacks, then hurried to answer the summons.

“Court!” The deputy’s normally spotless uniform was stained and smudged with soot. “What’s wrong?”

“A problem at the museum.”

“What sort of problem?”