A Season For Love

“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

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.”

“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?”

“Yes,” she flung at him. “Alone!”

“That’s what you want?” His left hand curled at her waist. With his right he turned her face to his. One gray gaze dueled with another. “Is it, truly, Mary Elena?”

Gathering courage, she glared into his probing stare. “I came to fulfill an assignment, Jericho, nothing more. When and with whom I sleep isn’t a concern.”

“Liar.” The word had the ring of an endearment as his lips slanted in a patient smile. Looking away from her stormy scowl, his gaze moved down her throat to the shadowed cleft of her demure décolletage. “Isn’t that why you wore a gown that clings like liquid gold and blazes like fire? Why have you waited alone on the gallery, except to drive me to this?”

“I came back to Belle Terre on assignment. Not home. Not to you.” The litany of her denial fell from rigid lips. When she would have looked away again, the curve of his palm about her cheek stopped her. “Don’t, Jericho.” Anger blazed out of desperation. “I came to gather news. I don’t want this. I…I don’t want you.”

“No?” He smiled in sympathy as she fought the battle he’d fought for hours. His fingertips drifted down her cheek and throat to the pulsing hollow at its base. “Then what does this mean?”

Catching his roving fingers in hers, changing his focus and avoiding his question, with thumb and forefinger she turned the scarred and worn gold band he wore. “And this?” she whispered. “A wedding band, worn on your right hand? What does it mean?”

Closing his fist over hers, lifting their joined hands, he stroked the flesh of her wrists with his lips before he met her gaze again. “It means whatever you want it to mean, Maria Elena. As little or as much and for as long. Perhaps just for the night.”

With a low sound that might have been laughter were it not for the raw note of pain, she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “Damn you, Jericho. Damn you to hell and back. Eighteen years, and then this.”

“I take that as a yes.” Burying his hand in the dark wealth of her hair, sending the anchoring pins flying, he waited in simmering, barely contained impatience.

Raising her face to his, with her hair tumbling from the glamorous coiffeur as if it had waited as impatiently for his plundering caress, she whispered, “Yes.” Then again, “Yes!”

Finding strength in fury and need, a whisper became a low cry: “Damn you, Jericho!” Hands sliding over his jacket and the smooth tucks of his shirt, she circled his nape with clasping fingers. Drawing his mouth to hers, she whispered. “In hell or heaven, after all the years, why is it always you? Always only Jericho, with no thought of tomorrow.”

“Hell will come soon enough, my love.” Sweeping her into his embrace, he pledged, “But for tonight, I promise only heaven.”

Maria slept. Like a child too tired to toss or turn, she lay half curled on her side, her hair spread in dark rivulets over his pillow, a hand tucked beneath her chin. But it was more than a long night of unquenchable passion that caused the exhaustion marking her face and body. Far more than exhaustion that made her sleep too tense, too still, too guarded.

The first glint of dawn filtering into his bedroom woke him. Concern kept him sitting by the bed keeping watch as she slept. With each precious second, as the day grew older and first light touched the room, he worried it would disturb her. Yet he dared not risk the clatter of closing row after row of shutters.

Twice, while he watched, she frowned and tossed her head, muttering in a language he didn’t understand. Twice he caught the sliding sheet, drawing it over her naked breasts again. Returning to his chair each time with the ache of desire, he knew wherever sleep had taken her, it wasn’t to him and the night they shared.

“I want it all, sweetheart. The night, the day, your dreams. You, Maria Elena…waking or sleeping.” His voice was hushed, though there was no one to hear.

Unable to resist temptation, he took her hand in his and was surprised when her frown faded. When, unconsciously soothed by his touch, the unnatural tension of her sleep grew restful, then serene. Lacing the fingers of both hands around hers, he leaned his forehead against them and closed his burning eyes.

Perhaps he slept, steeped in the scent of her, locked away from all but the muffled sounds of a world not yet awake. Perhaps he only slipped into waking dreams as he remembered the night, the darkness, the dusky room spangled with wisps of moonlight. Soft sighs and shuddering breaths. Wandering, wondering touches, hungering kisses lingering long and deep. Low sweet cries speaking more than words.

The caress of her body gliding over his. The tease of her swaying breasts as she leaned over him discovering the changes time and manhood had wrought in the boy who had been her first lover.

The fall of her tears as she kissed the pallid scars of too many surgeries on his knee. The catch in her breathing as he drew her from her exploration, cradling her breasts in his palms, cherishing nipples furled like new rosebuds with his lips and tongue.

In his drowsy, waking dream, he remembered the play of light and darkness veiling her in tantalizing mystery as her long legs twined about him. He would remember forever the thrust of her body accepting him, enfolding him, taking him deep inside her.

He remembered the clasping heat, the sweet caressing strokes soothing him, comforting him. Maria driving him mad with delight, with ecstasy. And as he’d dreamed she would one day, with love.

“Jericho?” The whispered word and the brush of fingertips skimming over his hair brought him back.

Lifting his head, his gaze collided with Maria’s. Neither spoke. As her questing fingers grew still, neither moved.

After a moment, she smiled a contented smile. “Jericho.”

Dropping a kiss on her knuckles, he said, “Good morning, Maria Elena.”

Tracing the line of his lips, her smile softened. “Maria Elena. Only you call me that. To the rest of the world I’m simply Maria, and sometimes, Ms. Delacroix.”

“What would you have me call you?”

“I like how you say my name.” A wandering caress trailed from his face to the hands that encircled hers. Her smile wavered. “I thought I dreamed you.”

“I’m real, my love.”

“In a world of arrogant pretense, you were always my anchor, always my courage. My only reality.”

“You left me.” His voice was tender and accusing.

“It was for the best, Jericho. If I’d stayed, what would I have become? What would you?” Taking her hand from his, clutching the sheet, she sat up. Bracing against the bed, she looked around, remembering more than seeing the bold masculinity of the room. The neutral decor in ever-darkening tones, the perfect refuge for the quiet times of this worldly man who had been the boy she’d loved.

“You were a Rivers. With all the confidence the name commands, you knew who you were, and understood what you could be. I was a Delacroix. Until I left Belle Terre, I never understood I could be more than the outcast’s brat. More than a girl with courtesan’s blood in her veins. No better than a courtesan herself, in the eyes of Belle Terre’s very proper society.