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  Brendan was standing up, casting a rueful glance at the keys he'd just lost. "I guess no answer is answer enough. You'll be wanting to keep the keys, and I don't blame you. Just think about giving an old friend a few days before you do anything with her, okay?" Brendan waited. Sam still didn't speak. Then Brendan shrugged. "Well, I suppose I better head on home. I got the feelin' I'm gonna be doing some serious crawlin' before the night is through. I've not only got to soothe Amy down for the harsh words we shared, but now I've got to tell her I've lost our livelihood as well." He laughed mirthlessly. "Hell, maybe this solves all our problems, now I think about it. Amy was on me because I've got a run out of Marysville at six Sunday night. She was upset because I'm never home. But now, unless I find me a thousand bucks under a rock somewhere, it looks like I'll be home a lot."

  "Maybe not," Sam said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Sit back down a minute, Brendan. Maybe we can both get what we want out of this deal."

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  Delilah, sound asleep, stirred and tried to block out the knocking that kept intruding on her dreams. But then it came again, urgent and demanding. She turned over and wrapped her pillow over her head.

  "Go away," she mumbled at the mattress.

  But talking to the bed did no good. The knocking continued—along with some idiot calling her name.

  Finally, she surrendered to wakefulness. She sat up and listened.

  More pounding. On the front door. "Delilah. Hey, sis!"

  Delilah grabbed the little bedside clock and glared at it. 2:30. One of her insane brothers was pounding on her door at 2:30 a.m.

  "All right, all right," she muttered. Then she called out, "Put a lid on it! I'm coming!"

  She grabbed her robe and shoved her arms into it, belting it as she strode through the short hall and the living room to reach the front door. She flung it back.

  Brendan stood there, looking horrible. Delilah gaped at him for a moment, worry replacing vexation. Had something terrible happened? Had their father breathed his last? Were Amy and the baby okay?

  But then she noticed that he was smiling that smarmy smile that all three of her brothers used to bestow on her whenever they wanted something out of her. A warning buzzer went off in Delilah's head. She closed the door most of the way, and peered around it suspiciously.

  "Brendan." She made his name an accusation.

  "Sis." The smarmy smile widened.

  "What do you want?"

  "Well…"

  "Is there an emergency?"

  "Well…"

  "Is there?"

  "Well, sort of."

  "Sort of does not cut it at 2:30 in the morning, Brendan Jones."

  "Look, I'm sorry to bother you—"

  "Don't be sorry. Just don't." She tried to close the door on him. He stuck his foot in it.

  Grudgingly, she pulled it open once more. "All right. What do you want?"

  "I have to talk to you."

  "Now? Can't it wait till morning?"

  "No, it can't wait. Look, I really am sorry, but I don't have much of a choice. I can't go home to Amy until—"

  Delilah looked beyond his shoulder at the darkness, which smelled of coming rain, at the black sky where the clouds were gathering, and at her neighbors' houses across the road. She was a respectable citizen, not the type to conduct urgent conversations through a crack in her front door. She reached out, grabbed Brendan by the collar, and yanked him into her living room.

  "Hey, back off," he complained, swatting her hand away.

  They stood facing each other by the door. She could smell him now—he reeked of cigarettes and whiskey.

  "You can't go home to Amy until what?" Delilah demanded.

  Brendan rubbed his eyes. "Can you spare a cup of coffee? It's been a hell of a night."

  "All right. Come on." She led him into the kitchen, told him to sit at the table, and then quickly set about spooning grounds into the filter basket and setting the maker up to brew. When the coffee had dripped, she plunked a full mug in front of him and allowed him a few fortifying sips.

  Then she said, "Talk."

  He looked at the table, at his own fingers wrapped around the handle of the mug. "Amy and I had a big fight tonight." Brendan winced, at the painful memory no doubt. Then he tossed back more coffee, until he'd emptied the mug. After that, he got up and poured himself a refill.

  "Brendan," Delilah said, her patience hanging by a thread.

  "I'm getting to it. I am." Brendan returned to the chair and sat down again. "Okay, now. Where was I?"

  "You and Amy had a fight…"

  "Right. And I slammed out of the house and went over to Dad's bar."

  "How surprising."

  He gave her a look that only brothers give sisters. "Delilah, if you're going to make sarcastic comments, I could start getting crude. You remember how I used to swear. I still know how."

  "Sorry. Go on."

  He looked at her for a moment more, as if to press home his threat. Then he acquiesced to continue. "I went over to The Hole in the Wall, and I got into a poker game—"

  "Very bright," she remarked. He glared. She mouthed another "Sorry."

  He went on, "And for quite awhile I was rakin' it in. And then…"

  "You started to lose."

  He gave her a quelling look. "Who's telling this?"

  She sighed. "Keep talking."

  "I'd had a few hundred on me, and I'd built it up to near four thousand at one point."

  "That's a high stakes game," Delilah couldn't help but point out in obvious disapproval. "Father is always swearing that the games that go on at The Hole in the Wall are just friendly little—"

  "Delilah. If you want to start preaching the evils of gambling, will you do it in church tomorrow, and let me get on with this?"

  "Well, I'm only saying that this just goes to prove what Nellie and Linda Lou and I have always claimed. Gambling is a dangerous pastime—not to mention the fact that it's illegal in California."

  "Organized gambling is illegal in California, Delilah. Not a friendly game of cards with the guys."

  "Friendly? You call losing thousands of dollars on a Saturday night friendly?" Brendan just looked at her. "All right. I'm sorry. You're right. I've interrupted."

  "Thank you." Brendan dragged in a big breath. "Anyway, I started to lose, and I kept on losing. And before you know it, I had this hand I knew I could win with—and not a red cent for the final bet. So I threw in the keys to the Sweet Amy."

  "Oh my heavens," Delilah muttered, knowing exactly what her brother would say next.

  "And I lost."

  In the grim silence that followed, Delilah stared at her brother, unable to comprehend how he could have done such a harebrained thing.

  Brendan looked up. "Okay. It was about the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life."

  "No comment." Delilah stuck her hands in the pockets of her robe. "Now what's this got to do with me?"

  Brendan swallowed. "Well, see. There is some good news here."

  "Oh, really. What's that?"

  "You can make everything all right."

  "Me?"

  He nodded, looking earnest.

  "How?" The faint warning buzzer inside Delilah's mind that had started when she saw his smile at the front door was reaching full volume now.

  "If you do me one little teeny favor," Brendan said, "I get the truck back and I can go home to Amy down only five hundred or so—not good, but not the end of the world, if you know what I mean."

  "What is the favor?"

  Brendan swallowed again. "Well, see. It's who won the truck that makes this all possible…"

  "Who won the truck…" Delilah repeated the words blankly. Then she asked, with some force, "Well, who was it?"

  Brendan raked back his black hair with both hands. "Well…"

  "Who?" she asked again, and then suddenly she knew. She uttered the rotten scoundrel's
name. "Fletcher." Delilah closed her eyes and groaned. Then she forced herself to look again at her brother. "Sam Fletcher."

  "Now, sis—"

  Very quietly, she asked. "What does he want?"

  "It's really hardly anything."

  "What?"

  "I mean, compared with the Sweet Amy…"

  "What?"

  "Just…"

  "Yes?"

  "…a date with you."

  For a moment, Delilah stared at him, as his words sunk in. And then she hit the roof.

  "You wagered your own sister in a poker game?"

  Wincing, Brendan put out his hands in a fruitless plea for reason. "Settle down, sis. How're we supposed to work this out when you get like this? I already explained. I didn't bet you. I bet my rig—or at least, I put down my rig as guarantee on a thousand. But I haven't got the thousand, so Sam would be completely within his right to take the Sweet Amy. But he said he'd be willing to take you instead."

  Delilah felt like the top of her head was going to pop off when he said that. She managed to keep from shouting, barely, as she asked, "Do you realize what you're telling me? That my person will do as a substitute for a truck and trailer?"

  "Sis, you got that look you used to get back in the old days when me and the other boys would pull a harmless little joke on you. It worries me, it truly does. I thought we were beyond all that now."

  Delilah felt like she might explode. "You are not listening to me, Brendan Jones. I asked if you comprehend what you've done? You've … you've offered me up like a sacrifice to the man I most despise in all the world so that you can keep your truck."

  Now Brendan was the one to look offended. "That isn't so. And you know it. Sam never asked for you. Just a date with you. You know … dinner, drinks and a show? Lord, sis. This isn't your virtue we're talking about. It's a few hours of your time … to save me and Amy and the baby from ruin." He looked at her with a kind of defensive self-righteousness that set her teeth on edge. "And besides that, you two seemed downright friendly in town last week. You were smiling at him and saying 'why, thank you, Sam,' when he helped you down from the sleeper. It seems to me it couldn't be that horrible for you to spend an evening with the guy…"

  Delilah longed to box her brother's ears. "Oh, what do you know, Brendan Jones? What do you know about anything?"

  Brendan had sense enough not to answer that one. He was quiet for a moment, having said all he imagined he could get away with right then. Then he resumed, looking doleful, "Okay, sis. This is a free country. I can't make you do it." Now his voice dripped resigned nobility. "And I suppose it is way out of line. To ask you to do such a disgusting thing just so Amy and the baby will have food on the table and a roof over their heads."

  "You are pushing it, Brendan."

  "I'm only stating the facts."

  "Fine." She recrossed her arms. Her brother went on looking at her as if she held the lives of his wife and unborn child in her hands. Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore.

  "Stay here." She headed for her bedroom where she could change into jeans and a sweater. "I'll deal with you as soon as I get through with him!"

  In less than ten minutes, Delilah pulled up in front of the new house Sam Fletcher had recently built.

  The house stood, framed by cedars and birches, on four acres near the end of Bullfinch Lane

  . Though there were few homes nearby as of yet, there would be soon enough. Bullfinch Lane was a neatly paved road now, and little resembled the dirt trail down which Sam, barefoot in a wetsuit, had carried the kicking and screaming teenaged Delilah twenty years before.

  As she sat in her car after turning the engine off, bolstering her courage to do what must be done, Delilah noted that the porch light was on. The rest of the house appeared unlit. But his room could be at the back, after all. And he could be asleep. Though, the way she'd always heard it, the devil never slept.

  Maybe he wasn't there. Maybe she should come back in the morning.

  Delilah banished the cowardly thought the moment it took form. If she had to wait all night, she wasn't going away until she'd told the rotten rascal just what she thought of him. She'd yell at him so long and so loud that he'd give her the keys to the Sweet Amy just to get her to stop.

  With that idea firmly in mind, Delilah bolted from her car and gave the door a slam. Then she hesitated for a moment, as she breathed in the moisture on the cold air. The crescent moon had already gone down. The sky was a mass of turbulent shadows as the clouds that obscured the stars churned, black and heavy with rain. A spring storm was on the way.

  That's the truth, Delilah thought grimly, a doozy of a storm. And it's hitting Sam Fletcher's house right about now…

  She marched up the front steps. Once at the entrance, she began alternately pounding on the front door and leaning on the bell, discovering great satisfaction in making such a ruckus—especially considering that he lived far enough out that no one else in town was likely to hear her at this hour of the night. Or rather morning…

  "Sam Fletcher!" she shouted. Ah, what gratification to holler out his name with all the loathing she was feeling for the rogue right then.

  Normally, she liked to think of herself as a very calm person, a self-controlled person, a no-nonsense person, level-headed and reasonable above all. The passion and tumult of her painful childhood and adolescence had passed, she always told herself, and she had grown into a mature, rational woman, who never went in for rash displays.

  But tonight was an exception. Sam Fletcher had finally pushed her one step beyond rationality. She was a one-woman storm, to match the one in the sky.

  She bellowed, "I know you're in there! You come out this instant! I want to talk to you!"

  She pounded on the doorbell in several sharp bursts, and then hit the door some more with a tightly clenched fist.

  "Sam Fletcher, I warn you! I'm not leaving this spot until you come out here and—"

  The door was pulled back, suddenly, cutting her off in mid-tirade and nearly causing her to go sprawling into the small foyer beyond. Delilah gasped, and pulled herself up.

  And then she fell back a little, her mouth dropping open in surprise.

  It was her nemesis, all right, standing there with that knowing grin spread over his too-handsome face. He was soaking wet. And wearing only a towel.

  "Why, Lilah," he murmured cordially. "How nice of you to drop by. I was just cleaning up and getting ready for bed."

  She blinked, and licked her lips and struggled desperately to match his composure, though her heart pounded like jungle drums in her ears and her face felt aflame from within. He had … why, he had silky reddish hair on his chest, and his little nipples were hard, from the chilly night air. In fact, his golden skin, beneath which the hard muscles rippled and bulged, had goose bumps all over it. He stood with one powerful arm fisted on a hip. The reddish hair on that arm was matted with moisture, as was the hair on his chest. The hair on his head looked darker, all wet like it was. It was loose, too, falling on his shoulders in snaky water-weighted curls. He looked—primitive and magnificent, like a viking or some feral barbarian from a lost, untamed age.

  Her insides, as they had on the street the other day, bloomed with heat once again. And she saw herself stepping forward, her lips parting, pressing herself up against him, running her hungry hands over his huge shoulders as she licked him dry with her tongue.

  He chuckled. "I'm glad to see you too, sweetheart," he said softly, as if in response to a greeting she had never—she was sure—uttered. "Why don't you come in?"

  She stepped forward in a kind of daze, and was beyond the threshold before she really let herself decide if such a move was wise. He gently pushed the door shut behind her. And there she was, alone with him in his house…

  He was standing behind her after shutting the door. She turned, too quickly, like a small frightened animal cornered by a large beast. She retreated a step, though that brought her backside in contact with the wall.
<
br />   She realized she was staring. And from the look in his eyes, she knew there must be way too much of the sensual longing she didn't want to feel written clearly on her flaming face.

  She forced herself to croak, "I want to talk to you."

  "Okay. Talk."

  She sucked in a breath. In the closed space, so near him, she was having great difficulty deciding what to say next. He smelled of soap and water and man, a delicious, arousing scent, one that messed up her thought processes, short-circuited her synapses.

  She had to get control of herself, she knew it. Otherwise this encounter was going to end up a rout. Silently, she castigated herself for a fool. She'd indulged in a stormy scene by pounding on his door and yelling as she had. And stormy scenes were something she never allowed herself since she'd matured. And now she was paying the price. She'd been caught off guard, with her adrenaline flowing, when he'd pulled back the door—off guard and vulnerable in the worst and most dangerous way.

  She decided a little retrenchment was in order. She drew herself up.

  "Go put something on first," she instructed in the same tone she used when one of her students dared to misbehave. She poked her head around the corner and saw a living room. "I'll wait in here." She flew out of the foyer and into the larger space.

  He chuckled behind her. "Yes, ma'am," he said softly, and then left her alone.

  She ignored him as he padded up a switchback staircase. Then, while she waited for him to return decently covered, she pretended to study the angled ceilings and the full bookcases and the gray leather furniture accented with bright-colored pillows and throws.

  But even looking around worked against her. As she had in his store three weeks ago, she couldn't help but notice how different this was than what she would have imagined—if she'd ever felt like imagining where Sam Fletcher made his home. The room was attractive and inviting. The books, both hardbound and paperback, looked as if he might even have read a lot of them, and the prints and paintings on the walls were ones she herself might have chosen.

  Oh, it was all just too … disorienting. She'd rushed over here without stopping to consider, caught him in the altogether, and now she was wandering around waiting for him to cover himself, thinking that she liked his house better than her own.