Children of Destiny Books 1-3 (Texas: Children of Destiny Book 9) Read online

  An extraordinary violet-red thunderhead towered menacingly in front of her, higher than all the rest.

  Hell.

  Megan flashed on the seat-belt sign, and Jeb came into the cabin. “What’s the matter?”

  “Over there,” she pointed. “We’ve got to land in this.”

  The setting sun had tinged the curling bellies of the huge clouds brilliantly iridescent shades of pink and lavender.

  “All I see is pretty clouds.”

  “They’re gorgeous... but deadly. The winds inside them can tear this plane to pieces in seconds.”

  “It’s your job to prevent that.” Jeb buckled himself in beside her. “The question is can you?”

  She let go of the controls.

  The jet dropped two hundred feet in one second.

  “Easy,” Jeb murmured.

  She didn’t trust herself to speak. Not that she needed to. He would get his. And soon. There wasn’t a Jackson alive who had the stomach for flying when things really got rocky. Even though Jeb was a licensed pilot, and a good one, she knew he’d only learned to fly as a safety precaution. With some satisfaction she noted the extreme pallor of his chiseled features as the winds caught the plane and tried to fling it across the sky.

  “If you had an ounce of sense, you’d choose a better time to harass me,” she whispered, gripping the controls. “There are mountains down there, and our ceiling’s so low, we can’t see them.”

  “We have instruments.”

  He shut up after that. She noted that his fingers were locked around the armrests like iron manacles. But she knew he was ready to help her if she needed it.

  The clouds billowed up on all sides of the jet like giant beasts filled with dark potency. The plane hurtled down, into the clouds. Soon there was nothing outside the windows but cold, gray nothingness. Rain began to batter the windshield, and she had only her instruments to guide her, only the tense disembodied voice of the controller.

  “Jacobs Tower to Lear 2835 Tango. We have you on radar. We’re going to bring you in. Turn two degrees east and descend four thousand feet. At your present airspeed, you should be down in ten minutes.”

  She forgot Jeb and focused her complete attention on flying, using every skill she had ever acquired.

  Down, down. She watched the glide slope needle overshoot the center mark, drift back up and stop near the middle as she finally got the descent rate stabilized. Then the plane was hammered on three sides by violent winds. The jet rolled to the right, abruptly, and then plunged under the belly of a cloud.

  Megan stole a quick glance at the altimeter. The needle was edging below forty-five hundred feet. That was a lot of altitude in flat Texas ranch country, but over Big Sur...

  She could almost feel the mountains rushing up to meet them.

  Beads of perspiration popped out on her brow. Her hands were so clammy they stuck to the controls.

  “Jacobs Tower to Lear 2835 Tango. Descend to thirty-five hundred feet and maintain.”

  Down. Down. Did this pea-soup visibility go clear to the ground?

  Thirty-five hundred feet, and she broke out of the clouds just in time to see deadly, sharp rock looming up with alarming suddenness, rising less than fifty feet below the jet.

  Another second in the clouds and they would all have been dead.

  She heard Jeb’s low, guttural curse as she banked instinctively to evade the wall of rock.

  The jet careened like the wildest roller coaster car. Jeb’s features were drawn tautly across his cheekbones; his dark skin blanched by fear.

  Suddenly, through the rain, she saw the flat, hard glimmer of the ocean, the white waves crashing into the headlands, the green rolling hills of the Jacobs’s ranch and the dark straight gash that was the landing strip.

  “We’re going to make it,” she whispered.

  Jeb didn’t look at her, didn’t speak.

  Three minutes later the jet was on the ground, taxiing to the hangar. When she brought it to a stop, Megan switched off the engines with numb fingers and sat rigidly still, hardly able to breathe.

  There was a heavy silence inside the jet. Outside, corrugated tin doors were rumbling and scraping closed in their concrete tracks. Rain was slashing down as the men rushed up to help them out.

  Jeb unclenched his hands from the armrest. She heard the metallic unsnapping of his buckle. Without a word, he got up and left her.

  Not one word to her for having gotten them down safely. Being a pilot himself, he had to know what a miracle that landing had been. It was as if she meant nothing.

  From the cabin she heard Jeb’s voice, speaking softly, soothingly to Janelle. “She scared the hell out of me, too, honey. Don’t worry, I’ll give her a talking to later that she won’t forget, but only after I get you home and make sure you’re all right.”

  Not one word to indicate he might have cared that Megan was scared, too.

  Her face felt as still as petrified wood.

  She heard the hatch open, their retreating steps and Jeb’s softest, solicitous drawl.

  Something inside her exploded.

  *

  He had not bothered to send a car back for her! Megan’s heart was near bursting as she threw herself inside the silent, dark house. Consumed by the wildest, the most gut-tearing emotion she’d ever known, she closed the door and sagged against it, white-faced, wild-eyed and panting, like some tormented character from a melodrama. Her hands were shaking, her teeth chattering. She was sopping wet and every part of her body felt frozen. Behind the door, the storm still raged.

  He had not sent the car back for her even after she’d called him on the phone! A spasm of nausea boiled up in her throat, and she pressed a hand weakly to her mouth. The awful feeling subsided, but it left her even weaker than before.

  Because of Jeb she’d fought her way through that storm. Because of him she was shivering and frozen, queasy with starvation.

  At last she caught her breath, and the mad hammering of her heart slowed. Finally she regained enough strength to stumble through the hushed stillness of the vast, cavernous rooms of the Jacobs’s Big Sur ranch house to Jeb’s room.

  It was past midnight. Having forgotten her, everyone had gone to bed, and she’d had to let herself in. She had shouted, but the hollow echoes of her own voice had been her only answer. She could have died, and no one would have stirred.

  As she made her way across the living room, she left a trail of puddles and oozing mud on the Saltillo tiles and priceless Oriental throw rugs, but she was too filled with rage to care.

  Nothing mattered but finding Jeb.

  He had treated her as though she were less than nothing! He had driven away with Janelle and left Megan alone at the strip, not caring that she’d been as terrified as he, not caring that she hadn’t slept or eaten, not bothering to send a driver for her even after she’d phoned him.

  In the end, too proud to call him again or to let the others at the hangar know of his humiliating treatment of her, she’d walked the quarter mile between the strip and the house in a freezing, bone-chilling downpour.

  She stumbled past the kitchen and the hall that led to the little room in the back that she was always given when Jeb flew to the Jacobs’s. Stiff, wet leather boot tops were cutting into her ankles. She stopped, unlaced her boots, and threw them aside. Then she ran barefoot up the wide staircase and down the long corridors to Jeb’s room. She knocked urgently, breathlessly against the cool, wooden door, all the time hating herself for how she had let him treat her. If he was in bed with Janelle, so be it.

  Maybe he was going to marry her, but he was never, never going to walk all over Megan MacKay again.

  When he didn’t answer, she twisted the knob and stepped into his large bedroom. She stood there a moment, uncertain, dripping on the plush thickness of the wine-red carpet.

  The long windows beside his bed were open, and rain was blowing inside. For a second she wondered how he could have slept through her shouts.

&nb
sp; White curtains billowed eerily. Thrown across the sofa were his suitcase and clothes. The temperature was like ice, and her teeth and jaw began to rattle.

  “J-Jeb...”

  There was no answer from the silent, snugly ensconced lump in the middle of that immense bed.

  She moved closer and whispered his name a second time, and again there was only the blowing wind and the endless silence of the house falling around her like an icy cloak.

  She knelt closer to him, saw his shiny black hair, and detected the faint steady rhythm of his breathing. Droplets of water ran from her hair, spattered the smooth white sheets and ran down his brown neck. She drew back. Then she caught herself as she realized what she was doing.

  Why was she creeping silently into his room? Being thoughtful of his comfort when he hadn’t given a damn for hers? He’d been sound asleep in the warm comfort of his bed while she’d been stumbling through mud and rain!

  In a frenzy of uncontrollable wrath, she snatched the corners of his bedspread, his blankets, his sheets, everything on the bed, and yanked.

  His hand snaked out of the darkness and clamped around her wrist.

  Soft, dripping-wet woman-skin was snapped tightly against the rock-hard, molten heat of man.

  He hadn’t been asleep at all.

  “What took you so long?” he murmured huskily, his warm breath fluttering against the mad pounding at her throat.

  His lazy, amused voice was like gasoline deliberately thrown on the flaming coals of her rage.

  For some inexplicable reason, he wanted her mad.

  Every cell in her being ignited with anger.

  “I’ve been waiting for you for hours,” he whispered.

  She scarcely heard him.

  In that first split second of blinding fury she didn’t register that he was nude.

  When she did, it was already too late.

  He towered over her, naked, erect, magnificent.

  A wild scream of rage bubbled up in her throat as she lunged forward, seeking to strike him, but he swung her off her feet into his arms. His mouth came down over hers, his lips hard and hot and demanding, his tongue filling her, his muscled body shuddering against the cold wetness of her skin. The moment he touched her, she belonged to him utterly.

  The wind howled. Outside, lightning spattered an ink-black sky. Thunder rumbled. Man and woman were at the center of the wildness.

  A storm of exquisite sensation radiated from his flesh to hers. Her skin was like ice, but the center of her became fire. Incredulously the wildness of her anger was transformed into violent, insatiable, carnal hunger. She was gasping for breath, murmuring his name, straining her body into his. Tomorrow she would tell him what she thought of him; tonight she wanted him too badly.

  Weakly her hands circled his neck, her fingernails digging into his brown skin. She had come to him, hating him; then his burning mouth had touched hers, possessed hers, and she discovered that her all-consuming hatred was hopelessly entangled in an all-consuming love. He had taken her into his arms, molded her to the rigid heat of his body, and proved she had never belonged anywhere else. As his mouth played across hers, all her hatred and pain and loneliness were destroyed by a flood of desire that flowed from him into every cell of her body.

  One kiss and his mouth set her body aflame.

  Time stood still.

  Until tonight she had never known herself. She had thought she hated him, but she’d never hated him at all. She had thought she could deny her love only to discover she could deny him nothing.

  His hands moved over her, warming her, touching her intimately, and she knew the pattern of her life had been changed forever. She no longer had the will to fight him.

  Without a word he pulled her down to the bed. She lay beneath him, her eyes ablaze through her dense, half-lowered lashes, and let him strip her. She felt the feverish urgency of his hot trembling hands ripping the buttons from her wet blouse; she felt those rough, callused fingers brushing against her nipples as he peeled away the gauzy, soaked shirt that had glued itself to her damp skin. His quick, naked urgency was hers.

  Megan was no longer herself. She was some new, vitally alive being.

  “I want you,” she whispered. “Now... Please, I can’t wait.”

  His husky, desire-tinged laughter teased her from the darkness. Outside the sky flashed fire, and the rain fell in torrents.

  He made her wait, deliberately tantalizing her senses as he ran a single callus-tipped finger from her lips, over her chin, down her throat, down the satiny skin between her breasts, dipping into her navel and finally moving between her thighs into the soft womanliness of her. She lay on the bed quivering helplessly beneath his velvet touch, waiting, wanting him, dying for him as an erotic tide of tingling excitement inundated her senses.

  His thighs pressed between hers. He lowered his molten body. Naked flesh slid against naked flesh. Hard bronzed maleness into honey-gold woman. Fury fusing with desire, forever, irrevocably into love. Waves of passion, savage in their intensity, left her sighing, gasping, clinging, crying out his name again and again.

  Man and woman came together in a wanton, torrid, soul-destroying splendor.

  The bedroom was filled with the cool, sweet smell of spring rain, of the salty scent of sea air rolling in over the emerald hills, of the musky odor of lovemaking.

  Years of loneliness fell away from her.

  She could not get enough of him.

  *

  Megan came awake slowly, and the world was new. It was a beautiful morning—damp and fresh and cold. Water droplets glistened with the fiery jewel colors of the dawn through the green foliage that dripped outside the open window. A bird was singing a love song.

  Beside her Jeb slept. His black head lay against her pale shoulder, his hushed breathing tickling the skin beneath her ear. Beneath the covers, nestled against her, his muscled body felt toasty warm, and she did not dare stir for fear of waking him. In those first moments, she felt no guilt. Her pleasure and satiation were too complete; she had craved him for too long.

  Vaguely she remembered her father and Jeb’s driving him away. She had promised herself she would hate Jeb forever for that, but strangely, the hatred was gone. She only felt drained, depleted and utterly contented.

  She shut her eyes languorously and drifted to sleep again. When she awakened a second time, she felt the weight of his massive upper body across hers. He was staring down at her, his eyes ablaze in his arrogant, handsome face. One of his fingers caressed her throat.

  She should have been mortified, but she liked lying under him this way and felt a glow from the shivery excitement that radiated along her nerve endings at every point where his body touched hers. She liked the way his fingers trailed lightly across her hot skin, and she smiled drowsily at him.

  He smiled back, the warmth of his feelings in his eyes. “It’s late,” he whispered lovingly, lowering his mouth to her throat and kissing her gently. “You’d better go back to your room before the Jacobses find you here.”

  At first the meaning of his words were lost to her. All she was conscious of was his mouth against her flesh. His kisses, passing from her throat to her breast where his teeth made little nibbles, sent spasms of pleasure down her spine.

  “Honey, you’d better go,” he murmured, withdrawing his lips.

  Drowsily she opened her torpid eyes and became slowly aware of his impatience to be rid of her.

  Quite suddenly, like sunlight leaving the day, the joy went from her heart. He wanted her gone! He didn’t want anyone to know he’d slept with her! She had given herself to him desperately, completely, irrevocably, and she had never considered the experience might have been no more than a casual diversion for him.

  “Why, y-you don’t want people knowing you slept with me,” she gasped, pulling away, trying to stifle her hurt.

  His hot, dark gaze swept her possessively. He dragged her back beneath his body, and his sensuous ringers stroked her breast. “Is it so w
rong—not wanting to share this, to share you with the world?” he asked in a soft, low tone.

  She felt paralyzed. All her life she had wanted desperately to be loved, to feel special to someone. She had lost her mother, and her father, too. Last night she had thrown herself into the arms of the one man who had helped take these things from her.

  Suddenly she was filled with self-disgust that made her stomach wrench into a tight knot of pain. Last night she’d made a passionate, daring bid for momentary happiness, only to awaken to the cold reality of a man who would never do anything but use her. It was because of Janelle that Jeb was so anxious to send her away.

  Megan glanced at his black head, her conflicting feelings tearing at her. She wanted to hate him, but she knew she could never hate him again.

  He did not see her tragic expression. With infinite sweetness his mouth took the pink, hardened tip of her breast and lightly let his tongue play across it.

  “It’s because of Janelle,” Megan insisted in a tear-choked voice, “isn’t it—that you want me gone?”

  He caught the throb of agony in her tone.

  “Darling,” he murmured very gently as his arms wrapped around her more tightly. He lifted his dark handsome face and saw the terrible hurt in her eyes. “No, darling, it’s only you I’m thinking of. Please believe me.”

  “I—I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “It’s your reputation I’m worried about. Not Janelle’s. How could you think...”

  Megan stared at him in disbelief. “Why would you care about that?”

  Very slowly, very carefully, he cupped her face in his hands and held it still. “Because I don’t want there to be any gossip about my future wife.”

  In his eyes she saw a violence of emotion as powerful as her own.

  Megan’s heart lurched in a pounding rush. “W-what?”

  “I’m asking you to marry me.”

  He bent his head and kissed her lips, suckling them until a moan escaped her.

  “Jeb,” she began, at a loss.

  His mouth was nuzzling her lips. His nose nuzzled her nose. “I want you, Megan, more than I’ve ever wanted any woman. It’s as simple as that.”