Social Graces Read online

  Whether Or Not She Was Ready To Admit It, She’d Been As Turned On By That Hot, Sweet-Salty Kiss As He Was.

  It occurred to him that he might have set his mission back a few days.

  Or maybe not. Maybe now that he’d defused this crazy physical attraction, he could concentrate on doing what he’d come down here to do.

  So there was some electricity sizzling between them. Roughly enough to light up Shea Stadium. It might help if he could take her to bed and make love until he was cross-eyed, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  It might also help if he could find whatever he was looking for and get the hell out—put a few hundred miles between them. But somewhere along the line, that idea had lost its appeal.

  Dear Reader,

  Thanks for choosing Silhouette Desire, where we bring you the ultimate in powerful, passionate and provocative love stories. Our immensely popular series DYNASTIES: THE BARONES comes to a rollicking conclusion this month with Metsy Hingle’s Passionately Ever After. But don’t worry, another wonderful family saga is on the horizon. Come back next month when Barbara McCauley launches DYNASTIES: THE DANFORTHS. Full of Southern charm—and sultry scandals—this is a series not to be missed!

  The wonderful Dixie Browning is back with an immersing tale in Social Graces. And Brenda Jackson treats readers to another unforgettable—and unbelievably hot!—hero in Thorn’s Challenge. Kathie DeNosky continues her trilogy about hard-to-tame men with the fabulous Lonetree Ranchers: Colt.

  Also this month is another exciting installment in the TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: THE STOLEN BABY series. Laura Wright pens a powerful story with Locked Up With a Lawman—I think the title says it all. And welcome back author Susan Crosby who kicks off her brand-new series, BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, with the compelling Christmas Bonus, Strings Attached.

  With wishes for a happy, healthy holiday season,

  Melissa Jeglinski

  Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

  DIXIE BROWNING

  Social Graces

  Books by Dixie Browning

  Silhouette Desire

  Shadow of Yesterday #68

  Image of Love #91

  The Hawk and the Honey #111

  Late Rising Moon #121

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  In the Palm of Her Hand #264

  A Winter Woman #324

  There Once Was a Lover #337

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  Along Came Jones #427

  Thin Ice #474

  Beginner’s Luck #517

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  Twice in a Blue Moon #588

  Just Say Yes #637

  Not a Marrying Man #678

  Gus and the Nice Lady #691

  Best Man for the Job #720

  Hazards of the Heart #780

  Kane’s Way #801

  *Keegan’s Hunt #820

  *Lucy and the Stone #853

  *Two Hearts, Slightly Used #890

  †Alex and the Angel #949

  †The Beauty, the Beast and the Baby #985

  The Baby Notion #1011

  †Stryker’s Wife #1033

  Look What the Stork Brought #1111

  ‡The Passionate G-Man #1141

  ‡A Knight in Rusty Armor #1195

  Texas Millionaire #1232

  The Bride-in-Law #1251

  §A Bride for Jackson Powers #1273

  §The Virgin and the Vengeful Groom #1331

  More To Love #1372

  Rocky and the Senator’s Daughter #1399

  The Millionaire’s Pregnant Bride #1420

  **Beckett’s Cinderella #1453

  **Beckett’s Convenient Bride #1484

  Social Graces #1550

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  Single Female (Reluctantly) Seeks…

  Silhouette Special Edition

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  The Love Thing #305

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  Something for Herself #381

  Reluctant Dreamer #460

  A Matter of Timing #527

  The Homing Instinct #747

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  Silhouette Books

  Silhouette Christmas Stories 1987

  “Henry the Ninth”

  Spring Fancy 1994

  “Grace and the Law”

  World’s Most Eligible Bachelors

  ‡His Business, Her Baby

  Harlequin Historicals—Writing as Bronwyn Williams

  White Witch #3

  Dandelion #23

  Stormwalker #47

  Gideon’s Fall #67

  The Mariner’s Bride #99

  The Paper Marriage #524

  Longshadow’s Woman #553

  The Mail-Order Brides #589

  **Beckett’s Birthright #633

  Blackstone’s Bride #667

  Lone Star Country Club

  The Quiet Seduction

  DIXIE BROWNING

  is an award-winning painter and writer, mother and grandmother who has written nearly eighty contemporary romances. Dixie and her sister, Mary Williams, also write historical romances as Bronwyn Williams. Contact Dixie at www.dixiebrowning.com, or at P.O. Box 1389, Buxton, NC 27920.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  One

  Standing in the middle of the bedroom, dangling a pair of Chanel slingbacks by the stiletto heels, with a sleeveless black Donna Karan slung over her shoulder, Val Bonnard stared at the partially open closet and listened for the scratching noise to come again. Shivering in the chill air, she glanced quickly at the window. With the wind howling a gale, it might be only a branch scraping the eaves. What else could it be? She was alone in the house, wasn’t she?

  She was alone, period.

  Swallowing the lump that threatened to lodge permanently in her throat, she glared at the closet door. It was ajar because there wasn’t a level surface in the entire house. All the doors swung open, and all the windows leaked cold air. The temperature outside hovered in the low forties, which wasn’t particularly cold for Carolina in the middle of January, but it felt colder because of the wind. And the dampness.

  And the aloneness.

  She was still glaring when the mouse emerged, tipped her a glance, twitched its ears, then calmly proceeded to follow the baseboard to a postage-stamp-sized hole near the corner of the room.

  It was the last straw in a haystack of last straws. Grief, anger and helplessness clotted around her and she dropped onto the edge of the sagging iron-framed bed and let the tears come.

  A few minutes later she
sniffed and felt in the pocket of her leather jeans for a tissue. As if pockets designed to display starbursts of rhinestones could possibly harbor anything so practical.

  Sniffing again, she thought, it’s not going to work. What on earth had she expected? That by driving for two days to reach a quaint, half remembered house on a half remembered barrier island she would not only escape from crank calls, but magically exchange grief for perspective? That a lightbulb would suddenly appear above her head and she would instantly know who was responsible for Bonnard Financial Consultants’ downfall, her father’s disgrace, his arrest and his untimely death?

  Time and distance lent perspective. She’d read that somewhere, probably on a greeting card. She’d had more than two and a half months. Time hadn’t helped.

  As for distance, she had run as far away as she could run, to the only place she had left. Now she was here with as many of her possessions as she could cram into her new, cheap, gas-guzzling secondhand car, in a village so small it lacked so much as a single stoplight. She had even escaped from those irritating calls, as there wasn’t a working phone in the house. Her cell phone with its caller ID didn’t seem to work here.

  There wasn’t a dry cleaner on the island either, and half her wardrobe required dry-cleaning, most of it special handling. “Why not whine about it, wimp?” she muttered.

  At least focusing on trivia helped stave off other thoughts—thoughts that swept her too close to the edge.

  It had taken all her energy since her father had died to settle his affairs and dispose of the contents of the gabled, slate-roofed Tudor house that had been home for most of her life. Although stunned to learn that it was so heavily mortgaged, she’d actually been relieved when the bank had taken over the sale.

  The rest had gone quickly—the disposal of the contents. Belinda and Charlie had helped enormously before they’d moved to take on new positions. She and Belinda had shared more than a few tears, and even stoic old Charlie had been red-eyed a few times.

  In the end, all she’d brought south with her was her hand luggage, three garment bags and three banana boxes, one filled with personal mementos, one with linens, and another with the files she’d retrieved from her father’s study.

  In retrospect, everything about the past eleven weeks had been unreal in the truest sense of the word. There’d been a bottle of special vintage Moët Chandon in the industrial-sized, stainless-steel refrigerator, waiting for her birthday celebration. Her father had bought it the day before he’d been arrested. “Belinda has orders to prepare all your favorite dishes,” he’d told her the night before, looking almost cheerful for a change. The old lines and shadows had been there, but at least there’d been some color in his face.

  She’d asked several times before if anything was worrying him. Each time he’d brushed off her question. “Stock market’s down,” he’d said the last time, then he’d brightened. “Cholesterol’s down, too, though. Can’t have everything, can we?”

  She’d chided him for spending too much time downtown and been relieved when he’d promised to take her advice and start spending more time at home, even though she knew very well he would spend most of it closed up in his study with Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.

  For her birthday she had deliberately arranged to have dinner at home with only her dad instead of the usual bash at the club. She had planned to mellow him with the champagne and find out exactly what had been eating at him. But early on the morning of her thirtieth birthday a pair of strangers who turned out to be police officers had shown up at the door and invited her father to accompany them downtown.

  She’d seen the whole thing from the top of the stairs. Barefoot and wearing only a robe and nightgown, she had hurried downstairs, demanding to know what was happening.

  The spokesman for the pair had been stiffly polite. “Just a few questions, miss, that’s all.” But obviously that hadn’t been all. Her father had been ashen. Alarmed, she’d called first his physician, then his lawyer.

  The next few hours had swept past like a kaleidoscope. She didn’t recall having gotten dressed—she certainly hadn’t taken time to shower, much less to arrange her hair before racing outside. Belinda had called after her and told her to take her father’s medicine to the police station, so she’d dashed back and snatched the pill bottle from the housekeeper’s hand.

  They’d had only brief minutes to speak privately when the officer in the room with him had gone to get him a cup of water. Speaking quietly, as if he were afraid of being overheard, Frank Bonnard had instructed her to remove all unlabeled paper files from the file cabinet in his study and store them in her bedroom.

  Confused and frightened, she had wanted to ask more, but just then the officer had returned. Her father had nodded, swallowed his pills and said, “Go home. I’ll be there as soon as I get through here.”

  That was the last time she’d seen him alive. Before he could even be bonded out, he’d suffered a fatal coronary.

  Now, peeling a paper towel from the roll on the old oak dresser, Val blew her nose, mopped her eyes and sighed. She’d been doing entirely too much of that lately. Great, gasping sighs, as if she were starved for oxygen.

  What she was starved for were answers. Now that it was too late, she wondered if it had been a mistake to leave Greenwich. She could have rented a room, possibly even an apartment. If there were any answers to be found, they would hardly be found halfway down the East Coast in a tiny village her father had visited only once in his entire life.

  On the other hand, the auditors, the men from the Financial Crimes Unit, plus those from all the various government agencies involved, were convinced they already had their man—their scapegoat—even though they’d made another token arrest. And even if she were to unravel the mess and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that her father was innocent, it was too late to bring him back. The best she could hope to do was to restore his reputation.

  Light from the setting sun, filtered by ancient, moss-draped live oaks, turned the dusty windows opaque. So many things on the island had changed since she’d last seen this old house, she would never have found it without the real estate agent’s explicit instruction.

  Just over a week ago she had called the agency that managed the property she’d inherited from her great-grandmother, Achsah Dozier. A few hours ago, following the agent’s instructions, she had located Seaview Realty. While the office was scarcely larger than a walk-in closet, the woman seated behind a desk cluttered with brochures, boxes of Girl Scout cookies and what appeared to be tax forms, seemed friendly, if somewhat harried.

  “Marian Kuvarky.” The woman nodded toward the nameplate on her desk. “Glad you made it before I had to close up,” she said, handing over a set of keys. “I’d better warn you, though—I still haven’t found anyone to give the place a good going-over since the people who were renting it moved out. You might want to check into a motel for a few days.”

  Val had come too far to be put off another moment. Besides, she couldn’t afford a motel. Even in the dead of winter, beach prices would seriously erode her dwindling funds. “I can take care of a little dirt, just tell me how to find my house.” She was hardly helpless. She had looked after a three-room apartment with only a weekly maid before she’d moved back home to Connecticut.

  Ms. Kuvarky, a youngish blonde with tired eyes and an engaging smile said, “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Take a left once you leave here and turn off onto the Back Road.”

  “What’s the name of it?”

  “Of what?”

  “The road.”

  “Back Road. It’s named that. I had the power turned on after you called. I forgot if I told you or not, but the last renters left owing for two months. I would have had it ready to rent out again once I found somebody to do a few minor repairs, but like I said over the phone, my cleaner’s out on maternity leave. She says she’ll be back, but you know how that goes. I’m sort of coasting for now, trying to get through the slack sea
son. I cleaned two places myself last weekend.”

  Val had been too tired to involve herself in the agent’s problems. Her stomach hadn’t stood the trip well, as she’d nibbled constantly on junk food, more from nerves than from hunger. “I brought linens. You said the house was furnished,” she reminded Ms. Kuvarky.

  The agent had nodded. “Pretty much all you’ll need, I guess, but it’s sort of a mishmash. I wrote to your father about the repairs—those are extra—but I never heard back. Anyway, there’s so much construction going on these days, even between seasons, it’s hard to find dependable help.”

  Ms. Kuvarky had promised to call around. Val remembered thinking that if the place had a roof and a bed, everything else could wait.

  Now she wasn’t quite so sure.

  The last thing the rental agent had said as Val had stood in the doorway, trying to get her bearings in a village that had nothing even faintly resembling city blocks or even village squares, was “By the way, if you happen to be looking for work and know one end of a broom from the other, you’re hired.”

  She’d been joking, of course. It might even come to that, Val told herself now, but at the moment she had other priorities. Starting with getting rid of her resident mouse.

  The power was on, that was the good part. The bad part was that there was no phone. Or maybe that was the good part, too. A few crank calls had even managed to get through call-blocking before she’d left Greenwich, but they could hardly follow her to a place where she didn’t have a working phone.

  There was no central heat, only an oil heater in the living room and an assortment of small space heaters scattered in the other rooms. She’d managed to turn the oil heater on. The thing hadn’t exploded, so she assumed she’d pushed the right button.

  The water heater was another matter. She let the hot water faucet run for five minutes, but luke was as warm as it got. That’s when she’d discovered that her cell phone didn’t work. She’d tried to call Ms. Kuvarky, and the darned thing blanked out on her. No signal.

  All right, so she would think of herself as a pioneer woman. At least she had a bed to sleep in instead of a covered wagon somewhere in the middle of the wilderness. She was thirty years old, with a degree from an excellent college—and although she was somewhat out of her element at the moment, she’d never been accused of being a slow learner. However, repairing major household appliances just might stretch her capability close to the breaking point. Sooner or later—probably sooner—she would have to look for a paying job in order to hire someone to do the things she couldn’t figure out how to do herself.