Belonging to Taylor (14 page)

"Nope. Didn't even nick myself." It didn't surprise him to hear his own calm, bantering tone; with Taylor, falling into a companionable mood was rather like one foot automatically following the other.

They sat down at the breakfast table in the kitchen, and for a while conversation was limited to the mundane but necessary.

"Would you pass the butter, please?"

"Certainly. More coffee?"

"Thank you."

With the meal nearly finished, Trevor said, "Are you sure there'll be no shotgun wedding on the agenda?"

"I promised, didn't I?" she countered serenely.

He looked at her. "Under these circumstances with any other family, I'd be tempted to ask why not. With your family, I'm afraid to hear the answer."

Taylor's eyes were filled with mischief. "Well, I'm not saying that Daddy wouldn't rouse himself enough to defend his daughter's honor, you understand."

"Then why no shotgun wedding?" His gaze narrowed suspiciously. "If your father decks me the way he did the Frenchman—"

She laughed. "No, of course he won't. Trevor, you forget— my entire family's psychic. Daddy'll know the instant he sees me that my virtue is still very much intact."

Trevor blinked. Then, dryly, he said, "I
did
forget, dammit. You little witch. So they'll never be able to hold their heads up at the club, huh?"

After sipping her coffee, Taylor smiled seraphically. "I was worried about the
neighbors
seeing me."

"You were not. We agreed—I remember distinctly—that your parents couldn't resist telling everyone that you weren't, in spite of all efforts, a fallen woman. You were determined to
spend the night here, weren't you? No, never mind answering that. It's obvious. Just tell me why." Trevor was looking forward to one of her ridiculous answers, and he wasn't disappointed.

"Well," she said seriously. "I was rather hoping to be ravished in the middle of the night. But you slept like the dead."

"Sorry," he managed faintly, fighting the desire to burst out laughing.

"You should be!" she scolded. "I even managed to get us both in a prone position on the couch—and you fell asleep. Asleep!" Frowning slightly, she asked quizzically, "Should I try a different perfume? Or maybe a lavender teddy instead of black?"

Trevor fought manfully. "Has it occurred to you that it wasn't a question of your—uh—seductiveness, but rather my willpower?"

"Was that it?" she asked, interested. "I didn't do anything wrong?"

"Nothing that I noticed," he said ruefully.

"We," she said firmly, "have to talk further about these noble scruples of yours."

"We've already talked about them. We're going to take the time to get to know each other—remember?"

"But I'm not getting any younger," she protested, aggrieved. "And I want babies!"

He eyed her, fascinated. "What'll you say next?"

"Whatever pops into my head." She grinned suddenly, the vivid blue eyes wickedly amused.

Trevor drew a deep breath and pushed his chair back. "I'm going to clean up in here, and you're going to get dressed—"

"You do want babies, don't you?" she interrupted briskly.

"A hint toward the stability of our future relationship," he advised in a careful tone. "Never—never—ask me loaded questions before nine
a.m."

"All right," she said agreeably. "I'll ask again later."

"Much later."

"How much later?"

'Taylor, if you don't go and put your dress on right now—" He broke off and stared into the eyes watching him hopefully. "Witch!" he said feelingly. "Go get dressed!"

Laughing, she slipped from her chair and left the room.

Trevor found himself smiling like a smitten schoolboy again and shook his head at himself. A beautiful, seductive woman in his apartment wearing nothing but his robe and a black teddy, and he was ordering her to get dressed.

Ridiculous.

He was obviously losing his mind.

Jason would've split his sides laughing.

Chapter Eight

Trevor's willpower withstood the test of zipping Taylor's
dress for her, but his finger-and-toehold at the edge of sobriety crumbled—as usual—the moment they entered her house.

With any other family, under the circumstances, Trevor would have accompanied her inside to explain her innocent all-night stay at his apartment; she was over twenty-one, but she lived at home and could have been expected, to some extent, to answer to her father.

However, this was the Shannon family. Trevor didn't go in with her to explain anything at all. He went because he wanted to be with her. And he went because he was curious to see the family's reaction.

Sara entered the hall from the den just as they came in the front door, and stood gazing at them with her vague gray eyes. Those seemingly hazy eyes took in Taylor's slightly rumpled appearance and blatantly innocent face, then shifted to Trevor's carefully grave face.

"Oh, dear," Sara said mildly but with distressed undertones. "Darling, you can't let it bother you. I'm sure you'll do better next time."

"I plan to, Mother," Taylor responded solemnly.

Trevor bit down hard on his inner cheek in an attempt to fight the laughter.

Sara peered at him, a little doubtful. "You mustn't think I'm being critical, Trevor," she said gently, "but I really think you shouldn't have disappointed the child. She was so looking forward to it."

He choked swallowing the laugh in his throat. He knew only too well that none of his rational arguments would have any effect on Sara, so he didn't attempt any. Holding his voice level with a tremendous effort, he said, "You are an unnatural mother, Sara."

"Am I?" She smiled at him. "I suppose so. But such fun for the children."

Luke wandered in just then, holding a distributor cap. He addressed his wife sternly. "What is this doing in the kitchen?"

"It fell out of the car," she told him.

"They don't just fall out," he objected.

"It did."

Her husband ran a hand through his blond hair, his abstracted expression holding the rueful acceptance of odd things occurring in his wife's orbit. "Well, I'll put it back later."

"The car runs without it," she observed.

He stared at her. "It isn't supposed to."

"It does."

Luke sighed. "It would for you. Not for anyone else. Hello," he added, apparently just noticing his daughter and Trevor. Before they could respond, his brilliant blue eyes became stern again. They focused on Taylor.

"Sorry, Daddy," she said meekly.

The frowning eyes lifted to Trevor, and he fought an instinctive urge to apologize as well. Instead, he met the gaze with all the severity he could muster in his own eyes.

Luke turned back to his wife. "We'll never be able to hold our heads up at the club," he said in a pained voice.

Trevor didn't dare meet Taylor's eyes.

"I know," Sara said seriously. "But I think it was more a matter of Trevor's willpower than Taylor's sex appeal."

Frowning at Trevor, Luke demanded, "Well?"

"Quite true," he answered faintly.

"Willpower," Luke told him in a ridiculously paternal
voice, "is a very good thing—in its proper place. But you want to make sure you don't end up being stuffy."

Trevor nodded, not trusting his voice.

"Well, that's all right, then." Luke was cheerful again. "Can you drive a nail? I have to build a tree house for Dory."

"I can drive a nail."

"Then you can help me. Taylor, why don't we barbecue for lunch?"

"All right, Daddy." She sent Trevor a look brimful of laughter. "I'll go change and then see what we have to barbecue."

"Yes, do," he said absently, already taking Trevor's arm and leading him from the hall.

Trevor went.

The remainder of the morning and early afternoon flew
by. Trevor managed not to bruise a thumb or nail his fingers to the tree while assisting Luke to build a tree house. They had barbecued chicken for lunch and a general family cleanup in the kitchen—which meant that it took twice as long to get everything put away neatly with the vaguely incapable "help" of certain members of the family.

Luke instigated a Frisbee game in the backyard and exhausted everyone but himself. They ended up sprawled in various positions beneath the trees, enjoying the shade and quiet as they watched the eldest Shannon industriously weeding a small flower bed in the shade.

Trevor shared the hammock with Taylor, drowsy and content. A part of him was a bit bemused, since she'd several times absently called him "darling." He looked around at the other peaceful members of the family—and one busy one— feeling very much a part of them. Dory was asleep with her head in Sara's lap, Jamie was stretched out nearby on her stomach with a book propped before her, and Jessie leaned against a tree with sheet music in her lap and her fingers playing an imaginary piano.

The blow, when it came, was as out of place in the peaceful scene as such blows always tended to be.

'Trevor."

He turned his head to respond to Luke's voice. Then
slowly, he sat up in the hammock, feeling an inexplicable chill. He could feel Taylor's sudden tension as she, too, sat up, both of them staring at her father.

Luke was sitting back on his heels, garden tools overflowing the basket beside him. The tools and the flowers were forgotten. Luke was gazing at Trevor steadily, his brilliant eyes not the least abstracted and his handsome face unusually grim. His voice, when he spoke, held the same curiously chilling evenness that had caught their tense attention.

"Your brother's ... hiking somewhere."

"In Wyoming."

Taylor softly asked the question Trevor couldn't ask. "What's wrong, Daddy?"

Her father continued to stare intently at Trevor—but through him somehow. As if he were seeing something else entirely. "Have you talked to him?" he asked slowly.

"Not since I put him on the plane Monday." Coldness was seeping all through Trevor, gripping his heart in sudden dread.

Very quietly, Luke said, "Maybe you'd better try getting in touch with him. There'll be a freak blizzard there tomorrow ... and I think he's in trouble."

Trevor was hardly aware of slipping from the hammock and didn't realize until he was inside the house that he was tightly holding Taylor's hand. The warmth of her hand was the only warmth he felt; all else was coldness. He told himself fiercely that Jason was all right, that he was, even now, staying with his college friend in Casper as he'd planned to do the last few days of his vacation.

He told himself that, but the coldness held him.

It was difficult to think clearly, but Trevor forced himself to. He released Taylor's hand as they reached the telephone in the hall, silently grateful that she remained nearby. He met her anxious eyes, his own a little blind as he grappled mentally for the phone number only dimly remembered from other vacations. Desperation found the number, and steady fingers dialed. He kept his voice calm somehow when a worried voice answered far away.

"Hello?"

"Owen, this is Trevor. Is Jason—"

'Trevor! I've been trying to reach you since this morning."

"What's wrong?" Trevor asked steadily.

Owen sighed raggedly. "Jason was supposed to be back here in Casper yesterday morning. When he never showed, I got worried and called that lodge up in the mountains where he's staying. They sent out a search-and-rescue team, and they've alerted the Rangers. Trevor, there's snow on some of those high peaks, and a blizzard forecast for tomorrow. Jason must have gotten off the trails, or they would have found him by now. And with a storm coming—"

"I'll catch the first flight," Trevor said numbly.

"I'll meet you at the airport."

Trevor cradled the receiver slowly. He stared at Taylor, unable to force a single word past his blocked throat. But out of the fear gripping him rose a sudden terrible need to have her with him. He wasn't thinking of her psychic abilities, but only of her quiet strength. For the first time in his adult life, he needed a strength he couldn't find in himself.

Taylor stepped forward, her hand a comforting touch on his arm. "I may be able to help."

He nodded silently then reached for the phone again as she hurried upstairs to pack. A toneless voice came from somewhere to book two seats on the next available flight to Casper, and he had to restrain driving impatience when he found that the flight left in two hours. By the time he hung up the phone, Taylor was back with a quilted jacket flung over one arm and a small bag in her other hand.

It was she who quickly and briefly explained the trip to her parents, both of whom were concerned and neither surprised. Luke said only, "He's alive, Trevor." It helped—but not much.

They were quiet on the drive to Trevor's apartment, where he hastily packed a few things. Quiet all the way to the airport and during the interminable wait for their flight.