However, William Christopher didn’t look the least bit daunted. His dark eyes blazed with fury as he walked across the room, not bothering to support himself with the ebony cane he carried. With his neatly groomed white hair and impeccable dark suit, he looked anything but a man in his last death throes.
“Forty million dollars,” William growled, taking up a position directly across the desk from Zach. His spotted hands flattened against the marble surface. “Forty million dollars! That’s how much this campaign’s costing us. You tell me how the hell this company can sustain such a loss.”
“How’d you find out?” Zach asked, striving for control as he seated himself behind the desk. He glanced up at his father. “No, let me guess. Roland Sutton called you.”
“You’re damned right he called me,” William raged. “He’s the only one in this company who’s seen fit to keep me informed. You’ve certainly never bothered. You wouldn’t come to me if you were down to your last penny. Which is where Renee Alexander may be heading, thanks to this brilliant scheme of yours.”
“You’re exaggerating as usual,” Zach said, feeling his anger surge in spite of his best efforts. “The entire campaign isn’t lost. We can salvage—”
“You can salvage! How? The campaign is designed in layers, Sutton said. Each picture tells a continuing story. I understand that was your idea, as well, along with hiring only one model for the entire campaign. An unreliable model at that. Now she’s up and run off, and without the final installment, the whole campaign is worthless. Forty million dollars,” he repeated, “down the tubes because of your incompetence.”
“My incompetence?” Zach was standing again, leaning across the desk, eye to eye with his father. “This company was in trouble long before I came here because of your complacency—”
“Complacency! You call a conservative approach to business complacency. I call it common sense. I call it surviving the long haul. You always did think you had to set the world on fire to be a success.”
“And you always thought I had to play by your rules in order to win,” Zach countered.
By now they were shouting at each other, glaring at one another with years and years of pent-up anger and resentment.
“Just once, I’d like to hear you take responsibility for your actions, Zachary. Just once, I’d like you to come to me and admit you made a mistake. I’d like you to tell me that maybe, just maybe, I was right about something. The best thing you can do now is clear out of here and let me start cleaning up this mess.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Zach said with a calmness that surprised him. He looked at his father, saw behind the blustering facade to a faded old man who, in essence, had lost everything. William Christopher lived in an antiseptic world with an antiseptic wife. They lived a squeaky-clean life with no pain, no feeling, no threat of any kind. Since Matthew had died, they’d closed themselves off from emotion, which meant closing themselves off from their one remaining son, a son who had never been willing to play by their rules.
But in a way, Zach had played by their rules this time. He’d allowed them to shut him out. He’d closed off his own feelings because facing up to his parents’ indifference would have meant facing up to his own guilt.
As he faced his father, Zach felt only pity for William Christopher. Pity and a small tinge of regret for what they might have been to each other.
It was a transient concern, however, one that would have to be sorted out later if he chose to do so. Both of them, father and son, had swept their emotions under the rug for far too long to simply start anew, especially in the face of such a potential business disaster. Right now, Zach had more pressing issues to worry about.
Anya had disappeared. When he’d gone to her house last night, it had looked abandoned, clearly deserted. She’d left him high and dry, knowing full well her actions could mean his ruin.
But it wasn’t over yet. Far from it. Somehow, he’d find her. Somehow, he’d bring her back here and make her finish what they’d started. Somehow, everything would turn out all right because he wasn’t about to spend the rest of his life thinking about what might have been.
“Are you even listening to me?” William shouted.
“No, not anymore,” Zach said as he headed for the door. “I’m tired of listening.”
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Zach turned and stared at his father for a moment. “You can stand here ranting and raving and blaming me for every disaster that’s ever befallen this family if that makes you feel better, but right now I don’t have time to listen. I have a company to run.”
Zach slammed the door on his father, and strode past a shocked Edna without a word.
Thirty minutes later Zach was back in his apartment, poring over the hundreds of newspaper clippings and magazine articles on Anya. He picked up a dozen or so scraps of paper, letting her image slip through his fingers as he rummaged for a particular article. Toward the bottom of the stack, he found it.
It was a clipping from a small-town newspaper in Maine, a place called Towering Oaks, and the headline read Granddaughter Claims Inheritance. There wasn’t a picture this time, just a small, gossipy blurb in the tradition of smalltown papers about Anya’s grandmother having died a few months earlier, and about Anya returning from Europe to occupy the house her grandmother had willed to her.
There wasn’t even a mention of Anya’s notoriety as a supermodel, or her disappearance from the public eye. It was as though, to the citizens of Towering Oaks, her status as Cora Johnson’s beloved granddaughter was the really important aspect of Anya’s life.
The article ended with an obscure suggestion that because of Anya’s bereavement, her privacy should be respected. The byline read L. Traymore.
A friend of Anya’s? Zach wondered. The last sentence sounded strange to him, as though the carefully worded caution contained a deeper meaning. It sounded more like a warning, as though the writer sought to protect Anya from the outside world.
Had she returned to Towering Oaks again? The community had protected her once before when she’d retreated from the world. Had she gone back there now, to be protected from Zach?
It was a grim thought, this notion that Anya was so afraid of him she’d break their contract, risk ruining her reputation—and his—to avoid him. Why couldn’t she trust him? Why couldn’t she have talked to him? Why jeopardize everything? Why make him look like a complete fool?
Because that’s what you are.
He’d been warned all along about the rashness of relying on only one model, of planning the whole campaign around a woman who had walked out on her responsibilities once before. But he’d believed in her. He’d had faith in her. He’d trusted her, and that was what hurt the most.
Zach let his anger override his concern for her as he hastily packed a bag and slung it into his car. She wouldn’t get away with this. She wouldn’t get away with ruining everything he’d worked so hard to achieve—not without a damned good explanation.
And if it was the last thing he did, he was going to hear that explanation from her own lips….
* * *
It was well after sunset by the time Zach drove into the little hamlet on the coast of Maine, having finally located it on a map he’d bought at a gas station. In the gathering twilight, Towering Oaks appeared to be a dismal town with a few antique buildings littering the main thoroughfare. The streets were swathed with mist from the sea, and the windows and doors of the businesses were all dark and tightly bolted against the coming night.
Rain drizzled from the bleak sky, streaking the dust on Zach’s windshield. He cursed at what seemed yet another barrier to his search.
There was no one in sight to ask directions, and within moments, Zach had left the town behind and was heading into a countryside so bleak and barren, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise up in alarm.
He started to turn around and go back, intending to beat on doors until he found someone willing to
tell him how to find Anya’s house. But then the road narrowed to one lane, and the shoulders gave way to steep drop-offs on either side. Zach continued on, trying to find a place where he could safely turn the car.
Drifting like ghosts across the road, clouds of fog curled and thickened in the headlights. The mist played hell with visibility. Zach leaned forward, peering through darkness.
Suddenly, the headlights parted the clouds, and he thought he saw something move in the road ahead, something huge and dark and…alive.
Zach slowed, straining to see through the curtain of haze. What the hell was it? His imagination? He was just about to chide himself for the hallucination when the mist parted again.
“What the hell—”
The thing rushed at him out of nowhere. He stared in disbelief as the shadow materialized into the shape of a huge black dog. It leaped straight out of his nightmares toward him. Stunned by the quickness, Zach impulsively hit the brakes, then felt the tires spin on wet pavement.
He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles burned. In the instant before the Viper’s rear tires started slipping off the pavement, a dozen impressions raced through Zach’s mind: gleaming, bared fangs; glowing red eyes; a gaping mouth moving in for the kill.
And then nothing. The dog seemed to vanish into thin air.
The car went into a full-fledged skid. Swearing profusely, Zach fought the wheel for control, but it spun uselessly in his hands. Within seconds he found himself heading straight down an embankment at a dizzying speed…directly toward one of the giant oak trees.
It was like being trapped on a carnival ride, Zach thought fleetingly, as he jerked the wheel under control just in time to miss the first tree. But another one was coming up fast. A string of expletives flowed from Zach’s mouth as the car bumped along toward an inevitable collision. Zach pumped the brakes, but they seemed worthless on the treacherous hillside.
And then the shadow moved again, just in front of him. The dog spun, and glared into Zach’s headlights, almost as though willing the car toward the tree. Red eyes glowed. Razor-sharp teeth gleamed. For an instant, for one brief second, Zach had the impossible notion that the dog had suddenly turned into a man.
Then Zach had no time to do anything but gasp another black curse as the car smashed into the tree.
The impact propelled him forward with such force that the breath shot out of his lungs. If not for the seat belt digging into his shoulder and stomach, Zach would have gone sailing straight through the windshield. As it was, his head snapped to the side and banged against the window. Pain exploded inside him. His ears popped like a cannon. A dizzying display of fireworks erupted behind his eyes.
Then everything was absolutely silent, excruciatingly still.
Just before the lights in his head turned completely black, Zach could have sworn he heard the dog baying somewhere outside the car. The bestial cry reminded him strangely of…laughter.
CHAPTER TEN
Anya!
The wind seemed to sigh her name as Anya stood on her balcony, gazing into the darkness. No other impression came to her at first, just that, her name repeated over and over in her mind in silent entreaty.
Mist rolled over the countryside, giving the enormous oaks guarding the house a strange and surrealistic movement. Wind ripped through the branches, animating the giant limbs. Clouds raced in the sky. The night seemed alive with unspeakable dangers. Anya felt frightened, and she shouldn’t have been. He wouldn’t follow her here. He wouldn’t come to her.
Then why the nerves? Why the premonition?
Anya paused, still and silent, as she opened her senses to the night, letting the wind bring to her the nuances of the countryside. There was nothing unusual to be seen or heard. A few dead leaves blew across the yard. A loose shutter rattled against a window. Nothing unusual in that. Nothing extraordinary seemed to be about.
What was it then? Anya thought with growing unease. What was wrong with her?
A shadow passed across the moon, so swiftly she thought she must have imagined it at first. The breeze picked up, colder now, fraught with some subtle undercurrent that made Anya shiver with dread. There was an evilness in the air that settled over her like a death pall. And it came to her suddenly that Zach was out there in the darkness somewhere. Close. Very close.
And so was Gershom.
No! It couldn’t be! It was more of his mind games to torment her, to keep her in agony until she wavered, succumbed once again to his lure. He was thousands of miles away, in his homeland, where his strength was the greatest. He would never venture this far, not for her. He would never risk weakening his powers. She would be safe, now that she had left Zach. Zach would be safe. The threat had been removed, and she was back in her home, where her resistance was the greatest.
But even as Anya tried to convince herself that what she experienced was only imagination, something changed in the night wind. There was something in the breeze now. A new scent. A sweet, tantalizing fragrance that she knew only too well.
Blood.
Zach’s blood.
She tried to deny it, but the scent came to her again, stronger, more demanding. Zach had followed her to the country, and now he was lying hurt somewhere, bleeding….
And out there in the darkness, Gershom could be watching and waiting and wanting her more than ever as he lured her with cunning precision from the safety of her home.
“Don’t go,” she whispered to herself. “Don’t go out there.” But the warning melted in the breeze. The scent of Zach’s blood washed over her, exciting the hunger inside her until she wasn’t sure which drew her to the darkness—her terrible fear for Zach’s safety…or her desperate need for his warmth.
As silent as the silvery mist, Anya slipped from the house. She embraced the darkness, letting the sounds and smells of the night guide her. There was an urgency to her movements. She ran lightly through the darkness, glancing over her shoulder every few seconds. A shadow seemed to be pursuing her. A shadow that was ready to swoop down from the moon and grab her. It was coming closer, closer….
The wind whipped at her coat, tangled in her hair. Anya’s heart pumped in terror. The night welcomed her, seduced her with a sly skill she had long since learned to distrust. There was danger here. Danger at every turn.
The mist seemed to clear a bit as she came out of the woods near the road. The first thing she saw was Zach’s car rammed against a tree. But there was no movement around the area, no sign of life. Anya ran toward the car, her heart in her throat.
He was lying on the ground outside the car, and for a moment, Anya’s heart stopped. He lay so still! So silent! Then she heard the unmistakable sound of his heartbeat, as loud as a drum in the silence. He roused slightly as she knelt over him. He opened his eyes and looked around, dazed. Blood trickled from a cut on his forehead, and with trembling fingers, Anya reached to touch it.
“Anya?” He whispered her name in amazement.
“Shush.” She touched his head, and her fingers trembled against his skin as she gently, oh so gently, wiped away the blood. She lifted her fingertips to her lips and fire exploded inside her. Pure white heat…
A shudder ripped through her body as she withdrew her fingers from her lips.
“How did you know where to find me?” Zach asked suddenly, sitting up.
“I was outside,” Anya said, cradling her hand like a wounded bird against her breast. “I…heard the sound of the crash.”
“Then I must have been closer to your house than I thought.” He glanced around at the misty, forbidding woods. “This is some place you’ve got here,” he murmured.
“Can you walk?” she asked, casting an uneasy glance over her shoulder. They had to get out of here. For more reasons than one. “We have to get back to the house.”
“It’s a cinch we can’t drive,” he said, wincing as he took in the smashed front end of the Viper. “Damn,” he muttered. “I can’t believe I did something that stupid. There was somet
hing in the road…at least, I thought I saw something….” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I can’t seem to remember. I know I was tired and mad and not paying enough attention to the road. I was thinking about you.”
“You’re angry with me,” she said softly. “Because I left.”
“Damn right. You left me in a very difficult position, Anya. What in the world possessed you to run off like that? In case you’ve forgotten, we have an ironclad contract.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” she said, her gaze lingering on the thin trail of blood trickling down his cheek. She began to tremble all over again as she closed her eyes briefly and whispered, “I did what I had to do.”
“Which was?”
She glanced away, casting another furtive look over her shoulder. Zach felt the anger boiling inside him again, but for some reason, when he looked at her, gazed into those extraordinary silver eyes, his rage dissolved. She seemed so vulnerable out here. More fragile somehow. Suddenly, he only wanted to protect her. From himself? From the night? He wasn’t quite sure, but her sense of urgency had rubbed off on him. He struggled to his feet, bracing himself against the car. “Let’s go,” he said, blinking rapidly to try to clear the spots swimming before his eyes. “We’ll talk about this later.”
She had risen, too, and peered at him in the darkness. Her eyes were like sterling pools of seduction as she gazed up at him. Slowly, very slowly, her hand lifted to his head.
“You’re bleeding again,” she whispered, her voice trembling with an emotion Zach couldn’t quite define.
“It’s just a scratch,” he said, mesmerized by the ragged tone of her voice. “If the sight of blood bothers you so much, I’ll cover it.”
He removed a white handkerchief from his pocket and started to lift it to the wound, but Anya took it from him, her voice desperate-sounding in the misty darkness. “Let me,” she whispered.
Her touch was incredibly gentle, powerfully erotic. Zach wondered if the blow to his head had unhinged him somehow. The uneasiness of the past few moments evaporated. The only urgency he felt now was to take Anya into his arms, to feel her lips beneath his as he devoured her with his passion.
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