Vendetta

by Susan Napier

  For long minutes there was no sound but the quiet swish of paper turning, and Vivian’s heart thundered in her ears as she waited for her enemy to reveal himself.

  ‘Where do I sign?’ He flicked cursorily back through the pages. ‘Here? Here? And here?’

  ‘Uh…yes.’ He bent and she watched disbelievingly as he uncapped a fountain pen and scrawled his initials in the right places, ending with a full, flourishing signature. The solid gold band on his ring-finger caught her eye as his hand paused, and she stared at the etching of snake and rose, the same crest that she had seen on the letterhead in his lawyer’s office.

  ‘Now you.’

  She numbly took his place as he stood aside. The shaft of the expensive pen was heavy and smooth, warm from his touch, and she was so nervous that she left a large blob after her name. He blotted it without comment.

  ‘We’ll need this properly witnessed, won’t we?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer but went to the door and bellowed for ‘Frank’.

  The man in the dark suit came in. He gave Vivian a single, hostile, sharply assessing look, then took the proffered pen and co-signed the document with a tight-lipped frown.

  ‘Satisfied?’ he asked gratingly as he straightened up, throwing the pen down on to the desk.

  ‘Thank you, Frank.’

  Frank grunted.

  ‘Lunch ready?’ Nicholas Rose asked, seemingly undismayed by his employee’s surly air of disapproval.

  ‘In the kitchen. Just as you ordered, sir. Just don’t expect me to serve it!’

  ‘We’ll serve ourselves.’ He turned to Vivian, who was watching the by-play with slightly dazed green eyes, still stunned by the inexplicable reprieve. Could she have been wrong about him, after all? ‘Frank heats up a mean soup. Frank is my right-hand man, by the way. Frank, this is Vivian.’

  Another grunt and a bare acknowledgement.

  ‘I think Vivian has something to give you before you go, Frank.’

  ‘I do?’ She looked at them both blankly.

  ‘The money, Vivian,’ Nicholas reminded her helpfully. ‘If you haven’t brought the cash and the bank-cheque, then this contract of sale isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.’

  ‘Oh!’ She blushed. How unprofessional. She was surprised he hadn’t asked to see the money earlier. ‘Oh, yes, of course. It’s right here.’

  She unfastened a locked compartment of her satchel, drawing out the thousand-dollar bundle of notes from a cloth bank-bag, and the crisp slip of paper that made up the balance. She was about to put them down on the desk when she hesitated, eyeing the settlement papers still splayed out in front of him, her fears blossoming anew. Her colour drained away as she nibbled her lip.

  With a sardonic look, Nicholas Rose silently gathered up the papers and handed them to her. She tucked them hastily into the satchel before she gave him the bundles. She couldn’t quite hide her relief at getting rid of the oppressive responsibility and was chagrined when he tossed the money casually to Frank, who stuffed it in his suit pockets and stumped out, muttering something about the pilot.

  ‘This is all very unorthodox,’ she said disapprovingly.

  ‘I’m a very unorthodox man.’ If that was a warning, it had come far too late to be of any protection. ‘Did it make you nervous travelling with such a large sum of cash?’

  She thought of her sweaty drive and the almost sleepless night in the motel with a chair propped under the doorknob. ‘Very.’

  ‘Poor Vivian, no wonder you look so pale and tense.’ He casually brushed her cheek with his thumb and she nearly went through the roof at the bolt of electricity that sizzled her senses.

  They looked at each other, startled. His gaze dropped to her soft naked mouth, open in shock, then to the sliver of thickly freckled skin revealed by the modest cleavage of her blouse and the faint suggestion of lace hinted at by the trembling rise and fall of her lush breasts against the cream silk. In that single, brief glance he stripped her naked and possessed her.

  ‘Come into the kitchen,’ he said quietly. ‘I know just what to give you to relax.’

  He ushered her before him and she moved awkwardly, shaken by the most profoundly erotic experience of her life. And yet he had scarcely touched her! She felt confused, fearful and yet achingly alive, aware as never before of the feminine sway of her full hips and the brush of her thighs beneath her skirt. Her spine tingled in delicious terror. Was he stroking her again with that spiky look of hunger? Imagining how she would look moving in front of him without her clothes? She blushed in the dimness of the hall and chastised herself for her dangerous fantasies. Either it was all in her own mind, or Nicholas Rose had decided to set her up for a very personal form of humiliation. He couldn’t possibly be genuinely attracted to her, not a man who, despite his physical flaws, possessed a raw magnetism that probably gave him his pick of beautiful women, not a man who showed every sign of being bent on vengeance.

  The kitchen was small and compact and clearly the preserve of someone who enjoyed cooking. The bench-top was wooden, slicked with the patina of age, in contrast to the microwave and modern appliances, and in the small dining-alcove was a well-scrubbed kauri table and three chairs. Evidently Nowhere Island was not normally used for business entertaining.

  The table was set with rush place-mats and solid silver cutlery, and the steaming bowl of thick, creamy, fragrant soup that was set before her made Vivian’s tense stomach-muscles uncoil. There were bread rolls, too, which Nicholas got from the microwave, cursing as he burnt his fingers on the hot crusts.

  The relaxant turned out to be a glass of champagne. And not just any old bubbly, but Dom Perignon. Vivian watched as he deftly opened the wickedly expensive bottle over her murmured protests that wine in the middle of the day made her sleepy, and turned his back to pour it into two narrow, cut-crystal flutes he had set on the bench.

  Vivian drank some more soup, and when she was handed the chilled flute with a charming flourish accepted it fatalistically.

  ‘Have you ever tasted Dom Perignon before?’ he asked, seating himself again, and this time applying himself to his soup with an appetite that definitely wasn’t feigned.

  ‘Why, yes, I have it every morning for breakfast, poured on my cornflakes,’ she said drily.

  ‘You must be a lively breakfast companion…albeit a more expensive one than most men could hope to afford,’ he said, with a provocative smile that was calculated to distract.

  But not you. It was on the tip of her tongue to say it, but she manfully refrained. ‘I pay my own way.’

  His eyes dropped to her hand, nervously tracing the grain of the table, and the smile was congealed.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, you do, don’t you. Even to the extent of bank-rolling your fiancé’s grand property schemes. I suppose you could say he gained a sleeping partner in more than one sense of the word…’

  As she gasped in outrage, he lunged forward and trapped her left hand flat on the table-top, his palm pressing the winking diamond ring painfully into her finger.

  ‘You’ve been working for him since you left school, haven’t you? What took him so long to realise you were the woman of his dreams? It was around about the time you got that little windfall, wasn’t it? Did he make it a condition of his proposal that you invest your inheritance in his business, or did you do it all for love?’

  ‘How dare you imply it had anything to do with money?’ she said fiercely, fighting the sudden urge to burst into pathetic tears and throw herself on his mercy. ‘Peter asked me to marry him before he ever knew about the trust!’ The release, on her twenty-third birthday, of funds from a trust set up by her natural parents had been a surprise to everyone, including her adoptive parents, who had refused to accept a cent of it. It was for Vivian to use how she wished, they had said—so she had.

  ‘The wedding’s this Saturday isn’t it? Your twenty-fifth birthday?’

  Her eyes lowered, her hand curling into a white-knuckled fist as she pulled i
t violently from under his and thrust it down into her lap. His investigations must have been appallingly extensive. How much more did he know? Please God, not enough!

  ‘Yes.’

  Her curt response didn’t stop his probing as he leaned back again in his chair. ‘You must be looking forward to it after such a very long engagement? And only four days to until death do you part. No wonder you look slightly…emotionally ragged. It’s going to be a big church wedding, I understand. I’m amazed you could spare the time to dash down here…or was this a welcome distraction from the bridal jitters?’

  Vivian lifted her chin and gave him a look of blazing dislike. At the same time she lifted her champagne glass and took a defiant sip.

  He watched her with a thin smile, and suddenly she had had enough of his subtle tormenting. Any moment now she was going to lose her temper and give the game away. Thinking, In for a penny, in for a pound, she closed her eyes and recklessly quaffed the whole lot. It really was glorious, like drinking sunshine, she decided, drenched in a fizzy warmth that seemed to invade every body-cell.

  She was still feeling dazzled inside when she reopened her eyes and found him regarding her with serious consternation.

  ‘You shouldn’t knock Dom Perignon back like water!’

  Well, she had certainly succeeded in changing the subject! She gave him a smile that was almost as blinding as her hair. ‘I thought that was the way you were supposed to drink champagne. It gives such a delicious rush! I think I’ll have some more.’ She held out her glass.

  His jaw tightened. ‘One glass is more than sufficient for someone who claims not to drink very much.’

  ‘But I like it. I want another one,’ she insisted imperiously. ‘A few minutes ago you were trying to ply me with wine, and now you’re sitting there like an outraged vicar. More champagne, garçon!’ she carolled, waving the glass above her head, suddenly feeling marvellously irresponsible. She might as well get thoroughly drunk before she met her fate.

  ‘Vivian, put the glass down before you break it!’ he ordered sharply.

  ‘Only if you promise to fill it,’ she bargained, crinkling her eyes with delight at her own cunning.

  He looked at her silently for a moment, during which her body began to take on a slow lean in the chair. ‘All right.’

  She chuckled at him. ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  ‘Vivian—’

  ‘Stick a needle in your eye—!’ She broke off the childish chant, putting her free hand to her open mouth, her face blanching under the freckles. ‘Oh, God, Nicholas, I’m sorry.’

  ‘The glass, Vivian—’

  She was too shocked at her thoughtlessness to register anything but her own remorse. ‘Oh, Nicholas, I didn’t mean it, I was just being silly. You mustn’t think I meant—’

  ‘I know what you didn’t mean, Vivian,’ he ground out, as she regarded him owlishly from behind her spectacles.

  ‘I would never tease you about your eye,’ she whispered wretchedly.

  ‘I know,’ he said grimly, lunging to his feet and reaching for her glass just as her limp fingers let it go. It slid past his hand and shattered on the stone-flagged floor into hundreds of glittering shards.

  ‘And now I’ve smashed your lovely crystal,’ she said mournfully, her eyes brimming with more tears at the knowledge of the beauty she had carelessly destroyed. ‘You must let me buy you another one.’

  ‘By all means pay for the glass. You’ve smashed a hell of a lot worse in your time. Perhaps it’s time you were made to pay for that, too,’ he growled, and caught her just as she toppled off the chair, bumping her cheekbone on the edge of the table.

  ‘Oh!’ Her back was arched across his knee, her head drooping over his powerful arm, hands flopping uselessly to the floor. ‘You’ve gone all wavy and soft,’ she murmured dizzily.

  ‘Your glasses have fallen off.’ His voice came from such a long way away that she had to strain to hear it. Her thoughts seemed to flow stickily through her head, oozing aimlessly like melted honey and slurring off her tongue.

  ‘Why won’t my arms move? What’s happening to me?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re drunk.’

  She felt a warm weight slide under her knees and then the whole world went around and she gave a little cry as she seemed to float up towards the heavy-beamed ceiling.

  ‘I don’t think so. I never get drunk.’ The rocking feeling didn’t make her feel sick as the boat had. She was being carried, she realised muzzily, struggling against the dragging desire to melt into the arms that held her against a hard chest.

  ‘What’s happening, where am I going?’ she slurred weakly.

  ‘Wherever I care to take you,’ came the terse reply. ‘Don’t you know what you’ve done, Vivian?’

  She had used to know, but somehow the knowledge was now wispily elusive. ‘No, what have I done?’ she mumbled.

  ‘You’ve pricked yourself on a thorn, a very dangerous kind of thorn…’

  ‘Poison.’ The word floated up through her subconscious without fear. ‘Was it poisonous? Am I dying now…?’ It was much nicer than she expected, she decided woozily, aware of a strange, shining whiteness all around.

  ‘No, damn it, you’re just going to sleep. You’re only drugged, not poisoned.’

  ‘Must’ve been a rose-thorn, then,’ she said, having trouble getting her silly tongue around the words. There was a flat, echoing, metallic rhythm coming from somewhere close by, keeping time with the rhythmic rocking that was making her float higher and higher away from reality. Confusing images clouded in her wandering brain. ‘Was a rose, wasn’t it…tha’ caused all th’ tr’ble? In B-Beauty an’ the Beast…’

  ‘You’re getting your fairytales mixed up. Sleeping Beauty.’ The bitter steel of his voice cut into her fading consciousness. ‘I may be a beast but my name’s not Rose—it’s Thorne, Nicholas Thorne.’ His grip tightened and he shook her until her bewildered green eyes opened, staring fiercely down at her.

  ‘You do remember my name, don’t you, Vivian?’ he burst out harshly. ‘Even if you never saw my face. Nicholas Thorne. The man you almost destroyed ten years ago. The Olympic athlete whose future you smashed to bits with your car?’

  She stirred weakly in his arms. ‘No…!’

  ‘The man whose wife and son died while you walked away with hardly a scratch,’ he went on relentlessly. ‘Do you believe in the Bible, Vivian? That justice is an eye for an eye…?’

  She rejected the horror of what he was implying, the black eye-patch suddenly dominating her hazy vision. Perhaps he intended that it was the last thing she would ever see! Frantically she tried to bring her hands up to hide her face, to protect her eyes from his avowed revenge, but they, like the rest of her body, refused to respond to orders.

  ‘No!’ She was falling now, with nothing to save her. He had thrown her from the high place into a pit of horror. She was falling down, down, down and he was falling with her, his breath hot on her face, his unmasked hatred and the formidable weight of his hard body pressing her deep into the soft white oblivion that was waiting to receive them.

  ‘Ssh, I’ve got you.’

  Her body twitched feebly. ‘No…’

  ‘Fight it all you like, Vivian, it’s too late,’ he murmured in her ear, with the cruel tenderness of a murderer for his victim. ‘All you’re doing is hastening the drug’s absorption into your system.’ His hand was heavy across her throat, his thumb pressing against the sluggish pulse under her jaw as his voice deepened and roughened ‘You may as well accept that for the next few hours I can do whatever the hell I like with this voluptuous young body and you won’t be able to lift a finger to stop me. Would Marvel want you back, I wonder, if he knew that someone else had grazed in these lush pastures?’

  Strangely, the lurid threat with its menacingly sexual undertones didn’t terrify her as it should have. To be ravished by a man who could make her tingle a
ll over with just a look didn’t seem such a bad thing. She was sorry she would miss it. She might even have said as much, for as her eyelids seeped closed for the last time she heard a soft, incredulous laugh.

  Her last conscious awareness was of his mouth warm on hers, his tongue sliding intimately into her moist depths, a leisured tasting of her helplessness as large hands began smoothing off her clothes.

  And the sound of someone wishing her sweet dreams.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHEN Vivian opened her eyes she was still trapped in the fuzzy white wilderness.

  She blinked, and discovered that she was lying in an incredibly soft, warm bed and the whiteness was the curving surface of a wall a few inches from her nose. She reached out to touch the rough plaster surface, using the contact with reality to push herself upright, meaning to peer out of the narrow window which broke the curve of the wall at the end of the bed. Instead she sank back on her heels with a smothered moan as her head swam horribly.

  ‘Poor Vivian. Head thumping like a drum?’

  She opened herself mindlessly to the warm sympathy in the sugar-coated voice. ‘Umm…’ she groaned in inarticulate agreement.

  The sugar melted to sickly syrup. ‘Hangovers are a bitch, aren’t they? I had no idea you were such a reckless drinker. I told you champagne shouldn’t be knocked back like water…’

  Vivian swung around on her knees and froze, uttering a gasp of shock as she discovered why the bed was so blissfully warm.

  ‘You!’

  ‘Who did you expect? The faithful fiancé?’

  Nicholas Thorne was sprawled beside her, his solid outline under the covers blocking the only escape-route from the narrow single bed. His tanned shoulders were dark against the stark white pillows and his chest above the folded sheet bare, apart from a thick dusting of gold-flecked body-hair that didn’t soften the impact of the powerful slabs of raw muscle. Even lounging indolently in bed he managed to exude an aura of barely leashed strength. His head was propped against the stout slats of the wooden bed-head and, with his tousled blond hair and scarred beauty, and a mockingly cynical smile on his lips, he looked to Vivian like the epitome of sin—a fallen angel begging for the redemption of a good woman…