by Susan Fox
Her head began to pound once she reached the nearly empty parking lot where she’d left her car that morning. Trying hard to resign herself to the idea that Mitch Ellery might already have found her apartment and taken up a convenient place to keep watch for her, she started her car and drove out of the lot to the post office, then home.
There was no point in hoping for another reprieve or even a delay. The suspense of waiting even a few hours was already more than she could tolerate. She’d known this day was coming for months. She should have contacted Mitch Ellery long ago, but selfishness was the real reason she hadn’t.
Through Kendra, she’d got a taste of family that she’d hungered for since childhood, and she hadn’t had enough character to keep from taking it. And since the notion of family and home and belonging were the sweetest and most sacred things in the world to her, it made sense that those small tastes and rare glimpses of what mattered most would come at a steep price.
Now it was time to pay for those treasures in whatever coin Mitch Ellery decreed. Though she knew the payment was certain to devastate her, she’d pay quickly and, because she was guilty, she wouldn’t complain.
As she finally turned onto her street then pulled into the driveway between her building and the next one, she resisted the urge to glance around for unfamiliar vehicles. She made it all the way inside to her apartment before she heard the buzzer sound from the call box outside the front door of the small lobby downstairs.
The simultaneous knock on her apartment door came before she could cross to the tiny foyer and press the button on the intercom. Rattled, Lorna belatedly recognized the knock and gratefully opened the door.
Melanie Parker, her closest friend, greeted her with a wide smile that vanished the moment she glimpsed Lorna’s pale face.
“What’s wrong?”
Lorna let out a nervous breath. “I’m so glad you’re home. I need a favor.”
The buzzer on the call box sounded again and Lorna reached to grip Melanie’s hand. “You remember Mitch Ellery?”
Mellie’s pretty face showed her alarm. “Oh, no, Lorna. What can I do?”
Lorna felt the sting of grateful tears. Though Melanie knew she’d silently indulged her craving to spend time with her sister, Mellie had never made more than a couple of remarks to caution Lorna about the risk. She’d kept her disapproval mostly to herself because Melanie Parker, more than anyone, understood. But Mellie knew as much as Lorna did what Mitch’s arrival now meant.
“If he comes up,” Lorna said shakily, “I’d like you to check on me in a few minutes. Just a quick phone call, you don’t need to come over.”
Melanie was distressed by that. “Do you think he’d hurt you? Could he become violent?”
God, she hadn’t thought of that, but she doubted it. She shook her head.
“He’s very angry, but I don’t think he’d hurt me. Not like that. I’m probably overreacting.”
The buzzer on the call box sounded again and Lorna urged Melanie back into the hall.
“I can’t make him wait, Mel. Please. Call me in…twenty minutes?”
“That long?”
“Twenty minutes,” Lorna repeated and tried for a smile, suddenly feeling guilty for worrying her friend. “It’ll be all right.”
Melanie nodded, though she didn’t look convinced as she backed toward her apartment door across the hall. Lorna let her door close, then reached to press the intercom button before Mitch could ring again. If she was very, very lucky, the person downstairs would not be Mitch Ellery.
Her soft, “Yes,” sounded strained.
Mitch’s gravelly voice was curt. “This the right apartment?” He’d apparently recognized her voice.
No proper greeting, no “Is this Lorna Farrell?” no “May I please come in?” No acknowledgment that she had a choice in whether she buzzed him into the building or not. Almost as if the only thing that had made him pause from charging in like an angry bull was the need to make certain he’d be charging into the right apartment.
On the other hand, building security was sometimes lax. He could have waited until another tenant came along to slip past the locked door. The fact that he hadn’t was at least honest and some indication of a sense of propriety, if not also fair play.
Her soft, “Yes,” was resigned. She hesitated a moment, then pressed the button that would release the lock downstairs and let him pass into the lobby.
Real fear surged then. This was it. And, as she’d sensed, Mitch Ellery was about to charge in like a bull. Far too soon he’d cleared the stairs and she heard him striding down the hall. The cadence of his heavy boot heels was a confirmation that he was angry and would charge in. The relentless sound of his long stride coming so quickly near cranked her dread up at least a thousand notches.
She didn’t think her nerves could take the sound of him pounding on her door, so she reached out to open it.
CHAPTER TWO
AT THE sight of Lorna Farrell standing so primly at the open door, Mitch stifled the same private shock he’d felt when she’d walked into John Owen’s office with Kendra.
Lorna Farrell was slim and petite. Her dark head of glossy, shoulder-length hair curved under, her eyes were large and deeply blue, and her facial features were fine and delicate enough for a Renaissance portrait. The resemblance between her and Kendra was unmistakable.
Five years had smoothed out her features and turned her into a beauty. She had polish now, class, and the poise of a queen. But what she had by the bucketful was a resemblance to Kendra she’d not had five years before. No doubt it was now that stronger resemblance that had made her think she could engineer another try at Doris.
Mitch might even have given her some leeway had she simply tried to contact Doris again. His stepmother had finally confided that she’d given up a child for adoption years ago, but she’d denied the possibility that Lorna Farrell could be that child. A simple blood test might have thwarted Miss Farrell a second time. Surely she knew how easily she could be proved a liar if someone called her bluff.
But instead of inflicting herself directly on Doris, she’d managed to wedge herself into Kendra’s life. That alone undermined her in his eyes. In the past few hours, he’d found out that Lorna had worked for John Owen long before Kendra had become engaged to him, but she’d had no business befriending Kendra, no business at all crossing the line as far as she had.
Kendra was a sweet, naïve child-woman. Strong-willed, a little spoiled, but blinded by the optimism and generosity of youth. She hadn’t yet learned that the world was full of liars and opportunists. She hadn’t been bitten by the bitter truth that jealous people would do their damnedest to knock her down for having money or that the greedy ones would play her for a fool to get a piece of it.
Lorna Farrell’s slick intrusion into Kendra’s confidence marked her as the second kind. And though Mitch had long thought his stepsister needed to wise up to the ways of the world, he was determined that Lorna Farrell wouldn’t be the one to educate her.
Lorna didn’t speak and neither did he as he strode through the open door into her apartment.
Lorna had done much better for herself these past five years than the cramped one-room apartment she’d had back then. These rooms were painted bright white, and the furniture was tasteful blend of nice pieces, though probably second hand. She liked color and she liked interesting little accents, like the whimsical caricature of a gangly palomino pony with inch-long eyelashes that stood almost a foot tall on the floor in front of an antique bookcase lined with hardcover and paperback books.
The dove gray sofa was plush and artfully scattered with old-fashioned needlework pillows. There were a few inexpensive but tasteful paintings on the walls and she had a fondness for dark tables with delicate legs. The dining room had a bowl of vivid silk flowers in the middle of the table, and every surface throughout the two rooms he could see were polished to a deep luster.
Everything was neat and orderly without a single thi
ng out of place. Was this the rigid care of a woman who’d only recently come up in the world and appreciated that enough to take religious care of everything? Or was she an opportunist who liked to have nice things and by such diligent care demonstrated not only a lust for material possessions but a hunger for more and even better?
Because he was so suspicious of her, he discounted the idea that she kept her things so neat and orderly because it was an admirable habit.
He didn’t bother to take off his Stetson. Though it was polite to do so and expected indoors, he didn’t intend to pay her the compliment. He heard the tremor in her voice and sent her a surly glance.
“Would you like to sit down, Mr. Ellery? Can I get you something? Coffee? A s-soda?”
He watched color flash across her cheekbones at the small stutter and took note of the way she gripped her slim fingers together. He detected the tremor she clearly tried to suppress in the faint vibration of her shoulders beneath her suit jacket.
“I didn’t come to be sociable, Miz Farrell. Your pretty manners are wasted on me.”
Now he saw the color vanish from her cheekbones, confirming the notion that she was as completely intimidated by him as she’d been five years ago, and thus would be easy to manage.
He lifted his hand to his chest, frowned at the small start she gave at the movement, then slipped his fingers into his suit pocket to remove the check. He held it out so she could see the amount.
Her deeply blue eyes dropped automatically to the digits. There was a spark of something then. Surprise? Or was it a flash of pain?
“Give Owens two weeks notice, then quit,” he told her brusquely. “This should hold you over until you can find another job. If you leave San Antonio to take a job, I’ll give you double that amount. Every year up to five years, I’ll leave a matching check for that double amount in an account with my attorney. Every year up to five years that you stay out of San Antonio and have no contact with Kendra, the attorney will transfer that yearly amount into whatever out of town bank account you choose.”
Mitch paused because she appeared to sway. He hardened his heart to that show of shock because it was more likely shock that he’d given her what she’d wanted so easily. And from the amount on the check, she could surely see that multiples of that kind of money, if carefully handled, would soothe the sharper edges of her lust for riches for a long time to come. He went on.
“After five years, the money deal expires. By then there’ll be a record of every transaction. If you approach Kendra again, we’ll have a money trail to take you to court for extortion.”
“How dare you?”
The words were choked and Lorna’s stormy gaze came up to his. She’d stood stiffly before, but now she looked so rigid that movement might make her bones crackle.
Mitch lowered the check and tossed it dismissively to a lamp table.
“How dare you, Miz Farrell? Trading on the resemblance you didn’t have five years ago to worm your way into an innocent kid’s life. You aren’t Doris Ellery’s long-lost anything. If you say one word to Kendra, we’ll press charges, petition the courts for a blood test, and when it comes up a no-match, you’ll have an arrest record and very likely a conviction.”
He paused to let that sink in. Her face had gone bright red now and she was shaking. He kept his low voice harsh.
“Choose a happy life, Miz Farrell. Take the money and leave town. You’re beautiful, you’re obviously clever, and you’ve got taste. Find some rich old boy and hold out for a ring and a date.”
“Get out.” Her voice trembled as hard as she did now.
“I meant every word, darlin’. Every single word. And you’re bright enough to know I can make it happen.”
“Get out.”
Lorna gave the two words separate emphasis. No matter how foolish she’d been, no matter how long she’d let the situation with Kendra go on, she wouldn’t tolerate this. So much for Mitch Ellery’s propriety and sense of fair play. He was trying to bully her into a setup. She was so outraged over it that she felt faint. Dark dots were swimming in her vision and her eyes felt on fire. Her whole body felt scorched.
And still he made no move to leave, just stood there like a column of granite. The hostility that radiated from him in waves was so intimidating that it magnified her hurt and the fury she felt.
She almost wished he had roughed her up. Anything, even that, would have been better than the brutal sting of his insult, not to mention the sheer menace of a man so much larger and stronger than she. The top of her head barely came to his shoulders. If he’d roughed her up, she could have dialed 911.
But she was helpless against this. She had no doubt that he had the will and the means to frame her for extorting money from him, though she’d die before she took a single cent from anyone.
Mitch Ellery was a bully, but suddenly none of it mattered. None of it mattered because the emotions of these past few months, the old hurts and traumas that had been stirred up and the horror of this confrontation, seemed to have short-circuited her body.
The two-bite breakfast she’d caught on the run, the lunch she’d forgotten, the uneaten apple she’d carried home from the office, suddenly conspired with all the rest and she felt an odd lethargy as the dots swam faster and multiplied.
Panicked, she tried to reach the nearest chair. She’d no more than taken a wobbly step and sensed Mitch Ellery’s sudden move when the world went black.
Mitch had hesitated to reach for Lorna because he thought she was faking a faint. And then he’d caught her a second too late because she’d wilted so fast and gone so boneless that even catching her arm hadn’t prevented her temple from grazing the corner of the coffee table.
He’d gathered her up and placed her on the sofa, but her small body was so rag-doll limp that it was amazingly hard to manage, though she weighed almost nothing.
A pink welt marked her right temple and already the skin beneath it was staring to swell. Shock jolted him. She hadn’t flinched when she’d hit, and as he tested the delicate skin next to the swelling, not even a hint of reaction showed in her lashes.
Hell. She hadn’t hit the table hard enough to be knocked out, so the lady had well and truly fainted. An alien feeling of guilt punched him in the gut. Remorse made him pick up one of her limp hands and chafe it between his palms.
“Miz Farrell,” he growled. “One of us is gonna be damned upset if you don’t come around quick.”
Mitch gritted his teeth for admitting that much. He patted the back of her still hand and when that got him nothing, he lightly tapped her pale cheek. Her glorious black lashes lay closed and motionless, and he felt another arrow of concern.
Gently laying her hand on her small waist, he rose to find the bathroom. Once there, he grabbed an artfully folded washcloth from a white basket on the counter and wet it beneath a jet of cold water in the sink.
Squeezing the excess water from it, he stalked back to the living room. Now her lashes spasmed and he sat down by her hip on the edge of the sofa cushion. He touched the cool, damp cloth to her cheek and was rewarded when she weakly turned her head to escape the sensation.
Mitch lifted the cloth to gently press it against her other cheek before he realized he’d picked up her hand again. Her fingers tightened on his, but her grip was weak.
His own low words, “Come on, darlin’, come on back,” startled him.
Perhaps it was the remorse he felt, perhaps it was the simple compassion he had for any injured creature that accounted for the uncommon tenderness he felt suddenly. Or perhaps it was Lorna’s sharp resemblance to his stepsister. Whatever the reason, feeling tender toward Lorna Farrell was not quite the anathema it should have been.
And when she made a soft sound of protest and brought up her other small hand to ward him off, he felt like a brute.
Mitch allowed her to brace her hand against his chest while he pressed the cool cloth softly against the welt. She winced at the pressure and sucked in a breath, then strug
gled to move her head away.
“Lay still.”
His tone was harsher than he’d meant, and he was privately horrified when he saw wetness spring onto her lashes. He forced his voice to soften so much it was almost a rasp.
“Let me take care of this, darlin’.”
The fact that he’d repeated the endearment in a sincere way was a fresh shock. But she responded to it by going still. Her wet lashes opened and those blue, blue eyes focused mistrustfully on his face. He could see her fear and she lay completely still, as if she was afraid to move.
The guilt that made him feel was sharp and uncomfortable, and his gaze shied briefly from her wary study before he brought it back to say something that would let her know he meant her no harm.
“Looks like I scared you into a faint. You hit the coffee table before I could catch you.”
Confusion darkened the blue of her pretty eyes, but mistrust lingered in the mix. His pride was choking him, but he added a quiet, “I apologize.”
Mitch couldn’t maintain eye contact with her, so he lifted the cloth and inspected the small welt. “I’ll get you some ice for that.”
Her soft, “No,” made him pause and he looked down at her. “You have to leave.”
Despite her fear, she was rallying. Her refusal nettled his sense of responsibility. “Not till I’m sure you’re okay.”
She came right back with, “I don’t need your help.”
“How do you know that? Do you keel over in a faint so often it’s a routine?”
“I never faint.”
He gave a short bark of laughter and she jerked as if startled. Her eyes darkened again with wariness. Mitch ignored her reaction and leaned closer for emphasis.
“Well you just fainted, Miz Farrell. Write it in your diary.”
She seemed to fumble a moment for an answer to that. “I ha-haven’t eaten today.”
That nettled him again. “You out of money till payday?”
Color surged into her cheeks. “I have plenty of money. I was too busy to be hungry.”