Stranger in the Moonlight (Edilean 7)

“Why were you unhappy?” she asked before she remembered.

Travis looked at her.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you try to make me feel sorry for you I’ll start asking you why you came to my art shows but didn’t make yourself known.”

For a moment Travis looked affronted, but then he gave a one-sided grin. “Sounds like we’re even. You think there’s any food in this room?”

“If not, you can buy the hotel and use your own catering company. Set up a Maxwell Industries right here in Janes Creek.”

Travis shook his head. “You and my father are going to get along well. In fact, he might be a little afraid of you.”

“Funny!” Kim said, but she was pleased by his words because he was saying that he was going to introduce her to his father. Maybe even his mother. Again.

When Travis rolled off the bed and stood up, Kim put her hands behind her head and watched him. She had pulled the bedspread over her and it was nice—erotic even—to be covered but to see him in the nude.

All those sports he did had given him a truly beautiful body, with muscles rippling under his skin. There were scars here and there, but they only added to the very male beauty of him.

“Do I pass?” Travis asked, his voice husky as he looked down at her.

“Yes,” she said as she smiled up at him.

Smiling back, he pulled on his discarded sweatpants. He walked around, looking at things, then went into her room. He returned with the big portfolio Gemma had made for her.

“What’s this?”

“The real reason I’m here.”

“Mind if I . . . ?”

“Sure, look all you want. I haven’t read any of it.”

As Kim watched Travis stretch out beside her and begin to read the paper, she thought how little she knew about him. On the other hand, maybe she knew everything about him. The man who had scars from doing dangerous stunts was the same boy who learned to ride a bike and an hour later was doing wheelies. The boy who sat in a tree and read about Alice and the Mad Hatter was this man who was giving his full attention to some historical documents.

“Did you really not read these?” Travis asked as he put the papers on his stomach and drew her to him.

“I saw the word cemeteries and closed the file. What did I miss?”

“Let’s see . . . You want the facts presented as a fairy tale or as in a courtroom?”

She was tempted by the courtroom idea. She’d like to see him talking to a jury. But then, he’d probably use his good looks to charm the jurors—and she wouldn’t like to see that. “Fairy tale,” she said.

“All right.” He was smiling. “Once upon a time, way back in 1893, a young woman from Edilean, Virginia, by the name of Clarissa Aldredge, wanted to spend the summer in Janes Creek, Maryland.”

“Why?” Kim asked. “Why did she leave Edilean?” She knew her tone told something deeper than her words.

Travis kissed her forehead. “I can’t imagine why she’d leave a town where everyone knows everything about everyone else.”

“Except people’s mothers,” Kim muttered.

“Are you going to listen or throw barbs at me?”

“Let me think on that,” she said. At Travis’s look she told him to continue.

“Where was I? Miss Clarissa Aldredge went to Janes Creek, Maryland, in the summer of 1893. No one knows why she went there but it’s my guess that she had friends in the little town and she wanted to spend the summer with them. Okay?”

Kim nodded.

“Whatever the reason she left, all that’s known for sure is that when she returned to Edilean in September of that year, she was pregnant. She wouldn’t tell anyone about the father, so the townspeople—who are given to a bit of gossip now and then—assumed that he was married. Clarissa never corrected anyone no matter what they said. The big problem was that after Clarissa returned, she was different. Melancholic. Depressed.”