by Carol Rose
“If you leave today, I won’t pursue prosecution,” he said, his voice hard with fury. “But you can never come back, never contact Donovan again.
“I haven’t done anything illegal.” Her face averted, the protest came out thin and faint. She couldn’t believe this, couldn’t make sense of his venom.
Mitchell’s short laugh was scoffing. “No? We’d start with embezzlement and move from there. I bet the district attorney’s office would like to see your books. You’d have a hard time explaining the way the renovation money has been handled.”
“No,” she protested. “It’s all there. I haven’t stolen anything.”
He took her upper arm in a tight grasp, turning her toward him. “Don’t bother lying. You set out to snare my grandfather, you wormed your way into his trust and took him for everything you could get your hands on.”
“No!”
“I know your kind of woman. You use your sexy body and your husky voice to drive a man insane,” Mitchell declared, his face radiating hatred as he shook her. “I want you far away from me, far away from Donovan. And if you ever try to contact him again, I’ll sic the Internal Revenue Service on you. I’ll locate and document every man you’ve ever slept with, every man you’ve cheated!”
His fingers bit into her arm as she tried to pull away. “No! How can you say that about me?”
“You’re a tramp and a con artist! You make a man want you and then he has to pay.”
“No!” She tore her arm loose from his grip. “No, Mitchell!”
Stumbling back over the uneven boards of the walkway, she brushed a hand across her face to clear the tears from her eyes. He reached for her again, rage in his beautiful, beloved face.
“Come back here,” he snarled. “I’m not through with you yet.”
Sobs choking her, she dodged his out-thrust hand. Turning, Delanie fled from the lake, running from the hate in his voice, from the unbearable decimation of her dreams.
She’d found the lover of her heart…and he hated her with a bitterness that shook her to the soul.
******
Rigid with anger, Mitchell watched her go. The sunlight gleaming off her red-gold hair, she tore up the smooth green lawn toward the hotel as if the devil were after her.
Only he wasn’t chasing after her despite the sudden, nauseating urge to do so.
Turning back to the lake, he steeled himself against calling her back. Trying to banish the image of her anguished face, he struggled at the same time to calm the bitter rage within him.
She’d seemed different from all the others.
The surface of the lake stretched before him, cool and peaceful, a rippling of blue and green. All his life, he’d known this place.
He struggled now to connect with that calming continuity, the certainty of those things he relied on. The resort, his father and grandfather, the life he’d always known. His responsibilities. These were the foundation, the steady path of his days.
Last night, with its heated, other-worldly passion, had been the unreliable vision.
Closing his eyes, Mitchell let the memory roll over him. When had he ever felt so desired? So cherished. Wanton that she was, she’d wooed his flesh with an expertise edged with false innocence. He’d lost himself in her touch, in her sweet, drugging kisses, until nothing mattered but her.
He should have known she was too good to be true. He had known it on some nagging level. Life long experiences tended to stay with a man even when he’s been offered a glimpse of another kind of heaven, a place he knows can’t exist.
She loved him?
Mitchell snorted.
How green did she think he was? Love didn’t spring up out of thin air, conjured by the ambiance of an up-scale cocktail party and a rich, sensuous setting.
Oh, but her skin had been soft. Her breasts ripe and taut in his hands.
The same breasts that had pleasured his seventy year-old grandfather, he reminded himself bitterly.
Still, he struggled against a crazy sense of disillusionment. It was an annoying experience since he’d long ago given up his illusions about women and money. No matter what they said they felt, it was always about the money.
He’d always known his father’s attitude had been the right one. Enjoy women. Use them as much as they use you. It was no different than a business transaction.
Shoving away from the railing, Mitchell walked along the lakeside boardwalk, heading back to the main building. He forced himself to walk slowly, strolling over the short, dew-wet grass while ordering away the disquiet inside him.
Lanie Carlyle meant nothing to him. If anything, she was a pointed reminder that a man needed to know the women he slept with.
Her betrayal was nothing new. He’d known the truth about women and money since high school. Within his hearing, his first real girlfriend, Melinda Jo Parker, had boasted to her friends that she’d snared the richest boy in school.
He remembered the moment vividly, a defining instance in his life that had little to do with the Melinda Jo and her easily-surrendered virtue. She’d opened his youthful eyes, that was all. Left him feeling sliced in two. But he’d learned the lesson well.
Walking up to her then, furiously angry, he’d kissed her silly in front of her friends and had then continued to go out with her and bed her for another year. Why not take what was offered? He’d learned then that women were available to a wealthy man. It seemed only human nature to take advantage of them while they took advantage of him.
It was all very practical, in a ego-jolting way. You just had to know the score.
Hell, his own mother had sold him to his father for a million dollars. A large settlement in cash and stock options in exchange for his father having sole custody.
It was just a reality. Money equaled power. Money meant sex. Money was always the bottom line.
What he didn’t know, though, was why the hell that should bother him so much this time?
***
Delanie ran away from his taunts, away from the hostility and disgust in his eyes.
Her legs trembling, her head dizzy, she ran through the bath house area, along the sparkling aqua pool and up the grassy bluff toward The Cedars. With each breath harsh in her throat, each gulp of air dragged into burning lungs, she ran on, fleeing from the images in her mind. From the angry, devastating accusations he’d flung at her.
Your kind of love? I can buy that on any street corner.
Pain seared through her, so strong it left her nauseous. She halted, gasping, half way up the slope, her hand pressed to her stomach. Too aware of him yards behind her, she walked on, clinging to the shadows of the tall cedars, feeling as exposed as a wounded animal out in the open.
She had to get far away from this place. From him. The words drummed in her, an urgent, desperate rhythm. Leave. Run away.
Teasing. She’d thought they were teasing at breakfast and all the while he’d been hating her, thinking terrible things of her.
Hurrying through the deserted grounds, she didn’t slow or hesitate again, blindly seeking refuge. Seeking escape.
Her sandals slipping on the morning grass, she dodged the stately cedar trees ranged along the northern side.
Mitchell actually hated her. The one man she’d waited so long for and he hated her.
Tears blurring her vision, she reached the side door nearest her room and wrenched it open.
The change from light to dark as she went through the opening only left her feeling more disoriented. Nausea tore at her midsection. Heedless of the stares of a couple who passed her, she went on.
How could he think she was sleeping with his grandfather? How could he know so little of her? Hadn’t he been able to look into her eyes and know her as she’d felt she knew him?
Clinging to the handrail, she climbed the stairs to her room, opened the door and went in. Sinking down on the bed, she stared blindly at the room through shocked eyes. Only last night, she’d dressed here for the party. It was to have been a
happy occasion to celebrate her accomplishment in refurbishing The Cedars. And it was her accomplishment. Donovan had given her full rein, full responsibility, and she’d pulled it off.
But what did that matter now? What did anything matter?
Mitchell didn’t love her, hadn’t listened to anything she’d tried to say.
Alone now in the pretty white bedroom, the blinding sunlight tumbling through the windows, Delanie crawled on to the bed and curled into a ball.
She felt herself slipping, felt the edges of her vision blurring with the pain. The room seemed made of light, blazing at her from all directions.
You’re okay, she tried telling herself, grasping for common sense, for stability. You were wrong about him. So he isn’t the right one. Let it go.
Only she couldn’t.
It was as if his furious face with those beautiful piercing blue eyes were burned on her retinas. How could she have let this happen? Why hadn’t she known he mistrusted her, suspected her of designs on his grandfather?
Her eyes shut against the blinding light, she curled tighter into herself, remembering the shades of hesitancy in Donovan’s voice when he’d mentioned Mitchell. He’d outright said several times that Mitchell had questioned the money going into the project. Why hadn’t she asked him about it?
Why hadn’t she told Mitchell her name last night?
She had to get away. Had to leave.
Struggling to her feet, she stumbled her way to the closet and pulled out her suitcase. Every movement sent showers of pain through her head, light scattering before her eyes.
With the sensation of swimming through a nightmare, she took the suitcase to the bed and opened each drawer of the bureau. Scooping her clothes out randomly, she dumped them into the case.
For the last six months, she’d lived here, supervising the renovation in its last stages. She went to the closet again and began to drag down her hanging clothes, ignoring the roaring in her ears, the thundering in her head.
Every movement sent the room shimmering before her eyes and she hesitated, leaning with an outstretched arm against the bed. Leaving was the only option. If she could get away, she could silence the words drumming in her head, quiet the gash in her heart.
Fool! she berated herself as she scooped her toiletries off the counter in the bathroom. When will you learn?
Zipping her crammed suitcase, she scooted it to the floor and picked up her purse and her overnight case. Only a few more minutes, a few more steps. Then she’d find a way to forget, find a place in her head she could crawl into. She just had to get away from the memory of his furious face.
The memory of his kisses.
Leaving the hotel room she’d called home, Delanie spared an anguished thought for Donovan. He’d been a good friend to her. More like a father, if that thought weren’t so grimly ironic.
But she couldn’t face him now. Couldn’t talk to anyone. She’d leave, get back to her crowded, beloved apartment in Boston. She’d go home and find a way to forget the gaping hole in her heart.
Then she’d call Donovan, tell him something. She didn’t know what, but that would wait till another day. Till the pounding in her head had eased and the pain in her chest lifted.
Making her way down the stairs, clinging to the handrail as the steps swam before her eyes, she made it to the ground floor and went out the side door.
Her eyes hurting more in the light, despite the clouds that had rolled in since she went inside, Delanie glanced around. Unable to face a repeat of Mitchell’s accusations, she dreaded running into him as she left.
Around the back of the main hotel, off to the side, were the parking lots. Her small red compact was there.
She fumbled with the keys, ready to cry. If only she had sunglasses, to hide her ravaged face. Another layer of protection between she and the harsh world despite the darkening sky. Anything would help. But she didn’t have any glasses.
Heaving her cases into the truck, Delanie got into her car, the warmth of the closed up vehicle swelling over her like an oven despite the moderate season and the now overcast skies.
She leaned her head back against the headrest, fighting off the nausea that welled in her. Her head throbbed and pounded, leaving her feeling even more disoriented.
The heat in the car, the suddenness of it, left another moment, a ragged, blurred memory, tugging at her fragile composure. Another car, another time. Heat pounding against her. Another heart-wrenching failure.
Shoving the key into the ignition in a panic, Delanie started the car and made herself focus on driving out of the lot, away from The Cedars forever.
Away from Mitchell, who she loved. Mitchell who hated her.
Tears blurring her vision, she just barely saw the on-coming car, swerving at the last moment.
CHAPTER THREE
The black-topped road stretched before her, a winding ribbon beneath the shifting sky, blurry gray to her misty vision.
Delanie drove on, away from The Cedars, away from Mitchell and his cold, cruel eyes, his harsh angry words. Away from her own stupidity. How could she have not told him who she was? If she had done that one thing, then he wouldn’t have felt tricked and betrayed. Then they could have met on a different footing.
Above her as she drove, the windswept clouds blocked, then revealed the sun, a bewildering, roiling mix of light and shadow. A scattering of raindrops cracked against the windshield like bullets.
Delanie flinched.
If they’d met differently, she could have somehow made him see that she didn’t have designs on Donovan or his money. Maybe then, he’d have let himself see what they could mean to each other.
Only now he thought she was a harlot. A deceiver of hearts. A golddigger.
A sob tore loose from her throat as a fresh wave of despair rolled over her. She brushed at the sudden tears in her eyes with one hand.
A blue van suddenly appeared around the corner ahead.
Through the riot in her head, Delanie heard the blare of its horn.
Reacting to the realization that she’d strayed across the yellow line, she gripped the steering wheel and yanked the car back into her lane just as the van approached her, sweeping by with a angry blasting of noise.
Trembling, panic coursing through her, Delanie clung to the steering wheel and began to cry as she drove. The narrow, charcoal road rushed beneath her. Everything moved in front of her gaze—the sky overhead, the road, the gray-green brush along the road.
Great, heaving sobs shook her, harsh in her throat, dragging at her breath. Fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, she stared through the tears in her eyes at a gray and useless future. As ashen as the asphalt surface beneath her tires. That was her life.
She’d found him…and lost him.
The aching sobs welling in her chest echoed the pounding in her head. Consumed in misery, she battled to keep the road in view, struggled to force herself to keep breathing.
Her world had been fine before, the work interesting. She had friends. Men who were interested in dating her. A thousand possibilities everyday…but no one she loved. No one man who revved her heart and made her homecomings warm.
No one to really love.
Not then and certainly not now.
She’d met him and had bungled the show. How could she have been so romantic, so consumed in her own awareness of loving him that she’d missed the doubt in his face.
It must have been there, but she hadn’t seen it. He’d drawn her into his arms and kissed her as if she were his only destiny.
If only he’d known her name first. Then it would have been different. Then he wouldn’t have felt manipulated. Cheated.
How could she have been so stupid?
Dazed at the tumult consuming her, Delanie dragged her focus back to the winding, gray road again and again. She had to get home, had to find a place to huddle, to hide from a misery so complete it threatened her very existence.
A misery as complete as he’d made her
feel for just that one night. It was as if a piece of her had been torn loose in that angry denunciation by the lake, a piece wrenched out of her soul.
Delanie put a hand to her throbbing head. The motion of the car left her dizzy and disoriented. She closed her eyes briefly, just a second, to ease their aching.
Opening them again, she gasped, pulling sharply at the steering wheel to yank the car back into its lane.
Over-corrected violently, the small vehicle skidded across the road, hit the verge and careened down an embankment until it came to a jarring halt in a ditch beside the road.
Shaken by the impact, Delanie huddled behind the wheel, staring sightlessly through the windshield, her hands clenched on the steering wheel, her entire body shuddering in shock.
******
She woke slowly to the light, feeling heavy and stiff. The pillow beneath her head crackled noisily in her ear.
Opening heavy-lidded eyes, she aimlessly noted the faintly-patterned vinyl wallpaper, typically found in newer institutional settings. Across the room, a television perched on a wall mount. Beneath it sat a durable vinyl-upholstered chair that looked as if it might recline.
Hospital, she thought, her fuzzy brain only mildly curious.
A bank of windows paraded across the wall to the left, the curtains pulled back to display a lovely wooded area.
The door to her left suddenly whooshed open, drawing Delanie’s gaze round.
A diminutive woman with dark curly hair walked briskly into the room. Even if she hadn’t worn scrubs and a stethoscope around her neck, the confidence and efficiency in her bearing would have proclaimed her calling.
Struggling against the lethargic, cob-webby feeling in her mind, Delanie smiled at the nurse. “…hello.”
The woman stopped, blinking at her in surprise. “Well, good morning to you! How are you feeling this morning?”
Putting a hand to her neck, Delanie said, “Stiff and groggy….”
The nurse came forward, clasping Delanie’s wrist between three fingers as she checked her pulse.
It wasn’t till then that Delanie noticed the I.V. in her own arm, the plastic tubing taped in place.