Wishes for Tomorrow. Brenda Jackson
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studied the geese, she again studied him, taking in the angle of his face while his head was tilted slightly backward. He was standing with his legs braced apart and with his hands in his pockets. There was something about that stance, that particular pose—especially on him—that made her just want to stand there and stare.
While living in Los Angeles for five years she’d been surrounded by jaw-droppingly, stomach-stirringly handsome men, many from some of the world’s most elite modeling agencies. But none could hold a light to the man presently standing in her yard. His features were distinct—sharp facial bones, firm jaw and full lips. His hair beneath his Stetson was close cut and trimmed neatly around his head.
A moment passed. Possibly two. When suddenly he turned his head and looked over in her direction.
She had been caught.
And she was immediately enveloped in his intense gaze. She was unable to do anything but return his stare while wondering why she was doing so. Why were her senses, her entire being, homed in on everything about him? This wasn’t good, she thought.
At least that was what her mind was telling her, but her common sense hadn’t gotten there yet. It was being held captive within the scope of the darkest pair of eyes she’d ever seen.
Somewhere in the not-too-faraway distance she heard the sound of a car backfiring and the sound ripped right into the moment. It was only then that she was able to slide her gaze away from his to look over across the wide expanse of yard.
After taking a deep breath she returned her gaze to his, wrestled with those same senses she had lost control of earlier, placed a smile on her face and said, “Good morning, Dillon.”
She wasn’t just off the boat, and knew that during the brief moment when their gazes had held, something had happened. Just as it had last night. She wasn’t sure of what, but she knew that it had. She also knew she would pretend that it hadn’t. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” she added.
“Yes, it is,” he said, turning to walk over toward her. Holy cow! she thought, swallowing deeply. The man’s strides were sure, confident and deliberately masculine. He had one hell of a sexy walk, and what was so disturbing about it was that it seemed as natural as the sun rising in the morning.
He came to a stop in front of her and met her gaze fleetingly before glancing up at the sun. His gaze then returned to her. “It might rain later, though.”
She nodded. “Yes, it might.” She knew they were trying to get back in sync and to lessen the intensity of what had passed between them.
“I hope I’m not too early,” he said in a deep, husky voice, breaking into her thoughts.
“No, you’re fine. I was just having my morning coffee. Would you like to join me?”
With an ultrasexy shrug of his massive shoulders, he smiled as he removed his hat. “Umm, I don’t know. I feel I’m taking a lot of your time already.”
“No problem. Besides, you want to know about Raphel, right?”
“Yes. Is there something you can tell me other than he was your great-grandfather’s partner and that he ran off with your great-grandmother, Portia Novak?”
Pam chuckled as she led him through the house and headed toward the kitchen. “Portia wasn’t my great-grandmother,” she corrected. “A few years after she’d run off, he met my great-grandmother and they married.”
When he sat down at the table, she said, “I’m sure you’ve heard some stories about Raphel and Portia.” She proceeded to pour him a cup of coffee.
“No, in actuality, I hadn’t. I’d always assumed my great-grandmother Gemma was my great-grandfather’s only wife. It was only after my Atlanta Westmoreland relatives showed up and explained how we were related that I found out about Portia Novak and the others.”
Pam lifted a brow. “There were others?”
He nodded. “Yes, Gemma was his fifth wife.”
Dillon was more than curious about what had happened to a preacher’s wife, a woman by the name of Lila Elms. Although she was already legally married to the preacher, had she and Raphel pretended to be married for a spell before he dumped her for Portia, the wife of Jay Novak?
And then what happened to Clarice, wife number three? And Isabelle, wife four? All four women’s names were rumored to be connected to Raphel in some say. If what they’d discovered so far was true, Raphel had taken up with the four women before his thirty-second birthday, and all had been married to another man or engaged to marry someone else. It seemed Raphel’s reputation as a wife stealer was legendary.
Dillon took a sip of coffee, deciding for the moment not to inform her that the others, like Portia, were women who belonged to other men, legally or otherwise. But he would throw out the name of one she might have heard about already. “My goal is to find out what happened to Lila Elms.”
“The preacher’s wife?”
So, she had heard about Lila. “Yes.” He took another sip and then asked, “How do you know so much about this stuff?”
She chuckled as she sat down at the table with him after refilling her own cup of coffee. “My grandmother. As a little girl we would spend hours and hours on the porch outside shelling peas, and she would fill my ears about all the family history. But the one subject she didn’t shed a lot of light on was Portia. For some reason, any conversation about her was taboo. Jay wanted it that way and my great-grandmother respected his wishes.”
Dillon nodded, trying to concentrate on what she was saying and not on how smoothly her lips would part each time she took a sip of her coffee. How the bottom lip would hang open a little and how the top one would fit perfectly around the rim of the cup.
He felt his gut tightening and took a sip of his coffee. When he had been standing out in her yard and he’d turned and seen her staring at him, he had tried not to speculate just what was going on in her mind. He didn’t want to even consider the possibility that it had been close to what had been going on in his.
Her gaze had touched him deeply, in a way he doubted she even realized. Something about Pamela Novak was calling out to him in the most elemental way, and that wasn’t good. Since his divorce, he had dated on occasion. But if the truth be told, he’d made it a point to date only women who, like him, weren’t interested in anything long term. All of those women had been unattached.
“Are you ready to go up to the attic?”
Her question reined his thoughts back and he glanced over at her and immediately wished he hadn’t. Every muscle in his body immediately seemed to weaken yet at the same time fill him with an intensity that made him draw in a long breath. It was time to acknowledge it for what it was. Sexual chemistry.
He had heard about it but had never actually experienced it for himself. He’d been attracted to women before, but it never went further than an attraction. What he was beginning to feel was an element of something greater than a mere attraction. There were these primitive vibes he was not only emitting but was also receiving. That meant Pamela Novak was in tune to what was going on between them, although she might choose to pretend otherwise. Of course, he understood her reluctance to acknowledge such a thing. After all, she was an engaged woman. And she didn’t come across as one who would deliberately be unfaithful to her fiancé.
But still...
“Yes, I’m ready,” he finally said. “But first I want to clear the air about something.” He watched her lips quiver nervously before she set her cup down and met his gaze. He tensed, trying to ignore the sensations rolling through him every time their eyes met.
“Clear the air about what?”
He’d been too busy watching her lips to pay any attention to the words flowing out of them. He fought back the urge to lift the tip of his finger and run it across those lips.
He cleared his throat. “About last night. My showing up here