by JoAnn Ross
"What makes you think Caine is my lover?" she asked, stalling for time.
"What do you take us for, Chantal? Fools? It is obvious to anyone with eyes that O'Bannion has been sleeping with you from the beginning. Karl has become quite jealous, in fact. Haven't you, Karl?"
As his fingers trailed slowly across her shoulder blades, the blond man uttered a guttural grunt Chantal took to be an affirmative response.
"I'm quite fond of Karl," Stephan confirmed conversationally. "Despite the fact that he has one unpleasant little quirk."
"'Quirk'?"
"Idiosyncrasy," he translated the unfamiliar word. "He enjoys inflicting pain upon women."
Chantal found the implacable cruelty in Stephan's eyes every bit as disturbing as Karl's alleged perversity. "Why do you want to hurt me, Stephan?" she asked quietly. "What have I ever done to you?"
"What have you done? Why, nothing, chérie."
"I don't understand." She backed away from the silent Karl, relieved when he remained where he was, watching her with unblinking reptilian eyes.
Stephan reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a pack of long, dark brown cigarettes. "You know that my Aunt Clea died six months ago," he said as he lit one of the cigarettes with a thin gold lighter.
Burke's mother. "Of course. Although I'd never met her, I was sorry to hear she'd died. At the time, the news seemed to hit Burke very hard."
"She committed suicide. Hung herself with her bed sheets."
"How horrible!" Chantal wondered fleetingly if her brother had been told the truth and decided that he hadn't. She and Burke shared everything; he would not have kept such disturbing news to himself.
Stephan exhaled slowly, eyeing her through a veil of thick blue smoke. "Her father was the one who discovered her, during his monthly visit to the sanitarium. Did you know that he never stopped visiting her? For thirty-five years he made that unhappy trek from Montacroix to Switzerland in order to visit the beloved daughter your father had locked away so he would be free to marry his American slut."
"That's not the way it happened," she protested. "Clea was mentally ill. She'd been in the sanatorium for nearly five years when Papa met my mother."
"She was unhappy," he corrected. "And who wouldn't be? Living with a man who continually degraded her by sleeping with other women. By bringing his filthy whores into the palace."
"My father did no such thing!"
"Of course he did. Which is why my aunt had no choice but to end his worthless life."
"She tried to kill him?"
"He deserved it. Unfortunately, she failed and as a re was locked away so the truth could never get out."
"She was insane," Chantal repeated firmly.
"She was wronged!" Stephan roared, jabbing the cigarette into a crystal ashtray. Reaching into the drawer again, he pulled put a pistol and pointed it at her. "Eduard Giraudeau made my aunt suffer for years. He has made her family suffer. He is responsible for the death of an innocent, lovely woman. And now Clea's grieving father wants the bastard Giraudeau to know exactly how it feels to lose a daughter."
She remembered her father telling her that Clea's own mother had committed suicide in a mental institution, that insanity ran in the family. A fact that was all too apparent as Stephan approached her, undisguised malice glittering in his eyes.
"How can you talk this way? We have always been such good friends, Stephan." She put her hand out, schooling her voice to a calm, reassuring tone. "More than friends. When I was a young girl, I loved you madly." Perhaps "madly" wasn't the proper word, under the circumstance, she decided. "Wildly."
He shook his head. "You say you love me. But you sleep with O'Bannion."
Stall, her fevered mind cried out, seizing the slim thread of opportunity. "I didn't realize that you still cared for me." Taking a chance, she reached over to put a supplicating hand on his arm. "Had I known you wanted me, Stephan, I never would have wasted my time with Caine."
She'd no sooner said his name when, as if conjured out of thin air by wishful thinking, Chantal caught a glimpse of Caine standing in the shadows of the foyer. He'd come. As she'd known all along he would.
"Dear, dear Stephan," she murmured, her voice half honey, half smoke, "don't you know that a woman never forgets her first love?" She was grateful for her youthful acting experience as she watched Stephan's eyes momentarily glaze over. He was obviously not immune to her gently stroking fingers. "Please, darling. Send Karl away so that we can be alone, just the two of us."
The spell snapped as quickly as it had been spun. "You're attempting to take my mind off what I must do," Stephan said. Although his eyes had cleared somewhat, Chantal could still see the madness glittering in their swirling depths. "You are no better than your mother, using your body to gain favors."
"That's not what I was doing," she protested.
"Of course it was. And it will not work. But don't worry, Princess," he said, caressing her cheek with the cold blue steel muzzle of the gun. "Karl and I will make certain that your last few hours are enjoyable."
The idea of either man touching Chantal made Caine's mind explode with fury. He wanted to kill them both, here and now, but unfortunately, Chantal was in the way. As if she'd read his mind, Chantal suddenly appeared to faint, folding bonelessly to the floor.
"What the hell?" Stephan burst out.
As the two men bent over her, Caine rushed into the room, bringing his revolver down toward the base of Stephan's skull. It might have been instinct, or perhaps he'd felt the faint whoosh of air, but Stephan ducked and rolled out of the way. Caine's blow connected with his shoulder, however, and the force dislodged the pistol, sending it skittering across the black marble flooring.
As Stephan reached for the gun, Chantal came alive. Jumping up and grabbing the gilded foil from the wall, she pointed it toward him. "Don't you dare move, Stephan," she warned softly, "or I'll kill you."
Not to be left out, Karl had pulled his own snub-nosed revolver and was pointing it at Caine.
"It appears that we have ourselves a standoff, O'Bannion," Stephan observed. "Even if you do manage to shoot Karl before he gets you, I'll still have Chantal."
"Brave words from an unarmed man," Caine said, watching both men carefully.
"You forget, I know Chantal. You wouldn't hurt a fly, would you, ma chère?" He glanced over at his pistol, just out of reach. "We have a treat for you, O'Bannion. You're going to get to watch your slut perform first with me and then with Karl. And when we're through with her, she's going to watch you die."
As he grabbed for his weapon, Chantal lunged, plunging the sharp tip of the foil into the back of his hand. At the unexpected pain, Stephan screamed, distracting Karl just long enough for Caine to kick the gun out of his hand.
Then Caine fell on the blond man and began using his hands with startling efficiency. This was the man who'd tried to kill Chantal. The man who'd left her in that smoked-filled house to die. Blind with rage, he drove his fists into the man's face again and again until he lay unconscious.
"Caine! Caine! Please stop. You're going to kill him!"
Through the roaring in his ears, he heard Chantal's frantic voice. Shaking his head as if to clear it, he turned around. She was standing there, her foil pressed against Stephan's chest, her eyes wide with fright.
"You want to be next?" he asked Stephan, picking up both guns from the floor as he walked over to where the man lay.
"You may think you've won, O'Bannion, but you haven't. Fate has decreed that I kill the bastard princess, and I will not fail."
"Don't look now, pal, but your plan's gone down the drain," Caine said, uncurling Chantal's rigid fingers from the foil.
"Destiny will not be denied!" Stephan shouted. "The princess must die in retaliation for Princess Clea's death."
"He really is insane," she said faintly as Stephan let loose with a long, incoherent tirade against her family.
"Mad as a hatter."
"Drew was right." Her smile,
as she looked up at him, only wobbled slightly. "You are a hero. You saved my life."
He brushed his fingertips down her cheek. "Then we're even. Because you saved mine."
The reluctant love he felt for her was so apparent in his eyes that Chantal had to bite her lip to keep from crying out his name. "Caine," she uttered simply.
It was only his name, but her tone spoke volumes. Before he could respond. Drew walked in the door, two FBI men right behind him.
"Nice of you to drop by," Caine said.
"Hey, you said you wanted first dibs on the guy," Drew said with a broad grin. "I figured you'd have everything under control by now." He put away his gun. "So your hunch about the cousin proved right, after all."
Chantal stared at him. "You knew about Stephan? How?"
Caine shrugged. "All this seemed so personal, I started wondering if your would-be assassin's grudge might be against your father rather than you. Remembering what you said about his first wife's insanity, I called the institution where she'd been hospitalized and discovered that she had committed suicide shortly before the first attempt on your life."
"Since that pointed toward a motive for revenge, we ran a check on all the family members and discovered that not only had Clea's nephew, one Stephan Devouassoux, recently visited Montacroix, but his credit card revealed that he was also in Washington, New York and Philadelphia on the same days as your exhibit," Drew tacked on.
"Figuring he'd try again, we asked Burke to tell him where you were, if he happened to ask," Caine continued, "which he did. But since we didn't have any hard proof that he was behind your rash of accidents, and simply wanting to know your whereabouts wasn't any crime, we've had the guy under surveillance ever since his call to you in Milwaukee."
"But you didn't say a word," Chantal said.
"I was going to, as soon as we got to L.A. But the way things were going between us, I didn't think you'd believe me."
Chantal looked down at the two men on the floor, one rubbing his battered face as he groggily regained consciousness, the other glaring up at her with an icy malevolence that chilled her blood. "I probably wouldn't have. It's so unbelievable. Stephan and I were always so close." She shook her head.
Displaying the tenderness that had been missing froth their relationship during the past two days, Caine put his arm around Chantal's waist. "Ready to go back to the hotel?"
She was in no mood to argue. "Ready." Leaning against him, she allowed him to shepherd her to the car.
The following day, Chantal was alone in her hotel suite, packing to return to Montacroix, when there was a knock on her door. Opening it, her heart soared when she viewed Caine standing there. She hadn't seen him since the FBI and the Los Angeles police had questioned her last night.
"Hi," she said, feeling unreasonably shy.
Caine looked no more comfortable. "Hi. I came to see if you're ready for your bags to be taken downstairs."
"The bellman could have done that."
"As you so succinctly pointed out three weeks ago, it's my job to carry all those bags. I like to see a job through to the end."
She forced a smile. "I'm almost finished. Would you like to come in and wait?"
"Sure." Clothes were piled high on the bed, colorful, expensive silks and satins, most of which he recognized. "I got a call from Montacroix this morning."
Chantal looked up from her renewed packing. He was standing in the bedroom doorway, military straight as always, his expression unreadable. "Oh?"
"Clea's father has been arrested for plotting your murder. Since there's no sign of mental instability, it doesn't look as if he's going to be able to use Stephan's insanity defense, so I suspect he'll probably be put away for a very long time."
She shook her head as she picked up a peach-colored satin teddy that unstopped a flood of memories Caine had been struggling to forget. "Poor man."
Caine fought the urge to go to her. "That poor man tried to kill you, Chantal."
"I know." Tucking the teddy into a corner of the suitcase, she began folding the ivory nightgown she'd been wearing the first time he'd made love to her.
Desire slammed into Caine. He unrelentingly forced it down.
"But it's such a tragedy, Caine. So many years. So many lives."
"I talked with your father. He's relieved. But I think he's feeling a bit guilty about everything, too."
"Papa has this unfortunate tendency to believe that he can control the entire world around him," Chantal observed. Like someone else I know, she could have tacked on. "Whenever things go awry in his carefully constructed Utopia, he believes it to be his fault."
When Caine didn't answer, Chantal fell silent, as well. "Well," she said at length, "I guess that's everything."
He'd never wanted a woman more than he wanted Chantal. Never needed a woman more than he needed her. "So, looks as if you're all set."
"I suppose so."
As Caine struggled to keep his expression from revealing his inner turmoil, he marveled at Chantal's ability to conceal her own thoughts so well. Her too-pale face was disconcertingly void of expression.
"I'm supposed to be downtown at police headquarters for a debriefing in thirty minutes, so Drew was scheduled to drive you to the airport," he said. "But I don't think Lieutenant Martin would mind if I changed our appointment to later this afternoon."
Chantal stared up at him, wondering if this was Caine's way of telling her that he'd changed his mind. But then she read the terrible finality in his eyes and realized that all he was offering was companionship to the airport.
"Drew's been doing all the driving up until now," she said. "He may as well continue."
Caine shrugged. "Whatever you want."
It was a statement Chantal didn't dare answer. She refused to give the man the satisfaction of knowing that her heart was breaking. Instead, she walked from the room, leaving Caine to follow with the bags.
They stood close together on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. "Chantal—"
"Yes?" Hope leaped into her eyes, only to fade away as she took in Caine's shuttered gaze.
"Take care."
"You, too," she managed through lips that had turned to stone. "And thank you. For everything." She turned away, then, unable to leave without one last bittersweet memory, she lifted her hand to his cheek. "You know, Caine," she said softly, "no one expects you to be bulletproof." Going up on her toes, she pressed her lips against his, igniting a quick flare of heat that was too soon gone.
Climbing into the front seat of the limousine, she quickly closed the door, continuing to stare straight ahead out the windshield until Drew had driven the car around the corner. Then she buried her face in her hands and wept.
After a time her sobs diminished, and Chantal drew in a deep, painful breath as she accepted the clean white handkerchief Drew extended across the center console.
"Thought you might need this," he said simply.
As she wiped her eyes, Chantal couldn't help wondering why she hadn't been smart enough to fall in love with a simple, uncomplicated man. A man like Drew Tremayne, for instance.
"You're going to make some woman a wonderful husband."
He grinned. "That's what my mama always says, right after she asks me how come I'm still not married."
"And what do you tell her?"
"That if I ever find the right woman, I'll move heaven and earth to get her."
And he would, too, Chantal knew. Drew was the kind of man who'd put his head down and forge full steam ahead. Depending on the woman he chose, such a damn-the-torpedoes, single-minded pursuit could either prove exhilarating or frightening.
"I love him, Drew."
"I know, honey. And I think you're a smart enough cookie to realize that he loves you, too."
"So where does that leave us?"
He reached over and took her hand in his. "Give him some time, Chantal. Caine's not as dumb as he looks. He's bound to realize that he can't live without a certain princess in his li
fe." He shot her an encouraging grin. "In the meantime, there's a little going away present for you in the glove compartment."
Leaning forward, Chantal investigated, laughing in spite of her pain when she discovered the cache of chocolate-covered peanuts.
Two nights later, Caine and Drew sat in a dimly lit neighborhood bar where the jazz was cool and the drinks weren't watered. "I always knew you were an idiot," Drew said, popping a handful of beer nuts into his mouth. "But I never realized you were certifiably crazy."
Came lifted the bottle of dark beer to his mouth and took a long pull. "Now you're talking about Chantal."
"Who else? Do you have any idea how many men would commit murder to be in your shoes? She loves you, Caine."
"And I love her. But it's not enough."
"So you keep saying." Drew leaned back in his chair and took another handful of nuts. "You know, women have an unfortunate tendency not to wait around forever. Even for a man they love." Calm brown eyes observed Caine soberly. "Go to her, Caine. Before you spend the rest of your life wishing you had."
Drew wasn't saying anything that Caine hadn't been telling himself over and over again since he'd watched Chantal drive out of his life. "I'll think about it," he muttered, ignoring his friend's triumphant expression.
It was a warm spring evening, that special time between afternoon and night when the world seems to stop and catch its breath. The sun was a brilliant orange ball dipping into Lake Losange, turning the cloudless sky to jeweled tones of ruby, amethyst and gold. A light breeze rippled the sun-gilded water.
She was sitting on a rock, looking out over the lake, clad in a snug tank top and white shorts that displayed her long legs to advantage. It had been two weeks. Fourteen long and incredibly lonely days and even lonelier nights.
"Looks like good sailing weather."
At the sound of Caine's voice, Chantal closed her eyes briefly, then turned around. Noel's dream, predicting it would happen exactly this way, had been the only thing that kept her from going to Caine in Washington. She'd wanted to believe her sister; she'd clung to the happy premonition the way a seven-year-old clings to thoughts of Saint Nicholas. But deep in her heart she'd been afraid that it was only wishful thinking.