Wild Honey (20 page)

Without another thought, she stood on tiptoe and wound her arms about his neck, pressing her body fully against his. Unaware of the moan that came from her throat, she touched the tip of her tongue to his. And felt the blood singing in her veins as their tongues danced and mated.

Travis heard a roaring in his ears as she communicated her hunger. Stunned by the force of it, he let his hands slide over her shoulders, dropped them to her waist. Locking his arms about her, he pulled her hard against him. Their mouths crossed and crisscrossed, seeking closer union. My God, he wondered, where had this come from? One moment she was shyly accepting his careful kisses, and next thing he knew—

Whoa, McLean!
With the self-chastening command, he pulled his mouth from hers, doing his utmost to control his ragged breathing. He planted a kiss on her brow, then cradled her carefully in his arms, making sure their bodies didn’t touch below, betraying his arousal.
Damned fool, you nearly lost it. Remember who this is!

“Travis?” she said against his chest in a bewildered voice. “What…what’s wrong?”

“Shh, darlin’,” he whispered into her hair. “Nothin’s wrong.”

“Then why…”

A chuckle vibrated within his chest. “Because you’re too temptin’ by far, sweetheart, ‘n’…let’s just say it’s gettin’ late ‘n’ I need to be goin’, okay?”

He pulled away and raised her chin with his knuckles, smiling into her upturned face. “Call you tomorrow?”

Giddy from what had happened, Randi could barely nod as she drank in his features, loving the play of moonlight on his face.

“Night, sugar,” he murmured. “Sleep well.” A brush of his lips over hers, and before she knew it, he was gone.

“Night,” Randi whispered belatedly into the darkness. She touched her fingers to her lips, still tasting him there.

Amazed, she realized she hadn’t wanted the kiss to end. Yet she wondered, as she turned to the house, why, for all its aching sweetness, the thought should provoke a tiny frisson of fear.

T
RAVIS SLOWED
and turned the Alpha between the massive stone pillars that marked the entrance to Sunnyfields, his family’s Virginia estate. Cruising past the huge oaks lining the drive, he tried to ignore the knot that had formed in his stomach. Tried, but couldn’t. It was the same feeling he’d had as a kid whenever a confrontation with his father loomed. He was a man, many years out from under his father’s roof, yet the meeting he anticipated had the capacity to reduce him to a bundle of childish dread.

Borrowing a trick he’d learned while under pressure in the field for the Agency, he took a deep breath and released it slowly. Then another, repeating the process until he felt the knot begin to unwind. Good. His father was a master at sensing others’ weaknesses and using them to control them; Travis needed to be the one in control if he was to make this reconciliation work.

If the old man didn’t have him thrown off the place before he even got the chance.

“T
RAVIS
! O
H, MY
G
OD
, are you really
here?”
Judith McLean’s eyes shone with tears as she ran them over her firstborn. “I—I’m not dreamin’, am I?”

“We’re both wide awake, Mother.” Travis bent to embrace her. “Lo, the prodigal son returns!” he added with a chuckle, then lifted her off the floor and whirled her around as she began to laugh and weep at the same time.

“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” she kept repeating as Higgins, the longtime family butler, looked on with suspiciously bright eyes.

“Higgins,” Judith managed as Travis set her back on
the foyer’s marble floor, “run and fetch Sarah. Hurry! She won’t believe this, either.”

“Sarah’s here?” Travis asked as the servant left.

“For the weekend, yes.” His mother ran her gaze avidly over his tall frame. “You’re…you’re well, son? Your shoulder, it’s…”

“Good as new,” he assured her.

“Well, all right, if you’re sure…”

“I’m sure. See?” He swung his arm in a wide circle, to demonstrate, and gave her a wink.

She nodded and gestured him toward the spacious living room. He noted her hand was trembling and felt a moment of deep regret. How much grief had his actions caused her over the years of his rebellion? How much pain?

Curling an arm about her shoulders, he drew her to a halt just inside the living-room doors. “I love you, Mother,” he said quietly. “And though you haven’t asked, I’ll tell you right off. Yes, I’m here to make peace with him—if it’s at all possible. It’s time we were a family again.”

He meant it, Travis thought as they waited for Sarah. It
was
time. High time. He
wanted
this family. He wasn’t here simply because he found it convenient after deciding to return to medicine; the decision simply gave him a window of opportunity to heal the breach. A window he’d lacked before. He’d regretted the breach for a long time, to be honest. Now, if only he could get the old man to listen…

“D
ADDY’S CAR’S
just comin’ up the drive,” Sarah said to her mother and Travis as she peered out the living-room window. She looked at her brother. “How d’you want to handle this? Should Mother and I make ourselves scarce?”

In the hour they’d talked since his arrival, Travis had informed them of his decision to return to medicine. Both had been astounded, then delighted at the news. Although he didn’t plan on becoming a heart surgeon, his mother felt
it would nevertheless pave the way for a reconciliation with his father.

Travis wasn’t so sure. Marring their reunion was their awareness of Trent McLean’s fury about Sarah’s switch to law; their father, apparently, still blamed it on Travis’s influence.

“I think y’all had better leave me to face him alone,” he told the women. “Just have Higgins let him know I’m here and uh, keep your fingers crossed.”

While his mother offered a shaky smile and turned to leave, Sarah ran up and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “We’ll do more than that, love,” she told him. “We’ll pray—so hard, you’ll think there were a hundred trumpets soundin’ and the judgment day in sight!”

Which it might just be,
Travis told himself gloomily as he watched them leave the room. He was by no means sanguine about the encounter with his father. The old man hadn’t yielded an inch in the past when Travis had tried to reason with him; why should he now? Still, it was something he had to try.

He was tired of living outside, like a pariah. With the discovery that he had a son had come the realization that family was important to him—this family, as well as the one he longed to nurture under his own roof. And like it or not, Trent McLean was a part of it. He was Matt’s grandfather, damn it, and—

”Who in the hell d’you think you are, bargin’ in here like this?” The icy voice had Travis turning to face the door.

Trent McLean III. With one of those odd flashes of memory, Travis recalled the only reason he himself wasn’t named Trent McLean IV was that there’d been an infant who’d died, who’d been christened with that name first.

“I wasn’t aware I’d done any bargin’,” he replied with deliberate mildness. He gestured toward a silver tea service Higgins had brought and from which his mother had
poured. “Considerin’ the hospitality I’ve enjoyed from my mother in the hour I’ve been back,” he added, one hand thrust casually in his pants pocket as he leaned against the mantel over the fireplace, “I’d say I’ve been received most graciously…sir.”

Trent’s eyes flashed a warning as he moved into the room. The inflection in Travis’s “sir” hadn’t escaped him. When his children were young, he’d demanded they address him as “sir,” but he had no doubt Travis was mocking him with it now. “Don’t play games with me, boy!” he thundered.

Travis wanted to kick himself. He hadn’t intended the tiny insult; it had just slipped out.
Can’t erase years’ worth of bitterness overnight, I reckon.

He took a moment to appraise his father as Trent went to the bar hidden behind a sliding mahogany panel and fixed himself a drink. The old man had aged. Not that he wasn’t still an impressive figure. The expensive cut of his hand-tailored suit outlined the tall physique that Travis had inherited and that Trent kept trim through regular dates on the tennis and raquetball courts. But there was a stoop to his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. The lines on his face, which once had been slight, merely lending it a suave maturity, were now deep grooves. And there was far more gray to his hair than blond.

Finally, as his father took a sip of the neat bourbon he’d poured and faced him, Travis noticed his eyes. This was where he seemed to have aged most of all. They were…bleak. Travis gave himself a shake. Bleak? The mighty Trent McLean? What in hell could possibly have—

“Don’t look at me that way!” the older man snapped. “I don’t usually have a drink in the middle of the afternoon,” he added defensively, “and you damn well know it!”

Do I? Do I really know anything about you after five
‘long years? Even way before that You spent so little time with us I doubt we ever really got to know you at all.

Trent was shaking his head. “I don’t know why I should be tellin’ you but, fact is, I lost someone on the table today.” He took a big swallow of the whiskey. “Someone I know—knew well, a friend, and I’m still not sure how it happened. It
shouldn’t
have happened, dammit!”

“Who?” Travis couldn’t help asking.

Trent downed the rest of the bourbon with a grimace, shook his head and let his eyes flick over Travis before looking away. “Wally Reston,” he said.

“Reston? My God, I just saw him a few—”

“I know. He told me ‘bout it when he called to ask if I’d perform this operation personally, as a special favor to an old friend.” Trent poured himself a second drink. “Said he knew it was just a simple bypass, but that he’d still feel better if I was the one did it. Said he trusted me…Oh, God! A simple bypass, and he died.
Under my scalpel.”

A bitter laugh issued from him before he downed the bourbon. “The poor bastard trusted me, and I let him die.”

Travis didn’t know what to say. He’d never seen the old man like this. Then it struck him. Trent McLean, for all his aura of infallibility, was as susceptible to guilt and failure as any other mortal. For the first time in his life, he was seeing his father as human.

“I’m sorry,” he said, carefully feeling his way along unfamiliar emotions. “Truly sorry. I know the two of you went back a long way. I also know, if there was anyone could’ve pulled him through, it was you.”

Trent glanced at him sharply. “Y’do, do you?” There was a sneer on his face, a challenge in his voice. “What would
you
know about it?”

It took every ounce of control Travis possessed not to respond in kind. “I never questioned your competence as a surgeon, sir.” The final word was issued without mockery
this time. “You’re one of the best—world-class. I simply didn’t want to be forced—”

“For no reason but sheer spite, what you
wanted
was to wallow in the mud of your infantile rebellion. Wallow! And rub my nose in it at the same time!”

Travis’s control finally snapped. “Wrong! And if you’d ever listened to a word I said, you’d know that. But you never did listen, did you? Not to me, not to Troy or Sarah, not—”

“Sarah! Don’t you dare talk to me ‘bout Sarah, you connivin’ ungrateful viper! You put her up to this insane thing she’s done. You engineered this…this betrayal.”

“Wrong again! I had no idea—”

Trent slammed down his glass and whirled on him. “D’you deny your sister’s followin’ in your disgraceful footsteps? Indulgin’ in a childish rebellion? A childish rebellion, Travis,
just like yours!”

“No,” Travis said quietly, regaining some control. “It
was
a childish rebellion—mine, that is. Sarah’s is another matter, but I swear to you, I had no hand in her decision, and I hope to God her motives were different”

For the first time in Travis’s memory, his father seemed totally taken aback. He stood frozen, a disbelieving look on his face as he faced his son.

“Am I to believe,” he said at last, his jaw working as he seemed to search for words, “that you’ve come here to admit you were wrong in what you did to me five years ago?”

Travis heaved a disgusted sigh and struggled to control himself. Trust the old man to see it all as a personal affront.

“No,” he corrected. “What I’m hopin’ you’ll understand is, I’m admittin’ that what I did—to myself primarily—was done for the wrong reasons.”

“I see,” Trent said tightly. “And what would you say were the right reasons?”

“The right reasons were the same ones I hope are motivation’
Sarah now—the pursuit of a different path for its own sake. Not from bein’ hell-bent on defyin’
you.”

“So you admit you did it to defy me!”

Travis smiled wearily. “That’s what I just said, didn’t I?”

His father’s smile was gloating. “Well, well, well. Can it be we’re makin’ some progress here? After all these years—”

“After all these years,” Travis said rounding on him angrily, “you still don’t get it, do you, Father?” He strode forward, closing the distance between them, until their faces were inches apart. “Well, let me see if I can spell it out for you.” He clenched his hands into fists at his sides.

“I don’t have to listen to this—” the older man began, but Travis cut him off.

“You
don’t,
but you
will.
When I’m done, you can have me thrown out, for all I care, but just this once, you’re gonna listen!”

It all came pouring out. The painful memories of a boy yearning for the father who was never there. The attempts to please, only to find them ignored when they failed to align .with the father’s vision. The anger and frustration thai simmered over the years, finally erupting in a boil that tore at the heart and fabric of a family. A dysfunctional family, because it was under the controlling thumb of a father who didn’t give a damn about anything but his own selfish ends.

“And the worst of it is,” Travis finished bitterly, “I’m as guilty as you are.” Tears were streaming down his face, but he didn’t notice. “In my need to spite you, I derailed myself from the more sensible course I might’ve taken. And I’m heartily sorry for it, Father. So damned sorry.”