Texas! Lucky (31 page)

Pressing deeper, he parted his lips and kissed her earnestly. There was moisture and heat and need, which he wanted to probe.

"No!" Suddenly she shoved him off, rolled away, and drew herself into a ball. "It's wrong. I can't. I can't."

Lucky stared down at her, gasping for breath, trying to clear his head and make sense of a senseless situation. He saw her tears, but even before then he knew this wasn't some trick. She was suffering spiritual torment and emotional hell, and he couldn't bear it.

"It's okay, Devon," he said with soft gruffness, laying a hand on her shoulder. He made ineffectual attempts to draw her blouse together over her breasts, the tips of which were still rosy and moist from his caresses.

"I'd never want you to do anything that would make you feel bad about yourself or about me. Never."

She turned her head and gazed up at him through eyes shimmering with tears. "I'm married, Lucky." Her voice trembled with desperation. "I'm married."

"I know."

The ancient bed rocked when he flung himself off it and stamped through the door. He paced the length of the stable a couple of times, cursing fate, gnashing his teeth in an effort to cool his passions and his temper. However, when Devon appeared, his temper dissipated. Her despair killed it as nothing else could have. There were still tears in her eyes. Her lips, which were swollen from fervent kissing, made her look like a victim. What did that make him? The culprit?

Yes.

"I'll walk you back to the house now," he said gently. She didn't take the hand he extended to her, but fell into step beside him as they moved from the stable to the house. As soon as they entered, she said, "It won't take me long to pack." Before he could stop her, she ran upstairs.

He wished his mother allowed liquor in the house. If he'd ever needed a whiskey, it was now. The longest ten minutes of his life was spent roaming the rooms of the house, knowing that Devon was upstairs, preparing to walk out of his life forever.

She had reached the bottom stair before he heard her tread and rushed to confront her there. At her side, she was carrying her packed suitcase.

"Devon—"

"Good-bye, Lucky. I'm glad everything worked out well for you. Of course, there was never any doubt in my mind that you would be cleared of the charges. Thank your mother for her hospitality, and say my good-byes to everyone. They're all so kind, so…" When her voice cracked, she side-stepped him and headed for the front door.

He caught her arm and spun her around. "You can't just leave like this."

"I have to."

"But you don't want to, Devon. Dammit, I know you don't."

"I'm married."

"To a guy you don't love."

"How do you know?"

He took a step closer. It was time to play hard-ball. Their futures were at stake.

"Because if you did, you wouldn't have let me make love to you that first time. You weren't that sleepy. And you wouldn't have let what just happened, when you were wide awake, go so far.

"Know what else? I don't think he loves you either. If he did, he wouldn't have acted like he did when you went to explain things. He'd be gut-sick, or outraged, or determined to castrate and kill me, but he wouldn't act like a kid whose favorite toy had been damaged."

Her momentary defiance evaporated, and she lowered her head. "Whatever Greg says or does isn't the issue. It's what we do that counts. I'm leaving, Lucky. Talking about it won't change my mind."

"I can't let you just go."

"You don't have a choice. Neither do I."

Again she maneuvered around him. He delayed her again. "If you did have a choice—"

"But I don't."

"If you
did
," he repeated stubbornly, "would you want to stay with me?" She did something then that she had avoided doing since coming downstairs—she looked at him directly.

The yearning in her eyes mirrored his own. He exulted in it. Raising his hand, he stroked her cheek. "If you had a choice, would you let me love you like I want to?" he asked in a stirring voice.

The physical and emotional tug-of-war between them was almost palpable. Her eyes cried, yes, yes! But aloud she said nothing. Instead, she turned toward the door. "Good-bye, Lucky."

Abysmally dejected, he dropped down onto the bottom stair and listened to her light footsteps cross the porch and crunch in the gravel driveway. He heard her car door being opened, then closed, and the growl of the engine as she turned it on. He sat there long after the motor could no longer be heard and she had had time to put miles between them.

He listened very closely to something else—his own being. He lusted after this woman's body more than all the other bodies he'd ever known put together. His single sexual experience with her stood out above all the rest. He'd had many that were lustier, crazier, faster, slower, but none as heart-piercingly sweet, none that still haunted his mind.

His heart was saying that his craving for her wasn't entirely physical, however. He could no longer even imagine a life without Devon in it. There would be nothing to look forward to. Days would be dreaded rather than anticipated. Years. Decades.

His head was telling him that the situation was hopeless and that he'd known that from the time she had informed him she was married. Their worst enemy wasn't Greg Shelby; it was their own consciences. Neither could engage in an unscrupulous affair, and if they could, they wouldn't be attracted. They would be two different people. What a brutal irony, that the morals they respected in each other made their being together impossible.

But James Lawrence Tyler wasn't only lucky, he was eternally optimistic.

Nothing was impossible. He simply wouldn't accept this situation. Fate couldn't play a bad joke on him like this and get away with it. It couldn't end this way, with Devon just quitting his life and both of them being miserable about it. No way. He wouldn't allow it.

Hell no.

Chapter 19

"
V
isits are limited to fifteen minutes."

Lucky was shown into the room where, a week earlier, Devon had met briefly with her husband. "I understand," he said to the official. "Thank you for arranging this meeting on such short notice."

During the bleak hours of the night before, it had occurred to Lucky that the manly thing to do would be to confront Devon's husband.

He wasn't yet sure what he was going to say to Greg Shelby. Was he supposed to say that he was sorry for making love to Devon? What an appalling thought. He wasn't sorry for it in the slightest. To say so would be a lie. He supposed he would just come right out and tell the man that he was in love with his wife.

That, too, had occurred to him during the bleak hours of the night.

For all his philandering, he'd always figured that one day there would be a woman who would make sexual fidelity not only an obligation but a pleasure. Devon Haines was that woman. She had made monogamy the only form of sexual activity he wanted to engage in.

As Tanya had done for Chase, Devon had made all other women pale in comparison. She could fulfill his every need and make fulfilling hers a lifetime challenge that he would look forward to meeting.

The idea of his child growing inside Devon gave him goose bumps. It was probably the goose bumps, and the lump that had formed in his throat at the thought of making a baby with her, that convinced him it was love.

Hand in hand with love came honor. That was one lesson the Tyler children had been taught by both their parents. If you loved people, you might hurt them, disappoint them, anger them, but you never, ever, dishonored them.

It was that code of honor that had compelled him to drive through the gates of the country club prison to meet with her husband.

"Are you Tyler?"

At the sound of the voice, Lucky came around and got his first look at Greg Shelby. Mentally he sighed with relief. He'd dreaded meeting a Mel Gibson lookalike garbed in righteous martyrdom and prison stripes.

Instead, facing him was a tanned, nice-looking guy—but not one Sage would deem a hunk. It pleased him to note that Shelby's hair was thinning.

"Mr. Shelby?"

"That's right."

Carrying a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore, he moved into the room and sat down on the sofa, laying his arm along the back of it. His nonchalance surprised Lucky. Surprised and provoked. Why wasn't the son of a bitch going for his throat? Didn't Devon deserve that?

Shelby said, "I don't have to ask what you want to see me about, do I?"

"I guess you don't. You read all about it in the newspapers."

"So did everybody else," he remarked bitterly.

Lucky sat down in a chair adjacent to the sofa. The two men squared off and eyed each other. "I'm sorry you found out about it that way," Lucky said, meaning it. "I know it couldn't have been easy on you, but it was a helluva lot worse on Devon."

Shelby snorted. "She's not in prison, though, is she?"

"She didn't commit a crime."

Lucky's bluntness momentarily took Shelby aback. Then he grinned slyly. "Some would think that what she did with you was a crime."

"I don't. And you don't either."

"How do you know what I think, Tyler?"

"If you were torn up over her adultery, we wouldn't be discussing it so casually."

Shelby gave him another wily grin and said sarcastically, "You're right. Devon's a veritable saint. Her only crime was marrying a guy destined for prison."

Lucky leaned back in his chair as though they were discussing the baseball season instead of an issue that, depending on the outcome, could determine his future.

"I wonder why she did that?"

Shelby regarded him shrewdly, then shrugged. He left the sofa and went to pour himself a cup of coffee from the dispenser. "Want some?"

"No thanks."

He blew on his hot coffee,
then
sipped. "Devon wanted an inside, in-depth story on a white-collar crime that most people would merely label good business. Because I claimed to be innocent, the victim of manipulators too smart to get caught, the case made damn good fodder for her column."

"She's got talent."

"She sure as hell does. She had everybody in Dallas rooting for me." He frowned into the Styrofoam cup. "Too bad the judge and jury couldn't read the newspapers. Maybe we should have put her on the stand as a character witness. She might have convinced them of my innocence."