Reckless Moon Read online

  “My Father!”

  “Don’t make me laugh. You would never let him or anybody else stand in the way of what you wanted. Which only leads me to one conclusion. You didn’t want me.” She jumped to her feet.

  Bram stood also. “That isn’t true. I wanted you very much. And if you can’t accept that, your recollection of that evening isn’t as clear as mine is.”

  Beth held up her hand. “Excuse me––you’re right. You wanted me physically; I remember that very well. What you didn’t want was a relationship with a clinging teenager who would foul up your plans to have girl in every port.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Beth stared at him. “Isn’t that right? I wanted it all, and you weren’t ready to give it.”

  RECKLESS MOON

  Doreen Owens Malek

  –

  Published by

  Gypsy Autumn Publications LLC

  P.O. Box 383 • Yardley, PA 19067

  –

  Copyright 1985 and 2012

  by Doreen Owens Malek

  www.doreenowensmalek.com

  The author asserts the moral right to

  be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher.

  First printing: April, 1985

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About the Author

  Recent Releases by Doreen Owens Malek

  CHAPTER 1

  He’s here,” Mindy said breathlessly, pulling the door shut behind her.

  Beth Forsyth swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to appear calm. “Who’s here?” she asked neutrally, reaching for her hairbrush.

  “Bram Curtis, who else?” Mindy replied, exasperated. “I told you he’d show.”

  “I didn’t think he’d have the nerve.”

  Mindy smiled impishly. “Yes, you did. The one thing Bram never lacked was nerve.”

  Beth tried to feign indifference as she smoothed her hair into place. “How does he look?” she asked casually.

  Mindy sighed, adjusting the hem of her gown. “Wonderful,” she said wistfully. “He has a beard now, and his hair is longer, but it just makes him look more…rakish...or something.” Her eyes met Beth’s in the mirror. “He’s still the sexiest thing you ever saw.”

  Beth’s expression indicated that she didn’t consider this bulletin good news.

  Mindy shook her head. “Look, Bethany, if you were hoping that he’d gotten fat or bald, forget it. He looks different, but the impact is the same.” She paused and added, “Only more so.”

  Beth fiddled with the pearl button on her lace cuff. More so. How was that possible? Bram had made such an impression originally that he had inhabited her dreams for ten years.

  She felt Mindy’s hands on her shoulders. “Relax,” her friend said quietly. “It was a long time ago. You were a kid then; a lot of things are different now. You’re all grown up, you’re a lawyer with a career to build, and your father is dead. Both of you have been away; hardly anyone remembers the reason you left. So forget it. Tough it out and the evening will be over before you know it.”

  “Are there many people downstairs?” Beth asked Mindy.

  Mindy nodded “A full house. Everybody showed to give your sister the royal send-off.”

  Beth’s sister, Marion, had gotten married in New York, and then returned home to Connecticut for the open house that would be her local wedding reception. She had issued a general invitation to attend the party to the neighbors. It hadn’t occurred to Beth that Bram might be a guest until she heard he had returned to Suffield from his latest stint in the merchant marine. And the word was, with his stepmother gone and his father in bad health, this time he would stay.

  “Do you think this dress is right for me?” Beth asked anxiously, adjusting the lace bib on the bodice .

  “You’re beautiful,” Mindy said warmly. “You look perfectly lovely. Now stop fussing and come with me. The dress is fine.”

  “It’s so frilly,” Beth said worriedly. “I fell in love with it when I saw it, but now I don’t know.” She turned to crane her neck at the full length pier glass on the other side of the bedroom. “You don’t think it makes me look like Lillie Langtry?”

  Mindy rolled her eyes. “Lillie Langtry was a legendary beauty; if you look like her you’re in good company.”

  “She’s been dead for fifty years,” Beth said, frowning at her reflection.

  Mindy stamped her foot. “You’re stalling! I never should have told you he was here.”

  “I’d have killed you if you hadn’t.”

  “I’m going to kill you if you don’t get a move on. Marion has been asking for you for half an hour. She’s going to think something is wrong with you.”

  “Something is wrong with me. I have to face a man I haven’t seen since I was sixteen, the person responsible for my being packed off to boarding school in suspicious haste by my outraged father. And I’m dressed like a character in an Edwardian farce.”

  “That’s it,” Mindy said, throwing up her hands. “I’m leaving. You can hide up here for the rest of the night, but I’m not going to cover for you. Goodbye.” Mindy made for the door.

  “All right,” Beth called after her. “I’m coming.”

  Mindy halted.

  “You’re still a terrible bully,” Beth grumbled.

  “I’ve been practicing,” Mindy replied. “While you were off getting an education I was whipping two preschoolers into line.”

  Beth put her hand on Mindy’s arm. “What am I going to say to him?” she asked softly.

  Mindy opened the bedroom door and pushed Beth through it. “Bethany, when were you ever at a loss for words?” she said, walking into the hall.

  Beth’s eyes roamed the crowd of well wishers as she and Mindy descended the spiral staircase of her father’s house. It belonged to Beth and her sister now, with their mother and father both gone, but Marion would return to New York with her stockbroker husband and Beth would live in it alone. She had plans to convert a ground floor wing into an office for her budding practice, but that was before she found out that Bram Curtis was back in Suffield. For good, Marion said. It would be difficult to stay here now, with Bram at his father’s place just down the road. He hadn’t been back since the night Beth’s father found them together, and now he had turned up just as Beth was settling in to start her firm. Damn the man. It was just like him to reappear at the least opportune moment

  Bram was not among the group milling about the front hall, nor was he in the living room or dining room that led off from it to the right and left. Beth wandered into the kitchen at the back of the house with Mindy’s daughter, Tracy, clinging to her skirts. Mindy had seized the moment and vanished.

  Marion was standing at the sink, breaking ice cubes into a bucket. She turned at Beth’s approach.

  “There you are,” she greeted her sister. “Help me with this; my arms are broken from tr
ying to get these beastly things out of the trays.”

  Beth took over the task, saying, “I don’t know why you didn’t just let us get a caterer for this thing. You’re the only bride I’ve ever seen who’s waiting on people at her own reception.”

  Marion got a Popsicle from the freezer and gave it to Tracy, who proceeded to smear the sticky concoction all over her organdy dress.

  “I hate strangers wandering around Daddy’s house,” Marion replied. “It’s nicer for us to give the party ourselves.”

  “Mindy is going to be very happy when she sees that child,” Beth commented dryly. Tracy now also had a chocolate mustache.

  “It’s keeping her occupied,” Marion said darkly. She peered at Beth’s face. “Bram Curtis is here,” she announced.

  “So everyone has told me,” Beth replied, “but I haven’t seen him.”

  “I have.” Marion bit her lip. It made her look like their mother, who had used the same gesture when she was concerned.

  “Don’t worry, Marion,” Beth said. “I’m not going to spoil your party. I will be very civil, I promise you.” She handed her sister the ice, then refilled the trays at the sink.

  “You’re not the one I’m worried about,” Marion said. “He always was wild, but you should see him now. He has a beard and when he smiles, those teeth against that midnight hair...” she trailed off, unable to complete the thought. She took the trays, putting them away.

  “Maybe we should lock up the silver,” Beth whispered.

  Marion stared at her. “How can you make jokes after what he did to you?”

  “He didn’t do anything to me, Marion. In Daddy’s immortal words, ‘It takes two to tango.’”

  “Daddy never was very original,” Marion giggled.

  Tracy dropped the remains of her Popsicle on her left shoe and began to wail.

  “Oh, dear,” Marion said. She took the dishrag from the sink and started to wipe ineffectually at the spreading brown stain.

  Mindy appeared in the doorway, summoned by Tracy’s cries, and scooped the little girl into her arms.

  “I gave her the Popsicle,” Marion said guiltily.

  Mindy shifted Tracy to one arm and waved the other. “Never mind, if it wasn’t this it would have been something else; she always winds up filthy at the end of one of these events. Where’s your husband?”

  “Making drinks on the patio,” Marion replied. “I’m supposed to be getting him ice.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Mindy said, and the two women went out together, leaving Beth alone. She threaded her way through the guests on the lower level, nodding and smiling, and finally sought refuge in her father’s study, a small room behind the garage at the back of the house. Lined with books, the walls hung with family memorabilia, it was her favorite place to think.

  When she opened the door a man turned from the fireplace, where he had been leaning on the stone mantel. There was a half finished drink in his hand. Beth looked at him, and a decade dissolved in an instant.

  “Bram,” Beth said, striving to regain her shattered equilibrium. “What are you doing in here?”

  He saluted her with his glass. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m crashing your party.”

  Beth closed the door, shutting out the din of conversation from the rest of the house. “You’re not crashing,” she said evenly. “The neighbors were invited, and you’re a neighbor. I want to know why you’re in this room, that’s all.”

  His black brows shot up into his hair. “I got lost?” he suggested.

  Beth merely looked at him.

  “Came to borrow a dictionary?” His dark eyes mocked her.

  Beth waited.

  He shrugged, draining his glass. “Well, I guess that rules out drawn here by forces beyond my control and driven to return to the scene of the crime.” He slapped his empty glass on the mantel and surveyed her archly. “This room holds a rather significant memory for me. You, too?”

  Beth’s heart thumped against her breastbone. “I would rather forget what happened between us in here.”

  He rocked slightly on his heels. “Ah, yes, the sweet little teenager seduced by the big, bad sailor.” He took a step toward her. “I suppose that’s the way you prefer to think of it. Except that isn’t quite the truth, is it, Bethany? You and I, we know what really happened.”

  “I don’t want to go over all of that again,” Beth said hoarsely. She still reacted to the sound of his voice saying her name.

  “I’ll bet you don’t,” he said softly, moving even closer. She tried not to meet his eyes, but her gaze was drawn to his, mesmerized.

  He did look different from the way she remembered him, but his attractiveness was hardly diminished by the change. Ten years before he’d been clean shaven, with close-cropped wavy hair. Now the lower portion of his face was covered by a short black beard, and his raven hair had grown out into dark wings that covered his ears and curled over his collar. Trust Bram to adopt longer hair when it had really passed out of style; he always liked to be different But the cola-brown eyes, the thick, dark lashes, the strong white teeth were all the same. And the slim, powerful body, clad in a dark suit in honor of the occasion, was as lean and agile as she recalled. Beth ached to go to him, but she backed away.

  He laughed softly. “You had more guts the last time I saw you,” he said. “You’ve changed.”

  “You were drunk the last time I saw you,” Beth replied. “You haven’t changed at all.”

  His eyes widened, and the fading evening sun coming through the window lightened them to the color of milk chocolate. “Drunk,” he said, indignant. “Certainly not. I had a couple of nips for courage, nothing much.”

  “You needed courage to face me?” Beth asked, watching him.

  He turned away, not answering. Then, after a moment, “Maybe I needed courage to face the memories in this room.” He looked back at her. “I never wanted your father to send you away, Bethany.”

  Beth said nothing.

  “I went to see him the next day and tried to talk him out of it,” Bram added. “As soon as I heard his plan, I tried to dissuade him.”

  Beth couldn’t conceal her surprise.

  Bram nodded. “I suspected he wouldn’t tell you about that. You just assumed I’d abandoned you to your hapless fate, didn’t you?”

  “Does it matter what I thought?” Beth asked wearily, pushing back a strand of her hair. “It was a long time ago. I was just a willful, impulsive child, and you were just...”

  “A fully grown man who didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘restraint,’” Bram finished dryly. “When a sixteen-year-old girl gets together with a twenty-five-year-old merchant seaman, you don’t have to tell me who’s responsible.”

  “That’s not what you said a few minutes ago,” Beth replied, reeling. She now remembered how he could blithely switch tracks in a second, leaving her to stumble after him in a desperate struggle to understand.

  “A few minutes ago I was smarting from the impact of your frosty reception,” he stated flatly.

  Beth didn’t know how to respond to that, so she asked,“Are you home to stay? I heard you might be.”

  He made a dismissive gesture. “My father appears to need me to run the business, and since my dear stepmother has at last left him for good, there seems to be no reason why I shouldn’t stay.” His eyes drifted away from her face, looking into the distance. “I’ve finally tired of roaming the globe, Bethany.” Then he grinned suddenly, his magnificent teeth flashing. “The prodigal son has returned.”

  “Your father must be happy about that.”

  Bram shrugged. “As long as Anabel remains in Palm Beach, I’ll stick. He never missed me before but now he’s too sick to get along without me, so I’ve become necessary.”

  His acid tone regarding his family hadn’t changed either. Bram’s mother had died when he was small, and when Bram was fifteen his father, at that time fifty, had married Anabel, who was half his age. Bram’s enmity for his stepmother was l
egendary, and their disagreements had led to his enlisting in the merchant marine two years later, when he was seventeen. Except for visits on leave, he hadn’t been home to live since.

  “Mindy tells me that you’re a lawyer,” he said, smiling slightly.

  “That’s right,” Beth replied. “Surprised?”

  Bram shook his head slowly, his eyes holding hers, and Beth felt a flush spreading up her neck.

  “I knew you were one quick-smart lady,” he said quietly, and Beth felt as if he had touched her.

  “Brains and beauty, your Dad said to me,” Bram went on. “And he was right. After you left and I went back to sea, I discovered that I couldn’t quite dismiss that combination, even in a teenage schoolgirl.”

  Beth held her breath, afraid to speak.

  “The day after the barbecue I told your father I was leaving anyway, there was no reason to ship you off to Boston,” Bram said. “But he was convinced that you needed discipline, and boarding school was the answer. Just the thing to control a motherless girl.”

  “He thought I was a simpleton, a silly little flirt,” Beth said bitterly.

  “You were nothing like that,” Bram said huskily. “You just got mixed up with the wrong guy, on the wrong night.”

  Beth closed her eyes.

  “Your father asked me not to contact you again, so I didn’t, even though I knew he had misunderstood it all. But after what happened I thought it best to listen to him.”

  Mindy’s voice sounded in the hall outside the door. They both started.

  “My father didn’t understand,” Beth said helplessly.

  “He couldn’t,” Bram replied. “I was sorry to hear of his death, Bethany. The news reached me six months after the funeral. I didn’t get any mail until we docked in Tripoli.”

  “Beth? You in there?” Mindy called. She rapped on the door.

  Bram dropped his eyes and walked back to the fireplace.

  “Come in,” Beth called.