The Rebel's Return

CLUB TIMES

For Members’ Eyes Only

Murder-Mystery Gala Turns Deadly

Last night Maddie Delarue’s murder-mystery gala was filled with more drama than a soap opera when the body of Judge Carl Bridges was found floating in the club’s front pond! Sources say our very own members were questioned and then released by authorities, but before long, the most likely suspect emerged from the darkness—Dylan Bridges, bad-boy son of Judge Carl who had recently returned to Mission Creek to make amends with dear old dad. If the wealthy stockbroker truly believes an Armani suit can cover up the scoundrel that lies beneath, he’s been watching too many Dallas reruns. Word has it, though, that Maddie was quick to give Dylan an airtight alibi, claiming she was with him all night. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what those two were up to….

On a lighter note, all members will be happy to know that the investigation into the abandoned baby found on the links is making some headway, thanks to P.I. Ben Ashton and his team. And the Club Times has also learned that newlyweds Flynt and Josie Carson are about to expand their little family. Talk about some Texas two-stepping!

As always, members, make your best stop of the day right here at the Lone Star Country Club!

About the Author

BEVERLY BARTON

was delighted to take part in the LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB continuity series and was especially pleased to write The Rebel’s Return because the bad boy/poor boy and good girl/rich girl theme is one of her favorites. She found it challenging to incorporate characters from other series books into her story and discovered that the residents of Mission Creek, Texas, were quite fascinating. Being able to include a murder mystery in the plot was an added bonus, and turning Dylan and Maddie into multifaceted people with personal histories that bound them together was gratifying indeed.

Award winning, USA TODAY bestselling author Beverly Barton is a very happy wife, mother and grandmother, a sixth-generation Alabamian and a proud American, with deep family roots in this country that go back over two centuries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Welcome to the

Where Texas society reigns supreme—and appearances are everything.

A shocking murder rocks the town of Mission Creek….

Dylan Bridges: When this hard-hearted loner makes a stunning entrance at the LSCC’s murder-mystery gala, romance reignites with the woman of his dreams. But an evening of passion is not in the works when a grisly discovery is made and all fingers point to him as his own father’s murderer!

Maddie Delarue: This good-girl socialite can’t believe her eyes when the roguish rebel from her past strides into the LSCC and boldly sweeps her into his arms for the kiss of a lifetime. Can their newfound love withstand a devastating turn of events?

Mission Creek Musings: What is visibly bereft waitress Daisy Parker doing at Carl Bridges’s funeral? Could the real murderer still be at large? And is there any truth to the rumor that missing-in-action international playboy Luke Callaghan could be Baby Lena’s proud papa?

To Melanie Davis Austin, who grew up with my daughter as a cousin and as a dear friend.

Because of who you are and what you’ve meant to us, you will always have a special place in my heart.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Prologue

Dylan Bridges glared across the courtroom at his father and for one horrific moment felt nothing but hatred for the man. He had kept hoping, up to the very last minute, that his dad would do something—anything—to help him. But the high and mighty, all-important Judge Carl Bridges hadn’t lifted a hand—hell, hadn’t lifted his damn pinky finger—to help his only child.

Dylan felt like a fool for believing that his father would somehow find a way to stop the inevitable, that he’d pull strings, call in favors or at the very least speak in Dylan’s defense. But oh, no, not Carl Bridges, the by-the-book, high-principled, no-excuses lawyer, judge and absentee father. For the past four years, ever since Dylan’s mother died, Carl had had no use for him. Leda Bridges had been the buffer between father and son, keeping peace in the family. It seemed to Dylan that once his mother was gone, his father had stopped loving him, and had devoted all his time and attention to his job.

Well, you’ve had it now, Dylan told himself. You’re on your way to the Texas Reform Center for Boys. Two years! He wouldn’t be getting out until he turned eighteen. How the hell had this happened to him? He’d done a lot of stupid things in the past few years, even had some skirmishes with the law; but stealing a car had been a major screwup, even for him. A string of misdemeanors was one thing—auto theft was something else entirely.

“I’ve never been more disappointed by anyone in my entire life,” Carl Bridges had said. “Son, what were you thinking? You took that car for a joyride and dragged Jock Delarue’s daughter into this mess with you.”

Had that been the real problem, the fact that he’d dared to corrupt Mission Creek’s reigning princess, Maddie Delarue, whose old man had more money than God? If he had simply borrowed the car from the country club and hadn’t whisked Maddie off her feet and practically kidnapped her, would he still be in as much trouble? Probably not. Had his father decided it was easier to betray his son than to displease Jock Delarue? If Dylan knew one thing about his dad, it was the fact that he enjoyed being a golf buddy with the movers and shakers in Texas, especially men like Delarue, Archy Wainwright and Ford Carson.

So, why, of all the girls at Mission Creek High, had Dylan set his sights on Maddie? He’d known she was way out of his league. Was it because the fiery-haired cheerleader was the most popular girl in school? Was it because she represented the unobtainable? Or was it simply because every time he looked at her, he got hard? Whatever the reason, he had become obsessed with the one girl who wouldn’t give him the time of day. Other girls found the tough-guy, bad-boy image he’d cultivated intriguing. At sixteen, he was considered the hellion of Mission Creek, Texas—and the bane of his father’s existence.

He supposed he could lay all the blame on Maddie; after all, she was the reason he’d taken the sleek silver Porsche that day. Like a fool, he’d been damned and determined to impress her, to show off, to get her alone, even if only for a few minutes. The whole thing had started several months ago, the day he’d finally worked up enough courage to ask Maddie for a date. He had cornered her in the school parking lot that afternoon as she and several of her giggling fellow cheerleaders passed by.

He leaned casually against the hood of his old truck. Unlike a lot of the other guys whose fathers had given them new cars on their sixteenth birthdays, Dylan had been told that if wanted a vehicle, he’d have to work for it. His two part-time jobs—as a weekend valet at the country club and his summer and after-school job at the local hardware store downtown—had earned him just enough money to buy the beat-up, aqua-blue Chevy pickup.

“Hey, Red,” he called as she walked past him.

Maddie paused momentarily, shook her head just enough to toss about her long red hair, but didn’t turn or acknowledge his presence in any way. But her girlfriends turned and looked at him, all smiles and fluttering teenage silliness.

“Look, Maddie, it’s Dylan Bridges,” one girl said as she curled a lock of her blond hair around her index finger and gave him the once-over.

“Why don’t you leave Maddie alone?” Another perky blonde asked. “She’s not interested in the likes of you. Why would she want anybody else when she’s practically going steady with Jimmy Don Newman?”

Ah, yes, Jimmy Don Newman, a high school senior and captain of the football team. Every girl’s dreamboat. Not rich by Wainwright, Carson and Delarue standards, but acceptable because his mother’s family had deep roots in Mission Creek and Jimmy Don’s athletic prowess had gained him the town’s admiration.

“Is that right, Maddie?” Dylan eased away from the truck and took a tentative step toward her. “Do you really agree with all these other airheads who think Jimmy Don’s so wonderful? Or are you dying to find out what it would be like between you and me?”

Maddie jerked around and glared at him. “There is no you and me and there never will be.”

“Never say never.” He winked at her.

She huffed.

When he walked toward Maddie, her friends stepped aside and moved behind her.

“Come on, honey, let me drive you home.”

Maddie lifted her chin, stuck out her snooty little nose and glowered at him; then she glanced at his rusty, battered, old truck. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in a rattletrap like that. I’d never date a guy who didn’t have a decent car.”

Her words stung him, but what pissed him off royally was the fact that she stood there so smugly, looking down her nose at him while the tittering laughter of her friends echoed in his ears.

Oh, yeah, he could certainly lay the blame for his present predicament at Maddie Delarue’s feet. But his father shared at least half the blame. The very morning he’d borrowed the Porsche from the country club, he and his father had gotten into another rip-roaring argument and he’d stormed out of the house, bitterly angry. Adding to his bad mood when arriving for his valet job at the Lone Star Country Club was Maddie’s arrival to play tennis with Jimmy Don. When he saw the two of them together, he’d never wanted anything more in his life than to grab Maddie and run away with her.

And that was just what he’d done.

“That Bridges boy is being sent to the Texas Reform Center for Boys in Amarillo,” Jock Delarue said. “It’s a damn shame that a fine man like Carl has such a worthless, troublemaking son.”

“Perhaps his hoodlum tendencies come from his mother’s side of the family,” Nadine Delarue commented in her usual superior manner. “Who was Carl Bridges’ wife? I don’t think we ever knew her, did we?”

“Can’t recall her name.” Jock laid the Mission Creek Clarion aside as he lifted his second cup of coffee. “I vaguely remember meeting her once. Curvy little blonde. Rather pretty. Didn’t we send flowers when she passed away?”

“I’m sure Dodie took care of that.”

Yes, I’m sure Dodie did, Maddie thought. Her daddy’s private secretary, Dodie Verity, took care of anything Maddie’s mother considered beneath her. Nadine Gibson Delarue didn’t bother herself with underlings, except to issue orders or complain about their lack of intelligence or breeding. Her mother had been born in Georgia, the granddaughter of the governor, and once arriving in Mission Creek, Texas, a good twenty years ago, set about procuring herself a position as one of the town’s grand dames.

Sometimes Maddie wondered how her cultured, Southern belle mother had ever wound up married to a gruff, plainspoken Texan, who, despite being the richest man in the state, was a down-to-earth, good old boy. Jock Delarue’s granddaddy had made a fortune in oil, and his daddy had taken that fortune and tripled it by making smart investments. Maddie sighed. Maybe what she’d heard was true—maybe her mother had married her father for his money.

Growing up, Maddie had basked in her parents’ doting love for her and had always been daddy’s little girl. Believing herself to be the child of a loving union, she had never questioned the solidity of her parents’ marriage. Not until recently. She certainly hadn’t seen much affection between the two lately. And even at sixteen, she wasn’t totally naive. She’d heard the rumors about her father’s other women.

“May I be excused?” Maddie tossed her napkin on the table and scooted back her chair.

“You look a bit pale, dear,” her mother said. “Are you upset because your father mentioned that awful Bridges boy? I know how traumatic being kidnapped by that delinquent was for you.”

“Hell, Dinie, the boy didn’t kidnap Maddie,” Jock bellowed. “She told us, she told the police and she testified in court that he didn’t force her to go with him.”

“I refuse to believe that any daughter of mine would have willingly—”

“Shut up, woman!” Jock looked at Maddie, who stood behind her chair, trembling, tears swimming in her eyes. “You’re excused, honey pie.”

Maddie nodded, offered her father a weak smile, then ran from the dining room. She didn’t stop running until she reached her bedroom, upstairs. And all the while her mind whirled with unanswered questions, with doubts and uncertainties and with an un-bidden sympathy for Dylan Bridges.

She tossed herself across her bed and cried as if her heart were breaking. And in all honesty, she wasn’t sure her heart wasn’t breaking. Her safe, secure and sane life had in a few short months begun to unravel, to come apart at the seams. And there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop it.

She couldn’t help wondering if she was responsible for the constant bickering between her parents; it seemed they seldom had a kind word for each other. When the police had called her parents the day Dylan had taken her for a ride in a stolen car, her mother had blamed her father.

“It’s all your fault for allowing her to attend public school and to associate with riffraff,” Nadine had said. “If you had listened to me and we’d sent her to private school, she would have known better than to even speak to someone like that Bridges boy.”

“My father sent me to public school and it didn’t hurt me one bit,” Jock had replied. Her mother had simply rolled her eyes. “I felt Maddie needed to learn how to deal with people from all walks of life, just as my father believed that was best for me. Along with great wealth comes great responsibility, you know.”

“You should have acted in a more responsible manner toward your daughter!”

Could she have prevented what happened that day? Maddie wondered. Had her comments about Dylan’s dilapidated truck a few days earlier prompted him to steal the car that Saturday? Had the embarrassment her mother experienced because of her involvement with Dylan’s car theft created a rift between her parents?

Maddie curled into a fetal ball in the middle of her bed and cried until her eyes were red and her nose stuffy. As she uncurled her body, turned over and gazed up at the ceiling, she sniffed several times and wiped her face with her fingertips.

Enough of this feeling sorry for yourself, she thought. Your life hasn’t been drastically changed; not the way Dylan Bridges’ life has been. He’s going away to a correctional facility for underage criminals.

You shouldn’t waste your time feeling sorry for him, she told herself. He doesn’t mean anything to you.

Was she lying to herself? Was she trying to convince herself that Dylan Bridges had no effect on her whatsoever? If only that were true. She hated the very idea that Mission Creek’s rebel without a cause plagued her thoughts day and night. For goodness sakes, she didn’t even like him. But she did feel something for him. Those strange, unnerving feelings scared the heck out of her. During the past six months, whenever she saw him, her heart beat a little faster and a her stomach quivered. And heaven help her, she had daydreamed about him kissing her. Her reaction to Dylan was different from anything she’d ever felt. Even when Jimmy Don Newman French-kissed her, she didn’t get weak in the knees.

Maddie closed her eyes as memories of that Saturday at the country club six weeks ago flashed through her mind like a movie.

Jimmy Don had picked her up in his red Corvette at ten-thirty for their tennis date. They had played doubles with friends, then eaten lunch at the country club’s Yellow Rose Café before Jimmy Don and several of his buddies left the girls alone to go play billiards. Bored with the idle chitchat and endless discussion of next year’s Debutante Ball, Maddie wandered around on her own and finally went outside. Looking back at what happened that day, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure she hadn’t deliberately gone looking for Dylan. But if she had, it had been an unconscious action.

“Hey there, Red.” Dylan surveyed her from head to toe. “Looking good today, honey. But then you always look good. Mighty good.”

She pretended to ignore him.

“Get tired of Jimmy Don?” he asked.

“No, I did not get tired of—Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“What would you like to do to me?”

Maddie gasped, understanding the none-too-subtle innuendo.

Dylan laughed. “How about going for a ride with me? It’s a beautiful sunny fall day.”

“Aren’t you working?” She told herself to go back into the country club, to get as far away from Dylan as possible, but she didn’t heed her own warning.

“I get a lunch break,” he replied.

“Oh. Well, it doesn’t matter because I wouldn’t be caught dead in that old truck of yours.”

“See that silver Porsche over there?” He pointed to the sleek sports car in the private parking area at the club. “How would you like to take a ride with me in that?”

“But that’s not your car.”

“It belongs to a friend. He won’t mind if I borrow it.”

Maddie’s moment of indecision obviously prompted Dylan to assume she wouldn’t reject his request. By the time she managed to form her thoughts into words, he had raced over to the car, jumped in and started the engine.

Oh, no. Now what? She was not going anywhere with him. Not even in a Porsche. Her mother would be appalled if she ever found out that her daughter had even talked to Dylan Bridges, let alone taken a ride with him.

Dylan eased the car around to the front of the club, flung open the passenger door and grinned at Maddie. “Come on, Red. Live dangerously for once in your life. You know you’re dying to come with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, Dylan, really, I can’t. I wish you’d stop pestering me. You get me all confused and I don’t like it.”

With that confession, Dylan hopped out of the Porsche, grabbed Maddie’s hands and dragged her toward the car. She skidded across the sidewalk, her efforts doing little to halt Dylan’s determination. She realized that she really did want to go with him, so her protest was only halfhearted. When they reached the car’s passenger side, Maddie jerked her hands back, but Dylan held tight.

“Come on, honey. Don’t chicken out on me now.”

“I—I…Oh, all right. But—”

Dylan swept her off her feet. She cried out in surprise, barely able to believe that he’d lifted her up into his arms. He deposited her in the bucket seat, then bolted around the hood and got behind the wheel. As he sped down the circular drive, the wind whipped Maddie’s long hair into her face.

I’ve lost my mind, she thought. A niggling sense of uncertainty fluttered inside her. What was she doing here, flying down the highway with Dylan in a borrowed car?

About fifteen minutes later, Dylan turned off on a bumpy dirt road. After pulling under a tree several yards from the highway, he killed the motor, then threw his arm across the back of Maddie’s seat as he leaned toward her. Before she realized his intention, he kissed her. A quick brush of his lips over hers. She gasped.

“What’s the matter, honey? You’ve been kissed before, haven’t you?”

“Of course, I’ve been kissed,” she told him. “And much better than that.”

Without warning, Dylan grabbed her, lifted her up and over the console and into his lap. She was jammed between the steering wheel and Dylan’s lean body. When she felt his erection pressing against her bottom, she panicked and tried to pull free. He manacled her wrists and held both in one hand while he lowered his head and kissed her again. But this time, he took her mouth hungrily, shocking her with the fury of his possession. She trembled. She felt hot. She ached between her thighs. Oh, mercy, this can’t be happening.

Maddie knew that she had to stop him now, before he went any further, before she wouldn’t have the power to resist. But he kept ravaging her mouth, his tongue seeking entrance. She wriggled and squirmed, but he seemed to enjoy it and moaned into her mouth. She immediately stopped moving. Finally, he lifted his head so that they could both breathe again.

“I didn’t tell you that you could kiss me!”

He grinned. A cocky, self-assured smile that created a flurry of butterflies in her belly. “But you wanted me to kiss you, didn’t you? You’ve been wondering what it would be like, the same way I’ve been wondering.”

“No, that’s not true, I haven’t…”

She looked into his eyes, an earthy moss green, and recognized a kindred passion unlike anything she’d ever experienced with Jimmy Don or any other boy. Was it possible that he could see the same overwhelming emotion in her eyes?

They stared at each other for an endless moment. Maddie tugged on her bound hands, and he loosened his hold. She lifted her arms up and around his neck, then moved against him, her breasts pressing against his hard chest. When she leaned forward, he watched her, waiting for her to make the next move. She kissed him. Softly. Sweetly. But suddenly that wasn’t enough. She wanted more. She wanted a lot more.

Taking charge, Dylan deepened the kiss.

Just as he undid the top two buttons on her blouse and kissed the swell of her breasts spilling over the top of her bra, she heard the sirens. But she disregarded them. By the time she had Dylan’s shirt undone and her fingers were caressing his chest, she realized the sirens came from two police cars that were turning off the highway onto the dirt road.

“Damn,” Dylan muttered under his breath.

Within minutes two uniformed policemen had parked and were approaching the Porsche.

“What’s going on?” she asked Dylan.

“Both of you get out of the car, nice and slow,” one of the officers said.

“Dylan?” She stared at him.

“Do what they say, Maddie.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The guy I borrowed this car from must have called the police.”

“You stole this car?”

“I borrowed it, dammit.”

“You stole it!” Maddie flung open the door and got out. Glaring at Dylan, she shouted, “I hate you, Dylan Bridges. Do you hear me? I hate you and I never want to see you again as long as I live.”

That had been six weeks ago. Six long, agonizing weeks. Jimmy Don hadn’t spoken to her for days afterward. All her girlfriends had asked her a hundred and one questions about Dylan. Her mother had all but disowned her. Only her daddy had comforted her. But she suspected that he’d spoken to Carl Bridges about Dylan. She had wanted to ask her father to intervene on Dylan’s behalf—and he could have. With one word from Jock Delarue, Flynt Carson, the owner of the silver Porsche would have dropped the car-theft charges against Dylan. But she didn’t dare let anyone, least of all her daddy, know that she cared about Mission Creek’s bad boy.