Wildfire

WILDFIRE

A Bantam Book /June 1993

LOVESWEPT® and the wave design are registered trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and elsewhere.

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1993 by Billie Green.

Cover art copyright © 1993 by Barney Plotkin.

To Sally, for the brainstorming session.

You brought the brain,

I provided the storm.

Wildfire

1. any furious, uncontrollable fire

2. something that acts rapidly and intensely

3. a sweeping conflagration.

"
T
ell her . .. tell her—" Rae Anderson broke off in frustration and blew out a puff of air, stirring a stray lock of auburn hair on her forehead. "Tell her to stop it."

"Gee, why didn't I think of that? That'll probably fix everything."

Hearing the undisguised sarcasm from the woman on the other side of the desk, Rae glanced up. Glenna Baxter, Rae's excellent secretary and even more excellent friend, was a well-padded brunette with a baby doll's face and a field marshal's attitude.

"Well what am I supposed to do?" Rae asked in exasperation. "I've already explained to Miss Rodale that her actions could seriously jeopardize her interests. I've said it on the phone, in a letter, and to her face. What else can I do?"

Glenna raised one precisely plucked eyebrow. " 'Her actions could seriously jeopardize her interests'? People don't talk like that, Rae. You have to come right out and tell her that sane people don't go around shooting at meter readers .. . especially not people who are trying to sue the electric company."

With something between a moan and a laugh, Rae covered her face with one hand. "It was only a water pistol."

"The meter reader didn't know that. And since Miss Rodale used a slingshot to launch pieces of candy at him last month, you can understand why the man was a little gun-shy."

"Who would have thought M&M's could raise such ugly little welts?" Rae murmured, pulling at the neck of her cotton blouse. "Is it getting hotter in here? Don't you think we could turn on the air-conditioning ... just for a little while?"

"Stop whining. Only successful lawyers can afford cool air." The brunette rose to her feet. "Until you get a few more clients, we'll either learn to enjoy perspiration or start shooting at the meter reader ourselves. I'll run next door and get us a cold drink."

As soon as the door closed behind Glenna, Rae leaned back in her chair, her lips curving in a wry smile. More clients, she thought. It sounded like such a simple thing.

Rae knew she was a good lawyer—a damn good lawyer—but in Dicton, Texas, population ten thousand and change, attorneys tended to be passed down from generation to generation.

And then there was that pesky little gender thing. In this part of the country, female lawyers were considered an anomaly. A peculiarity of nature along the lines of a potato shaped like Snoopy. Interesting, but of no earthly use.

But probably the biggest strike against Rae was the fact that she was an outsider, born and raised somewhere other than Dicton. Which meant that the only people willing to give her a chance were either newcomers like herself or those whose cases had been turned down by all the homegrown lawyers, people like crazy old Seraphina Rodale.

Rae liked Dicton. She wanted to make this town her home. And the people here seemed to like her as well. They invited her to their parties and dropped by her office to chat. They brought her home-baked cookies and told her what to do for a cold.

And then they took their business somewhere else.

Picking up a file from her desk, Rae opened it, stared at it for a minute, then closed it, shifting restlessly in her seat.

In the past few months she had found herself falling into weird moods. She had tried telling herself that because she was twenty-eight, something inside was whispering, "It's getting late. It's getting late." She had even told herself that when it came right down to it, she was first and foremost a woman, ordained by Nature to perpetuate the species.

Rae told herself a lot of things, but they were mostly a crock of bull. Her mood had nothing to do with biological clocks or gene pools. It had to do with loneliness, and it had to do with love. Rae wanted a family.

With a little twist of a smile she picked up the photograph from her desk and ran caressing fingers across the face that looked back at her, a smiling young man with strong features and thick, sandy blond hair. And in his eyes, in those tender gray eyes, Rae saw an entire world of sweetness and love.

"You shouldn't have left me, Johnny," she whispered.

If he had had to leave, he should have given her children first. Johnny should have left behind a piece of himself for her to love.

Exhaling a slow, controlled breath, she wished that, at the very least, her late husband had left the way open for another man to father her children. But Johnny had been too wonderful, too perfect. The best lover, the best life partner, the best friend.

No man could measure up to that, and sometimes— not often but sometimes—she resented Johnny for having been so wonderful, for having been so absolutely matchless.

Rae had always known she would marry Johnny. From that first day, the day his family moved next door to hers, Johnny had been her constant companion, a hero in her little-girl eyes, and she had told him then that she would marry him someday.

Later, when it came Johnny's turn to propose, their plans had become more concrete. They would practice law together, and after a few years Johnny would go into politics in order to make the world a better place for their children.

Rae had never doubted that their shared dream for the future would become reality. She hadn't known then that there would be no future for Johnny.

There had been times in the past nine years when Rae's need for a family and one-person-just-for-her had urged her to consider settling for what she could get. And in the time since Johnny's death, there had been men who wanted to marry her, nice men who would have given her a nice life and fathered a couple of nice children.

But Rae couldn't bring herself to accept second best. She wanted—she needed—to love someone the way she had loved Johnny.

"Electrifying fizz, energizing sugar, and mysterious chemical compounds for me," Glenna said, as she walked back into the office. "Really boring mineral water for you. No substance, no challenge. I don't see how you can drink this stuff. It tastes like day-old Alka-Seltzer."

As she placed the water-beaded bottle on the desk, the brunette glanced out the window. "Whoa . . . this view is definitely getting better. I swear that man was born knowing how to get a woman's motor started."

Swinging her chair around, Rae looked out the window and felt her heart give a little hop-skip. Standing across the street, smiling down at the mayor's plump wife, was a man with sun-streaked brown hair and an incredibly handsome face. Drew McCallister.

Drew lived on the famed Ashkelon Ranch with his father, John Joseph McCallister. On paper, Drew and his father were partners, but even though the elder McCallister was in his seventies and had been paralyzed from the waist down for almost twenty years, everyone knew that the old man was still in charge. From a wheelchair in the study of Ashkelon, Joe McCallister ruled an empire.

Over the years Joe had acquired money, property, and a reputation for ruthlessness, but because of Drew's nature, the old man hadn't been able to pass his single-minded ambition on to his son. No one in Welch County was more admired or well liked than Drew McCallister. And as Rae stared at him, it occurred to her that for the first time in nine years she was feeling something more than casual interest in a man.

Maybe Drew was responsible for her recent restless moods. Had she finally found a man who could measure up to Johnny?

"Talk about hot." Glenna was still talking, still ogling. "Steam starts to rise every time I look at him. It's not just that he's the sexiest thing alive. It's .. . it's—I don't know. There's always been something a little dangerous about him, as though—"

"You think Drew is dangerous?" Rae broke in, frowning as she studied his features. Even from across the street, the gentleness in Drew's face was evident.

"Drew? Who in hell's talking about Drew?"

Before the words were out of Glenna's mouth, a man stepped from behind an ornamental tree, and Rae knew who her friend was referring to.

Tanner West
.

Tanner was not only Ashkelon's foreman, he was Drew's best friend, an association that confounded Rae. She knew that Drew and Tanner had been raised together, and from what she had heard, no one could ask for a better overseer than the latter.

But the men's personal relationship simply didn't make sense. How could someone as kind, decent, and rock-solid as Drew have a man like Tanner West for his best friend?

Rising to her feet, Rae joined Glenna at the window, drawn there against her will. A tall, muscular man, Tanner looked like a Roman gladiator done in bronze. His thick black hair was just a little too long and always looked as though it had been combed by a wild Texas wind. The tight, faded jeans he wore had been aged to a softness that displayed every hard muscle in his buttocks and thighs. And, although she couldn't see it from across the street, she knew that a demon's light glittered in those dark, deep-set eyes.

Rae didn't like him. She didn't like him at all. But every now and again she wondered if her feelings for Tanner were based on the kind of man he was or if she disliked him because he so obviously disliked her.

They had met several weeks after Rae moved to Dicton, on the night of the Lone Dees dance.

Lone Dees, a corruption of a French term for the tenth year, was a local celebration dating back to the early nineteenth century when a group of French Huguenots had decided to make this part of Texas their home. Every ten years the austere farmers would gather together in Dicton to thank

God for bringing them to this new land and to brag about their farms, their livestock, and their children.

Gradually the celebration changed to reflect the times, and now Lone Dees was a weeklong mingling of carnival rides and livestock shows, auctions and beauty pageants, parades and fireworks displays. The dance, held on the crepe-paper-bedecked town square, was the chaotic event that brought the festival to a close.

For Rae, Lone Dees was a perfect introduction to the town. Everyone, old and young, rich and poor, participated, and they were all friendly, all welcoming.

But on the night of the dance, as the shadows began to fall on the long summer day and all around her people were partnered for dances or flirtatious conversation, Rae had felt a pricking loneliness nudge against her. And that was when she spotted the man leaning against the wall at the edge of an unlit alley.

He stood alone in the shadows, tall and dark, his attention held by a group of children who were mimicking their parents with an overly exuberant version of the two-step.

As though he felt her curious gaze on him, the man began to turn toward her. In the next instant the sky over the town square came alive with fireworks, spotlighting the interlude, exaggerating its importance. His rugged features and shadowy eyes, illuminated by erratic bursts of distant light, caught at her imagination and held her still.

Only for the briefest of moments did they stand and stare at each other, but in that moment Rae felt a flash of communication, incredibly intense and unlike anything she had experienced before.

Because in his eyes, eyes dark enough to be mistaken for black, Rae had recognized a deep, restless hunger so powerful and so disturbingly familiar that she had been forced to look away from the sight.

The whole episode had been over in a matter of seconds, and in the following days, she was forced to admit that her imagination had been getting out of hand, in what was locally known as Lone Dees madness. The excitement of the celebration had caught her in its grip and played tricks with her mind.

When Rae had next met Tanner, there was nothing in his eyes except taunting, scornful animosity. Because his attitude was so obvious, Rae had assumed it was a personality trait, that he was antagonistic to everyone, but after seeing him interact with other people in town, she had changed her mind. With everyone else, either he was casually polite or he ignored them completely. His hostility was reserved for Rae.

Now, as she watched him from across the street,

Tanner was once again evoking unwanted reactions in her. Sweet heaven, even the way he moved was an affront to decent folk. Tanner West, with his sensual mouth and desperado eyes, was not a respectable man.

Rae felt her muscles contract in irresistible anger and, as on that night two years ago, the sight of him left her so unsettled that she had to look away.

"I don't know what this town would do without Tanner to gossip about," Glenna said. "He's been raising hell and eyebrows, not to mention expectations, for as long as I've known him. Getting drunk, starting fights ... I told you about the time he rode that wild horse of his right through the middle of Eddie and Louise Wheeler's backyard barbecue." She cut her eyes toward Rae. "The funny thing is, Drew always defends him."

"Funny? No, that's the kind of man Drew is."

"I guess so." The brunette's voice was doubtful. "To tell you the truth, I've always thought of Drew as a little bit ordinary, but the way he stands up for Tanner is pretty damn high class if you ask me. Even back when that gas-station thing happened, Drew—"

"What gas-station thing?"

"You mean I didn't tell you about that? Tanner must have been about seventeen when it happened. Oh my gosh, was it really eighteen years ago? Rae,

I'm getting old! How could eighteen years have gone by? I'm only five years older than you, but look at you and look at me. Why didn't I get your complexion? Or your figure? I can't even grow decent fingernails. It's not fair. Especially since you—"

"Glenna . . . the gas station?"

"What? Oh, yeah." The brunette stopped patting her throat with the back of her hand and took a swallow of her drink as she leaned against the window. "Well, rumor had it that Tanner was involved in a robbery at Hardy's Texaco. Lordy, the gossip was flying that week. But nothing ever came of it because Old Joe paid Pete Hardy to drop the charges. At least that was the story that went around. Some people say that's why Tanner works so hard for so little pay, because Old Joe's holding that robbery over his head. Which is stupid when you think about it. I mean, the statute of limitations probably ran out years ago." Glenna shrugged. "Who knows? I'm just grateful he stays. He adds a little spice to this town. He always looks like he just got out of bed." She grinned. "Somebody else's bed."