Bougainvillea

by Heather Graham

  Here’s another chance to read this unforgettable tale of romance and suspense from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham!

  After twenty years, artist Kit Delaney returns to the lush Florida estate that harbors a million childhood memories…and a deadly legacy. Has the man she’s fallen for restored her to her birthright—or lured her to her doom?

  Praise for these New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling authors

  Heather Graham

  “Graham wields a deftly sexy and convincing pen.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Heather Graham will keep you in suspense until the very end.”

  —Literary Times

  Carla Neggers

  “Nobody does romantic suspense better than Carla Neggers. The Whisper is big, bold and stunningly effective. Evidence of a writer at the absolute top of her game still climbing higher.”

  —Providence Journal

  “Suspense, romance, and the rocky Maine coast—what more could a reader ask for? The Harbor has it all.… A story so vivid you can smell the salt air and feel the mist on your skin.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen

  Sharon Sala

  “[A] well-written, fast-paced ride.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Nine Lives

  “Vivid, gripping… this thriller keeps the pages turning.”

  —Library Journal on Torn Apart

  Also by Heather Graham:

  THE HIDDEN

  THE FORGOTTEN

  THE SILENCED

  WAKING THE DEAD

  THE BETRAYED

  THE HEXED

  THE CURSED

  THE NIGHT IS FOREVER

  THE NIGHT IS ALIVE

  THE NIGHT IS WATCHING

  LET THE DEAD SLEEP

  THE UNINVITED

  THE UNSPOKEN

  THE UNHOLY

  THE UNSEEN

  AN ANGEL FOR CHRISTMAS

  THE EVIL INSIDE

  SACRED EVIL

  HEART OF EVIL

  PHANTOM EVIL

  NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRES

  THE KEEPERS

  GHOST MOON

  GHOST NIGHT

  GHOST SHADOW

  THE KILLING EDGE

  NIGHT OF THE WOLVES

  HOME IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS

  UNHALLOWED GROUND

  DUST TO DUST

  NIGHTWALKER

  DEADLY GIFT

  DEADLY HARVEST

  DEADLY NIGHT

  THE DEATH DEALER

  THE LAST NOEL

  THE SEANCE

  BLOOD RED

  THE DEAD ROOM

  KISS OF DARKNESS

  THE VISION

  THE ISLAND

  GHOST WALK

  KILLING KELLY

  THE PRESENCE

  DEAD ON THE DANCE FLOOR

  PICTURE ME DEAD

  HAUNTED

  HURRICANE BAY

  A SEASON OF MIRACLES

  NIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRD

  NEVER SLEEP WITH STRANGERS

  EYES OF FIRE

  SLOW BURN

  FLAWLESS

  NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  HEATHER GRAHAM

  ON THE EDGE

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  It had been foolish to make threats, Marina knew. Obviously. But, then, she’d been so angry, frustrated and powerless, and in all honesty, her temper had always been her downfall. Well, there was nothing she could do about it now. Her words couldn’t be taken back.

  She blinked back a sudden onslaught of tears, thinking of the people she had not meant to hurt. Including herself, she reflected wryly. But she had been feeling weepy. Still was. But she shouldn’t have been drinking. Drinking always compounded everything. Along with the guilt, anger, and sorrow that were going to haunt her when she turned the world upside down tomorrow, she was going to have a crippling hangover.

  She quickened her pace along the walkway that led deeper into the grounds of Bougainvillea, the vast Delaney estate, knowing that she might somewhat calm her state of anguish if she could just reach the beach, feel the soft breeze that came with the late afternoon, and watch the sunset falling over the pond near the docks. This is what she would miss. She loved the property as no one else did. Unless it was…

  That despicable man!

  Oh, they were all despicable. Seamus, Martin, Lenore, Josh, Kaitlin. Sometimes even David, because he could look at her with such strange eyes…

  Then, if the household wasn’t enough, there were the neighbors. Always there. Martin Callahan and his darling little Shelley. And Eli.

  The ones she needed to be thinking about were Mark.

  And Kit.

  Not now, she was in such a roil of anger!

  She quickened her pace and reached the beach at last. The scene before her was postcard perfect. Lazy palms, drifting in the breeze. Golden sand, stretching out to the surf. The water, with small whitecaps forming that just caught the dying light, and dazzled beneath it like diamonds. A little crane strutted along the beach, at once elegant and gawky. A gull swept down, and the crane took flight.

  “Marina!”

  She heard her name called, and she knew his voice. As she turned back, she trembled, both with fury and because she wanted what she shouldn’t have. Even when she knew better.

  “Don’t!” she told him as he caught up with her on the beach. “Don’t come near me…this is entirely wrong, and I’m going to leave, do you understand?”

  But he kept coming anyway, and his features carried the same agonizing torment as her own. He reached out and pulled her into his arms and ended her tirade with a passionate kiss. In those first moments, she would have pulled away. But he was stronger, and proving his force. She stiffened, willing to fight…but for no more than embarrassingly brief seconds. Then a sense of nostalgia seized her. She was leaving…just one last taste of everything that was forbidden, and she would spend her life repenting her sins, repairing the damage she had done…

  With that logic and illusion, and of course, a bit of the alcohol coursing through her bloodstream, she began kissing him in return with equal passion. Hot, wet, greedy kisses as they fumbled with each other’s clothing. He shoved her skirt up to her hips while she ripped his shirt from his pants, and slipped her hand beneath his belt line, fondling his erection. Half undressed, they tumbled to the damp sand together. They made love desperately, like a pair of maddened animals, natural perhaps, for the lover she had taken. For brief moments in the aftermath of their violent mating, she was sated and satisfied, as if something had come to completion. Yes, she’d needed this once more. A tempestuous and dramatic goodbye. If nothing else, we’ve had this passion, burning too brightly perhaps, so illicitly, but precious nonetheless. Because it’s so sweet to have this power, something I can lord over one man…

  That would devastate another.

  Remorse set in.

  But she reminded herself once again, she was leaving. And she would use the years ahead to atone for all that she had done.

  Tomorrow, she would become everything that she should have been all along. A good wife. Lord knew, her husband deserved as much. More than that, she would be a good mother. She had always intended to be.

  Tomorrow… .

  Tomorrow she was leaving. Before that, however, she would see to it that she carried out her threats. She meant to tell everything that she knew.

  She meant to atone.

  And so, by G
od, would the others.

  All of them.

  For everything.

  But that would be tomorrow! Her resolve was strong; she could and would change. But for now, she needed to cherish these last few precious seconds. She would first finish what she had begun, then she would leave, and never look back.

  She had just seconds left.

  And then…

  Tomorrow.

  But for the moment, they lay side by side, both aware that they were going to have to rise, and deal with the fact that they’d mangled each other’s clothing and that they did have to go back to the house. But she didn’t want to talk yet. She just wanted to feel what it was like to lie beside him as if she belonged there. The sun had now created beautiful crimson streaks across the sky. The ocean was darkening, the whitecaps would soon have to look for moonlight, and the color of the air was dusky and gentle and the breeze was sweetly sensual.

  “Marina—”

  “Shh. Just close your eyes. Hold me, please. Just for a minute.”

  He held her. He closed his eyes, as she did. The palms whispered softly as the breeze lifted them.

  * * *

  The parrots were back.

  Early every evening, the little buggers escaped their tourist-attraction home and hightailed it across town. They landed in the trees, and they began squawking. Making tea in the little bungalow on the Delaney property that had been her home since 1935, old Mary O’Hara, retired now from her post as head housekeeper, looked out her rear windows.

  “Birdies!” she exclaimed with disgust. “Bloody, wretched birdies!” she continued, raising her fist toward them. She shook her head, wondering how any creature that screeched so loudly and annoyingly could entice a paying audience. Ah, well. The parrots hadn’t always come here. Maybe they’d find a new place to visit soon.

  She made her tea, sat in her rocker and turned on a repeat of Hollywood Squares. She just loved game shows. And at her age…well, there were only so many pleasures left. She raised the volume on her television. All right, she was nearly as old as God himself, and maybe she was losing her hearing a bit, but it was those bloody birds forcing her to turn the TV so high, and that was a fact!

  She paused for a moment, predicting that sometime tonight Marina would come. Mary’s hearing might be bad, but she did still know what was going on around the place. She believed that she had talked the girl into her senses. Marina, for all her madness, was one of those few pleasures Mary had left, along with her reruns. Marina always made her laugh. Mary loved the girl, and knew for her own good, Marina had to leave. But she would come to say goodbye. But until then…

  Mary turned up the television again. The birds were so loud! She simply wasn’t able to hear any of the punch lines.

  * * *

  Marina had been too sated, and too wrapped up in the drama of her own life, to notice anything else in the world. Lying there, in his arms, on the beach, was, at least, far too perfect an ending.

  She had become too comfortable, and she had actually dozed. So much for the great trauma of guilt and proposed redemption.

  She awoke slowly, groggily, feeling as if she already had a hangover. She thought at first that it was him tugging at her to awaken her, that he wanted to make love again. No. She had said her goodbyes. And there was someone else who mattered more now, someone who mustn’t pay for her sins. She opened her eyes. Her head was foggy. She could barely move. It wasn’t him…was it? She blinked, thinking incredibly briefly that it might be good that they had been caught together half-naked on the sand because that could force everything out into the open. Everything. She could just admit it all, not just this, but the entire truth of everything at Bougainvillea, and her fellows in deception and sin would be brought to answer for everything that they had done as well. All the duplicity and the illicit truths. Those who were innocent could choose whether or not to forgive…

  She realized that it was not her lover trying to awaken her. She was being…dragged. And she didn’t just have a hangover; it was something else. She could barely twitch. Barely think, function, reason…

  Then she knew. The drinks she’d had that night. They’d seemed more potent than usual. She’d thought that it had been her mood, her recklessness, her anger. But there was more. She should have known. She knew it now, because this was no simple hangover she was feeling. She had been drugged.

  She tried to move, tried to understand what was happening to her. Who was taking her…

  Where.

  And why.

  Then she saw.

  She could hardly purse her lips or even breathe deeply, and she couldn’t seem to control her limbs at all.

  Her throat seemed…locked.

  She forced her lips to open. Forced air into her lungs. Prayed for sound. And at last…

  She started to scream.

  Because although her limbs were like lead, her mind was working. She understood then exactly what was happening. And why.

  She kept screaming. High-pitched, terrible. She knew that she had to keep up the desperate summons for help.

  Her lips wouldn’t really form at all, certainly not into words. And still, noise came from her. Shattering in the foliage. The dense foliage.

  Someone must hear. They must.

  She felt her body, sliding roughly over sand and little outcrops of vegetation. Felt the roughness, the hold on her body, and still, she hadn’t the power to move or fight.

  Tomorrow, she realized desperately, might never come!

  She fought…and screamed louder. And screamed… and screamed.

  Until her screams were silenced.

  Forever.

  * * *

  Mary leaned forward, trying to catch an answer from the pretty young starlet in the middle square. The birds had started shrieking again, right at the most important moment of the show. Mary missed what was said, but she saw the stars laughing, and the contestant win the prize.

  Damned parrots.

  Shrieking and shrieking. They sounded just like a woman, screaming in bloody terror.

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  Nineteen Years Later

  As Kit slowly awoke and opened her eyes, she saw a man standing in the doorway. He was very tall, and in the shadowy, dim light he at first appeared to be dark—and sinister. She had the uneasy feeling that he had been standing there, staring into the room in silence for a long time. Staring as she slept, making her feel oddly vulnerable.

  His shoulders were broad beneath a heavy winter coat, and he seemed to stand very straight, with a great deal of confidence and assurance. She sensed that he wasn’t watching her. He was watching her father.

  Waiting for him to die.

  Kit blinked, and awkwardly tried to rise, wanting to demand to know who he was, and what the hell he was doing. But when she blinked, he was gone. There was no man in the doorway.

  Frowning, she rose and walked to the door and looked out into the hall. There was no one there, either.

  She’d fallen asleep in the hospital chair at her father’s side, and apparently dreamed that he was there.

  “Katherine Delaney, you’re losing it—though exactly what ‘it’ is I’m not sure, nor am I sure you ever had it,” she said aloud to herself, trying to dispel the unease that had settled over her. She looked around her father’s darkened hospital room once again. It had been late afternoon when she dozed. It might well be late in the night now. Shadows were everywhere.

  Kit watched the IV’s clear liquid as it dripped, traveled along the length of tube, and entered into Mark Delaney’s vein.

  He hadn’t moved for a long time, and until she had opened her eyes to see the vision in the doorway, neither had Kit. Of course, it had been longer for him. He had lain in a coma for more than a week now, and it was doubtful that he would ever awaken again. She had accepted that fact. There had been days when she had tried not to cry because she had wanted to encourage him as though he could still hear her. There had been days when she had
cried buckets. Now, there was an acceptance in her heart, but she had no intention of leaving him now, not until the very end. And it didn’t matter whether he knew that she was there or not.

  She knew.

  A rueful half smile curved her lips. In her dozing, she had probably had strange snatches of dreams. Her friend Jennifer would say that she was having desperate illusions. Her subliminal mind was inventing a tall, dark, mysterious stranger for her, since it had been months now since she had done anything but work or spend time with her dad. Jennifer basically understood, but she shook her head over the fact that Kit hadn’t taken so much as a few hours to go out and find a handsome hunk, a suitable dinner companion or—for sanity’s sake—a one-night stand on her own.

  “Jen, it’s just not the time,” she said softly, and looked down at her father. His illness had ravaged his features, but he was still handsome. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes were closed. But she would remember them, forever. Bright powder-blue, full of life, laughter and wisdom.

  “Kit?”

  She started as Sherry, her father’s very skinny but wonderfully compassionate and competent nurse, slipped quietly into the room. Had it been Sherry she had seen in the doorway before? Had Kit, in strange, quiet dreams of drifting time, imagined the nurse to be a tall stranger in a winter coat?

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Sherry said.

  “No, no, it’s okay.”

  “He showing any signs of distress?”

  Kit shook her head. She knew that the doctors had told the nurses all they could do at this stage was make their patient comfortable. When he needed more morphine, he was to get it. But he hadn’t shown any signs of distress. He hadn’t shown any signs of life, either, other than the little blips on the screen, for days now.

  “Honey, it’s way, way past dinner time. You go on out for a few minutes. Stretch, walk, get yourself something to eat and some coffee.”

  “I don’t want to leave him alone.”

  “I’m signed out, my paperwork is done and the night shift nurses arrived a long time ago,” Sherry informed her. “I’ll sit right here with him and read up on the new drug literature.”