by Janet Dailey
“Are you coming?” he asked gently.
“No.” She couldn’t. “I’ll wait here — on the boat.” The two men were waiting for him. Reuben Gentry nodded in acknowledgment, then moved to join them. Samantha turned away, wiping the tears from her cheek and determined she wouldn’t cry anymore.
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Chapter Nine
SAMANTHA STARED into the coffee mug, wishing she could lose herself in the seemingly fathomless void of the dark liquid. A man, probably part of the crew, had brought it to her shortly after she had come aboard the cruiser.
Half of it was gone and the rest had cooled to an unpalatable stage. Still she clung to the mug, needing to hold on to something to keep her sanity while she waited in the cabin.
It had been almost twenty minutes since her father had left for the house. There hadn’t been a sound, not a gunshot, nothing, only the lapping of the water against the cruiser’s hull. Her nerves were virtually raw and bleeding, not knowing what was happening and not wanting to know, yet imagining.
She had drawn the curtains in the cabin. She didn’t want to accidentally see them bringing Jonas in. She caught back the sob of agonizing pain that rose in her throat.
There were footsteps on the dock, hollow and ominous, echoing over the boards, Samantha tensed, following them in her mind as they boarded the boat and approached the cabin door. Refusing to turn around as it opened, she closed her eyes and tried to get a grip on her senses. She didn’t want Reuben to see her torment, not right now. She breathed in deeply and blinked at the ceiling.
“Did they … give themselves up?” she inquired tautly.
The door closed. “Not exactly.”
At the agonizingly familiar sound of that voice, Samantha swung around. Her fingers lost their grip on the coffee mug and it shattered on the floor, scattering pieces of pottery and spattering brown liquid. Her horror-widened eyes stared at Jonas.
“What have you done with Reuben?” she demanded in alarm.
“He’s at the house” His features betrayed only a firm determination. The gray eyes were unreadable. “Would you like to join him?”
“Would I like to join him?” Samantha laughed bitterly. “Have you taken him captive, too? Oh, Jonas, you won’t get away with it,” she declared with taut pain. “Not Reuben Gentry!”
“My name is Cade Scott.”
“Cade Scott?” she repeated in bewilderment. The name was familiar, but she was too emotionally trapped to concentrate on why it was known to her.
“I work for Reuben,” he stated blandly. “I handle all the security for him.”
“Security?” Samantha felt like a weak echo. It was difficult to assimilate his sudden influx of new information. She took her head. “Then …”
“I know you must have jumped to the conclusion you were kidnapped, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it,” the man now identified as Cade Scott continued. “I was following Reuben’s instructions. My hands were tied.”
“Reuben’s?” Then she realized she was doing it again. “But why? Why should my father want me held prisoner on this island? It doesn’t make sense!”
“It was for your own protection. It —”
“For my own protection?” Samantha interrupted. “Why should I need protection?”
“Over the last few months, your father has received a series of threatening letters and phone calls. He didn’t take them seriously until someone took a shot at him a couple of weeks ago.” At Samantha’s gasp of fear, he added, “The man missed, but he convinced Reuben, as I had been unable to do, that he wasn’t making idle threats.”
“What does this have to do with me if he was after Reuben?” she frowned.
“The day I came to the newspaper office, your father had received a phone call from the man that morning. He said he had decided Reuben should live, killing him would be too easy. He would get his revenge on Reuben through you. He knew what town you were in, where you were working and what name you were using,” Cade Scott explained. “With that much information, we had to believe he would harm you. I had to move faster than him to get you out of there before he could make good his threat.”
“And that’s why you brought me here.” She felt a shiver of fear dance down her spine.
“The island is isolated, easier to guard. Intruders would be spotted immediately. We decided it was the ideal place to hide you, he stated in the same impersonal tone he had used since he entered the cabin.
Samantha raked her fingers through hair, flipping it back.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this in the beginning? Why was it such a deep dark secret?”
“I told you — it was Reuben’s orders. He didn’t want to alarm you. Which is why I wasn’t able to tell you my real name. Reuben was certain you would make the connection to his security section and become suspicious.” He snapped a lighter, flame to a cigarette. “I don’t think he realized you weren’t a little girl anymore and had long ago stopped being afraid of the dark.”
“So you went through that whole charade of being Owen Bradley, then Chris Andrews and the mysterious Jonas!” Samantha exclaimed impatiently. “Didn’t you think the constant parade of names would make me suspicious? That’s not even mentioning your refusal to let me leave the island or speak to anyone else. Which raises another question. Why wouldn’t you let me call Reuben?”
“Because we didn’t know how the man was getting his information. It was conceivable that it was being relayed to him by someone in your father’s organization. I couldn’t let you leave a message where you were in case it got in the wrong hands,” he returned smoothly.
Her anger was rising. “You could have explained, somehow,” she accused, “instead of letting me think I was a prisoner. That you and Tom and Maggie were holding me —” She broke off to ask sharply, “I presume that Tom and Maggie work in the security department, too?”
“That’s right.”
“When you realized that I thought I was kidnapped, you should have told me,” Samantha protested bitterly.
‘I couldn’t. You —”
“I know, Reuben had given orders,” she flashed. “But you could have explained to him. I was positively terrified, and for nothing!”
“I did try to convince him, but he’s like a bulldog. Once he gets his teeth into something, he won’t let go. He insisted on sticking with the original plan for you to know nothing of the threats.” Cade regarded her steadily. “I believe you overheard the last part of the conversation I had with him about it and misinterpreted it.”
Samantha vividly remembered the one he was referring to and Cade’s anger when he warned Reuben he would be sorry. “Yes,” she nodded crisply. “I thought Reuben was refusing to pay the ransom.”
“The original plan should have been scrapped when Reuben discovered he couldn’t join us,” Cade commented absently, glancing at the wispy trail of smoke rising from the end of his cigarette.
“Was he planning to?” Samantha inquired with vague skepticism.
“Yes, we thought it was best if he was here with you in case the man changed his mind and made another attempt on his life, but the authorities persuaded him to stay in New York where the man could contact him again.”
“In that case, why is he here now?” she demanded.
“The man was arrested in the night. The danger is over.” Cade stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, the bronze mask firmly in place.
Yet something in his tone made her ask, “How long have you known?”
“Since around five this morning.”
Approximately the same time that Maggie had indicated he had relinquished his guard over Samantha and gone to bed. But that wasn’t what made her temper ignite.
“And you let practically another day go by letting me believe I was kidnapped. You could have explained all of this to me before Reuben arrived,” she accused angrily.
“Yes, I could have,” he agreed with the utmost calm, blandly meeting the
snapping fire of her gaze. “But I didn’t think you would believe me. As you pointed out before, you listened to too many of my lies to listen to anything I said. I knew Reuben was on his way, so I waited for him to support my story. I’m telling you the truth, Sam.”
Samantha turned away, pain bursting in her heart at the sound of her name on his lips. She believed him. Everything fitted, all the evidence that she had misinterpreted. Even the initials C.S. turned out to be right.
C.S. for Cade Scott.
She had known who Cade Scott was. She had heard Reuben praising loud and long the man who headed the security division of his various companies. By some quirk of fate she had never met him until he had brought her to this island paradise that her imagination had turned into an island hell. But the initials alone hadn’t been sufficient to jog her memory of a man she hadn’t met.
“If only I’d known!” she groaned softly.
“I wanted to tell you,” Cade said quietly. “I nearly did a couple of times.”
“I wish you had,” Samantha sighed; remembering the pain she had experienced when she discovered she was falling in love with a stranger who had kidnapped her. The love had tormented her. At least now she didn’t have to feel so guilty about loving him. “I wish you had, regardless of what Reuben wanted,” she repeated.
“I take orders from your father. He’s the boss,” Cade reminded her.
The words were a death knell. Cade Scott worked for her father and she was the boss’s daughter, an excellent prize for an ambitious man. And the relentless quality about him assured Samantha that he was an ambitious man. He would get where he wanted regardless of whom he used along the way.
“I’ll assure him of the thorough job you did protecting me,” she declared with a brittle smile. “You did your very best to keep me entertained, even resorting to some drastic methods, but they worked. And it’s only been in the last couple of days that I decided — wrongly — that I’d been kidnapped. You weren’t to blame for that. I’m sure Reuben will be very proud of you.”
His gaze narrowed, slicing over her face. “Not everything I did was to entertain you, Sam.” There was underlining emphasis on the word “everything.”
“Of course not.” She laughed huskily to hide the quivering of her chin. “It was good fun for both of us.”
A brow flicked upward, arrogant and withdrawn. “That’s all it was.”
Yet she sensed there was a question behind his statement and it hurt. “Yes, that’s all it was,” she said, but the poignant catch in her voice wasn’t convincing.
Cade took a step toward her and Samantha pivoted to face him, on guard against the explosive attraction his presence made her feel. Like quicksilver, his gaze glided over her face, the vulnerable light in her brown eyes, then stopped on her moist lips. Her pulse accelerated.
“You’re lying, Sam. It wasn’t just fun for either of us,” he said, starting forward again.
She retreated, a fragment of the broken coffee mug crunching beneath her foot. “Please, Jonas … .” With a broken laugh, Samantha corrected herself. “It’s Cade, isn’t it? You see, I don’t even know what to call you. Please, I need time to think. It’s all so confusing. Leave me alone, Cade, please?”
He hesitated, then grimly conceded. “Okay, we’ll do it your way this time.” He turned on his heel and walked to the cabin door. “I’ll tell Reuben you’ve decided to wait for him at the boat.”
Cade was gone before Samantha could acknowledge his last statement. For several minutes she listened to the sound of his footsteps as he left the boat. Finally she bent to pick up the pieces of the broken mug until tears blinded her vision and she could no longer see them.
By the time Reuben Gentry returned to the boat, Samantha had washed away any trace of tears. She had even managed to find some humor in her escapade, however bitter, when they discussed it. Luckily her father had no intention of remaining on the island, even overnight.
Samantha gladly accompanied him, needing to get away from Cade before she committed herself to something she would regret.
At twenty-two, she had learned not to give in to impulse. She already had too many scars where people couldn’t see them. Cade didn’t return with them. Reuben claimed Cade had a few ends to tie up and would follow the next day.
Samantha wondered if he was giving her that chance to think.
Reuben didn’t seem to expect her to go directly back to the newspaper. Samantha needed a few days to lick her wounds in private and come to some decision about Cade. There was no question that she loved him. The question was what would she do with that love?
FOUR DAYS after her return, the telephone rang. Samantha stared at it. She didn’t want to answer it. It was Cade — she knew it as surely as if he was standing, in the room. Cowardly, she let it ring, wanting to avoid the inevitable. But it was inevitable and it was better not to postpone it. On the fourteenth ring she answered it, hardly aware she had been counting.
“Sam, this is Cade.” His low voice moved through her like a golden flame.
“Hello, Cade, how are you?” She congratulated herself on the calmness of her reply. It wasn’t indicative of her racing heart.
“Fine,” was the automatic response, but he didn’t return the inquiry. “Since Reuben’s out of town, I wondered if you were free for dinner this evening.”
Samantha breathed in sharply as he stole her excuse. Cade worked for her father and being in charge of security made him cognizant of Reuben’s whereabouts.
“Actually —” She was stalling, trying to think of a plausible lie.
“Sam,” Cade interrupted in a quietly firm voice, “I want to see you.”
Her legs didn’t want to support her as her heart skipped several beats. She clutched at the table, fighting the waves of longing. If the sound of his voice could do this to her, what would happen if she saw him again? To be forewarned was to be forearmed — wasn’t that what they said? Wouldn’t it be better to see him now than to wait for some time when she might be unprepared, hence vulnerable?
“Actually,” Samantha continued, “I don’t have anything planned for this evening.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he concluded.
“Yes.”
After an exchange of goodbyes, Samantha hung up the telephone, her hands shaking, a giddiness in the pit of her stomach. She closed her eyes tightly. She had to get control of herself before tonight.
The thin organdy blouse of apricot and the long cream-colored skirt gave her a sophisticated appearance, but the luminous brown eyes gazing at her reflection were troubled and apprehensive. Her features were strained with the expression of poise.
The doorbell rang and Samantha jumped. This would never do, she scolded herself, and hurried into the living room. Carl, Reuben’s houseman, answered the door as she entered the room. Cade’s glance slid past the houseman to Samantha. Her steps faltered under the appraising sweep of his gaze, lazy and warmly charcoal gray.
“Ready?” he asked quietly.
His rough features were more rugged and compelling than she remembered, the dark brown of his hair growing thickly away from the slanted forehead, the heavy curve of his nearly black eyebrows, the steady regard of dark smoke eyes above the angular planes of his cheeks, the slight broken bend of his nose, the strong, well-shaped mouth, and that casual air that hid the steel. Samantha felt light-headed.
“Yes, I am” The breathless catch in her voice revealed the way he disturbed her. Normally, she would have invited her date in for a drink, but not this time. “Shall we go?” Her voice was closer to normal.
“I have a cab waiting,” Cade agreed.
Samantha walked to the door, glancing at Carl, who held it open for her and smiling into his gentle face.
“I have my key,” she told him.
His mouth curved slightly, taking her hint. “I won’t wait up for you, then. Have a nice evening, Samantha.”
As he closed the door, she felt Cade’s questioning gaze. �
��Carl has been with Reuben for years. When I first started dating, he was the one who usually waited up until I was safely home, and always when Reuben was out of town. He’s a dear. I don’t know what Reuben would do without him.” She was willing to discuss anything as long as it didn’t directly relate to her and what she was really thinking and feeling at this moment.
“It’s good Reuben has Carl, then,” he commented as they walked toward the elevators at the end of the hall “You won’t have to worry about who’s taking care of Reuben when you aren’t here.”
“You mean when I spread my wings and leave the nest for good to embark on my career as a journalist,” she added with forced brightness.
“Or marry. Or both.” His sideways look held her gaze for pulsing seconds.
Before Samantha could recover, the elevator doors were opening and his large hand was applying pressure on the back of her waist to guide her inside. An involuntary thrill of pleasure ran through her at his touch, unnerving her and taking away her ability to speak. Cade didn’t seem to expect a reply as he pushed the ground floor button and turned calmly back to her.
Samantha had the sensation of falling. She couldn’t tell whether it was caused by the soundless descent of the elevator or the enigmatic look in his eyes as it ran over her face. Either way the pulse in her throat was-throbbing madly.
“I haven’t told you how beautiful you look tonight.” The seductive pitch of his voice was almost too much.
“Thank you,” she returned, striving for lightness to keep from sinking completely under his spell. “You’re looking very attractive, too.” She forced her gaze to break away from the hold of his and let it rush over the dark evening suit he wore. “It’s a definite improvement not to have the bulge of a shoulder holster under your jacket.”
“When did you guess?” Cade asked thoughtfully. “The night you sneaked back into the house after your walk and we mistook you for an intruder?”
“Yes,” Samantha admitted. “I saw you slip the gun inside your windbreaker. After that, I put two and two together and realized it wasn’t poor tailoring that made your jackets so bulky.”