Moonlight in the Morning Read online

She didn’t finish because Tristan leaped on her, started kissing her face, and telling her he loved her. He made love to her with such passion, such all-out abandon, that for two days afterward, she lived in a daze.

  After that, Tris’s mood changed completely. She often heard him on the phone with Reede telling him to buck up, that he’d be there “soon” to take back his job.

  Every day Tris ran off patient records from his e-mail files, and he often called people in Edilean. Jecca got to hear his “doctor voice” as he soothed and calmed people. Sometimes she heard him explain the same thing three timesng he often to a person. Tris never lost patience with them, never seemed to be in a hurry. No wonder they love him so much, she thought.

  They visited Edilean as often as possible. Jecca never minded that Tris was gone most of the time visiting his former patients. To them, he was their doctor, not Reede with his curt bedside manner.

  As for Jecca, she had made a lot of friends in Edilean. Whenever she was visiting, she never missed a 3 P.M. workout with Lucy and Mrs. Wingate, and she loved catching up on all the news and gossip.

  It was on their third weekend home that Mrs. Wingate asked when she and Tris were going to get married.

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” Jecca said. “We’ve been so busy that . . .”

  They were having tea at the Wingate house, Jecca was still glowing—Mrs. Wingate frowned on saying they were “dripping with sweat”—from the kickboxing workout they’d just done. Lucy looked up from the teapot and Joe put down the invoice he’d been reading. He was now living at Mrs. Wingate’s house, ostensibly in his own apartment, but he spent all the time he could with Lucy. Nell was also there, and she looked at Jecca with her young-old eyes.

  Jecca knew she was outnumbered. “I saw some winter white charmeuse that would make a great wedding dress.”

  They didn’t quit staring at her. “All right! I’ll set a date. I just have to talk to Tristan first.”

  That wasn’t enough for any of them, but they knew it was all they were going to get. Jecca settled back with her tea and for a moment thought of the apartment building in New York. She used to love that people didn’t know where she was going or when she would return, but Edilean had changed her. Now she liked that so many people cared about her.

  “Let’s see,” Jecca said solemnly. “Dad to walk me down the aisle, two honorary mothers of the bride to sit in the front row, Kim as my maid of honor, and . . .” She looked at Nell. She was too tall and too old to be a flower girl. “And Nell as a second maid of honor. You wouldn’t mind holding my bouquet while Tris and I exchange rings, would you?”

  With a shout of delight, Nell leaped onto Jecca. They both would have gone over backward if Joe hadn’t caught the arm of the chair and held it.

  That had been weeks ago, and last night had been the most beautiful wedding Edilean had ever seen—or at least that’s what everyone told Jecca and Tris.

  Whether that was true or not, to Jecca it was beautiful. There was a huge tent set up on the lawn at Tristan’s house, and it seemed that everyone in Edilean had shown up. She hardly knew any of them, but Tris knew everyone. Kim and Nell had been dressed identically in grown-up dresses of a pretty bluey-purple that complimented both of them. Jecca’s gown—designed by her and made by Lucy—had been extraordinarily beautiful. Mrs. Wingate had spent days and nights hand embroidering crystal beads on the bodice.

  The ceremony had been sweet and reverent. When the pastor—Laura Chawnley’s husband—spoke to them, it was as though Jecca and Tris were alone in the world. She smiled at him when he lifted her veil and he leaned forward ean,Rto kiss her cheek. The pastor said, “Not yet,” and the guests had quietly laughed.

  Tris slipped a ring on her finger that had been created by Kim, and Jecca gave him one made from the same nugget of gold. It seemed right that the gold had been together for centuries and that it should unite her and Tris forever.

  After the ceremony there’d been dancing and wonderful food. It was late when she and Tris left. They’d had to hug Nell a lot to reassure her that they were going to return.

  “You’ll come back even if you passionately love New Zealand with all your soul?” she’d asked seriously.

  Tris knelt down to her. He knew what she was really asking. “I promise I won’t leave you again. I shouldn’t have run off the other time and not told you where I was.” He’d told her this many times before, but she still needed reassurance.

  “And I’ll see if they have any interesting stuffed animals in New Zealand,” Jecca said.

  Nell nodded solemnly and let her mother pull her away so Tris and Jecca could leave.

  Now, lying in bed beside her husband—Jecca would need a while to get used to that idea—she thought how she’d told Tris that she was sublimely happy. And she was. She’d realized that she’d been afraid of happiness because her world had been so small. She’d had her father and Joey and that was all. But now her life had expanded to include most of an entire town.

  “Are you laughing?” Tris asked from beside her as he slipped his leg over her bare one. After their enthusiastic lovemaking of last night, neither of them had bothered to put on clothes.

  “In joy,” she said.

  He moved closer to her, Jecca opened her arms—and her cell phone buzzed.

  “Forget it,” Tris murmured as he nuzzled her neck.

  “It might be Dad or someone in Edilean might be sick,” she said as she reached for her phone.

  At the last, Tris lifted his hand.

  Jecca picked up the phone. It was an e-mail from Kim. REMEMBER HOW YOU AND SOPHIE TRIED TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE MAN I USED TO SEARCH FOR? HE SHOWED UP LAST NIGHT AND HE’S STAYING WITH ME. I’VE BEEN IN LOVE WITH HIM SINCE I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD. HAVE A NICE HONEYMOON AND BRING ME BACK A FRIAND MOULD. TRAVIS LIKES TO EAT.

  Jecca read it twice, the second time aloud to Tris. “Do you know anything about this man?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ll call Lucy and find out what’s going on.”

  Tris took the phone from her hands and put it on the bedside table. “Where’s my New York girl who doesn’t like people to know her business?”

  “She—” He kissed her.

  “She lear#82

  “She likes—” He kissed her even deeper.

  “I’ll hear all about it when we get back,” Jecca said as she pushed Tristan onto his back.

  “I agree,” he said and kissed her deeper still.

  Turn the page for a preview of

  Jude’s newest novel,

  Stranger in the Moonlight

  From Pocket Books

  Prologue

  Edilean, Virginia

  1993

  In all of her eight years, Kim had never been so bored. She didn’t even know such boredom could exist. Her mother told her to go outside into the big garden around the old house, Edilean Manor, and play, but what was she to do by herself?

  Two weeks ago her father had taken her brother off to some faraway state to go fishing. “Male bonding,” her mother called it, then said she was not going to stay in their big house alone for four whole weeks. That night Kim had been awakened by the sound of her parents arguing. They didn’t usually fight—not that she knew about—and the word “divorce” came to her mind. She was terrified of being without her parents.

  But the next morning they were kissing and everything seemed to be fine. Her father kept talking about making up being the best, but her mother shushed him.

  It was that afternoon that her mother told her that while her father and brother were away they were going to stay in an apartment at Edilean Manor. Kim didn’t like that because she hated the old house. It was too big and it echoed with every footstep. Besides, every time she visited the place there was less furniture, and the emptiness made it seem even creepier.

  Her father said that Mr. Bertrand, the old man who lived in the house, had sold the family furniture rather than get a job to support himself. “He’d sell the hou