Diana Palmer - True Colors

Digging in her jeans for her house key, she didn’t see the shadowy figure on the front porch until she reached the steps. Then she stopped dead. She felt her heart skip.

Cyrus Granger Harden was every bit as tall as Mr. Smith, but the comparison ended there. Cy was dark and dangerous-looking even in an expensive blue vested suit like the one he was wearing now. He stepped into the sunlight. Despite the anguish of the past six years, Meredith felt a surge of warmth shoot through her body as she looked at him.

He was older. There were new lines in that long, lean face with its high cheekbones, thick black eyebrows and deepset dark brown eyes. His nose was straight, his mouth a sensual delight, its firmly etched contours so familiar that Meredith had to drag her eyes back up. There was a Stetson tilted arrogantly over his broad forehead, covering hair that had the sheen of a raven’s back. His lean, dark fingers held a smoking cigarette; so he hadn’t quite given up that habit, she thought with faint humor.

“I thought it was you,” he said without preamble, his deep, cutting voice as harsh as the unrelenting sunlight on her bare head. “I can see the bus stop out my window.”

As she’d hoped. So he had seen her after all. She gave herself a quick, mental pep talk. I’m older, I’m richer, I have secrets, and he has no power over me. She repeated it.

Her full lips tugged into a careless smile. “Hello, Cy,” she said. “Fancy seeing you over here in the slums.”

His jaw tautened. “Billings doesn’t have slums. Why are you here?”

“I came back for your family silver,” she returned with a pointed stare. “I must have missed it on my last trip through.”

He shifted uncomfortably, ramming one hand into his pocket. It drew the thin fabric of his slacks against the powerful muscles of his long legs, and Meredith had to fight not to look. Unclothed, that body was a miracle of perfection, all dark skin and dark curling hair that wedged sexily down his chest and his flat stomach and feathered his legs….

“After you left,” he said hesitantly, “Tanksley admitted to my mother that you had nothing to do with the theft.”

Tony Tanksley, she recalled, was the “accomplice” she’d allegedly been in love and sleeping with. Only a jealous fool could have imagined Meredith going from Cy to Tony, but since Myrna had paid Tony to invent the story, the details she’d given him had been perfect. A classic frame. But regardless of that, Cy had believed her capable of infidelity and criminal acts. Love without trust wasn’t love. He’d even admitted that his only interest in her had been sexual. What a pity that her mother hadn’t lived, couldn’t have warned her about giving a man everything without counting the cost. The lesson she’d learned the hard way had been expensive.

“I wondered why the police hadn’t come after me,” she said easily.

His powerful shoulders moved under the fabric. “You couldn’t be found,” he said tersely.

Not surprising, considering the fact that Henry had stashed her on a Caribbean island during her pregnancy, with Mr. Smith to protect her. Nobody, but nobody, had been told her real name. She was known as Kip Tennison after their marriage, period. Now she was grateful for that safeguard. She’d been afraid that the Hardens might try to track her, if for no other reason than to embarrass her.

“How nice to finally know that,” she said with faint sarcasm, watching his eyes glitter as she shifted the bag of groceries. “A jail sentence wouldn’t have appealed to me.”

His face became more severe, his dark eyes narrowed under those thick brows as he studied her face. “You’re thinner than I remember,” he said. “Older.”

“Twenty-five next birthday,” she said breezily, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re thirty-four now, aren’t you?”

He nodded. He moved his gaze down her body and back up. He felt as if he were dying inside all over again. Six long years. He remembered tears on that young face, and the sound of her voice hating him. He remembered, too, long, exquisite lovings in his bed with her arms clinging, her soft body like quicksilver under the heated thrust of his, her voice breaking as she moaned her pleasure into his damp throat….

“How long are you going to be here?” he asked tightly.

“Long enough to dispose of the house,” she replied.

He lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “You won’t keep it?” he asked, hating himself for being vulnerable enough to ask the question.

She shook her head. “No. I don’t think I’ll stay. Billings has too many enemies in it to suit me.”

“I’m not your enemy,” he replied.

She lifted her chin and stared at him with pure bravado. “Aren’t you, Cy? That isn’t how I remember it.”

He turned away, his eyes glancing down the wide street. “You were eighteen. Too young. Years too young. I never asked, but I’d bet I had your chastity.”

Meredith flushed. Cy watched the stain in her cheeks with faint amusement, the first he’d felt since he’d seen her get off the bus.

“So I did,” he murmured, tingling all over at having his suspicions confirmed.

“You were the first,” she said coldly. She smiled. “But not the last. Or did you think you were going to be an impossible act to follow?”

His pride bristled, but he didn’t react. He finished the cigarette and flipped it off the porch. “Where have you been for the past six years?”

“Around,” she said simply. “Look, this bag is getting heavy. Do you have anything to say, or is this just a friendly visit to see how fast you can shoot me out of town?”

“I came to ask if you needed a job,” he said stiffly. “I know your aunt left nothing except bills. I own a restaurant here. There’s an opening for a waitress.”

This was really too much, Meredith thought. Cy offering her a job waitressing, when she could easily afford to buy the place. Guilty conscience? she wondered. Or renewed interest? Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to accept it. She had a feeling she’d see a good bit of the Hardens that way, and it fitted in nicely with her plans.

“Okay,” she said. “Do I need to apply?”

“No. Just report for work at six sharp tomorrow morning,” he said. “I seem to remember that you had a job in a café when we first met.”

“Yes.” Her eyes met his, and for an instant they both shared the memory of that first meeting. She’d spilled coffee on him, and when she’d gone to mop up his jacket, electricity had danced between them. The attraction was instant and mutual…and devastating.

“So long ago,” he said absently, his eyes dark with bitterness. “My God, why did you run? I came to my senses two days later, and I couldn’t find you, damn you!”

Came to his senses? She didn’t dare dwell on that. She glared at him. “Damn you, too, for listening to your mother instead of me. I hope the two of you have been very happy together.”

His eyebrows arched. “What did my mother have to do with you and Tanksley?”

He didn’t know! She could hardly believe it, but that blank stare of his was genuine. He didn’t know what his mother had done!

“How did you get him to confess?” she asked.

“I didn’t. He told Mother that you were innocent. She told me.”

Her heart trembled in her chest. “Did she tell you anything else?” she asked with affected carelessness.

He scowled. “No. What else was there to tell?”

That I was pregnant with your child, she thought darkly, that I was eighteen and had nowhere to go. I couldn’t risk staying with Great-Aunt Mary with a theft charge hanging over my head.

She lowered her eyes so that he wouldn’t see the fury in them. Those first few weeks had been the purest hell of her life, despite the fact that they’d strengthened and matured her to a frightening degree. She’d had to take complete charge of her own life and fate, and from that time she’d never been afraid again.