Demon Lover (35 page)

"Well," Chayne said carefully, clearing his throat, "that might depend on the desk."

"What?"

"I, uh… I spent some extra time in Washington, and I just may have come up with a solution to this little dilemma of ours."

"Chayne," Julie cried, pounding on his biceps. "Stop sounding so smug, damn you. Tell me what."

"Trust me, Julie, it’s going to be all right."

"Chayne!"

"Ah–ah, Guerita…remember what happens when you don’t trust me? Now then. Be still and kiss me."

* * *

"I thought it went well today, didn’t you?" Julie added a log to the fireplace and sank onto the couch beside Chayne. Outside, the Charleston night had turned unusually nippy, even for December. "Was Davidson suitably impressed?"

"Knocked out," Chayne said, lifting her feet into his lap and taking off her shoes. "He was so impressed he’s talking about keeping at least one instructor on the training center’s staff pregnant at all times. Or is it keeping one pregnant instructor on the staff—"

"Stop that." Julie giggled, poking him in the stomach with her toe. "Seriously, he’s going to let me stay with this class of rookies? Even now that I’m beginning to show?"

"Seriously. You demonstrated today that you can handle it physically, and the trainees obviously like the little extra insights you give them. There are some things a male instructor can’t teach a future undercover operative, which is what the center had in mind when they took us on as team instructors in the first place."

"I know, but—"

"And your pregnancy adds a—pardon the expression—a new dimension to the program."

Julie laughed and kicked him smartly in the ribs. "You’re really in fine form tonight, aren’t you?"

"Um–hmm. So are you. God, but you’re gorgeous!"

"Chayne, what are you doing?" He had pushed up her sweater and unzipped her slacks and was kissing the gentle swell of her abdomen.

"Gorgeous. And delicious. Umm, I’m glad I married you." He hooked a finger in the elastic of her panties and drew them down past her navel.

"Oh, sure, you say that now," Julie said with mock severity. "But will you still love me when I’m huge and ugly and covered with blue veins?"

"Didn’t I ever tell you? I’ve had this secret craving for a huge wife with blue veins." He rubbed his cheek against her belly, chafing gently with the roughness of his jaw, and then began laving the spot with his tongue. "Did you feel movement again today?"

"Um hmm," Julie murmured, beginning to melt.

He placed his hand reverently over the growing mound. "Do you suppose I could feel it?"

"No," Julie whispered, stroking his hair. "Not yet." She smiled a secret smile. For a while yet it was hers and hers alone, this tiny being she and Chayne had made. A tiny fluttering deep, deep inside, like butterfly wings.

"Chayne… I love you."

He lifted his head and smiled at her with cobalt eyes, and Julie felt as if the sun were shining on her.

–END–

Want more? Read an excerpt from
A Christmas Love

It was early in December of 1983 that I got "the call." That is, the phone call every writer never forgets, the one that told me the synopsis and three chapters of a novel titled "Coyote's Captive" which my agent had submitted to Silhouette was destined to become my first published book.

Of course, I still had to write it, a process I recall as being something akin to etching words on stone with my fingernails.

Determined to make the book as authentic as possible, before I started writing at all I set out to explore the setting—Baja California, a place I had never visited except for a brief trip to Tijuana with my mother when I was about three. Alone, I drove across the border at San Ysidro and ventured south via Tijuana's primitive freeway system. Very few miles into my adventure I realized my high school Spanish had completely deserted me, and the landscape had taken on the appearance of a war zone, at which point I turned around and headed back to the good old USA. After waiting several hours in line to cross the border, I made straight for my local library (no Internet back then) and checked out every book I could find on Baja California.

I did manage to interview a female border patrol agent, so the trip wasn’t a complete waste of time.

A footnote to this story: Several years later, at a writer’s conference, I met a woman in an elevator who peered at my name tag and gleefully told me how much she had enjoyed the book, particularly the setting, which she was certain was the very spot where she and her husband had once gone fishing. So, thank you, National Geographic!

Re-titled "DEMON LOVER," that book, my first, was released in February of 1985. Such a long time ago! One of the decisions I had to make in preparing this book for digital publication in the 21st Century was whether to bring it forward in time. In some ways, so much has changed: We didn't have cell phones, GPS, or the internet; home computers were in their infancy. But in other ways, nothing much has changed: We are still dealing with illegal immigration, terrorism, and the wounds of war.

In the end, it was that last one that made me decide to leave the time setting in the early 1980's. The war in this case is Vietnam, which was unlike any war this country has been involved with, before or since. It left grievous wounds on our national psyche, much as it did on the central character in this book. Chayne Younger's story needed to be kept just as he told it, and I have done so.

One other small note: DEMON LOVER is the first and only book I ever wrote solely from the heroine’s point of view. I still think it was the right decision. I hope you will, too.

And so, on this, the 30th birthday of my writing career, come journey with me, back in time…

A Christmas Love

T
HE WEEK BEFORE
Christmas, John Clayton Traynor came home from his usual afternoon walk in the woods, put his coat and rifle away in the closet where they belonged, and went into the kitchen singing out, "Miss Leona, I’m home."

At ninety-two Miss Leona was getting a little hard of hearing, and didn’t like surprises.

He found her standing by the stove, which, since she wasn’t close to five feet tall, came nearly to her chin. She cocked her head to look at him over her shoulder in the way she had that reminded him of a little brown bird and snapped, "John Clayton, wipe your feet."

"Yes, ma’am," Clay said cheerfully as he went to see what she was up to. "What’s that you’re making now?"

"Scones."

"Scones?" He burst out laughing.

Using a potholder, Miss Leona nudged a metal jar lid with what looked like a doll-sized biscuit sitting in the middle of it over in his direction. "Here—the tester’s done. See if it’s right."

"Miss Leona, you don’t need a tester," Clay said, knowing she wasn’t going to listen to him this time any more than she had all the other times he’d explained it to her. "That’s not a wood stove like the one that burned your house down. That stove’s gas—it’s got its own thermostat."

Miss Leona’s snort told him how much faith she put in such newfangled notions. He gave up and poked the jar lid with his finger. "So that’s a scone, huh? Looks like a biscuit to me."

"The recipe book says they’s scones, then scones they is." Miss Leona had her chin poked out in a way Clay knew well, so when he took a nibble of the scone and it tasted pretty much like a biscuit to him, only sweeter, he didn’t say so. Instead he mumbled good–naturedly through his mouthful, "What are you doing poking around in cookbooks again, Miss Leona?"

"Christmas," she said, as if that were the whole explanation.

Clay nodded as if he understood it, which he did. Even under normal circumstances Miss Leona considered it her mission in life to feed any living thing that might need feeding, human or animal, and Christmas required some extra special effort. Of course, he didn’t understand the whole craziness about Christmas himself, but if it made Miss Leona happy, he didn’t mind it.

"What’s wrong with plain old down–home cookin’?" he inquired with a deep Southern drawl, half teasing, half serious. Last season’s pre–Christmas cooking binge had been French and Cajun, and it had taken him till spring to get his stomach back to normal.

"Ha!" said Miss Leona. "Southern cookin’11 kill you."

"Well," said Clay matter–of–factly, "we all got to go sometime."

"Not me," retorted Miss Leona. "I’m goin’ to raise chickens next year."

He didn’t have any answer for that kind of optimism, so he gave it up and said meekly, "Well, it sure is good, whatever it’s called, Miss Leona. And the oven temperature seems just fine. I guess you can go ahead and cook the rest." He polished off the biscuit while Miss Leona independently wrestled a new panful into the oven.

When she’d straightened up and was facing him again she remarked casually, "Someone’s moving in across the gully." But her eyes were sharp and yellow as a raven’s.

"’Cross the gulley?" Clay said. "You don’t mean the summer house? The old Robards place?" Miss Leona nodded sagely. "How do you know?"

"Miz Robards wrote, that’s how I know. Now what do you suppose they’d be doin’ over there this time of the year, wintertime, and so close to Christmas? They don’t have kinfolk here anymore, I know that for fact." Miss Leona pulled out a chair and sat in it, hooking her feet over the bottom rung, like a child. Her eyes squinted up and her voice got far away.

"Let’s see now… I sold that piece a’ land to those Robards folks in nineteen hundred and forty–two, same time I sold this place to your granddaddy. That was right after I got the letter that my Thomas been killed in the war. Sold off most my land then. Didn’t mean nothin’ to me, you know, without my Tom. Your granddaddy, of course, he settled right down here and raised his family, but that Jack Robards, he always thought he was too good for country folks." Miss Leona snorted and shook her head. "And his wife, well, she always had to be in the middle of things in town, you know. Came out in the summertime, which always seemed like the waste of a good home, to me. Rich folks got some strange ideas ’bout what makes a good life."

Clay mumbled agreement, and Miss Leona got up to check on her scones. When she came back she smacked the potholder down on the table and lifted up one crooked brown finger as though she’d just had a revelation. "You know, I never did care much for that boy of theirs. That Russell—most spoiled–rotten white boy I ever saw. Married late, as I remember. Found him a nice wife, though. Got a sweet little baby girl, too. Used to spend summers here, just like his folks did up until they passed on." She stabbed Clay in the chest with the same finger. "You remember—the first time they come was the summer right before you went NORTH." Miss Leona always said "north" in capital letters.

"I don’t know," Clay said doubtfully. "That was a long time ago. Fourteen years."

Miss Leona cocked her head and squinted up her eyes again. "Well," she admitted, "time gets by me, you know. Seems like just yesterday you were goin’ away to school. " Her face had the sad, cracked look of forgotten heirlooms. "And then, you met that Northern girl up there and never came back. You never came home…"

"Sure I came back, Miss Leona," he said, gently patting her hand. "I’m here now."

She beamed at him like a good–natured baby just woken up from a nap. "Why, yes you are. Yes you are—-you’re a good boy, John Clayton. Always were. Made your mama and daddy so proud, you know, you being a policeman, gettin’ those medals." She gave his hand a good hard squeeze and went back to the stove.

Clay didn’t say anything, just got up and went to help her. This time Miss Leona allowed him to remove the potholder from her hand and the pan from the oven. She had other things on her mind now. Though she came back quickly enough when he tried to help himself to another scone, pouncing on his hand like a raven on a grasshopper.

"Here, John Clayton, you let those biscuits cool first! And don’t you eat all those now—you know I got to have plenty for the church baskets. God’s chul’ren got to eat, too." God’s children being what Miss Leona called anybody she thought might be in need of feeding, human or animal.

She tilted her head and gave him a sideways crafty look he’d learned to dread. It meant she was cooking up more than food for God’s children. "John Clayton, I want you to go on over there tomorrow mornin’ and see about things, you hear me? That summer house is in no fit shape for a woman and chile, especially in the wintertime."

"Woman and child?" Clay frowned. "I thought you said it was Robards coming with his family."

"Said no such thing," Miss Leona countered, managing to look both righteous and evasive. "What I said was, Miz Robards wrote. Looks like she shed that no–good man of hers, because she’s comin’ alone, with her little girl. And you goin’ to go over there tomorrow like a good neighbor and see if they need anything, you hear?"

Clay sighed. It wasn’t the first time Miss Leona had tried to set him up with somebody, and although he’d had some pretty interesting dates come out of her meddling, a divorcee with a kid was the last thing he had any desire to mess with. However, he knew better than to argue.