Letters to Kelly Read online

  Marcy was looking at her as if she had finally lost her mind. “And just which telephone line is it that you supposedly called on?” she said. “The one that rings silently?”

  “Tell him—” Kelly was grabbing wildly now. “Tell him you called me.”

  Marcy folded her arms across her chest, the bangles and bracelets she wore on her wrists jangling. “I talked to the man for maybe five minutes when he first came in, but it was long enough for me to know he’s no idiot,” she said. “Now, if I go out there making excuses for you, girl, he’s gonna realize that you took one look at him and ran away. And a man like that one—” she gestured toward the door to the outer office “—usually does only one thing when he’s being run away from.” She paused for emphasis. “He gives chase. So unless you want this guy following you all over town—and if you do, that’s fine, because I sure wouldn’t mind—you better take a nice deep breath, and go and talk to him.”

  Marcy was right. She was absolutely right.

  Kelly walked to the door and, following her friend’s advice, took a deep breath. She glanced back at Marcy for an extra dose of strength, then turned the doorknob.

  Chapter 2

  Jax stared at the college newspaper without reading it. He tried thinking about the book he was writing, tried to plan the next scene, but he couldn’t even keep his mind on that. He was nervous. What if Kelly didn’t show up?

  What if she did?

  Relax, he ordered himself. It’s just Kelly.

  Just Kelly.

  It had been seven years since the night of her junior prom.

  God, his life could have been so different if he hadn’t been so stupid. But he made a mistake, and here he was, seven years later, no closer to getting what he wanted.

  Seven long, wasted years…

  Jax wished he could go back in time, do it all over again. Well, not all. He’d skip the trip to Central America, thank you very much. Yeah, he’d pass on that ten-day news-gathering expedition that had turned into a twenty-month nightmare—

  He took a deep breath. He had dreamed about Central America last night for the first time in a long time. He’d dreamed he was back in the prison and—

  But he didn’t want to think about that, either. He was better off just worrying about Kelly. Seven years was a long time. She must have changed. Lord knows he had.

  But since yesterday, when Kevin had called and filled him in on the latest O’Brien family news, Jax felt twenty-two years old again. All of his optimism and hope flooded back, as if it had never faded and disappeared.

  Kelly was back in Boston, Kevin had told him, finishing her college degree. She had gotten a divorce.

  Even as Jax had talked to Kevin on the phone, even as he had made regretful noises over Kelly’s failed marriage, he’d done a silent victory dance in his living room.

  Kelly was single. She was single and she wasn’t too young anymore. Jax smiled as he stared sightlessly down at the newspaper he was holding.

  He could still see her, the way she had looked when he’d first met her. She’d been only twelve years old, no more than a child, but her dark blue eyes held the maturity and wisdom of a woman twice her age. With her dry wit, she was clearly intelligent, but it was her steady self-confidence that made him adore her—not to mention the promise of incredible beauty he could see in her face.

  And as he found himself spending more and more time with the O’Briens, his feelings for Kelly grew as she did.

  And though the O’Briens didn’t have a fraction of the money that his parents had, in Jax’s mind, the Winchesters were the losers.

  Nolan and Lori O’Brien had been married twenty years when Jax had first met them, but they still loved each other, and maybe even more important, they still genuinely liked each other. And they truly loved their children. They couldn’t give Kevin and Kelly expensive gifts, they couldn’t even afford to send Kevin to Boston College without the help from his scholarship, but there was certainly no lack of love in that family.

  And the O’Briens had opened their arms to Jax, encircling him with all the love and laughter and music that always seemed to shake the foundation of their little house.

  Jax had even spent one entire summer living with them—along with Lori’s recently divorced sister, Christa, and her three children. It had been a magnificent summer, the best he could remember. The house had been so crowded that he and Kevin had to sleep on bedrolls out on the screened-in porch. When it rained, they sought refuge on the floor in Kelly’s room.

  Kelly had been fourteen that summer, her long legs and arms beginning to change from skinny to willowy. She had grown her dark hair long, and she wore it in a single braid down her back.

  She still called Jax “T.” or sometimes even Tyrone. She was the only person in the universe he would let get away with that.

  He hadn’t gone out on a single date that entire summer, spending most of his evenings playing Risk or Monopoly with the ready crowd of O’Briens and relatives. But if anyone had accused him at that time of having anything other than a friendly, platonic love for Kelly, he would have furiously denied it. He was a twenty-year-old man, for crying out loud. Kelly was just a kid.

  It wasn’t until two years later, until the night of Kelly’s junior prom—

  “T. Jackson Winchester the Second.” Kelly’s husky voice interrupted his thoughts, and he looked up from the newspaper into a pair of familiar blue eyes.

  Kelly.

  Jax forced himself to move slowly. He slowly folded the newspaper and put it on the table beside him. He slowly got to his feet and smiled down at her.

  God, she had become even more beautiful than she’d been the last time he’d seen her, four years ago at Kevin’s wedding.

  Her eyes were a deep, dark shade of blue and exquisitely shaped. Her skin was smooth and fair, contrasting with her rich brown hair and her long, dark eyelashes. Her face was elegantly heart-shaped, with a small, strong chin and a perfect nose. She was gorgeous. She’d always been remarkably pretty as a girl, but as a woman, she was breathtaking.

  “Kelly.” It came out little more than a whisper.

  “How are you?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”

  Jax cleared his throat and ran his hand through his hair. “I’m in town on business,” he said. It wasn’t entirely a lie. True, the business could just as easily have been done over the telephone, but…“I thought I’d come and ask you to have dinner with me. I didn’t realize you were back in Boston until I spoke to Kevin yesterday.”

  As Kelly looked up into his eyes, she was struck by how little T. Jackson had changed. He was still the same poised, confident, charismatic and utterly charming man he’d always been. There was no situation he would be uncomfortable in, nothing that could rattle him—no, that wasn’t entirely true. She had seen him severely shaken up, even out of control. But only once. It had been the night of her junior prom.

  “So how about it?” Jax smiled as he returned her steady gaze. “Will you have dinner with me?”

  It was Plan “A.” He would take her to dinner tonight, and again tomorrow night, and by Wednesday she’d remember how good they were together. She’d realize that their friendship had survived all those years they’d spent apart. And then he’d kiss her good-night, let her know he wanted them to be more than friends. By the end of the week, he’d ask her to marry him. It was fast, but it couldn’t exactly be called a whirlwind courtship considering that he’d really started courting her back before he even realized it, back when she was only twelve years old.

  It was a plan that would work. He knew it would work.

  But he could see wariness in Kelly’s eyes. “I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head no.

  She had turned him down. He hadn’t figured that possibility when he was making his plan. This was one scenario he had never considered. Despite the heat of the day, Jax felt a sudden chill. Was he too late again? Was he destined to go through life with the woman he wanted always one ste
p out of his reach?

  “Are you seeing someone?” he asked.

  Kelly looked away. “No.”

  Jax fought to hide his relief from showing on his face.

  “It’s just…not necessary for you to take me out to dinner,” she said, pushing a wisp of hair from her face.

  Jax laughed then. “Says who?”

  She sighed and crossed her arms in front of her. “Look, I know Kevin called you because he’s worried about me. I’ve been…a little down. Give me a break, I just got a divorce. I’m allowed to be depressed. I was brought up believing that marriage was permanent, but Brad and I didn’t even manage to hold it together for three years.”

  As Jax watched, she looked down at the floor. Her unhappiness was clearly evident in her eyes, in the tightness of her mouth. Good grief, another variable he hadn’t considered. “Do you still love him?” he asked softly.

  She glanced up at Jax, and her eyes were filled with tears. “You know what the really stupid thing is, T.?”

  He shook his head silently, wishing that he could take her in his arms. But he was held back by all those years of purposely not touching her. During the five years that he’d been in college, the five years that they’d been such good friends, he’d always been very careful not to touch her. Not casually, not at all. It was as if he subconsciously knew there could only be one kind of physical relationship between them, and that there would be nothing casual about it.

  “I don’t think I ever loved him,” she said.

  One of Kelly’s tears ran down her cheek, and Jax couldn’t stop from reaching out to brush it away. She took a step back, as if the contact had burned her.

  “Don’t.”

  “Sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry.”

  Kelly wiped her face with the back of her hand, blinking away the rest of her tears. T. was looking at her with such anxiety in his eyes, it almost made her laugh. T. Jackson anxious? She wouldn’t have believed it possible. She managed a shaky smile.

  “You think I’m a real basket case, right?” she asked.

  “I think you could use a friend,” he said quietly.

  “Yeah,” she said, hugging her crossed arms close to her body, as if she were cold, as if it weren’t more than eighty degrees in the newspaper office. “I could. But not you, Tyrone. Not this time.”

  “Why not?”

  But it was as if she hadn’t heard him. “Just tell Kevin I’m okay. I’m going to be fine. But I’ll be fine a lot sooner without you hanging around, doing my brother a favor.”

  Jax choked on the air he was breathing. “I’m not here to do Kevin a favor,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be the first time,” Kelly said, “would it?”

  Jax laughed, but then stopped as the meaning of what she was saying washed over him like a cold bucket of water. “Oh, God,” he said. “You believed what Kevin said that morning after the prom?”

  “Of course I believed him,” Kelly said. “You didn’t deny it.” She turned toward the door to the back office. “I’ve got to go. Thanks for dropping by.”

  “Kelly, wait—”

  But she was gone.

  Jax stood there for a long time even though he knew she’d gone out the back door, even though he knew that she wasn’t coming back.

  So much for Plan “A.”

  Jax set his laptop computer on the dining table in his hotel suite, attached the power cord and plugged it into the wall. He hit the On switch and the computer wheezed to life.

  He pulled his spiral notebook and his collection of computer disks out of his briefcase and found the one labeled Jared.

  This book was an historical, with most of the action taking place during the Civil War era. He’d written a number of Civil War books before, so the research he’d had to do for this one had been minimal. This book was going to be fast and easy, especially since the story was one he was extremely familiar with.

  He put the disk into the computer’s drive and called up the job. After less than a week of work, he was already up to page 163, and he’d just finished writing the explosive, pivotal fight scene between Jared, the hero, and Edmund, the heroine’s brother.

  He quickly skimmed the last few pages that he’d written, but it was all still fresh in his memory, so he went right to work, starting the next scene.

  With bleakness in his eyes, Jared stared at the heavy wrought-iron gates that separated him from Sinclair Manor. The gates had been shut when night had fallen, just as they had been every night. In the morning the servants would come out, unlock them, and throw them open wide.

  As Jared stood in the darkness, his gaze moving up to the brightly lit house on the hill, he knew without a doubt that, day or night, he was no longer welcome there. Those gates had been closed to him forever.

  Jax stopped writing to take a sip from a can of soda. Now what? Now Jared had to get over that fence.

  But Carrie was in there, and welcome or not, Jared meant to have her. With an effortless leap, he climbed up, up and over the sharp spikes that decked the top of the tall fence, letting himself drop lightly to the ground on the other side.

  He’d made a promise to Carrie. It was a promise he intended to keep.

  Keeping to the trees, moving quietly, the way he’d learned as a young boy in the wilds of Kentucky, he approached the manor house. He moved with purpose, his mouth set in a grim line of determination, making his dark good looks seem almost savage, making it seem as if more than just a quarter of the blood that ran through his veins was Indian.

  His gaze quickly found Carrie’s bedroom window—

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” Jax muttered as he stopped writing. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  In his mind he could see Jared turning to stare at him, arms crossed, eyebrow raised, impatience clearly written on the character’s handsome face. “I’m going to see Carrie.”

  “Nuh-uh-uh,” Jax chided gently. “According to my outline, you’re supposed to meet her in the gazebo.”

  “Right,” Jared said with exasperation. “Only, she doesn’t show, her brother Edmund does, and he beats the crap out of me again, because I’m too noble to raise a hand against him on account of the fact that he used to be my best friend. In reality, I could whip him with one hand behind my back. I’m getting tired of this, and so will all your readers.” He glanced up at Carrie’s window again. “It’s time for some sex.”

  Jax crossed his arms, leaning back with a sigh. His heroes were all alike. They all wanted immediate, instant gratification. They all loved the heroines desperately, and couldn’t understand why Jax made them go through all sorts of contortions before being allowed to live happily ever after.

  Of course, the New York Times bestseller list meant nothing to them.

  “I love Carrie,” Jared was arguing right now. “And she loves me. I know it—she told me in that last scene you wrote. Face it, Jax, there’s no way on earth I’d get on a boat for Europe and leave her behind. It’s entirely out of character.”

  “No, it’s not,” Jax said quietly. “Not if you thought it was the best thing for Carrie.”

  Jared sighed, shaking his head slowly. “Carrie? Or Kelly? This is fiction, Jax. Don’t get it confused with the things that went wrong in your life.”

  “If things don’t go wrong, there’s no story,” Jax pointed out. “You want to climb up into Carrie’s room and make love to her, right?”

  Jared nodded.

  “And you plan to sneak her out of the house, and take her with you to Europe.”

  Jared nodded again, his eyes drawn once again to that dimly lit window on the second floor of the house.

  “What are you going to do for money?” Jax asked. “Carrie is used to living a certain lifestyle. Have you thought about that?”

  Jared shrugged. “I know she loves me more than money,” he said with an easy smile. “As long as we’re together, she’ll be happy.”

  “You’re too perfect,” Jax said in disgust. “
I’ve got to give you some insecurities, or some dark family secret.”

  “Oh, please, not the dark family secret thing,” Jared groaned. “I’m already one-quarter Native American and dirt poor to boot. Isn’t that scandalous enough?”

  “Obviously not,” Jax muttered. “I’d like this book to have more than 175 pages, if you don’t mind.”

  “You want more pages?” Jared asked, his face brightening. “I’ve got a good idea. How about this—a hundred-page love scene? Just me and Carrie, and a hundred pages of bliss?”

  Jax laughed out loud. “My, oh my, a little horny today, aren’t we?”

  Jared’s eyes were glued to Carrie’s window. “One hundred and sixty-three pages, and I’ve been trying to get my hands on Carrie since page one,” he said. “Two different times you bring me right to the brink of ecstasy, only to snatch her away from me at the last minute. I’m dying here, Jax. Give me a break.”

  Jackson smiled suddenly. “All right,” he said. “Go for it. Climb that trellis.”

  His hard gaze quickly found Carrie’s bedroom window, and in a matter of moments, he was scaling the side of the house, climbing the trellis, unmindful of the thorns from the roses that scratched his hands.

  Jared stopped climbing, and glared back at Jax. “You could have chosen ivy, but you had to use roses with thorns, didn’t you? Man, you never give me a break.”

  “Roses are romantic,” Jax said. “Besides, you’re unmindful of them.”

  The window was open, and Jared quickly pushed it wider and slipped inside. He knew as soon as his feet touched her bedroom floor that something was wrong. With his heart pounding, Jared stared at the carefully stripped bed, at the empty vanity top, the barren bookshelf. Where were all of Carrie’s things, all of her clutter? He strode to the wardrobe, swinging the doors open.

  Empty.