Black Rose

didn’t support. What was in her heart, for this moment, in this winter garden belonged to someone else.
    “You had no one. No mother, no father, no sister, no brother.”
    “I had my sons. I had this house. I had myself.” She looked away, and he could see her draw herself back, close that door to the past. “I understand where you’re going with this, and I don’t understand it. She never bothered to object before, not to John, or anyone I was with after, not to Bryce. She did, occasionally express some disapproval—I’ve told you that before. But nothing on the scale she has recently. Why would that be?”
    “I’ve been trying to work that out. I have a couple of theories. Let’s go inside first. The light’s going and you’re going to be chilled straight through. Not much meat on you. That wasn’t a complaint,” he added when she narrowed her eyes.
    Deliberately she bumped up the southern in her voice. “I come from a line of women with delicate builds.”
    “Nothing delicate about you,” he corrected and took her hand as they walked toward the house. “What you are is a long wild rose—a black rose with plenty of thorns.”
    “Black roses don’t grow wild. They have to be cultivated. And no one’s ever managed a true black.”
    “A black rose,” he repeated and brought their joined hands to his lips. “Rare and exquisite.”
    “You keep talking like that, I’ll have to invite you up to my private quarters.”
    “I thought you’d never ask.”

THIRTEEN

    “I THOUGHT I should tell you,” Roz began as they walked toward the house, “that my... household is very interested in my more personal relationship with you.”
    “That’s all right, so am I. Interested in my personal relationship with you.”
    She glanced down at their joined hands and thought what a lovely design it was that fingers could link so smoothly together. “Your hand’s bigger than mine, considerably. Your palm’s wider, your fingers longer. And see how your fingers are blunt at the tip where mine taper some?”
    She lifted her arm so their hands were eye level. “But it makes such a nice fit.”
    With a soft laugh, he said her name. Said it tenderly. Rosalind. Then paused briefly to angle his head down and touch his lips to hers. “So does that.”
    “I was thinking the same. But I’d as soon keep those thoughts, and that personal interest, between you and me.”
    “Hard to do, since we have other people in our lives. My son wanted to know where I came up with the brunette babe I was with at the Ole Miss game.”
    “And you told him?”
    “That I’d finally managed to get Rosalind Harper to give me a second look.”
    “I gave you plenty of looks,” she said, and sent him another as they started up the steps to her terrace. “But I’ve gotten into the habit of being selfish with my private life, and I don’t see any reason we can’t enjoy each other without filing regular bulletins on our sex life.”
    She reached for the terrace door. It blew open, barely missing striking her face. A blast of frigid wind gushed out of her room, knocking her back a full step before Mitch managed to grab her, then block her body with his.
    “Good luck!” he shouted over the scream of air.
    “I will not tolerate this.” Furious, she shoved him aside and bulled her way through the door. “I will not tolerate this sort of thing in my house!”
    Photographs flew off tables like missiles while lamps flashed on and off. A chair shot across the room, slamming into a chest of drawers with a force that had the vase of hothouse orchids spinning. When she saw the vanity mirror her sons had given her start to slide, she leaped forward to grab it.
    “Stop this idiotic bullshit right now. I’m not going to put up with it.”
    There was pounding, monstrous fists of fury, on the walls, in the walls, and the floor trembled under her feet. A large Baccarat perfume bottle detonated, a crystal bomb that spewed jagged shards like shrapnel.
    In the midst of the whirlwind, Roz stood, clutching the vanity mirror, and her shout over the explosions of shattering glass, the ferocious banging, was Arctic ice.
    “I’ll stop every attempt to find out who you are, to right whatever wrong was done to you. I’ll do whatever it takes to remove you from this house. You won’t be welcome here.
    “This is my house,” she called out as fire erupted in the hearth and the candlestick on the mantel spiraled up into the air. “And I will,