Blue-Eyed Devil (Travis Family #2)(7)

I squirmed and pushed back from him until I'd managed to put some distance between us. "I have a boyfriend," I said shakily. "I don't know why I just . . . I don't know why I let that happen. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. At least, not for that." His footsteps came closer, and I tensed. "What you should really he sorry for," he continued, "is that for the rest of my life, I'll have to avoid wine cellars to keep from thinking about you."

"Why?" I asked, woeful and shamed "Was kissing me that bad?"

A devil-soft whisper. "No, sweet heart. It was that good." And he left first, while I leaned against the tasting table with raggedy balance.

I went back out into the clamor and stole away to the grand staircase leading to the second-floor bedrooms. Liberty was waiting for me in the room Gage had occupied in childhood. I had barged in there a thousand times, wanting attention from the one person who always seemed to have time for me. I must have been a royal pain, chattering to him while he did his homework, dragging in my broken toys for him to fix. But Gage had tolerated it with what was, in retrospect, remarkable patience.

I remembered the time I'd been about Carrington's age, maybe a little younger, when Jack and Joe had dropped my favorite doll out the window and Gage had rescued her. I had gone into Jack's room, a chaos of toys and books and discarded clothes, and I'd seen him and Joe kneeling by the open window.

"Whatcha doing?" I had asked, venturing nearer. The two dark heads turned at the same time.

"Get outta here, Haven," Jack had commanded.

"Daddy says you have to let me play with you."

"Later. Get lost."

"What are you holding?" I had gone closer, my heart clutching as I saw something in their hands, tied up with strings. "Is that . . . is that Bootsie?"

"We're just borrowing her," Joe had said, his hands busy with string and some kind "I plasticky fabric.

"You can't!" I had felt the panic of the thoroughly powerless, the outrage of the dispossessed. "You didn't ask me. Give her back! Give her — " My voice shredded into a scream as I saw Bootsie being dangled over the windowsill, her na**d pink body harnessed with a contraption of strings and tape and paper clips. My baby doll had been recruited on a mission as a parachute jumper. "Doooooooon't!"

"For Pete's sake," Jack had said in a disgusted tone. "She's just a hunk of plastic." And, adding injury to insult, he'd given me a mean look and dropped her.

Bootsie had gone down like a stone. I couldn't have been more upset if the boys had dropped a real baby out the window. Howls ripped from my throat as I'd raced from the room and down the big staircase. And I kept howling as I tore outside to the side of the house, paying no attention to the voices of my parents, the housekeeper, the gardener.

Bootsie had fallen into the middle of a massive ligustrum bush. The only thing visible had been the crumpled parachute caught on a top branch, my doll hanging unseen in the green and white thicket. Since I was too short and small to reach into the branches, I could only stand there crying, while the heat from the Texas sun had settled on me with the weight of a wool blanket.

Alerted by the racket, Gage had come and rummaged through the ligustrum until he found Bootsie. He had dusted away the powdering of scurf from ligustrum leaves, and held me against him until my tears were blotted against his T-shirt.

"I love you more than anybody," I had whispered to him.

"I love you too," Gage had whispered back, and I could feel him smiling against my hair. "More than anybody."

As I entered Gage's room now, I saw Liberty sitting on the bed in a heap of shimmering organza, her shoes on the floor, her veil a rich froth floating on the mattress. It seemed impossible that she could have been any more stunning than she had been earlier at the church. But she looked even better this way, glowing and smudged. She was half Mexican with a butter-smooth complexion and big green eyes, and a figure that made you think of the old-fashioned word "bombshell." She was also shy. Cautious. You got the sense that things hadn't come easy for her, that she'd had close acquaintance with hardship.

Liberty made a comical face as she saw me. "My rescuer. You'll have to help me out of this dress — it has a thousand buttons and they're all in the back."

"No problem." I sat on the bed next to her, and she turned her back to make it easier for me. I felt awkward, struggling with unspoken tensions that no amount of niceness on her part would dispel.

I tried to think of something gracious to say. "I think today was the best day of Gage's life. You make him really happy."

"He makes me happy too," Liberty said. "More than happy. He's the most incredible man, the most . . . " She paused and lifted her shoulders in a little shrug, as if it were impossible to put her feelings into words.

"We're not the easiest family to marry into. A lot of strong personalities."

"I love the Travises," she said without hesitation. "All of you. I always wanted a big family. It was just Carrington and me after Mama died."

I'd never reflected on the fact that both of us had lost a mother while we were in our teens. Except it must have been much scarier for Liberty, because there'd been no rich father, no family, no nice house and cushy life. And she'd raised her little sister all by herself, which I had to admire.