As Natural As Breathing. As Necessary As Breathing. Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Copyright

As Natural As Breathing. As Necessary As Breathing.

Meg felt Lucas’s start of surprise as her lips touched his, and then she was where she wanted to be, had needed to be, in an embrace that healed and filled all the empty caverns in her heart.

She felt the brush of the mat as he lowered her to it, felt the weight of Lucas against her, felt the tangle of their legs. She felt a need as Lucas took control of the kiss she’d begun.

Desire. Had she ever really felt it before?

And more. Much more. Every nerve ending she possessed had sprung to life, demanding... demanding something she’d never believed in until this moment.

Had anyone ever cherished her—because she could only have dreamed of this happening, never truly imagined it—as Lucas now did with every touch, every breath?

For a woman who now was worth millions, Meg would give up every penny for Lucas’s arms to stay around her for the rest of her life....

Dear Reader,

This month, Silhouette Desire celebrates sensuality. All six steamy novels perfectly describe those unique pleasures that gratify our senses, like seeing the lean body of a cowboy at work, smelling his earthy scent, tasting his kiss...and hearing him say, “I love you.”

Feast your eyes on June’s MAN OF THE MONTH, the tall, dark and incredibly handsome single father of four in beloved author Barbara Boswell’s That Marriageable Man! In bestselling author Lass Small’s continuing series, THE KEEPERS OF TEXAS, a feisty lady does her best to tame a reckless cowboy and he wisds up unleashing her wild side in The Hard-To-Tame Texan. And a dating service guarantees delivery of a husband-to-be in Non-Refundable Groom by ultrasexy writer Patty Salier.

Plus, Modean Moon unfolds the rags-to-riches story of an honorable lawman who fulfills a sudden socialite’s deepest secret desire in Overnight Heiress. In Catherine Lanigan’s Montana Bride, a bachelor hero introduces love and passion to a beautiful virgin. And a rugged cowboy saves a jilted lady in The Cowboy Who Came in From the Cold by Pamela Macaluso.

These six passionate stories are sure to leave you tingling... and anticipating next month’s sensuous selections. Enjoy!

Regards,

Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

Silhouette Books

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie. Ont. L2A 5X3

Overnight Heiress

Modean Moon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MODEAN MOON once believed she could do anything she wanted. Now she realizes there is not enough time in one’s life to do everything. As a result, she says her writing is a means of exploring paths not taken. Currently she works as a land-title researcher, determining land or mineral ownership for clients. Modean lives in Oklahoma on a hill overlooking a small town. She shares a restored Victorian farmhouse with a six-pound dog, a twelve-pound cat, and, reportedly, a resident ghost.

One

Two plainclothes policemen stood at the end of the bar.

Meg stopped just inside the door and looked warily at the two strangers, knowing they were cops without ever having seen them before. Then, with her heart beating a heavy cadence to the beat of her footsteps on the hardwood floor, she made her way through the scrubbed-clean tables and upended chairs.

They’re not here for me. They can’t be here for me, she told herself as she schooled her features into an expression of concerned curiosity.

“Good morning,” she said pleasantly. “Is Patrick—” As she glanced around the brightly lighted room, her concern became real. “Patrick McBean is here, isn’t he?”

The younger of the two men flashed a smile and just as easily flashed his ID at her. “Yes. He’s in the back.”

Meg let an eyebrow climb a fraction of an inch. “Is there a problem?” she asked.

The older cop, a stereotype of her worst nightmares, raked a glance over the black tailored slacks and white pin-tucked shirt she wore on her angular body. “You a waitress here?”

“Day bartender,” Meg told him, and started to pass him to go behind the bar.

“Don’t touch anything.”

“What?” Meg stopped in her reach for her apron.

“Not until the print crew gets here. And we’re going to need your prints, too. For comparison.”

Oh, hell. Oh, God. Oh, no.

The detective’s eyes narrowed. “You got a problem with being printed, Miss—?”

Meg sighed. “Wilson. Meg Wilson. And yes, I have a problem in principle with workplace fingerprinting, workplace polygraph testing and random drug tests. But since my objections are based on my interpretation of constitutional rights, I don’t suppose those objections will carry any weight with you, will they?”

Shut your mouth, Meg. Shut it now. This isn’t the time to bait a bear. Too much is at risk.

“Isn’t she something?” Patrick asked, coming in from the back room and draping his arm affectionately over Meg’s shoulder.

“Night school. I swear, she can hold her own with anybody who comes in this joint. And they love it.” The bar’s owner squeezed her shoulder with a little more force than necessary. A warning? “Now tell these fine gentlemen you were only staying in practice, Meg, me darlin’.”

Back off. Meg’s silent warning to herself echoed Patrick’s. Your prints aren’t on file. They can’t learn anything. Don’t antagonize them. Don’t make them want to look past the obvious.

Meg had a wide and generous smile. She knew: she’d had to work at it. “I’m sorry,” she said, using that smile. “Wisecracks have gotten to be such a part of the job, I sometimes think I put on the personality when I put on the rest of the uniform.”

Meg turned toward her boss, but now her smile was genuine and concerned. “What happened this time, Patrick?”

Meg paced her minuscule living room, stopping sporadically in her marching to look out through the sliding patio door at the vibrant colors on the surviving trees in this older neighborhood—looking for peace in the panorama of changing seasons, finding none. Tulsa was big enough to get lost in, big enough to escape from, but not big enough to hide two persons from a concentrated search.

Three days had passed since the latest theft from Patrick’s upscale bar and grill, three days since her fingerprints had been sent to the FBI wonderland that cops worshiped. She’d never been printed before, but... but, but, but. There were too many unknowns in this equation, and Meg was so tired—tired of running, tired of hiding—exhausted from the effort of making a home that didn’t feel like they were running or hiding.

She glanced at her watch, as utilitarian as everything she wore, and grimaced. Twenty minutes; that’s all she had until the neighborhood filled with the laughter and noise of home-bound school children. Twenty minutes to pace, to wrestle with her conscience, to decide. She wouldn’t be able to use Patrick as a reference if she left—she’d probably never be able to contact him again.

That was what hurt: losing the friend, not the reference. But if she left without notice, would she become a suspect in this string of thefts from Patrick? Would the police look for her for that reason when they might otherwise overlook her if she stayed quietly where she was?

The doorbell squawked out half its two-note warning and crackled into silence. Meg twisted her watch face into view.

Twenty minutes. Damn it! She needed that time to pull her racing thoughts together, to drag her crumbling composure around her. Later she’d have time for the visit with her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Henson, that the woman was beginning to expect, but not now. Please, not now.

Two men stood on Meg’s tiny doorstep. They were dressed in conservatively styled, tailored and colored suits. FBI. Her mind had no trouble making that connection.

“Good afternoon. Miss Wilson,” one said as both men produced identification.

“Good afternoon,” Meg said through a suddenly and agonizingly dry throat. Yes. FBI. And it wasn’t an accident. They weren’t just canvasing the neighborhood. They knew her name.

“What... Is something wrong?”

One of them smiled, and she was sure it had to be a violation of at least one rule. “No, ma’am. But we’d like for you to come to our office with us.”

“Am I—am I under arrest for something?” FBI. Had he filed kidnapping charges? No. Even he wouldn’t do that. Of course he would!

“Oh, no, Miss Wilson. It’s just a problem that was brought out when you were fingerprinted last week. It won’t take long. You should be home—within an hour.”

With the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge, Meg thought She opened the door wide and stepped back. “I need to get my purse,” she said. And I need thirty seconds alone in the bathroom. Please, please don’t come in.

Lucas Lambert was waiting in the interrogation room when the woman was brought in. He’d argued that interrogation wouldn’t be necessary, but the Feds seemed to think it would be. The woman was tall, at least five-ten, he suspected, even in the flat-heeled shoes she wore, angular—almost gaunt—with her dark hair cropped in a utilitarian, nocare style, and dark eyes that would have had him questioning her relationship to Edward Carlton even without the fingerprints.

Dark eyes that called too vividly to his mind the memory of another woman facing another roomful of unknown men, another interrogation that had a far different outcome from the one he expected here. With the constant regret that he had not been there for that woman, he forced his attention back to the woman in this room.

She was frightened, although she hid it well. She took the seat she was told to take and looked around the small room, focusing suspicious attention on him.

Hadn’t these idiots told her anything? He’d relayed Edward’s message to them, the same message Edward had given him when he first voiced his own suspicions. “We were rich kids,” Edward had told him. “Nothing was left to chance. We were measured and fingerprinted and tattooed. The fingerprints convinced me, but she might need a little extra persuasion.” And then Edward had given him childhood photographs showing a birthmark and a tattoo.

Scared. She was scared out of her skull, and hiding it well enough to fool most people, but not him. He focused on her hands, long fingered and slender, held loosely in her lap but trembling with the tension of not clenching them.

She visibly relaxed her hands, then lifted her chin in a cocky, do-or-die attitude. “Don’t you think it’s time for someone to tell me why I’m here?”

The two federal agents remained silent. Lucas stepped forward. They might not approve of his tactics later, but they had passed the ball to him. “Miss Wilson,” he said. “My name is Lucas Lambert. I’m sheriff of Avalon, New Mexico.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever been in your jurisdiction, Sheriff.”

He met her cautious smile with one of his own. “That isn’t surprising. Few have. But we have a new citizen of Avalon, a man who has become a good friend of mine. I’m here on his behalf.”

He saw the tension return to her hands. Curious. And still more curious.

“His name is Edward Carlton.”

Lucas saw no recognition in her eyes but he did note that once again her tension relaxed. “Actually, it’s Edward Willliam Renberg Carlton IV.”

He watched as she fought back a smile, the same response he had once made to the pomposity of Edward’s name.

“I hope he’s a big man,” she said.

“He is. Six-two, but lean. Dark hair. Dark eyes.”

He watched the confusion in her eyes for only two heartbeats. “Edward is thirty-five now,” he told her. “Twenty-five years ago his father, his mother and his younger sister went on an outing without him. Edward was left at home for some infraction—a punishment that saved his life.

“The family was kidnapped. A ransom note was received but as too often happens, somehow, someone slipped up. The bodies of Edward’s mother and father were found a month later. Nothing was heard from or about his sister Megan until last week when her fingerprints turned up in a routine screening in a burglary investigation.”

The tension whooshed out of her. She sank back in the chair, eyes wide, mouth open in a question she couldn’t seem to speak. Lucas passed an envelope containing two pictures across the table to her. Numbly she opened the envelope and examined the pictures Edward had provided.

“And I—oh. Oh, my.” She closed her eyes and turned the photographs facedown on the table, sitting silently for several seconds before she again looked up at him. For only a moment her eyes pleaded with him for—for what?—for information on who she had been, where she had lived, and what had happened to the brother she never knew?—before they shuttered.

“I suppose you want me to go with a matron or someone to prove I have those marks?”

Lucas shook his head. “No. Those photographs are for your assurance only. I’m sure there will be all sorts of formalities to go through later, but we’re satisfied with the fingerprints. And with your appearance. Would you like to see a picture of your brother, Miss Wilson?”

She didn’t answer. Lucas didn’t suppose that was too surprising considering the circumstances. The FBI report stated she worked as a day bartender in a popular downtown restaurant and lived in a neighborhood that was still safe but was well past its prime. She was wearing what had to be her uniform. Everything about her was squeaky clean but functional; there were no frills in Meg Wilson‘s—Carlton’s—life. That would change. That would definitely change.

Lucas considered the other photographs he had brought with him and handed her one of Edward and his new wife Jennie taken in the back garden of their home in Avalon.

Meg studied the photo, and for a moment Lucas saw what he could only describe as wistfulness play across her expression. Then her chin jutted and a cocky smile lifted her lips. “He seems to have survived his ordeal fairly well.”

What the hell was she so mad about? Because Lucas was sure that anger was what he saw in her—maybe unacknowledged, maybe even unwanted, but anger just the same.

“Perhaps you’d like this one better,” he said, fighting his own anger at her response. He handed her a studio portrait of Edward taken a year before, showing him as an ambitious, successful, driven—empty—man before Jennie had healed him.

Meg studied the portrait. For a moment her features, a feminine version of Edward’s—a stunningly beautiful feminine version of Edward’s, Lucas suddenly realized—became as bleak as those of the man he had first met only months before.

“So,” she said. “What’s my name?” She dropped the photo onto the table in front of her. “Who am I?”

Her name was Megan Elizabeth Carlton, and she would be twenty-nine years old in three months. Twenty-nine. It wasn’t often a woman got to celebrate her twenty-ninth and her thirtieth birthdays twice. Meg’s lips twisted against bitter anger. That explained so much. What was slow or backward or just plain stupid for a six-year-old—and she had been called all of those—or immature for a twelve- or an eighteen-year-old, was pretty remarkable for someone more than a year and a half younger.

No wonder she hadn’t been able to cope with Blake. She hadn’t been old enough to marry him when she’d divorced him.

Her parents—her adoptive parents—had some serious questions to answer. To her, and to the FBI. Had they known how young she truly was? Or had the lie about her age started before she was brought to them? It mattered; yes, knowing the answer to that question mattered. But letting them know who she was and where she was meant the possibility of Blake finding out, too. And she wasn’t ready for that yet.

Not yet.

Meg schooled her features to reveal none of her thoughts. Lambert’s attention seemed to be focused on the traffic as he guided his rental car back to her apartment, but more than once she had caught him studying her with more perception than normal suspicion. She ought to be terrified of him, being locked in the confines of this less-than-spacious rental car. He was dark, vaguely Native American, vaguely Arabic in appearance, and massive, but for some reason he wasn’t threatening in the way she had come to expect from her past history with cops. He didn’t look like a cop—maybe that was the difference.

And then Meg realized that he did. But he looked like a cop who had spent his life deflecting assaults and abuses away from those who couldn’t defend themselves and taking them on himself if necessary. Or a gladiator, maybe. With battle scars that not even the civilized veneer of expensive tailoring could hide.

“Have you about got it figured out?”

Lambert’s voice was still a surprise. His gravelly accent bore traces of the South—aristocracy, not Appalachia—and he spoke softly as though he had spent years allowing nothing more obvious than a whisper. And once again, his perception intimidated her.

“What?”

“Whatever it was that threw you into that poor, pitiful female, ‘I’m going to faint’ routine. Have you ever fainted in your life?”

Meg let out a deep breath and shook her head. “Turn left at the next light.”

“Who are you hiding from?”

Not a cop? This man was wasted on some hick town. “Turn left again and find a place about midblock to park.”

Lucas pulled the car to the curb and killed the engine, but when Meg reached for the door handle, he stopped her with a firm hand on her arm and an equally firm shake of his head.

“I know this is a shock to you,” he said. “I know there are going to be all sorts of changes in your life—changes that no one at this time can even imagine. But I also have to know if I’m taking trouble back to Avalon. If I’m taking more trouble back to Edward and Jennie. They don’t need it.

“You were scared spitless when they brought you into the interrogation room, you refused to go to Edward’s house until you learned about the publicity that’s sure to find you if you don’t, and you faked a faint so you wouldn’t have to give any details of your life beyond the past six months. That spells hiding to me. lady, and it’s time I had some answers.”

Meg sank back against the seat. Maybe Lambert wasn’t her friend, but at least he wasn’t her enemy. It wasn’t as though she could keep this secret forever, anyway.

“Wrong. I faked the faint to keep from talking and to get out of there. And I promise you all the answers you need, but first I have to go in that house.”

Lucas held her arm for perhaps a second longer. Then, with a nod, he released her. Meg scrambled from the car, had her key in her hand by the time she reached her door and went directly to the bedroom. The little stash of cash and credit cards on the top shelf of her closet was gone. She didn’t have to check for the rest; she knew it would have been taken, too.

Meg sagged against the door frame, allowing herself a moment’s weakness, and then went to find Lambert.

He had followed her into the house but had stopped at the open door to the bathroom. The medicine cabinet door stood at an angle, and the message she had scrawled on it was obvious even though she had only had cold cream to use.

“‘B’?” he asked.

“As in Plan B,” Meg told him. “Everyone talks about one. We actually had one. And an A and even a C. Today had all the earmarks of a B day.”

“Answers, Meg.”

She nodded, swallowed once and squared her shoulders. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to trust anyone, Lambert. It doesn’t come easily.” She took a towel from the hamper and began wiping the cold cream from the mirror.

Lucas stilled her motions, took the towel from her and rested both hands on her shoulders. “Answers,” he said in his whispery voice.

For a moment Meg accepted the comfort of tins man’s hands on her shoulders. He was strong enough for her to lean against if she but would, and for that moment she wanted very much to do just that, to let someone else fend off the fears and frustrations that had become her life. But she suspected that too many people had already done that to Lucas Lambert; she wouldn’t add unnecessarily to the burdens he carried. And besides, she remembered with a small start of surprise, he was a cop.

She stepped back, drawing her strength around her. “Your friend Edward isn’t just regaining his long-lost sister today,” she said. “He’s getting a little more family than that.”

“Meg—”

“Can I tell you the rest of it later?” she asked. “Right now we have to stop my son before he gets on a plane to Florida.”

Danny looked like her. Too thin, too intense, too competent in his escape plans to be a novice at Plan B or any other plan, and too world-weary to be the twelve Meg had told him.

Now the boy was asleep, curled up in a seat by a window of the Carlton executive jet—the aftereffects of too much adrenaline in too short a time. Lucas knew the symptoms well.

What he didn’t know was why these two were running, or how they had become so accomplished at it.

Megan had taken one quick, startled breath when she’d seen the interior of Edward’s private jet. Lucas thought that before that point the fact of Edward’s wealth hadn’t really penetrated through her shock at finding herself with family. She had sunk silently into one of the oversize chairs grouped for conversation at the front of the cabin. Now she looked up, catching Lucas in his study of the sleeping boy. He watched as the silent battle she waged with herself played through her expressive eyes, watched as she imperceptibly squared her shoulders and prepared herself physically for battle.

“How many times am I going to have to tell this story, Sheriff?” Meg finally said.

Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know. There is no statute of limitations on murder. And the Bureau is going to want to drag every possible bit of memory it can from you. Edward won’t push you, but he’s going to want to know what happened to you. And it seems to me that there are some things I will have to know, in order to protect you from whatever it is that has you running.”

Meg nodded. “Fair enough. But why don’t you make a note of the things you think are going to be important to the—to the past—and have them typed into a statement, or something, that I can sign and not have to go through this again?”

“We can try that,” Lucas told her. We can damn well try, he vowed. This woman looked like she had been through hell and was on the verge of being thrust back into it.

But this time he would make sure that nothing—nothing—got past him to harm her. It was a promise he now knew he had made the moment he had looked into her eyes and seen again the vivid reminder of the debt that was the only hope of redemption for his misbegotten life.

He could help this woman.

She was as fragile as his wife, Alicia, had been in those last few months after he’d come back to her, as fragile as Jennie had been when she first came to Avalon, although he suspected Meg would never admit to fragility—to weakness of any kind.

He could give her the security and protection she needed to discover who she was and who she could become. Her son would have the chance to be a child again, and in a few months, when she left, when she no longer needed him, he could deal with that, too.

Could he?

Giving was hard. Much harder than he’d ever dreamed when he’d promised that if he lived, he would learn to give. Give, rather than take. Give, rather than accept as somehow due.

Give, because if he never got anything else in return, he had already received more than he could ever give back.

But he suspected that Megan Elizabeth Carlton presented more of a challenge to his sanity and his soul than he had faced since he’d made that promise. Could he give to her and her son Danny without asking anything in return from them? Would he be able to let them leave—let her leave—without relinquishing a vital part of the soul he was trying so hard to redeem?

And even if he couldn’t, did he any longer have a choice?

Two

Meg leaned back in the luxuriously upholstered chair and closed her eyes, wondering where to start m telling the convoluted but not terribly interesting story of her life.

For a moment her senses became finely attuned to her surroundings—the hushed drone of the powerful engine, the fine fabric of the upholstery, the deep pile of the carpet, the unmistakable aroma of “new” and “clean.”

Everything about the jet’s passenger compartment was designed to cushion and protect its occupants, much as the Carlton wealth would cushion and protect.

Meg felt a wave of anger as uncontrollable and as unwanted as the one she had felt when she first saw a picture of the man they told her was her brother—laughing, carefree, with his arm around his wife in the security of their own home.

Secure, happy, protected—while she and Danny ran from city to city, from furnished apartment to hotel room, from one minimum-wage job to the next. She pushed those thoughts away, recognizing her rare flash of jealousy as both unreasonable and unwarranted. She had done nothing to earn this wealth. And she and Danny had always had each other.

Still, with the Carlton wealth behind her, she might not have had to hide so desperately from Blake...wouldn’t have been able to—

Enough!

Recognizing that her random thoughts were merely postponing the inevitable, Meg opened her eyes to find Lucas Lambert studying her from the adjacent chair.

“Are you all right now?” he asked.

Meg saw concern in Lambert’s gray eyes, concern and secrets she couldn’t begin to guess. But his secrets weren’t under examination now; hers were.

“Are you going to take notes?”

Lambert gestured toward the table between them, and Meg noticed controls and some sort of built-in equipment.

“I can take notes, or we can tape what you tell me. It’s your decision.”

Meg sighed. “Please take notes. I don’t think I’m going to say anything earthshaking, but I—I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of not knowing who is going to be listening.”

Lambert nodded and took a small notebook and what appeared to be a gold pen from an inside jacket pocket.

“Where do I start?”

“Meg, this isn’t an inquisition, but would it be easier if I asked you some questions?”

“No. No, I wasn’t thinking. Of course I know what you need me to tell you.

“I grew up in Simonville. That’s a small town about forty-five miles east of Sacramento. I was adopted—I think I always knew that—at least from the time I started school onward.

“My adoptive parents were—are—James and Audrey Stemple. They called me Margaret Ann—maybe I was able to cling to the name Meg—I don’t know. He was a judge. She is the daughter of a doctor. Other members of the family told me that they had wanted a child for years. The story was that I was the daughter of a distant niece, although I knew that wasn’t true, but I don’t know how I knew. They may have told me.”

Meg paused, collecting her memories.

“They—Audrey especially—told me a lot of things when they were angry,” she added, unable to keep her remembered pain from tingeing her words.

“I don’t remember much of my early childhood, very little before the first grade. I had a lot of trouble in the first grade. And the second.” Meg caught her hand to her mouth. “And the third.”

“Discipline?” Lucas asked.

Meg heard a barely tudden thread of humor in his voice. Well he might ask, she thought, considering the chase she had taken him on today. And she wished now that her problems had been discipline; Lucas Lambert could have understood that, perhaps even have appreciated it. And for some inexplicable reason, his good opinion had become important to her.

“No,” she said, plunging onward. Good opinion, bad opinion or no opinion, she had to get this story told and behind her. “Academic. I almost failed first grade, and all through the elementary grades I had to fight to barely keep up with the class.”

“Now that I find difficult to believe.”

“So did James and Audrey. Audrey especially. She explained to me time after time how I was going to have to do better, that as their daughter I had an image to uphold and that they had gone to great lengths to give me the advantages of their home, their name... ”

“You know there are a number of valid reasons why an obviously bright child doesn’t learn in school.”

She sighed and rewarded him with a smile that was genuine and free of any artifice.

“Thank you for that. And yes, now I do know. And now—today, in fact—I can at last begin to accept that I gave them no reason to be disappointed in me.” She had to ask. She had to hear again the words that freed her from a cruel and untrue childhood label—dumb, stupid, slow; Audrey had screamed all of those at her—but she was afraid that somehow she had heard Lucas wrong, had misunderstood, had wanted so badly to believe that she’d manufactured an excuse. “Tell me again the date of my birthday.”

“January 20?” Lucas said, but she heard the unspoken question in his voice.

“And Meg Carlton will be twenty-nine?”

“Yes.”

Meg felt moisture glittering in her eyes. She hadn’t misheard; she hadn’t misunderstood. “Write this down, Sheriff. Margaret Ann Stemple’s birth certificate swears that five months ago she passed her thirtieth birthday.”

Lambert was silent, so silent that Meg looked up at him. He was watching her, quietly, intently, while running his gold pen through his fingers. “It would seem to me,” he said finally, “that James and Audrey have a great deal to answer for—the ‘great lengths’ they went to to obtain someone else’s child, and why they so obviously failed to cherish that child once they had her.”

Cherish. Yes. That was precisely the right word for how Meg loved her own son. But how strange to hear that kind of comment come with such ease from someone who looked as though he had never been cherished, either. How strange it was that this stern and unsmiling man, this man who had known her only superficially and only for a few hours, should know instinctively what had been missing from her life.

“How are they with Danny?”

Caught in her thoughts, Meg almost didn’t hear the question, and then she wished she hada’t. “They aren’t,” she said abruptly, because now Lambert had come to the hard questions. “They’ve never seen Danny.”

She had met Blake Wilson when she was a senior in high school. She’d been tall even then, all arms and legs and knees and elbows and so hungry for affection that she had believed everything Blake told her, everything he promised.

“They didn’t approve of Blake, Danny’s father,” she told Lambert. “When we—decided to marry, they told me not to bother to come back to them when the marriage failed. When the marriage did fail, I—I believed what they had told me.”

“And the boy’s father?”

“Is the reason we’re running.”

Lambert had gone still, holding his pen between his fingers, not moving.

“He’s abusive,” Meg said, condensing years of pain into those two words. “The last time he found us, two years ago, he broke Danny’s arm.”

A pencil would have snapped under the pressure. “Did the bastard go to jail?” Lambert asked with deadly quiet.

And now for the moment of truth. Meg glanced around the luxuriously appointed Jet. She was only beginning to suspect the power and wealth of the Carlton family—enough power and wealth that Lucas Lambert, the sheriff, would continue to protect her and her son, but would Lucas Lambert, the man, believe her?

“No.”

Lambert placed his notebook on the table between them and aligned the gold pen beside it. “Why not?”

Meg fisted her hands to keep from reaching for his pen, for his hand—to touch him or any part of him in some—any—way. Where were all these unfamiliar urgings coming from?

“We were in Denver,” she told him, calmly, dispassionately. She was making a report as once before she had made a related report. “A nice young patrol officer came to the emergency room. I filed a complaint. By then Blake had come to the hospital, too. He can be...very convincing. He showed the nice young officer his own police commission—he’s a detective captain in Simonville—swapped a few stories about his father, the chief of police, and his grandfather in the ‘good old days’ of the department, threw in a blatant fabrication about a contested custody suit and convinced everyone there except one doctor that I was a vindictive, hysterical ex-wife.”

“This—this man is still a police officer?” Lambert asked, and Meg heard not one clue to his thoughts or his feelings.

“Yes. At least I think he still is. He left once a few years ago to do something he thought more exciting—DEA, I think—but he went back to Simonville.”

“You’re divorced?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“And you have custody of Danny?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That simplifies things. Not that it really matters. If you weren’t, or didn’t, a battery of lawyers would go to work tomorrow. Will anyway, if you want them to. Are you vindictive, Meg? Do you want his job? His hide? A pound or two of flesh?”

Did she? If she were truly honest, she’d have to admit that at one time she had wanted Blake to suffer for the pain he had caused Danny and for the unsettled and too-frequently disrupted life they were forced to lead. Then her fantasies had been just that—dark-of-the-night fantasies with no hope of ever being fulfilled. Now? Now she could no more ask than she could have when she was still Meg Wilson, struggling single mother.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No. I just want him to leave us alone.”

“You don’t need the Carlton legal staff for that, Meg,” Lucas told her with promise in every softly spoken word. “Just me. And I swear to you, as long as I’m around, he’ll have to go through me before he ever lays a hand on either you or Danny again.”

Avalon, New Mexico, was as much a surprise to Meg as its soft-spoken sheriff had been. But in a day when her world had been literally turned around, she didn’t suppose she should be surprised by geography, no matter how unexpected it was.

The jet landed at a small, but obviously modern, airport in what seemed to her to be little more than a wide clearing in the forested mountains. From the plane she’d seen a white-spired, picture-postcard village a little further up the mountain.

Meg awakened Danny, who scrambled upright in his window seat and strapped himself in for the landing. He was no more surprised than she by the terrain below them—the former-ocean-bed desert stretching in one direction and the awesome pine-covered mountains in the other—he just didn’t hide his surprise as well as she.

And he didn’t manage to hide his involuntary shrinking away when Lucas reached to help him into the top-of-the-line Land Rover that waited for them at a terminal straight out of an art deco design book.

Meg saw Lucas’s mouth flatten into a narrow, unsmiling line, but he unobtrusively stepped back, giving Danny the space he needed without calling attention to that need. He gave Meg the same space, not touching her, as he held the door for the passenger-side front seat.

Almost in the center of town, he turned into the graveled driveway of a walled estate that wound its way through an arborist’s sampler of trees and shrubs to a large, stone and timbered house. The house should have been imposing because of its size, but instead Meg found it surprisingly welcoming.

Meg sat still while Lucas rounded the Land Rover and opened the door for her; she’d lost the duel of the doors twice in Tulsa and knew that he would insist on this courtly gesture no matter whether she was seventeen or seventy. Danny remained in his seat, and she suspected it was because he was temporarily intimidated by his surroundings. She’d explained to him what Lambert had told her as best she could when they had retrieved him from the Tulsa airport, but she knew he was having as much trouble as she was—maybe more—understanding the changes in their lives.

She smelled the pleasant aroma of wood smoke from a fireplace chimney and felt the promise of a light chill in the air of approaching night, a chill that the wealth and comfort of the house they faced would cushion.

Lucas Lambert held his hand out to her to help her from the vehicle. She glanced at it, at the strength evident in its wide palm and long, blunt fingers, and hesitated. She never asked for help—never—but this man insisted on giving it to her. Why? What was there about her, or him, that made him do so? And what was there about her, or him, that made her want to take that help? Not just in alighting from a car, but in facing what waited for her inside that huge stone house, in facing what waited for her when Blake found out who and where she was?

She lifted her chin and placed her hand in his, taking his help as she stepped from the vehicle and onto the winter green grass bordering the drive.

For a moment his hand closed over hers, wrapping it in a promise of safety and caring and concern that she had no memory of ever knowing, wrapping it in a promise of more, much more. Stunned, she looked up, surprising for no more than a second a look in his eyes that spoke of hunger and longing and a loneliness as great as she had known for most of her life. And then it was gone, replaced by a professional, or perhaps a distant-relation, friendliness.

She drew in a not-quite-steady breath and gave him a shaky smile before turning toward her son. “Come on, Danny,” she said softly. “Let’s go meet this new family of ours.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “It’s for sure they’ve got to be better than the old one.”

Meg let the uncharacteristic bitterness pass without comment. She had felt something similar when faced with the apparent ease of Edward Carlton’s life when contrasted with hers. His studio portrait had proved her mistaken about just how sheltered and comfortable he had been. Something would prove it to Danny, too, but until it did, nothing she said would change his mind.

Double oak doors, framed by a heavily leaded, stained-glass fanlight and matching panels, guarded the entrance to the house. Before their little entourage reached the fiat, protected landing, one of those doors flew open, spilling light out into the darkening night and revealing the tall, stern man of the photograph and a small, delicate young woman as light and effervescent as a butterfly.

“You brought them?” the young woman said. “Sheriff Lambert? You really brought them.”

“Yes, Miss Jennie,” Lucas answered, stepping to Meg’s side to grasp the young woman’s hands. “Now what are you doing running around like this? Aren’t you supposed to be resting?”

The tall, stern man—it had to be Edward, her brother—dropped his hand onto the woman‘s—onto Jennie’s—shoulder. “Yes, she is,” he said. “But you know Jennie.”

He looked out onto the steps, and his eyes—eyes that were achingly familiar to her from all the times she had looked into a mirror—locked with Meg’s.

“Meggie?” he said. “Oh, God.” His voice broke, and Meg saw a glint of moisture in his eyes. “It really is you. Meggie.”

Jennie lifted a hand to grasp Edward’s where it lay on her shoulder. “Of course it is,” she said. But even her voice seemed strangely thick. Then, smiling, she stepped away from Edward’s touch and out onto the porch. “He really wants to do this,” she said to Meg, “but he’s still learning that it’s all right to show his emotions. Give him a little more time, though, and you’ll be able to see the love that’s in him, too.” Then she wrapped her arms around Meg and hugged her tightly. “We’re so glad we found you. Edward’s missed you forever.”

With one last welcoming hug, Jennie stepped back and looked toward the young boy standing slightly behind Meg, a boy who, in spite of his youth, was almost as tall as she. “And you’re Danny. Lucas told us about you when he called from Tulsa, but no one would ever have had to tell me who you are. You’re going to look just like your Uncle Edward.”

Danny shrugged and nodded, clearly unsure of his welcome or how he should act toward this strange woman, in spite of her words. Meg took a comforting step closer to him.

“I suppose you’re too big to admit wanting a hug,” Jennie said to the boy. When Danny shrugged and nodded again, Jennie smiled. “Too bad,” she said as she stepped up to him and wrapped him in an embrace. “Everybody needs hugs.”

Danny didn’t immediately surrender to the embrace, but he didn’t struggle, either. Meg caught him looking at her in questioning wonder and gave him a shrug of her own.

“And everybody needs to come into the house and get out of the night air,” Edward said, stepping back but holding out his hand toward Jennie.

“Yes, Miss Jennie,” Lambert added, looking pointedly at her. “They do.”

Jennie laughed and turned, wrapping one arm over Danny’s shoulder and the other around Meg’s waist. “Then by all means, let’s everybody go inside.”

Only then did Meg notice the lines of pain on the young woman’s face. Only then did she hear the strain in her voice. Curious, she thought, as she let herself and her son be led into the house, down a long, wide hall with hardwood floors and Oriental rugs. Fine English side tables and crystal wall sconces lined the walls on the way to what must have been considered a small room in that house, but which was welcoming and comfortably furnished, with a cheery wood fire burning in the cozy fireplace.

There, Edward firmly but gently led Jennie to a wing chair and stood in front of her until she grinned at him and settled herself in the chair. Then, as though not really sure of the etiquette—and who could be, Meg wondered—he gestured toward the other chairs in the grouping. “Please,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable. I—” He broke off with a short laugh. “I really don’t know what to say next. And I suppose you are as much in the dark as I am.”

He turned fully toward her. He was tall. As tall as Lucas Lambert who stood beside him, although he was leaner and didn’t have the look of being battle scarred that Lambert wore so unconsciously. And it was more than just his eyes that were familiar to her from her time at the mirror.

“Meggie,” he said again, and his voice made her name a prayer. “I knew—I knew it had to be you when your prints matched,” he told her. “And Lucas told us how much—how much you bore the family resemblance. But, God!...”

Jennie reached for his hand and grasped it.

Edward straightened and glanced toward Lambert. “You’ll stay for dinner?” he asked.

Lucas shook his head, and Meg felt an unreasonable sense of betrayal at being abandoned by him. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got work stacked up at the office and more coming as a result of today.” He turned toward Jennie. “You take care of yourself, now,” he said softly.

He looked again at Edward. “The news shouldn’t break for a few days, but if you need me, you know to call.”

He turned toward Danny. “You’re a fine young man,” he said, and Megan heard in his words a goodbye, to Danny and to her. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

And then he turned toward her. “And—and it’s been a pleasure meeting you, too, Meg. If you need anything...”

Meg shook her head, stopping his polite offer. “Thank you, Sheriff Lambert,” she said. So, it was to be Lucas Lambert, the sheriff, with whom she dealt in the future, and not Lucas Lambert, the man. For a while she had wondered. For a while she had almost let herself hope. “You’ve been more than kind. I appreciate all you’ve done for us.”

Tully Wilbanks, his first deputy, was still on duty when Lucas arrived at headquarters. He summoned Tully back to his office and waited until the deputy shut the door. Then he shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it across his chair. Stretching once, he sighed and leaned against the desk.

“Tough trip?” Tully asked.

Lucas shook his head. “Surprising, but not strenuous.”

“Was she?”

Was she Megan Carlton and not an impostor? It was amazing how many normally intelligent people thought someone who didn’t claim to be anyone other than a single mother and daytime bartender could be scheming to be Megan Carlton. Even he had, he remembered. At first. “She is.”

“Wow. I guess now we’re going to have reporters and feds crawling all over the place.”

“Reporters, maybe,” Lucas admitted. “But not too many feds. At least not for a while.”

“Okay,” Tully said. “We can handle the press. We’ve still got the plans we worked out when that British rock star came to visit his cousin.”

Plan B. Everyone talks about one. We actually had one. And an A and even a C.

“Tully?”

“Yeah, Lucas?”

“We may be getting a call from a Blake Wilson. He’s a detective with the Simonville, California, PD, although he may claim some previous DEA connection. He’ll be asking for professional consideration, and he may claim he has visitation rights with his son. He doesn’t get either.”

Tully’s left eyebrow went up a quarter of an inch, but he made no comment, only nodded his understanding.

“If he shows up,” Lucas went on, “I’m to be notified the moment he sets foot in this jurisdiction, and he’s not to be allowed anywhere near Meg Carlton or her son without an escort. Will you make that clear to the department?”

Again Tully nodded.

“And will you see if you can find a picture of him, probably from the DEA, without letting him know?”

“Is he dangerous?”

Lucas considered that for a moment. “He’s a cop,” he said finally, “so he will be armed. He’s a cop,” he said, letting his distaste show, “who broke his ten-year-old son’s arm.”

After Tully left, Lucas leaned back in his leather chair, toed open a bottom desk drawer and propped his feet on the rim. Meg Wilson—Meg Carlton—had been quite a surprise for him. And he was pretty sure he had been a surprise for her—over and above the obvious stunning news of the day.

He’d felt the moment she became aware of him and of the attraction he’d felt for her. He let a rueful smile twist his face at the memory of that one brief moment, standing in front of her brother’s home with her son watching as he helped her from the car: one brief moment that had no time to go anywhere before he surrendered her to her new brother and to her new life.

What on earth had made him think this woman needed him? Meg Wilson might have. But Meg Carlton? Not too likely. At least, not after the ordeal of the next few weeks had passed.

But until then, she did.

Oh, yes. Until then, she definitely did.

And did he need her? He suspected that he did. He suspected—hell, he knew, damn it!—that sometime between watching her being led into the interrogation room and helping her from the car in her brother’s driveway, he had grown to need the surprising, gentle, stubborn, competent and insecure woman that Meg Carlton had become.

His chair was too well constructed and maintained to squeak when he pushed out of it, but his desk drawer closed with a satisfying slam.

He couldn’t need her. He couldn’t take from another person. Not again. Not ever. And he was afraid that if he ever admitted to needing Meg Carlton he’d want to take, have to take, and it wouldn’t matter then how much he had to give, because it would never be enough.

He ran an impatient hand through his hair and then grasped the back of his neck, working his head back and forth in an attempt to release some of his tension.

Enough! he told himself. He had more to do than wallow in what he couldn’t or wouldn’t take.

He had responsibilities.

Shaking his head, he reached for his telephone and punched out the numbers.

“Lambert residence,” answered the sweet, young-girl’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Hi, kiddo.”

“Pops! Are you home? Did you bring Avalon’s Anastasia with you?”

Lucas surrendered to a grin. At fourteen, Jamie was only two years older than Danny, but a world apart in openness from the quiet, solemn boy, and a world apart in spontaneity from the daughter he had finally tracked down seven years ago. Russian history was her latest love. How like her to compare Meg Carlton’s return with the tragic life of the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas.

“I did,” he said.

“And is she?” Jamie asked. “Really?”

“Really,” he told her. “Wait till you see her. There’s no way she’s not Edward’s sister.”

“Hot da—oops!”

Lucas chuckled. “Oops is right, kiddo. You won’t like the taste of soap messing up your pizza.”

“You mean I don’t have to force feed us broccoli tonight after all?”

Lucas shook his head. Jamie loved broccoli. But she loved pizza more. “Not tonight,” he told her. “Tonight I have a craving to take my best girl out for a special meal and a night on the town.”

After he hung up, he shrugged into his suit jacket and looked around the office.

It was a good office. A stable, dependable workplace after a lifetime of strife. And if Jamie was his best girl, that was his choice, too. A choice he had willingly made. A choice he could live with, as he could live with the peace of Avalon, as he could live with doing what he had to do to ease the way of others, as he could live without...without the temptation that for a moment Meg Carlton so unconsciously had offered.

He couldn’t need her, he told himself again. He wouldn’t need her. But somehow his vows seemed pathetically lacking in force.

Three

Meg stretched and twisted, trying to get comfortable in the wide bed. She suspected she wouldn’t, no matter how many times she pounded the down-filled pillows. No matter how many times she told herself that Danny was sleeping peacefully in the equally luxurious room adjoining hers. No matter how many times she realized she was living her little-girl fantasy: the king and queen had come for her—had told her, “You belong with us, my dear. We’re taking you home to live in the castle,” and had whisked her away from the unhappiness of life with James and Audrey, of life with Blake.

And they’d whisked her away from the insecurity of knowing that if anything happened to her, her son would be alone, unprotected and unloved. Now Danny would never be left alone. Edward would love him, and Jennie; she knew that from the few hours she had spent with them. And Lucas would protect him.

Meg slid her hand over the smooth sheet she lay on. It wasn’t actually linen—she was fairly sure of that—but a cotton so luxurious that the sheets on this bed alone had to have cost as much as the entire contents of her bedroom in Tulsa. And across the room, in the alcove of a sitting room, the glow from a fire in the tiny marble fireplace danced over the pattern of an Oriental rug. Sheer luxury. Opulence in excellent taste.

So why was her mind spinning, refusing to let her sleep? Wasn’t her life going to be wonderful from here on out? After all, the glass slipper had fit.

No. That was the wrong fairy tale.

And in spite of all the times she’d wished as a child for the king and queen to come and get her, in spite of the pictures and videotapes of converted home movies Edward had shown her that evening, in spite of the memories her brother—her brother—had shared with her, she didn’t feel like the princess. She was just Meg Wilson, Danny’s mother and Patrick’s bartender. Tomorrow she would miss an entire shift at Patnck’s. Tonight Danny had missed his woodcarvers’ club meeting, and she had missed a class in contract law. That was going to be important when everyone here discovered she was really an impostor.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She wasn’t an impostor. This was her life now, and no matter how strange, how alien it seemed to her, she had better get used to it.

A brother. Oh, Lord, she had a brother. A family. A decent family—she would have been drawn to Edward and Jennie even if they hadn’t been—been hers. And friends. She could have friends now. Friends she wouldn’t have to leave without a word, if—when—Blake found them.

And when Blake found them this time, Lucas would be there with her, standing between her and whatever he threatened.

Lucas.

Meg turned again, and this time her shoulder found the spot in the feather bed that had eluded her all night, her cheek nestled against the pillow and the tension that had clenched her shoulders eased from her as she felt, at last, the peace of sleep wrapping itself around her.

“Gee, Ma, you goin’ to sleep all day?”

Ma? Meg raised one eyelid and glanced across the oversize pillow she had hugged to her as she slept. A dream floated back into her subconscious as she focused on Danny standing at the side of the bed. Since when did her son call her Ma? She squinted at him through sleepy eyes. Since when did her son look like an escapee from a Dumpster?

“Didn’t I throw that T-shirt in the rag bin this fall?”

Danny looked down at his shirt and grinned. “Yeah, but I figured, what the heck? They’re probably expecting the Beverly Hillbillies. Why not give them what they want?”

Meg closed her eyes, but all thought of sleep had fled with Danny’s words. Sighing, she unwound her arms from the pillow and scooted up against the headboard, taking the sheet with her. “He’s my brother, Danny. Do you have any idea what this means to me?”

“Yeah,” her son told her. “It means that after today you get to sleep in silk instead of that reject from the thrift store.”

She would have liked to wait until she was more awake and more sure of her own emotions before having this conversation, but it looked as if the time for waiting had fled with the last of her elusive dream.

“Are you angry with me, Danny?”

“You? No. Why?”

“Then maybe you’re angry with Edward and Jenny. You do understand that they didn’t know about us until the day before we found out about them, don’t you? They came for us right away.”

“They came for you. No. They sent for you. They sent a cop for you. I just got dragged along because—”

“Because I’d cut off my arm before I’d leave you behind?”

At that Danny ducked his head. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

“And of course they’ve been really mean to you since you got here,” Meg continued in a companionable tone. “Made you sleep in the basement, fed you gruel and water for supper last night—”

At the mention of gruel, her stomach gave an audible complaint She looked away from Danny’s answering grin and saw the delicate, ornate clock on the nearby desk. “Ten o‘clock? I slept until ten o’clock? Good grief. Breakfast? Are you starved?”

“Nah. I ate hours ago. There was some old lady in the kitchen when I found it. She was cryin’ when I got there, but she fixed me pancakes. I don’t think you’re going to get food though, not unless you cook it yourself. There’s something really weird going on in this house, people going and coming, an old guy that looks like the actor that played Santa in Miracle on 34th Street and some sort of a preacher with one of those tight white collars up to here. And, oh yeah, the sheriff’s back. Do you suppose they’re going to kick us out?”

Meg shook her head. Danny’s insecurity was even worse than her own, probably with good reason. She’d tried. Oh, how she had tried. Apparently her efforts so far hadn’t been enough, but that didn’t mean she could give up. “Edward and Jennie are family.”

“Yeah. Well, so was Dad. And so were all those grandparents I’ve never even seen.”

Now Meg was the one to duck her head. “Yeah.” She chuffed out a sigh and studied her son. He was so young and so cynical, and right now, even though he’d never admit it, so scared. And so was she. “But you’re right about one thing,” she told him. “I suspect that we’re at least part of the reason those people are here this morning. Us and the trouble that’s going to come down on our heads when the press gets hold of this story.”

She slid her long legs in the almost-long-enough nightgown over the side of the bed and quirked a grin at Danny. “Give me a hug so I’ll have the strength to face what the day has m store, and then scram and let me get dressed so I can go face it.

“And, Danny,” she said when he just stood there, “I don’t think we’re going anywhere, but just remember, if we do, you and me kid, we go together. Got that?”

Meg found Lucas and Edward in serious conversation in the same small sitting room they had used the night before. Edward looked up, stricken, when she entered the room.

“Meggie...”

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you and Danny have passports?”

Passports? Why would they need passports? Concerned, she shook her head.

“No. Of course not,” her brother said. “Or we would have found you much sooner. Lucas?”

Hearing the thread of panic in her brother’s voice sparked an answering one in Meg. “What’s wrong?” she repeated.

“It’s Jennie She needs surgery. We’d hoped to be able to avoid it—she’d seemed to improve—or at least to postpone it, especially since you’ve just arrived, but she had a relapse last night. Dr. Freede contacted her neurologist finally, about six this morning, and we need to take her...now.”

“Someplace where I would need a passport to accompany you?”

He nodded. “Switzerland.”

Meg found a chair simply by backing into it, and collapsed. What kind of wealth had she stumbled into? Jennie needed surgery so they woke up a couple of doctors in the middle of the night and scheduled a trip to the other side of the world.

“Is she—How is she?”

“In pain.” Edward looked at her with his unbelievably familiar eyes. He’d told her the night before how close he’d come to losing Jennie, in a kidnap attempt. Now she knew he had never shed the fear of losing her to the effects of the serious head injuries she’s suffered in that attempt. “Frightened,” he said, “but trying not to let me see just how much. I wouldn’t leave you if this wasn’t critical.”

Unbelievably familiar. But not quite real.

Meg sought out the only thing, the only person, in the room who was truly real to her. “Are you going, too?” she asked Lucas.

He gave her a grim smile. “Only as far as the airport.”

“When?”

“Within the hour.”

Within the hour. It was that critical, then. She forced her practical self to take over. “What can I do to help?”

Edward crossed the room and dropped his hand onto her shoulder. “Just be here when we get back, Meggie. Don’t let us lose you again.”

She sensed a deep pain in Edward’s words, an echo of too many losses. Uneasy with the intimacy and the sharing that was so different from the isolation she had always known, Meg looked away—and found Lucas watching Edward’s hand on her shoulder. Losses. She and Edward weren’t the only ones to have felt them.

“You will be here?”

She dragged her attention back to Edward. “Yes.” She knew he needed to hear her say the words. “Yes, of course.”

Edward turned to the other man in the room. “And you’ll take care of her?”

Lucas’s eyes met hers. Reluctantly? Meg couldn’t really be sure of anything but his words. “Yes,” he said, echoing her promise. “Yes, of course.”

They weren’t truly alone in the house; at least Meg didn’t think they were. But it seemed that way. For such a large house, Edward kept a very small staff. A very small, tired staff, who had been up most of the night while she and Danny slept. After assuring the cook that she would be all right, and sending her off for a much needed nap, Meg installed herself in the kitchen.

Here, at least, she felt at home.

The room was huge, with marvelous, if ancient, commercial fixtures. Except for the numerous sparkling windows, it reminded her of the kitchen at Patrick’s and at any number of the restaurants where she had worked over the past twelve years.

Danny ambled into the kitchen and scooted himself up onto the long pine table in the center of the room. “I told you that if you wanted to eat, you’d have to fix it yourself,” he said.

His moods never lasted long. Maybe if she just ignored this one it would go away. Meg doubted that, but it was worth at least one more try. “So you did, oh fearless prognosticator. Did you happen to foresee what I would be preparing?”

“Corn dogs, French fries and double-chocolate ice cream?”

“Hah!” Meg grabbed lettuce and a platter of baked chicken from the refrigerator. “Swami sees with a broken crystal ball.”

Danny grinned at her, her mischievous and loving son again for at least this moment. “It was worth a try.”

The rich were different, or at least lived differently, Meg thought moments later as she and Danny lunched on sandwiches made of thinly sliced chicken on a rich homemade dark rye bread with tangy mayonnaise that had never seen a processing plant and tomatoes that had ripened naturally somewhere in a warm climate.

“still want corn dogs?” Meg asked as her son with the hollow leg built his second monster sandwich.

“Mmmph.”

She interpreted that as a “no,” or maybe a “later, Mom,” and grmned. Danny’s appetite, at least, had not changed.

“So,” she asked, already knowing the answer, “have you had a chance to check out this place?”

Danny nodded. “Big,” he said. “Big house. Big yard. Big fence.” He set his sandwich on its plate and looked at her. “Did somebody really steal you when you were just a little kid?”

Not only had he been checking out the place, he’d obviously been spying on conversations, as well, because neither she nor Lucas had told him just exactly how Meg had gotten separated from her family. “That’s what they tell me,” she said.

“Gee. You must have been scared.”

Meg nodded. “I expect I was.”

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head. “No, Danny, I don’t remember,.”

“Then maybe it’s a mistake, and you’re; not who they think?”

She reached across the table and took his wildly gesturing hand in hers. “Aside from the fact that my fingerprints match, remember that funny little birthmark I have behind my left ear?”

He nodded.

“Meg Carlton had one just like it. And Jennie was right. You do look like your Uncle Edward. A lot. Especially when he was your age.”

“So we do belong here?”

She smiled at him. “Yes, Danny. I think at long last we have found a place where we really belong.”

Lucas returned minutes after she had taken Danny to the only other downstairs room where she felt comfortable, the small sitting room, and had begun showing her son the photo albums Edward had left for her. Danny tensed when he saw the man standing in the doorway; Meg tensed when she saw the hummingbird of a woman who accompanied him.

“They’re on their way?” Meg asked.

Lucas nodded.

“Yes,” the woman said, just that, yes, as she stepped into the room. “This will be a pleasure. Oh, yes, Megan, you will be stunning.”

“Excuse me?”

Lucas shook his head, and what might have been a smile passed over his features. Yes. Definitely a smile. But gone so quickly she almost missed it. “Let me introduce you. Meg Wilson, this is Marianna Richards. Marianna, this is Meg and her son Danny.”

The woman smiled at Danny and advanced on her, a tiny, delicate firestorm of color and self-assurance. “Jewel tones,” she said. “Definitely. And drama. Lots of drama. Scarves and hats and—oh, yes—more height. Two-inch heels. Maybe three.”

“I beg your pardon,” Meg said, looking from the woman to Lucas in confusion.

“Oh. Oh, I am sorry,” Marianna said. “Edward has asked me to oversee your makeover.”

Makeover. Meg felt every defensive hackle she possessed rise up in indignation. “Makeover,” she said tightly. “I don’t think so. If I’m not accepta—I’m perfectly happy with who I am.”

“Oh, yes. Of course you are. And you should be. But when the reporters come, and they will, snapping around like a pack of ill-mannered little terriers, you are going to want to look down your lovely aristocratic nose at them and silence them. I’m just here as a friend of the family—for no other reason, I assure you—to help you be able to do that.”

And to make sure I look like a Carlton, Meg thought. But of course she couldn’t say that. And why shouldn’t she look like someone who belonged to this wealth, she realized; she was a Carlton. Even though she didn’t feel like one. Maybe she did need this woman’s help. She looked up and caught Lucas studying her quietly from across the room, not condemning, just offering a steady, nonjudgmental acceptance of whatever she decided to do.

“And me? Are you going to try to make me over, too?” Danny asked with the same belligerence Meg had heard in his voice earlier that morning.

Marianna turned slowly toward him and raked an appraising glance from hair he had managed somehow to spike, over disreputable T-shirt and jeans, to athletic shoes that looked as though he had found a mud puddle to scrape them through.

“That’s quite a fashion statement,” she said. “How old are you? Twelve?” She glanced back at Lucas. “How old was Jamie when she discovered this very same style?”

For a moment, Lucas didn’t answer, almost as though he understood the turmoil behind Danny’s revolt, and then he smiled, falling in with Marianna’s teasing diversion. “Jamie’s my daughter,” he said to Danny. “She’s fourteen, a little older than you are, but she went through some pretty hard times after her mom died. I thought that in spite of the age difference, you two might find a few common interests and that she should be the one to introduce you around. Instead of me, I mean,” he added when he saw Danny’s pending and instinctive refusal.

Danny subsided, silent but once again sullen. Meg wanted to shake him, and she wanted to hug him. Instead, she looked at Lucas who seemed to be waiting for some sort of answer. Daughter, huh? Well, that answered a question she hadn’t even let herself ask. That was at least one reason why it was Lucas Lambert, the sheriff, she would be seeing in the future. Lucas Lambert., the man, obviously had enough to fill his life, if he was raising a child alone. God knew she understood how draining that could be.

And it answered or at least hinted at answers to some of the questions she hadn’t allowed herself to ask—about his secrets, about his pain.

Meg found her smile, the cocky one the patrons at Patrick’s had known and expected, and turned it on Marianna. “Did you say aristocratic?” she asked the woman, peering down at her from an advantage of several inches.

Mananna nodded, acknowledging the role everyone in the room understood Meg was playing.

“Well, then,” Meg said, “I suspect we’d better get busy.”

He came back. Later that afternoon when he was sure Marianna would have finished the first phase of her new assignment and when he hoped that Danny had taken himself off to explore the rambling grounds of the estate.

There was no reason to return. Lucas told himself that as he parked the Land Rover and strode across the lawn. Anything he had to say to Meg could be said by telephone, or even relayed by a third party. There was no reason to think she would even want to see him again, except for the memories of the way her eyes sought his whenever her new life threw another obstacle in her path.

He found her in the garden, sitting on the sun-warmed lawn beside the marble pool and fountain that so fascinated his daughter. She had drawn up her knees to rest her chin on them and wrapped her arms around her legs.

And she was lost, staring unseeingly at something or somewhere far away from Avalon, New Mexico, and all the changes that an unwitting burglar had brought into her life. Was she missing the small duplex she had made into a warm, welcoming home? Or Patrick McBean, the man she’d told him had given her a job and hours that took into account her schooling and Danny, and reinforced the sense of self-worth Meg had spent a lifetime building?

A soft breeze found its way through the trees and teased a lock of Meg’s hair across her cheek. Absently she brushed it back, sighed and raised her tented hands to her mouth. He noticed the sheen of moisture in her eyes. And she noticed him.

“No. Don’t get up,” he told her when she started to scramble to her feet. “I’m sorry I startled you.” He crossed the few steps and seated himself on the stone ledge of the pond. “I’m sorry I disturbed you. You looked lost in thought.”

Meg sniffed once and grinned up at him. “What a kind way of saying I was wallowing in my emotions.”

“Were you?” he asked. “Wallowing?”

“Maybe.” Meg looked, and for a moment all her indecision and confusion and pain flowed from her to him. “Have you ever had your life completely change, Lucas? I thought I had seen changes—as Danny and I moved from one town to another—but I always knew who I was and who my son was. Now I’ve learned that all of that was based on a lie so horrible I can’t bear to consider it. Now I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who I can be. Can you have any idea how frightening that is?”

Oh, yes. He knew. He knew too well. But there was a difference in the changes she was undergoing from those he had been forced to make. “Do you have to know right now? Can’t you give yourself time to explore the possibilities? It’s only the outer trappings that have changed, Meg. Beneath all of those, you’re still the same fine woman and mother you were yesterday. And Danny’s still the same fine boy.”

She chuckled softly. “I hope so. I keep reminding myself to be patient, that this phase of his won’t last long.”

“I’ll send Jamie over tomorrow. She’ll show him the town and introduce him to her friends. If nothing else, peer pressure will bring him around.”

Again she laughed. And this time she did rise to her feet with an innate grace she seemed completely unaware of. She dusted off her slacks and cocked her head to one side as she looked at him. “But that’s not why you came. There’s more, isn’t there?”

Yes, there was more reason for his being here. More than he, himself, could even begin to understand. More than he could ever tell Meg Carlton. But this much he could tell her, even though he knew she wasn’t ready, even though he’d like to shield her from this. He nodded. “The Bureau called.”

She paled slightly, then sank onto the ledge beside him. “And so it starts?”

“Soon, Meg. Soon.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I’ve dictated a statement based on what you told me yesterday. If you’ll sign it, I’ll send it on to them. That ought to keep them quiet for a while.”

Meg took the pages. When she looked up from them, her eyes were bright with relief. “You kept it to the minimum.”

“That’s all they need for now. Later, yes, they will ask more questions than you’ll ever want to answer about your kidnapping. But this will keep them away until you’ve had a chance to orient yourself. And until you’ve had time to confer with the Carlton lawyers.”

“When?” she asked.

“Tomorrow. Edward’s personal attorney, Fallon Teague, is flying in late tonight I’ll delay this report as long as I can so that he can begin preparations before the Stemples or Blake are questioned—”

“Blake? Why would they question him?”

He heard the thread of panic in her voice, quickly masked, and cursed himself for causing it. “Even if they don’t, Meg, he will hear the news when it’s released. And it will be released. Or leaked. This was too big a case for someone to pass up the opportunity for publicity. But for now we’ve all agreed to play it low-key and quiet.”

“You mean, not tell?”

He nodded.

“I—Then I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t tell Patrick any more than you did. I mean, about a family emergency taking me out of town. I...thank you for calling him last night, Lucas. I didn’t think of it until very late. He’s been a good friend to me. He deserved to know a lot more than just that I won’t be back.”

“And he will, Meg. In fact, I don’t see any reason why you can’t tell him...but Fallon might, so please wait until after you talk to him tomorrow before you begin contacting your friends.”

“Lucas—”

The breeze once again caught a wayward curl and teased it across Meg’s cheek. Without thinking, Lucas lifted his fingers to it and eased it back in place. He heard Meg suck in a startled breath before he realized what he had done, but by then it was too late. His fingers rested on her cheek. She closed her eyes and turned her face slightly, into his touch, before her eyes flew open and her mouth parted in a silent question.

Not now, he told himself. Maybe not ever. Meg Carlton was a warm and loving woman, and it would be too easy to take advantage of her confusion or even her gratitude in her present mood. Lucas commanded his fingers to move from the softness of her cheek, to reach instead for the statement she held gripped in one hand. “If you’ll sign this,” he said, “I can get it in tonight’s mail instead of faxing it.”

Yes. Confusion. He saw that in her eyes. And he saw her understanding of his delaying tactics, with her and with the FBI.

“Of course,” she said, standing. “And tomorrow morning? You will be here, won’t you?”

Was it a question or an order? Lucas couldn’t be sure. It seemed this fragile-looking woman wasn’t quite so unprepared to take her place in the Carlton empire as she thought. He shouldn’t come back—Fallon was more than capable of guiding her through the morass of paperwork and protocol facing her—but he knew that nothing short of a major disaster would keep him from her side during this initial interview.

“Yes,” he told her. “Yes, I will be here.”

Four

Meg sighed with pleasure as the soft wool crepe settled over her body. Oh, yes. She could get to like this. She soothed the softly draping emerald green skirt in place and glanced in the full-length mirror in her dressing room.

She’d done easier things than that which she would be called upon to do in just minutes, but she’d done harder ones, too. It helped, a lot, that thanks to Marianna Richards and the experts she had called in, Meg now looked the part she was being called upon to play.

She touched her hair, not yet daring to disturb the new style. It was shorter than she had ever worn it, but feathered so that it looked longer and fuller. And it accented her eyes and cheekbones in a way that made her wonder if some fairy magic hadn’t been at work on those, too, while she slept.

At a discreet knock on her door, Meg slipped her feet into the two-inch heels Marianna had insisted upon and which brought her height to an even six feet. Old tapes played hard and loud. She found herself wanting to kick off the shoes and slump to hide her height. Instead, she threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin.

Edward’s housekeeper waited patiently in the hall. She wasn’t an unkind woman, or a suspicious one, just aloof. Even though Jennie had affectionately referred to her as Tommy, Meg hadn’t yet figured out how to chip away any of the woman’s layer of strict professional decorum. “Okay, Mrs. Tompkins,” Meg said. “Lead me to the wolves.”

The wolves waited in Edward’s study, a wonderful room, full of leather and dark polished walnut. There were three of them, Fallon Teague and two men who accompanied him. She studied them from the open doorway before entering the room and easily identified Teague. She recognized the type from the late-lunch crowd at Patrick’s. Strictly Type A, power lunch, constantly accessible either by cellular phone or pager—except she didn’t think that Fallon Teague would stoop to carrying his own phone. No, one of the other two would do that, as well as carry any necessary papers.

She searched for Lucas and, yes, found him standing in the back of the room against one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Her heart gave that funny little rush it had the day before, when he had touched her cheek, and suddenly the men in the room didn’t seem nearly so intimidating. She stared at Lucas until he shifted and turned slightly and saw her in the doorway. His eyes acknowledged her presence as a small smile—of approval?—softened the frown that had darkened his face.

She took the one step that placed her in the room, and Fallon and the two men looked up from the cluster of chairs in front of Edward’s massive desk.

Type A and suspicious.

She returned their steady appraisal.

First Fallon and then his associates stood. All remained silent, as she did, waiting.... Waiting for what?

Finally a shadow of a smile rewarded her patience. “Miss Carlton,” Fallon said, “welcome home.”

Meg sank into the deep leather chair beside the fireplace in Edward’s study after the men left. For a first meeting, it hadn’t been too bad, a few affidavits, a little uncomfortable conversation and, until Lucas had put a stop to it, a gentle probing by the attorneys about those events of twenty-five years ago that remained shrouded by the mists of time.

There would be more, much more, the next day and in the days afterward, as Meg resumed a life she had never dreamed of. As she did what she knew now she must do—protect Danny from the claims his father and even the grandparents who had turned their backs on him quite probably would make on him and his interest in the Carlton wealth if anything should happen to her.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.