Forbidden Fire (38 page)

He had come riding after her the fateful morning of the quake. And he had dug through rock and rubble and wood to get to her. And he held her so securely now.

He had refused to think of divorcing her. She knew that. But the marriage wouldn't mean anything anymore, not unless she had his love.

“I'm going to put back all the money that has been taken out of Mary's trust fund. I don't think that people are lining up to prosecute us, but we are all guilty of fraud. If we repay the fund, then I will, at least, feel that we've not defrauded the squire, and if anything should happen in the future, we will only be guilty of having borrowed the money.”

“But, Ian!” Mary gasped. “What will you have? The emporium is burned to the ground, Nob Hill has burned—”

“I've a lot of insurance, and all with very reputable companies.” He smiled. “And haven't you heard? The world is helping San Francisco. Money is already pouring in from New York and Chicago and Boston and countless other cities. And I've been told they're collecting across the globe. This city will rebuild.

“And I will rebuild with it. Jimmy, you and Mary should survive very nicely on the salary that I intend to pay you until Mary reaches the legal age to receive her inheritance. Theo, you're one of the most admirable men I've met, and I'm delighted to have you continue on with us. Of course, you're the one innocent party in this group, aren't you?”

“Innocent as a babe,” Theo said smugly. Marissa wanted to kick him.

“There's only one stipulation to all of this, of course,” Ian continued.

“Oh, Ian! You've been far more generous than we'd any right to expect,” Mary told him. “We'll do anything.”

“You might want to think about it, after the past few days,” he advised her. “Because this is the stipulation. I'm not leaving here. San Francisco is my home. There's going to be a lot going on when they sit down and try to figure out how to rebuild properly. I want to be a part of that building. You've just weathered an earthquake and a fire to rival the worst. Are you sure you want to raise your child here? This is my home—it isn't yours.”

Theo spoke up quietly. “It is now, Ian Tremayne. Home is where you build, and where you hope, and where you dream. We've nothing left behind us. So here we are, and here we stay.”

“Indeed,” Mary murmured. “Here we stay.”

“Then so be it,” Ian said. “I've finished with all I've got to say to you all about the matter.”

“Oh, Mary!” Marissa burst free from Ian to hug her friend. Mary hugged her back, but almost immediately, Ian had his hand upon her arm, pulling her back. “I've finished with them, my love. I did not finish with you.”

Startled, and chilled once again, Marissa stared into her husband's face. She squared her shoulders defensively, meeting his bright blue gaze. It was fathomless, and far from reassuring.

“You'll all excuse us?” he said to the others.

“I've got the little one, sir,” Darrin told him.

Marissa thought he winked at Darrin, but she was being pulled out of the tent. And then Ian had her hand and he was walking toward one of the ponds, far from the area where all the refugees were camped. And then he suddenly swung around and stared at her.

“And what about you?” he demanded.

“What—what about me?” she whispered.

“I'm well aware that you did what you did to help Mary. And Theo. And I know now about your school in England. But I also know that you were seeking a better life. You dreamed of a big house, of an easier life. Well, my love, I may not have a house anymore. So, what about you?”

She jerked her hand free, furious that he could still think so little of her. “Ian Tremayne, how dare you. I have had all that I can take! I—”

“Marissa, love, there's nothing wrong with wanting to soar!” he told her softly. “One of the reasons I love you so deeply is your determination to seek something better.”

“I married you for money, yes, but I—” She stopped dead still, suddenly certain that she hadn't heard him right at all. “What?”

“I said, one of the reasons I love you—”

“You love … me?”

He smiled, the slow, lazy, taunting smile that had once so easily seduced her. “Yes, Marissa Ayers Tremayne. I love you. I wanted you from the very beginning. I started to love you because of that haunted quality in your eyes. Because of the mystery, the determination, the spirit. I fell so deeply in love with you that I couldn't stand the fact that you hadn't trusted me. Marissa, you little fool! It never mattered to me where you came from. I love what I've learned about your past. And I'm glad that you can't bear to see lost children without taking them under your wing. I'm glad that you can't be licked by catastrophe or fire. You are everything I could have ever wanted.”

“Oh, Ian!” she whispered, staring at him, unable to believe his words, or the tenderness within him. But there was truth, wonderful truth in his eyes. And as he smiled at her, blackened and haggard, she still thought she had never seen a more striking man. There was strength in his tired form, in the set of his shoulders, in the handsome contours of his face, strength, courage, determination and love.

She threw her arms around his neck, rising on tiptoe to kiss him.

“Well?” he demanded. Even now, she thought wryly, disheveled and worn as he was, he carried that arrogance about him.

“Well what?” she whispered.

“You didn't answer me. What about you?”

“Ian Tremayne, I love you. I never deserved you, because I did lie and cheat to get you. And I did hate you. I hated you because you saw so many things in me too easily. But I wanted you, too. And then I saw how good you were to Mary and Jimmy, how good you were to all of us. And when I came here at first I was so very jealous, and so I was so furious! And I wanted to hate you. I wanted so much to hate you so that I wouldn't care about Grace and Lilli—”

“There wasn't anyone once I had met you,” he told her.

She smiled. “Thank you for that. But there was. Diana.”

“I'll always love her a little in my heart. But you even allowed me to let her go, Marissa. Can you understand?”

Her eyes glimmered with the threat of tears, and Marissa prayed that it was all right to be so happy when a great city lay in ruins beyond them. But God would understand, she thought.

She intended to help rebuild that city.

“Ian, I love you! So much!” Then she added, “Oh! Ian, I saw Lilli, and—”

“And she's going to marry Jake and live happily ever after,” he told her.

“Yes, and I'm so glad.”

“You don't mind her so much anymore?”

“She probably saved my life. No, I don't mind Lilli anymore. I promised her that I'd call on her, and I will.”

Ian smiled. “Yes, I think that you will.”

“But Grace—”

“Grace is taking her broken ankle and leaving the city,” Ian said flatly.

Marissa's eyes widened. He knew what Grace had done. “Ian, how—”

“Darrin told me that Grace had arranged to see that you disappeared. I spoke to her this morning, briefly. She's not interested in staying. Not really. And after I had a talk with her … well, she can inflict herself upon Chicago or New York for a while.”

Marissa laughed. “Oh, Ian, I do love you so very much!” she told him, her arms wrapped around his neck. He held her close against him.

“So you'll stay.”

“I'm your wife, Ian. Of course, I'll stay. Like Theo said, it's my home now, too. It's where I can hope and dream and build. It's where I can be with you. Oh, Ian! It's the first real home I've ever had. Oh! There's just one thing. It's Darrin. Could we—”

He started to laugh, interrupting her. “I knew, my love, that we weren't going home without Darrin. And I'm beginning to imagine that we might also be going home with an infant we're calling Francesca.”

“It's just that she's so very little, Ian. We'll keep her just until her parents can come for her.”

“And then we'll have our own very soon,” he murmured, stroking her cheek.

“Oh, Ian, do you mind?”

“I'm delighted, Marissa. So very delighted. A year ago, my love, I was a bitter and angry man, alone. And now I am surrounded by love and loyalty. And it is all because of you.”

His lips touched hers at last. With warmth, with tenderness, with a fervor that defied the very world. His kiss held passion; it held promise; it held all the desire that she could ever imagine. And it held love.

And it went on and on.

“Mr. Tremayne! Mrs. Tremayne!”

Dimly, she became aware that someone was calling to them in a voice that was becoming more and more frustrated. It was Bobby.

Marissa broke free from Ian's kiss and turned quickly.

Bobby was mounted upon Ian's bay. His uniform was torn, and he had smudges of soot on his face.

But he was smiling.

“Your house, sir, it's standing! More than half the hill is burned clear to the ground or gutted, but your house is standing.”

“I don't believe it!” Ian gasped.

Bobby leaped down from the bay's back. “Go on, sir, and take a look. There's not much else to do here, help is pouring in from all over. If you want—”

“If I want!” Ian exclaimed. He swept Marissa into his arms and sat her upon the bay's back. Then he leaped up behind her.

They moved slowly as they left Golden Gate Park. But then Ian gave the horse free rein, and they moved swiftly through the burned streets, cantering all the way to the hill, then up the length of it.

And there, as Bobby had told them, the house still stood. Around them, mansions had burned. The walls were scorched and blackened, but the beautiful house still stood.

Ian eased down from the bay and reached for Marissa. Laughing, she fell into his arms. “We've even a home to come home to! A place for this ragtag family you've created!” he exclaimed.

And then he kissed her again, and while he kissed her, he lifted her into his arms and headed up the pathway to the house.

“We've got to go back for the others,” she reminded him, breathing the words against his kiss.

“Bobby will see that they come here,” Ian told her.

Then he paused at the front step.

“I have everything,” he said. “What more could God grant?”

He kissed her, and as he kissed her, he suddenly discovered what greater blessing there could be.

It began to rain.

Sweet, cool rain began to fall. And he lifted his eyes to hers, and they both began to laugh with delight.

His lips touched hers once again as the cleansing rain continued to fall, running down their cheeks, clinging to their lashes. Mingling with their kiss.

And then he hurried up the steps to the house.

Miraculously, they had both come from fire, and found their way home.

A Biography of Heather Graham

Heather Graham (b. 1953) is one of the country's most prominent authors of romance, suspense, and historical fiction. She has been writing bestselling books for nearly three decades, publishing more than 150 novels and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide.

Born in Florida to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, Graham attended college at the University of South Florida, where she majored in theater arts. She spent a few years making a living onstage as a back-up vocalist and dinner theater actor, but after the birth of her third child decided to seek work that would allow her to spend more time with her family.

After early efforts writing romance and horror stories, Graham sold her first novel,
When Next We Love
(1982). She went on to write nearly two dozen contemporary romance novels.

In 1989 Graham published
Sweet Savage Eden
, which initiated the Cameron family saga, an epic six-book series that sets romantic drama amid turbulent periods of American history, such as the Civil War. She revisited the nineteenth century in
Runaway
(1994), a story of passion, deception, and murder in Florida, which spawned five sequels of its own.

In the past decade, Graham has written romantic suspense novels such as
Tall, Dark, and Deadly
(1999),
Long, Lean, and Lethal
(2000), and
Dying to Have Her
(2001), as well as supernatural fiction. In 2003's
Haunted
she created the Harrison Investigation service, a paranormal detective organization that she spun off into four Krewe of Hunters novels in 2011.

Graham lives in Florida, where she writes, scuba dives, and spends time with her husband and five children.

Graham (left) with her sister.