Breathless, his heart pounding against the wall of his chest, Cody braced an arm at her waist and a hand on the loft floor and lowered her, following her to the hay. Rolling to his side, he gathered her close, smoothing her damp hair from her face. She lifted her head to look at him, and amber eyes softened by passion met his in the moonlight. The trust and love he saw there squeezed at his heart.
My Regan. My Reggie. The thought swelled in his chest. A man fragmented by a solitary life suddenly felt whole.
“I love you, Reggie,” he whispered as he pressed his lips to her forehead.
“And I love you,” she whispered in return, snuggling against him.
He held her, one hand knotted in the coal-black hair that curtained her back, while with the other he traced the curve of her waist, the gentle rise of her hips, the slope of her thigh.
Regret came then, sneaking up on him like a ghost in the night. He’d taken Reggie’s virginity, robbed her of her innocence. He’d allowed lust to overrule common sense. He tightened his hold on her, knowing full well that what he’d done was wrong, but knowing, too, that if he had it all to do over again, he’d do the same thing.
Worries crowded his thoughts, one piling up on the other. What would they do now? He couldn’t marry her. Not yet. She was too young and he too old. She was the boss’s sister and he was nothing but a wrangler on her family’s ranch.
“Cody?” she murmured.
“Hmm?” he murmured, distracted by his troubled thoughts.
“Run away with me.”
Startled, Cody lifted his head to stare at her, sure that he had misunderstood. “What?”
“Run away with me. We can get married and have a place of our own. Please, Cody,” she begged, sinking her fingers into his arms. “You’re all I have.”
Though it broke his heart to do so, carefully, Cody set her away from him. “No, Regan. I can’t.”
One
Houston, Texas 1997
Silence. It pressed from every corner of Reggie Gile’s private office, a constant, if not painful, reminder of the fact that she was alone. Silence really didn’t bother her, nor did being alone. She’d had years to learn how to live with it peaceably. It was what the silence represented that she found so disconcerting.
Not so many months before, she might have avoided the silence and the loneliness by picking up the phone and calling her friends, Mary Claire and Leighanna, and making plans for the evening. But they were gone now, both having moved to Temptation to start their lives anew.
She almost laughed at the irony of that. Temptation. Her friends had gone there to start over, to the same town she’d run from ten years before. But of course, Mary Claire and Leighanna didn’t know that.
That was Reggie’s little secret...or was it Regan’s? She almost laughed at the absurdity of the question. She hadn’t thought of herself as Regan since she’d left Temptation. Along with her past, she’d given up her name, choosing instead to call herself Reggie, the nickname used exclusively by—
No, she wouldn’t think about him now. That was another secret.
Secrets, Reggie thought on a weighty sigh. Everyone had them, but few could keep them, not like she had. She’d kept hers for ten long years, although the burden of carrying them had never seemed as oppressive as it did now. Every call from Mary Claire and Leighanna from their new home in Temptation, every mention of the town they’d moved to and the people they had met, every invitation for a visit brought with it a guilt, a yearning that weighed heavily on her heart and mind. Never had she longed for home more than she did now. Never had she wanted so desperately to give up her secret for the opportunity for a past, for a future, for even a glimpse of those she still held dear.
But she couldn’t. She knew that. A person could never go back and reclaim what she had so foolishly tossed aside.
Saddened by her thoughts, she pushed away from her desk and the contracts she’d been reading and settled her spine against the soft, cushy leather of her chair. Unerringly her gaze went to the wall opposite her desk and the Georgia O’Keeffe original that hung there. Soothing in its simplicity, the painting’s bold colors drew her as strongly as they had on the day she’d first seen it hanging in a gallery in Santa Fe; a radiant yellow sunflower projected on a background of cornflower blue.
She’d purchased the painting for the memories it drew of the fields that surrounded her childhood home where sunflowers had grown, tall and proud, their cheery, smiling faces tipped to the sun. The memories of home were vivid, if distant, and secreted away in her heart along with those of the loved ones she had lost—some to death, others sacrificed for a freedom that she’d once thought so important.
The phone rang, jarring her from her thoughts. Since it was after office hours, she was tempted to ignore the call and let the service pick it up, but she knew who was more than likely on the other end of the line and knew, too, that she couldn’t avoid this conversation forever. On the third ring, she punched the speaker button. “Reggie Giles,” she said briskly.
“Do you ever return calls?”
In spite of the feelings of apprehension that pricked her, Reggie found herself smiling. “Hello, Mary Claire. How are you?”
“Fine now. Hold on a second. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”
Reggie grabbed for the corners of the desk and curled her fingers around the burled wood in need of something, anything, to anchor herself to. She didn’t want to talk to him. Not now when she hadn’t had an opportunity to prepare herself for this confrontation.
“Reggie! We’ve been calling you for days! Where have you been?”
Reggie wilted at the sound of Leighanna’s voice, collapsing against the chair’s back, her fear giving way to relief. Another reprieve. How many more would she receive before her past caught up with her?
“Working. Where else?” she replied, trying to keep her tone light.
“Well, I’m glad we finally caught you. I have news, we both do. Mary Claire? Are you on the extension?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Okay. On the count of three. One...two... three...”
“We’re getting married!” they chimed in unison, laughing.
Reggie’s eyes widened. She’d known Mary Claire and Harley were getting married, had even suffered a tremendous bout of guilt for not attending their engagement party, had already spent hours fabricating excuses for not attending the wedding. But Leighanna now, too?
“Both of you?” she asked, sure that she had misunderstood.
“Yes,” Leighanna replied, laughing gaily. “Hank asked me to marry him and I said yes!”
“We’ve decided to have a double wedding,” Mary Claire added. “And we want you to act as maid of honor for both of us. Isn’t this exciting?”
Exciting? How about a nightmare? It was all Reggie could do not to put her head down on her desk and cry. She could just see Harley’s face when his stepsister Regan, whom he hadn’t seen since she’d run away from home ten years before, walked down the aisle toward him.
“Well, of course it is,” she replied, trying to force a level of enthusiasm over the knot of dread choking her. Already mentally reviewing the list of excuses she’d offer when she declined their invitation, she asked, “When’s the big event?”
“In