Silver Miracles (2 page)

Trinity shook her head slowly. "That place must have over a thousand acres. You don’t do things halfway, do you?"

"Whatever"—he shrugged indifferently—"but in this instance, I think I made a wise choice. Having you for a neighbor may make the cost of the land cheap at twice the price. This bucolic life just might appeal to me after all."

He reached out and ran the back of his hand down her cheek with a killingly sure touch, and she shivered with the warmth it caused. He seemed to enjoy touching her. And she didn’t seem inclined to stop him.

"You feel it, too, don’t you," he questioned softly, "this chemistry that has been between us since we first set eyes on each other?"

"Yes," she admitted unsteadily. Chase Colfax interested her, and she saw no point in lying about it.

He laughed, a low, rich sound that she immediately became absorbed in. "You are definitely a rarity. Most women would deny it, say no, while all the time they would mean yes."

"I don’t play games, Chase, and if we are going to be neighbors, you might as well learn it now."

"Good. That will save a lot of time."

Something in his forceful answer made her continue. "But just because I’m attracted to you doesn’t mean I’ll be yours for the taking. The entry to your land is miles away from mine, and it’s approached from different directions. Even though part of your land runs beside mine and fronts on the same road, there is no entrance there. Who knows? It might be some time before we see each other again." It was the truth, but she couldn’t make up her mind whether she was disappointed about the fact or not.

"Don’t bet your farm on it, Trinity Ann. We will see each other again. You are a very unusual young woman. So far, you haven’t done or said one expected thing. You just don’t conform, do you?"

"To what?" Trinity wondered aloud.

He ignored her question and asked one of his own. "You said this is your farm?"

"Yes. It’s only thirty-two acres—not big, when you compare it with yours—but it’s all I need. My father left it to my sister and me when he died, but my sister has signed her half over to me, since she and her husband have a place of their own down the road."

"That was very generous of your sister," he mocked. "East Texas land is extremely valuable, if for nothing else than the mineral rights."

"It’s something that goes beyond generosity," she murmured mildly, watching the way the moonlight glinted off his hair. "It’s called love."

"I really wouldn’t know about that." His response was brusque. Too brusque given the kiss they had shared. "Do you live here alone?"

"No."

"So . . . you do conform after all," he drawled his contempt, with maybe just a hint of disappointment, at her flat statement. "Who is he?"

"Who?"

"The guy you live with."

"No guy," she answered evenly. "I live with my three- year-old daughter." She knew what was coming and she also knew exactly what she would tell him.

"You have a child? Well, Trinity Ann Warrenton, you’ve just managed to surprise me once again, and I can’t remember the last time someone did that."

"You must live a very dull life."

"Not really. At least I’ve never considered it dull until I met you." He looked at her for a long moment. "So who is the guy who is the father of your child, but hasn’t married you? Or even branded you in any way that I can see. Careless of him to let someone like you to wander free."

"There’s no guy."

"But–"

This was what she had been prepared for. Sooner or later most people got around to asking the same question. Trinity looked straight into his eyes. "I’m not married and I have never been married, but I do have a daughter."

Chase shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and regarded her, his cold blue eyes glinting with speculation.

Maybe she shouldn’t have told him, but she had never been anything but honest about Stephanie and she wasn’t going to start lying now. If the facts bothered him, it was his problem, not hers.

Trinity watched Chase Colfax while he assessed this latest information about her. What a strange man he was. It was a curious fact that, when she had first seen him, the possibility that he might rape or hurt her in some way never even occurred to her. Her first impression had been that here was a man who would possibly kill but who would never resort to rape. And now, in the aftermath of his kiss, she knew he would never have to rape any woman.

Despite his jeans and rifle, he didn’t seem to belong on a farm in east Texas. Which brought up the question: Where did he come from? Maybe she should ask him. And maybe she should ask if he was married. Somehow, though, she didn’t think he was.

One thing she was certain of: No woman had ever touched him deeply enough to bring out his softer side—if indeed he had one. He seemed hard, all the way through, like a block of Texas granite, with no veins of softness to mar his tough strength.

Chase finally spoke, breaking into her reverie, and it was his turn to surprise her. "When I first saw you flying down the hill, with your hair streaming out behind you and your feet barely touching the ground, you reminded me of some wild thing— an untamed creature, free of any earthly constraints."

Listening to him speak, it seemed that, just for a moment, his voice had held a different inflection, brief though it had been. Trinity wasn’t sure what it had meant, if anything. When he continued, his voice was low and cool again, but his eyes burned his desire through the silver night, reaching out to her with a disturbing intensity, weakening her knees and heating her lower limbs.

"And then, when you reached the pier, flinging off your gown and standing still as if you were. . . inhaling the night, do you know what I was thinking?"

"No," she whispered, her legs suddenly weak.

"I was thinking what a beautiful body you had and wondering what it would feel like under me, with those long, lovely legs of yours wrapped around my back."

"Don’t say those things," Trinity gasped in faint protest.

But it was really too late for any form of protest, because his words had reached out and covered her with a spell of fascination and, when he took her in his arms this time, there was no thought of a fight.

The kiss did not ignite sparks, because it didn’t have to. She was already aflame with her own perception of his verbal pictures, and there was no thought as the kiss deepened and went on and on, thrusting through all restraints occasioned by the situation.

The moon could have fallen from the sky and Trinity would never have noticed. She was totally absorbed in the raspiness of his tongue against hers, and the heat of his hands through the thin damp cotton of her gown.

There was no reason why this man’s kisses should excite her, but they did—ridiculously so, unbearably so. His musky male scent swirled through the air around them, mingling with her perfume and wrapping them both in the sweetness of the night.

And when he finally broke the kiss off, she was totally disoriented. Worse, he knew it. But his hands on her shoulders kept her steady until her equilibrium returned.

Trinity looked up at the man in front of her and saw a complete stranger, to whom, at their first meeting, she had responded with an inexplicable passion. It didn’t make a lot of sense, and she needed time to think, away from his magnetic pull.

"I’ve got to get back to the house," she choked, turning and running back up the slope, not stopping until she got to her room.

Lying in her bed a few minutes later, she thought about her perplexing encounter down by the pool. Could she blame it on the enticing allure of the moonlight? She didn’t really know. But she could recall every detail about Chase Colfax: How he had tasted, how he had smelled and how he had made her feel.

She wasn’t a silly teenager experiencing the first stir of passion. She had known desire before, but not on this scale. It was an obvious chemical reaction, and whether they would feel the same explosive attraction to each other the next time they met remained to be seen.

Their encounter had been scandalous and it had been intriguing, and Trinity fell asleep, dreaming of a strange, hard man with silver-white hair and ice-blue eyes.

By midmorning the next day. Trinity had already been up and working for hours, doing her best to forget about the man who had so successfully dominated her dreams throughout the night.

Washing dishes, she watched while her golden-haired daughter painstakingly cut out cookies with a star-shaped cookie cutter. "That’s really good, sweetheart," she encouraged absently.

Having enjoyed every minute of Stephanie’s young life, it was hard for her to realize that her little girl was nearly four years old now. Trinity had a teaching degree, but she had made up her mind not to work away from their home until Stephanie was older and in school. Even though Stephanie didn’t have a father, Trinity was still determined to give her as secure a start in life as possible.

"When can we ice these cookies, Mommy?"

"I’ll put a batch in the oven right now," she answered, matching her actions to her words, "and then, when the boys get here, Tray can help you."

Her three nephews were going to stay with them for the night while her sister and her husband went into Dallas on business.

"I don’t think I can wait," Stephanie told her importantly. She had been working on the cookies for quite some time. "When will they be here?"

"Any minute now."

And sure enough, about that time, Larry, with his thinning brown hair askew and his wire-rimmed glasses smudged, walked in the back door, carrying nine-month-old Joshua under one arm and nearly two year-old Anthony under the other.

"Mornin’, babe. Are you ready for the little monsters?"

"Hey, you be careful who you call little monsters! Those are my nephews, and in my family, we don’t have anything but little angels. Isn’t that right, Joshua?"

Trinity smiled at the little boy as she took him from his daddy’s arm. "How’s my handsome fella?" she asked him, walking over to the kitchen table and sitting down. Joshua cooed a silly little smile up at her. He was such a happy baby, and she just loved to cuddle him.

Her sister’s three children were all very comfortable in Trinity’s home, having spent so much time there, and the reverse was also true. There were times when Trinity thought Stephanie would be quite happy to live permanently with Sissy and her brood.

Larry set Anthony on the floor and walked over to the stove to help himself to a cup of coffee. "I see icing cookies is on the agenda for the day." He grinned, spying the muffin pan—with each muffin hole full of a different color icing, which Trinity had made out of powdered sugar and food coloring—and the little paint brushes by the side of the pan.

"Of course. I keep telling you, the trick is to keep them busy." Her kitchen was old-fashioned but big, and she had set up a card table in one corner of it for the cookie making. "Where’s Sissy? Is she getting ready for the trip into the big city?"

Her sister’s name was Sabine. Their parents had loved the slow, moody rivers of east Texas and had graced their daughters with two of their names, but Trinity had been born five years after her sister, and, as a baby, she had not been able to pronounce the name Sabine. As a result, "Sissy" had evolved and stuck.

Larry rolled his eyes. "She’s home, making fudge."

"The trip’s bothering her, right?" Trinity laughed indulgently.

Larry and Trinity both knew that whenever Sissy was upset about something, she invariably made fudge.

"Yep, you know your sister. Even though she knows you take as good care of the boys as she does, she hates leaving them, even for one night."

"Don’t worry. The trip will be great for her, and once y’all get on the road, she’ll be okay."

Larry was a successful mystery writer, and even though he loved the seclusion of the country for writing, he had to make periodic trips into Dallas to see his agent. Larry refused to fly. Consequently, his agent made the concession to his star client’s idiosyncrasies and flew in from New York upon request. Larry was that successful.

Their conversation was interrupted by a five-year-old bundle of energy named Tray bursting in the back door. Again, Tray was a nickname, since the boy had been named after his father, Lawrence Breedlove II, making Tray the third.

"Hi, sweetheart. How were the hens? Did you get all the eggs?" Trinity asked, noticing that Tray was carrying a small basket. He took a proprietary interest in the hens and always inspected the hen house the moment he arrived. He loved to help Trinity feed the hens and collect the eggs.

"No. There were more, but I couldn’t carry all of them," he informed her, carefully putting the basket on the counter.

"Well, come here and give your Aunt Trinity a big hug, and then you can help Stephanie paint the cookies with icing. Later, we’ll go get the rest of the eggs."

Running promptly over to her, Tray planted a great big juicy kiss on her cheek and then went tearing off to the corner of the room where Stephanie sat, diligently cutting out more cookies, this time with a cookie cutter in the shape of a clown.

Trinity got up, plopped Joshua in his father’s lap and took a tray of newly baked cookies and the pan of icing over to the table, giving the two small cousins instructions. "Go to it, kids. Ice them while they’re hot, and be sure to change brushes every time you change colors."

On her way back to Larry, Trinity scooped up Anthony, who had been sitting on the floor playing with a truck. "How’s my baby today?" she asked him, and in his own fashion he tried to tell her.

"Co’d," he said, pointing to his runny red nose.

"Oh, nooo! Anthony has a cold?"

Anthony nodded emphatically, happy to have his aunt’s undivided attention.

"I bet a few cookies would help that cold feel better. What do you think?"

"Cokie," Anthony repeated happily.

"Okay," Trinity said, carrying him over to the card table, "you sit here and watch Tray and Stephanie ice these cookies, and when they’re finished, you can have one." She handed him a cookie cutter of a Santa Claus and a ball of dough to keep his hands busy and then walked over to the stove to pour herself a cup of coffee.