Paper Rose Quotes

“Bring Cecily home,” he said curtly. “I won’t have her at risk, even in the slightest way.”
“I’ll take care of Cecily,” came the terse reply. “She’s better off without you in her life.”
Tate’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, affronted.
“You know what I mean,” Holden said. “Let her heal. She’s too young to consign herself to spinsterhood over a man who doesn’t even see her.”
“Infatuation dies,” Tate said.
Holden nodded. “Yes, it does. Goodbye.”
“So does hero worship,” he continued, laboring the point.
“And that’s why after eight years, Cecily has had one raging affair after the other,” he said facetiously.
The words had power. They wounded.
“You fool,” Holden said in a soft tone. “Do you really think she’d let any man touch her except you?” He went to his office door and gestured toward the desk. “Don’t forget your gadget,” he added quietly.
“Wait!”
Holden paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned. “What?”
Tate held the device in his hands, watching the lights flicker on it. “Mixing two cultures when one of them is all but extinct is a selfish thing,” he said after a minute. “It has nothing to do with personal feelings. It’s a matter of necessity.”
Holden let go of the doorknob and moved to stand directly in front of Tate. “If I had a son,” he said, almost choking on the word, “I’d tell him that there are things even more important than lofty principles. I’d tell him…that love is a rare and precious thing, and that substitutes are notoriously unfulfilling.”
Tate searched the older man’s eyes. “You’re a fine one to talk.”
Holden’s face fell. “Yes, that’s true.” He turned away.
Why should he feel guilty? But he did. “I didn’t mean to say that,” Tate said, irritated by his remorse and the other man’s defeated posture. “I can’t help the way I feel about my culture.”
“If it weren’t for the cultural difference, how would you feel about Cecily?”
Tate hesitated. “It wouldn’t change anything. She’s been my responsibility. I’ve taken care of her. It would be gratitude on her part, even a little hero worship, nothing more. I couldn’t take advantage of that. Besides, she’s involved with Colby.”
“And you couldn’t live with being the second man.”
Tate’s face hardened. His eyes flashed.
Holden shook his head. “You’re just brimming over with excuses, aren’t you? It isn’t the race thing, it isn’t the culture thing, it isn’t even the guardian-ward thing. You’re afraid.”
Tate’s mouth made a thin line. He didn’t reply.
“When you love someone, you give up control of yourself,” he continued quietly. “You have to consider the other person’s needs, wants, fears. What you do affects the other person. There’s a certain loss of freedom as well.” He moved a step closer. “The point I’m making is that Cecily already fills that place in your life. You’re still protecting her, and it doesn’t matter that there’s another man. Because you can’t stop looking out for her. Everything you said in this office proves that.” He searched Tate’s turbulent eyes. “You don’t like Colby Lane, and it isn’t because you think Cecily’s involved with him. It’s because he’s been tied to one woman so tight that he can’t struggle free of his love for her, even after years of divorce. That’s how you feel, isn’t it, Tate? You can’t get free of Cecily, either. But Colby’s always around and she indulges him. She might marry him in an act of desperation. And then what will you do? Will your noble excuses matter a damn then?”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“It was raining and I had to walk on the grass. I’ve got mud all over my shoes. They’re brand-new, too.”
“I’ll carry you across the grass on the return trip, if you like,” Colby offered with twinkling eyes. “It would have to be over one shoulder, of course,” he added with a wry glance at his artificial arm.
She frowned at the bitterness in his tone. He was a little fuzzy because she needed glasses to see at distances.
“Listen, nobody in her right mind would ever take you for a cripple,” she said gently and with a warm smile. She laid a hand on his sleeve. “Anyway,” she added with a wicked grin, “I’ve already given the news media enough to gossip about just recently. I don’t need any more complications in my life. I’ve only just gotten rid of one big one.”
Colby studied her with an amused smile. She was the only woman he’d ever known that he genuinely liked. He was about to speak when he happened to glance over her shoulder at a man approaching them. “About that big complication, Cecily?”
“What about it?” she asked.
“I’d say it’s just reappeared with a vengeance. No, don’t turn around,” he said, suddenly jerking her close to him with the artificial arm that looked so real, a souvenir of one of his foreign assignments. “Just keep looking at me and pretend to be fascinated with my nose, and we’ll give him something to think about.”
She laughed in spite of the racing pulse that always accompanied Tate’s appearances in her life. She studied Colby’s lean, scarred face. He wasn’t anybody’s idea of a pinup, but he had style and guts and if it hadn’t been for Tate, she would have found him very attractive. “Your nose has been broken twice, I see,” she told Colby.
“Three times, but who’s counting?” He lifted his eyes and his eyebrows at someone behind her. “Well, hi, Tate! I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”
“Obviously,” came a deep, gruff voice that cut like a knife.
Colby loosened his grip on Cecily and moved back a little. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said.
Tate moved into Cecily’s line of view, half a head taller than Colby Lane. He was wearing evening clothes, like the other men present, but he had an elegance that made him stand apart. She never tired of gazing into his large black eyes which were deep-set in a dark, handsome face with a straight nose, and a wide, narrow, sexy mouth and faintly cleft chin. He was the most beautiful man. He looked as if all he needed was a breastplate and feathers in his hair to bring back the heyday of the Lakota warrior in the nineteenth century. Cecily remembered him that way from the ceremonial gatherings at Wapiti Ridge, and the image stuck stubbornly in her mind.
“Audrey likes to rub elbows with the rich and famous,” Tate returned. His dark eyes met Cecily’s fierce green ones. “I see you’re still in Holden’s good graces. Has he bought you a ring yet?”
“What’s the matter with you, Tate?” Cecily asked with a cold smile. “Feeling…crabby?”
His eyes smoldered as he glared at her. “What did you give Holden to get that job at the museum?” he asked with pure malice.
Anger at the vicious insinuation caused her to draw back her hand holding the half-full coffee cup, and Colby caught her wrist smoothly before she could sling the contents at the man towering over her.
Tate ignored Colby. “Don’t make that mistake again,” he said in a voice so quiet it was barely audible. He looked as if all his latent hostilities were waiting for an excuse to turn on her. “If you throw that cup at me, so help me, I’ll carry you over and put you down in the punch bowl!”
“You and the CIA, maybe!” Cecily hissed. “Go ahead and try…!”
Tate actually took a step toward her just as Colby managed to get between them. “Now, now,” he cautioned.
Cecily wasn’t backing down an inch. Neither was Tate.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“I wish you’d told me this before.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“Maybe not. But talking about wounds can help heal them.”
“You don’t talk about yours,” she pointed out.
He sat down on the sofa facing her and leaned forward. “But I do,” he said seriously. “I talk to you. I’ve never told anyone else about the way my father treated us. That’s a deeply personal thing. I don’t share it. I can’t share it with anyone but you.”
“I’m part of your life,” she said heavily, smoothing her hair back again. “Neither of us can help that. You were my comfort when Mama died, my very salvation when my stepfather hurt me. But I can’t expect you to go on taking care of me. I’m twenty-five years old, Tate. I have to let you go.”
“No, you don’t.” He caught her wrists and pulled her closer. He was more solemn than she’d ever seen him. “I’m tired of fighting it. Let’s find out how deep your scars ago. Come to bed with me, Cecily. I know enough to make it easy for you.”
She stared at him blankly. “Tate…” She touched his lean cheek hesitantly. He was offering her paradise, if she could face her own demons in bed with him. “This will only make things worse, whatever happens.”
“You want me,” he said gently. “And I want you. Let’s get rid of the ghosts. If you can get past the fear, I won’t have anyone else from now on except you. I’ll come to you when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when the world falls on me. I’ll lie in your arms and comfort you when you’re sad, when you’re frightened. You can come to me when you need to be held, when you need me. I’ll cherish you.”
“And you’ll make sure I never get pregnant.”
His face tautened. “You know how I feel about. I’ve never made a secret of it. I won’t compromise on that issue, ever.”
She touched his long hair, thinking how beautiful he was, how beloved. Could she live with only a part of him, watch him leave her one day to marry another woman? If he never knew the truth about his father, he might do that. She couldn’t tell him about Matt Holden, even to insure her own happiness.
He glanced at her, puzzled by the expression on her face. “I’ll be careful,” he said. “And very slow. I won’t hurt you, in any way.”
“Colby might come back…”
He shook his head. “No. He won’t.” He stood up, pulling her with him. He saw the faint indecision in her face. “I won’t ask for more than you can give me,” he said quietly. “If you only want to lie in my arms and be kissed, that’s what we’ll do.”
She looked up into his dark eyes and an unsteady sigh passed her lips. “I would give…anything…to let you love me,” she said huskily. “For eight long years…!”
His mouth covered the painful words, stilling them.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Tate gave me your birthday present when you were here before,” she confessed. “I put it on top of the cabinet in the dining room and forgot to give it to you. Here, I’ll fetch it!”
Cecily felt as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her just at the sound of his name. She could almost taste him on her mouth, feel the fierce hunger of his body as he pressed her into the wall…
“He remembered my birthday,” she said faintly, touched.
“He always remembers it, but he said you weren’t speaking then.” She handed the small box to Cecily. “Go on,” she said when the younger woman hesitated. “Open it.”
Cecily’s hands went cold and trembled as she tore off the wrappings. It was a jewelry box. I wasn’t a ring, of course, she told herself as she forced up the hinged lid. He certainly wouldn’t buy her a…
“The beast!” she exclaimed. “Oh, how could he?”
Leta looked over her shoulder at what was in the box and dissolved into gales of laughter.
Cecily glared at her. “It isn’t funny.”
“Oh, yes it is!”
Cecily looked back down at the silver crab with its ruby eyes and pearl claws, and one corner of her mouth tugged up. “He is pretty, isn’t he?”
She took the pin out of the box and studied it. It wasn’t silver. It was white gold. Those were real rubies and pearls, too. This hadn’t been an impulse purchase. He’d had this custom-made for her. Tears stung her eyes. It was the sort of present you gave to someone who meant something to you. She remembered his passionate kisses, and wished with all her heart that he’d meant those, too.
She pinned the small crab onto the collar of her blouse and knew that she’d treasure it as long as she lived.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“In a private room down the hall, a tired but delighted Cecily was watching her husband with his brand-new son. Cecily had thought that the expression on Tate’s face at their wedding would never be duplicated. But when they placed the tiny little boy in his father’s gowned arms in the delivery room, and he saw his child for the first time, the look on his face was indescribable. Tears welled in his eyes. He’d taken the tiny little fist in his big, dark hand and smoothed over the perfect little fingers and then the tiny little face, seeking resemblances.
“Generations of our families,” he said softly, “all there, in that face.” He’d looked down at his wife with unashamedly wet eyes. “In our son’s face.”
She wiped her own tears away with a corner of the sheet and coaxed Tate’s head down so that she could do the same for him where they were, temporarily, by themselves.
Now she was cleaned up, like their baby, and drowsy as she lay on clean white sheets and watched her husband get acquainted with his firstborn. “Isn’t he beautiful?” he murmured, still awed by the child. “Next time, we have to have a little girl,” he said with a tender smile, “so that she can look like you.”
Her heart felt near to bursting as she stared up at that beloved face, above the equally beloved face of their firstborn.
“My heart is happy when I see you,” she whispered in Lakota.
He chuckled, having momentarily forgotten that he’d taught her how to say it. “Mine is equally happy when I see you,” he replied in English.
She reached out and clasped his big hand with her small one. On the table beside her was a bouquet of roses, red and crisp with a delightful soft perfume. Her eyes traced them, and she remembered the first rose he’d ever given her, when she was seventeen: a beautiful red paper rose that he’d brought her from Japan. Now the roses were real, not imitation. Just as her love for him, and his for her, had become real enough to touch.
He frowned slightly at her expression. “What is it?” he asked softly.
“I was remembering the paper rose you brought me from Japan, just after I went to live with Leta.” She shrugged and smiled self-consciously.
He smiled back. “And now you’re covered in real ones,” he discerned.
She nodded, delighted to see that he understood exactly what she was talking about. But, then, they always had seemed to read each others’ thoughts-never more than now, with the baby who was a living, breathing manifestation of their love. “Yes,” she said contentedly. “The roses are real, now.”
Outside the window, rain was coming down in torrents, silver droplets shattering on the bright green leaves of the bushes. In the room, no one noticed. The baby was sleeping and his parents were watching him, their eyes full of warm, soft dreams.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“You said that it would be the two of us from now on, if this happened. That there would be no more Audrey, no other woman. That you’d come to me to be comforted, to be cared for.”
He took great handfuls of her own wonderfully soft hair and framed her face in his lean hands. He bent to kiss her with breathless tenderness, savoring her warm mouth. “I will. Even if I don’t know that I can cope with that again,” he said huskily.
“With lovemaking?”
He took a long, long look at her. “You don’t know much about this,” he said finally. “There are…degrees of pleasure. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s even great. Once in a lifetime or so, it’s sacred.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were a virgin,” he whispered solemnly. “But we joined souls. I was inside you, but you were inside me, too.” He nuzzled her nose with his. “I remember wondering if a man could die of pleasure, just at the last. It was so good that it was almost painful.”
She smiled. “I know. I love you,” she said softly.
He looked away from her. His hands on her shoulders were bruising.
“Sorry,” she murmured, pulling away. “You don’t want to hear that. But it’s a fact of life, like middens and projectile points and horizons in archaeology. I can’t help it, and it isn’t as if you didn’t already know. I couldn’t have slept with you only because I wanted you. Not with my past.”
He knew that. He knew it to the soles of his feet. He was confused and afraid and overwhelmed by the passion they’d shared. It was an addictive, narcotic experience that left him shaken and uncertain for the first time in his life.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Tell me!” Cecily insisted later, shaking Colby by both arms.
“Cut it out, you’ll dismember me,” Colby said, chuckling.
She let go of the artificial arm and wrapped both hands around the good one. “I want to know. Listen, this is my covert operation. You’re just a stand-in!”
“I promised I wouldn’t tell.”
“You promised in Lakota. Tell me in English what you promised in Lakota.”
He gave in. He did tell her, but not Leta, what was said, but only about the men coming to the reservation soon.
“We’ll need the license plate number,” she said. “It can be traced.
“Oh, of course,” he said facetiously. “They’ll certainly come here with their own license plate on the car so that everyone knows who they are!”
“Damn!”
He chuckled at her irritation. He was about to tell her about his alternative method when a big sport utility vehicle came flying down the dirt road and pulled up right in front of Leta’s small house.
Tate Winthrop got out, wearing jeans and a buckskin jacket and sunglasses. His thick hair fell around his shoulders and down his back like a straight black silk curtain. Cecily stared at it with curious fascination. In all the years she’d known him, she’d very rarely seen his hair down.
“All you need is the war paint,” Colby said in a resigned tone. He turned the uninjured cheek toward the newcomer. “Go ahead. I like matching scars.”
Tate took off the dark glasses and looked from Cecily to Colby without smiling. “Holden won’t tell me a damned thing. I want answers.”
“Come inside, then,” Cecily replied. “We’re attracting enough attention as it is.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“His eyes ran over her hungrily. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” he said, almost to himself, “the way it felt, back at my mother’s house. I was never so hungry for anyone, but it wasn’t completely physical, even then.” He frowned. “I want you, Cecily, and I hate myself for it.”
“What else is new?” She gestured toward the door. “Go home. And I hope you don’t sleep a wink.”
“I probably won’t,” he said ruefully. He moved toward the door, hesitating.
“Good night,” she said firmly, not moving.
He stood with his back to her, his spine very straight. “I can trace my ancestors back before the Mexican War in the early 1800s, pure Lakota blood, undiluted even by white settlement. There are so few of us left…”
She could have wept for what she knew, and he didn’t know. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” she said solemnly. “I know how you feel.”
“You don’t,” he bit off. He straightened again. “I’d die to have you, just once.” He turned, and the fire was in his eyes as they met hers, glittering across the room. “It’s like that for you, too.”
“It’s a corruption of the senses. You don’t love me,” she said quietly. “Without love, it’s just sex.”
He breathed deliberately, slowly. He didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t help it. “Something you know?”
“Yes. Something I know,” she said, lying with a straight face and a smile that she hoped was worldly. She was not going to settle for crumbs from him, stolen hours in his bed. Men were devious when desire rode them, even men like Tate. She couldn’t afford for him to know that she was incapable of wanting any man except him.
The words stung. They were meant to. He hesitated, only for a minute, before he jerked open the door and went out. Cecily closed her eyes and thanked providence that she’d had the good sense to deny herself what she wanted most in the world. Tate had said once that sex alone wasn’t enough. He was right. She repeated it, like a mantra, to her starving body until she finally fell asleep.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“You have to stop letting me do this,” he bit off, half-angrily.
“If you’ll stop leaning on me so that I can get my hands on a blunt object, I’ll be happy to…!”
He kissed the words into oblivion. “It isn’t a joke,” he murmured into her mouth. His hips moved in a gentle, sensuous sweep against her hips. He felt her shiver.
“That’s…new,” she said with a strained attempt at humor.
“It isn’t,” he corrected. “I’ve just never let you feel it before.” He kissed her slowly, savoring the submission of her soft, warm lips. His hands swept under the blouse and up under her breasts in their lacy covering. He was going over the edge. If he did, he was going to take her with him, and it would damage both of them. He had to stop it, now, while he could. “Is this what Colby gets when he comes to see you?” he whispered with deliberate sarcasm.
It worked. She stepped on his foot as hard as she could with her bare instep. It surprised him more than it hurt him, but while he recoiled, she pushed him and tore out of his arms. Her eyes were lividly green through her glasses, her hair in disarray. She glared at him like a female panther.
“What Colby gets is none of your business! You get out of my apartment!” she raged at him.
She was magnificent, he thought, watching her with helpless delight. There wasn’t a man alive who could cow her, or bend her to his will. Even her drunken, brutal stepfather hadn’t been able to force her to do something she didn’t want to do.
“Oh, I hate that damned smug grin,” she threw at him, swallowing her fury. “Man, the conqueror!”
“That isn’t what I was thinking at all.” He sobered little by little. “My mother was a meek little thing when she was younger,” he recalled. “But she was forever throwing herself in front of me to keep my father from killing me. It was a long time until I grew big enough to protect her.”
She stared at him curiously, still shaken. “I don’t understand.”
“You have a fierce spirit,” he said quietly. “I admire it, even when it exasperates me. But it wouldn’t be enough to save you from a man bent on hurting you.”
He sighed heavily. “You’ve been…my responsibility…for a long time,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “No matter how old you grow, I’ll still feel protective about you. It’s the way I’m made.”
He meant to comfort, but the words hurt. She smiled anyway. “I can take care of myself.”
“Can you?” he said softly. He searched her eyes. “In a weak moment…”
“I don’t have too many of those. Mostly, you’re responsible for them,” she said with black humor. “Will you go away? I’m supposed to try to seduce you, not the reverse. You’re breaking the rules.”
His eyebrow lifted. Her sense of humor seemed to mend what was wrong between them. “You stopped trying to seduce me.”
“You kept turning me down,” she pointed out. “A woman’s ego can only take so much rejection.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Cecily let her cheek fall to Leta’s shoulder and hugged her back. It felt so nice to be loved by someone in the world. Since her mother’s death, she’d had no one of her own. It was a lonely life, despite the excitement and adventure her work held for her. She wasn’t openly affectionate at all, except with Leta.
“For God’s sake, next you’ll be rocking her to sleep at night!” came a deep, disgusted voice at Cecily’s back, and Cecily stiffened because she recognized it immediately.
“She’s my baby girl,” Leta told her tall, handsome son with a grin. “Shut up.”
Cecily turned a little awkwardly. She hadn’t expected this. Tate Winthrop towered over both of them. His jet-black hair was loose as he never wore it in the city, falling thick and straight almost to his waist. He was wearing a breastplate with buckskin leggings and high-topped mocassins. There were two feathers straight up in his hair with notches that had meaning among his people, marks of bravery.
Cecily tried not to stare at him. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever known. Since her seventeenth birthday, Tate had been her world. Fortunately he didn’t realize that her mad flirting hid a true emotion. In fact, he treated her exactly as he had when she came to him for comfort after her mother had died suddenly; as he had when she came to him again with bruises all over her thin, young body from her drunken stepfather’s violent attack. Although she dated, she’d never had a serious boyfriend. She had secret terrors of intimacy that had never really gone away, except when she thought of Tate that way. She loved him…
“Why aren’t you dressed properly?” Tate asked, scowling at her skirt and blouse. “I bought you buckskins for your birthday, didn’t I?”
“Three years ago,” she said without meeting his probing eyes. She didn’t like remembering that he’d forgotten her birthday this year. “I gained weight since then.”
“Oh. Well, find something you like here…”
She held up a hand. “I don’t want you to buy me anything else,” she said flatly, and didn’t back down from the sudden menace in his dark eyes. “I’m not dressing up like a Lakota woman. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blond. I don’t want to be mistaken for some sort of overstimulated Native American groupie buying up artificial artifacts and enthusing over citified Native American flute music, trying to act like a member of the tribe.”
“You belong to it,” he returned. “We adopted you years ago.”
“So you did,” she said. That was how he thought of her-a sister. That wasn’t the way she wanted him to think of her. She smiled faintly. “But I won’t pass for a Lakota, whatever I wear.”
“You could take your hair down,” he continued thoughtfully.
She shook her head. She only let her hair loose at night, when she went to bed. Perhaps she kept it tightly coiled for pure spite, because he loved long hair and she knew it.
“How old are you?” he asked, trying to remember. “Twenty, isn’t it?”
“I was, give years ago,” she said, exasperated. “You used to work for the CIA. I seem to remember that you went to college, too, and got a law degree. Didn’t they teach you how to count?”
He looked surprised. Where had the years gone? She hadn’t aged, not visibly.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Don’t make that mistake again,” he said in a voice so quiet it was barely audible. He looked as if all his latent hostilities were waiting for an excuse to turn on her. “If you throw that cup at me, so help me, I’ll carry you over and put you down in the punch bowl!”
“You and the CIA, maybe!” Cecily hissed. “Go ahead and try…!”
Tate actually took a step toward her just as Colby managed to get between them. “Now, now,” he cautioned.
Cecily wasn’t backing down an inch. Neither was Tate. He’d gone from lazy affection and indulgent amusement to bristling antagonism in the space of weeks. Lately he flew into a rage if Cecily’s name was mentioned, but Colby hadn’t told her that.
“You have no right to make that kind of insinuation about me,” she said through her teeth. “I don’t get jobs lying on my back, and you know it!”
Tate’s black eyes narrowed. He looked formidable, but Cecily wasn’t intimidated by him. She never had been. He glanced at her hands, which were clenched on her cup, and then back to her rigid features. It had infuriated him to be the object of televised ridicule at the political dinner, and Audrey’s comments had only made things worse. He was carrying a grudge. But as he looked at Cecily, he felt an emptiness in his very soul. This woman had been a thorn in his side for years, ever since an impulsive act of compassion had made her his responsibility. In those days, she’d been demure and sweet and dependent on him, and her shy hero worship had been vaguely flattering. Now, she was a fiery, independent woman who didn’t give a damn about his disapproval or, apparently, his company, and she had done everything expect leave town to keep out of his way.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“She pulled the shawl closer as a tall, lithe figure cut across the parking lot and joined her at the passenger door.
“You’re already famous,” Colby Lane told her, his dark eyes twinkling in his lean, scarred face. “You’ll see yourself on the evening news, if you live long enough to watch it.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Tate’s on his way right now.”
“Unlock this thing and get me out of here!” she squeaked.
He chuckled. “Coward.”
He unlocked the door and let her climb in. By the time he got behind the wheel and took off, Tate was striding across the parking lot with blood in his eye.
Cecily blew him a kiss as Colby gunned the engine down the busy street.
“You’re living dangerously tonight,” Colby told her. “He knows where you live,” he added.
“He should. He paid for the apartment,” she added in a sharp, hurt tone. She wrapped her arms closer around her. “I don’t want to go home, Colby. Can I stay with you tonight?”
She knew, as few other people did, that Colby Lane was still passionately in love with his ex-wife, Maureen. He had nothing to do with other women even two years after his divorce was final. He drank to excess from time to time, but he wasn’t dangerous. Cecily trusted no one more. He’d been a good friend to her, as well as to Tate, over the years.
“He won’t like it,” he said.
She let out a long breath. “What does it matter now?” she asked wearily. “I’ve burned my bridges.”
“I don’t know why that socialite Audrey had to tell you,” he muttered irritably. “It was none of her business.”
“Maybe she wants a big diamond engagement ring, and Tate can’t afford it because he’s keeping me,” she said bitterly.
He glanced at her rigid profile. “He won’t marry her.”
She made a sound deep in her throat. “Why not? She’s got everything…money, power, position and beauty-and a degree from Vassar.”
“In psychology,” Colby mused.
“She’s been going around with Tate for several months.”
“He goes around with a lot of women. He won’t marry any of them.”
“Well, he certainly won’t marry me,” she assured him. “I’m white.”
“More of a nice, soft tan,” he told her. “You can marry me. I’ll take care of you.”
She made a face at him. “You’d call me Maureen in your sleep and I’d lay your head open with the lamp. It would never work.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Colby’s resourceful, I’ll give him that.”
“You used to be good friends.”
“We were, until he started hanging around Cecily,” came the short reply. “I’m not as angry at him as I was. But it seems that he has to have a woman to prop him up.”
“Not necessarily,” Matt replied. “Sometimes a good woman can save a bad man. It’s an old saying, but fairly true from time to time. Colby was headed straight to hell until Cecily put him on the right track. It’s gratitude, but I don’t think he can see that just yet. He’s in between mourning his ex-wife and finding someone to replace her.” He leaned back again. “I feel sorry for him. He’s basically a one-woman man, but he lost the woman.”
Tate packed back to the wing chair and sat down on the edge. “He’s not getting Cecily. She’s mine, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.”
Matt stared at him. “Don’t you know anything about women in love?”
“Not a lot,” the younger man confessed. “I’ve spent the better part of my life avoiding them.”
“Especially Cecily,” Matt agreed. “She’s been like a shadow. You didn’t miss her until you couldn’t see her behind you anymore.”
“She’s grown away from me,” Tate said. “I don’t know how to close the gap. I know she still feels something for me, but she wouldn’t stay and fight for me.” He lifted his gaze to Matt’s hard face. “She’s carrying my child. I want both of them, regardless of the adjustments I have to make. Cecily’s the only woman I’ve ever truly wanted.”
Matt spread his hands helplessly. “This is one mess I can’t help you sort out,” he said at last. “If Cecily loves you, she’ll give in sooner or later. If it were me, I’d go find her and tell her how I really felt. I imagine she’ll listen.”
Tate stared at his shoes. He couldn’t find the right words to express what he felt.
“Tate,” his father said gently, “you’ve had a lot to get used to lately. Give it time. Don’t rush things. I’ve found that life sorts itself out, given the opportunity.”
Tate’s dark eyes lifted. “Maybe it does.” He searched the other man’s quiet gaze. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was, having a foot in two worlds. I’m getting used to it.”
“You still have a unique heritage,” Matt pointed out. “Not many men can claim Berber revolutionaries and Lakota warriors as relatives.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“I won’t be responsible for helping you move someplace where you’re at risk. For one thing, Tate would kill me if anything happened to you.”
“He might maim you a little…”
“I’m not joking,” Colby said quietly. “You don’t understand how he is about you. He isn’t normal when you’re threatened, in any way.”
He studied her for a long moment. “Cecily, how do you think it would affect him if he knew you were carrying his child?”
Her heart almost jumped out of her chest. She put a hand over her slightly swollen waistline and sighed. “I don’t know. He…loves little things,” she said after a minute, smiling as she recalled Tat with a succession of her pets over the years. “He likes children, too. We always had a Christmas party at the school on the Wapiti reservation every year, and Tate would help pass out presents. The kids were crazy about him.”
“He loves children,” Colby agreed. “He’d want his own child.”
She lowered her eyes to the carpet with a sigh. “Maybe. Or maybe it would just make him feel trapped all over again.” She put her head in her hands. “It’s all such a mess,” she murmured. “I don’t know what to do.”
“In which case, you should do nothing,” Colby said firmly.
She didn’t quite meet his eyes as she smiled. “Good advice.”
Which didn’t mean she was willing to take it, she thought an hour later as she packed a suitcase. She couldn’t tell Colby her plans for fear he might tell Tate. She couldn’t tell Matt or Leta for the same reason. Her only logical solution was to get on a bus or a train or an airplane and just…vanish. So that’s what she did.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“She realized at once that he expected trouble and that he was used to handling deadly situations. It was the first time she’d actually seen him do it, despite their long history. It gave her a new, adult perspective on his lifestyle. No wonder he couldn’t settle down and become a family man. She’d been crazy to expect it, even in her fantasies. He was used to danger and he enjoyed the challenges it presented. It would be like housing a tiger in an apartment. She sighed as she saw the last tattered dream of a future with him going up in smoke.
Tate looked through the tiny peephole and took his hand away from the pistol. He glanced at Cecily with an expression she couldn’t define before he abruptly opened the door.
Colby Lane walked in, eyebrows raised, new scars on his face and bone weariness making new lines in it.
“Colby!” Cecily exclaimed with exaggerated delight. “Welcome home!”
Tate’s face contracted as if he’d been hit.
Colby noticed that, and smiled at Cecily. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, looking from one tense face to the other.
“No,” Tate said coolly as he reholstered his pistol. “We were discussing security options, but if you’re going to be around, they won’t be necessary.”
“What?”
“I’m fairly certain that the gambling syndicate tried to kill her,” Tate said somberly, nodding toward Cecily. “A car almost ran her down in her own parking lot. She ended up in the hospital. And decided not to tell anyone about it,” he added with a vicious glare in her direction.
“Way to go, Cecily,” Colby said glumly. “You could have ended up floating in the Potomac. I told you before I left to be careful. Didn’t you listen?”
She shot him a glare. “I’m not an idiot. I can call 911,” she said, insulted.
Colby was still staring at Tate. “You’ve cut your hair.”
“I got tired of braids,” came the short reply. “I have to get back to work. If you need me, I’ll be around.” He paused at the doorway. “Keep an eye on her,” Tate told Colby. “She takes risks.”
“I don’t need a big strong man to look out for me. I can keep myself out of trouble, thank you very much,” she informed Tate.
He gave her a long, pained last look and closed the door behind him.
As he walked down the staircase from her apartment, he couldn’t shake off the way she looked and acted. Something was definitely wrong with her, and he was going to find out what.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“I made decaf,” he said. “Caffeine isn’t good for you.”
“Thank you, Mama Lane.”
He made a face at her. “Tate and I used to share everything. Let him go off in a snit. I’ll share his baby. If he doesn’t come back, I’ll appropriate it, and you.”
“That’s one area where all your commando skills will fail, dear man,” she said affectionately. “I like you very much, and you can be baby’s godfather. But I’m raising this child myself.”
“Godfather.” He was savoring the word when the toast popped up.
“Bad choice of words,” she murmured. “I wouldn’t want to give you any bad ideas. I don’t want my child outfitted in a fedora and a machine gun.”
“Commando godfathers are a different breed.”
“Black bags and camo gear aren’t much better,” she informed him.
“Spoilsport. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Hanging in the shower trying to dry out.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“What a curse, to want only one person.”
He drew her into his arms and kissed her again, hungrily. “What a glorious blessing, to want only one person and be wanted back, even after thirty-six long years,” he whispered.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Leta walked to the door and opened it with a ready smile for Colby Lane. And found herself looking straight into the eye of a man she hadn’t seen face-to-face in thirty-six years.
Matt Holden matched her face against his memories of a young, slight, beautiful woman whose eyes loved him every time they looked at him. His heart spun like a cartwheel in his chest.
“Cecily said it was Colby,” Leta said unsteadily.
“Strange. She phoned me and asked if I was free this evening.” His broad shoulders shrugged and he smiled faintly. “I’m free every evening.”
“That doesn’t sound like the life of a playboy widower,” Leta said caustically.
“My wife was a vampire,” he said. “She sucked me dry of life and hope. Her drinking wore me down. Her death was a relief for both of us. Do I get to come in?” he added, glancing down the hall. “I’m going to collect dust if I stand out here much longer, and I’m hungry. A sack of McDonald’s hamburgers and fries doesn’t do a lot for me.”
“I hear it’s a presidential favorite,” Cecily mused, joining them. “Come in, Senator Holden.”
“It was Matt before,” he pointed out. “Or are you trying to butter me up for a bigger donation to the museum?”
She shrugged. “Pick a reason.”
He looked at Leta, who was uncomfortable. “Well, at least you can’t hang up on me here. You’ll be glad to know that our son isn’t speaking to me. He isn’t speaking to you, either, or so he said,” he added. “I suppose he won’t talk to you?” he added to Cecily.
“He said goodbye very finally, after telling me that I was an idiot to think he’d change his mind and want to marry me just because he turned out to have mixed blood,” she said, not relating the shocking intimacy that had prefaced his remarks.
“I’ll punch him for that,” Matt said darkly.
“Ex-special forces,” Leta spoke up with a faint attempt at humor, nodding toward Matt. “He was in uniform when we went on our first date.”
“You wore a white cotton dress with a tiered skirt,” he recalled, “and let your hair down. Hair…”
He turned back to Cecily and grimaced. “Good God, what did you do that for?”
“Tate likes long hair, that’s what I did it for,” she said, venom in her whole look. “I can’t wait for him to see it, even if I have to settle for sending him a photo!”
“I hope you never get mad at me,” Matt said.
“Fat chance.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Tate opened another beer. He was glad he had several. He held up the beer to his image in the mirror. “To bastards everywhere!” he said sarcastically, and chugged it down.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Steel tempered by fire,” she said aloud, without thinking.
“Am I?” he asked.
She smiled sadly. “Aren’t you?”
He let out a long, slow breath and some of the tension drained out of him. He looked at her quizzically. “You give me peace,” he said unexpectedly. “The only time I ever feel it is when I’m with you. God knows why, when you set me off like a bomb.”
She searched his eyes. “Tate, Senator Holden has a reason for what he did,” she told him seriously. “I don’t pretend to know what it is, but I know him. He’s not like some politicians who lie when the truth would suit better. He has integrity. He doesn’t hold grudges and he doesn’t backstab. You know that,” she added with conviction.
He scowled. “Yes, I do.” His narrow eyes searched hers. “What do you know, Cecily?”
“I know archaeology,” she replied.
He reached out and touched her firm little chin with hard fingers. “You’re keeping something from me,” he said in a low, deep tone. “I’m not sure why I sense that, but I do.”
“You think you know all about me,” she replied, trying to draw back. “Don’t…do that,” she muttered, reaching up to catch his hair-roughened wrist in her warm fingers.
His breath caught. “Fatal error, Cecily,” he said huskily, moving in, giving in to the hunger that had really brought him to her apartment at this hour of the night. “You shouldn’t have touched me…”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“That night, while you were asleep, I unbuttoned your pajama jacket and looked at what he’d done to you. Afterward, I drove back to his house and very nearly killed him. If he hadn’t started crying and begging me to stop, I…” He let out the angry breath. “That was when I realized how I felt about you,” he added, his eyes meeting hers. “A man wants to protect what he considers his own. It started then, that night.”
She was surprised by what he was telling her. “You…looked at me?”
He nodded. His eyes narrowed. “You had the most beautiful little breasts,” he said roughly. “And they were covered with bruises. I wanted to kiss the bruises, take you into my bed and hold you, just hold you, all night long so that you’d be safe. I didn’t dare give in to the impulse, of course,” he added with the first touch of amusement he’d shown since her arrival. “My mother would have horsewhipped me.”
She felt waves of surprised pleasure lance through her body. “I never knew.”
“I was always known for my poker face,” he murmured. “But it was sheer agony to be around you. The older you got, the worse it was. It was inevitable that one day I’d go mad and take you.” He sighed. “The most hellish part of the whole thing was knowing that all I had to do was touch you and you’d let me do anything I liked to you.”
She traced the mouth of her coffee cup. “I loved you,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
There was a world of pain in the words. She looked up into his black eyes and saw an answering emotion in them. “You never told me.”
“I couldn’t.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“The milk is long since out of date, the bread all has mold and I think you could start a bacterial plague with what’s in the crisper here…”
“Order a pizza,” he suggested. “There’s a place down on the corner that still owes me ten pizzas, paid for in advance.”
“You can’t eat pizza for breakfast!”
“Why can’t I? I’ve been doing it for a week.”
“You can cook,” she said accusingly.
“When I’m sober,” he agreed.
She glowered at him and went back to her chore. “Well, the eggs are still edible, barely, and there’s an unopened pound of bacon. I’ll make an omelet.”
He collapsed into the chair at the kitchen table while she made a fresh pot of coffee and set about breaking eggs.
“You look very domesticated like that,” he pointed out with a faint smile. “After we have breakfast, why don’t you come to bed with me?”
She gave him a shocked glance. “I’m pregnant,” she reminded him.
He nodded and laughed softly. “Yes, I know. It’s an incredible turn-on.”
Her hand stopped, poised in midair with a spoon in it. “Wh…What?”
“The eggs are burning,” he said pleasantly.
She stirred them quickly and turned the bacon, which was frying in another pan. He thought her condition was sexy? She couldn’t believe he was serious.
But apparently he was, because he watched her so intently over breakfast that she doubted if he knew what he was eating.
“Mr. Hutton told the curator of the museum in Tennessee that I wasn’t coming back, and he paid off the rent on my house there,” she said. “I don’t even have a home to go to…”
“Yes, you do,” he said quietly. “I’m your home. I always have been.”
She averted her eyes to her plate and hated the quick tears that her condition prompted. Her fists clenched. “And here we are again,” she said huskily.
“Where?” he asked.
She drew in a harsh breath. “You’re taking responsibility for me, out of duty.”
He leaned back in his chair. The robe came away from his broad, bronzed chest as he stared at her. “Not this time,” he replied with a voice so tender that it made ripples right through her heart. “This time, it’s out of love, Cecily.”
Cecily doubted her own ears. She couldn’t have heard Tate saying that he wanted to take care of her because he loved her.
He wasn’t teasing. His face was almost grim. “I know,” he said. “You don’t believe it. But it’s true, just the same.” He searched her soft, shocked green eyes. “I loved you when you were seventeen, Cecily, but I thought I had nothing to offer you except an affair.” He sighed heavily. “It was never completely for the reasons I told you, that I didn’t want to get married. It was my mother’s marriage. It warped me. It’s taken this whole scandal to make me realize that a good marriage is nothing like the one I grew up watching. I had to see my mother and Matt together before I understood what marriage could be.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Tate was sprawled across the bed in his robe early the next morning when the sound of the front door opening penetrated his mind. There was an unholy commotion out there and his head was still throbbing, despite a bath, several cups of coffee and a handful of aspirin that had been forced on him the day before by two men he’d thought were his friends. He didn’t want to sober up. He only wanted to forget that Cecily didn’t want him anymore.
He dragged himself off the bed and went into the living room, just in time to hear the door close.
Cecily and her suitcase were standing with mutual rigidity just inside the front door. She was wearing a dress and boots and a coat and hat, red-faced and muttering words Tate had never heard her use before.
He scowled. “How did you get here?” he asked.
“Your boss brought me!” she raged. “He and that turncoat Colby Lane and two bodyguards, one of whom was the female counterpart of Ivan the Terrible! They forcibly dressed me and packed me and flew me up here on Mr. Hutton’s Learjet! When I refused to get out of the car, the male bodyguard swept me up and carried me here! I am going to kill people as soon as I get my breath and my wits back, and I am starting with you!”
He leaned against the wall, still bleary-eyed and only half awake. She was beautiful with her body gently swollen and her lips pouting and her green eye sin their big-lensed frames glittering at him.
She registered after a minute that he wasn’t himself. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked abruptly.
He didn’t answer. He put a hand to his head.
“You’re drunk!” she exclaimed in shock.
“I have been,” he replied in a subdued tone. “For about a week, I think. Pierce and Colby got my landlord to let them in yesterday.” She smiled dimly. “I’d made some threats about what I’d do if he ever let anybody else into my apartment, after he let Audrey in the last time. I guess he believed them, because Colby had to flash his company ID to get in.” He chuckled weakly. “Nothing intimidates the masses like a CIA badge, even if it isn’t current.”
“You’ve been drunk?” She moved a little closer into the apartment. “But, Tate, you don’t…you don’t drink,” she said.
“I do now. The mother of my child won’t marry me,” he said simply.
“I said you could have access…”
His black eyes slid over her body like caressing hands. He’d missed her unbearably. Just the sight of her was calming now. “So you did.”
Why did the feel guilty, for God’s sake, she wondered. She tried to recapture her former outrage. “I’ve been kidnapped!”
“Apparently. Don’t look at me. Until today, I was too stoned to lift my head.” He looked around. “I guess they threw out the beer cans and the pizza boxes,” he murmured. “Pity. I think there was a slice of pizza left.” He sighed. “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“Yesterday!”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Are you a relative of her late husband?” the woman asked.
His eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
“It must be so hard for her, pregnant and just widowed,” the middle-aged woman continued. “We’ve all done what we could to make her happy here. Mr. Johnson, the curator, is a widower himself. He’s already sweet on her. But you’re probably anxious to see Mrs. Peterson. Shall I ring her and let her know you’re coming?”
Tate’s eyes were blazing. “No,” he said with forced politeness. “I want to surprise her!”
He stalked out, leaving the rented vehicle where it was as he trudged through the small layer of snow and glared contemptuously at the cars sliding around in the street as they passed. This little bit of snow was nothing compared to the six-foot snowdrifts on the reservation. Southerners, he considered, must not get much winter precipitation if this little bit of white dust paralyzed traffic!
As for Cecily’s mythical dead husband, he considered, going up the walkway to the small brick structure where she lived, he was about to make a startling, resurrected appearance!
He knocked on the door and waited.
There was an irritated murmur beyond the closed door and the sound of a lock being unfastened. The door opened and a wan Cecily looked straight into his eyes.
He managed to get inside the screen door and catch her before she passed out.
She came to on the sofa with Tate sitting beside her, smoothing back her disheveled hair. The nausea climbed into her throat and, fortunately, stayed there. She looked at him with helpless delight, wishing she could hide what the sight of him was doing to her after so many empty, lonely weeks.
He didn’t speak. He touched her hair, her forehead, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, with fingers that seemed bent on memorizing her. Then his hands went to the robe carelessly fastened over her cotton nightdress and pushed it aside. He touched her belly, his face radiant as he registered the very visible and tangible signs of her condition.
“When did we make him?” he asked without preamble.
She felt her world dissolve. He knew about the baby. Of course. That was why he was here.
He met her eyes, found hostility and bitter disillusionment in them. His hand pressed down over her belly. “I would have come even if I hadn’t known about the baby,” he said at once.
“The baby is mine.”
“And mine.”
“Audrey is not getting her avaricious little hands on my child…!”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“You need a battle plan,” Matt advised. “I never left the base without detailed reconnaissance and a battle plan. It’s why I came home alive.”
Tate chuckled in spite of himself. “She’s a woman, not an enemy stronghold.”
“That’s what you think,” Matt said, pointing a spoon in the other man’s direction before he lowered it into his cup. “Most women are enemy strongholds,” he added, with a wicked glance at his smiling wife. “You have to storm the gates properly.”
“He knows all about storming gates, apparently,” Leta said with faint sarcasm. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be expecting a grandchild…” She gasped and looked at Matt. “A grandchild. Our grandchild,” she emphasized with pure joy.
Matt glanced at Tate. “That puts a whole new face on things, son,” he said, the word slipping out so naturally that it didn’t even seem to surprise Tate, who smiled through his misery.
“You go to Tennessee and tell Cecily she’s marrying you,” Leta instructed her son.
“Sure,” Tate said heavily. “After all the trouble I’ve given her in the past weeks, I’m sure she can’t wait to rush down the aisle with me.”
“Honey catches more flies than vinegar,” Matt said helpfully.
“If I go down there with any honey, I’ll come home wearing bees.”
Leta chuckled.
“You aren’t going to give up?” Matt asked.
Tate shook his head. “I can’t. I have to get to her before Gabrini does, although I’m fairly sure he has no more idea where she really is than I did until today. I just have to find a new approach to get her back home. God knows what.” He sipped more coffee and glanced from one of his parents to the other. He felt as if he belonged, for the first time in his life. It made him warm inside to consider how dear these two people suddenly were to him. His father, he thought, was quite a guy. Not that he was going to say so. The man was far too arrogant already.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Everything’s fine.”
“Except that Cecily’s pregnant,” Matt Holden offered, grinning at Tate’s exasperated glare and Leta’s shocked gasp.
“What do you mean, Cecily’s pregnant?” Leta burst out. She hit her son’s arm with her open hand. She hit him again. “You hooligan, how could you! How could you?”
Tate defended himself with both arms. “How do you know it was me?” he teased.
“Who else could it be?” Leta raged. “Do you think my baby would let another man touch her? Would she jump into bed with any other man in the world except you? Are you crazy?”
Tate actually looked sheepish, and there was a new light in his eyes. Matt, after contemplating the two of them for a minute, sauntered off into the general direction of the kitchen, leaving mother and son alone together for the first time since the tempest had started.
Tate stuck his hands into his pockets and stared down at his pretty little mother. “If you haven’t finished hitting me, I think there’s a spot or two you missed,” he pointed out, touching his arm and grimacing.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Matt was deeply touched that his estranged son would come to him for advice. He wasn’t going to let it show, of course. A man had his pride.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Matt’s housekeeper let him in with a grimace.
“I’m harmless today,” Tate assured the woman as she led the way to where Matt Holden was standing just outside the study door.
“Right. You and two odd species of cobra,” Matt murmured sarcastically, glaring at his son from a tanned face. “What do you want, a bruise to match the other one?”
Tate held up both hands. “Don’t start,” he said.
Matt moved out of the way with reluctance and closed the study door behind them. “Your mother’s gone shopping,” he said.
“Good. I don’t want to talk to her just yet.”
Matt’s eyebrows levered up. “Oh?”
Tate dropped into the wing chair across from the senator’s bulky armchair. “I need some advice.”
Matt felt his forehead. “I didn’t think a single malt whiskey was enough to make me hallucinate,” he said to himself.
Tate glowered at him. “You’re not one of my favorite people, but you know Cecily a little better than I seem to lately.”
“Cecily loves you,” Matt said shortly, dropping into his chair.
“That’s not the problem,” Tate said. He leaned forward, his hands clasped loosely between his splayed knees. “Although I seem to have done everything in my power to make her stop.”
The older man didn’t speak for a minute or two. “Love doesn’t die that easily,” he said. “Your mother and I are a case in point. We hadn’t seen each other for thirty-six years, but the instant we met again, the years fell away. We were young again, in love again.”
“I can’t wait thirty-six years,” Tate stated. He stared at his hands, then he drew in a long breath. “Cecily’s pregnant.”
The other man was quiet for so long that Tate lifted his eyes, only to be met with barely contained rage in the older man’s face.
“Is it yours?” Matt asked curtly.
Tate glowered at him. “What kind of woman do you think Cecily is? Of course it’s mine!”
Matt chuckled. He leaned back in the easy chair and indulged the need to look at his son, to find all the differences and all the similarities in that younger version of his face. It pleased him to find so many familiar things.
“We look alike,” Tate said, reading the intent scrutiny he was getting. “Funny that I never noticed that before.”
Matt smiled. “We didn’t get along very well.”
“Both too stubborn and inflexible,” Tate pointed out.
“And arrogant.”
Tate chuckled dryly. “Maybe.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“I can’t find out anything, but I’ve put together a network. I’ll find her.”
“The thing is, she doesn’t want to be found. That isn’t going to make things any easier.”
He didn’t want to ask, but he had to know. “Why doesn’t she want to be found?”
“Because you’re marrying Audrey at Christmas,” Colby said simply.
“I’m not marrying Audrey,” came the sort reply. “I never meant to marry Audrey. She outflanked me while I was getting used to the idea of being a media snack.”
“Well, Cecily doesn’t know that,” Colby replied.
“Great,” he muttered. “That’s just great. I leave the country and come home to find myself engaged to a woman I wouldn’t have, at any price!”
“That’s not the only reason Cecily left,” Colby said tersely. “She knew you wouldn’t forgive her for not telling you about Matt Holden.”
Tate ran a hand through his hair, missing the former length of it. “I’ve had a rough few weeks.”
“So has she,” the other man said curtly.
“She could have told me about my mother and Holden!”
“Cecily gives her word and keeps it. There aren’t a lot of people on the planet who could make that claim. She promised the senator she wouldn’t tell you anything.”
The senator. His father. Tate paced with the phone to his ear, his mind busy with possible places she might have gone to. “She might have told my mother where she was going.”
“I’d bet good money that she didn’t,” Colby returned immediately. “She doesn’t want you to find her.”
Tate stopped pacing. He scowled. “She doesn’t want me to find her?”
“Actually, she doesn’t want any of us to find her. Especially you.”
Tate’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Any particular reason for that? Other than what I already know?”
“Oh, boy.” Colby made a rough sound in his throat. “I still don’t think I should tell you. But if something should happen to her…”
“Damn you, tell me!”
Colby took a breath and went for broke. “All right. Cecily’s pregnant. That’s why she ran.”
“You son of a bitch!”
The phone slammed down so hard that Colby shuddered at the noise. He put the receiver down with a grimace. He shouldn’t have blown Cecily’s cover. But what else could he do? She was pregnant and alone and an attempt had been made on her life. It Tate wasn’t told, and Cecily was hurt or lost the baby, he might never get over it. That went double for Tate.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose

“Yes?” he said impatiently.
There was a pause. “You wouldn’t believe how many people I had to bribe to get this new number of yours. But I didn’t think past getting you to answer the phone,” Colby said reluctantly. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“You and Cecily are getting married,” Tate drawled sarcastically, hating the very idea of it and trying not to let it show. “I can’t say it’s any big surprise. Was there anything else?”
There was another pause. “Cecily won’t marry me.”
“Tough.” Tate wasn’t going to admit how much that admission pleased him, even if she wouldn’t answer her damned phone when he tried to call her. “So?”
Colby laughed mirthlessly. “I thought this was the right thing to do. Now, I’m not sure if it is.”
“I’m not pleading your case for you,” Tate replied. His voice was icy. Then he hesitated. His heart skipped a beat as another reason for this call occurred and chilled his blood. “Has something happened to her?” he asked immediately.
“She’s not hurt or anything,” the other man replied. “It’s just than I can’t find her. Maybe they can’t find her, either,” he continued, sounding as if he was talking to himself.
Tate had a terrible sinking feeling in his stomach. He broke the Internet connection on the other line and turned off the computer. “What’s up?” he asked, sounding the way he used to, when he and Colby were colleagues in the old days.
“Cecily’s done a flit,” Colby told him. “She’s gone and I can’t find her. Believe me, I’ve used every contact I could find or buy. She didn’t leave a trail.”
― Diana Palmer, Paper Rose