Stranger in the Moonlight Read online

  She kissed him to silence. “What about the divorce?”

  “Joe can handle that. In fact I’m a bit afraid for my father when he goes up against Joe. Do you want to talk more?” His voice was full of exasperation.

  “Yes!” she said. “Yes and yes and yes! I want to talk endlessly about us, about our future, about—Oh!” Travis’s mouth was on her stomach.

  “Go on, keep talking,” he said as he moved his lips lower on her body.

  “Maybe later,” she said as she closed her eyes and forgot all about whatever she’d been worried about.

  Fifteen

  When Kim woke up, she could see that it was dark outside. The first thing she noticed was that Travis wasn’t in bed with her. They’d made love all afternoon and she knew she’d never enjoyed anything so much in her life. She hadn’t realized it, but from the beginning she’d had so many questions that she’d never fully relaxed. All the years of searching for him, of not knowing what had happened to him, were between them.

  It wasn’t that she’d completely forgiven him, nor did she fully understand his male reasoning, but for the first time since she’d seen him, a stranger standing in the moonlight, she saw the possibility that she would get over it.

  There was a knock on the door into the hallway, and Kim looked about for her clothes. They were folded neatly on a chair, certainly not where she’d tossed them a few hours ago.

  “Just a minute,” she called, but then Travis came out of the connecting room. He was showered, shaved, and wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She thought about not getting out of bed.

  “Hungry?” he asked as he opened the door and spoke to someone. He closed the door and turned to Kim. “They’re going to set up dinner in my room. Or would you rather go downstairs and hear what the Pendergasts have found out about your relatives?”

  He made the second choice sound so awful that she laughed. “Russell will miss you.”

  “He’ll miss you,” Travis said. “Do you think that kid has a girlfriend somewhere?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder that too. I guess if he were a New York lawyer that you’d know it.”

  “Probably.” Travis sat down on the bed beside her, and his face was serious. “I didn’t realize that I hadn’t made myself clear about my hopes for the future.”

  She knew he was referring to her outburst of fear that he would leave her again. “It’s all right,” Kim said. “We have . . .” She hesitated. “Some time to think about what we want to do.”

  The sound of a champagne cork being popped came from the other room.

  “I think our name is being called,” Travis said as he took her hand to pull her out of bed.

  But Kim pulled the sheet close to her and didn’t get out. “I’ll meet you at the table after I’ve had a shower,” she said pointedly.

  Smiling, he kissed her hand and left the room.

  Kim took a full thirty minutes showering and getting dressed. She put on a blue silk dress that she’d tossed in her bag as an afterthought. When she’d packed she’d thought it was over between her and Travis, that she’d never see him again. Smiling, she remembered that she’d thought he had given up. She had told him off and he’d run away. But Kim was learning that the three Maxwell men never gave up.

  When she’d finished dressing, she took a breath, smoothed her skirt, and opened the door into Travis’s room. It had been set up so beautifully that she stood still just to look at it. Cream-colored linens, blue-green dishes with little seashells on them, silver that glistened in the candlelight. But to her eyes, the most beautiful thing in the room was Travis. He’d changed into a tuxedo, and Kim was very glad of her silk dress.

  “May I?” Travis asked, holding out his arm to her. He led her to a pretty chair done in blue-and-white-striped satin. “This is lovely,” she said, looking across the table. But when she turned to him, he was on one knee beside her.

  Kim’s heart leaped into her throat and began pounding.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked softly. “Would you be my wife and live with me forever?”

  There wasn’t any hesitation on Kim’s part. “Yes,” she answered.

  Smiling, Travis bent forward to kiss her, and took her hands and kissed the back of them, then her palms.

  Still on one knee and holding her left hand, he reached under the tablecloth and pulled out a long, wide box covered in blue velvet. Kim knew what it was, as she’d seen the same box in her work.

  Travis flipped up the lid, and inside were a dozen rings, each one different. Kim didn’t need her jeweler’s loupe to know that she was looking at world-class stones. Sapphire, diamond, emerald, ruby, they were all there. Each setting was unique, and she knew that each one was the work of an independent jeweler. She would never see the same ring on another person.

  With her eyes wide, she looked at Travis in question.

  “Mind if I . . . ?” He glanced down at his knee.

  “Of course,” she said and took the box from him to look at the rings. “I don’t know what to say. They’re beautiful. How did you . . . ? Oh. Mrs. Pendergast.”

  “No,” Travis said as he filled their champagne flutes. “While Russ drove me here, I called places and had the rings sent. Each one was made by a different artist.”

  “That’s what I thought.” It wasn’t easy to choose from among the rings.

  “They’re nonreturnable,” he said.

  At that she frowned. “You’re not going to lavish me with gifts, are you?”

  “Since you’re supplying the house we live in, and the furniture, I think I have a right to add a few things.”

  Kim pulled a ring with a large square-cut emerald from the box. Her jeweler’s eye could tell that it was excellent quality. She held it near the light of the candle to admire the occlusions, the tiny imperfections that showed it to have been taken from the earth and was not man-made.

  She held out the ring to him and extended her left hand. He slipped the ring onto her finger, kissed the back of her hand, and held it as he looked into her eyes.

  “Kim, I love you,” he whispered. “I have loved you since I was a boy and I don’t want us to be apart again. I want to live where you do, with you.”

  Kim, ever practical, smiled at him. “I’d like to talk about where, when, how. You seem to have made a lot of plans and I want to know what they are.”

  “Good!” he said as he removed the lid from a silver platter, exposing two filet mignons. “I like women who know their own minds.”

  They talked and ate and discussed. Travis told Kim his ideas for the future, that he wanted to live in Edilean and open his camp for the summer. In the winter he’d do law work. “I like it better than I thought I would, so maybe what Dad told Penny is true, that there is some Maxwell in me.”

  “Do you think little Edilean could be enough for you?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and I promise that I won’t do anything that we don’t agree on.” He leaned across the table to her. “But I think maybe you have some of your brother in you and your ambition is a bit more than your little town.”

  “I’m found out!” she said, and they began to talk about her future as she saw it. Dave’s ideas of expanding her company hadn’t been just his idea alone.

  They talked of the coming divorce, and Travis told how he’d decided that Joe and his parents could fight it out themselves. “I’ll get Mom a good lawyer.”

  “Forester?” Kim asked, and they laughed together.

  It was while they were sharing a thick slice of chocolate cake that an invitation was slipped under the door. After they finished dessert, Travis and Kim had eyes only for each other and didn’t see the heavy vellum envelope.

  It wasn’t until morning that Kim picked it up and showed it to Travis. It was addressed to both of them.

  “Open it,” Kim said to Travis. “I bet it’s from Mrs. Pendergast and she wants to tell you that Russell is your half brother.”

  “Too late,” Travis said. “You already blabbe