One Summer’s Knight

Chapter 1

It had never entered Summer Robey’s mind that she might go to jail. Primarily because it was unthinkable.

Jail. The word, spoken in the judge’s stern, Southern voice, rumbled inside her head like far-off thunder, ominous and threatening. Impossible, she thought. There were the children. The animals. She couldn’t possibly go to jail.

Summer, she ordered herself, take a deep breath. They didn’t really put people in jail for owing money anymore, did they? Hadn’t there been wars fought over that sort of thing? Hadn’t debtors’ prisons been banished long ago?

Deep in her heart she knew she wouldn’t really go to jail. For one thing, her family would never let it happen. It was the injustice of it all that was so overwhelming. And the humiliation. Oh, Lord, the humiliation.

Sitting in that overheated courtroom, hearing the judge’s rebuke echo in her ears, Summer felt exactly as if she’d been slapped. Her cheeks burned with it! All right, she’d never actually been slapped in the face in her life, but she was sure this must be what it would feel like. To be scolded like a child, publicly chastised in front of all those people…those strangers, the clerks and bailiffs, the spectators and lawyers.

Especially that lawyer, the opposing counsel, her enemy, the hospital’s high-priced ace. What was his name?

Two last names. Riley…Grogan-that was it A strange name, she’d thought, for a man so polished, so elegant, so immaculately groomed-so utterly heartless!-with his soft, Southern aristocrat’s voice and his cold blue eyes. A street fighter’s name. Oh, how she wished she’d had someone as ruthless fighting on her side!

She should have hired a lawyer, no matter what the cost. Charly had told her so, and now that it was too late, Summer knew that she was right. Charly was Summer’s sister Mirabella’s best friend, as well as the family’s attorney, but at the moment she was off in the South Seas honeymooning with her husband Troy, who also happened to be the big brother of Mirabella’s husband Jimmy Joe. Which, as Jimmy Joe would have put it, was a whole ’nother story.

“First thing you do is get yourself a lawyer and declare bankruptcy,” Charly had yelled over a bad satellite phone connection from somewhere in Tahiti. But Summer had cringed at the thought. It would have been bad enough having to ask Bella and Jimmy Joe for the money to hire an attorney. Horrible enough having to take her humiliating family problems-her miserable failures-to a stranger. But bankruptcy? Never. Summer Robey might be all but penniless and backed into a corner, but she did have her pride.

And what had all that pride got her? Simply the worst, the most humiliating day of her life.

How could this have happened? How could she be held liable for her ex-husband’s hospital bill when it was he who had deserted her, deserted his kids, leaving them virtually penniless and with the bank foreclosing on their home?

But unbelievably, none of that had mattered to this Southern judge. Immaterial, he’d called it, even if she’d had proof of her allegations. Which she didn’t. How could she have known Hal would become so desperate as to do such a thing? He’d seemed better, those last few months. She’d even allowed herself to hope… Stupid. Stupid. She should have known.

But it had never once occurred to her that she might not be believed. It was Hal Robey who was the compulsive gambler and congenital liar, Summer who was the responsible parent and respected veterinarian-didn’t that prove something?

Too bad. As the judge had coldly pointed out, there’d already been a ruling in this case, and the deadline for appeal had long since passed. The case could not be retried. Meanwhile, there was a judgment against her. She had been ordered by a California court to pay the rehab hospital’s bill. An order that she had chosen to ignore. Therefore, the judge had no option but to find her in contempt.

Contempt. Oh, yes, she’d seen it in the judge’s eyes when he’d scolded her as if she were a child-or an irresponsible nitwit. Of course, she knew that’s what he thought, that she was just another California bimbo, a dumb little beach bunny. And who could blame him? Because, unfortunately, that was exactly what she looked like.

For most of Summer’s life her looks had been her greatest trial For while she realized she looked very much like her name-golden and breezy, carefree and sunny-that was not who she really was. For one thing, she knew she looked much younger than her thirty-five years-when she wasn’t gaunt and hollow-eyed with worry-young enough to still get carded every time she ordered wine with dinner or bought a six-pack of beer at the supermarket, young enough that she could have fit right in with the crowds of gum-popping teenagers who hung out at the mall near her clinic, making conversation that seemed to consist mostly of “I mean, like, totally awesome, y’know?” No one would ever guess to look at her that she was a practicing vet with two kids and a truly frightening house payment.

And beach bunny? Well, she was blond-thanks to genetics, not choice-with a healthy glow to her skin that had little to do with exposure to the sun. But with the demands of her clinic, not to mention the hectic schedule set for her by the children’s activities, she had precious little time for the beach. If it wasn’t some school project, it was David’s swim practice or one of Helen’s gymnastics meets-for which Summer would almost invariably show up late, still wearing a smock smeared with heaven-knows-what and reeking of nervous animal. At least the children would forgive her for that, since it was what they’d grown up with and were pretty much used to. As co-custodians of an elderly and vile-tempered Persian cat, a timid but adorable Chihuahua, and an African gray parrot with an IQ surpassing that of some college students of her acquaintance, they often wore those telltale smears and scents themselves.

Theirs had been a lively household at times. Interesting, to say the least Had been.

Summer sat quietly, her shoulders slumping with defeat. As she gazed out the courtroom’s high, multipaned windows at a January sky the dingy gray of old dishwater, she thought about the blue of January skies in California, and the roses that would still be blooming in the front yard of her ranch-style house, nestled in its securely affluent suburb at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains.

And she thought about the rented mobile home she and the children and the animals lived in now-an ugly brown shoe box set down in a patch of dusty, weedy grass, with a gravel driveway and a single oak tree for shade. But convemently located only a mile from the terminus of the mobile vet service where she’d found employment as a vet-tech, traveling around to local communities, helping to dispense rabies shots and heartworm pills. Her own clinic-yes, perhaps she missed that most of all.

Lively, chaotic…interesting. Oddly enough, she realized as she pulled her gaze away from the windows and began to gather up her coat, her purse, notebook and pen, those words she’d used to describe her former life did still apply to this one. But, oh, how different. Thanks to Hal, that charming scoundrel she’d married right out of vet school with everyone’s blessing, something else had been added. Fear. Of all the things she had to forgive her former husband for, that was the hardest.

Forgive you, Hal?

As much as she wanted to, she really couldn’t blame Hal; she knew compulsive gambling was a sickness, like alcoholism or any other addiction. She knew her husband needed help, more help than she’d been able to give him, and that he’d tried, truly tried, more times than she could count, to straighten himself out.

But this… this time it’s too much, Hal. Even for you. Yes, I’m angry, damn you. I’m angry with you for taking away the life we knew, but especially for putting that look of fear in your children’s eyes.

The cold of the January sky came to settle around Summer’s heart. No way around it, she would have to borrow the money to pay the judgment. Her sisters would help out-Bella, and Evie, if she could track her down in whatever desert or jungle she was filming at the moment. And Mom and Dad probably would, too, if she asked them. Oh, she did hope it wouldn’t come to that. Their retirement income was stretched thin enough as it was.

Slowly she rose, lifted the strap of her handbag to her shoulder, folded her coat over her arm. She took a deep breath, pleased that her legs no longer felt as though they might buckle, and began the short walk up the aisle between the rows of spectators’ seats to the double doors at the back of the courtroom.

“Would you excuse me for a minute?” Riley touched the sleeve of his client’s expensively tailored suit and moved around him on a course intended to intercept the woman who was just emerging from the courtroom. She hadn’t seen him yet. He had an idea that when she did she’d take pains to avoid him, and he meant to see that she didn’t, if he could

He saw that she still wore a dazed look, along with a slight flush-residual effects, he was sure, from the humiliation of the public dressing-down she’d just endured. Riley did regret that, especially since he knew it was mostly his fault the way Judge Stoner had lit into her. Well, hell, it was his job to bring judges and juries around to seeing things the way he wanted them to, and he was good at it He could have had that judge convinced Summer Robey was Joan of Arc or Lizzie Borden, if he’d wanted to, but it had suited his purposes to make sure she came across as merely arrogant and irresponsible instead. The fact that she had a body that’d look right at home loping across a California beach in one of those red lifeguard’s bathing suits they wore on that popular TV show hadn’t made his job any more difficult, either. But while he hadn’t wanted to risk her appearing even the slightest bit sympathetic, he really hadn’t intended the judge to come down on her quite so hard.

He watched her come toward him, still unaware that she was on a collision course with the man responsible for her degradation, busy digging through her pocketbook for something-car keys, probably-a frown of distraction making a tidy pleat between her brows. In addition to the sun-streaked hair and a body that wouldn’t quit, she had a certain coltishness, he decided, that made her seem much younger than she was. This in spite of the rather dowdy way she wore her hair, pulled back in a nondescript ponytail, and the unbecoming army-green shade of her slacks and turtleneck pullover. Pastels, he thought. She should wear sunny yellows, pale pinks, soft silvery blue…

His regret became a physical pressure inside his chest, demanding that he try to ease it with a breath…almost a sigh. Dammit, he knew this woman. Knew her kind, at least Had seen them sitting bewildered and drained across the table from him, all too often still wearing the black-and-blue marks that came of too much love and too much trust coupled with too much pride. Neither saint nor bimbo, this woman. She was, for want of a better name, what Riley liked to call a Giver. The kind of woman Takers homed in on like bees to a blossom. A sucker for every underdog, a magnet for every weak and needy creature to come down the road. But when she needed help? Her kind of woman inevitably had way too much pride to ask for it. She’d try to go it alone even if it killed her. Sometimes, it did.

“Mrs. Robey? May I speak to you for a minute?”

The frown disappeared as her eyes widened and her head came up, reminding him of a wild doe when she hears a twig crack.

This is a mistake, Riley thought. He could feel the client’s eyes on him, too, and knew the man was going to be wondering what the hell this crafty Southern lawyer of his was up to. In Riley’s experience, Californians and northerners just naturally assumed Southern lawyers were all a bunch of good ol’ boys and crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

The woman had stopped directly in front of him. She was taller than he’d thought, with rather thin, sharply honed features and eyes the clear, pale blue of sapphires. On a level with his chin, they regarded him steadily, telegraphing her resentment, bitterness and hurt. But she didn’t say a word. A little too polite, he thought, to tell him to go to hell.

Still mindful of the watchful client, he spoke softly, choosing his words carefully. “Mrs. Robey, I’d just like to offer you a word of advice. Next time you find yourself in court, you need to do yourself a favor…” She waited, cocked and wary, for him to finish. “Hire yourself a good attorney.”

She caught her breath then, and made a soft sound that might have been a laugh. Her lips tugged themselves into a half smile, stiffly, no doubt against her will. “Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind,” she said as she stepped around him.

Riley watched her make her way down the marble stairs, one hand gripping the rail as if she really needed the support. Dammit, he thought as he turned back to his waiting client. Dammit all to hell.

Summer sat on her hands and stared through the windshield without really seeing the bleakness of the January sky while she waited for the smelly and rust-pocked sedan to warm up. The Olds had been all she could afford after selling everything she owned to pay off Hal’s bills-an attempt to salvage her good credit that now appeared to have been an exercise in futility-and she hated it with a passion. It was transportation, nothing more, and she was never, ever, going to call it hers. In her mind there was a certain symbolism in the acknowledgment of the wretched junker that would be like conceding defeat.

I thought his eyes were cold, cold as that sky, but they aren’t. Not at all.

The thought came out of nowhere, as the image in her mind’s eye merged and blended with the winter scene before her until she could no longer distinguish one from the other. Perhaps she’d only imagined it, just now, but could it possibly have been compassion she’d seen in that coldhearted lawyer’s eyes?

The Starr family’s big old-fashioned kitchen was crowded that morning, noisy with laughter and the clatter of pots and the tinkle of metal jar lids. It smelled of burned blackberry jam, which wasn’t as bad a smell as Mirabella would have supposed, mixed with the scent of new-mown grass carried in through the open door on a sweet June breeze.

The same breeze brought the sound of her stepson J.J.’s squabbles with his cousin Sammi June over baby-sitting rights to eighteen-month-old Amy Jo, who was gleefully in pursuit of the kittens a stray calico mama cat had hidden out in the garden shed sometime in April. The sound of that laughter, Mirabella decided as she watched her daughter through the screen porch door, had to be one of the sweetest in all the world, sweeter than the music of a thousand wind chimes…choirs of angels. Well, maybe she was a little besotted.

At the thought, her gaze shifted automatically to the man she could just see beyond the doorway to the hall, trying to talk on the phone. He had his head down and a finger stuck in his free ear in a futile effort to dampen down the noise all around him. And as so often happened when she caught a glimpse of her husband-little things, like the glint of light on his dark blond hair or the flash of his slow, sweet smile-something bumped up under her ribs and made her catch her breath. Something composed of varying parts happiness, awe and fear. A year and a half later, Mirabella still hadn’t quite gotten used to the wonder of Jimmy Joe Starr.

A year and a half. Could it really have been that long ago that they’d shared the Christmas miracle of Amy’s birth in the sleeper of Jimmy Joe’s eighteen-wheeler on an ice-bound Texas interstate? Had a year-yes, to the day-gone by since she’d gazed into his brown eyes and pledged through a shimmer of tears to love him for all the days of her life?

It was true, though-today was her anniversary. The family was even now gathering for the celebration; tonight the whole Starr clan would be here for barbecue and black-eyed beans and corn bread, and plenty of fresh blackbernes to go with the homemade ice cream. But where in the world had the year gone? It had passed in a moment, a snap of the fingers, the blink of an eye. And yet, so much had happened in that time.

To begin with, there’d been the amazing and hectic week leading up to the wedding, when Mirabella’s best friend and maid of honor, Charly Phelps, having flown out from Los Angeles a week early, had somehow managed to get herself thrown in jail in the tiny Alabama hill town of Mourning Spring. And when Troy, Jimmy Joe’s oldest brother and best man, had gone to see what he could do about bailing her out, in spite of the fact that Charly had once pledged to loathe and despise all things Southern until her dying day, they’d wound up falling in love. Speaking of miracles! They’d gotten married, themselves, just last fall. Now, to top it all off, Charly was pregnant and, at this very minute, upstairs in the guest bathroom suffering through a horrendous bout of morning sickness.

As if that hadn’t been enough excitement, just two days before Mirabella’s wedding, her sister Summer had arrived in a U-Haul truck packed with all her worldly goods, including her two kids and a motley assortment of animals, having just filed for a divorce from her husband of ten years, that irresponsible bum, Hal. And that was just the beginning! It seemed that Hal-

“Hey, Marybell, how’s it goin’?” Jimmy Joe’s whisper in her ear spilled a cascade of shivers down her spine.

“Fine,” she whispered back. “Who was that on the phone?”

“Ah, that was just my brother Calvin.”

“Customer problems?”

“Nothin’ he can’t handle.” He leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Take more’n that to pull me away on our anniversary, darlin’.” He straightened and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Got to run over to the house, though. Cal’s needin’ some numbers. Be right back.”

Mirabella nodded and replied with a brisk “See you later.” But her brow furrowed as she watched her husband squeeze past Troy and Charly’s huge yellow-eyed chocolate Lab, who had parked himself in front of the screen door. Poor Bubba was suffering divided loyalties, what with Charly throwing up in the bathroom and Troy gone off to the store to find her some saltines and cola for her nausea.

Out on the lawn, Jimmy Joe had paused to swing Amy up in a quick hug before handing her over to J.J. and Sammi June. Mirabella watched him with a familiar lump in her throat until he’d driven away in their silver-gray Lexus. But when she turned back to the panful of dusty blackberries in front of her, her gaze was snared instead by another pair of wise brown eyes with a golden gleam of fire lurking in their depths.

It’s the fire, Mirabella thought suddenly. That’s what’s missing from Jimmy Joe’s eyes these days.

“Problems?” Jimmy Joe’s mama, Betty Starr, asked softly.

Mirabella shook her head. “He just needs to get some information for Cal. He’ll be right back.” Her gaze dropped to her berry-stained fingers as she quirked a wan half smile and muttered, “Paperwork. Always something.” But she knew the evasion was useless; when it came to her kids, Jimmy Joe’s mama didn’t miss much, and it was a pretty safe bet that she hadn’t missed the worry in Mirabella’s eyes.

Okay, maybe worry was too strong a word, but concern, at least. And she didn’t even know if she was justified in that. After all, in the last eighteen months, her husband’s trucking business had grown beyond anyone’s hopes and dreams, thanks to the hoopla over Amy’s birth. All the major networks had carried the story of the gallant trucker delivering a baby on a snowbound interstate on Christmas Day. Jimmy Joe had been an overnight sensation, a hero, albeit a reluctant one. Job offers had begun pouring in almost immediately and hadn’t slowed down since. As a result, instead of the one Kenworth Jimmy Joe had nicknamed “The Big Blue Star,” Blue Star Transport now owned a fleet of six trucks and counted two of the Starr brothers, Calvin and Roy, among its drivers. Jimmy Joe still had more business than he could handle and was looking for a piece of property on which to build Blue Star Transport’s new terminal. Mirabella just wished she could be certain all this success was making the man she loved happy.

From over at the sink, where she was up to her elbows in jam jars and soapsuds, Jimmy Joe’s sister Jess, mother of Sammi June, gave a cackle of laughter. “Paperwork-now, there’s something I just can’t picture. I sure never did figure Jimmy Joe for a businessman, did you, Mama?”

Betty said, “Oh, I think he can be anything he sets his mind to.” And she smiled at Mirabella and winked as if to say, Don’t worry about that one, hon-he knows what he’s doing. Life is always goin’ to have its little ups and downs…

Mirabella nodded as the sounds of running water and banging doors came once again from overhead. All four women-Betty and Jess, Granny Calhoun and Mirabella-glanced upward and exchanged empathetic glances and sighs. They’d all been through it before.

When it got quiet upstairs again, Granny Calhoun, her twiglike fingers nimbly stemming blackberries, aimed a sly, sideways look at Mirabella and croaked, “You’re lookin’ broody, y’sef. Got those dark circles und’neath your eyes. You keepin’ secrets, baby girl?”

“Secrets?” Mirabella frowned. “No, I just haven’t been sleeping very well the last few days for some reason, that’s all.” Suddenly aware of the listening stillness, she looked up and encountered three pairs of avid eyes. Heat flooded her cheeks. She laughed. “What? Oh, no-not me. I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you’re thinking. No way.” At least, I hope not. Please, God. Jimmy Joe sure doesn’t need anything else to worry about. Please God, not now… She brushed back her hair with a careless hand, leaving smears of purple juice. “I think I’ve just been worried about Summer and Evie.”

“Your sisters?” Betty lifted a kettle off of a burner before she turned, eyebrows raised in concern. “What’s the trouble, hon? Summer doin’ okay? I know she’s had a pretty tough time, startin’ all over and all.”

“She’s doing okay, as far as I know.” Inspired, Mirabella gave another laugh and embellished it with a touch of embarrassment, hoping it would be enough to account for the blush. “I’ve just been…well, I’ve been dreaming about her lately. Evie, too. A lot.”

Granny Calhoun cried, “Hah!” Betty smiled and picked up a wooden spoon and went back to skimming.

Relieved at the success of her diversion, Mirabella let out a breath and muttered, “Not that I’m superstitious.” Well, she never had been in her life, before. Since coming to live in the South, and the way things had worked out with her and Jimmy Joe, and then Troy and Charly, she’d had to rethink some of her former convictions.

Granny Calhoun gave a little jerk and laughed suddenly, a sound like a twig scratching on a windowpane. She pointed a crooked finger at Jess and said, “My sister Effie-that’s your great-aunt Eufemia-thought she had the second sight, you know. You ask me, she just liked the attention it got her. All that stuff is just a bunch of hooey, anyway.” She gave a snort and went back to stemming berries. After a moment she peered up at Mirabella, turtlelike, from her osteoporotic crouch. “Dreams, now. Just means you can be expectin’ a visit sometime soon. That’s all that is.”

Over at the sink, Jess nudged her mother with an elbow and said slyly, “Hey, Granny, I thought all that was just a bunch of hooey.” Mirabella hid her smile.

Granny Calhoun said nothing, taking her time picking out a particularly nice ripe berry and putting it in her mouth. She ate it with soft, sucking noises, then delicately spat out the husk into her hand. “There’s hooey,” she said, “and then there’s fact. You dream about somebody, they’ll be a’visitin’ soon, and that’s a fact.”

“Summer’s coming for the party,” said Mirabella. “Does that count?”

But Granny Calhoun had lost interest and was searching through the berries for another that looked good enough to eat.

“You ever get ahold of Evie?” Betty asked as she tossed the wooden spoon into the sink and reached for a clean, scalded jar.

Mirabella shook her head. “I’ve left messages on her machine. She’ll get around to me when she gets back from wherever she’s gone off to, I guess.”

“She’ll be comin’,” Granny Calhoun croaked suddenly. “You can bet on it. Mark my words.”

“Who’s comin’?” Troy asked as he and Jimmy Joe clomped into the kitchen, leaving a disappointed Bubba whining outside the screen door. Jimmy Joe came to lean on the back of Mirabella’s chair and drop a kiss onto the top of her head while Troy carried his plastic grocery sack over to the counter.

Granny Calhoun lifted one frail arm to point at Troy and instructed, “Pour some’a that cola in a bowl and let it go flat. You want it flat to settle the stomach.”

Troy said, “I will, Granny,” and then asked his mother in a soft aside, “Where is she? Still throwin’ up?”

“Umm-hmm.” Her hands full, Betty used her head to point the way. Troy gave a worried sigh and headed for the stairs.

“Who’s comin’?” Jimmy Joe softly inquired of the back of Mirabella’s neck.

Breathless and prickly, she had opened her mouth to reply when Granny’s gnarled, blue-veined hand suddenly clamped onto her forearm. “Don’t you fret,” the old lady chirped, berry-stained lips curving in a smile of innocence belied by the crafty gleam in her sharp old eyes. “I’m gon’ keep your secret for you, don’t you worry.”

Mirabella’s breath exploded in a gust. Jimmy Joe straightened up and said, “What secret?”

Over at the sink, Jess sang out, “Hah-I knew it Granny’s never been wrong yet.”

Betty made an exasperated noise and muttered, “Mama, for Lord’s sake.”

Jimmy Joe said, “What secret’s she talkin’ about?”

Granny Calhoun cast her eyes demurely downward and turned her fingers at her lips, pantomiming turning a key in a lock.

“Marybell?” Jimmy Joe’s hands were gentle but insistent on her shoulders.

Trapped.

But fate must have been on her side, because at that moment, Bubba rose up from his post beside the screen door and launched himself down the porch steps in full cry. Out on the lawn, the excited yells of children blended with the clatter and thump of a badly tuned engine. The unmistakable smell of burning petroleum products drifted into the kitchen.

Mirabella gulped out a laugh and sprang to her feet “Summer’s here!” she cried, and brushing a kiss across her husband’s perplexed half smile, she went out to greet her youngest sister, her heart pounding with relief and a certain guilty excitement.