Children of Destiny Books 1-3 (Texas: Children of Destiny Book 9) Page 26

  Eight

  At the top of the stairs Megan hesitated, feeling ridiculously awkward and out of her depth as she waited for Byrom to park the car. In one hand she clutched a small, brightly wrapped birthday present. The elegant party had already started, and she was thankful that Wayne and Mercedes Jackson had finished receiving guests and that their places beneath the glittering chandelier in the foyer stood empty.

  Byrom rushed up the stairs and pressed Megan’s clammy hand in his. “Thought I’d never find a parking place.”

  Megan tried to smile at him and felt only a painful pulling at the corners of her mouth.

  A chattering group of young women in silks, chiffons and flashing jewels flew past them and disappeared into the house. Kirk was already inside.

  Brilliant floodlights lit the house so that the red-roofed Spanish mansion stood out like a radiant ruby set with diamonds against the velvet blackness of the night. A constant stream of helicopters and limousines had ferried wealthy guests from the airport.

  Unlike everyone else on the ranch who had been filled with anticipation at the thought of a party, Megan had dreaded tonight all week. The house was filled with caterers and bartenders and extra help hired to serve. White party tents had been erected beside the pool.

  Mariachis stood outside strumming their guitars, and the hauntingly melodious Mexican music filled Megan with an aching nostalgia for other evenings, simpler evenings when she had danced until dawn with the vaqueros in their sharply pressed, razor-edged khakis and laughed and talked with their dark-skinned women and children.

  It was the Jackson Ranch custom to give two parties simultaneously in celebration of all grand occasions. Thus, whenever there was a party at the Big House, there was one given outside for the ranch hands, too. Usually it was the ranch-hand party that Megan attended, instead of the more formal affair at the Big House. Tonight, more than ever before, she would have preferred the outdoor party.

  As she stepped inside the door, Megan heard the strains of the orchestra from the ballroom, and her heart tightened with a feeling of queer, almost painful expectancy as she thought of seeing Jeb again. She had bought a new dress, a bright emerald-green gown with long, swirling skirts that seemed to float at her every turn. Nestled against the flyaway tendrils of her flame-red hair was a yellow blossom that Kirk had picked and given to her from the vine of climbing roses that grew beneath her bedroom window.

  She remembered his hushed words, velvet soft in the darkness. “Be happy tonight, Megan. For me.”

  She had nodded, unable to speak.

  “And try to be nice to Jeb. He cares more about you than you know.”

  She had turned away.

  Megan felt uneasy surrounded by the opulence of Jeb’s house and the glamour and sophistication of his guests. There was nothing like one of Mercedes’s elegant parties to show Megan the gulf that separated the Jacksons from their employees.

  Elegant gifts with golden labels from fancy stores completely covered the vast, polished library table in the foyer beneath the dazzling chandelier. Quickly, before anyone could see her humble, squashed package, she darted forward and tucked it beneath the rest of the presents.

  At the last minute she had snatched the wooden figure that Jeb had always wanted from the shelf, wrapping it clumsily while Byrom had tapped his foot impatiently, fuming while he waited in the living room.

  No matter how she felt about Jeb, it was his birthday. He had risked his life to save Kirk, and she had wanted him to have something special from her. Now, as she studied the fashionable pile of professionally wrapped gifts with the soft lights glinting off their green, red and yellow satin bows, she wished she’d left her humble present at home. Her gift seemed as out of place in the elegant mound as did she with her simple gown and rose in her hair among Jeb’s bejeweled guests.

  A girl called to Byrom, and he left Megan for a moment. The broad, gleaming doors between the library, the drawing room and ballroom stood open wide so that guests could spill easily from one room to the next, and already the old-fashioned rooms with their quarter-sawn oak-paneled walls and their lovely white Gothic ceilings were jammed with people. Waiters served bourbon and Scotch, old-fashioneds and martinis, straight bourbon being the favorite among the Texas ranchers.

  In the library several politicians were speaking a little too loudly to groups that had clustered around them. The conversation centered on border problems, water shortages, bank foreclosures and the troubles in the oil patch. But Megan took no notice. She was looking for Jeb.

  On a whirl of music the dancers at the edge of the ballroom spun and parted. She saw him. Her mouth suddenly felt dry.

  A hundred attractive faces, glittering gowns and sparkling jewels blurred. Across the ballroom floor, one darkly handsome, virile male caught her attention.

  Tall, swarthy, and magnificently built, Jeb stood apart even though he wore a black tux and black tie like most of the other men. Megan could feel the pull of his animal magnetism welling up inside her. Her breath caught painfully in her throat, and she couldn’t swallow.

  He was dancing with Janelle. Megan’s breath again came quickly, and her heart began to pound high in her throat.

  Janelle’s golden head was tilted so that her shining curls, wound with lustrous pearls, cascaded down her back. Through her long lashes she gazed into his black eyes. Her exquisite face was rapt. She was all in red. Her gown, with its low neck and straight-cut skirt that clung to her slim figure, was stylish and boldly dramatic. A strand of pearls lay against the soft curves of her bosom. Jeb’s black head was bent attentively over her fair one, and she laughed gaily at something he murmured into her ear, tossing her head so that a single, perfectly formed blond coil dangled over her shoulder. He was holding her very close, as if he never wanted to let her go.

  Megan’s head began to throb dully as the blood rushed to it, her stomach feeling as if a knife had been plunged into it. Her feet and hands had gone numb, and she was shivering with cold. But she could not drag her eyes away from them.

  Megan was not the only one watching. They were such an arresting couple that many an eyebrow arched speculatively in their wake. Tomorrow they would be a delicious item of gossip.

  Megan imagined the whispered, titillating conversations.

  Isn’t she stunning?

  No more than he.

  He’ll never do better.

  And he needs to marry well.

  Megan turned her face to the wall, but she could not block out the image of Janelle, beautiful and polished and sophisticated in her designer gown and pearls. A fitting queen for a man who considered himself a king. By comparison Megan felt shabbily flamboyant, wearing no other jewel than the yellow rose in her hair.

  Clumsily she removed the blossom and cast it toward a nearby table, not caring when she tangled her hair and the rose fell instead to the floor where it would no doubt be crushed carelessly under some guest’s booted heel. She glanced up, and Jeb’s eyes met hers.

  Megan wanted to turn away, to stop watching the handsome man in black tails whirl the golden woman lightly in his arms, but she was fascinated. She felt a quick, jealous heat rise and ebb in her cheeks, leaving her even colder than before. Her face was probably the color of starched linen, her eyes dull green emeralds without sparkle, her emotions plain for him to read.

  “Megan, don’t stand there like a wallflower where everyone can see you eating your heart out,” rasped Nick Browning from behind her. “It’s high time you figured out that you’re in love with my big brother.”

  She whirled. “I’m not in—”

  “Go after him.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” When she tried to smile lightly into that familiar tanned face beneath the butter-gold hair, her mouth merely quivered.

  Nick’s grin was bold enough for both of them. He was flashily dressed in a white tux with a peacock-blue shirt that intensified the color of his vivid, sparkling eyes. His hair was streaked silver from the many days he sp
ent racing and sailing all over the world. When she’d met his plane this afternoon, he’d told her that he’d just flown in from a week-long series of races off Bermuda.

  He swept her into his arms in a bear hug and let her go. Megan had grown up loving Nick as a brother…maybe because he’d been the illegitimate son, and, therefore, a bit of an outcast like herself. At least he’d always taken time to be kind to her when he’d come to the ranch every summer to visit his father, Wayne Jackson, and his half brothers, Jeb and Tad.

  She looked at him inquiringly. “I didn’t realize you were coming until Jeb told me to pick you up.”

  “I received a royal summons from the king himself,” Nick teased. “I had no choice but to obey.”

  “I never realized before you had such an obedient nature.”

  He laughed. Heads turned. She was aware of Jeb and Janelle dancing nearer to them. Of Jeb’s eyes seeking hers.

  “You know me too well,” Nick said.

  “Where’s Amy?”

  Nick was a little younger than Jeb. He’d been born during a lengthy separation between Mercedes and Wayne in the early years of their turbulent marriage. Jeb and Nick had resented each other from the first. They had been like two young bucks fighting over the same scrap of territory.

  Nick laughed easily again. “Amy’s got her eye glued to Triple. Good thing too.”

  Triple was the liveliest child Megan had ever encountered. On his last visit to the ranch, Triple had sneaked into Megan’s Piper and taxied down the runway because he’d read how to fly in a comic book and wanted to try it. Fortunately he’d run out of runway before he’d managed to take off. This afternoon she’d heard a rumor that he’d gotten clunked in the head by a stray hoof while trying to shoe his pony, Nugget.

  “More than one eye, I hope! Triple’s a full-time job.”

  Nick grinned. “You don’t know the half of it. Right now he’s at the hors d’oeuvres table gobbling up all those tiny meatballs. Amy’s afraid if she leaves him for a second, he’ll get into trouble. He’s got a bigger appetite for mischief than he does for meatballs.”

  “I haven’t forgotten the day he stowed away on Jeb’s jet and came to Texas.”

  A glow of happiness deepened the color of Nick’s eyes. “Well, at least that crisis brought Amy and me back together.”

  “You three are doing okay then?”

  “If you call expecting a baby okay.” Nick beamed with paternal pride.

  “After producing Triple, I’d say that’s living dangerously.”

  Nick laughed indulgently. “I thought you were the girl who didn’t know any other way to live.”

  “I’m not the wild hellion you used to know.”

  “Really?” Nick frowned in mock disappointment.

  “I’m not!”

  “Dance with me, Megan.”

  He took her hand in his. “It will make Jeb jealous.”

  “But I don’t want—”

  His bold blue eyes saw through to her heart. “Why not, when that same emotion is eating you alive?”

  “Stop it, Nick.”

  Nick’s eyes twinkled. “Besides, I’d kind of like to stir big brother up a bit—for old times’ sake. I’ve been too easy on him lately.”

  “But your wife—”

  “My wife knows I adore her.”

  Megan was in Nick’s hard arms. He danced expertly, as he did everything else. Megan caught more than a few curious looks cast in their direction, but she didn’t care.

  She said breathlessly, “You don’t really have to dance with me, you know. I—”

  “Don’t be an idiot!” He laughed.

  Despite her intentions to ignore Jeb, Megan, who was searching for him surreptitiously, spotted him kneeling beside the table where she’d thrown her rose, retrieving it reverently, pinning it to his lapel. As he stood his eyes met hers. Her throat constricted as she saw the tensing of his muscles as he looked at her.

  A split second later Nick whirled her around, and she lost sight of Jeb in the throng.

  Nick and Megan were dancing at the periphery of the crowd, near the great doors leading to the solarium, and before Megan quite knew what was happening, he had pushed the doors open and pulled her through them. Unnoticed, they slipped out into the darkened room lit only by moonlight streaming through its skylights. The music followed them softly, muted, as was the rumble of laughter and conversation of the guests.

  The solarium smelled of roses and orchids and gardenias. Megan’s skirts brushed the petals of a potted azalea bush. They danced down the length of the room where soaring columns cast long shadows, and the music seemed a long way off.

  Nick stopped in the darkest corner.

  “If this doesn’t do it, nothing will,” Nick said under his breath.

  Megan was too breathless from dancing to catch his meaning.

  The moonlight shone in Nick’s butter-gold hair. “So how did it happen—your discovery that you love Jeb?” Nick demanded. “Did he seduce you?”

  From the shadows behind them came a stern, all-too-familiar voice. “It was the other way around.”

  “Speak of the devil...” Nick’s goading voice trailed away on a note of satisfied triumph. “Happy birthday, big brother!”

  Jeb’s face looked hard and remote, his body rigid. “Do you mind if I join you, or would three be a crowd?”

  “Megan and I were just catching up on old times,” Nick replied softly, obtusely.

  “So that’s what you call it.” Jeb edged closer, looming out of the shadows. He smiled at her, a terrible, aristocratic, condescending smile. Megan could hear the anger, barely leashed, in his voice.

  His sinewy hand reached through the moonlight and closed around her forearm. “Your Dr. Ferguson was looking for you a while ago.”

  She arched her eyebrows coolly. “Oh?”

  “He was called away on a medical emergency. He said he might not be able to get back. He couldn’t find you to tell you himself, so he sent me.”

  “Is that why you followed us?” Megan asked.

  “It’s one of the reasons.”

  Behind Jeb’s veiled look Megan felt the dark intensity of his gaze. He turned to regard his brother with equal intensity.

  Nick smiled at him lazily. “I think you had a valid point a while ago. Three is definitely a crowd.”

  Nick melted into the darkness. The last thing to disappear was his warm, teasing grin.

  “And...your other reasons... for following us?” Megan murmured shakily.

  For a pregnant moment he didn’t speak. Megan could not stop looking at him. She could see the faint shadow that darkened his jaw. His recent injury where the bullet had grazed his temple had healed nicely. But she could see the faint edges of a tiny scar beside his left brow, and her face whitened with guilt. During roundup last spring, he had ordered her about, and she had gotten so mad she had buzzed him with her plane when he was riding Caesar. Caesar had gone wild and thrown him. Jeb had even been knocked unconscious for a couple of minutes.

  She had expected Jeb to fire her on the spot, but he had lain in the back of his pickup, his dark face grim and bloodied and accepted her stammering apology after she’d landed her plane in a field and had come running to help him.

  He’d acted as if the incident were nothing, never teasing her about it or referring to it in any way. When he’d ordered Mario to drive him to the hospital, she’d ridden with him. He hadn’t had a concussion, but he’d needed the stitches of a plastic surgeon.

  She could have killed him, but he hadn’t blamed her…or Caesar.

  The scent of the yellow rose in his lapel came to her nostrils. It was sweet and delicate. Her rose. His wearing it seemed an intimate thing.

  “I had to be alone with you,” he whispered. Something flared in his eyes and then vanished as of he was in the grip of some powerful emotion. The muscles along his jaw whitened from his effort to control it.

  For an instant she was moved by his words, by the passion in his l
ow tone. Then she remembered his dancing with Janelle. He made love to whatever woman he was with. But given the choice, he would do what was best for the ranch the people he was responsible for and marry money.

  “But I don’t want to be alone with you,” she managed tightly, taking several faltering steps back.

  “You could at least wish me a happy birthday,” he said. He followed her as she darted for the doors, gripping her by the arm and spinning her around. His arms circled her, crushing her to his length. Soft emerald skirts floated in the air. Her hair was like a wing of flame.

  His touch felt like fire, like ice, and sent a volt of sensation sizzling through her, numbing her will to fight.

  “Happy birth—”

  Megan looked past him. A woman in red opened the door and stood framed in a bright rectangle of golden light, calling softly to Jeb.

  As she recognized Janelle, Megan’s tongue seemed to stick to the roof of her mouth. She stared at Jeb in mute anguish.

  He had had only to touch her to prove she was his. But he could never be hers.

  Suddenly, surprising them both, she spoke in a low strangled voice. “Let Janelle wish you happy birthday.” Megan jerked free of his grasp, and, gathering her skirts, she streaked past Janelle and through the doors.

  “Megan!”

  Behind her, Megan heard the heavy tread of his footsteps, but they seemed to stop when he reached Janelle.

  For an instant Megan was blinded by the brilliance of the lights in the ballroom and deafened by the noise after the dark quiet of the solarium. She could only stare at the glittering couples in bewilderment. She wanted to dance, to become part of the party and chatter vivaciously, to forget Jeb and all that he meant to her, all that she must never let him mean to her.

  Oh, it wasn’t fair to want someone and know she could never fit into his glittering circle of polished friends. Across the room she saw Nick. She wanted to run to him, but he was standing with Triple and Amy.

  Nearby, Wayne Jackson was dancing with his wife. Mercedes wore a white gown and still moved as gracefully as a girl, having once been a prima ballerina. There were those who said they were the oddest of stormy mismatches—the Anglo-Texan rancher married to a cosmopolitan, woman who’d been born a Mexican National. Living near the border where the Mexican and Anglo cultures had never blended easily, was it any wonder they’d had their battles as a couple?