TRAVIS LOUNGED AGAINST THE COUNTERTOP OF THE GLASS case in a Richmond dress shop, waiting with little grace while Margo tried on yet another dress.
“And how is this one, darling?” she said, returning from behind the dressing-room curtains. Very little of her large breasts were left to the imagination by the rust-colored muslin. “It’s not too daring, is it?” she asked in a low voice as she walked closer to him, grazing his chest.
“It’s fine,” he said impatiently. “Haven’t you bought enough? I’d like to get home before the sun sets.”
“Home!” she said in a pretty pout. “You hardly ever leave that awful ol’ plantation anymore. You used to take me dancing. You…used to do a lot of things with me.”
Removing her hands from his chest, he gave her a tired look. “That was before I was a married man.”
“Married!” she gasped. “Your wife ran off and left you! She proved she didn’t want you, and what other man stays faithful to his wife, whether she’s with him or not?”
“Since when was I like other men?” he answered, giving her a look of warning. They’d had this argument many times before.
The jangling of the bell on the shop door stopped Margo’s next words as they both turned to see Ellen Backes enter. She was a neighbor and a friend of Travis’s family. “I thought I saw you, Travis,” she said cheerfully. “Margo,” she added curtly, letting it be known what she thought of Margo’s pursuit of a married man. She’d never met Regan, but she’d heard about her from Nicole, Clay’s wife. Having known Travis for years, she felt she knew why Regan had run away.
“The oddest thing just happened,” Ellen continued. “I was in the church delivering fresh flowers for Sunday, and a man—a rather shabby little man, I might add—started asking the pastor all sorts of questions about you.”
“Probably wants a job,” Travis said in dismissal.
“At first I thought that, too, and of course I wasn’t listening very carefully, but I swear I heard the name Regan.”
Instantly, Travis stood upright. “Regan?” he whispered.
“I was going to wait until the pastor had finished, but I was afraid I might miss you.”
Without another word, Travis left the room and immediately jumped into a carriage, yelling at the horses to go faster.
“Damn!” Margo said vehemently. “You would have to go and spoil my day.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” Ellen said with a radiant smile as Margo flounced toward the dressing room. Turning back toward the window, Ellen offered a silent prayer that Travis would find out something about his wife.
The horses hadn’t come to a full stop when Travis leaped from the carriage in front of the church. Just leaving was a small man who looked as if he hadn’t gone without a drink for more than a few hours in his life.
Travis, never one to stand on formalities and too angry to consider consequences, grabbed the man’s shirtfront and slammed him against the clapboard wall. “Who are you?”
“I didn’t do nothin’, Mister, and I ain’t got no money.”
Travis pushed him harder into the wall. “You the one’s askin’ questions about me?”
Wincing from pain, trying to breathe against Travis’s big fist pressed against his throat, the man gasped, “He paid me. I was just supposed to find out if you was alive or not.”
“You’d better start talking. Who is he?”
“Some English dandy. I don’t know his name. He said you were a friend of his but heard you were dead, wanted me to find out when you died and then tell him.”
Travis pushed his fist harder into the man’s throat. “You mentioned Regan.”
Bewilderment crossed the man’s face. “I said the man was stayin’ at Regan’s place.”
For a moment Travis let up on the pressure. “Regan who? And where’s her place?”
“Scarlet Springs, Pennsylvania, and she’s Regan Stanford, like your name. I asked the preacher if you were related to her.”
Instantly, Travis dropped the man and had to catch himself to keep from collapsing. “Get in the carriage. We’re going to Scarlet Springs, and on the way you’re going to talk.”
Before the man could seat himself, Travis whipped the horses forward. As he flew past the dress shop where Margo stood outside, he didn’t even slow down. At the livery stable he pulled to a halt.
“Jake,” he called. “Give me a decent wagon, something that’ll hold up for a longer trip, and here.” He tossed money on the seat. “See the owner of this rig gets it back.”
Jake barely glanced up. “If you’re in a hurry, you better get goin’ ’cause it looks to me like a storm’s about to descend on you.” Nodding in the direction of a very angry Margo, he dropped the horse’s hoof he’d been cleaning and went to hitch a wagon for Travis.
Turning to the little man still on the buggy seat, Travis gave him a warning. “You move, and it’ll be the last move you make.” He’d hardly finished the words before Margo flew at him.
“How dare you drive past me like that!” she gasped, breathless from practically running down the street, chasing him.
“I don’t have time to argue right now. I’m leaving in about five minutes.”
“Leaving! Well I guess I’ve completed my shopping, but you’ll have to stop at the four shops and pick up my purchases.”
“Jake!” Travis bellowed. “Is that wagon ready yet?” He turned back to Margo. “I’m not going home, and you’ll have to find someone else to take you. Get Ellen to give you a ride, and stop off and tell Wes I’ll be away for a while.”
Turning, he saw Jake bring the heavy wagon to the front of the stable. “Get on it,” he commanded the nervous little man on the borrowed buggy.
“Travis,” Margo hissed. “So help me, if you don’t—.” She broke off as Travis leaped onto the wagon. “Where are you going?” she screamed as he started to move away.
“Scarlet Springs, Pennsylvania, to get Regan,” he yelled and then was gone in a hail of gravel and dust.
Coughing and cursing, Margo looked back at the stableman, who was grinning broadly. She knew her pursuit of Travis was a joke, and the more people laughed, the angrier she grew. But even as she was fuming, a plan began to form in her mind. Scarlet Springs, was it? Poor dear Travis left without a stitch of clean clothing. Perhaps she should pack and take him a few things. Yes, the more she thought about it, the more she was sure he needed clean clothes.
Regan was at her desk in her office, going over accounts, when Brandy walked in.
“And how is everything?” Brandy asked.
“Going quite well,” Regan answered, looking at the books. “Next year we should be able to put up a couple of new buildings. I was thinking of a cabinet shop. Don’t you think Scarlet Springs needs its own furniture maker?”
“You know I’m not talking about finances. How is it going between you and Farrell? You had dinner with him last night again, didn’t you?”
“You know very well that I did. But to answer you, Farrell is always a delightful companion. His conversation is excellent, his manners are impeccable, and he knows how to make a woman feel like a crown princess.”
“You’re bored to tears by him, aren’t you?” Brandy said with a sigh, sitting down.
“In a word, yes. There are no surprises with Farrell. He’s so…I don’t know, he’s too perfect, I guess.”
“Jennifer likes him.”
Regan gave a little laugh. “Jennifer likes his gifts. Can you imagine giving a child as active as Jen a French porcelain fashion doll? She wanted to use it for target practice with the bow and arrow set you gave her.”
Brandy smothered a giggle. “Perhaps Farrell expects little girls as well as big ones to be ladies.”
Regan stood behind her desk. “Have we any new guests? I haven’t looked this morning.”
“There was some man getting out of a wagon a few minutes ago. Good-looking guy. Big.”
“Brandy, you are incorrigible,” Regan laughed. “But I’ll go and welcome him.”
Outside her office, she met Farrell. “Good morning,” he said, raising her hand to his lips. “You are sweeter than the early sunshine on the drops of dew on a rose petal.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. “Thank you for such a lovely compliment, but I really must go now.”
“Regan, dearest, you work too much. Come spend the day with me. We’ll take Jennifer and go on a picnic, just as if we were a family.”
“It’s a tempting offer, but I really must go now.”
“You can’t escape me that easily,” he smiled, and took her arm as they walked toward the reception area.
Regan felt Travis’s presence before she saw him. He stood in the doorway, blocking the light with his big body. Her body went rigid as her eyes locked with his.
Neither of them moved; they just stood looking at each other. Wave after wave of emotion went through Regan until a loud crashing sounded in her ears. After minutes, hours it seemed, she turned on her heel and, skirts flying, fled back toward her office.
Farrell wasn’t sure what was going on between Regan and this man, but he had a good idea. He didn’t like this kind of reaction from her. Losing no time in following her, he was inches behind her.
“Regan, love,” Farrell said as he put his hands on her shoulders. She was shaking so badly she could hardly stand.
But Regan was barely aware of him. All she heard was the pounding of her heart and the slow, heavy steps moving deliberately toward her door. Trembling, the blood gone from her head and hands, she clutched at the edge of her desk and leaned toward Farrell’s strength.
The door to her office was pushed open with brutal force, slamming back against the wall.
“Why did you leave me?” Travis demanded in a low whisper, his eyes drilling into hers.
As he came closer she could not speak, could only look at him wildly.
“I asked you a question,” Travis said.
Farrell stepped between them. “Now see here. I don’t know who you are, but you have no right to anything from Regan.”
He didn’t finish what he had to say because Travis idly grabbed the smaller man’s shoulders and tossed him to the far side of the room.
Regan barely noticed, only aware of Travis coming ever closer to her.
When he was inches from her, he gently touched her temple with his fingertips, and Regan felt her knees go weak. Before she could collapse, he caught her, lifted her in his arms, and buried his face in her neck. Without a word exchanged, he carried her toward the door, turned right, and went toward her apartment at the end of the hall. After two days of talking to the man Farrell had hired, Travis knew the entire floor plan of the Silver Dolphin Inn.
Her mind too full to think at all, she never considered what she was doing or committing herself to. All she knew was that Travis held her, and, more than life itself, she wanted him to make love to her.
Gently, as if she might break, he laid her on the bed and then sat beside her, his hands holding her face, fingertips caressing her cheeks and temples. “I had almost forgotten how beautiful you are,” he whispered, “how delicately lovely you are.”
Her hands went up his arms. How magnificent it felt to feel his strength once again, to feel the nearness of him! Her trembling began again as desire flooded her, coursing through her blood hotly.
“Travis,” she managed to whisper before his mouth covered hers.
Desperate, frantic, turbulent, they began to tear at each other. There was no desire for sweetness, only a violent need that had to be fulfilled. Clothes tore away, buttons flew across the room, a handful of laces burst, and delicate stockings shredded. As they came together like a clap of thunder following a burst of brilliant lightning, they clawed and clung, drove each other deeper and deeper, trying to satisfy their overpowering, uncontrollable need of each other.
Violently, in a blinding flash, they arched together as spasms twisted their bodies. Clinging in a breathless crush for full minutes before their muscles relaxed, they finally surfaced and looked at each other, their eyes seeming to try to devour each other.
It was Regan who broke the spell—by laughing—for Travis, his chest and one arm bare, wore one shirt sleeve alone.
Glancing down at what she was laughing at, he grinned delightedly.
“The pot shouldn’t call the kettle black,” he said as he nodded pointedly toward the remnants of her attire.
A petticoat was bunched about her waist, while a torn one lay under them. Her stays, half on, half torn off, were crumbled under one arm, while her dress was about twelve feet across the room, dangling by a button from the corner of a picture frame. Rising on her elbows, she glanced down at her feet and saw that one stocking and its pretty lacy garter was intact while the other, with holes in it, was tangled in her toes.
Travis wore the one sleeve of his shirt and his boots and nothing in between.
With one look at Travis—his eyes dancing, his delicious body so near—she started laughing, her arms going out to him, pulling him to her as they began to roll about the bed, laughing gleefully, while Travis quite expertly tore away the remnants of her clothes. Never seeming to leave her, he took his boots off, and a loud crash of breaking china as one of the boots landed somewhere in the room caused new hilarity.
Sharp, teasing, nipping little bites on her shoulders and arms made her stop laughing and turn serious as she gave herself over to his lovemaking. Their first passion was gone, and they could spend more time reexploring, rediscovering each other. As Travis’s mouth traveled down her body, she closed her eyes, gave herself over to her senses. Running her hand down his arm, she caught his hand, raised it to her lips, and began to taste those broad fingertips that gave her so much pleasure. Scraping them against her teeth, gently chewing on the soft pads, running her tongue across his knuckles, she was so aware that this was the hand of a man—scarred, hard, callused, broad, yet delicate and sensitive. She bit hard in the palm, wanting to devour him.
Travis pulled his hand away to run it over her legs, to massage, to kiss and caress, until she kicked her legs in impatience, wanting him again. When he brought his head up again, she pulled his mouth down to hers and threatened to swallow him whole.
Travis gave a low, seductive laugh and pulled her to him, both of them on their sides, facing, as he manipulated her legs around him and groaned when he entered her softness. Holding him tightly, staying with him as he moved her body, he prolonged her ecstasy for minutes, days, weeks, years, a century, as her head lolled backward, rolling, unaware of who or where she was.
When she thought she would go insane, he abruptly pushed her to her back and thrust into her long and hard until their bodies at last found release.
Without a word, exhausted, sweaty, sated, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Regan was the first to awaken, surprised to see the sun setting outside her window. Stretching, moving away to look at Travis sprawled across the bed, she wondered if she’d ever have any sense when it came to him. For the first time in years she’d completely forgotten her responsibilities to her daughter, her friend, and her business. Quietly, so as not to disturb him, she left the bed and dressed, grabbing what was left of her mutilated garments from the furniture. Before she left the room she planted a kiss on Travis’s hair and covered the lower half of him with a light quilt.
Silently, she left the room and headed toward the kitchen. Brandy must be wondering what had happened to her.
Travis awoke slowly, feeling as if he’d slept well for the first time in years. With a smile on his lips, he turned his head to look at his wife, but, instead of Regan, he encountered a pair of solemn brown eyes watching him intently.
“Hello,” Travis said quietly to the little girl. “What’s your name?”
“Jennifer Stanford. Who are you?”
Even before she spoke, Travis had an idea of who she was. There was a look about her of his younger brother, and the arch of her eyebrows was very like their mother’s. “Is your mother’s name Regan?”
Seriously, the child nodded.
Sitting up on the bed, pulling the quilt across his lower half, Travis was also serious. “What would you say if I were your father?”
Jennifer traced a pattern on the bedspread. “I might like it. Are you my father?”
“I think it would be safe to say I am.”
“Are you going to live with us?”
“I was planning for you to live with me. If you were to come sit by me I could tell you all about where I live. Last year I bought four ponies just the right size for my daughter.”
“You’d let me ride a pony?”
“It would be yours to care for, to ride, and to do whatever you wanted with it.”
After just a moment’s hesitation, Jennifer climbed onto the bed beside her father, far away at first, but as Travis’s storytelling increased, soon she was sitting in his lap.
And that is how Regan found them, cuddled together, fascinated by each other. It was a charming picture.
As soon as Jennifer saw her mother, she started bouncing on the bed with glee. “This is my daddy, and we’re going to go live with him, and he has a pony for me and pigs and chickens and a treehouse and a swimming pond, and we can go fishing and everything!”
After one quick look at Travis, Regan held out her arms for her daughter. “Brandy has supper ready for you in the kitchen.”
“Can Daddy come too?”
“We need to talk,” Regan said sternly. “He’ll see you later—that is, if you eat what Brandy gives you.”
“I will,” Jennifer promised, waving to her father before scampering out the door.
“She’s a beauty,” Travis said. “I couldn’t be prouder….” He stopped when Regan turned to look at him in fury. “Did I do something?”
“Did you do something?” she mocked, trying to control her temper. “How dare you tell my daughter we’re going to live with you!”
“But of course you’ll return now that I’ve found you. It just took me a while, that’s all.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I’ve always known where you were?” she fumed. “At any time that I wanted, I could have returned to you and that monstrosity of a plantation of yours.”
“Regan,” Travis said, his voice low. “I don’t understand why you left, but I can tell you that you and my daughter are returning home with me.”
“Right there is why I left,” she said. “From the moment I met you you’ve told me what to do and how to do it. I wanted to stay in England, but you wanted me to come to America, so I came to America. You initiated a wedding ceremony without even asking me if I wanted to marry you. And then at that plantation of yours! I was left in charge of a hundred people who did everything they could to defy my authority. And all the while you were…out chasing horses with your dear Margo.”
At the last, Travis smiled. “Jealousy, was that why you left me?”
Regan threw up her hands in despair. “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? I don’t want you to run my life, or Jennifer’s. I don’t want her growing up and being told when to do something and how to do it. I want her to learn to make her own decisions.”
“When have I ever stopped you from making decisions? I gave you half a plantation of decisions to make, and I never interfered.”
“But I didn’t know how to make them. Can’t you understand? I was so afraid, in a new country around strangers who constantly told me I didn’t know how to do anything. I was afraid!”
Travis’s eyes were twinkling. “From what I’ve heard, you’ve done very well here. You didn’t seem to be afraid of Americans here, so why were you there? I admit I have a fairly harsh group of judges working for me, but if you did it here, why couldn’t you have done it then?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Here I had to do something or starve. At your place I could have stayed in my room and never come out.”
“Which you did most of the time, if I remember correctly.”
She gave him a sharp look because she’d had no idea he’d known what she did during the day. Had he any idea how terrified she’d been during those months?
He continued, “After starting from scratch and buying and building a whole town, my place should be easy to run. I have a wagon here. We could pack Jennifer’s clothes and yours and leave tomorrow. Or, better yet, let’s leave now. You have clothes at home, and I’ll buy my daughter everything new.”
“Stop it!” she shouted. “Right this moment! Do you hear me? You are not going to start running my life for me again. I like having some power of my own. I like deciding what I want to do rather than having you or my uncle or even Farrell making my decisions for me.”
His head came up. “Who’s Farrell?”
With a look of disgust, she answered, “The man you so blithely tossed across the room this morning.”
“So what’s between you two?” he asked, his eyes in a hawklike gaze.
“I knew Farrell in England. In fact, I was engaged to him once, and he came to America to find me.”
For a moment, Travis was quiet. “You said you’d been in love with a man once. Was he this Farrell?”
She was startled at his memory. “I believe so. I was lonely, and he paid attention to me for a while, and I thought I loved him. It was so long ago, and I was a different person then.”
“And how do you feel about him now?”
She walked about the room. “I don’t know how I feel about anything right now. For years I was scared of everything, and then I suddenly was totally alone, and I had to sink or swim. For the last four years all I’ve done is balance ledger sheets and buy and sell property. Men have not been part of my life. Now all at once Farrell turns up, and I’m reminded of that unloved little girl I once was, and here you are, just like always, making me ache to touch you yet terrified you may make me into a crying child as I once was. Can’t you understand, Travis? I can’t return to your plantation and be smothered by you. The only way I can be myself is to stay away from you.”
In spite of her best intentions, she began to cry. “Damn you!” she said. “Why did you have to come back and upset me like this? Go away, Travis Stanford! Go away and never, never come near me again.” With that, she slammed out of the room.
Leaning back against the headboard, Travis smiled. When he’d first met her, he’d seen just a hint of the woman she could be, but he wasn’t sure how to help her become that woman. Maybe she was right and the plantation was too much to handle. When he’d heard how the staff was treating her, it was all he could do to keep from throttling the lot of them, but he knew she needed to find her own strength.
Now, closing his eyes, thinking about her, he was overwhelmed at the woman she’d become—sure of herself, sensible, her dreams put into action, made into reality. She’d taken what was little more than a wide spot in the road and built a thriving town, and she’d raised an intelligent, sensible little daughter. No one need worry that Jennifer was going to retreat to her room and cry.
With a loud laugh of pure happiness, he tossed aside the quilt and began to dress; at least his pants and boots were in one piece. Although Regan thought she’d matured enough to resist him, he knew she hadn’t. What was that old saying? Age and treachery will win out over youth and talent every time. He planned to use every means, every aid ever learned to win her back. With resolve, he left the room, wearing only the snug dark pants and tall boots.
