Reflected Pleasures Read online

  “Don’t go saying sweet things to me, son,” she said with a scowl. “Not until you explain why you felt it necessary to destroy that gentle young woman.”

  “Merri? But I was the one…”

  “I’m so disappointed in you I could just spit,” Jewel told him. “Merri never did anything but work hard to please you and the whole community. And you turned all that on its head and made her out to be some kind of pure evil. She made a mistake. Get over it.”

  “She lied to me,” was all he could manage to say.

  “Tell me I didn’t raise such an idiot,” Jewel frowned and gave him a backhanded shot across the upper arm. “She loved you, and you sent her out alone to face the dreadful hordes by herself.”

  “Merri should be used to the paparazzi by now,” he said coldly. “After all, her whole life before she came here was one stunt after another. Let her get herself out of whatever mess she’s in.”

  Jewel narrowed her eyes at him and frowned. “If you’d taken a moment to let her explain instead of running home with your feelings hurt, you might have learned that the reason she was hiding from the lime-light in the first place was because she’d tried to help a friend. But when the going got rough, that so-called friend betrayed her. Used her to take the heat off himself and then turned her over to the jackals so they could pick her clean.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “Some of it,” Jewel replied. “The rest I bribed out of one of them no-good reporters.”

  “Bribed?”

  “With a couple of the garden club’s raffle cakes. No better way to get the truth out of a man.”

  A tender shift in Ty’s heart took him by surprise as thoughts of Merri wound through his mind. She had worked hard at learning things she probably had no idea how to do. She’d charmed the Foundation’s donors, made sense out of the office and gave the kids at Nuevo Dias Ranch a reason to smile. Everyone who knew her loved her. Including him.

  “But she didn’t have to lie to me,” he whined in spite of everything else. “Not to me.” The hurt and betrayal were still strong in his heart. Too strong for forgiveness.

  “Argh,” Jewel muttered. “How can you be so foolish? You hurt her bad, boy. And stubborn pride is going to hurt you, too. Maybe worse than ever before.

  “I can’t stand to watch you behave like this and ruin a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be happy,” Jewel said with a snort. “If you’re determined to sit here pouting and suffering, you’re going to do it by yourself. I’m going home to bake and garden. And hope to hell I can get the sour taste of your bitterness out of my mouth.”

  Ty rubbed at his temples as Jewel stormed out of the house, slamming doors behind her. Damn it. He wasn’t the bad guy here. He hadn’t lied.

  He took a deep breath of cleansing air, but stopped when he smelled the sugar scents of lavender and vanilla. Those weren’t Jewel’s scents. Hers were almost always the tangy smells of Ivory soap and cinnamon.

  No, the soft scents he’d just noticed were all Merri’s. Ty looked around his office. She had told him she’d been in here while he was out of town. Maybe the musky smells of her had lingered until now.

  Or maybe he was really going insane and would never get her out of his mind completely. Oh, God.

  Starting around his desk toward his heavy high-backed chair, Ty ran his fingers lightly around the edges of his polished wood desk. Thinking that Merri might’ve touched these same places, he could just imagine feeling her touch still warm through the mahogany.

  Suddenly his fingers and his gaze landed on the gypsy’s antique mirror, lying facedown on the desk where he’d carelessly left it several weeks before. Strange that now he remembered, Merri had mentioned seeing her reflection in the mirror.

  It had been the one time before today that he’d thought she’d told him a lie. This look-alike mirror was nothing but plain glass. But then, just as now, Ty couldn’t imagine why Merri would choose to lie about something so meaningless.

  He reached to pick up the golden mirror and then plopped down in his chair and leaned back. Closing his eyes, he tried to remember what Merri had looked like when she’d first come to Stanville and he’d fallen for her. So innocent, so sweet.

  But there had been a wounded look in her eyes back then. Had she been afraid of him? Afraid that he would give her away by accident?

  Fighting that uncomfortable idea, Ty thought he heard a voice speaking to him. He really was going nuts.

  “Turn the mirror over, Tyson Steele. It will reveal the truth, no more.”

  His eyes opened wide and he stared down at the scrollwork with his name embedded in the back of the mirror. That had been what the gypsy had told him. The mirror would take him to his heart’s desire.

  Slowly, filled with trepidation for no good reason but still determined to take a look, Ty turned the mirror over in his hand and stared down at the glass.

  The damned thing seemed to be alive all of a sudden. Swirls of haze and fog obscured the mirror and seemed to rise up to encircle him within its mists. He would’ve dropped the creepy thing immediately, but his fingers felt as if they were glued to its handle. He noticed the gold had begun to warm under his hand and was heating up to somewhere past normal room temperature.

  Ridiculous. There was no such thing as magic.

  Just then the fog began to clear and Merri’s face came into view. Merri. His heart lurched at the mere sight of her beautiful smile.

  It was like every other time she had appeared before him. His blood began racing through his veins and his erection hardened with a sudden throbbing beat.

  Looking closer, trying to focus on her sparkling green eyes, Ty was taken aback by the vision before him. It wasn’t Merri—and yet it was.

  Somehow the image in the mirror had become a combination of both the sweet, shy Merri Davis and the sexy, gorgeous model, Merrill Davis-Ross. He would’ve thought that the latter would repel him, remind him of her treachery.

  But nothing about her turned him off.

  Instead, rippling changes of scene zipped past in the mirror right before his eyes. Merri crawling under his desk to find her shoes. Merri falling on her butt in the rain and kissing him senseless while the water poured over their heads.

  Next he saw Merri telling him she didn’t want anything permanent, begging him not to force himself into her life. Then came the vision of pure lust shining in her eyes as he saw himself bending over her, tasting and cherishing—

  Rubbing at the spot on his chest that had begun to ache, Ty could scarcely believe the next picture. It was of a stunning Merrill Davis-Ross in a red dress and stiletto heels with soft green eyes and a panicked look on her face.

  “I love you, Ty,” she had said. “But you need to know something about me. I have to tell…”

  Ty groaned and felt the tears stinging at the back of his eyes. It was as plain as the image before him. She did love him. And…she had tried to tell him the truth.

  He had pushed her, run right over her feelings in his zeal to have her. And in the end, he had rejected her.

  Jewel was right. He was a selfish bastard and didn’t deserve anything as wonderful as being loved by Merri.

  He was determined to make it up to her, however. Maybe he had hurt the woman he loved beyond repair. Though he could barely stand to think of that idea at the moment.

  But regardless of whether she forgave him, it was time to act like a man and make things better for her.

  Merri heard a bigger commotion than ever at the back of the café where she’d stopped running and let the paparazzi catch up. At least she was miles away from Stanville, Texas, and all the wonderful people there.

  It was her time to stand and face the music. Which she intended to do, if she could ever hear a reporter’s question through all the yelling and screaming that was going on in the back of the room.

  Several strobes flashed in front of her eyes and temporarily blinded her.

  “What about your relationship with Tyson
Steele, Merrill?” someone called out from the crowd.

  “There is no relationship,” she squeaked. “None at all. He just happened to be in the town I picked. He never knew a thing about me.”

  “Wrong,” came a familiar-sounding shout from the back.

  “Aw, come on, babe,” a nasty voice snarled from behind another snapping bright light. “Tell the world about him. Did he turn out to be gay, too? Maybe it’s just you that forces guys out of the closet. Maybe you emasculate the men around you. Maybe…”

  The guy’s words were suddenly halted and Merri swirled, trying to see what was happening. When her vision cleared, she saw Ty, breaking though the crowd and spinning the vicious reporter by the shoulder. Ty reared back and took a swing, pasting his fist right into the photographer’s jaw.

  “Say what you want about me, creep,” he growled. “But don’t you ever say anything like that about her again. Got it?” Ty still had the man by his shirt and reared back to take another shot.

  “Hold it,” the guy cried. “I got it. And you’re going to hear from my lawyer, dude. This is assault. You’ll be paying for it for a long time.”

  Ty released him and looked over to Merri. “Are you okay?” he mouthed.

  She nodded but wanted to tell him to go away. He was just going to make things worse.

  At that moment, about a dozen sheriff’s deputies came out of nowhere and began dispersing throughout the room, rounding up and herding the reporters out the door.

  A tall man with a tan hat and a silver badge pinned on the pocket of his western style shirt walked up to where Ty and the obnoxious photographer were standing. “I saw everything,” he grinned at the reporter. “Too bad it was so crowded in here that you accidently ran your jaw into Mr. Steele’s elbow. You coulda knocked your eye out.”

  The reporter spun to address the rest of the paparazzi. “Did anybody get a decent shot of this cowboy hitting me?”

  A rumble went around the room, but everyone else was being escorted outside. The man who had been “accidently” hit lifted his camera and pointed it at Ty and the sheriff.

  “I don’t believe I’d do that, son,” the sheriff told him. “Not if you want to keep that camera…and your fingers…for future use. Come on, let’s take this outside. You’re trespassing on private property here.”

  When they were alone in the café, Merri turned to Ty. “Why did you hit him? I was holding my own with them. Now he’s going to sue you and make a big fuss.”

  “Forget him. He’s not a problem.” He reached for her but she slithered away from his reach. “Merri, darlin’.”

  “Why did you follow me?” she asked. “I thought you said everything that needed to be said. What more is there? You were clear enough. I’m on my way out of your life.”

  She’d been crying, he could tell. And it ran stabs of pain through his soul.

  “I don’t want you out of my life,” he whispered. “I want you to forgive me for being a bigger jerk than that idiot photographer.”

  “Why? Nothing has changed. I’m still never going back to being the shy Merri Davis you thought you fell in love with.” She hesitated, swallowed and then kept on talking. “I’m never going to be Merrill Davis-Ross again, either. I couldn’t go back to that. Not after…you.”

  He moved in on her then. He was compelled to wrap his arms around her body, keeping her safe and warm.

  “How about if you don’t go back to either one?” he asked softly and tightened his arms around her. “Why can’t you just be Mrs. Merri Steele from now on?”

  “Ty?” she said breathlessly. “I don’t think we can…”

  A momentary panic gripped his stomach and he knew if he had to get down on his knees and beg, he would do it gladly.

  She would listen to him. She would hear his words in her heart. She just had to.

  He leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “I have been an arrogant fool for most of my life, Merri. Letting anger at my mother’s death color all my relationships with women.

  “I wanted to be loved so badly that I shoved myself down people’s throats and then sat back, waiting for them to betray me.”

  After chuckling over the idea that his own method of hiding his true feelings had been so much worse than Merri’s disguises, Ty drew a deep breath and continued. “Most of them didn’t disappoint me. But you were different. You held back and made me see the real you first. And I did, darlin’. I really saw your soul first.”

  She gasped, threw her arms around his waist and clung to him.

  “I don’t care what name you use…or how you look on the outside,” he said gently in her ear. “None of that matters.

  “It’s what’s between us now. Who we are when we’re together as a team. That’s all that truly counts.”

  She pulled back, putting inches of air between them and lifting her chin to look in his eyes. “Really, Ty? It hurt so bad when I thought I would never see you again. I…”

  “I’m so sorry, sugar,” he mumbled past a lump in his throat. “I was hurting too…and stubborn as hell. Give me a few hundred years to make it up to you.”

  “I’m not exactly blameless in all of this,” Merri said with a slow sexy grin. “But I do love you, Tyson Adams Steele. And I’ll be more than happy to spend the next hundred years or so letting you try to convince me that this was all your fault.”

  He couldn’t help himself. She was so tempting standing there, gazing up at him with love shining in her eyes. He bent and lightly kissed her lips, knowing full well some horrible tabloid would carry a picture of them like this on their front page tomorrow.

  But what the hell. None of that mattered anymore. Not when he had the other half of his soul beside him at last. Not when he could taste her and hold her and keep the rest of the world at bay forever.

  They could do anything…go anywhere. As long as they stayed together.

  He still wasn’t sure why he had been so honored, but their love was his legacy, given by the gypsy and Lucille Steele. And no one could take that away from them.

  Not as long as he held on to the magic.

  Looking down at the bewitching face he hoped to see everyday for the rest of eternity, he realized that he really did hold the magic right here in his arms. Merri was the real magic.

  And he would never again let her go.

  Epilogue

  “Well…” The old gypsy sat back in her chair as the crystal ball grew dim.

  “Very nice,” she murmured to herself. “Tyson Steele has finally captured his heart’s desire. But it was too close to a complete disaster to suit me.”

  Passionata gazed at the heavens above and addressed her ancestor once again. “The next recipient will be much more difficult to help, my father and king. I cannot sit idly by with him and watch the ‘lost’ Steele descendent squander or misuse his legacy.

  “This next time I must intervene on your behalf.”

  Steely gray clouds opened up and bolts of lightning crisscrossed the midnight sky. “Not to worry. I shall keep a close rein on young Chase Severin. Your gift of magic shall be used for its proper purpose.

  “I swear it.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7403-1

  Reflected Pleasures

  Copyright © 2005 by Linda Lucas Sankpill

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