Sandra Hill

by Love Me Tender

  Pulling to a stop, he waited for the rain to let up, staring morosely at the castle before him. Every time he saw the monstrosity—which wasn’t often—he shuddered with distaste.

  Five years ago, when he’d decided to turn Morton Friedman’s cut-rate shoe empire into an upscale supplier to the rich and famous, he’d needed a palace as a backdrop for his royal persona. Dick had purchased the Spanish title for him, along with the deserted island “empire.” But no way was P.T. going to build even a bamboo hut on that volcanic paradise that resembled some sci-fi lunar landscape. On his one and only visit, P.T. had seen more snakes than any person should see in a lifetime. Some of them had made their way into Ferrama shoe creations.

  But the news media had been, and still were, curious about the new prince of leather. P.T. had suggested to Dick that they rent some villa or mini-castle in Europe for a week or so and take some photographs of him in his supposed home. But Dick had nixed the idea, and rightly so, pointing out that the European papparazzi were vultures when it came to sniffing out the truth. Besides, they probably had pictures on file of every bloody castle ever created.

  So he’d bought this crumbling heap in the Catskills and done only enough renovations to have professional photographs taken of him lounging about his palace. No way would he let the press know of its existence. In fact, his zeal for privacy and insistence that the tabloids accept only his photographs of his castle residence had only enhanced his mysterious aura…and upped Ferrama’s attractiveness in the marketplace.

  P.T. had purchased the castle, built almost a hundred years before by railroad tycoon Henry Fowler, and its surrounding one hundred acres for a song…a mere five hundred thousand dollars, including the remaining dilapidated furnishings. Of course, the structure itself wasn’t worth the cost of hauling the stone away. That was why it had stood vacant and unsold for so long. He’d always figured that the land represented a potential long-term profit if it could be subdivided at some point. But Naomi had fallen in love with the place—Naomi always had been a little half-baked—and insisted that it be included as part of her buyout settlement.

  Never once had P.T. doubted the wisdom of the prince scam, though it could hardly be called that, since they’d done nothing illegal. It had worked, putting Ferrama, Inc., in the forefront of the fashion industry in record time, along with Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and the other biggies. And he didn’t doubt for one minute that Calvin or Ralph would have employed the same tactics if they’d thought of them first.

  Well, good riddance to both the castle and Naomi. Which reminded him of the purpose of this visit. Naomi wasn’t going to have to worry about renovating this heap by the time he was done with her. She was going to be buried under it.

  Seeing that the rain was coming down even harder now, accompanied by claps of thunder, P.T. decided to make a dash for the castle. Opening his door, he was immediately surrounded by a half-dozen yelping guard dogs on retractable chains. They looked like glue factory rejects. Do dogs go to glue factories, like horses? Hell if I know!

  Snapping at his immediately sodden Gucci loafers and hanging onto the hem of his Fendi slacks, the hounds continued to yip and yap, slowing his progress across the moat bridge. Swiping at the water that blinded his eyes, he wasn’t able to watch his step, and he slipped on a rotting board that broke under his weight. He landed face-first in a muddy trench along with the dogs, who frolicked over him with wagging tails and lolling tongues, obviously thinking he’d gone mud bathing deliberately. It wasn’t quite the kind of frolicking Dick had had in mind, P.T. was sure.

  He crawled out of the moat and made his way to the open door, where he noticed Naomi for the first time. She was standing with hands planted on the hips of her baggy denim coveralls, glaring at him. Naomi always glared at him.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Well, welcome to you, too,” he snapped, brushing past her into the ostentatious foyer. He didn’t care if he did get mud on her chic denim outfit.

  “Aaargh!” she shrieked. “You’re getting mud on the Italian marble, you lout.”

  “Well, big deal, Naomi,” he said, cutting her with an icy stare. Then he deliberately shook himself like one of the miserable mutts that wailed outside the door. Mud splattered everywhere, including Naomi’s livid face.

  “Go back to New York and take care of the company,” she demanded. “You’re not wanted or needed here.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “Cynthia Sullivan, that’s who. What would ever possess you to try such a crazy stunt? Are you having a nervous breakdown or something, Naomi? Or early menopause?”

  “Menopause? Menopause?” she sputtered, her face turning even redder with rage. “Women don’t go into menopause when they’re thirty-four years old, you jackass.”

  God, it was just like a female to fixate on the least important thing he’d said. “Where are you keeping her? Oh, no…please, don’t tell me this place has a dungeon.”

  “Give me a break,” Naomi snarled, her eyes unconsciously shifting upward.

  “Cyn-thi-a,” he screamed and made for the wide staircase, taking the steps three at a time. “Where are you? Cyn-thi-a!”

  “Stop!” Naomi yelled after him. “She’s safe, and her corn’s almost healed, and this is the best plan. Really. She won’t be able to affect the stock offering if we keep her here for eighteen more days.”

  When he got to the first landing, P.T. glanced down at his stepsister. “And what are you going to do when she files criminal charges against us? And a civil lawsuit?”

  Naomi shifted uncomfortably. “We’re working on that.”

  “How?”

  “Look, she’s fine here. Oh, she grumbles a lot, but Elmer and Ruth are taking care of her. In fact, Ruth just got done doing her fingernails, and—”

  “Her fingernails!” Oh, Lord, they wouldn’t torture her, would they? Of course they would. Hadn’t Naomi just said that Ruth was up there pulling out Cynthia’s fingernails? Ruth…the gentle sister who wouldn’t swat a fly when they were kids? Ruth…the warm-hearted teenage girl who dated every butt-ugly loser in the county when they were growing up because she didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings?

  “You can’t take that woman back, P.T. You’ll ruin everything. I want my money to fix up the castle. I mean it. No one—not you, and not that foul-mouthed shark—is going to stop me.”

  As greedy as Naomi had been in the past, P.T. never would have believed her capable of deliberate physical cruelty. He gaped at her for a long moment, then told her where she could stick this blasted castle.

  Not waiting for a response, he practically flew up the steps, continuing to shout, “Cyn-thi-a!” From somewhere in the higher regions—probably the fifth or sixth floor—he heard music playing. He followed the sound.

  Moments later he charged madly through the open doorway of a sixth-floor suite and came to a screeching halt. His jaw dropped open with surprise.

  Cynthia Sullivan was sitting in the center of a huge platform bed. Her hair…her big hair…stood out from her head in a wavy, strawberry-blond cloud…a big cloud…and she wore nothing but the little lacy camisole she’d been wearing under her business suit three days ago. No, he corrected himself, she was wearing a pair of white silk briefs as well. It was no wonder he’d missed them, with the sight of all those miles of bare legs stretching out before him. At the bottom of the bed, Ruth sat painting Cynthia’s nails a bright neon pink, even the three toes that were still covered with a light gauze. From one of those legs, a long chain extended from the ankle to the wall.

  “No blood,” he muttered with a heart-swelling sigh of relief. Slowly, the facts registered. Ruth wasn’t torturing Cynthia; she was giving her a pedicure.

  “Huh?” Cynthia said, gazing at him with equal amazement. He must look pretty…well, amazing himself, with his face and hair and clothing dripping rainwater and mud about him.

  “You’re just in time for the vide
o,” a voice said behind him.

  He turned to see Elmer Presley standing next to a TV with a video player on its top. On the screen the opening credits of a cartoon began to play. Cinderella. Elmer fiddled with the knobs a little before turning to P.T. “It’s about time you got here.”

  “Oh, God, the fairy dwarf, too,” P.T. observed, taking in Elmer’s short frame wrapped, like a sausage, in a tight white jumpsuit studded with rhinestones. A huge belt with a clasp the size of a Frisbee bisected his midsection. On his feet were high blue suede boots, also studded with rhinestones. The same person must have done his big hair as Cynthia’s.

  “Don’t call him that,” Cynthia and Ruth chastised P.T. at the same time.

  “I…am…not…short,” Elmer asserted. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  “Go ahead and put a spell on him, Elmer. For that insult, you ought to turn him into a…a toad. But then, he’s already a toad,” Cynthia commented. Although her remark was terse and to the point, he could tell by the spark in her blue eyes that she had a lot more to tell him. A helluva lot more.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Naomi creep through the door and pick up Elmer’s guitar. But his attention was diverted to the TV screen, where some nitwit began to belt out, “Someday my prince will come….”

  Just before his head burst with a shattering headache and his mind went blank, he thought he heard himself murmur, “I’m coming, I’m coming….”

  Chapter Six

  It was hard to maintain anger at a blood-boiling temperature when the object of your rage was lying in bed beside you, chained to the wall, unconscious…wearing nothing but a pair of cute white boxers imprinted with green shamrocks.

  Peter Ferrama was all dark skin and lean muscle from the top of his raven black hair to the bottom of his narrow, sexy feet. In repose, his sinfully long eyelashes were spread out like thick sable fans accenting a face of aristocratic Spanish features—high cheekbones, prominent nose, full lips, proud jaw. His arms were thrown over his head, relaxed, calling attention to patches of black hair in his armpits and on his well-honed chest, leading in a vee to the low-riding band of his shorts, then resuming on the trek down his long sinewy legs.

  His was not the pumped-up body of a yuppie weightlifter, but the result of good genes and years of some vigorous physical activity. Polo or riding to the hounds or jousting or some such princely pursuit, she supposed. Or running from women who fashioned themselves royal groupies, she added as an afterthought.

  “Handsome is as handsome does,” the right side of her brain kept reminding the left side of her brain, which was locked in yum-yum mode.

  Three hours had passed since Naomi had bopped him over the head with Elmer’s guitar. He’d been too busy ogling Cynthia to fend off his stepsister’s blow. What a scene had ensued then as Ferrama had sunk, wide-eyed with shock, to the floor!

  Elmer had flown into a rage at Naomi’s misuse of his precious instrument, which luckily survived without damage, despite Ferrama’s hard head. “My guitar! My guitar!” Elmer had cried, caressing it like a baby. “May the seven terriers of hell sit on the spool of your breast and bark at your hardened soul.”

  Ruth had stormed at her sister then for employing such brutal tactics. “You could’ve killed P.T.! How could you? How could you? Put another curse on her, Elmer. Go ahead.”

  “May there be no butter on your milk, nor on your ducks a web.”

  “Huh?” she and Ruth had both exclaimed.

  Elmer was giving Naomi the evil eye, except that his evil eye resembled a nervous twitch.

  Naomi had pooh-poohed Ruth’s recriminations and Elmer’s curses. “If I’d wanted to kill him, I would have used my gun.” Naomi had then pulled out her handy drill and another retractable chain, anchoring Ferrama to the wall in a similar fashion to Cynthia, but on the opposite side of the bed. Before she’d wrapped the chain around his gauze-bound ankle, she’d removed all his clothes, except for the boxers. The only reason she hadn’t taken them, too, Cynthia suspected, was that she’d been squeamish about seeing her stepbrother in the buff.

  Cynthia had urged Naomi to leave his clothing on. “He doesn’t strike me as the shy type. Do you really think your stepbrother would care if he was naked, running along the interstate, if it meant he could escape?”

  “Yeah, he’d worry about what the press would think,” Naomi had responded with a sneer. “A prince wouldn’t do such an uncouth thing.”

  Maybe she was right.

  “Then put him in another bedroom,” Cynthia had suggested. The idea of being confined in close proximity to the prince was a daunting prospect. She was afraid she’d break his bones. Or, worse yet, jump his bones.

  “Nope! It’s easier to watch you two in one place. Besides,” Naomi said, her eyes narrowing craftily, “P.T. can keep an eye on you…for the family good.”

  “That would be like putting the fox to mind the goose,” Cynthia had argued.

  “Precisely.” With that enigmatic comment, Naomi had gone off to plaster a wall or something. After assuring themselves that Ferrama was not seriously injured, Ruth and Elmer had prepared breakfast, then made excuses of some busywork that needed to be done. They obviously wanted to avoid Cynthia’s nonstop complaints.

  Elmer’s parting shot of advice to her had been, “When the apple is ripe, it will fall.”

  Yeah, well, the only fruit in this room is wearing blue suede boots. “A person might as well whistle jigs to a milestone as tell her troubles to you,” she’d called after the maddening little man.

  He’d laughed with glee. “The Irish wolf ever did bark at her own shadow.”

  Her answering snarl had been lost in his departing footsteps.

  The prince moaned and moved restlessly now. He was just beginning to awaken. She couldn’t wait. Because she intended to bop him once or twice herself.

  Cynthia watched as he gradually became aware of his predicament. At first, he cracked only one eyelid, putting a hand to his presumably aching head. Then he blinked with amazement and raised himself onto his elbows, gaping first at his nearly nude body, then at the chain running from his ankle to the wall, at the Cinderella video playing on the TV set across the room and finally at Cynthia, in her scanty attire and matching chain.

  “His and hers chains!” he muttered, rubbing the fingers of one hand across his furrowed brow. “This is crazy.”

  “Yep.” Cynthia was demonstrating incredible restraint in issuing the terse reply when what she wanted to do was berate him in an unending stream for causing this entire fiasco. In time, she promised herself. In good time. But she couldn’t stop herself from remarking, “There must have been a whole lot of inbreeding in your family tree, ’cause you’re all half-witted…you, Naomi, Ruth.”

  “I’m going to kill Naomi,” he said in a seething tone.

  “You’ll have to stand in line.”

  Ferrama sat up, giving her his full attention. “Are you all right?”

  “No, I’m not all right,” she snapped. “Do I look like I’m all right?”

  His midnight blue eyes swept over her, real slow, from the big hair she hadn’t had a chance to tame down yet to her glow-in-the-dark pink toenails. “Yeah, you look all right,” he said huskily.

  God, that voice alone must snag women by the dozens. She decided to turn the tables on him, not wanting to feel intimidated by all that oozing virility. “You don’t look much like a prince now.” Well, Einstein, that was a really bright observation!

  “Oh?” His lips twitched with amusement.

  His half-grin really jerked her chain…so to speak. She hated it when he looked down his blue-blooded nose at her, one of the awkward common folks. “Without a crown, a prince is apparently just a man,” she taunted. “As my grandma always said, ‘You can’t tell what’s in the pot, girlie, till the lid is lifted.’”

  He groaned, probably because he disliked her Irish proverbs. Most men did, since the best of the witticisms from the ol’ sod cut straight to t
he heart of universal male blarney.

  “Honey, you don’t know me well enough to lift my…uh, lid. Besides, I may not have a crown, but I still have my scepter,” he pointed out, bobbing his eyebrows at her.

  “Huh?” When she realized what he meant, her face colored with embarrassment. “Oh, that was so…so gauche!”

  He shrugged. “So, sue me.”

  “I intend to,” she vowed. “When I’m done dragging your sorry ass through the court system, you won’t have a crown jewel to your name.” She’d deliberately used the crude term sorry ass because she sensed her earthiness made him uncomfortable. And she was not in the mood to please him in any way whatsoever.

  “Wanna bet? You’re not touching my crown jewels unless I let you.” He thought a minute, then chuckled. “Oh, all right. My crown jewels are all yours, querida.”

  Cynthia’s face grew hotter. This conversation was taking a decidedly suggestive route she didn’t like at all. “Great shorts, by the way. Where’d you buy them? The royal Wal-Mart?”

  “They were a gift,” he answered distractedly as he searched under the heavy brocade bedspread folded at the bottom of the mattress, discovering the alarming fact that there were no bed linens. It was alarming to her, anyhow. She saw the minute understanding dawned as to the implications of the lack of sheets or pillowcases. His eyes went slowly from her near-nude body to his near-nude body, with nary a cover in sight. Then he smiled.

  He smiled! The troll!

  “Can I assume body heat is the only option in the event of a sudden cold spell?” He was clearly enjoying himself. And hoping for a North Wind.

  “A gift?” she said derisively, choosing to ignore his reference to body heat and take the discussion back to his boxers. Not that his underwear was really a better subject. “From some Irish lass with a shamrock fetish?”

  He laughed. “No, they were a Christmas gift from Elmer. Don’t you like them?”

  “I could care less. I just thought that a prince would be wearing the family crest on his skivvies, not some good luck charm.”