Rose Alice’s voice was rich with suspicion. “There was this man just drove up, come to the front door. He wanted you. He wouldn’t identify himself. He’s on his way around there now. I said to him, ‘Hold it, buster,’ but he wouldn’t stop. Gus’s rifles are still in the gun cabinet. You want me to load up, come over there, show this guy the way out?”
Darcy struggled not to flinch. Rose Alice had once been imprisoned for shooting off a man’s ear. “No, no,” she said. “I’ll handle it. Don’t worry.”
“I’ll keep my eye on him,” Rose Alice promised. “Don’t you worry, honey. Rose Alice is right here.”
The line went dead. Darcy heard footsteps stalking up the front walk to the cottage. She and Emerald both turned toward the living room door.
There was a furious knock, so forceful that the very air of the studio seemed to shake.
“Who is it?” Darcy demanded.
There was no answer except another hail of knocking, even more earsplitting.
“All right, all right,” Darcy called, anger rising. “Don’t bang the door down.”
“What is this?” Emerald asked apprehensively.
“I don’t know,” Darcy said, stalking to the door. “Rose Alice says it’s some man.”
She flung open the door.
A tall man stood there. He was expensively dressed, but his black tie was askew and his suit coat was off. His white shirt looked crumpled, and its sleeves were rolled up unevenly on his forearms.
With a jolt, she realized he was an extraordinarily handsome man—or would be, if he were not so lean that he was almost gaunt. His thick brown hair was unruly, and the fore-lock fallen over his brow gave him a dangerous air. His lips were unsmiling. His brows were dark and stern. His eyes were a feline green.
He looked at Darcy, then Emerald behind her, then at the bookworm curled on the floor. “Which one of you is Darcy Parker?” he demanded.
“I am,” Darcy said. Her eyes locked with his. His gaze glittered with a frightening intensity. “Who are you?”
“My name is Sloan English. I’ve come from Tulsa. Your mother and my father are…acquainted. They seem to have met on the Internet. I think you and I had better talk.”
A kaleidoscope of disjointed impressions reeled through her mind.
This man is hostile—
His father? My mother?
What does he mean?
This man is wild—
Emerald stepped to her side and took a militant stance. She gripped the hilt of her sword more fiercely. “Zounds!” she said between her teeth. “It’s the son of that cur, the BanditKing.”
CHAPTER TWO
SLOAN BLINKED. The light was playing tricks—or he was sicker than he thought.
Another woman had appeared beside Darcy Parker, a woman who was little more than a girl. Yet she was dressed as a knight in a black leather doublet and breeches. She wore a jerkin of chain mail and ornate metal guards protecting her shins, shoulders and elbows.
Her hair was cropped short like a boy’s. She was a delicate little thing, but anger flashed from her eyes. Around her waist was buckled a scabbard, and she gripped the silver hilt of a sword as if she were about to draw it and run him through.
He knew she had said something to him, but it was so extraordinary, so preposterous, it did not register. Perhaps he had dreamed it. Yet she seemed completely real.
“Churl,” she snarled. “Varlet.”
“What?” he asked, frowning.
The girl glared and started to say something more, but the Parker woman clapped a hand over her mouth. “Emerald—hush!” she commanded with such authority that whoever or whatever Emerald was, she hushed. But she kept her grip on the sword’s hilt.
With effort, Sloan turned his attention back to Darcy Parker. The effort, he realized hazily, was worth it.
She wore faded blue jeans and a dark red T-shirt with a batik design of armadillos. She was half a head taller than the girl, slender but nicely curved. She had a mane of jet-dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, but strands of it had escaped and framed her face like waving wisps of smoke.
Her face was not one of classic beauty. It was sprinkled with freckles, and the jaw was too square, the nose too snub. But her eyes were so liquidly dark, he had the dizzying feeling he could fall into them and keep falling until he disappeared in their depths. His chest tightened, and it burned to draw breath.
Darcy dropped her hand from the girl’s mouth, at the same time drilling her with a warning look. The girl stepped backward, as if forced by the other’s sheer will. Darcy looked at Sloan again. One of her dark brows cocked in what seemed a combination of curiosity and suspicion.
“Mr. Sloan is it?” she said. “I think you’d better state exactly what your business is.”
“English,” he said, his chest growing tighter. “Sloan English.” He offered her one of his business cards, holding it up to the screen door so she could see it before she took it.
It said Sloan J. English, Vice President, Development, PetroCorp Oil Company. It was an expensively printed card, meant to be impressive. She read it and looked as unimpressed as possible.
She didn’t open the door to accept it. “Thanks,” she said, “but we don’t need any oil.”
This straight-faced flippancy irked him. He stuck the card back into the breast pocket of his shirt. Okay, he thought. That’s the way you want it? Let’s go straight for the jugular.
He said, “Your mother is Olivia Ferrar?”
She folded her arms. There was neither anger nor shyness in the movement; it seemed coolly casual. “Yes. What about it?”
“My father is John English,” Sloan said. “He and your mother seem to have met on the Internet.”
“Our mother’s met someone,” said the girl in the chain mail. “We don’t know who. But he’d better watch his step.”
Darcy’s head whipped about, and once more she silenced the girl with a look. Then she faced Sloan again, her gaze measuring him with absolute self-possession.
Can she really be this calm? he wondered. Or is she bluffing? He himself was not at his best, and he knew it. His head ached, his temples banged, and a small man with a drill seemed to be trying to make an excavation in the center of his forehead.
“Tell me what you want,” said Darcy Parker.
Behind her, through the screen door, he saw a hallucinogenic welter of objects: kites, dolls, puppets, quilts. They made the background dance crazily.
He touched his fingertips to his forehead, then drew them away. He shook his head to clear it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is—perhaps too sudden. I shouldn’t have barged in here without warning.”
She tilted her head to one side. “Right. You shouldn’t have.”
“My aunt’s concerned,” he said. “My father’s sister. She—reacted strongly. She gets…overdramatic about things.”
Darcy’s mouth quirked slightly and a dimple played in her cheek. It was as if she were saying, Okay. I can sympathize with that.
What she actually said was, “What’s that got to do with my mother or us?”
His temples banged more clamorously. He found himself putting out a