the pen aside, Adams slipped back a cuff to check the time. “Just a matter of hours, Jeffie. Hang tough.”
As the receiver rattled into place, Adams Cade stood, only then recalling his visitors. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid we must continue this conference another time. My father is ill. I will be leaving Atlanta immediately.”
“You can’t go,” Jacob Helms snapped with an edge of steel. This was the voice of command, meant to send minions scurrying to do his bidding.
Adams Cade had never been a minion. Anyone in his right mind would doubt he knew how to scurry. “You’re mistaken, sir. I can leave. I am leaving.”
“We had a deal.”
“No, sir,” Adams corrected the proper gentleman. “We were on the verge of making a deal with a contingency.”
A flush across his cheeks signaled Helms’ anger at the upstart’s contradiction. As he looked to his board and back again to Adams, he barely managed to quell his ire at being defied, even so genteelly. “We’d spoken our agreement.”
“We’d spoken of agreeing to agree, if all elements fell into place. For now, they can’t.” Adams rested his curled hands on the walnut plane of his pristine work space. “This meeting was your idea, the conditions your choice. Listening to and accepting or not accepting your proposal was mine.”
“Was?” Jacob Helms, for all his arrogance, had not built his business empire by being obtuse.
“Yes, sir.” Adams straightened. “Was is the operative word. Now that choice has been taken from me.”
Bracing himself on the desk in a parody of Adams’ recent posture, Jacob Helms leaned close. “Your brother calls to say your father is ill, and you’re going to delay a multimillion-dollar deal?”
Adams only nodded, not surprised Helms knew he had been discussing his father, and his father’s health, with Jefferson.
“For a man who disowned you, a man who will not even look upon your face, you would risk the loss of our offer?”
“For my father I would risk anything. And for my father I must leave.” Turning to the board, he spoke pleasantly. “Gentlemen, you must excuse me. I have a plane to catch.” With that courtesy and no more heed of Jacob Helms or his multimillion-dollar alliance, he strode from the room.
After an absence that seemed forever, Adams Cade was returning to the South Carolina low country, the land and islands of his youth.
The land, the islands and the father he loved.
One
“He’s here, Mrs. Claibourne. And totally dangerous!”
Placing the last blossom in the massive flower arrangement that would soon grace the lanai of the river cottage, Eden Claibourne, mistress of The Inn at River Walk, stepped back. Carefully she inspected her artistry, nodded approval and turned, at last, to address the breathless young woman.
“Where is he, Merrie?” Her voice was hushed, musical, with only a hint remaining of the Carolina low-country accent.
Merrie, the youngest, prettiest and most impressionable of the staff, clasped her hands before her in an effort to calm herself. “I took him to the library as Cullen instructed and assured him you would be there shortly.”
“Thank you.” A probing look took in the young woman’s face, made even prettier by a dark, dancing gaze. Merrie was the daughter of a friend of a friend, a student at the local college and a newcomer to Belle Terre. Yet, obviously, the reputation of the arriving guest had preceded him even into the halls of the inn. “You do realize he isn’t dangerous, don’t you, Merrie?”
“Not dangerous, Mrs. Claibourne. Dangerous! With a capital D, because he looks so handsome.” Merrie laughed. “That’s how the girls in my class would describe him.”
“Ah, you’re studying slang now?” Eden chuckled, for normally Merrie rarely noticed the opposite sex, handsome or not. The girl’s first and last love was horses. “Slang aside, did you offer our guest a drink? Or a glass of chilled wine?”
Merrie’s head bobbed, sending an ebony mane ending in curls cascading nearly to her waist. “Mr. Cade prefers wine later, in his room.”
“Excellent.” A slim hand rested lightly on the girl’s shoulder, as Eden Claibourne remembered when Adams Cade had the same effect on her. The vernacular of the time was different, but the effect was definitely the same.
Putting memories best left in the past aside, Eden addressed Merrie in her usual sensible tone. “If you would please ask Cullen to have the wine steward select several wines, then, if he would, take these flowers with the wine to the river cottage, I shall greet our newest guest.”
Certain beyond doubt her instructions would be followed to the letter under the critical eye of her head steward, Cullen Pavaouau, Eden Roberts Claibourne hurried to the library.
Through the years many influential guests and many celebrities had chosen to stay in the gracious antebellum home Eden had transformed into an inn. But even before she’d returned to Belle Terre to reclaim and rescue the beautiful old landmark from crumbling ignominy, as Nicholas Claibourne’s wife, she had known what it was to live and move among the wealthy and near wealthy, the famous and soon-to-be famous. Yet in all those times, in all the places the Claibournes’ travels had taken them, in all the social and professional circles into which they had been welcomed, no one set excitement ablaze in the heart of the mistress of River Walk as had Adams Cade.
“Good grief! I’m as bad as Merrie.” Halting in the cool, broad hall, her hand resting on the carved door that stood slightly ajar and opened into the library, she caught what she intended to be a relaxing breath. Sweeping her pale-brown hair from her face, she adjusted her blouse and brushed a leaf from her slim skirt. Muttering, “Mr. Dangerous with a capital D, indeed,” Eden squared her shoulders and stepped inside.
He was there. Adams was there, standing with his back to the room, looking out over the grounds and the broadest expanse of the river. Absorbed in his thoughts, he didn’t hear her approach, affording her a precious instant to look at him. Time to seek out the changes the years and life and prison had wrought.
He seemed bigger now. Not taller, but more massive. A better fit for the breadth of his shoulders than his youthful slenderness had been. A product of maturity and time. As were, she supposed, the hints of silver threading through his thick, perfectly barbered, perfectly groomed hair.
Eden never knew what disturbance drew him from his thoughts. A raggedly caught breath? Some subtle scrape of her foot over the parquet? The wild-bird flutter of her heart?
As if thirteen years had not passed since he’d seen her, Adams Cade turned, his gaze a solemn touch on her face.
Beneath the elegant, worldly veneer that Eden Claibourne presented, the memories of a young girl quickened and trembled like the unshed tear on the sweep of downcast lashes. Visions of the wild, beautiful young man he’d been danced like living flames in her mind and heart. But when her gaze lifted to his, her eyes were clear, their brightness natural, and she searched the grave and handsome face for some trace of the laughing young rogue.
The
