Why it bothered her so much to see the man she had loved for the past seven years enchanting her entire family with that charismatic aura he wore so lightly was beyond her. But the tears that burned her lids were very real as she fought to control them, quickening her steps until she was lost in the inky blackness of the familiar leaf-clogged path that led from the back edge of her family’s property to the river’s edge below. She had walked this path for over twenty years, with her brothers and alone. It was as warmly familiar and welcoming as an old, dear friend as she inhaled the deep warm scents of oakmoss and pine needles and rotting humus.
He was back there stealing her own family from her. Infecting them with his wicked sense of humor and his overwhelming charisma. They were no longer her protective, tightly knit source of warmth. They were his newest sycophants. Even her own father, for Pete’s sake! The man who had sworn to tell the bastard what he thought of him. Her father was laughing jovially and slapping him on the back as if they were the best of pals. Damn the man. She felt like an outsider at her own fucking birthday party.
She followed the sloping path downward to the bank of the slow-moving little river…well, it had been a river to her at six, but it was really just a wide irrigation canal that wound its lazy way through the bottom lands toward the old barn and stables that had been empty for as far back as she could remember. They had once belonged to an old man who died about a dozen years back, and his family had never bothered to clear and use the old wooded property. But it had always been one of her favorite haunts whenever she felt the need to hide from the world.
Frustrated at her perplexing anger over her family’s desertion to the enemy ranks, Jill slipped into the musty darkness of the rotting barn, closing her eyes and imagining that she was ten again, hiding from her brothers. Inhaling the familiar scents of age and decrepitation. Ancient sun-baked wood. Old limestone that was slowly going back to the earth from which it was mined.
She sank onto the old barrel that was still there…once her trusty steed while escaping hordes of wild Indians, but now simply a rusted-out old piece of metal with gaping holes in the end. Sighing under the weight of her own confusion, she found herself wondering how she was going to handle the letdown her family would inevitably feel when they found out that they had been played like a harp by a master conman. When they found out that their new golden idol had simply been selfishly expeditious in keeping her by his side, that he wasn’t madly in love with her at all.
She chewed her lower lip and closed her eyes. Her father and brothers would be absolutely livid. And Jill Turner would be absolutely devastated when he decided to release her from her “contract” once the novelty wore off.
“Where the hell is Jill?” Tim asked as he emerged from the kitchen. “She isn’t in the house.”
Mike glanced up from the blueprints Jill’s father had been showing him, explaining the plans to renovate the seventy-year-old house, and his dark brows knitted. “She went to freshen up.”
“For an hour?” Tom asked with a frown. He looked across the living room at his twin. “Did you check her room? Maybe she crashed and burned.”
“I was just there. Not in the bathroom. Door’s wide open. Not in the kitchen, and I went down to the rec room. Not there.”
Mike’s thoughts were on her mood when she had walked out of the living room. Odd how attuned he seemed to be to her moods since yesterday. She had seemed angry. Nothing he could really put a finger on, but…
“Did she take her purse?”
“It’s in the bedroom with the luggage. I called her cell…it’s still in the purse. Her sat phone’s in there too.” Tim’s words stopped Mike from dialing the small matching phone he had fished out of his pocket.
“Maybe outside in the garden?” Helen Turner asked her sons.
“We’ll check. Shit, Mom, she can’t be far. It’s her fucking birthday.”
“Tim, watch your mouth around your mother!”
Mike wasn’t paying attention anymore. He rose from the sofa and glanced at the two tall blond men who were heading out the front door. “Where does she go when she’s upset?”
“Upset? Why would she be upset? She just got married…the family is celebrating her damn birthday…”
“Tim!”
“Yeah…sorry, Mom.”
Mike drew a deep breath. “We…had a tiff before we arrived. I think she’s still pissed…I mean angry at me.” He quickly amended his words and smiled at Helen Turner. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“I told you to call me Helen. Ma’am makes me feel old.” Her sweet smile reminded him of Jill’s lush curved lips.
“Well, Helen, I think she’s still angry with me…and she should be. I was a bad boy.” His wicked grin had the desired effect on the woman.
“She used to go down to the pastures in the bottoms. There’s an old barn there.”
Mike inhaled deeply. “Point me in the right direction. I think I need to go alone, and start crawling on hands and knees.” He noted the direction Tim pointed. “Got a flashlight?”
Jill stretched and drew a deep breath of the warm, pungent air of the barn’s interior, before snuggling back into the meager comfort of the musty old straw she’d piled up for an impromptu mattress. Not her idea of a comfy place to spend the night, but at least she was warm, dry and safe from the humiliation of crying in front of her family. No one would miss her, she thought peevishly as she frowned. Her hubby/boss was keeping them busy and entertained. She listened to the comforting sounds of rain striking the old wood and shingles, and she figured she was stranded there for the duration. Fine by her.
Some frigging birthday party. Her special day was totally spoiled by his presence. Or was it his absence now that bothered her the most? Had it really only been the day before yesterday that she’d been so damn determined to walk away from him? And today he was insinuating himself deep into her family’s hearts, setting them up for the inevitable letdown and heartache his selfishness would bring them. Damn him!
But even as her mind told her she should hate him, her heart made that hate a lie. How could she ever hate him? How could she ever forget the past twenty-four hours of making love to him every time the urge struck? And it struck often. How could she forget the endearing tenderness he allowed her glimpses of when he wasn’t being a frigging megalomaniac? She buried her face in her arms and bit back the sob that threatened to undermine her determination not to cry. But her tears would not be pushed back yet again. She drew her knees up to her chest and wept bitterly for her lost heart and her family’s future heartache.
Mike managed to reach the bottom of the slope without breaking a leg or falling on his damn face, and he paused to get the lay of the land. The old barn Tim had mentioned was somewhere along the bottoms, and was some distance from the slow-moving canal that flowed past the rocks at the bottom of the slope. He glanced up at the threatening storm clouds that had started to obliterate the moon, pitching the ground into darkness. He turned left as the path reached the water’s edge, and carefully made his way by the light of the flashlight he’d borrowed along the pine-needle clogged path, slipping perilously several times and swearing softly as he nearly toppled into the damn canal.