Jo Goodman Read Online Free Page B

anything."
    Anderson Shaw generally thought himself a tall man. Now, drawing himself up to his full height, he still had to raise his head a notch to stare down Colin and Decker Thorne. His left hand continued to rest at his wife's back, and when he spared a glance for her his eyes were warm and admiring. Without speaking directly to her he conveyed his support.
    No one observed the knuckle digging hard into her spine.
    It did not take a preternatural gift to see that Jonna and Mercedes were mortified. Any rudeness on their part had been strictly unintentional, but they could not say the same for their husbands. It was clear they thought some apology was in order. The only question was who would be first off the mark to make it.
    Decker, his faint smile deepening as Jonna glared at him, snapped to attention first. "I regret offending you, Mrs. Shaw. I assure you I meant to upbraid my wife. It seems I cannot do that without casting doubt on what she refers to as your gift." He looked at Colin then, daring him to make a better show of contrition than he had.
    Lord Fielding didn't even try. "Likewise," he said dryly.
    It was not so much the knuckle pressing her spine that prompted Berkeley to speak up, but the fact that Mercedes looked as if she might simply clobber His Lordship in front of them. "Perhaps it would not hurt to try again," she said softly. "I think I understand now how much it means to all of you."
    She couldn't know that, Colin thought. This young woman, in spite of her otherworldly charm, elfin beauty, and fathomless green eyes, couldn't possibly know what it meant to any of them, least of all him. Yet Colin acknowledged that neither he nor Decker was usually so lacking in good manners as they had been today. It was some indication of the intense emotion they shared, a measure of the desperation they felt. Is that what Berkeley Shaw sensed? When even their wives thought he and Decker had abandoned hope, had this woman realized it was only that they were terrified to risk it again?
    Berkeley Shaw held out her hand, palm up. She did not withdraw it when Decker hesitated but waited with such a patient air that no one in the room doubted she could remain in that exact pose for hours. Decker looked to Colin and glimpsed the almost imperceptible nod that was lost on the others. He reached in his vest pocket, removed the earring, and placed it carefully across Berkeley's palm.
    She reacted immediately. Her fingers, which had only started to close around the earring, unfolded spasmodically and remained extended and splayed. "Not this one," she said, looking between Decker and Colin. "This is the one you made to test me, to see if I would know the difference between an heirloom and a copy. I told you, this is cold. I can tell you nothing of your missing brother from this piece."
    Decker's quietly amused expression vanished. It was a rare moment for the others to see him unsettled. His lapse, however brief, was proof enough for Jonna that Berkeley Shaw had spoken the truth. Her disappointment was palpable. "Oh, Decker," she said quietly. "You did, didn't you?"
    "Not exactly," he said.
    "But—"
    Colin interrupted. "I had the copy made in England before Mercedes and I left. She is only finding out about it now. I told Decker what I had done when we arrived. No one else knew." He didn't add that he understood Jonna and Mercedes would not have approved. That point was made tacitly by his secretiveness on the matter. Colin's attention was drawn to Berkeley again, and his dark eyes narrowed as he regarded her steadily. "No one could have known," he said finally. And now there was a thread of hope in his voice.
    Sunlight glinted off the gold drop dangling from Berkeley's fingertips. It drew Jonna's eyes. "May I?" she asked.
    "I have no need of it," Berkeley said. She let the earring fall into Jonna's open palm and watched her study it.
    "It's remarkable," Jonna whispered, awed. All the more remarkable because Colin had