by Jeanne Allan
Cheyenne threw herself in front of the door. “I can’t. I know there’s a human being hidden in there somewhere.”
Thomas uttered a short, harsh laugh. “Worth warned me I was your latest victim. Not that I needed warning. From the morning you stormed up to my suite to rescue Davy from a nonexistent situation, it’s been clear you think you know better than anyone else how a person ought to live his life. You amused me at first, but the novelty has worn off.”
The brutal words hurt. As he meant them to. “Don’t do this, Thomas. Can’t you see what you’ve been doing? Your parents think of no one but themselves. Everyone said you adored your Steele grandparents, then your grandfather died and your grandmother had to run the hotels. It’s not surprising you felt abandoned.”
“No one abandoned me.”
“I know that. You’re the one who doesn’t believe it. Your grandmother left you her life’s work, Thomas. She kept it going for you. David loved you. Everyone says so. He died too soon to tell you. Janie would have loved you.”
“I didn’t come to talk about this.”
“Why did you come, Thomas? You could have phoned me, or faxed me, or even had Frank McCall tell me.”
“I don’t ask underlings to do my dirty work.”
She hugged her arms. “I’m just an unpleasant chore?”
“What did you expect? Sentimental sludge about falling passionately in love with you?”
“No, I didn’t expect that.” Hoped, maybe. She squeezed shut her eyelids. Despite her efforts, one tear escaped to slide down her cheek.
“More manipulation? Forget it. My mother’s used that trick so often, I’m immune to tears.”
She spread her palms flat against the cold, hard door at her back. “Will you kiss me goodbye?”
“No. You rejected my kisses when you rejected me.”
“I didn’t reject you. Maybe it sounded like I did, but—”
He grabbed her chin, holding her face immobile as he sneered down at her. “Having second thoughts about turning up your nose at what you’d gain by marrying me?”
“I don’t want hotel suites, Thomas.”
“I have nothing else to give you,” he said harshly. His fingers tightened painfully on her chin and then slowly, as if drawn against his will, he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his.
His body pressed her against the door. She welcomed the pressure, the warmth, the hard, unyielding feel of him. She’d never get enough of his kisses, his mouth, the taste of him. She traced the outlines of his face, memorizing it with her fingertips, even as her mouth memorized the feel of his.
He caressed her cheeks, then slowly slid his fingers down her neck, pausing to draw small circles under her ears with his thumbs. The sounds of his beating heart and her shallow breathing filled her ears. Thomas slipped his hands beneath the collar of her bathrobe. His touch aroused an aching need deep within her. She threw her arms around his middle, holding him close, wanting every inch of her body molded to his.
Thomas broke off the kiss.
Cheyenne’s eyes snapped open. She wanted to lock his image in her brain. Steady gray-green eyes, eyes without a hint of emotion, returned her look. She searched in vain for even the tiniest flame of sexual attraction and felt herself shriveling away. Failure. Loss. Mere words. Words filled with incredible pain. She wanted to deny them. She wanted to scream at Thomas. Shake him. Make him love her. Slowly she fumbled for the doorknob behind her. “Goodbye, Thomas. I...” No words which could possibly matter came to her. “Goodbye,” she repeated.
He didn’t laugh and say it was all a joke. He didn’t kiss her again or ask to stay. He walked out. Away from her.
Cheyenne leaned against the closed door for a long second. “Be happy,” she whispered. “Find love.” Crumpling to the floor in a heap, she wanted to cry. Tears wouldn’t come.
Too late, she thought of things she might have done. Words she should have said. If only she’d told Thomas she loved him. She’d given herself any number of reasons for not telling him. They hadn’t known each other long enough. Her love was too new and fragile to expose to Thomas’s skepticism. Endless rationalization. Lies.
Thomas accused her of refusing to face reality.
Cheyenne faced reality now. Faced what she’d known all along. The truth she’d hidden deep within herself. She was a fraud. Afraid to trust in love.
All her lectures to Thomas about love, and she’d been afraid to tell him she loved him. Afraid history would repeat itself. She’d lost track of the number of times she’d told her father she loved him, and he’d laughed and patted her on the head and walked out the door. He’d never loved her enough to stay.
Thomas hadn’t loved her at all.
Amber crept cautiously into the room. The cat stared at Cheyenne from unblinking yellow eyes, then walked over to rub sinuously against Cheyenne. Cheyenne buried her face in the cat’s warm side. Amber’s fur grew wet with tears.
The ringing phone dragged Cheyenne from a troubled sleep. Every bone in her body ached. She’d fallen asleep on the living room floor in front of the door. Memory returned and the ache spread to her heart. Thomas was leaving.
The phone rang again. Maybe he’d changed his mind. Cheyenne struggled to her feet and dashed across the room.
“Hello,” she said hopefully into the receiver.
“Is Davy there?”
She forgot all else at the sharp concern in Thomas’s voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s run away.”
CHAPTER NINE
“WHAT do you mean, he’s run away?”
“He’s run away is what I mean.”
“Are you sure? Maybe he went downstairs to breakfast.”
“There’s an idea,” Thomas said with heavy sarcasm. “Why didn’t I think to check? Don’t be an idiot. I’ve searched the hotel from top to bottom. I quizzed the entire staff and set them searching everywhere we could think of. A maid and one of the bellmen saw him earlier this morning, but they paid no attention to where he went. He’s not here now.”
“He loves the fountains on the mall. He could have—”
“That thing he calls his smeller is gone.”
“His sniffer. Maybe one of the maids threw it away.”
“I asked.”
“Your mother?”
“No,” he said impatiently. “Davy took it with him.”
“You think he’d come here?”
“Where else?”
“To see someone who works at the hotel.”
“McCall is phoning everyone who’s off.”
“Thomas, what exactly did you say to Davy last night?” Cheyenne asked slowly.
“What the hell kind of question is that? I told him we were leaving for New York this morning. I didn’t give him a reason. All I said about you is that I’d tell you goodbye for him.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t say anything. He went to bed.”
“He didn’t ask any questions, like ‘why?’ when you tucked him in? That’s not like Davy. He asks why about everything.” Silence greeted her remarks. Impatiently, she asked, “Thomas, you did tuck him in, didn’t you?”
“He’s too old to be tucked in.”
Cheyenne swallowed her exasperation. Thomas’s lack of parenting skills wasn’t the issue now. They’d already wasted too much time on the telephone. “I’ll ask around here and find out if anyone has seen him. If not, I’ll get dressed and head out on foot. He can’t have gone far.” She hesitated. “We’ll find him, Thomas. Davy’s a smart kid. He’ll be okay.”
“He won’t be when I get through with him.”
Cheyenne winced at the crash on the other end of the line as Thomas hung up. She knew his anger came from worry over Davy.
Several hours later that worry had intensified. Davy had vanished into thin air. Nobody voiced their deepest fear.
Thomas put down the telephone receiver in the suite. “Nothing. When I find that kid..
.” He yanked at his loosened tie, and when it came off, looked at it as if he had no idea what it was. He tossed the tie in the direction of the nearest chair. “Why the hell do we pay taxes if everyone is going to sit around on their behinds and do nothing? Giving me all that garbage about it being too early to call in the FBI.”
Cheyenne picked the tie up from the floor and draped it over the back of the chair. “The police and the sheriff’s office are searching. The state patrol has been notified. Worth has organized a search party of locals who know the area and have ideas where to look. Allie took Moonie to see if he could pick up Davy’s scent. Mom’s at our condo if Davy goes there. As much of the hotel staff as can be spared is out looking. We’ll find him”
“We should have found him by now. He’s only seven.” Staring at the ceiling, he ran his hands through increasingly disordered hair. “C’mon, Thomas, think, think.”
Hearing the frustration and anguish in his voice, Cheyenne wanted to go to him. To give him comfort. Knowing he’d reject it, she stared at the pad in front of her. The penciled words wavered before her eyes.
“The gondola. He loved taking the gondola. He must have somehow got on it.”
“Greeley checked, but she’ll keep checking. The gondola operators have been notified.”
“I can’t stand around here waiting. I’m going to find him. Everyone has my cell phone number if—when they find him.”
Cheyenne stood. “I’ll go with you.”
“Why? To make sure I don’t beat him when I find him?”
“We can backtrack all the places Davy and I went to.”
“Places I wouldn’t know about because I didn’t bother to go along? Places I wouldn’t think of because I’m no good at taking care of a kid? I know what you’re thinking. Satisfied, Ms. Lassiter? You had me pegged for a villain before we ever met. Does it feel good to be proved right?”
“Don’t blame yourself, Thomas.”
“I’m not blaming myself. This is your fault. You made the poor kid like you, and then you threw him away.”
Stunned by Thomas’s accusations, she couldn’t say anything for a moment. “I didn’t—”
“Little Miss Busybody. Sticking your nose in other people’s business. Telling me how I should act, what I should do, and then, when your little experiment in behavior modification failed, you went your merry way, not giving a damn about the disaster you left in your wake.”
Knowing what lay behind Thomas’s hurtful words did little to deflect the pain. “I know you’re worried about Davy,” she said shakily. “I know—”
“Nothing. You could have prevented this, but you’re too good to marry the likes of me and take care of my nephew.” He wrenched open the door to his suite and threw his final words over his shoulder as he left. “No matter what kind of condition we find Davy in, I never want to see you again. Get out of my hotel. Get out of my life.” The slam of the door reverberated through the room.
Cheyenne stood rooted to the floor. Waves of emotion buffeted her with the fury of a spring chinook. If Thomas had hurled stones at her, he couldn’t have shocked her more. Or hurt her more. He sounded as if he hated her.
She’d meant well.
How lame that sounded.
The pad in her hand went flying across the room. Darn it, she was right. Thomas and Davy did belong together.
Thomas had asked her to marry him for all the wrong reasons and she’d refused him for all the right ones. If she’d agreed to his proposal, he could have lied to himself the rest of his life about his feelings for Davy.
Davy’s running away had stripped away Thomas’s protective layers. Never again could he say his nephew meant nothing to him.
Cheyenne felt the moisture on her cheeks. Davy had to be found. Thomas needed his nephew and now he knew it.
Being right was a wonderful thing. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. The minute Davy showed up, she’d stick her face in Thomas’s and tell him, “I told you so.”
Except Thomas never wanted to see her again.
He hated her.
She’d never dreamed being right would be so painful. So lonely.
“We thought David was kidnapped once.”
Cheyenne spun around at the voice behind her. “Davy hasn’t been kidnapped. He just went somewhere for some reason.”
“It goes with the territory,” Ellen Steele said. “Disgruntled employees, or people see a big hotel and think the owners must be rich. I felt so helpless then, too, but with these excruciating headaches brought on by worry, I’d be in the way.”
“I didn’t know Davy’s father had been kidnapped.”
Thomas’s mother gestured wearily. “It turned out David was being naughty. They found him curled up in the hotel basement with a filthy stray dog I’d forbidden him to keep. He insisted the dog was his friend.” Her nose curled in distaste. “A mongrel.”
At Mrs. Steele’s words, a fragment of memory danced elusively through Cheyenne’s mind. Something Davy had said. She’d been reading him a book about a boy’s dog, who always knew the boy’s thoughts. Davy had asked if people and dogs understood each other, and when she’d said it seemed so to her, Davy had shyly confided he and Slots kind of talked to each other
Mrs. Steele advanced into the room, expanding on the thankless aspects of parenthood.
Cheyenne looked at the older woman, blinked out of her trance and said, “Call Frank McCall and tell him I’m going to check the ranch again. I think that’s where Davy is headed. Tell Frank to tell the others” Dashing out the door, she added, “I’ll call if I find Davy.”
Hope Valley had never seemed so far away. Cheyenne wanted to ram the tourists as they crawled along Highway 82 admiring the scenery. Once off the highway, she slowed, searching for possible resting places for a seven-year-old boy.
They’d checked the ranch too early. It would have taken Davy a while to figure out how to get there. They’d questioned the R.F.T.A. bus drivers, but none remembered a small boy alone boarding a bus headed down valley, nor had anyone seen him trudging beside the highway.
As she crept along the dirt road, Cheyenne kept telling herself Davy had headed for the Double Nickel Ranch. Davy knew few people in Aspen and those few worked for the hotel. He wouldn’t go to his uncle’s employees, knowing they’d take him back to his uncle. She refused to consider that Davy might not have left of his own choice.
Why hadn’t Davy come to her condo? Thomas claimed he hadn’t said anything about her to Davy, but children sensed a lot more than most adults gave them credit for. Hearing something in Thomas’s voice, Davy would have put his own interpretation on his uncle’s words.
She gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. Davy could have sensed Thomas’s anger and thought Cheyenne had terminated their arrangement. If Davy felt hurt, rejected and abandoned, he’d seek comfort from a friend who wouldn’t scold him for running away. Who wouldn’t call his uncle.
A pony friend named Slots.
At the ranch house, Cheyenne stood still and listened. Shadow, blind and deaf, dozed in a patch of sunlight ignoring the jay squawking from a cottonwood tree. A black and white barn cat shot from the barn. The horses penned in the nearest corral stood with their heads pointed toward the barn.
Her legs almost buckled with relief. Davy was in the barn.
Inside the huge building, an unnatural silence enveloped Cheyenne. Worth had turned the animals out, but there should be whispering birds, scurrying mice, rustling cats. An uneasy feeling crawled up her spine as she stood motionless, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the shadows.
“Been waiting for you, teach.”
They sat on a hay bale halfway down the center of the barn. Davy and Harold Karper, the man who’d abused his stepson. The man whose wife had lost custody of her son. The man who blamed Cheyenne for all his troubles.
Thomas had never more wanted a place to live up to its name. Hope Valley. He saw Cheyenne’s car immediately. She’d parked in
a hurry, and the driver’s door hung open. Stepping from his borrowed car, Thomas heard a persistent beep. Cheyenne had left her keys in the ignition. He grabbed them and ran to the house.
Several minutes of yelling and searching convinced him Cheyenne and Davy were nowhere inside. Thomas stood on the front porch of the ranch house and searched the surroundings with his eyes. Behind the barn, almost hidden from the house and out of sight to anyone driving up, sat an unfamiliar pickup.
The hairs at the back of his neck prickled, and a sixth sense warned Thomas not to call out. Something was wrong.
Stepping back into the porch shadows, he made a call on his cellular phone. After a few seconds of whispered explanation, he listened a moment, then said, “I’m not waiting,” and clicked off the phone in the middle of the speaker’s response.
Making his way circuitously around the yard, Thomas kept an eye on the barn, especially on the opening high in the loft. No heads showed. Damned kid had no business taking off. As for Cheyenne haring after him... The two of them didn’t have a brain between them. He’d wring both their necks.
At the corner of the barn he paused, listening. Voices came from inside. Unable to distinguish the words, Thomas edged toward the open barn door. A slit above the door hinges allowed him to see inside. The sight which greeted him froze his blood.
A strange man leaned his elbow against the door to an empty stall in the center of the barn. The man took a swig out of a whiskey bottle. With his other hand, he flicked on and off a cigarette lighter.
Thomas swore under his breath as he registered the implications of a cigarette lighter in a barn.
Behind the man, Davy sat tied to a post. Only his enormous eyes moved, flicking from the stranger to Cheyenne and back again. Seeing the fear on his nephew’s face, Thomas had to fight the urge to rush recklessly into the barn.
Cheyenne stood with her back to Thomas, her legs apart, her hands in her back pockets. Her rigid spine made a lie of the casual pose.
Thomas strained to hear the conversation.
The man gave a high-pitched laugh. “Wrong, teach. Nobody’s coming. I was snooping around the search party to see what all the excitement was about and I heard your brother say you’d gone to check the ranch. I started talk that someone saw a kid walking along Highway 82 heading up toward Independence Pass.” He laughed again. “Like herding sheep. They all took off.” He drank from the bottle. “It was easy to beat you here. You didn’t even see me pass you on the road. The kid had taken the bus with some family, but he’d been walking since the highway. He was glad to get a lift to the ranch.”