Read an Excerpt

One
 
Allison Josey slammed the door of her beloved red MG with her good knee, fitted her crutches under her arms, and awkwardly made her way across the courtyard into her grandmother’s garden. She’d driven for almost three days to get there, and she was determined to sit in the gazebo.
 
The scent of freshly mown grass was sweet and familiar. But the sight of the latticework structure wasn’t. It had become weathered over the years and was no longer white. By the time she reached the gazebo, where she’d spent so many happy hours as a child, her knee was throbbing with pain, and there was an ache in her throat. The place wasn’t at all as she’d remembered it.
 
Propping her crutches against the banister, she pulled herself determinedly up the steps. She’d made it—on her own. It didn’t matter that the paint was flaking and peeling. She was finally there. “Home,” she whispered, just as her bad knee gave way, and she stumbled inside.
 
Two arms caught her as she fell and lifted her against a bare, rock-hard chest that cushioned her face with soft downy hair and smelled like the woods after a rain. She felt the slow, steady beat of a person’s heart beneath her cheek.
 
“Hold on there, darling, you’ve reached the castle. I’ll pull up the drawbridge and stave off the attack.”
 
“Oh! I beg your pardon.” Allison’s voice was a choked sputter as she tried to settle her whirling senses back to normal. She was being held by a titian-haired, bearded giant of a man wearing faded jeans and a half-buttoned green plaid shirt.
 
“You never have to beg, Beauty.”
 
“I didn’t mean to … I mean I didn’t see you or I wouldn’t have …” Unwelcome tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
 
“It’s all right. With a rainstorm of salty tears blinding your vision, you couldn’t be expected to see anything.”
 
“I don’t cry,” she protested wearily. “I’m just exhausted.”
 
“Don’t worry, darling”—his teasing dropped off and his voice became soft—“you’re in Joker’s territory now. I’ll protect you.”
 
Caught by the tenderness in his voice, Allison tilted her head and looked up, straight into the biggest, deepest gray eyes she’d ever seen. Little laugh lines fanned out from their corners as his eyes flashed in merriment. In spite of their deep, smoky color, they seemed perfectly matched to the face of the burly, bronze-colored giant.
 
Thick auburn hair curled damply about the man’s forehead, and a darker brick-colored beard covered his face and upper lip. She had the absurd feeling that she’d stumbled into a time warp and was looking at Eric the Red standing on the bow of a Viking ship.
 
For the longest time they stood, not speaking, simply gazing at each other. She knew she ought to pull away from his embrace, ought to remove her fingers from his massive chest. But all she could do was look up at him in bemusement. She had to be dreaming. There couldn’t be a man in the gazebo in her grandmother’s garden in Pretty Springs, Georgia, at eleven o’clock in the morning.
 
He nodded as if in reassurance. “You’re Allison. Your grandmother said you’d come.”
 
“Who are you?”
 
“I’m Joker.”
 
“You can’t be real. I must be more tired than I thought.”
 
“Oh, yes, I’m real. I’ve been expecting you.”
 
“You have?” She felt a bit light-headed. This couldn’t be happening, she told herself. Her grandmother was in a nursing home. Why would a stranger named Joker be on the grounds? Yet the man’s arms were solid and warm. She knew instinctively that he was the kind of man a woman could lean on, a man who feared nothing. For the first time in a long time she felt secure.
 
“But why?” she asked, feeling as if she were a child again, there in the gazebo with Gran, asking questions. Why are the stars so tiny? Why does the wind blow? She hadn’t asked questions for quite a while. Trained athletes didn’t ask questions. They followed instructions. And she had, until she’d checked herself out of the hospital and run away from all those instructions.
 
“Why?” The big man repeated softly, pushing back a stray tendril of midnight black hair that had curled across her cheek. He caught it between his fingers and rubbed it back and forth as if he were studying a priceless treasure.
 
“Never question fate, darling. Just accept what it sends. You need me, and I’m here.” Reluctantly he tucked the strand of hair behind her ear and trailed his fingertips across her shoulder and down her back. He didn’t know what was wrong, only that she needed him.
 
“No. What I need is to walk again, skate again. The doctors told me that I’ll never skate again, and I must. Do you understand?”
 
“I understand, Allison Josey. For now, just lean on me.”
 
She rested her weight on her good leg, allowing him to support her with his big arms and strong body. Gran had told him to expect her? That was all that she needed to hear—for now. He seemed to be part of home, the steady comfort she’d been drawn back to, and she looked up at him once more, a wistful expression on her face.
 
“All right,” she agreed, too tired to put up a fight. “But I should know why, shouldn’t I?”
 
“Because I’m here, and I need you too,” he answered.
 
Joker felt he knew the dark-haired woman with the haunting eyes he held in his arms. She was the same graceful beauty whose photographs and news clippings papered the study wall in the main house. She’d fascinated him, captured his attention with her ethereal loveliness. For more than six months he’d taken the image of her to bed with him every night and had woken with her every morning. But this time she wasn’t wearing a gossamer ice-skating costume or being held by a slender man in some dreamlike skating pose. She was in his arms—and she belonged there.
 
Allison Josey’s appearance in the garden was no surprise to him. He’d already heard so much about her from her grandmother. He’d expected her, sooner or later. Now that she’d come, he had no intention of defying fate. The minute he’d seen the crutches he’d known that she’d come to him because she was bruised, hurt, in need of care. When she fell into his arms, he knew it was up to him to nourish her and make her bloom.
 
There was a hush in the garden, as though they’d slipped into a secret place where no one else could go. The sun was warm, the smell of honeysuckle sweet. Allison looked up at him with soulful eyes that drew him and held him imprisoned by the pain reflected there.
 
And then he kissed her.
 
As he lowered his head, Allison’s eyes widened in surprise. She couldn’t believe that his lips were touching hers. Her body seemed to sigh, rippling pleasantly as she sagged against him.
 
Suddenly, she could feel a fluttering inside her like a butterfly’s wings, as the floor of the gazebo seemed to float beneath her feet. For a moment she wasn’t sure she was breathing. The sun seemed to brighten, shooting a shimmering curtain of warmth through the vine-wrapped roof. She swayed against him, her fingers tangling in the hair on his chest. She returned his kiss as naturally as if she’d expected it, as if she’d known he’d be waiting there—for her.
 
When he finally lifted his head, she stumbled backward and tried to speak. “I … I don’t understand. This can’t be happening. I must be daydreaming,” she whispered.
 
“Daydreams are mirrors of the soul’s desire. That’s what your grandmother told me.”
 
“Gran?” Yes, she thought, that sounded like something her grandmother would say. Allison gazed at him for a moment as she tried to collect her thoughts.
 
“Oh, yes. She told me all about you, Allison Josey. You’ll celebrate your twenty-seventh birthday in December. You like fried chicken. You’re stubborn. Red is your favorite color, and you’ve been waiting for me. I think that just about covers it.”
 
His voice was low as he leaned closer. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her cheek. His beard was touching her forehead.
 
“Eric the Red?” she whispered under her breath. She trembled and pushed against him, reality nudging into the serenity of the moment. “I don’t understand. This can’t be happening. Let me go. Please!”
 
“Don’t be afraid, Beauty,” he said. “Sit here on the banister. I’ll release you—for now. But we’ve touched, and I’m part of you. You can never again erase the me from you.”
 
The stranger stepped away, and Allison’s heart pounded even harder. She’d been right. He was large, not heavy but tall and muscled, a man who worked with his hands and his body. This was no gym-shaped hunk. This was a man who was a part of the earth, a part of the universe, a part of her now, and she yearned to reach out and touch him again.