Foxfire Light

JANET DAILEY CAPTURES

THE HEART OF AMERICA!

LOOK FOR:

The Four Volume Calder Saga:

This Calder Range

Stands a Calder Man

This Calder Sky

Calder Born, Calder Bred

The Best Way to Lose

For the Love of God

Foxfire Light

The Glory Game

The Great Alone

The Hostage Bride

The Lancaster Men

Leftover Love

Mistletoe and Holly

Night Way

The Pride of Hannah Wade

Ride the Thunder

The Rogue

The Second Time

Separate Cabins

Silver Wings, Santiago Blue

Terms of Surrender

Touch of Wind

Western Man

PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS

 

“Please, Don't Stop Now, Linc.”

She was practically begging him to make love to her but she didn't care.

A second later, his fingers were gripping her wrists and pulling her arms from around his neck. In dazed confusion, she opened her eyes and blinked at the harshness of his features.

“What is it? What did I do wrong, Linc?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” His mouth was grim. “Maybe I just don't like the idea of being a vacation fling—someone to brag to your friends about back in California.”

 

Books by Janet Dailey

The Great Alone

The Glory Game

The Pride of Hannah Wade

Silver Wings, Santiago Blue

Calder Born, Calder Bred

Stands a Calder Man

This Calder Range

This Calder Sky

The Best Way to Lose

For the Love of God

Foxfire Light

The Hostage Bride

The Lancaster Men

Leftover Love

Mistletoe & Holly

The Second Time

Separate Cabins

Terms of Surrender

Western Man

Nightway

Ride the Thunder

The Rogue

Touch the Wind

Published by POCKET BOOKS

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1982 by Janet Dailey

Published by arrangement with Silhouette Books

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-87502-7

eISBN: 978-1-4516-3984-1

First Pocket Books printing January 1984

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.

FOX RIRE LIGHT

M
ost of the lime-green bedspread was hidden by the two suitcases lying open. Both were nearly filled with neatly folded summer clothes. The doors leading off the bedroom to the veranda were standing open to let in the cool night breeze off the California desert.

Joanna Morgan emerged from the spacious walk-in closet with more clothes destined for the suitcases. Her shoulder-length, ash-blonde hair was tied with a white silk scarf at the nape of her neck to keep it out of the way while she packed. Leggy and slim, she moved with an unconscious grace, her posture revealing her self-assurance and self-confidence. It was all completely natural to her, an in-born characteristic that did not need an artificial air of sophistication.

Preoccupied with her packing, she didn't notice the elegantly dressed woman pause outside the hall door. She was older than Joanna, but skillful makeup and the youthful style of her bleached blonde hair concealed her true age. The physical resemblance was sufficient for any on-looker to guess they were related but few suspected that Elizabeth Morgan was Joanna's mother. More often, outsiders guessed she was a young aunt.

The veneer of amiable sophistication fell away as Elizabeth surveyed the partially packed suitcases with surprise and sharpening suspicion. “Joanna, what is the meaning of this?” she demanded as she entered the room.

After sliding a brief glance at her mother, Joanna resumed her packing. There was a faint lifting of her chin to indicate her determination not to surrender to the intimidating ways of her mother.

“Uncle Reece is vacationing at his place in the Ozarks. He invited me to join him—and I've decided to accept.” Her reply ended on a note of challenge.

There was a thinning of the precisely outlined carmine lips. “Why wasn't I told about this before now?”

With a pair of white slacks neatly positioned in the suitcase, Joanna turned and walked calmly to the chest of drawers. She didn't bother to immediately answer as she took out several sets of undergarments and carried them to the bed.

“In case you've forgotten, Mother, I am twenty-one. I don't exactly need your permission anymore,” she stated. One shoulder was lifted in a shrug that seemed to lessen her stand of defiance. “Besides—I only decided this afternoon that I was going.”

“You'll simply have to change your plans,” Elizabeth Morgan announced with the airy certainty of one accustomed to having her wishes granted. “I've made arrangements for us to have lunch tomorrow with Sid Clemens. He's the head of a very prestigious advertising firm. I'm certain he can find a position for you in his agency.”

Joanna stopped packing to face the woman standing at the foot of the brass bed. “I am leaving to get away from all these private job interviews you keep setting up. I haven't had a minute to call my own since I received my bachelor's degree.”

With barely disguised irritation, she picked up the underclothes and began arranging them in the suitcase. Without looking, Joanna was fully aware of the affronted expression her mother was wearing. A trace of ironic humor appeared in the sudden slant of her mouth.

“We really have—'come a long way, baby,'” Joanna mockingly quoted the phrase attached to the women's lib movement. “You know there was a time when mothers paraded their daughters in front of every eligible bachelor in town. Now—we're dragged around to meet every prospective employer.”

“I am only trying to help you,” her mother declared stiffly.

“Well, don't,” Joanna retorted sharply, then released a long breath. “I just want to get away and relax for a couple of days. There isn't any harm in that.”

“But why on earth would you want to go to the Ozarks?” Elizabeth Morgan plainly showed her disapproval of the choice.

Joanna just shrugged. “It's been quite awhile since I've spent any time with Reece.” She rarely referred to him as “Uncle” Reece, although he was her father's brother. She had always called him by his first name. Again, there was a half-smile when Joanna added, “And the Ozarks sound
far
away from Los Angeles.” Her brown eyes cast a measuring glance at her mother. “You're just upset because Reece didn't invite you to come, too.”

Her mother appeared taken aback, and more than a little flustered by the hint of an accusation that she was jealous. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she protested. “Why would I be upset over that?”

Aware that her question had hit a sensitive nerve, Joanna continued with her packing, taking her time. “Daddy's been dead for almost fifteen years now. And lately, I've been getting the impression that Reece is more than just Daddy's older brother to you.”

There was a wary attempt to guard her expression and hide her true feelings when Elizabeth replied, too calmly, “Over the years, Reece and I
have become very good friends but if you are hinting that I want to marry him”—she paused, a little uncomfortably—“Reece has always been too much of a playboy to ever settle down.” She stopped trying to explain her own attitude, diverting the topic to an explanation of his. “He isn't likely to change his spots this late in life.”

But Joanna had guessed that her mother would love to be wrong. Her ego needed the excuse that it was Reece's inability to settle down that had kept him from marrying, rather than her inability to attract him to the altar.

Her mother deliberately changed the subject to revert to their original topic. “Since you insist on traveling to that hillbilly country,” she began, on a faint note of contempt for Joanna's destination, “you could at least postpone your trip for a couple of days. I went to a great deal of trouble arranging our luncheon engagement with Sid Clemens tomorrow. The least you could do is keep it.”

“No.” Joanna closed the lid of one of the suitcases and locked it. “I've already talked to Reece and told him I have reservations on the first flight out of L.A. in the morning. I'm not changing my plans for you—or Sid Clemens.”

On this issue, she could be as stubborn as her mother. She was going and she wouldn't be talked out of it.

The night air was somnolent and still, with not enough breeze to ripple the moon-shot surface of the lake. The dark sky was dusty with
stars. In a nearby cove of the lake, a bullfrog sang its bass solo to the background music of
chirruping
crickets. It was a warm summer evening, the heavily wooded Ozark hills unwilling to relinquish the day's heat.

Where a hill sloped into the lake, a cabin sat in a man-made clearing, the new-fangled kind made of precut logs, modern rustic. Its covered porch faced the lake and ran the width of the cabin. A light burned inside, attracting the moths to the screened door. The soft whirr of their wings could be heard as they beat themselves against the wire mesh.

In the shadows of the porch, beyond the fall of light fanning out from the doorway, two men sat in a pair of cane-backed rockers. The run of silence between them was companionable. Yet the two men were sharply different and the differences were evident in a glance.

One was older, on one side or the other of the fifty mark. His dark hair was showing signs of graying, but his features retained the lean handsomeness of his youth, proud and strong. His eyes were dark, nearly black, lit by an unquenchable vitality. There was a worldliness about him that was not gained from this environment. His experience did not come from these hills, but outside them. Reece Morgan was the outsider, the “furriner.”