All the Possibilities by Nora Roberts Page B

Deborah repeated as she remembered. "The Campbells and the MacGregors

    …
    were blood enemies in Scotland
    though I can't quite remember why."
    —
    "They stole our land," Alan put in mildly.
    "That's what you say." Shelby shot him a look as she sipped again. "We acquired MacGregor land through a royal decree. They weren't good sports about it." Alan gave her a thoughtful smile. "I'd be interested to hear you debate that issue with my father."
    "What a match," Myra said, brightening at the thought. "Herbert, can you just see our Shelby nose-to-nose with Daniel? All that red hair and stubbornness. You really should arrange it, Alan."
    "I've been giving it some thought."
    "Have you?" Shelby's brows lifted to disappear completely under her frizz of bangs.
    "Quite a bit of thought," he said in the same even tone.
    "I've been to that wonderful anachronism in Hyannis Port." Myra gave Shelby a brief pat on the thigh.
    "It's right up your alley, dear. She's so fond of the
    well, let's say unique, shall we?"
    —
    "Yes." Deborah sent Shelby a fond smile. "I could never figure out why. But then, both of my children have always been a mystery. Perhaps it's because they're so bright and clever and restless. I'm always hoping they'll settle down." This time she beamed the smile at Alan. "You're not married either, are you, Senator?"
    "If you'd like," Shelby said as she studied the color of her liqueur through the crystal, "I could just step out while you discuss the terms of the dowry."
    "Shelby, really," Deborah murmured over the sound of the Justice's chuckle.
    "It's so difficult for parents to see their children as capable adults," the Ambassador commented in his light, soothing voice. "For myself, I have two daughters with children of their own. Still, I worry. How are your children, Myra? You have a new grandson, don't you?"
    Nothing could have been better calculated to change the subject. Shelby sent him a faint admiring nod and watched his eyes twinkle as Myra began an enthusiastic description of her grandson's first tooth.
    He'd suit her, Shelby decided, watching her mother from under her lashes. She was the type of woman who never felt quite whole without a man. And she'd been shaped and polished into a political wife years before. The gloss was still there. Elegant manners, elegant style, elegant patience. Shelby gave a little sigh she didn't even hear. How could she and her mother look so much alike and be so very different? Elegance had always seemed a silk-lined cage to
    Shelby
    and a cage equaled restrictions no matter how it was formed. She still
    —
    remembered too many of them.
    The bodyguards
    discreet, but always there. The carefully screened parties, the
    —
    sophisticated alarm systems, the intrusion of the press. The security hadn't saved her father, though a photographer had gotten an award-winning picture of the gunman
    —
    seconds too late to do any good.
    Shelby knew what was behind the elegance; the state dinners, the speeches, the galas. There were a hundred tiny fears, a millennium of doubts. The memory of too many political assassinations and assassination attempts in hardly more than twenty years. No, her mother was made for the life. Patient, with a rod of steel beneath the fragile skin. Shelby wouldn't choose it, nor would she let it choose her. She'd love no one who could leave her again so horribly.
    Letting the conversation flow around her, Shelby tilted back her glass. Her eyes met Alan's. It was there
    that quietly brooding patience that promised to last a lifetime. She
    —
    could almost feel him calmly peeling off layer after layer of whatever bits and pieces made up her personality to get to the tiny core she kept private. You bastard. She nearly said it out loud. Certainly it reflected in her eyes for he smiled at her in simple acknowledgment. The siege was definitely under way. She only hoped she had enough provisions to outlast him.

    Chapter Four
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    Shelby put in a