Love and Dreams: The Coltrane Saga, Book 6 (23 page)

And suddenly, like a prayer answered…he was.

She felt firm fingers clasp her hand, and she glanced up to meet his anxious blue eyes. “Never run away like that again,” he said, his voice a blend of relief and indignation. “I’ve been running around like a madman looking for you.”

She squeezed his hand in grateful greeting, felt a wave of guilt to have worried him so. “I’m sorry.” Her smile was subdued, but radiated all the same from deep within, where affection for him fought to ignite amidst the painfully smothering ashes of her love for Colt. “I just needed to be alone to try and think things out. This is quite a shock, Bryan.”

He was at once tender, supportive. “Of course it is. God knows I hated having to tell you, but I wasn’t about to try to hide it from you. We both knew the ghost was there between us, but…” He paused to bestow a lopsided grin of apology, then candidly admitted, “The truth is, I wish they’d found out he was dead.”

She looked at him for a long time as she contemplated his frankness, then finally nodded. “That’s what they
did
find out, Bryan,” she whispered. “For all intents and purposes, Colt is dead.”

His brows raised in wide-eyed hope. “You’re going to try and forget him?”

“I have no other choice,” she confirmed with a shrug. “I’m certainly not going to run to wherever he is and make a fool of myself. He’d probably never leave his wife and child for me, anyway, and quite frankly, even though I loved him more than I thought it possible to love any man, I can’t say that I’d want him to leave them. It’s obvious,” she added bitterly, “he didn’t feel the same about me.”

In spite of her sadness, Bryan couldn’t help his cry of joy at her decision. He grabbed her in a fierce hug. “You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that!” He released her to wave at a passing hackney. “Come on. I had a surprise waiting for you before all this came up, and now’s the time to show it to you.”

He refused to answer her questions as he directed the driver to an address on Riverside Drive, ignored her protests as she wailed she did not feel like visiting anyone.

“You’re going to love it,” he mysteriously assured her. “Relax and enjoy the ride.”

The carriage eventually drew to a stop in front of a large and breathtakingly beautiful ornamental iron gateway. Beyond, at the end of a sweeping cobbled driveway, was a huge two-story house constructed of rough stone. Even from the street, Jade was awed by the magnificent glass and sculptured iron doorway, the symbol of the wealthy class of New York. Despite her misery, she curiously asked, “Who lives here?”

Bryan grinned, reached to open the carriage door with a dramatic sweep before proudly announcing, “Why, you do, my dear. Welcome home!”

Jade blinked, confused, and stared at him in bewilderment as he paid the driver. The grand front doors then opened, as though she and Bryan had been expected, and a white-costumed housekeeper and black-uniformed butler stepped out in respectful greeting.

Bryan, enjoying the moment, extended his arm, which Jade absently took, and they began to make their way from the gate, snowflakes kissing their faces.

“I bought this house because I thought you’d like your own place, away from memories of Marnia,” Bryan gently explained, “and I also thought you’d enjoy living in the city, in the midst of everything. It’s a long way to commute to the Hudson Valley.”

Jade was stunned, knew before she even entered the gorgeous house that it was going to be sumptuous, lavish, with all the luxuries money could buy. Looking up at him in grateful wonder, she asked simply, “But why?”

He kissed the tip of her nose, then smiled. “Because it’s the first step of my promise, princess, to make you love me so much you’ll forget there ever was a Colt Coltrane.”

She squeezed her eyes shut in painful retrospection, then flashed them open to brightly shine as she declared, with a pixielike wrinkle of her nose, “Well, Mr. Stevens, even if you don’t succeed, at least we’ll both enjoy your trying.”

He accepted her humor, love and desire mirrored on his face as he huskily proclaimed, “Oh, but I’m going to succeed, my dear. Believe that.”

They toured the house, with its huge reception hall, twin parlors downstairs, library, dining room, ballroom, kitchen, pantry, and glassed-in day porch. Then they ascended the curving mahogany stairway to an upper receiving foyer leading to three separate wings. Each wing contained separate serving pantries so guests could receive breakfast or tea in their suites, as well as small music parlors and reading rooms.

In the wing fronting the river, however, there were two bedrooms at the end, large, spacious, and joined by a sitting room dominated by a huge stone fireplace.

“This will be our quarters,” Bryan said with a flourish as they stood, hand in hand, in the middle of the sitting room. He turned to give her a warm look. “But we won’t need both bedrooms, my darling,” he whispered. “Just one. I never want to sleep one night without you in my arms.”

Jade started to turn away, to escape the moment she was not yet ready to face, but Bryan grabbed her arm and whirled her roughly about to hold her tightly against him. “Dammit, Jade, stop running from reality,” he ordered. “Admit that you love me! Say it!”

Her head fell backward beneath the delicious assault of his hungry, teasing lips. “I can’t,” she gasped. “Not the way you want me to.” She tried to shake her head from side to side in emphasis, but he moved a hand upward to hold her neck in a viselike grip.

“Think of all the hours we’ve spent in each other’s arms.” His mouth attacked the warm, soft flesh of her jawline. “Think how good it was…naked flesh melded against naked flesh, every nerve in our bodies on fire with desire. You’re unlike any woman I’ve ever known before. You satisfy me completely, in every way—a regal princess in public, a shameless hussy in my bed—”

“Bryan, no…” She struggled against him, for his words, his lips, his warm breath against her flesh, all were combining to ignite the familiar rush of feelings…feelings she did not want to have just now, not in the wake of so much unexpected anguish. “Let me go, please…”

His laugh was short, brittle, almost maniacal as he echoed, “Let you go? Never, Jade. Don’t you understand that?”

Suddenly he was sober, and his eyes became angry slits. His hand at the back of her neck tightened menacingly, and his voice shook with emotion as he decreed, “Now that I’ve found you, now that I’ve come to love you more than life itself, I won’t let you go, and I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you away from me. If it takes my dying breath to do it, I’m going to make you love me…and I swear to you, I’ll never let you go.”

“Bryan, you’re hurting me,” she cried, frightened. Never had she seen him so adamant or forceful, and the look in his eyes, cold, glittering with malice…it was terrifying.

At once, he released her, and apologized. “I’m sorry. You make me do strange things, Jade, when I think I might lose you.”

She did care for him, she thought. And what he said was true, they
had
shared wonderful, magic hours of passion. There was no doubt that he was as perfect a lover as Colt, awakening all sorts of secret delights within her. What, she wondered suddenly, almost frantically, would she do if he stepped out of her life? She would be totally alone, but that was not what filled her with such a feeling of misery. She was self-sufficient, self-confident, would be able to cope, somehow, but to think of not having Bryan to share her hopes and dreams and, yes, the sadness that life could sometimes bring—it was all more than she liked to think about.

“Will you marry me, Jade?”

She stared at him thoughtfully, feeling the warmth in her heart at just his nearness.

“If you care for me at all, it’s enough.” He gave her a gentle shake. “Bury the goddamned ghost, Jade, before it destroys both our chances for happiness in this life!”

She closed her eyes, swayed ever so slightly with the wonder of the moment and the sudden awareness that, had she never met Colt; had, instead, encountered Bryan, then he would have been the nucleus of all her dreams of love and happiness. He was, she knew, all she could ever ask for, or want, in a man.

So why not give in to the impulse to return his love wholly and completely?

Why hold back?

She took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly, then smiled up at him softly, warmly, her body trembling with the overwhelming emotion of the words she was about to speak. “Yes, Bryan, I’ll marry you. Just give me a bit of time, to think, to plan, to get used to the idea…

“…and,” she finished with a laugh and a careless wave of her arm, “to redecorate this huge and glorious house and make it even more grand and glorious.”

“Oh, you shall have it!” he exclaimed, lifting her up in his arms to whirl her around and around in jubilation. “Along with anything else you ever want. I’m going to make you the happiest woman in the whole world, I swear it!”

Then he set her on her feet, and their eyes met and held in adoration and the silent promise of the future. When, at last, he kissed her, Jade responded with fervor and determination.

The ghost was buried forever, she told herself, but all the while a thousand needles stung into her heart, for try as she might, with her eyes shut and Bryan’s strong arms holding her close, his lips melded against her own…Colt’s face was still before her…in the shadow of her dreams.

Chapter Eighteen

On the surface, it seemed as though Jade had accepted the cruel, crushing blow that fate had dealt her. Inside, however, a struggle of emotions waged war between head and heart. Bryan could not understand her refusal to set a wedding date. She pleaded for time, to deal with the myriad emotions running wild within. He countered by saying she was only prolonging the complete letting go of the past by not facing the future.

She questioned the legality of a marriage, and Bryan argued that no one would know she’d ever been married before. After all, the ceremony had taken place in a foreign country. She was not using her married name, but had been presenting herself as Miss Jade O’Bannon. Everyone thought she’d come to America directly from Ireland, a distant relative of his late wife. He insisted there was nothing to worry about, candidly suggesting, “You’d be better off pretending you never even knew Colt Coltrane, that there never was a marriage.”

Jade silently agreed, but knew her heart would never permit such absolute denial of so great a love.

They mutually agreed that Bryan would continue to present her to everyone as Marnia’s cousin, so as not to raise eyebrows over their spending so much time together and to ultimately lessen the shock when they married. Marnia’s parents were dead, he pointed out, so there was no reason for anyone to contradict their story.

Within herself, Jade dealt with her pain over Colt by instilling the firm belief that the past was no more than a dream remembered. Memories, both good and bad, only brought misery; therefore, she commanded herself each time her heart began to ache, it was best not to think about any of it, to think only of her present life and her future…and the man who was trying so very hard to make her happy.

Although Jade was disinclined to make any immediate arrangements, they did decide that when a date was finally set, they’d just slip away for a private ceremony. They both liked the custom that public announcements were marked by brevity, with more emphasis given to the bridegroom’s social status than the bride’s.

“We need to keep things in good taste,” he reminded her one day. “After all, there are those who’ll say I didn’t wait the proper length of time before remarrying, but,” he added sarcastically, “chances are they’ll forget I ever
was
married, the way you’re procrastinating.”

Jade had grown used to the way Bryan could sometimes be acerbic, knowing it was a way of getting his point across. She ignored it, as always, changing the subject this time to the matter of finances.

It was, she knew, unheard of at that time for a woman to own anything separate from her husband. She did not think it fair, however, and wanted it understood that when they did marry, she would retain her financial independence. Bryan was agreeable. He even set out immediately to research and advise her on various investments so she would have knowledge of options besides having her money sit idly in the bank.

With an understanding of their relationship, and that they would marry when, as Jade put it, the time was “right”, she then turned all her energies, both physical and mental, into moving into her new home. It was an exhausting, time-consuming job, for she insisted on doing all the shopping herself. Bryan urged her to call in a decorator, but she refused, saying it was something she wanted to do as it helped move her even further away from the ghost of the past. Seeing it that way, Bryan said nothing more on the subject.

For the sake of propriety it was decided that if she were to reside at a hotel in the city while preparing the house, she should hire a woman to be a combination secretary, companion, and chaperone. The young woman they selected, Miss Lita Tulane, had migrated from France with her family, had some experience, and seemed well bred and intelligent.

The two got along well, and Lita was always eager to accompany Jade on her almost daily shopping jaunts.

Jade ignored “The Ladies’ Mile”, the popular fashion district from Eighth Street to Twenty-third Street on Broadway, and instead became a familiar face among shoppers in the district around Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. There she found a myriad of shops and a large selection of imported furniture, antiques, bric-a-brac, art, and decorator pieces.