A Season For Love. Bj James

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.

      “Loving you was an impossible fairy tale that ended the night I was attacked. When the boys finished teaching me my place, one threatened rape. He was, as he saw it, only hurrying along the inevitable. Making clear to me what I could expect, what I would be, if I stayed in Belle Terre.”

      “Masked cowards,” Jericho snarled. “They hurt you, and they took something precious from us. They didn’t succeed in the rest, but their purpose was served.” His face turned grim with the memory of the night he found her on a darkened street, fighting for her life. A young girl, his girl, clothes torn half away, a gang of boys, with stocking caps hiding their faces, circling her like a pack of wolves. “In the end, you believed them. Not in me.”

      “You were barely eighteen, Jericho. No matter what weight the Rivers name carried, no matter how strong and brave and honorable you were, you couldn’t change the prejudices of an aristocratic Southern town.” Maria stroked tangled sable locks from his forehead. “Darling, you still can’t.”

      “That means you’re leaving again.”

      “The story’s finished. There’s no more to be done here.”

      “What about this?” Catching her wrist, he drew her hand from his hair. “What does it mean?” A bangle threaded through a tiny gold band, then soldered into an unbroken circle, hugged her wrist. He hadn’t spoken of it at the gala, or in the passion of the night. Now, as it glinted against the sheet, it took his breath away.

      “A tribute.” Maria answered. “To a memory I’ll treasure forever.” A slight twist of her wrist and the matching band he wore lay as inexorably between them as the bangle. “Something beautiful that can only be a memory for both of us.”

      “If you should fall in love again? What happens then, Maria Elena Rivers?”

      The name she’d carried in her heart for years brought tears to her eyes. Blinking them away, she shook her head. “I won’t.”

      He wouldn’t let it go at that. “And if I should?”

      Pain clotted her throat. But because he deserved the life and love she couldn’t offer, she gave him the only answer she could. “When that time comes, I won’t stand in your way.”

      Jericho Rivers laughed. But only a fool would hear humor in the sound. “In half a lifetime our paths have crossed twice, with the same culmination. One wonders if that should tell us something.”

      “It does tell us something. We’re star-crossed lovers, destined to love forever yet never meant to be. Belle Terre was the wrong place, our teen years were the wrong time.”

      “Do you ever wonder what might have happened if…?” Jericho’s voice drifted into silence, leaving the rest unsaid.

      As if she could wish the past away, she nodded. “If my father hadn’t been that rare male of the Delacroix family? If he hadn’t loved Belle Terre too much to leave it despite its archaic prejudices? If he’d never fallen in love with my mother, and she with him? If neither of them had ever picked up a liquor bottle? But most of all, if we’d met in college as strangers. Or in another life? Yes,” she whispered softly. “I wonder. But—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “Were they there last night?”

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

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

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

      Hearing her terror, hurting for