She remained silent for a moment. “The Black Rose had forgotten about you until we came nosing around. These attempts on your life are my fault. I should never have kidnapped you, forced you to help me.”
“That’s ridiculous! You can’t hold herself responsible for putting me at risk.”
“But—”
“I could have ordered my pilot to turn around at any time. I wanted to come. I’m only sorry you’re now in danger, too.”
The danger had forced him into facing his past and thinking about the future. With her kidnapping of him, Devin had accomplished what his marriage to Lindsay could never have done. Sure, he’d worked hard and forced himself to date during the past months. But none of his business successes or personal relationships had meant much. Then Devin had come along, and his reactions were spiced with a new zest.
He felt alive. For the past months he’d been on autopilot, in a fog. Now he smelled and tasted and touched. The world looked bright and shiny and interesting. Because of Devin.
She intrigued him, and by doing so, he felt renewed. He could just make out her silhouette. She rested on her side, her head on her palm. “How do you know Dr. Henschel hired the Black Rose because of the mixed-up eggs?”
He frowned. “What do you mean? Why else would Henschel have hired a killer to come after Rhonda and me?”
“I don’t know. It just seems odd that the assassin stopped pursuing you. Perhaps the primary target was Rhonda.”
He shook his head. “That’s not possible. Besides the fact that Rhonda didn’t have any enemies, I was more capable of ruining Henschel’s reputation than my wife.”
“You did a marvelous job keeping most of this out of the newspapers.”
“That was Mom’s doing.”
“Eva sounds like an unusual woman. We met briefly at Rhonda’s funeral. I recall her as slender, youthful and down-to-earth.”
“Mother’s looks are deceptive. There’s a steel mind under her fragile looks. Her IQ is in the genius range, and if she thinks her family is in danger, she defends us with the ferocity of an enraged lioness. But when it came to Rhonda’s killer, even Eva was stumped. Everyone involved in the scandal at the Kine Clinic is dead. Although I’m on the board of directors and had access to all the records, they didn’t leave many, if any, clues behind.”
He’d given up the search to find the assassin once before when he’d reached a dead end. But then he hadn’t Devin’s skills to help him. She hadn’t lied about her instincts. She had a knack for finding what the other professionals he’d hired had overlooked, discovering Grendal, the black roses and the transfer of large sums of money from Henschel’s account to Switzerland. What was the connection?
This time, with Devin’s help, he wouldn’t give up.
He, too, owed Rhonda. His resolve to continue the investigation had nothing to do with giving him more time to spend with Devin. Did it?
“Rhonda’s daughter now lives with your brother and his wife, right?” Devin’s thoughts obviously had taken a different direction.
“Brooke has raised Skye since she was a baby. She’s a great mother, and she adores Skye.”
“You didn’t want to raise her?” she asked softly.
Want to raise Rhonda’s daughter? He worked past the sudden lump in his throat. The room shifted, swam before the excess moisture in his eyes. Assuming the responsibility for Skye would have been a blessing that might have eased his loss of Rhonda. He’d ached to shower Skye with the love of a father, but for the child’s sake, he’d settled for the role of doting uncle.
“Rhonda would never have separated her daughter from the woman who’d raised her. Brooke is the only mother Skye’s ever known. I think Rhonda would be pleased.” And he’d accepted his fate. “Besides, Max is Skye’s father.”
“What?”
Her surprise stabbed him, piercing deeper with each word he revealed next. “We kept this out of the papers, too. I contracted the mumps when I was a kid. Dr. Henschel at the Kine clinic told me I can’t have children. Since Max and I are identical twins, we have identical DNA. He supplied the sperm to impregnate my wife. In the mix-up, Skye was implanted in Brooke’s sister.”
His admission stirred unbidden tumultuous regret at what could never be. A family. Children. Grandchildren. He forced down the sorrow and doubts. His life had taken another path.
As if sensing his pain, Devin changed the subject. “Brooke’s sister and her husband died in a car accident, right?”
He nodded. He had to give her credit for doing her homework. But the fact that she didn’t seem to care that he couldn’t have children interested him more. But why should she care about his inability to create a family when he’d told her he would never replace Rhonda? Besides, she might not want children. Anything was possible.
“Dr. Henschel killed himself before you could find out for certain who he’d hired to assassinate you?”
“Yes. Henschel had a personal vendetta against me. He’d expected to be promoted to my position on the board at the Kine clinic. He resented when Norton Industries bought a large share of the clinic and I took the seat he’d wanted on the board of directors. That’s when he started stealing from the patients. So you see, it’s more likely I was the real target.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
He could tell by her tone that she didn’t believe his theory of the assassin’s going to ground after Henschel was caught by the police. But he had no reason to think otherwise.
Her voice slowed as her breathing evened. “If I’m to stay at your house, I’d like permission to go through Rhonda’s personal papers. Yours, too.”
“Sure.” Her interest pleased him. He had nothing to hide, and he had lots of papers. That way, he could keep a close eye on her.
DAMN IT! THE Black Rose wasn’t supposed to make mistakes. Killing the Swiss man on the woman’s balcony was unprofessional, at best. At worst, it could lead to capture by riled authorities.
Of course, after the mistake, the Black Rose had outsmarted the Swiss gendarmes, hiding among the townspeople like a chameleon. But meanwhile, the prey had slipped away undetected. Either Ford and Devin had crossed the Juras into France or doubled back to investigate. Such cunning. But no matter Ford and Devin’s shrewdness, the Black Rose would pick up their trail as soon as they surfaced.
And finish them off.
FORD AND DEVIN rode out the next morning after a breakfast of thick, crusty bread, cheese and strong coffee. Last night’s rains had left the ground wet, and the horses’ hooves plopped in the mud. The air held a clean scent of pine, and as the sun rose, she removed her jacket. They came across a tree downed by lightning, its trunk crushing the bushes beneath it, and she realized how lucky she’d been to survive the storm.
With Ford riding ahead, her gaze was drawn to him as if he were a finely sculpted piece of art. His disheveled white shirt had several stains and a few rips, but a little muss couldn’t detract from the square set of his broad shoulders or his thick, silky black hair.
As the path turned, she glimpsed his profile, the high forehead, the straight nose and strong chin, and she realized what a magnificent specimen of man he was. For a moment, she regretted they hadn’t made love.
He rode as if he were part of the animal. Although Ford owned businesses that spanned the globe and was no doubt accustomed to luxury hotels, he had no difficulty roughing it. He’d lit the woodstove and heated coffee as if he was unacquainted with servants waiting on his slightest whim. She couldn’t imagine him being out of place anywhere.
He’d been wrong about one thing, though. They didn’t make a good team. Sure, he could fit into her world just fine. But she couldn’t make the same journey into his. And with the memory of Rhonda always between them, she had no reason to try.
After several hours of riding, she stopped her
horse in the shadows of thick brush that hid them from below and looked out over the sweeping vista of rock-strewn grass mixed with patches of forest. Far in the distance, she could just make out several farms amid dazzling mustard fields and rich pastures.
She glanced at Ford, immediately noting the tense angle of his jaw. “What’s wrong?”
Eyes squinting into the sunlight, he pointed to a knoll that lay between them and one of the French villages far below. “A rider just crossed that hill.”
“I don’t see anyone.”
“He’s climbing through the tree line on the ridge.” Her nerves tingled, but she didn’t feel the usual sensation of warning at the back of her neck that signaled danger. “Jacques did say he’d send his brother to meet us. But let’s ride in the cover of the trees until we see who’s out there.”
“It’ll take longer, but I’d rather play it safe, too.”
She focused on the ridgeline. “Have any ammunition left?”
Twisting in his saddle, Ford pulled out a handful of shells. He loaded both weapons to full, dividing the bullets between them. After checking the safety, he handed back her gun. “We each a few shots left.” Ford slipped the gun into the waistband of his jeans and veered into the woods, pulling the packhorse behind. In silence, she followed, wondering if she would ever feel safe again. She’d never been hunted before. Never worried that a professional assassin could pick her off from over a mile’s distance and she’d have no warning.
That they’d kept moving had no doubt worked to their advantage. Sometime this morning they’d crossed the border from Switzerland to France. If they were lucky, they’d find transportation to Paris and catch a plane home. If their luck ran out, they would die on this mountain, and then she’d regret that she’d resisted making love with Ford last night.
But if they survived, she’d made the right decision. She’d refrained from taking advantage of Rhonda’s death. And she’d protected her heart from the eventual anguish of separation from a man who, no matter how appealing, couldn’t love her.
Ford halted the animals and put his fingers to his lips. He withdrew his gun, and she followed suit.
Through the pine needles, the faint clop of a horse’s hooves approached. Ford leaned close, lips inches from her ear, his coffee-scented breath fanning her face. “Let him pass by before we notify him of our presence.”
She nodded, her mouth dry. How would they know if the rider was Jacques’s brother or the assassin? She didn’t voice her concern since the rider was almost upon them. When she heard the man whistling, she sighed in relief and lowered her weapon. No assassin would be so noisy.
As the horse and rider passed, she peeked around Ford. Smaller than his brother, Jacques, the Frenchman wore jeans with protective leather leggings. His brown-and-red-plaid shirt matched a brown cap. But one glimpse at his shock of white hair and light blue eyes in the same shade as his brother’s and she couldn’t doubt his identity.
Apparently drawing the same conclusion, Ford returned the gun to his waistband. “Bonjour, monsieur.”
The whistling ceased, and the man whipped his head around in surprise. A broad smile revealed a missing front tooth. “Bonjour. I am glad to see you. I am Bernard Moran. You spent the night in the cabin and did not get too wet, oui?”
She’d been expecting Jacques’s brother to be younger, but Bernard’s face was even more wrinkled and weather-beaten than Jacques’s. She’d bet he was close to eighty. Unlike his thin brother, Bernard had a potbelly that jiggled with his mount’s every step.
“Jacques explained you needed me to lead you out of the mountains.”
BERNARD LEFT THEM in Beaune at the bus station. There had been no sign of the assassin, but now that they were back in civilization, she couldn’t help looking around nervously. The empty bus station eased her concerns. No one seemed interested in rumpled American tourists.
“Come on.” Ford took her hand and steered her toward several phones. “I need to make a call.”
“Wait just a minute.” She tugged on his hand and pulled him to a halt. “I thought we’d agreed. No phone calls.”
His eyes flickered with impatience. “I agreed to discuss it with you first. The chance of the Black Rose tracing the call from here is nil. At this time of day, I’ll have to call my secretary at home, so unless the Black Rose has tapped Anne’s personal phone line, I’d bet a phone call is safe.”
He sure made good arguments, and the confidence radiating off him in waves kept her from arguing. No wonder he was so successful. “I agree it’s fairly safe.”
He raised an eyebrow, reached for the phone, and dialed. “Anne, sorry to wake you in the middle of the night.”
Meanwhile she made a few calls of her own, checking on black roses.
Twenty minutes later he hung up, a pensive expression in his eyes. “Anne called the American Rose Society. No wholesaler or breeder sells black roses.”
“Breeder?”
“People who grow roses are called breeders.” A bus raced by, blowing her hair, and she ran a hand through her locks. “I was hoping black roses would be rare so they would be easier to trace. I never expected the flowers to be almost nonexistent.”
“Grendal could’ve made a mistake. Maybe the flowers she found on Rhonda’s and my pillows weren’t black roses.”
“I should have taken the petal we found at Grendal’s house. We could have had it analyzed.”
Ford frowned. “Don’t forget the British ambassador, Bruce Willowby, told us about other assassinations where black roses were left on pillows. And now the rose society says black roses don’t exist?”
“I’ve done some research. Apparently, roses come in lots of colors, but mostly shades of reds, yellow, orange and white. Green ones are scarce. Black roses must be genetically engineered.”
“While breeders don’t sell black roses, a few raise them as a hobby. The rose society gave Anne the name of one breeder of black roses, a woman in Amsterdam named Yvonne Jansen.” Ford checked his watch and steered Devin toward a bus that had just rolled into the parking area. “If the blacks are that rare, we might find the assassin’s address in this Yvonne Jansen’s customer files.”
She glimpsed a matching excitement in the tension of his neck that set her heart pounding. She kept her voice calm. “Should we go see her?”
“I vote we make a side trip to Amsterdam before we head to London to trace Henschel’s payment to the assassin.”
“We could call Yvonne, instead.”
He shook his head. “She might talk to us by phone, but I doubt she’ll turn over her customer files to strangers. A visit in person would be better.”
He was taking charge again, swaying her with the merit of his argument. “How far is Amsterdam?”
“Several hours by car from Paris.”
Her hopes rose, but the last few days had taught her caution. “What about crossing the border?”
“We won’t have to worry. It’s like driving a major highway.”
He curved an arm over her shoulder and drew her to him. After last night, she should have been uncomfortable, but leaning against him seemed as natural as changing their plans. “You’ll love Amsterdam at this time of year.” His voice, deep and sensual, reminded her that they lived in two different worlds, but the knowledge didn’t dampen her enthusiasm. If Yvonne could tell them who her customers were, they would have a trail to follow.
“We’ll fly from Amsterdam to London. I’d planned to be gone another few days. But I must be back in New Orleans in time for the annual stockholders meeting of Norton Industries.”
He was arranging their schedule without consulting her. Since she had no reason to object, she didn’t protest. “Problems at home?”
He followed her onto the bus. “Nothing I can’t handle. A new holographic imaging process in Silicon
Valley looks promising, and I want in on the ground floor. But I can afford a side trip.”
Just because he could take time to divert their journey to Amsterdam didn’t mean going was a wise decision. She’d thought she could control her feelings for him, but instead of diminishing, her love was growing, and she suspected she was heading for unimaginable anguish.
She shoved her feelings aside as she took the window seat. “Ford, do you suppose someone doesn’t want you to make that meeting?”
“And that someone hired the Black Rose?” He considered her suggestion as he settled next to her. “It’s possible. Someone has been buying Norton Industries stock from many different sources. A hostile takeover could be in progress. If I miss the meeting, it would shake stockholder confidence.”
“But?” she prodded, sensing he’d already dismissed her suggestion.
“But the Black Rose tried to kill me months ago. And we’re almost sure Dr. Henschel paid the assassin. I can’t see how the Black Rose could be connected to my missing this meeting.”
“You’re probably right.”
But her instincts said otherwise. Why was the Black Rose suddenly trying to fulfill an old contract? When they returned, she intended to look into those stock purchases.
But first, they had to survive in the Black Rose’s territory. Once they questioned the grower, word of their whereabouts might leak out, making it imperative for them to find the Black Rose before he found them.
Chapter Eight
DEVIN LOOKED out the window and watched the countryside pass. The autumn leaves were just beginning to turn from green to gold and russet. A barefoot woman waddled along the roadside carrying a chicken in a cage. Children raced by on bikes. They passed vineyards and stopped in small towns of pink-roofed houses, tree-lined streets and medieval churches with stained-glass windows. But her mind was not on the scenery.
Ford sat beside her, cool, calm, confident. He was every inch the highly successful international businessman. While he’d spoken to his secretary, she’d been reminded the past few days were not real life, but merely an interlude between business deals. The tender man who’d massaged away her soreness couldn’t disguise the self-made billionaire who wined and dined presidents and kings.
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