Children of Dynasty (42 page)

She took it with a smile he thought promising and closed the door again.

The urge to whistle came back as he iced the champagne and brought it to the bedside. He turned back the comforter and plumped the pillows, like room service in a five-star hotel. Remembering the candles they had lit aboard
Privateer
long ago, he found one in the living room and lit it, turning down the other lights. From his kit, he brought out a bottle of the ginger massage oil he’d taken home from Ventana.

There were aspects of being married to Mariah he was going to like very much.

In the bathroom, Mariah put on the robe. The lining matched the center stone in her wedding ring, and seemed to cast a warm light onto her skin. In the other room, she heard Rory whistling. She’d never heard him do that before.

With a deep breath, she opened the door. He stood at the foot of the bed, jacket off and shirt open, removing his ruby studs. His hands stilled when their eyes met.

She went to him and pushed his hands aside. Gently, she took the stones from his shirtfront, placing them one by one on the dresser. The mirror reflected the scene of domesticity. She shifted her attention to his cuffs, loving his fine-boned hands, from their clean, square-cut nails to the sprinkling of dark hair on the backs. When she reached to push the shirt off his shoulders, he helped her, shrugging out of it to reveal his bare chest.

Planting an open-mouthed kiss in the hollow where her shoulder met her neck, he let her strip him down until he was as bare as when he’d been born, with a notable exception. The gold ring branded him as hers.

She took his hand and looked at it. “Are you still afraid?”

He gave her a steady gaze. “I’m sure there will always be something to fear. Right now I’m not.” He slipped his hands inside the robe she’d left loose and circled her waist. “You?”

“No.”

Rory’s eyes seemed enormous, drawing her as if she might float off the floor. She let her palms take in his skin’s texture, smooth in places, in others hair-roughened, like reading Braille. He kissed her and she realized she was crying from the salt taste of tears at the corner of her mouth.

He urged her down on the bed and began to make slow love with his hands and lips. The clean geranium smell of his cheek mixed with the spice of an aftershave she hadn’t noticed on him before. She lay taut and proud, the hand wearing her wedding ring cradling the back of his neck.

Impossible, but it was once again better than she remembered, for this time they were one, at least in the eyes of the Reverend Molly and the State of Nevada.

“When we were younger, you said you would always love me,” she dared through a languorous haze.

Rory raised his head and stopping caressing her.

She felt like curling up and pulling the comforter over her. Instead, she waited.

He pushed up on an elbow. “I didn’t know what I meant by ‘love’ then.”

Mariah maintained her silence.

“I thought we settled this at McMillan’s.” Rory pushed up and sat on the edge of the bed. “Neither of us had the gumption to fight for each other, so was it really love or were we enamored with the idea of it?”

Perhaps he was right and her younger self hadn’t understood the full meaning of the word. She’d been a kid with no idea how deeply she could need this man who was now her husband.

He ran his hands over his chin “If I’d loved you the way you deserved, I’d never have let you go.”

She looked into his troubled brown eyes. “I’m here now.”

“When I think of the wasted years we should have been together …”

Mariah scrambled up and knelt before him, a hand on each of his thighs. “Don’t go back there. Even after we talked about our breakup, I was still hung up on the past. I believed the worst when you decided not to leave DCI and when you came with Davis to Dad’s office. God, Rory, let’s be done with the past and look forward.”

He took her mouth with a desperate tenderness she had never felt in him. “I do want us to have a future,” he vowed. “I want that with all my heart.”

Her pulse thudded as she weighed pride against this man who still wrestled with their past breakup, his failed marriage, and his parents’ rocky relationship. She could walk away because Rory could not or would not say certain words, but the ones he’d just uttered meant even more than the rote ritual of their wedding ceremony.

“I want our future, too,” she whispered against his lips.

R
ory awoke in a cocoon of covers with Mariah’s arm around him. There was no instant of wondering where he was or with whom. Just a slow drifting up from sleep to a place that felt safe. He’d slept restlessly, sometimes pushing her away, at others holding her hard against him. Now he breathed deeply and evenly, as though in some dream of her he’d found peace.

Last night he and Mariah had left the drapes open, letting in a rose dawn light that fingered the nearest mountain peak. Not yet ready to face Grant Development’s last day and all the uncertainty it brought to both him and his wife, he closed his eyes and pressed his back to her warmth.

“You’re awake,” he whispered.

“How did you know?” She shifted slightly and curled her legs so they spooned snugly.

“I sensed you there.”

He turned over to face her and kissed her neck softly. His hand on her side moved to beneath her breast. His breathing became more deliberate, as images of last night readied him for more lovemaking.

For, it was love.

How utterly stupid he’d been to hesitate over the word. After the jubilation he’d felt as soon as they were married, he should never have suffered the old knee jerk reaction against giving a woman the ability to hurt him. Those days were past, and as Mariah had said, neither of them must ever go back.

He brushed her hair back from her face. “Last night …” he whispered.

The pealing tones of a muffled cellular phone began. They both jumped and he swore.

“It’s mine,” she said, gesturing toward her purse on the nightstand.

Mariah was closest, but he cleaved up, reached it, and handed it to her.

“Hello.” She threw back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. “Dad?”

On the drive down from the mountains, the soaring heights of the Sierras gave way to the broad San Joaquin valley. Summer row crops and fruit trees brought forth bounty, but the optimism Mariah had felt at their marriage saving Grant Development had blackened on the vine.

Her father’s terse words, “You’d better get down here as soon as possible,” had been a rough wakeup, but then he’d said, “Don’t ask for details now, but Davis knows what you and Rory did.”

“How?”

“I’ll explain when you get to the house, Daughter.” The weariness in his tone made her accept the wait.

Just before ten a.m., Rory steered his Porsche onto her father’s street in Stonestown. She jumped out, ran up the walk, and used her key to let them in.

John wasn’t in the house; the back door stood open. Bougainvillea on a trellis was in full bloom, cascading tiers of bright fuchsia and coral.

“Out here,” he called.

Mariah and Rory went through the kitchen and stepped onto the patio. She bent to kiss her father’s cheek.

He held out a hand to grip both hers and Rory’s. “Congratulations, you two.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Thank you, sir,” Rory said. “Now, what happened with Father?”

The pleasant set of John’s face turned sad. “I’m afraid I made a huge mistake. Instead of calling and accepting DCI’s offer, I decided to tell Davis the truth. That you had gone to get married and that it was time we buried the hatchet.”

As Mariah formed the same thought, Rory said, “Bad idea. What happened?”

John’s expression hardened. “He buried it in my back.” He shook his silver head. “His offer is no longer good. After Grant goes under, he’ll cherry pick the properties at the foreclosure auction.”

Rory slammed his hand against the post that held up the bougainvillea. His ring glinted, mocking her with the futility of what they’d tried. “Let’s go.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going over there and confront him with his blackmail of Tom Barrett. He’s going to by God stand down as head of DCI or I’ll drag his name through the dirt. Lyle Thomas would be happy to prosecute.”

The sight of Rory’s rage brought John up straighter in his chair. “Hold on. Tom made it clear he approached Davis. There was no extortion involved.”

Mariah found her hand on Rory’s arm. “He’s right. There’s nothing to be gained by going over there and starting a brawl.”

“You always wanted me to stand up to him,” Rory told her. “Now you don’t?”

Before she could speak, John said, “I’ve been sitting here thinking about what Wilson McMillan once told me about winding up on the rocks. Well, I’m there now, and you don’t need to join me.”

“McMillan!” Mariah snapped her fingers. He’d been a friend to John through the years, and she’d been impressed with his wisdom. “He’s rich as Croesus, but we didn’t think of calling him about the property sales because he’s retired.”

“What could he do?” John did not look hopeful.

“We won’t know until we call him,” she said.

An hour later, wearing her favorite black pantsuit as armor, with an emerald silk blouse, Mariah waited for an opening onto Sloat Boulevard. She’d pulled her blond hair back as severely as she could with not a stray curl, wore gold hoops at her ears, and pale porcelain makeup, no blush.

Rory had taken his Porsche and planned to meet them at DCI. Though they had only been separated for a few minutes, she already missed him.

“What’s wrong?” John asked from the passenger seat of her sedan.

“Nothing.” She kept her eyes on traffic.

“Call it a hunch, but you don’t seem as radiant as I expected.”

Mariah fiddled with the radio dial, thinking of turning up the news. Her father waited in a listening posture, following his own advice that patience reaped reward.

She thought it was going to sound silly in the cloudless morning sunshine, but she decided to tell him. “Rory hasn’t said he loves me.”

“He may not have said it, but he does!” John’s voice sounded stronger than it had since before his heart attack. “I know a man in love when I see him. I imagine he’s skittish of the trappings of commitment because Kiki and Davis exist in a state of war, and because his first marriage failed.”

Almost noon according to her dash clock, and there wasn’t time for this. They had a plan to execute. Yet, she said, “I know why Rory’s like this, but that doesn’t change it. When we were younger, he said he loved me. Now he says he doesn’t know what he meant by that.”

John mused for a moment. “Of course, it’s possible he may have mistaken infatuation for love the first time through. For about ten minutes I was afraid Catharine and I were doing that.”

“That’s what Rory says we did.” Mariah changed lanes. “But I’m sure now that I love him. What can I do?”

John shook his silver head. “I don’t know. Although you barely recall, you saw me with Catharine, and you want nothing less.”

“That’s right.” Her desire to have a marriage as lyric as her parents warred with her love for Rory. Last night he’d declared his desire for them to be together, but would that be enough for her as time went on?