“Stunt work,” he said and didn’t seem to be interested in saying any more. “This town.”
“What about it?”
He rolled over to look down at her. “Have you seen this little town?”
She lifted a bit for him to kiss her and he did. “No,” she said at last.
He lay back down beside her.
When he said nothing else, she looked at him. “Was that a hint about something?”
“Didn’t you come here for a reason? Other than to marry some lowlife loser, that is.”
“I wouldn’t have—” She wasn’t going to let him bait her into an argument. “Good thing you bought him out for me, isn’t it? Are you going to learn to cook so you can run your new catering company?”
“I’m going to make Russell a gift of the whole business.”
“For having only recently met, you two are certainly chummy,” Kim said.
“Seeing me miserable seems to delight him.”
“Why were you unhappy?” she asked before she remembered.
Travis looked at her.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you try to make me feel sorry for you I’ll start asking you why you came to my art shows but didn’t make yourself known.”
For a moment Travis looked affronted, but then he gave a one-sided grin. “Sounds like we’re even. You think there’s any food in this room?”
“If not, you can buy the hotel and use your own catering company. Set up a Maxwell Industries right here in Janes Creek.”
Travis shook his head. “You and my father are going to get along well. In fact, he might be a little afraid of you.”
“Funny!” Kim said, but she was pleased by his words because he was saying that he was going to introduce her to his father. Maybe even his mother. Again.
When Travis rolled off the bed and stood up, Kim put her hands behind her head and watched him. She had pulled the bedspread over her and it was nice—erotic even—to be covered but to see him in the nude.
All those sports he did had given him a truly beautiful body, with muscles rippling under his skin. There were scars here and there, but they only added to the very male beauty of him.
“Do I pass?” Travis asked, his voice husky as he looked down at her.
“Yes,” she said as she smiled up at him.
Smiling back, he pulled on his discarded sweatpants. He walked around, looking at things, then went into her room. He returned with the big portfolio Gemma had made for her.
“What’s this?”
“The real reason I’m here.”
“Mind if I . . . ?”
“Sure, look all you want. I haven’t read any of it.”
As Kim watched Travis stretch out beside her and begin to read the paper, she thought how little she knew about him. On the other hand, maybe she knew everything about him. The man who had scars from doing dangerous stunts was the same boy who learned to ride a bike and an hour later was doing wheelies. The boy who sat in a tree and read about Alice and the Mad Hatter was this man who was giving his full attention to some historical documents.
“Did you really not read these?” Travis asked as he put the papers on his stomach and drew her to him.
“I saw the word
cemeteries
and closed the file. What did I miss?”
“Let’s see . . . You want the facts presented as a fairy tale or as in a courtroom?”
She was tempted by the courtroom idea. She’d like to see him talking to a jury. But then, he’d probably use his good looks to charm the jurors—and she wouldn’t like to see that. “Fairy tale,” she said.
“All right.” He was smiling. “Once upon a time, way back in 1893, a young woman from Edilean, Virginia, by the name of Clarissa Aldredge, wanted to spend the summer in Janes Creek, Maryland.”
“Why?” Kim asked. “Why did she leave Edilean?” She knew her tone told something deeper than her words.
Travis kissed her forehead. “I can’t imagine why she’d leave a town where everyone knows everything about everyone else.”
“Except people’s mothers,” Kim muttered.
“Are you going to listen or throw barbs at me?”
“Let me think on that,” she said. At Travis’s look she told him to continue.
“Where was I? Miss Clarissa Aldredge went to Janes Creek, Maryland, in the summer of 1893. No one knows why she went there but it’s my guess that she had friends in the little town and she wanted to spend the summer with them. Okay?”
Kim nodded.
“Whatever the reason she left, all that’s known for sure is that when she returned to Edilean in September of that year, she was pregnant. She wouldn’t tell anyone about the father, so the townspeople—who are given to a bit of gossip now and then—assumed that he was married. Clarissa never corrected anyone no matter what they said. The big problem was that after Clarissa returned, she was different. Melancholic. Depressed.”
“I would think so,” Kim said. “Unmarried and pregnant in 1893? It’s a wonder she wasn’t stoned.”
“I think that happened in a much earlier time period. Anyway, it seems that poor Clarissa died a few hours after her son was born.”
“Oh!” Kim said. “Joce and Gemma didn’t tell me that part.”
“Probably didn’t want to upset you. On her deathbed Clarissa said to her brother Patrick, ‘Name him Tristan and pray that he’ll be a doctor like his father.’” Travis put the papers down and looked at Kim. “Aren’t the Aldredge doctors today still named Tristan?”
“That name is saved for the ones who inherit Aldredge House.” Her voice showed that her mind wasn’t completely on what he was telling her.
“Not your branch?”
“No, which is why my brother is named Reede.”
“So I remember,” Travis said as he slid down in the bed beside her. “What’s wrong?”
She couldn’t tell him what was in her mind, that she and Clarissa had a lot in common. Everything was temporary between her and Travis. He’d come to Edilean to help his mother and soon he’d be involved in a big divorce case. He’d go back to being a lawyer, back to his glamorous life in New York. Kim and boring little Edilean would be just a memory. Years from now, would he smile when he thought of her? She tried to put those images out of her mind. They were together
now
and that’s what mattered. She gave her attention back to him. “I’m fine,” she said. “Go on with the story.”
“It seems to me that if Clarissa admitted the father was a doctor and his name was Tristan, wouldn’t that make it easy for your friends to find him through an online site?”
“Actually, they did,” Kim said. “They told me that they found a Dr. Tristan Janes—”
“Like the town name.”
“Yes.” She gave a sigh. “He died in 1893.”
“I see,” Travis said as he began to piece the story together. “Clarissa comes to Janes Creek to visit, falls for the local doctor, they tumble in the hay, but before they can get married she’s pregnant and he dies. She returns to Edilean, has the baby, then . . .”
“Joins him,” Kim said.
“Let’s hope that’s the way it works.” He paused. “If your friends know all this, why did they send you here?”
“Joce and Gemma are newcomers.”
Travis waited for her to explain that odd statement.
“They weren’t born in Edilean. They want me to see if this Dr. Tristan was married and if so, did he have any other children.”
“Cousins,” Travis said. “Is this about finding more relatives?”
“’Fraid so,” Kim said. “If I do find any young descendants, Joce will probably adopt them and Gemma will want to research the whole family.”
“And will you decorate them?”
Kim groaned. “If I come up with some new ideas, yes. Since I met you, I haven’t had even one new design for jewelry come to me. In fact I can hardly remember what I do for a living.”
Travis’s eyes were serious. “Kim, if you wanted to—”
She wasn’t certain what he was about to say, but she thought maybe he was going to speak of his ability to pay for things. She didn’t want to hear it. She changed the subject. “So when do we talk to the natives and ask who’s old enough to remember 1893?”
“If Dr. Tristan died here, we should look for a grave marker and photograph it. Maybe there’s something on it, and maybe someone is buried near him. If he had a wife, she’d be there.”
“Maybe we’ll be lucky and her name was Leslie.” Kim hadn’t meant to say that—or anything like it. She wanted to be cool and sophisticated. Instead, she was sounding like someone from . . . well, from a small Southern town. “I’d better get dressed,” she said and started to get off the bed.
But Travis caught her arm. “I think I should tell you the truth.”
She kept her back to him, the sheet covering her front. She felt as though her words had bared a lot more to him than just her body. “Your life is your own. I’m just in it for the . . .” She wanted to say “sex” but couldn’t do it. With her other boyfriends she’d always managed to keep it light between them. One of them had said she made jokes about everything. But this was Travis. The day after he’d returned to town she’d sent an e-mail to her friend Jecca saying the man she’d been in love with since she was eight years old had come back to town. Lover or not, she couldn’t make a joke about him and his beautiful girlfriend.
When she didn’t turn to look at him, Travis dropped his hold on her. “It took me so long to get back to you because I had to find out about myself,” he said softly. “I was a rich man’s son and I needed to know if I could support myself. I didn’t want to be one of those trust fund guys who lives off his father. What kind of a man would I be if that’s all I had to offer you?” When Kim didn’t move, he took a breath. “After I passed the New York bar, Dad offered me a high-powered, highly paid job, but I turned him down. He was furious! He shut off my trust fund, so I was on my own. He said I’d not make it and the truth was that I was afraid he was right.”
Kim turned to look at him.
“I wanted to get as far away from him as possible, so I bummed a ride with someone”—Travis gave a half grin—“on a private jet to L.A. I stayed with a college buddy while I looked for work. I was so angry that when I heard of an opening for stunt work, it appealed to me. I got the job because I’m the same size as Ben Affleck. I was shot twice for that man.”
He smiled at her. “I succeeded and I proved that I was able to support myself. But I’d made it in the physical world by performing stunts. I was good at it, but I could see that my body wouldn’t last, so I quit. And besides, it was no life for . . . for you.”
“Me?” She blinked at him.
“Of course for you. I told you that my life has always been about you.”
“But . . .” She’d thought he was saying one of those things that all men do. She hadn’t taken it literally. “So what did you do?”
“My plan was to join a law firm. I was hired by a nice, conservative place in northern California. I thought I would work there for a year or so, then I’d return to Edilean to see you again. I wanted to know if there could be anything . . . adult between us. And if I had a year or two of legal work under my belt, maybe I could get work in or around Edilean.”
Kim caught her breath, but said nothing.
“Everything was right on schedule until my mother stole millions out of one of my dad’s accounts. He came to me in a rage and said he was going to kill her.”
Kim gasped.
“He didn’t mean it literally, but I knew he’d make her so unhappy she’d wish she were dead. I knew exactly where she’d gone: the town where she and I had been the happiest.”
“Edilean.”
“Right. And knowing that, I knew my hope of seeing you again anytime soon was gone. I knew my dad. He’d have me followed and when he did, he’d find my mother.”
“So you went to work for him.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t plan to stay with him forever, did you?”
“I didn’t think that far ahead. It seemed that one moment I was on my way to obtaining my lifelong dream—since I was twelve, anyway—and the next I was working eighty hour weeks for my father. I didn’t have time to sleep, much less
think
.”
“But you had time to see shows of my jewelry,” Kim couldn’t help saying, and there was anger in her voice. “If I meant so much to you, why didn’t you say something to me? ‘Hi, Kim. Remember me?’ It could have been anything. I didn’t know your last name and I searched for you for years. I—”
Reaching out, Travis pulled her into his arms and stroked her hair. “How could I come to you? You were doing so well. You were a rising star in the jewelry world. I had an Internet alert on you and it seemed that every day you achieved something new. While I . . . I was still my father’s puppet. I needed to prove myself as a man.”
“And in bed?” she said and more venom than she meant came out.
“Yes,” he said. “I had to prove myself there too. It’s one thing to have a girl teach you how to ride a bicycle but quite another for her to teach you what to do in bed. ‘Now
where
do I put this big thing?’” he said in a falsetto voice.
Kim couldn’t help laughing, then she pulled back and looked at him. “Did you break me up with any men besides Dave?”
“No, but I kept a close eye on them.”
“What does that mean?”
Travis shrugged.
“What did you do?” she demanded.
“A few background checks, that’s all. Nothing invasive. When I saw that they were much less successful than you, I relaxed. You would scare the hell out of them.”
“Thanks a lot,” she said. “You make me sound like I wield a sword and ride bareback.”
“I like the image.” His eyes were laughing.
“You!” she began. “You’ve put me through hell for years. I missed you and I couldn’t find you and—” She broke off when he kissed her.
“I want to make it up to you.” He kissed her nose. “I want to spend years and years making it right between us.”
For all that she liked what he was doing, she drew back to look at him. “What does that mean? Exactly.”
“I love you and I want to marry you. If you’ll have me, that is.”
Kim suddenly lost the power of speech. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“We hardly know each other. You’ve been back for a week and before that—”
He kissed her again. “How about this? You take as long as you want to get to know me, and every day I’ll ask you to marry me. When you feel that you know me well enough, say yes and we’ll go find a preacher. How’s that?” Turning, he put his feet on the floor. “I’m starving. What about you? Penny has an uncle who eats so much she said I wouldn’t be able to afford his bill. I’d like to see that, what about you?”