Stranger in the Moonlight Read online

  “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.”

  “I would think so,” Kim said. “Unmarried and pregnant in 1893? It’s a wonder she wasn’t stoned.”

  “I think that happened in a much earlier time period. Anyway, it seems that poor Clarissa died a few hours after her son was born.”

  “Oh!” Kim said. “Joce and Gemma didn’t tell me that part.”

  “Probably didn’t want to upset you. On her deathbed Clarissa said to her brother Patrick, ‘Name him Tristan and pray that he’ll be a doctor like his father.’” Travis put the papers down and looked at Kim. “Aren’t the Aldredge doctors today still named Tristan?”

  “That name is saved for the ones who inherit Aldredge House.” Her voice showed that her mind wasn’t completely on what he was telling her.

  “Not your branch?”

  “No, which is why my brother is named Reede.”

  “So I remember,” Travis said as he slid down in the bed beside her. “What’s wrong?”

  She couldn’t tell him what was in her mind, that she and Clarissa had a lot in common. Everything was temporary between her and Travis. He’d come to Edilean to help his mother and soon he’d be involved in a big divorce case. He’d go back to being a lawyer, back to his glamorous life in New York. Kim and boring little Edilean would be just a memory. Years from now, would he smile when he thought of her? She tried to put those images out of her mind. They were together now and that’s what mattered. She gave her attention back to him. “I’m fine,” she said. “Go on with the story.”

  “It seems to me that if Clarissa admitted the father was a doctor and his name was Tristan, wouldn’t that make it easy for your friends to find him through an online site?”

  “Actually, they did,” Kim said. “They told me that they found a Dr. Tristan Janes—”

  “Like the town name.”

  “Yes.” She gave a sigh. “He died in 1893.”

  “I see,” Travis said as he began to piece the story together. “Clarissa comes to Janes Creek to visit, falls for the local doctor, they tumble in the hay, but before they can get married she’s pregnant and he dies. She returns to Edilean, has the baby, then . . .”

  “Joins him,” Kim said.

  “Let’s hope that’s the way it works.” He paused. “If your friends know all this, why did they send you here?”

  “Joce and Gemma are newcomers.”

  Travis waited for her to explain that odd statement.

  “They weren’t born in Edilean. They want me to see if this Dr. Tristan was married and if so, did he have any other children.”

  “Cousins,” Travis said. “Is this about finding more relatives?”

  “’Fraid so,” Kim said. “If I do find any young descendants, Joce will probably adopt them and Gemma will want to research the whole family.”

  “And will you decorate them?”

  Kim groaned. “If I come up with some new ideas, yes. Since I met you, I haven’t had even one new design for jewelry come to me. In fact I can hardly remember what I do for a living.”

  Travis’s eyes were serious. “Kim, if you wanted to—”

  She wasn’t certain what he was about to say, but she thought maybe he was going to speak of his ability to pay for things. She didn’t want to hear it. She changed the subject. “So when do we talk to the natives and ask who’s old enough to remember 1893?”

  “If Dr. Tristan died here, we should look for a grave marker and photograph it. Maybe there’s something on it, and maybe someone is buried near him. If he had a wife, she’d be there.”

  “Maybe we’ll be lucky and her name was Leslie.” Kim hadn’t meant to say that—or anything like it. She wanted to be cool and sophisticated. Instead, she was sounding like someone from . . . well, from a small Southern town. “I’d better get dressed,” she said and started to get off the bed.

  But Travis caught her arm. “I think I should tell you the truth.”

  She kept her back to him, the sheet covering her front. She felt as though her words had bared a lot more to him than just her body. “Your life is your own. I’m just in it for the . . .” She wanted to say “sex” but couldn’t do it. With her other boyfriends she’d always managed to keep it light between them. One of them had said she made jokes about everything. But this was Travis. The day after he’d returned to town she’d sent an e-mail to her friend Jecca saying the man she’d been in love with since she was eight years old had come back to town. Lover or not, she couldn’t make a joke about him and his beautiful girlfriend.

  When she didn’t turn to look at him, Travis dropped his hold on her. “It took me so long to get back to you because I had to find out about myself,” he said softly. “I was a rich man’s son and I needed to know if I could support myself. I didn’t want to be one of those trust fund guys who lives off his father. What kind of a man would I be if that’s all I had to offer you?” When Kim didn’t move, he took a breath. “After I passed the New York bar, Dad offered me a high-powered, highly paid job, but I turned him down. He was furious! He shut off my trust fund, so I was on my own. He said I’d not make it and the truth was that I was afraid he was right.”

  Kim turned to look at him.

  “I wanted to get as far away from him as possible, so I bummed a ride with someone”—Travis gave a half grin—“on a private jet to L.A. I stayed with a college buddy while I looked for work. I was so angry that when I heard of an opening for stunt work, it appealed to me. I got the job because I’m the same size as Ben Affleck. I was shot twice for that man.”

  He smiled at her. “I succeeded and I proved that I was able to support myself. But I’d made it in the physical world by performing stunts. I was good at it, but I could see that my body wouldn’t last, so I quit. And besides, it was no life for . . . for you.”

  “Me?” She blinked at him.

  “Of course for you. I told you that my life has always been about you.”

  “But . . .” She’d thought he was saying one of those things that all men do. She hadn’t taken it literally. “So what did you do?”

  “My plan was to join a law firm. I was hired by a nice, conservative place in northern California. I thought I would work there for a year or so, then