Reckless Lover

by Carly Bishop

  Reminded of her in any way, he couldn’t focus on turning himself into the cold-blooded murderer he needed to become. Even to gain access to Broussard’s property would require every professional wile, every finely tuned instinct, every fiber of his being.

  He had never believed he could pull off this hit on Broussard on his own territory. He was too well guarded, his private estate patrolled day and night by dogs and human killers. Chris’s plan had always been to bait Broussard elsewhere with Eden Kelley, to lure him away from his overwhelmingly secured property, but those plans had long since crumbled. Chris would have to deal with all of that protection and stay alive long enough to do the job.

  When the hot water ran out after just twenty minutes, he stood under the drizzling cold. Afterward, he ate the rest of the crumpled package of Oreo cookies and went through the small arsenal of weapons he carried in his pack, making sure he could lay his hands on what he needed when he needed it.

  The sky was still dark when he set out jogging to Winston Broussard’s property, which backed up to the ocean bay, and barely light by the time Chris reached a vantage point above the road in the woods opposite the guardhouse where he could see down into the estate. He figured dawn for his best chance at catching the guards and dogs unaware.

  He climbed a tree, pulled out his binoculars and scoped out what little could be seen through the enormous wrought-iron gate. The drive extended from the gates at the guardhouse for a quarter mile down a tree-lined lane.

  At the southwestern corner, the pavement divided. To the left, the lane continued on into a circle drive at the front of the beautifully maintained 1930s-era house. He guessed that to the right, the road continued on around the house to a service entry and parking garage.

  He began figuring out his strategy and mapping out in his mind the route he would take in avoiding the surveillance cameras, recognizing how dangerously hobbled he was because he wouldn’t pick off the men who protected Winston Broussard.

  Crouched in the tree, still running through his options, Chris listened to the low thrum of an approaching automobile. When he saw the BMW round the bend in the road and pull up to the wrought-iron gates, his heart all but stopped.

  FIVE MILES BACK UP the road, a local cop spotted the hunter green Karmann Ghia, double-checked the plates and radioed his station. Maroncek heard about the sighting less than ten minutes later. He drew a shaky breath on the good-news, bad-news information. He now had the legal wherewithal to go after Tierney and, at the same time, invade Winston Broussard’s fortresslike estate. With any luck at all, Broussard would resist and consequently go down in a barrage of government bullets.

  But Maroncek figured Christian Tierney would be lucky to survive at all. And the witness...who knew?

  EDEN CAME TO WHEN David Tafoya stopped the BMW and blasted the horn outside the gates of Winston Broussard’s Marblehead estate. Tossed unceremoniously into the front passenger seat, her hands cuffed behind her, she could barely move and her head throbbed horribly.

  Still, the black wrought-iron bars looming above Tafoya’s windshield gave her a powerful sense of her existence having been preordained, as if everything in her life had prepared her to deal with this moment.

  Being abandoned and shuffled about, reinventing herself time and again, hoping to be valued, because there was precious little love to go around for a ward of the state.

  Judith’s shattered mirror more powerfully described Eden’s life than words could ever recount. And then there was Chris, who’d taught her that even with her nose pressed to the glass—forever on the outside looking in— she didn’t have a monopoly on suffering.

  He had given her something else to draw on, as well, an inner sense of her self, of what it was to belong and what it was not. She had never belonged to Broussard, or with him. He had no power to hurt her. He could not win.

  Staring up at those bars, which were meant to impress and to intimidate all comers, she felt neither.

  Tafoya bellowed angrily out his window when the guards failed to open the gates quickly enough. She heard the creaking, metallic noise, the lock releasing, the gates swinging open, and then Tafoya drove through and the gates clanged shut behind the car.

  He hadn’t noticed that she had regained consciousness. When he stopped the car on the driveway in front of the entrance and came around to drag her out, she straightened.

  “I’ll get out myself...David. Thank you.”

  He recoiled at her pleasant tone. “Ah, bravado,” he said mockingly. “There’s a clever girl.” His lip curled. “You always were too clever by half.”

  She twisted about and put her feet on the driveway. “Not so clever as you,” she responded sweetly. “Or else I would have known you for what you are, wouldn’t I?”

  “Cute.” He grabbed her upper arm and hauled her to her feet. “Let’s see how long your smart mouth lasts, shall we?”

  He manhandled her to the massive front door. The butler must have been waiting because the door swung open before Tafoya could bang the knocker.

  Eden had been to this estate several times. She recognized the scrawny old black man, Jameson, whose accent was so Cajun-French thick that she had never clearly understood him. He was a brilliant and loyal servant, rarely heard from, so his accent didn’t matter.

  His eyes, instinctively shuttered because he took Tafoya for a cop—good cop, bad cop, makes no difference, he once told her, explaining his trouble back home back south—flew wide when he recognized her. “Miz Kelley?”

  She smiled. “Hello, Jamie. How are you?”

  Tafoya swore. “Put a lid on the old home-week routine, Eden.” To Jameson, he said, “Where’s Broussard?”

  The old man’s eyes slid away again. Eden answered. “At the poolside, almost certainly. Isn’t that right, Jamie?”

  “Mais oui. Follow me.”

  He led the way through the house Eden remembered well. Fresh, hothouse orchids sat scattered in assorted cut-crystal vases. She felt a sliver of panic. Out the back double French doors, Broussard sat in a black satin robe casually sipping his coffee while he read through the morning paper. In the distance, sunlight glinted off the rippling waters of the bay. A sailboat bobbed at rest, its masts bare.

  Tafoya’s suddenly sweaty hands shoved Eden out the door onto the pristine white deck surrounding the swimming pool. “The prodigal at last,” he said.

  She saw two or three armed guards patrolling the perimeter, accompanied by dogs. Broussard’s own bodyguard stood discreetly in the shadows beneath an upper balcony.

  When Broussard deigned to look up at Tafoya’s greeting, he ignored the man and let his sultry, lascivious eyes rake over her.

  “Eden. Ma douce amie. To what do I owe the honor of your return?”

  For all her bravado, she couldn’t prevent the primitive dread he conjured up in her. She fought with everything in her to thwart the fear taking hold inside her. He fed on fear, thrived on it. Revulsion, she would dare show. Fear, she could not.

  “I mean no honor, Broussard.” She tossed her head. Pain shot though her shoulders, and her wrists chafed in the cuffs. “But you must know that.”

  “Mais oui. I do. A pity,” he agreed, turning next to Tafoya. “You have finally earned your keep, but at what cost to me, I mus’ wonder. Our little captive, it appears, has grown quite bold.”

  Tafoya shrugged. “For all the good it will do her.”

  Broussard folded his newspaper and sat back. “Where is your savior, Eden? The equally desperate and daring Christian X. Tierney?”

  She managed a blank expression, but already Broussard had divined the weakness in her armor. “I don’t know.”

  “Ah, Tafoya. You disappoint me again,” he said, looking at Eden while he spoke. “Can this be true?”

  “Tierney will be caught,” Tafoya assured Broussard. “It’s only a matter of hours before he’s apprehended. His keepers will throw away the key on him.”

  “Eden!” All three of them turned toward the do
or. Sheila Jacques stood poised at the threshold. She wore a black satin robe matching Broussard’s—a robe Eden knew was far and away more elegant and pricey than anything Sheila had ever owned in her life.

  Her hair had been cut in a new and stunning style, and colored to tone down its fiery hues. When she stepped out onto the deck, she moved with more reserve and precision than Eden had ever seen.

  Sheila was transformed, gorgeous, coldly aloof. None of her warmth showed, no spontaneity remained. Nothing about her resembled the girl with whom Eden had shared a room at St. Anne’s. Eden turned to Broussard. The look of mocking satisfaction he shot at her filled Eden with despair.

  “Sheils,” she murmured to break the tension, “you’re stunning.”

  “Thank you,” the other woman responded, moving as if on a leash next to Broussard. He patted her backside. Eden flinched. “Winston,” Sheila said softly, “perhaps Eden could have those grotesque handcuffs removed and sit down?”

  “But of course!” he answered. His hand slid possessively down Sheila’s thigh.

  Eden would have been mortified had he touched her like that in the presence of anyone else. But that’s what he intended, she thought. To defile and humiliate her best friend in her presence. To show her exactly who was calling the shots.

  To bait her.

  Now, when it was far to late, Eden was willing to admit that she needed Christian Tierney’s help.

  “What can have become of my hospitality?” Broussard was saying. “Tafoya,” he ordered, “kindly remove the shackles.”

  The dirty FBI agent moved to comply. He jerked her hands unnecessarily high and unlocked the cuffs. Stabbing pain shot through her shoulders and arms as her circulation returned. Rubbing her chafed wrists, Eden shot Sheila a grateful look, but her friend wasn’t looking. Deliberately not looking.

  “Are you happy, Sheils?” she blurted.

  “Shut up, Eden,” Tafoya snapped, shoving her into a patio chair at the same table with Winston Broussard. “You’re playing with fire.”

  Broussard’s brow rose. “Indeed—” Eden staved off a shudder “—your question is a legitimate one. After all,” he went on, “this was once all within your grasp.” He gestured broadly over the panorama of all that he owned. “Answer your dear old friend, ma belle, Sheila Marie. Are you happy?”

  Sheila met Eden’s gaze. “I am happy, Eden.”

  Her response sounded parrotlike to Eden, but Broussard patted Sheila again, as if rewarding a dog for rolling over.

  “Now, perhaps fair Eden will indulge a question of my own,” he suggested equably, but his expression altered subtly. “What do you think, Eden, of your dear friend Sheila whoring herself at my whim?”

  Sheila’s expression never changed, but Eden quaked inside with fury at his stunning cruelty. “Your whim disgusts me,” she snapped. “Your Madonna/whore mentality sickens me.”

  Broussard began to laugh in her face but Tafoya snickered. “Except there are no Madonnas left here, are there? Get closer, Broussard. She reeks of Christian Tierney.”

  Eden’s breath stuck in her throat, but before she could think why Tafoya would risk Broussard’s wrath, his arm lashed out and he backhanded her hard, sending her crashing down on the deck.

  Her blood spilled and smeared on the immaculate white paint. Stars blinked before her eyes. It felt as if his blow had shattered her cheekbone. Tafoya righted the chair and jerked her up by her arm, then tossed her like a rag doll back into her seat. Her lip was split and bleeding. Sheila had turned stark white.

  Eden battled back her tears. She had to be smarter than this, smarter than to give up the battle by letting him knock her senseless. With all her heart, she wished Chris were here now, but that was unlikely to happen. He could never breach this stronghold of Broussard’s, and she had no one to help her anymore. Not Tafoya, not Sheila.

  She swallowed painfully and met Broussard’s brutal eyes. “What now?”

  “Now?” He blinked.

  But before he could answer, an explosion reverberated through the air, splintering glass and wood, and the estate alarms began to wail.

  Broussard twisted his head around at the sound and swore violently in his native tongue. “Tierney!” Broussard stood and roared at the armed guards running everywhere. His own bodyguard took off. “Take him alive! I want him alive!” Then he spat on the floor at Eden’s feet. “Now, chère, it seems we will wait upon my guards to apprehend your lover. And then,” he snarled, “we will see how you will whore yourself to spare his life.”

  Horror nearly paralyzed Eden, but Sheila turned on Broussard, crazed with fury. “You sick bastard,” she screamed, galvanized from her apathy into a rage. “Eden will never, never give in to you!”

  She flew at him, clawing at him, fighting like a rabid shrew gone mad. Another blast exploded, nearer this time, and flaming debris showered down on the deck.

  Growling fiercely, Eden launched herself at Tafoya to prevent his attacking Sheila from behind. She knocked the gun from his hand, but her momentum carried Eden into Broussard’s range.

  He shrugged Sheila off him with a mighty burst of anger, grabbed Eden’s arm and twisted it high and hard behind her back. “You will die now, whore,” he threatened, “because I will squeeze the life from your tainted and spent body myself.”

  But from behind him, Chris appeared, scaling the deck fascia to hurl himself over the low, white, wrought-iron fence. He must have used the explosions for a distraction so that he could approach from the rear.

  “Let her go and call off your guards, Broussard, or you’re a dead man.”

  Jerked tight to Broussard, Eden saw Chris from the corner of her eye standing only eight feet away and to the side of the arms dealer. Bloodied and bruised, his clothes and flesh ripped open by the attack dogs, relentlessly, recklessly determined, Chris trained his automatic on the back of Winston Broussard’s head. In the distance, dozens of police sirens blared, and on an upstairs balcony, Broussard’s bodyguard crept through a door, raised his gun and aimed at Chris.

  “Above you!” she screamed, but a shot from behind and inside the house caught Broussard’s bodyguard in the back and sent him hurtling off the balcony.

  Tafoya bolted. Sheila stood paralyzed with fear. Chris dropped as if he’d been shot. Eden cried out, screaming in horror, believing he had been. Reacting to Eden’s cry, Sheila threw herself at Broussard again, but he hurled Eden to the deck, enraged, crazed, ignoring even the threat to his own life in his dark, deranged obsession with choking the life from her.

  His eyes flaming, his strength was wildly inhuman. Distantly, Eden felt her lungs burning and the cartilage in her throat ready to snap. In his own primitive rage, Chris grabbed hold of Broussard from above and threw him into the wrought-iron railing. Still he lunged back at Eden.

  Humiliated and enraged at the man who had destroyed her best friend’s life and then picked at the sores of her own self-esteem until she bled, Sheila Jacques picked up Tafoya’s gun and shot Winston Broussard squarely in the chest.

  She dropped the gun and flew to Eden’s side. Christian Tierney held them both in the midst of the devastation while Maroncek burst through doors with twenty or so deputy marshals, and on the balcony, old Jameson blew the smoke from his sawed-off shotgun.

  Epilogue

  ON THE JET DESTINED FOR Los Angeles and beyond to Hawaii, a passenger jet this time, and not one appropriated from the government, Eden Kelley Tierney snuggled close to her husband.

  The ragged peaks of the Tetons rose to bid them goodbye, but they would welcome them back in three weeks’ time, when the house going up in the narrow valley where Judith Cornwallis’s old cabin had stood was completed.

  Eden and Chris were clearing out of Dodge City anyway, Boston in this case, so the old Brit expatriate poet had insisted. Spent quite enough time shambling around in the foothills on her own, she said, after taking her twelve gauge up and blowing the propane tank to kingdom come, igniting the blaze to send up her cabin a
nd convince the wise guys she was already dead.

  The ruse had saved her life. Her old silver-backed mirror had been restored, and Eden was officially adopted to assuage Judith’s maternal ancestors. The Bancrofts threw one hell of a bon voyage party.

  Sheriff Ross had spent a few hours metaphorically kicking Tierney’s butt to hell and back, and then hired him. Jackson Hole made one perfect upscale resort location for the reincarnation of Eden’s lingerie boutique. The high school accepted the application of Sheila Marie Jacques.

  And the wedding had come off without a hitch in the spectacular mountain meadow where elk bugled and moose ambled and trumpeter swans performed their song.

  Christian Tierney was at peace telling himself the truth these days, which was that he was wildly in love with a woman who told him the truth...which was that she was wildly in love with a reckless and dangerously potent man.

  Kirsten Cornwallis Tierney was born on the Fourth of July, followed, one per year, by Evan and Dylan and baby Meghan Marie.

  ISBN : 978-1-4592-7559-1

  RECKLESS LOVER

  Copyright © 1996 by Cheryl McGonigte

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Umited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.