"I've got something to show you," he said.

They swooped down a freeway exit, flew through the tree-lined streets of exclusive San Marino and on into the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains before Geoff slowed the motorcycle. Randy was more than curious as he pulled onto the grounds of an estate that had gone badly to seed. The gra.s.s was a foot high, the rose gardens overgrown, and the main house, a once-stately English Tudor with turrets and shuttered windows, was in a state of terrible disrepair.

Geoff parked the bike in the driveway of a small stone house just behind the mansion. "The caretaker's cottage," he told Randy, helping her off the pa.s.senger seat.

"Who lives here?" she asked, following him to the door.

"n.o.body has in a couple of years." He took a key from under a clay pot on the steps, unlocked the front door, and waved her inside. "I was the last tenant."

"You?" She stepped into the cottage, squinting to see in the darkness. She could make out some furniture with dust covers, but little else.

As Geoff moved around the room, opening the shuttered windows and letting the sunlight pour in, Randy saw an image that astonished her. On the wall opposite her was a picture of someone familiar. Thinking her eyes were playing tricks on her again, she blinked to clear her vision. That's when she realized the entire wall was a gallery of women in various poses, some of them erotic, all of them beautiful ... all of them her.

"What is this?" she asked, barely able to speak. The words floated out of her, as light and dizzy as she was.

"Somebody I met once." He stood back, as if wanting to give her some s.p.a.ce. "A gypsy bride."

"You did this, all of them?"

He nodded. "I'm the tormented artist. I had nothing else to remember you by," he said, his voice going husky. "Nothing but the images in my head. At first I thought I could release them that way, exorcise them by getting them on paper, but it didn't work. Nothing worked."

Something strange was happening to Randy's heart. It had been going too fast before, but now it was slowing, hardening, hurting, as if in antic.i.p.ation of some future disaster. She knew what was happening to her. She just couldn't believe it. She was falling-no, plummeting-for a mercenary soldier with holes in his pants. For a biker! Oh, Edna!

Randy's heartstrings pulled even tighter as she caught a flash of sweet, s.e.xy need in Geoff's eyes. Why was he looking at her that way? As if he wanted to take her in his arms and hold her tight. As if his heart was hurting too.

She turned back to the gallery, searching for something that would release her from the turmoil that was building inside her. But just as the artwork hadn't released him, it couldn't free her either. They were images of a woman who was frightened and rebellious, a woman who was fiery and sad and love-be-d.a.m.ned angry. He had caught every angle, revealing things about her she barely knew herself ... the heartbroken bride, the yearning child who'd always wanted a shiny swing set. He had touched the soul of Randy Witherspoon-sad child, proud woman, survivor.

"I love you, Randy," he said softly. "I do, baby."

"Oh, Geoff-" She turned to him, tears welling, silently pleading with him not to love her, not to make her love him.

The anguish she felt was filling her heart with choked pain. "What will become of me?" she asked. "I don't want to live like Edna-all those men leaving her, longing for something she never got-and I don't want to die like her either."

"You're not Edna, Randy. And I'm not all those men."

Randy could hear herself breathing, raspy, aching. She could hear him breathing, too, and hardly knew which was which-his breath or hers?

"Let go of the past, Randy," he urged. "It's Edna's past you're clinging to, it's Edna's dream. Let go of all that and deal with what's happening here, now. Deal with us."

She shook her head, laughing sadly, torn. A biker? One of Edna's men? This was too crazy to be believed. She could hear his voice echoing in her head, the incredible things he said to her that night in the alley in Rio. The "baby" on my bike is singular. It's you. Randy. Baby, it's you.

"What do you want, gypsy?" he asked. "Who do you want?"

A terrible, aching lump closed her throat as she looked up at him and nodded. "You." It was a commitment that both freed her and paralyzed her with fear, an acknowledgment that she was going to risk it all. She shuddered as he started toward her.

"You aren't going to break my heart, are you, Geoff?" she asked brokenly, smiling through the tears that washed her face. "You aren't going to love me and leave me?"

He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, his heart hammering against hers. "No, baby, no," he said, pressing his lips to her hair, cradling her against him with a tenderness that must have sprung from the pain of his own needs. "I'm not going to do any of those things," he promised. "I've been loving you too long for that."

He held her for a long time, just held her, both of them seeming to need that kind of comfort. Finally he turned her face up and brushed her lips with the warmth of his.

She moaned with the sweetness of it. And then the tender touches of his mouth deepened to a kiss that burned with pa.s.sion and promise. It held the startlement of sudden love and the harsh, sweet truth of dreams ... their dreams?

When Randy opened her eyes and looked up at him, she saw so many things that she had never allowed herself to acknowledge before. He was a good man, even a gentle man. He had the sensitivity of an artist and the honesty and integrity to live a life based on his own beliefs and convictions. Biker or not, he was a better man than Hugh, she realized, surprised that she'd been so blinded by her need to see people as she believed them to be, rather than who they actually were.

"I love you," she said, barely able to get the words out.

He laughed. "Don't make it sound so painful."

"It is ... I'm so frightened."

"Then that makes two of us."

Another myth exploded, she realized, gazing into his eyes. Geoff Dias could be frightened. He was as fearful of opening his heart to her as she was to him, as eager to be accepted and loved for who he was. Edna, I've found him, she thought, tears burning her eyelids. I've found the prince.

Her welling tears spilled over, flooding his fingers as he tried to dry them. "I love you," she told him again, and this time the words ached with heartfelt conviction.

Moments later, with a shaky sigh, she turned in his arms, needing to look at the pictures again, to drink in their moody brush strokes and dreamy eroticism. "I haunted you so much that you had to paint me?" she asked him, still not quite able to believe it. "Over and over again? That's terribly romantic."

"That's me," he laughed, "a terribly romantic guy."

They were silent for a while, holding each other, reminded of their past by its evidence on the wall ... until he released her and walked to one of the cottage windows. "Come here," he said, holding out his hand. "I've got something else to show you."

Randy knew what he was going to say even before she joined him. "This is yours, isn't it?" she asked him, looking out at the neglected grounds and the Tudor mansion.

"It's mine now. My parents left it to me."

Sensing his reluctance to talk about what had happened, she turned her attention back to the window. "If you'd rather not, Geoff-"

"No, I want to ... but prepare yourself. It gets pretty ugly." He drew her close, pulling her into the crook of his arm as he stared out the window. "My father committed suicide when I was sixteen. He was a partner in a Wall Street brokerage, and he got embroiled in a financial scandal before those things were fashionable. He was too proud to go to prison, too proud to do anything but put a gun to his head, apparently."

"Oh, Geoff, I'm sorry."

He nodded as if to say it was all right. "My mother never recovered," he told her after a s.p.a.ce of silence. "Two months later, she was dead too. An overdose of sleeping pills. The doctors said it was accidental, but I knew she didn't want to live without him. They were that close. Sometimes even I felt like an intruder."

Randy laid her hand over his and looked up at him. "What did you do?"

"I lived with an uncle for a while, finished high school, even gave college a shot. My father's family was originally from northern Spain. They came here dirt-poor, with nothing to their names but their belief in the American dream. They made their fortune here, so naturally, I was expected to restore the family's honor, carry on the proud tradition. They'd a.s.sumed I'd become a broker, or if not that, a lawyer. Maybe even a hotel magnate, like Hugh."

She was beginning to understand his antipathy toward the things she'd wanted desperately, and especially toward her former fiance.

"Not everyone gets an up-close and personal look at the dark side of material success," he explained. "I saw how wealth bred the desire for more to the point that even a man like my father could become corrupted. It wasn't his sense of honor that killed him, it was shame. In his suicide note he admitted he was guilty of everything he'd been accused of."

Geoff exhaled heavily. "So I said to h.e.l.l with it all and joined the Marines."

She turned in his arms to face him, wishing she knew how to convey the compa.s.sion she felt. "I'm sorry, Geoff. That must have been terrible for you, to lose your parents, to lose everything."

"It was rough," he admitted. "I was a big, strapping kid, but I was a kid, and it hurt like h.e.l.l."

He kissed her lightly as if to a.s.sure her that time had healed the wounds, that he was okay now. "There's just one thing you need to understand. I didn't lose everything. There's still a lot of money involved. It's being managed by attorneys, held in trust ... for me."

"For you? A lot of money? You're-"

"Rich, I think you could say." He grimaced. "Filthy."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"What would you have done if I had? I didn't want to have to compete with that dream of yours. Or to be put in the position of having to outbid Hugh for your affections."

The man had a point, she admitted. Being Hugh's wife had become an obsession. He'd been her fantasy of the perfect man, the answer to all her fears and insecurities. She had come terrifyingly close to marrying him as it was. Her only regret was that it had taken her so long to see the mistake she was making, and that she'd had to hurt Hugh before it was over. She regretted that deeply.

"Still love me?" Geoff asked, tilting her chin up and dazzling her with his emerald green eyes. "Just checking." His mouth curved into the slow, s.e.xy smile that never failed to make her heartbeat go weak.

"Oh, I suppose," she said, sighing as if it were a terrible burden. "I've got to be honest, though. I'm not sad you have lots of disgusting money, but I think I could have been blissfully happy with the poverty-stricken artist. As long as he drew pictures only of me."

"Umm," he said, nipping her lower lip. "I've already got an idea for the first pose."

Randy pretended to be frightened. "Is there leather involved?"

Epilogue.

ONE MONTH LATER ...

Randy tilted her face to the sky and breathed deeply, bathing her senses with fresh, sweet mountain air. Sunlight flickered brightly through the branches of a huge old sycamore as she walked around to the back of Chase and Annie Beaudine's mountain home, a charmingly rustic cabin nestled in the foothills of Wyoming's Wind River range. Her mission was to find the three men who were AWOL from the small anniversary party going on inside the cabin.

A roan mare nickered at her from its paddock as Randy pa.s.sed by. She took it as a friendly overture, but didn't stop to chat. Being a city girl, she'd had very little experience with animals who were bigger than she was, and now didn't seem the time to test the horse's good humor.

She spotted the missing persons in a gra.s.sy meadow that lay beyond the barn. Shirtless and shoeless in the dazzling sunshine, the three men were playing football as only ex-Marine buddies could. She stopped to watch as Chase Beaudine speed-hiked the football to Johnny Starhawk, then sprinted out to catch Johnny's pa.s.s. Chase darted, dodged, and feinted, amazingly agile for a big man as he tried to outmaneuver Geoff, who was guarding him doggedly.

The football soared toward the clouds, a Hail Mary pa.s.s if ever Randy had seen one. Chase faked to the right, evading Geoff long enough to leap into the air as the ball dropped out of the sky. Just as Chase's questing fingers were about to seize the prize, a bare foot flashed out of nowhere and karate-kicked the ball into oblivion. Geoff had launched himself like a weapon, using a spinning side kick to intercept Johnny's pa.s.s.

Randy had to restrain herself from cheering.

Chase and Johnny howled in protest. "You can't do that!" Chase complained.

"Does this look like a boxing ring, Dias?" Johnny shouted.

Geoff's reckless grin became a grimace as his opponents rushed him, knocked him to the ground, and piled on top of him. A wrestling match resulted, and when the horseplay threatened to get out of hand, Randy decided it was time to break things up.

"Gentlemen!" she called out, putting a drill instructor's spin on the word. "There's a party going on up at the house, in case you've forgotten. It's time to open the gifts."

A short time later she had the deserters in tow. They'd washed up at the faucet alongside the barn at her suggestion, and as she herded them into the cabin, she felt like a stern schoolteacher escorting the cla.s.s troublemakers to the princ.i.p.al's office.

"Here's Daddy!" Annie Beaudine cried, plunking a redheaded baby into Chase's arms the moment he entered the cabin. Their other child, a strawberry blond toddler, squealed in delight, attaching herself to Chase's leg. Chase seemed a little embarra.s.sed by all the attention, but it was clear he was also delighted by it.

Randy's throat tightened at the tender way he scooped the toddler up and nuzzled her hair, kissing the child's blond curls. His show of affection had a bittersweet effect on Randy. It stirred up old longings for the father she never had, but it also instilled in her the hope and the silent resolution that her own children would be as fortunate. Chase's girls were very lucky to have a father who so obviously adored them.

Geoff hooked an arm around Randy and drew her close. "I want a half-dozen of those," he murmured softly in her ear. Desire shimmered warmly in his eyes as he looked down at her. "What do you say?"

"A half-dozen kids?" Randy nestled into the crook of his arm and laughed weakly. "Don't you think maybe we should get married first?"

"Listen up, folks." Annie Beaudine clinked her gla.s.s of iced tea with a fork, calling the small crowd to attention. "Honor and Johnny, our happily married couple of one whole year, want to open their gifts. Right, you two?"

Honor was sitting next to Johnny Starhawk on the couch, and Randy thought she had never seen a more striking couple. Honor was as fair and lovely as Johnny was dark and arrestingly handsome. They looked as if they had been brought together by the same elemental forces that made magnetic poles attract, as if they were bound by their extraordinary differences. Their children would be something to see, Randy realized, drawn to the couple although she'd met them only that day.

Honor abandoned all pretense of ladylike restraint as she opened the presents, oohing and aahing over items that made ingenious use of the tradition of paper for first-anniversary gifts. Chase and Annie gave them a set of self-help books for young married couples, including an Intimate Dinners for Two cookbook and a primer on sensual ma.s.sage. While Honor continued to unwrap packages, Johnny leafed through the books, promising her a very special evening when they got home.

Randy had no doubt that he could provide such an evening. He was possessed of the most riveting natural sensuality she'd ever seen in a man. He was also clearly madly in love with his beautiful, gentle wife.

Geoff waited until they'd finished with the other gifts before presenting Johnny with a special offering-an oil painting he'd made of Chase, Johnny, and himself in their early mercenary days. Randy recognized the painting as a replica of a snapshot Geoff carried in his wallet. The three ex-Marines were sitting in a bar somewhere, probably an exotic foreign port, celebrating their first recovery mission. The media had not yet discovered the trio they would later dub the "Stealth Commandos," but Randy could see the potential for heroism in each one of them. In his military fatigues, cropped hair, and aviator sungla.s.ses, Geoff looked young and reckless, flushed with the thrill of victory.

Johnny seemed to be struggling with emotion as he studied the picture, and even Chase looked slightly shaken by it. Finally Johnny composed himself enough to glance up and grin at Geoff. "You got my hair wrong, you chump. I never wore it that short."

Laughter broke the tension as Johnny sprang up and gave Geoff a bear hug, thanking him for the painting. Randy's heart was in her throat before the two men released each other. And then Chase joined them, clapping Geoff on the back affectionately and kidding Johnny about needing a haircut. Randy could feel the genuine warmth between all three men, and she hoped they would always be as close as they were this day.

As Geoff returned to her side she felt a rush of love that impelled her to clasp his hand tightly and squeeze it. How had she ever had the good fortune to find-or be found by-a man with so many wonderful dichotomies in his nature? He was tough and tender, strong and gentle, all of the traits a woman sought and cherished in a man, and yet on a deeper level, he had an affinity for human nature that allowed him to mirror a person's soul in his work. There was a depth of understanding in him that made him all the more mysterious to her, all the more attractive.

As the party continued, Honor convinced her father-in-law Chy Starhawk, an Apache medicine man, to share his gift for prophecy with the crowd. With his long hair hovering like a white cloud around his shoulders, the shaman turned first to Geoff and Randy. A mysterious smile deepened the grooves of his sepia-colored skin.

"There is brightness around you both," he said, studying them for a moment. "Like the light of day glowing through an overcast sky. It's the brightness of a promise, of believing in things you can't see with your eyes." He hesitated, as if caught in the awareness, but not fully understanding it. "I see the sparkle of sunlight on deep green water."

"Maybe the brightness has something to do with this." Geoff took a small box from his shirt pocket and offered it to Randy, an expectant smile on his face.

Randy drew in a sharp breath as she opened the box. Nestled in lush white velvet was the most exquisite emerald ring she'd ever seen. Her hand flew to her mouth, trying to contain the surprise that trembled there.

"It was my grandmother's," Geoff explained, lowering his voice to an intimate level as he drew her into his arms. "My father gave it to my mother when they were engaged. I wanted you to have it. I'm sure they would have too."

Randy could feel the ring's brightness in her heart. It was as piercingly sharp as her feelings for him, and she wanted to believe that its rich light was a symbol of the love that would sustain them through everything, even the darker times that were in store for every relationship. In truth, she was still frightened of loving Geoff Dias, but she knew he harbored fears too. The loss of his parents had made him wary of a deep and committed bond, and yet he was willing to risk taking that step now, willing to risk everything. If he could open his heart to the dangers of loving a woman, then surely she could surrender hers to the fearful sweetness of trusting a man.

The light would sustain them.

The light was love.

A Biography of Suzanne Forster.

Suzanne Forster, the New York Times bestselling author of more than forty romance novels, was on a career path to becoming a clinical psychologist until a life-altering car accident changed everything. While recovering, she tried her hand at writing to pa.s.s the time and quickly found that it was her true pa.s.sion. Before she was ready to return to school, her first ma.n.u.script had won second place in a contest sponsored by the Romance Writers of America for unpublished writers. Before she knew it, she sold her first novel, Undercover Angel (1985), and embarked on a new path.