by Ann Major
She was aware of Lincoln’s eyes blazing with a mixture of triumph and exhilaration as he lifted her to her feet and led her back to her dressing room, back to her world, before she gathered her wits and changed her mind.
“You will have everything you have ever wanted,” Lincoln promised her.
She felt empty and alone among the glittering throng of wealthy ballet patrons who thronged around her. Not cool and safe and remote as she’d thought she’d feel.
She touched the glimmering, fiery pendant of the sun that lay against her throat. For once she found no courage in touching it, only pain. Its ragged metal edges cut into her skin like knives of ice.
“Yes, everything,” she whispered. “Everything...”
But even as she said it, her heart was shattering into a million pieces.
On a desperate impulse, she ran out to the hall to call Kirk back, but he had already gone.
“Let him go,” Lincoln said. “It is for the best.”
He was right, she thought. Lincoln was always right.
Eleven
In white chiffon, Dawn was elegant, ethereal, ghostly—lost. The sounds of laughter and gaiety enveloped her.
Tonight was the moment of her greatest triumph, but she felt only a profound and bitter despair.
She had everything.
But without Kirk, without her family, it meant nothing.
Why had she run from love?
Because she had not known the cost.
There are some decisions one cannot know are wrong until they are made.
For years she had survived by cutting all feeling from her life so that she would never be hurt. But Kirk had come to Ali Naid and saved her, and she had fallen in love with him. She had let herself feel, and she could not stop, even though now all she felt was pain.
It was not so easy to go back, to live the life she had once led, to turn herself into a talent machine for Lincoln, to live without hurt, to live without the knowledge that she was hurting others.
Tonight, by denying her true, terrifying feelings, she had betrayed her own mother as well as the man she loved. Because of her, they too were suffering. Real life was not simple.
Misery seemed to close in upon Dawn like suffocating walls of darkness.
Not that Lincoln’s party wasn’t fabulous. It was an extravaganza with its buffets overflowing with caviar, salmon, cheeses, fruits, breads, pasta. With its endless lengths of rare filet mignon and bubbling champagne. With its live rock band—and a crowd in one corner dancing wildly.
The large white rooms of the Wilde loft were filled with expensive furnishings, expensive food and expensive people. The guests were brilliant, ambitious, talented or, at the very least, merely wealthy. Then there were the dancers.
The dancers, in their gold threads, gold sparkles, gold socks, gold hair clips and brightly mixed purples, pinks and reds, stood out from the crowd because of a certain outrageous wacky behavior. Their humor was physical and filled with mimicry. Marguerite was enacting a parody of Aurora for an enraptured audience.
Dawn made no attempt to participate in the festivities. She was a ghost who could not fit into their vital world. All she could think of was the pain in Kirk’s eyes, the pain and love shining in her mother’s face, and Dawn knew she had caused that pain. Why had it seemed so frightening to face her family? Why had she run?
She had lost everything she really wanted by running. Suddenly, as she looked about the glittering party, she felt lonely, as if she did not belong here, as if she never would again. Her glamour was a facade that only made her loneliness worse.
She was filled with a terrible emptiness, the way she always was after she danced. One put all one’s energy, time and soul into a performance, then it always ended, every night. In a few years it would end for good. She was building nothing that could last, nothing that could mean anything. Her life would be filled with endings if she stayed in New York. Nothing more.
She wanted Kirk, her family, her mother… and maybe children of her own someday. Suddenly she wanted a future.
Dawn had always run from life, but that was before she had known who she really was. The second kidnapping and all that had followed had slowly caused her to regain her memory. She did not have to hide from her past anymore. It was part of her, something she had to accept.
Seeing her mother had been such a shock, Dawn had not known what to do.
Suddenly she knew that she had to find her mother, that she had to find Kirk as well.
In a daze, Dawn stumbled toward the door. Surely they were still in the city somewhere. She would call every hotel until she found them. Surely it was not too late to make up for what she had done.
She was halfway across the room, when drums began to thunder and a strobe light flickered on. She whirled, frozen for a brief second in the flashes of light. Lincoln came to her, swept her into his arms and spun her around in a wild dance. Lincoln was a superb dancer, and they always danced together once at every party. She started to resist him, but then decided it would be rude of her to reject him publicly.
All the guests shrank against the white walls to watch the mesmerizing couple; the tall golden man and the small dark woman. She let the savage jungle beat become a part of her. Her graceful body twirled sensuously, rhythmically, and she turned her emotional anguish into wild, passionate, beautiful movement. Her hair came loose and flew in silken waves against her neck and shoulders. Her gauzy skirts circled high above her knees to reveal her shapely legs.
As always, when she danced, she was the most electrifying presence in the room. No man or woman could take their eyes off her.
The door opened, and a tall dark man in evening clothes entered just as the music built to a throbbing crescendo. Dawn threw her head back so that her hair swung like a black veil over her white gown. Lincoln effortlessly lifted her in his arms and carried her high over his shoulders so that her chiffon gown glowed over his arms.
Lincoln was laughing as he set her down, and something he said caused Dawn to laugh, too. They seemed caught up in the tempo of the music.
Kirk brought his hand down, flat on the surface of a table, like the blade of a wide sword. Champagne glasses jumped; large wet pools stained snowy linen beside the glasses.
Dawn stopped dancing and began to tremble as Kirk stormed through the crowd, his dark face livid with anger and some other unnamable emotion. Green eyes blazed through Dawn and made her feel naked with guilt.
In two strides he crossed the room, grabbed Dawn’s wrist and snapped her against his hard body.
The music stopped. Lincoln’s golden face contorted. Everyone gasped and watched spellbound.
“Sorry, folks,” Kirk drawled into the stillness and silence. He was as mesmerizingly charismatic as Dawn. There was not a woman in the room who did not shiver. “The show’s over.”
Then he took Dawn’s unresisting hand and pulled her across the emptiness in the center of the room toward the door. There was not a woman in the room who would not have gladly gone with him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lincoln yelled, outraged.
“Just get out of my way!” Kirk barged past him, pulled her out the door, out into the hall, down the stairs.
“Kirk, what’s wrong?” she whispered, stumbling, terrified.
“The fact that you have to ask,” he snarled, pausing on the landing and shoving her against the wall. “How can you be so blind, so selfish? How can you turn your back on your own people?”
“I—I wasn’t going to. I was coming to find you.”
“Sure you were.”
“I was.”
He was rigid. She felt the power of his eyes, his anger.
“I don’t believe you, Dawn. That was quite a performance back there.”
“I love you,” she whispered desperately. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”
“In Texas? Living with me on a remote ranch? Raising horses? Having children? The hell you do. You cho
se Lincoln and what he can do for you. Parties. Dancing. Fame.”
“If you hate me so much, then why did you come back?” Her voice was bleak, tired, frightened.
“Not for myself,” he muttered coldly. “Because for once in your selfish life, you’re going to do something for someone else. Mercedes collapsed when she got back to the hotel. Oh, she was strong for you, but that was just an act. She waited twenty years to get her child back. She never gave up the belief that you were alive. She sent me to Ali Naid with a million dollars to get you out. I risked my life for her...because of you, and damn it, you’re going to talk to her and pretend that it means something to you.”
“It does.”
“Hell.” The single word held dry contempt.
In one swift motion he jerked her closer to his body. “Why do you have to be so beautiful?” Gently his fingers traced the soft curve of her cheek. “So desirable that you make me hate myself because I can’t stop wanting you. Because I can’t stop loving you.”
She felt the heat of him, the rage and the desire.
He leaned into her until her legs were glued against his muscled thighs, her breasts pressed against the solidness of his chest. She tried to fight him, but it was no use. He was too furious, too determined. The blistering heat of his lips claimed hers. She felt his tongue stroke insolently across her lips and slide deep inside her mouth. She went limp in his arms.
Despite his savage anger, she wanted him to kiss her; oh, she wanted him, more than she’d ever wanting anything. She felt she would die if he stopped kissing her. She loved him, and she’d hurt him. And it was killing her as much as it was killing him. She had to find some way to make him understand that he was wrong. That she was sorry. That she hadn’t known herself. That she’d never wanted to hurt him or the Jacksons. That without him, her life would be over.
His mouth ground against hers, and the flame inside him ignited an answering flame in her. A quivering started deep in her belly and worked its way down her thighs, causing an aching, pulsing desire. Her arms went around his neck, and her mouth trembled beneath his.
As abruptly as he’d seized her, he pushed her away, and she fell back against the wall, breathless from the passion a mere kiss so effortlessly aroused. Her mouth stung, and she traced her hand across it. His brilliant eyes studied her face, followed the path of her fingertips across her lips.
Every female nerve in her body clamored in awareness of him.
“You’re very good.” There was a curl to his lip. “Very good at getting next to a man, at making him want you.” He twined his fingers in the loose strands of dark hair and turned her face closer to his. “Did you feel anything? Or was I just amusing? A cowboy lover? A good time—for a while?”
“Don’t destroy our love,” she pleaded.
His laughter was tinged with a savage bitterness. “What love? You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
Dawn paled, and he caught her by the hand once more and pulled her down the stairs, outside into the waiting taxi.
All too soon she was outside the door of the Jackson’s suite, desperately clutching Kirk’s arm, which was as hard and steady as granite. Her pulses were pounding with fear. He hadn’t said a word in the cab, nor in the elevator.
The door was opening, and Kirk was pushing her inside, not following.
She was surrounded by her family.
Never in all her life had she felt so alone.
“Kirk...”
She turned toward him, but he would not even look at her. He pivoted on his heel and disappeared down the hall, into the elevator.
He was going. Walking out of her life, and she knew of no way to call him back.
She stepped uncertainly inside the hotel room. A blazing white light seemed to fill it. Everyone was frozen, even the weeping woman on the bed. There was an odd hush, a terrible stillness that caught at Dawn’s heart.
Her family couldn’t believe she had come.
Kirk was leaving her. She fought against the agony of light.
But she was coming home.
She wanted to run, to cry.
A crushing, unbearable pain weighted her heart, and yet there was joy, too.
She stared at them all wordlessly—her brothers, both tall, one golden, one dark like herself, her father.
Then through the brilliant diamond light, the fragile woman on the bed arose and came slowly to her. Dawn stood still, afraid to move forward, afraid that this woman who seemed to be her mother was a mere fantasy of her desire.
Mercedes’ black eyes shone with a feverish certainty and courage. Slowly, wonderingly, gentle maternal arms enfolded a long-lost child, a woman now.
The pleasure and rightness of touching the body that was, indeed, her mother’s sang sweetly in Dawn’s veins. Tentatively, she slipped her hand around her mother’s waist and clung. She felt her mother’s tears falling against her own cheeks. The familiarity of her mother’s scent enveloped her. She had come home. At last. She was loved. At last. Truly loved.
“I never gave up, querida,” Mercedes murmured in her small, clear voice. “I always knew you were alive.”
“I’m not your little girl anymore...”
“You will always be my little girl, querida. Always.”
Dawn felt the pull of something right and pure, something that went beyond loss and unshared years.
How odd it was that the comfort of her mother’s body, so well-known, so deeply loved, could have been forgotten.
Dawn felt that she had stepped out of cold darkness into fragrant sunshine and summer air. The bitterness and loneliness of years was washed away.
A girl with red hair and luminous green eyes came to her. “Julia, I’m Megan, Kirk’s little sister. Your brother Jeb’s wife.”
“I remember you. We used to play together when we were children.”
Gently Megan touched Dawn’s hand. “If Kirk hadn’t found you, if he hadn’t gotten you back, he would have kept on risking his life going after other kidnap victims. One day his luck would have run out, and he wouldn’t have come home. Now I won’t ever have to be afraid again.”
Dawn smiled wanly.
She was glad he had brought her home and forced her to accept her family. She was loved, wanted, accepted.
But it wasn’t enough.
She remembered Kirk’s savage bitterness, and she felt a loneliness worse than anything she had ever known. With eyes glazed over with ice, he had walked out on her—forever.
Even with her mother’s arms tightly around her, even with Megan’s love shining in her eyes, Dawn’s heart ached with an utter despair, with a fear that went all the way to her soul.
Twelve
The red, dust-coated jeep bounced along a dirt road. Dawn still wore her white chiffon dress from the day before. She had left all the Jacksons at the Big House so she could look for Kirk.
Dawn was afraid, not of driving, though she’d lived too long in a city of taxis and subways to be very good at it. She was afraid of facing Kirk in his house alone, of not being able to find the words to make him believe that she couldn’t live without him. He was so proud, so terrifyingly proud.
A brilliant sun was dying in a purple sky as Dawn stopped the jeep and got out to unlock the gate. For an instant she savored the spacious emptiness of the warm, vast land that stretched endlessly to far horizons.
Home. She had come home.
She felt a sense of belonging that she had never felt in New York. Never felt anywhere else. She had loved the great Jackson house. The Big House. Loved this empty land of cactus and mesquite and oak, been part of it, been brutally taken away from it.
Slowly she got back into the jeep and drove it with a rumble across the cattle guard and left the gate swinging open in the cloud of dust behind her. She shot past meadows of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush.
Would Kirk be home? Would he be so stubbornly set against her that he wouldn’t even listen to her? Would she have everything but the man she loved?
Two miles down the road, the MacKay ranch house was as she remembered it from her childhood. It was a house with clean, simple lines, with wide verandas on every side, a freshly painted house nestled in a shadowy grove of salt cedar and gnarled live oak. The blades of a windmill sang pleasantly, groaning in a faint breeze, and the whining sound filled her with a sweet nostalgia. Jeb had told her that Kirk had bought the MacKay Ranch back from him with his gas royalties, and that he had remodeled it and moved into it several months before.
Dawn stepped cautiously onto the porch. Curtains billowed against screened windows, and she could see into the rooms. In the bedroom there was a large bed with a brass frame. A man’s leather jacket was carelessly flung across the quilted spread. The television was on in the living room, and a beer bottle sat tipped at a queer angle beside a leather chair, as if Kirk had set it down in a hurry and gone somewhere.
Dawn could hear Kirk in the kitchen. She caught the scent of coffee brewing, the smell of warm bread and a steak baking in a hot oven.
Was that the only thing he knew how to cook? She would have to learn to cook herself so she could vary his menu.
She pushed the screen door open and stepped from darkness into the softly lit room.
It was a comfortable house, though sparsely furnished. A rifle lay against the fireplace. A box of shells was open, and some of them had spilled onto the floor. It was the house of a man. She would change that, too.
The door closed soundlessly behind her, and she knew that she belonged here and nowhere else.
“Kirk...”
He heard the velvet sound and came to the doorway. The light came from behind him, and his immense body was framed in its radiance. He was shirtless, in his jeans and boots. Golden light splashed across powerful male muscle, and she felt her pulse quicken. His silver bracelet gleamed against his dark wrist. He stood perfectly still, looking at her.
The wind blew through the screens, blew her hair about her neck and shoulders, blew the filmy chiffon about her slender form. She could feel his eyes burning across her face, over her body.