“You don’t sound as if you believe me,” she ground out.
He didn’t. The women he’d encountered were always looking out for themselves, which was fine, as long as he wasn’t the one being mounted as a trophy over their fireplaces.
“I’ve had two women sue me for paternity and breech of promises that I never made. You’ll forgive me if I’m a bit too jaded by that to accept your protests at face value.”
Her temper flared. She’d been forced to parade around in a two-ton costume to please him and had had to flee murderers dressed as red devils. She was hot, tired and sweaty, not to mention slightly overwrought, and she was in no mood to be gracious while he behaved like some brooding lord of the manor. Stan could just take his own damn photographs of this man.
“No, I won’t,” she said tersely, poking a finger at his chest. “I won’t ‘forgive’ you. Those experiences you’re talking about were with other women, not me.” She jabbed him twice for emphasis. “I’m telling you. I don’t want to be married to you and there’s no reason for you not to take me at my word.”
Impassioned, Cheyenne didn’t realize that anyone else was there with them until she felt a hand drop on her shoulder. Stifling a gasp, she jumped, her heart doing double time.
The reverend was standing behind them, a hand on either of their shoulders, the look of an eternal peacemaker on his rounded face.
“Now, now, children, fear is a very natural thing. You are both embarking on a very new, mysterious journey together. But put your fears aside and cleave onto one another in times of distress.” He looked directly into Cheyenne’s eyes. “There is nothing more comforting than the touch of a loved one’s hand in times of sorrow and stress.”
To make his point, he took each of their hands and joined them together.
Tired of playing along, Cheyenne pulled her hand away. “Right now, the touch of the loved one’s hand is what’s causing the stress.”
The reverend pursed his lips and shook his head in saddened disapproval. “My sympathies, young man,” he said to Grant. “You have chosen a particularly arduous row to hoe.” Smiling kindly, he patted Grant’s shoulder. “But remember, my son, the more difficult the labor, the sweeter the fruit it yields.”
He draped a wide, yellow rain slicker over his shoulders. “Now I must go and take shelter from the pending storm. Have a good life.” It was more of a command than a parting statement. “By the way,” he added in a monotone, “the cleaning crew are due soon.”
He left them standing alone in the hall, discomfort echoing around them, displacing the noise just outside the opened doors.
“Look,” Grant began, “I’m sorry if I came off a little strong. It’s just that I’m rather gun-shy.”
She accepted the apology. “That would make two of us.”
“We’ll take care of this first thing in the morning.”
Cheyenne wound her fingers around the camera strap, taking solace in the familiar feel of the leather. “Not soon enough for me.”
She sounded as if she meant it, he thought. Was a bad marriage responsible for that? He thought of his father. Probably.
Grant looked out the door. The streets were as thronged as ever, but the reverend had been right about the weather. The wind, flirtatious before, had picked up and was now behaving like an ill-mannered, uninvited guest intent on pushing everyone around. It was time to get out of here.
“I have an invitation to the King’s ball,” he said, touching his pocket “Why don’t we go directly there?”
Cheyenne didn’t feel very festive. “I’ve got four people looking to do me in, there’s a huge storm almost at the city gates, and we’ve apparently just gotten married to each other—something neither one of us wants. This hardly seems like the time to go to a party.”
Two gray-clad maintenance men, pushing a cart with cleaning utensils before them, entered. The younger of the two looked at them quizzically.
Taking her hand, Grant ushered Cheyenne out of the hall. “Spoken like a woman who doesn’t know the true meaning of fun.”
Her nerves were too frayed for her to be polite. “I have fun, O’Hara, but this...oh my God.” Cheyenne ducked around the side of the building, tugging him against her.
For a moment, he thought she’d taken leave of her senses. But he enjoyed the feeling of being so close to her again.
“It’s them,” she hissed urgently.
Grant looked for himself. It took a minute before he saw the man who had made Cheyenne jump. It was hard to tell, but this devil looked shorter than the ones she’d pointed out earlier.
The next moment, he found himself being tugged back. “Why don’t you just wave a red flag for him? He might have missed seeing you.”
Grant understood her agitation; but it could be baseless. “Cheyenne, we have no way of knowing if that’s the right devil or not.”
Annoyed, she frowned at him. “You want to stay around and ask him?”
“You have a point.” Taking her hand, Grant began working his way through the crowd, heading in the opposite direction. The sight of another devil made them alter their course toward Baronne Street and the hotel.
The wind, growing progressively more rambunctious, whipped her hat off her head, blowing it directly into the path of the second devil. Cheyenne’s heart lodged in her throat as she saw the man make a grab for it. Catching it, he motioned to someone as he scanned the crowd intently. She knew he was looking for her.
Cheyenne tugged urgently on Grant’s arm. “Maybe we’d better forget about the ball and just go to the police precinct.”
Grant knew that the police couldn’t offer her the kind of protection she needed if those photographs were as incriminating as she thought they were.
But he could.
“Between Mardi Gras and storm warnings, the police have got their hands full.” Taking the lead, he drew her aside to an alley. “I’ve got a better idea.” Grant pulled out his cellular telephone and flipped it open, then punched a single key.
“Who are you calling, a bodyguard?” She turned to look over her shoulder. There was no sign of the men, but they might appear at any moment.
Holding his hand up to silence her, Grant shook his head in reply. The noise and the wind were making it hard to hear.
“Hello? Riley?” He thought he heard his chauffeur responding on the other end. “You’re breaking up. Listen carefully. I need my plane tonight. Immediately.”
He glanced at Cheyenne. He had a feeling she wasn’t going to like this, but at the moment, it was the best plan. Besides, he had intended to stop at the island for a quick visit anyway. Looked like it was going to be sooner rather than later.
The signal was getting weaker. Grant covered his other ear. “We’re flying to the island. Yes, I am aware of the storm warnings, but if we take off within the next half hour, we should be there well before it hits. Call the pilot and tell him to stand by on the airfield, then meet me with the limousine on the corner of Carondelet and Howard as soon as you can.”
He flipped the telephone closed and slipped it into his pocket.
“We’re flying to your island?” Was he crazy? People didn’t fly in a fierce storm like this—they hid under the sheets and waited it out.
He took her hand again and made his way toward Howard. It wouldn’t take the chauffeur long to get there. Riley knew the city like no one else did and prided himself on always making his appointments no matter what the traffic was like.
“You’ll be safe there until morning,” he assured her. “And then we can go directly to the police station with your story.”
“And my photographs,” she emphasized.
“And your photographs,” he echoed.
“What about my assignment?” She wanted to know. “You know—following you around for two days.”
He should have had his head examined when he’d agreed to this invasion of privacy. “I’d think just staying alive would be enough for you.”
“Maybe fo
r me, but not for Stan. He’ll want his feature—and you did give your word,” she reminded him. “The word you never break.”
He sighed as they reached the corner. “We’ll work something out.” And then he smiled: down the next block, slowly weaving its way toward them, was the limousine. He knew he could count on Riley. “Let’s go. Our ride is here.”
Michael Riley looked more like a mercenary than a chauffeur. He certainly didn’t seem like the average driver to her. Cheyenne couldn’t help wondering where O’Hara had found him and what his references looked like. She made a mental note, as Riley held the rear passenger door open for her, to take a few photographs of the man.
“Did you manage to get ahold of Jack?” Grant asked him, getting in.
“All taken care of, sir.” Riley closed the door and slid in behind the wheel.
“Jack?” Cheyenne asked.
“The pilot,” Grant told her.
The queasiness was back, but for a different reason. “So we’re really flying to the island?”
He nodded. It was beginning to rain. Just enough to dampen the spirits of the more exhausted revelers. Others, he noted as the limousine snaked its way through the city, didn’t seem to even realize the weather had changed. “Can’t think of a more fitting place for a honeymoon.”
Grant saw Riley’s eyebrow rise, but he knew the man would keep any questions he had to himself. Riley operated on a need-to-know basis, and this was something he didn’t need to know about at the moment
“Honeymoon?” Cheyenne temporarily forgot about the danger without and became aware of the one closer to her. Her debate with Stan over O’Hara’s reputation returned to her. Going to the island seemed less of a good idea by the minute. “I don’t think—”
She was nervous, Grant thought, surprised and just the slightest bit curious. He let the moment play itself out. “You want your story, don’t you?”
Coercion? Stan’s Grant O’Hara was quickly slipping off that pedestal the editor had constructed.
“Yes, but I don’t think I like that look in your eye. I’m not taking advantage of this situation, Mr. O’Hara. I think it goes without saying that I expect you not to, either.”
He decided to put her mind at ease. “Relax, I’ve always behaved like a perfect gentleman.” He could tell she didn’t believe him. “Ask Stan.”
Stan was prejudiced by nostalgia and memories. Besides, he wasn’t here. “Then why were you sued for paternity?”
The paternity suits were a sore spot with him. “It was a matter,” he informed her, struggling to maintain his humor, “of a lady becoming incredibly inventive and incredibly greedy. In order for me to have been the father, she would have had to have been pregnant for thirteen months.”
She knew his kind: men who used looks and money and a tongue dipped in honey to get whatever they wanted, until it began to bore them. She’d seen her mother go through enough relationships like that. “Not happy with the crumbs you tossed their way?”
“Fifty thousand dollars hardly seems like a crumb.”
No, it didn’t. The amount surprised her. “Conscience money?”
“A parting gift,” he corrected. “And if I ever made a child, even by accident, I would fully intend to live up to not only my responsibility but to be a very real part of his or her life. Now, is it my imagination, or do I detect a bit of hostility on your part?”
There was nothing more she disliked than having the tables turned on her, unless it was being analyzed. O’Hara had managed to do both in the space of two minutes. “Let’s call it suspicion.”
He preferred calling a spade a spade. If she wanted honesty from him, he wanted nothing less than that from her. “Someone dump you, Ms. Tarantino?”
She raised her chin, taking offense at his presumption. “Someone dumped my mother, O‘Hara.” Though she was protective of her mother, there had never been that closeness between them that she had longed for. Her mother had never seemed to have time for it. In looking so hard for love, her mother had ignored the one person who could have given it to her unequivocally. “Actually, a lot of ‘someones.’ My mother was an uncomplicated woman who tended to believe everything a man would tell her.” Her mouth hardened. “It always worked against her.”
“But not you.” It wasn’t a guess, Grant thought. She’d obviously grown up with a mother who had been more interested in herself than her child, and it had made her strong. In a way, he supposed, they had something in common. They’d both grown up in single-parent homes, basically on their own. The only difference was that he’d had money to take the edge off.
“Not me,” she agreed. “I believe very little and prefer to find things out for myself rather than be told.”
He leaned back in his seat, studying her. “Makes it a little difficult where love is concerned, wouldn’t you say?”
Love was something she knew nothing about. But he didn’t have to know that. “No, it makes it perfectly easy where love is concerned. I don’t believe in words, O’Hara. Actions speak a lot louder.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll try to remember that.”
Cheyenne had an uneasy feeling she had just put her foot in it.
Chapter Five
“Are you aware of the fact that your knuckles are almost completely white?”
Grant’s question echoed in her head, meaninglessly, until it finally settled into coherence. It took Cheyenne a moment to realize that he was talking to her, even though there was no one else in the aircraft’s rear cabin.
She didn’t handle flying well—not since one of her mother’s “friends” had taken them up in his plane. They had narrowly avoided being killed when the engine caught on fire. She’d been seven years old at the time. The nightmares continued until she was thirteen. Even now, the dreams occasionally haunted her, bringing with them a dry-mouth, damp-palm feeling.
The same one she was experiencing now. Cheyenne tried to concentrate on remembering to breath. Grown women with accomplished careers didn’t hyperventilate in front of strangers.
They didn’t throw up in front of them, either. “I’m not aware of anything except my stomach,” she said through clenched teeth.
She looked as if she was going to rip out the armrests at any minute. He didn’t know whether to be amused or concerned. “I take it you’re not referring to hunger pangs.”
Cheyenne slanted a warning look in his direction. “Mention anything remotely edible and, I promise you, you’ll be very sorry.”
He was trying to decide whether she was serious, or whether this was just an elaborate put-on. Wouldn’t she have said something before they boarded if she were afraid of flying?
Maybe it was the storm she was worried about. By the time they’d reached the airport the winds had begun to thrash through the trees in earnest. “The storm hasn’t hit yet. We’re quite safe, Cheyenne.”
Was he kidding? Cheyenne could feel her stomach climbing steadily into her mouth with every dip the plane took. She pressed her lips together, struggling to maintain control.
It wasn’t working. “Being in a little silver box several hundred feet above the ground is not my definition of safe, O’Hara.”
“You don’t like to fly.”
That was putting it mildly. Right now, the plane felt as if it were trembling before the storm like a sacrificial lamb before an altar. “Try ‘hate,’” she suggested.
Given her profession, Grant found that difficult to believe. “How do you get around?”
“Very well, thank you.” At times, it wasn’t easy, she thought, but generally she managed. “Most places I need to be are accessible by means that don’t involve turbo lift and thrust.”
There was a thin sheen of perspiration on her forehead. She really was afraid, he thought. And he found such a reaction hard to comprehend. He loved flying enough to have gotten his own license, although, in weather like this, he trusted Jack’s expertise more than his own. The man flying them to the island was an exarmy pilot who ha
d flown in more than a few combat missions.
“And those that aren’t?” he pressed.
“I reach via planes that need their armrests refurbished by the time I get there,” she answered,
Cheyenne took a deep breath, trying to subdue her erratic pulse. It was racing even more now than when he had kissed her, she realized. At least then the sensation had been breathtaking as well as scary.
This was just plain scary.
Grant glanced at his watch. They should already have reached the island by now. The winds were against them, making the trip twice as long. For her sake, he wanted it over with. He had no concerns of his own. Though the ride was bumpy, it still wasn’t dangerous.
“Have you seen a doctor about this phobia?”
The rich man’s solution. “A shrink?” Her mouth curved disparagingly. “No, thank you. At best, they’re just paid friends. If I need to talk, I call someone who doesn’t charge me an exorbitant fee to listen. Besides, this isn’t a phobia,” she insisted. Phobias were unreasonable fears. Her fears were very reasonable: planes crashed.
“Oh?” Grant asked, amused by the way she split hairs. “Then just what is it?”
She felt that dip right in the pit of her stomach, a stomach that was making a return pilgrimage to her throat. The taste of bile was bitter on her tongue.
“A very healthy respect for the laws of physics,” she replied.
Her complexion was beginning to compliment her deep green costume. If he couldn’t keep her mind off the subject, the least he could do was to keep her talking. “Then you must realize that we’re safer in the air than on the ground.”
A lot he knew. She forced herself to look at him, and not out the window. “I was referring to the bit about what goes up, must come down—sometimes faster than it went up.” She saw his smile widened. He probably thought this was funny. She would have been annoyed if she wasn’t so queasy. “Besides, if I crash on the ground, I have a chance of walking away from it. My chances decrease drastically with every ten feet I go up.”
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