‘Can I get you anything?’ June offered as she saw the utter despair on her face.
Leonie shook her head. ‘I think I’ll go and sit with Laura for a while.’ She stood up unsteadily, not surprised to find that she was wearing a sheer cream nightgown, sure that Hawk would have undressed her before putting her to bed last night.
What was all this doing to him? He loved Holly just as much as she did, she was sure of that, and he had known her a much shorter time to love.
Oh God, she should never have denied Holly her love, should never have held herself aloof from her own baby for the first three and a half weeks of her life. She might never get another chance to show Holly how much she did love her…
Laura looked so peaceful as she lay asleep in her bed, but Leonie knew it was only an illusion, that as soon as her sister woke up her pain would begin again—Laura, who had refused to accept that love meant pain.
Leonie stood up restlessly, her heart beating rapidly as the room across the corridor drew her like a magnet. The nursery…
The room looked as it always did when Holly had been got up for the day, the tiny quilt not pulled back as it had been when she gazed uncomprehendingly into the empty cot the night before, but neatly tidy, the teddy bears they had received as presents when Holly was first born lined up along the bottom of the cot, the clown-patterned quilt seeming to be laughing up at her. And the laughter seemed to be getting louder, and louder, making her head feel as if it were about to burst, as if—
‘Stop it!’ June’s hand landed painfully against Leonie’s cheek and she sank to the carpet, her body racked by anguished sobs. ‘Leonie, don’t,’ June knelt down beside her, taking her in her arms. ‘Please don’t. Oh God, it’s all my fault,’ she choked. ‘If I’d kept a closer eye on Holly none of this would have happened!’
They were all so filled with guilt, a guilt that wasn’t going to do a thing towards bringing Holly back. June certainly wasn’t responsible for what had happened, and she couldn’t allow her to believe she was.
‘No,’ Leonie said firmly. ‘None of us could have stopped what happened last night,’ she realised with certainty. She gave a deep sigh. ‘I’d better get dressed.’
June frowned. ‘Are you sure you feel up to it?’
Leonie rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I have to be strong, for Holly’s sake. I have to—’ She turned sharply as she heard the front door open and close. ‘Hawk!’ she cried expectantly, running from the room.
One look at Hawk’s haggard face and Hal’s desolate one and she knew they hadn’t brought her daughter back to her.
* * *
Oh, God, Leonie looked as if she were about to shatter into a million pieces, Hawk thought brokenly.
They had gone to Spencer’s home, where his disgruntled landlady had told them what she had already informed the police: that Spencer had left late yesterday afternoon and hadn’t been back since. They had pressed the sleepy woman for names of his friends, anyone else they could question about where he could have gone. She had finally told them to try the female tenant in the flat opposite Spencer’s, a lead that had also proved fruitless. The woman had been obviously eager to get back to the man who was sharing her bed for the night. And so they had got the landlady out of bed again, stressing how important it was that she remember any of Spencer’s friends. She had finally come up with the name of a man who lived a few blocks away. Another dead end—the man was too high on something to be of any help to anyone.
The police were looking for Spencer now; he could only hope they would have more luck.
In the meantime he had to tell Leonie that Holly was still missing.
She turned to Hal with pained eyes. ‘Laura is still sleeping, so you might as well have breakfast before going up to her.’
She knew. She had taken one look at his face and she knew their darling daughter was still with Spencer somewhere.
Why didn’t she rant and rave at him, remind him of the assurance he had given her only yesterday that Michael Spencer would never bother them again! He couldn’t bear the quiet calm that hid so much pain.
Hal shook his head. ‘I couldn’t eat a thing. I—I think I’ll just go up and sit with Laura.’ He came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’m so sorry about this, Leonie,’ he choked, turning blindly towards her.
Hawk almost broke down and cried again himself as he watched Leonie comforting his son, the bulk of Hal’s body totally eclipsing her as she held him in her arms.
Hal left them with a wrenching sob, running up the stairs as if he were pursued by demons.
Leonie looked at Hawk with tears swimming in her eyes. ‘Would you like some breakfast? You must be exhausted, and—’
‘Leonie!’ he groaned, opening his arms to her, sighing his need as she instantly moved into them, burrowing her face against his chest.
She had never seemed more like a child to him, a lost and lonely child who didn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt her, and keep on hurting her.
‘Oh—I’m sorry,’ Sarah said awkwardly as she came out into the hallway.
Hawk looked at her sharply, bent protectively over Leonie as she still clung to him. ‘Get Jake, and tell him—’
‘But he isn’t here,’ Sarah shook her head, her expression one of deep concern. ‘He doesn’t seem to have been at the hotel all night,’ she shrugged worriedly.
Hawk’s eyes narrowed, and he wanted to pursue the subject further, but not now. Right now he had to get Leonie back up to her bedroom.
‘Let me.’ June appeared at his side, putting an arm comfortingly about Leonie. ‘And I think you’ll find Jake in the kitchen,’ she said huskily.
He bent to kiss Leonie gently on her brow. ‘We’ll find her,’ he said with more conviction than he actually felt. He could have sworn when he had met Spencer two days ago that the other man wouldn’t bother them again; and look how wrong he had been about that! He daren’t even think of what would happen to Leonie if he didn’t get Holly back for her.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs watching Leonie and June until they disappeared into the bedroom before turning briskly to Sarah. ‘Cancel all my arrangements for today,’ he ordered. ‘And then find out anything you can about Michael Spencer,’ he added grimly. ‘And I mean everything!’
‘Isn’t he—’
‘The bastard who has my daughter,’ he bit out harshly. ‘And I want him!’ His hands clenched into fists at his sides.
Jake rose slowly to his feet when Hawk joined him in the kitchen, and if anything he looked more haggard than Hawk felt, his face pale, a dark-blond growth of beard on his chin, his clothes giving the impression that he had slept in them.
‘No news?’ he rasped.
Hawk shook his head. ‘Where the hell have you been all night?’
Jake gave a guilty start—or did it only look guilty to him? What could his friend and assistant have to be guilty about? Hell, Holly’s disappearance was making him suspicious of everyone!
‘I went to look for Stephen,’ explained Jake, shrugging awkwardly. ‘I didn’t find him.’
Hawk’s eyes were narrowed. ‘No?’
Jake gave a ragged sigh. ‘He hasn’t booked out of his hotel room or anything like that, his clothes are still there, but he just—Forget about Stephen,’ he dismissed harshly. ‘What can we do to get Holly back?’ His gaze was intent.
Hawk drew in a shaky breath and sat down heavily. ‘Find Spencer,’ he bit out angrily.
‘You think it’s him?’ Jake gave a puzzled frown. ‘But I thought you’d settled—’
‘So did I,’ snapped Hawk. ‘But obviously I was wrong. Now it’s a question of either finding the bastard or waiting for him to make the ransom demand. Knowing what a cruel son-of-a-bitch he can be I would say that won’t be too quick in coming!’ His eyes glittered coldly. ‘If I don’t get her back soon, Jake, this could destroy Leonie,’ he added raggedly.
‘You think he did this for money?’ Jake said slo
wly.
Hawk nodded tersely. ‘And to hurt Leonie and me as much as possible,’ he said grimly. ‘He should get some cheap thrill when I go on television tonight asking him to return Holly to us! I’m having the telephone number here broadcast too.’
‘The police are allowing that?’ Jake frowned.
Hawk shrugged. ‘She’s my daughter, Jake,’ he said tersely. ‘I’ll give everything I have to get her back.’
The other man shook his head. ‘You’ll get all the mental cases coming forward as well.’
‘It’s a risk I have to take,’ Hawk said heavily. ‘I want my daughter back, Jake, and I’ll do anything I can to achieve that!’
‘Wouldn’t it be better to wait—’
Hawk shook his head firmly. ‘Someone out there may have seen Spencer with Holly. If they have, I and the police want to know about it. Once we’ve received a ransom demand the police have insisted on a media black-out.’
‘You’re agreeable to that?’ prompted Jake.
‘I said I’d do anything, Jake,’ Hawk bit out. ‘And that means anything Spencer demands!’
* * *
Leonie was in control again now, regretting the lapse when she had almost collapsed in Hawk’s arms. She was stronger than any of them now, had faced the pain of loss enough to know that grieving didn’t help anything, that they had to sit and wait for whatever came next.
She had just finished dressing when she heard Laura’s raised voice coming from her bedroom, and she quickly ran out to be with her sister now that she had woken up; possibly she the only one who understood the reason Laura had fallen apart so completely.
Hal was trying to take the distraught Laura into his arms, and Laura was fighting him for all she was worth!
‘Leave her to me.’ Leonie deftly took Hal’s place, and Laura at once fell into her arms, sobs racking her body.
‘I was good, Leonie,’ she choked. ‘I was so good. Why am I being punished? Why?’
Leonie glanced up at Hal, sympathising with his complete inability to deal with something he didn’t even understand. ‘Let me talk to her for a while,’ she suggested gently. ‘Just for a while,’ she encouraged as he would have protested.
‘You’ll call me if she needs me?’ he said uncertainly.
She gave him a gentle smile. ‘I promise,’ she nodded, waiting until he had left the room before turning back to Laura and softly beginning to talk, telling her sister all the things she knew she needed to hear, slowly feeling the tension ease from Laura’s shaking body, watching as total awareness returned and her sister softly began to cry.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT HAD been the longest day of Hawk’s life.
He, Jake and Hal had spent the afternoon and evening visiting every person Spencer had ever spoken to, with only the briefest of breaks in between when he had made his appeal on television. As Jake had predicted, it seemed every crackpot in the country had either seen or had Holly. The police were monitoring all the calls, and none of them had been from Spencer. He would know when the real ransom demand was made, he was sure of it.
Leonie had spent the time with Laura, a still strangely withdrawn Laura, although she had lost the look of hell from her eyes.
And Leonie—dear God, he had no idea what she was thinking any more. The vulnerability had gone, and in its place was a strength that nothing seemed able to pierce. She had become the comforter, not the comforted. And he knew that was the only reason she had come to his bed tonight.
He had sat up with the two policemen who were monitoring the telephone for several hours, but it seemed only the real crazies called at that time of night, and he had grown sickened by their warped minds, eventually coming wearily up to his room.
All had been silent upstairs, and he wondered briefly how Hal and Laura were faring together. Laura was treating her new husband rather like a stranger she had to be polite to.
Leonie’s door was firmly closed against him. Not that he could blame her; he had promised to get Holly back, and so far he had failed miserably. He had told her she would never know another day’s unhappiness, and yet her heart had been broken because he hadn’t recognised how dangerous Spencer was.
He had turned sharply into the nursery, moving about the room touching everything that was Holly’s, wondering if her golden head would ever rest inside the cot again, tightly gripping the cot sides as thoughts of his beautiful daughter took him through a nightmare of broken images that were too unbearable to contemplate. Those bastards, with their sick warped minds, had conjured up the images he had been fighting all day. They would get Holly back, they would.
He had staggered blindly into his bedroom, almost falling down on to the bed in his agony of grief.
And then the door had opened and a slight figure in a pale nightgown moved amongst the shadows the moonlight cast over the room.
Hawk had sat dazedly as Leonie came down beside him to take off his shoes and lay them neatly to one side, completely still as she deftly unbuttoned his shirt and stripped that from his shoulders with coolly impersonal hands, offering no resistance at all as she helped him back on the bed until he leant back against the pillows, her tiny hands dealing with the fastening of his denims before they too were gently eased off his body. And she hadn’t stopped there, black undershorts joining the neat pile of clothes before she pulled back the covers and arranged them over him.
He had watched as she moved about the room putting the clothes in their appropriate places, shirt and underwear in the laundry basket, his trousers neatly hung in the closet. And through it all she hadn’t said a word, neither did she speak as she moved the covers slightly back before climbing into the bed beside him.
She lay there still, her head resting against his shoulder, her hand on his chest, and they were farther apart than if they had been in separate rooms.
And neither of them had any intention of falling asleep tonight.
They both lay in the darkness, eyes wide open, living in their own individual hell, more like strangers than lovers. Because Leonie like this was a stranger to Hawk, the same stranger who had offered to let him take Holly away with him when he left. He hadn’t realised just how far that woman had receded during the last few days until she appeared once more. And this time he didn’t have the strength to reach her.
But he had to find the strength, because no matter what happened, Leonie was going to be his. He loved her, damn it; he couldn’t live without her!
* * *
‘No, Hawk,’ Leonie stared at him in horror. ‘Send him away!’ She shook her head in frantic denial of the suggestion he had just made.
He remained unmoving. ‘Do you know the effort it took to actually get him to come out to the house this afternoon?’
‘I don’t care,’ she choked. ‘Send him away! How can you even contemplate the two of us getting married now, when our daughter is missing?’
‘Why not?’ he shrugged.
Because Holly could be lying dead somewhere, her beautiful eyes closed for ever, or maybe they would just never know what had happened to her; Michael seemed to have done a good job of disappearing—why shouldn’t he make Holly just disappear too? And Hawk had brought a man here to marry them!
He was a monster, a cold, unfeeling—No, he wasn’t, she realised brokenly, he was the man who loved her so much he had been willing to do anything to break her out of the cold shell she retreated to so that the pain shouldn’t touch her.
But she had to feel that pain if she were to love, and she did love Holly and Hawk so very much.
He was watching her now, trying so hard to appear unaffected by what he was forcing on her, but now she could see the anguish in his eyes, the utter despair he was trying to keep from her.
She held out her arms to him. ‘I still think Las Vegas sounds a romantic place for a wedding. Will you take me there when this is all over?’
They held each other so tightly it was painful, and Leonie wasn’t sure if the tears she tasted on her lips we
re Hawk’s or her own.
‘I love you, Hawk,’ she choked, feeling a sudden freedom that gave her heart the lightness of having wings. ‘I love you so much,’ she repeated raggedly.
His hands cradled each side of her face. ‘Enough to marry me even if—even if it’s just going to be the two of us?’ His gaze was intent.
If Holly were dead. She knew that was what he was trying to say. She refused to accept that anything that final had happened to Holly, but she knew she would marry Hawk anyway, that to be without him now would mean returning to being only half alive. It might be safer that other way, but she needed Hawk to make her truly alive.
She needed to tell him that, and there was only one way for him to be really sure. ‘Ask your Mr Simpkins to come in and marry us now,’ she told him softly.
His breath left his body in a raggedly relieved sigh, his arms tightening about her. ‘There is no Mr Simpkins,’ he admitted brokenly. ‘Just the man who loves you very much trying to reach you in the only way I knew how!’ He stared down into her eyes. ‘Tell me again that you love me,’ he encouraged huskily.
‘I love you, Hawk,’ she repeated obediently. ‘And that’s the last time you can meekly expect me to do your bidding,’ she added with some of her old spirit.
He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘There’s still so much I need to know.’
Leonie knew he was thinking of the way Laura had become withdrawn too. Her sister was so distant from Hal today that he might have been a stranger to her and not the man she had loved enough to wait a year for.
They needed to get Holly back as much for Laura’s sake as for their own and Holly’s.
‘I—’
‘Hawk, I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Jake said harshly, ‘but I need to talk to you.’
They turned to looked at the other man, Leonie’s eyes widening at how drawn and totally beaten Jake seemed, with dark shadows beneath his eyes, as if he too hadn’t slept for some time, his face pale, his cheeks hollow.
He didn’t seem able to look at her, his attention was concentrated on Hawk. ‘I went back to London to look for Stephen again last night and this morning,’ he revealed stiltedly.
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