Wicked Ties(86)
doing anything to reduce his raging erection.
“Have you seen…more of her since my last visit?” Brice cackled and winked. “You
were slow to answer my greeting and never noticed my knocking on the door, yeah.”
“I didn’t answer the door because I didn’t hear it. I was out here. And it’s early. I
hardly expected company.”
“What time it is?” Brice frowned.
Jack didn’t buy his grandfather’s innocent act for a minute. “What time is it?” he
corrected. “It’s way too early for social calls, but early enough to catch us at something if we liked to start the day off right. Isn’t that what you were thinking?”
“Mon petit-fils, you are suspicious.”
“I think I have a right to be, since the ‘warm and practical’ clothing you brought
Morgan looks like it came from the X-rated version of the Victoria’s Secret catalog.”
His grandfather’s laughter made Jack roll his eyes. “But you have enjoyed the…
sights?”
“No comment. Why would you do such a thing? Wave an open invitation in my face
to have sex with her. I know you want me to remarry, but you’d never met Morgan before
that stunt.”
The old man tapped on his chest. “Live long enough, yeah, and you know things.
Them dreams, Jack, they mean something. Down through the generations, they’ve
always meant love.”
“Just because it did for you—”
“Non, not just me. My grandfather, too. He took a job in San Francisco for a few years.
No more Acadian country for him, says he.” Brice waved a dismissive hand at that. “He
started having dreams, did he, about a beau blond.”
“Hell, I’ve had a fantasy or two about a gorgeous blonde in my lifetime.”
“For months straight, mon garçon?”
Jack sighed, both because he hated being called anyone’s boy and because reasoning
with the old man was never an easy task.
“No,” he finally answered.
“You see there, yeah. My grand-pere had these dreams about a lady at a ball. He met
her and discovered she was his boss’s young bride. Since his love was already married,
he believed the family legend was wrong. But he kept on dreaming of her. The dreams
were hard on his heart.
“Two weeks after meeting son amour, the big earthquake struck San Francisco.
Nineteen-oh-six. The lovely lady’s husband, he died. And my grandfather married the
pretty blonde a year later. Six enfants and over fifty years later, they was still in love.”
Staring at the old man, Jack wondered if he was serious. Was it even possible, even a
bit?
“And his grandfather before him,” Brice went on, “was wounded in battle and
captured by the Yanks at the end of the Civil War. His bride, she was a union nurse in
the field hospital. He kept a journal that said dreams of a faceless beauty kept him sane
during months of battle, yeah. When he met her, it was a shock. They married three days
after the war ended.”
Three men of his blood all dreaming of faceless beauties. Jack had dreamed endlessly
of one with sparkling red hair glowing in the sunlight. And just this morning, Morgan
had manifested herself as his dream image. Did that explain his insane desire to lay
claim to her, as if she wasn’t taken, as if she was more than the instrument of his
revenge? As if walking away from her wasn’t possible?
Shock jolted a dizzying bolt through his system. Jack stroked his chin and tried to
regain his balance. The concept of predestined mates and dreaming of them was so…
otherworldly. So weird. Not that he hadn’t grown up with the knowledge; he’d just never
believed it.
“None of us want to believe that there’s any truth to this malédiction. But facts is
facts, yeah. It happens to every man in our line. And now, it’s your turn, with Morgan.”
“How did you know when it happened to you?” Jack asked, struggling to accept his
grandfather’s claim. “What made you sure, besides the dreams, that Grand-mere was the
one?”
The old man smiled, deepening lines around his eyes and mouth, leaving no doubt
the man had spent a lifetime smiling wide and often. “The moment I met her, I fought a
crazy urge to grab her up tight and convince her to be mine. I never wanted to be away
from her or see her blue. Most of all, cher garçon, I wanted her happy and I knew deep
inside here,” he pointed to his heart, “that I could make her so. Comprenes-tu?”
Oh, yeah. Jack understood all too well. Hadn’t he been feeling the same way from
nearly the instant he’d met Morgan? The insane desire to touch her, the willingness to do