A Dangerous Dance by Pauline Baird Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

pity. If she'd come to him, as he asked, would she still be alive? Or was the cancer an inevitable part of her future? And if she had come, would he have taken her? Shrines weren't meant to be inhabited, just visited occasionally.
    He shifted restlessly, turning from the view and pacing back to his desk. It wasn't usually this hard to rebury the past. Why was it resisting him today? He'd had her. That was enough, particularly when he knew he wasn't the only one who wanted her. Both Bozo and Bubba had wanted her, too, but she chose him.
    And Emma? Who knew what she felt or who it was she wanted? In the end, she'd slipped away from them all, and apparently never looked back.
    It was the only time in his life he felt real hate for someone. Magus appeared to be little affected by her leaving, almost seemed not to have noticed she was gone. Interesting that the only two strong emotions Darius had ever felt were centered on the same family. Love and hate, he'd heard, were two sides of the same coin. Had he come to hate Emma? He didn't think so, but he'd never achieved clarity where she was concerned.
    That's why he'd never acted. He could never decide what was the expedient thing to do with Emma. And now her daughter was back. Stirring up the past, digging into old and buried secrets. Reminding him of what he'd never had, stealing his clarity, just like her parents. Though Emma had been the biggest thief. She'd stolen his heart. And here he hadn't thought he had one. Unless it was just his pride she'd taken?
    He started pacing again, trying to get ahead of the unsettled feelings Emma's memory always brought in its train. With an inner shake of the head, he cleared back the memories of what had been, homing in on the now. And Dorothy. Emma's daughter.
    Odd he couldn't remember much about her from ten years ago. He did recall wondering how she could be Emma's offspring, she was so unlike her mother. He'd lost interest at that point, all his attention on stopping Magus's drive for the governor's mansion.
    He walked back to his computer, sat down and pulled up the company website where Dorothy's picture was posted. Now he could see that Dorothy had the look of her mother, though distilled and thinned by her Wizard blood. They both had titian hair and violet eyes, but he thought Emma had had the purer profile. And the fuller figure. How had he missed the similarities ten years ago?
    He grabbed the file of newspaper clippings about Magus and flipped through them until he found one with Dorothy standing just behind him. Even in the flatness of black and white, Magus overshadowed her, rendering her almost invisible.
    He shut the file. Well, she'd been young then, very young. Decidedly a fish out of water in Magus's hectic and very public life. She appeared to have overcome that past. She'd managed Magus's companies well, earned her place on the various boards. Did that make her Magus's daughter or Emma's?
    He needed to see her in the flesh to answer the question. Only then would he know how to deal with the threat she posed to the protege he hoped to place in the mansion in Baton Rouge.
    But was that his only interest? Was it possible that he'd find the mother in the daughter? It was an intriguing thought. Could the past live again? Emma had desired him. They'd only had the one night, but what a night it had been. Was it possible that satisfaction could be achieved again? If daughter were like mother, perhaps his long wait was over?
    Unless...
    Emma left Magus around three months from their affair. What if Dorothy were his daughter? Was it possible? He'd never wanted a child but, if he and Emma had made a child together, she might be interesting to him. If he saw her could he tell?
    In any case, his sources told him that Bubba Joe and Bozo were both going to see her in Oz. Did they fear her or the past, he wondered? Or both?
    He frowned. Obviously he hadn't looked into the past thoroughly enough ten years ago when Dorothy made her first