Wild Orchids Read online

  Also By Jude Deveraux

  The Velvet Promise

  Highland Velvet

  Velvet Song

  Velvet Angel

  Sweetbriar

  Counterfeit Lady

  Lost Lady

  River Lady

  Twin of Fire

  Twin of Ice

  The Temptress

  The Raider

  The Princess

  The Awakening

  The Maiden

  The Taming

  The Conquest

  A Knight in Shining Armor

  Wishes

  Mountain Laurel

  The Duchess

  Eternity

  Sweet Liar

  The Invitation

  Remembrance

  The Heiress

  Legend

  An Angel for Emily

  The Blessing

  High Tide

  Temptation

  The Summerhouse

  The Mulberry Tree

  Forever…A Novel of Good and

  Evil, Love and Hope

  Atria Books

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2003 by Deveraux, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-8068-0

  ISBN-10: 0-7434-8068-6

  ATRIA BOOKS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ford

  Have you ever lost someone who meant more to you than your own soul?

  I did. I lost my wife Pat.

  It took six long, tortured months for her to die.

  I had to stand by and watch my beautiful, perfect wife waste away until there was nothing left. It didn’t matter that I have money and success. It didn’t matter that I’m called an “important” writer. It didn’t matter that Pat and I had finally started building our dream house, an engineering miracle that hung onto a cliff wall and would allow us to sit quietly and look out across the Pacific.

  Nothing at all mattered from the moment Pat came home and interrupted me while I was writing—something she never did—to tell me that she had cancer, and that it was in an advanced stage. I thought it was one of her jokes. Pat had a quirky sense of humor; she said I was too serious, too morose, too doom-and-gloom, and too afraid of everything on earth. From the first, she’d made me laugh.

  We met at college. Two more different people would be hard to find, and even Pat’s family was completely alien to me. I’d seen families like hers on television, but it never occurred to me that they actually existed.

  She lived in a pretty little house with a front porch and—I swear this is true—a white picket fence. On summer evenings her parents—Martha and Edwin—would sit on the front porch and wave at the neighbors as they passed by. Her mother would wear an apron and snap green beans or shell peas while she waved and chatted. “How is Tommy today?” she’d ask some passerby. “Is his cold better?”

  Pat’s father sat just a few feet away from his wife at a wrought iron table, an old floor lamp nearby, and a box of gleaming German tools, all precisely arranged, at his feet. He was—again, I swear this is true—known as Mr. Fix-It around the neighborhood and he repaired broken things for his own family and his neighbors. Free of charge. He said he liked to help people and a smile was enough payment for him.

  When I went to Pat’s house to pick her up for a date, I’d go early just so I could sit and watch her parents. To me, it was like watching a science fiction movie. As soon as I arrived, Pat’s mother—“call me Martha, everyone does”—would get up and get me something to eat and drink. “I know that growing boys need their nourishment,” she’d say, then disappear inside her spotlessly clean house.

  I’d sit there in silence, watching Pat’s father as he worked on a toaster or maybe a broken toy. That big oak box of tools at his feet used to fascinate me. They were all perfectly clean, perfectly matched. And I knew they had to have cost a fortune. One time I was in the city—that ubiquitous “city” that seems to lie within fifty miles of all college towns—and I saw a hardware store across the street. Since hardware stores had only bad memories for me, it took courage on my part to cross the street, open the door, and go inside. But since I’d met Pat, I’d found that I’d become braver. Even way back then her laughter was beginning to echo in my ears, laughter that encouraged me to try things I never would have before, simply because of the painful emotions they stirred up.

  As soon as I walked into the store, the air seemed to move from my lungs, up my throat, past the back of my neck, and into my head to form a wide, thick bar between my ears. There was a man in front of me and he was saying something, but that block of air inside my head kept me from hearing him.

  After a while he quit talking and gave me one of those looks I’d seen so many times from my uncles and cousins. It was a look that divided men from Men. It usually preceded a fatal pronouncement like:“He don’t know which end of a chain saw to use.” But then, I’d always played the brain to my relatives’ brawn.

  After the clerk sized me up, he walked away with a little smile that only moved the left side of his thin lips. Just like my cousins and uncles, he recognized me for what I was:a person who thought about things, who read books without pictures, and liked movies that had no car chases.

  I wanted to leave the hardware store. I didn’t belong there and it held too many old fears for me. But I could hear Pat’s laughter and it gave me courage.

  “I want to buy a gift for someone,” I said loudly and knew right away that I’d made a mistake. “Gift” was not a word my uncles and cousins would have used. They would have said, “I need a set a socket wrenches for my brother-in-law. What’d’ya got?” But the clerk turned and smiled at me. After all, “gift” meant money. “So what kind of gift?” he asked.

  Pat’s father’s tools had a German name on them that I said to the man—properly pronounced, of course (there are some advantages to an education). I was pleased to see his eyebrows elevate slightly and I felt smug: I’d impressed him.

  He went behind a counter that was scarred from years of router blades and drill bits having been dropped on it, and reached below to pull out a catalog. “We don’t carry those in the store but we can order whatever you want.” I nodded in what I hoped was a truly manly way, trying to imply that I knew exactly what I wanted, and flipped through the catalog. The photos were full color;the paper was expensive. And no wonder since the prices were astronomical.

  “Precision,” the man said, summing up everything in that one word. I pressed my lower lip against the bottom of my upper teeth in a way I’d seen my uncles do a t