by Ann Major
But where had it all gotten her?
Cutter was as cynical and incapable of love as ever. His opinion of her was as poor as ever. He had even less respect for her than the citizens of Westville had when she had been a child. Still, he would stalk her until she surrendered and gave him what he wanted.
He really believed her to be so low she would sell herself. She remembered how stern and dark his face had been tonight as he’d insulted her in front of all those people.
Confusing emotions tore her.
He had been fierce but wonderful on the island when he’d broken the glass and made love to her. She had loved him. She had carried his child. But he had abandoned her, and she’d been forced to make a terrible marriage.
He was Jeremy’s father. Because of Jeremy, he wanted her now. And she...
No. Dear God. No. Not after...
Cutter was cold and hateful.
Her free-spirited mother, for all that the world had despised her, had never slept once, not once, with a man she hadn’t wanted.
Cheyenne would not be trapped into marrying another man she didn’t love, a man who neither loved her nor respected her, a man who would take her in his arms and seduce her with vengeance in his heart as he had before.
She had to defy him.
But she was as scared of Cutter as Martin had been. Indeed, it had been her empathy for Martin’s fear of his brother that had drawn her to Martin in the first place on that fateful afternoon when he’d stood under that gigantic purple wisteria in Sorrento, Italy, that she’d been trying to photograph. She’d asked him to move; he’d agreed but only if she’d join him for a drink. After he’d photographed her with the flowers, he’d told her about Cutter.
Maybe because of her own experience with Chantal, or maybe because the wisteria blossoms had darkened, and she’d taken it as a sign, or maybe it had been because Martin had warmed so passionately to the subject of his hateful brother that Cheyenne had empathized.
Cutter had proved himself to be even worse than Martin had led her to believe. She had thought “Lyon” a good person because the primroses and morning glories had bloomed out of season when she’d first seen him on the beach. But the signals had proved as false as the love he’d professed after he’d seduced her. Cutter had been out to destroy her chances with Martin.
Only Cutter had never considered pregnancy, nor the lengths to which she might go to protect her unborn child from the taint of illegitimacy. Nor had he realized how much Martin might want revenge.
When Martin had discovered she was pregnant, he had seen a way to spite Cutter by claiming something of his brother’s. She had married Martin to give her baby the Lord name, which should have been his.
Still, Cutter had ruined all their lives.
The marriage of convenience had been a tragic mistake.
She felt numb from the long years of marital misery. Numb from the new dangers threatening Jeremy.
But whatever she did, she couldn’t surrender to Cutter. For seven years he had cast a long shadow over her life. No more.
She had to get free of him.
No matter what it cost her.
As she drew closer to the dark house, her tears and thoughts of Cutter ceased as a vague new apprehension mushroomed.
The house was shrouded in darkness.
The only light seemed to come from the base of the huge magnolia tree. All the blossoms that had bloomed earlier that evening had withered and fallen to the ground where they gleamed eerily in the moonlight.
The house was dark. Really dark.
Why weren’t the lights on?
Ghostly and white in the moonlight, the two-story mansion loomed like a sepulcher from the end of the driveway. Her heartbeat thudded against her rib cage as she drove slowly past the magnolia tree standing in its pool of dead blossoms.
She should never have let Jeremy go home early with Kurt.
No. She mustn’t panic. Not yet.
But her heart wouldn’t stop skittering as she drove toward the house.
Her stomach knotted.
Why was she suddenly remembering that other night all those months ago when the last flower had fallen from the giant magnolia tree and those two granite-faced Houston detectives had knocked on her door and said, “Mrs. Lord, I’m afraid we’ve found your husband—”
The outside walls of the mansion were always lit by brilliant floodlights. As were the thick trunks of the trees and the sprawling lawn. The upstairs lights inside the house should be blazing, too. She had been very careful about the lights and the alarm ever since Martin’s death.
She knew—even before she shoved the heavy car door open and inhaled the damp, sickly, magnolia-scented night air. She ran, her sparkly black heels flying across the slick concrete sidewalk.
The front door was ajar; the security system off.
“Jeremy,” she whispered as she peered into the dark house.
Then she screamed his name.
“Jeremy. Jeremy. Jeremy.”
His name bounced off the high ceilings and marble floors in the nearly empty rooms.
When she stepped into the black foyer, glass crunched under her heels. She screamed again, jabbing frantically at the wall where the panel of light switches were.
She found the buttons and jammed her fists against them hard.
The foyer, which contained only a piece or two of essential furniture, burst into light.
“Oh, my God—”
For a moment Cheyenne felt she was in a stranger’s house.
There had been a struggle. A Tiffany lamp lay smashed on the checkerboard, black-and-marble floor. Slivers of a crystal Waterford vase glimmered darkly beside spilled red roses and a puddle of water. The corner of her only remaining Aubusson rug was kicked up and smeared with blood.
Beneath the light switches, on the marble top of a Louis XV table, lay a curling, bloodstained paper. A message had been fashioned out of crude newspaper block letters.
Cheyenne froze. Then she dabbed at a spot of blood on the note and began methodically ironing the paper flat on the cold marble with clammy fingertips.
“$5,000,000. No cops.”
When she dropped the paper, blood stuck to her hands.
Outside a high wind blew through the trees, snapped huge branches as if they were twigs, tore off roof shingles and shredded pink azalea blossoms.
“Jeremy!”
His name whirled through the house as flowers and roof shingles whirled against the windowpanes.
Cheyenne ran toward the staircase. “Jeremy! Kurt! Mrs. Perkins!”
Where were they?
She heard a faint sound from the basement and rushed to the kitchen where the door to the basement yawned into blackness.
When something alive and warm rubbed her foot, Cheyenne jumped as high as if she’d been bitten by one of her mother’s weird night roaming adders.
“Meow!”
A shudder of relief swept her. It was only Panther, Jeremy’s black Persian, glaring up at her with flattened ears and suspicious yellow eyes.
Cheyenne turned on the basement light.
“Jeremy?”
In the gloom near the bottom stair lay Kurt and Mrs. Perkins, their hands and feet bound with wire, their mouths plastered with silver duct tape.
Cheyenne rushed down and ripped the tape from their mouths. She untied them and made sure they were still breathing.
Outside the roaring wind made more roof shingles whirl.
“Jeremy? Where’s Jeremy?”
Gently she slapped Mrs. Perkins’s wrinkled cheek. She shook Kurt’s huge shoulders.
No answer. From either of them. Their faces remained slack-jawed, their bodies limp.
She would have to see about them later.
First—she had to find Jeremy.
The mansion was a mock, nineteenth-century French château, with nineteen-foot carved ceilings. Pretentiously tall windows looked out onto her opulent and magical garden. There were arched doorways, t
en bedrooms and six bathrooms.
Martin had bought the mansion to impress Cutter and Houston society. Tonight the empty shell seemed a stranger’s house. Vaguely she wondered if it had ever been the house of sunshine and warmth and huge flowers, of laughter and parties that had been described in the social columns? Had she really ever loved reading about herself in those columns the next day, which was invariably a degree or two hotter after one of her parties? Had she really ever cared whether people admired her beauty, her success, her child and her marriage?
Had she ever been the happy, assured hostess, wearer of designer gowns, caterer to the rich and famous who had been known for her magical flair with food? Martin the polished host? Had anyone who’d read those columns ever suspected the sinister secrets behind the glitter?
She had been the poor girl, ashamed of her bizarre upbringing, determined to make good and appear normal. She had wanted to be a jet-setting princess—a cultured woman who was glamorous and beautiful and envied. Martin had wanted to be as successful as his brother. Were those ambitions really so wrong?
Like a bewildered and terrified child, Cheyenne ran through the immense shadowy kitchen, down the long, dark hallways, and then up the swirling marble stairway. Turning on every light, she ran from blazing room to room on the second floor, calling Jeremy’s name.
As if light and sound or her son’s name could banish the dark fear in her heart.
The last bedroom was his. As she approached it, she could see the tall magnolia tree through the hall window and all its gleaming dead blossoms on the lawn.
Jeremy’s door was open.
As she had taken nothing from his room to be sold at the auction, all his furnishings were intact.
She stepped inside slowly.
There had been a violent struggle.
His designer sheets had been torn off the bed and dragged halfway across the polished, hardwood floors to the door. His pillows were all over the antique Persian rugs. So were his toys. Encyclopedias littered the floor. There was a smear of blood on the exposed mattress of his four-poster bed.
Like a windup doll moving robotically forward, she took one step after the other toward the empty bed, as if it were a place of undreamed-of evil. Then she sank silently to the faded carpet and leaned against the bed. Tears brimmed in her eyes as she scooped up the pieces of Jeremy’s oldest, dearest teddy bear, the one he still slept with and affectionately called Molly Pooh. As Cheyenne lifted it, the severed head, which had been hanging by a thread, fell off. A handful of stuffing exploded in white puffs from the opening and fell around the room as the magnolia blossoms had fluttered to the lawn.
Hysteria bubbled in her throat. She began to scream and brush the pieces of fluff off her black sweater. She was still screaming when the telephone rang jarringly.
Clutching the bear’s body, she crawled to the phone. She had Caller ID, so she let it ring a second time.
The digital window read, “No data sent.”
She picked up the phone.
“It took you long enough to get home, bitch.”
No, dear God. Not that eerie, scratchy voice.
She wept silently. “Where’, Jeremy?”
“Say hi, Jerry-O.”
“M-mommy!” Jeremy shrieked. Jeremy, her miniature daredevil, the bravest, and most adult-seeming little boy in the whole world, was sobbing so hard she could barely understand him. “I tried to climb the magnolia tree, but he has a big knife. H-he cut me. M-m-o-om—”
“My turn, Jerry-O. Mrs. Lord—no cops. Or no more Jerry-O—”
In the background Jeremy screamed.
“Don’t you hurt him! Don’t you dare hurt him!”
“Now—that depends on you.”
The caller hissed instructions and threats.
Jeremy gave a final scream. “Mommy—”
When the line went dead, she began to shake and sob violently.
The monster wanted five million dollars. He might as well have asked for the sun and the moon.
She didn’t have it.
In her panic she couldn’t think of anyone who did. Never had she felt so helpless with fear and so absolutely alone.
Then she remembered Cutter and his drunken bid for her at the auction.
Dear God.
She went to the window. She could see the topmost branches of her huge magnolia tree.
As she stared at the tree, the strange wind died, and a single, gigantic magnolia blossom at the very top, like a star on a Christmas tree, burst into bloom.
It was a sign.
She picked up the phone.
Four
The phone was ringing when Cutter, still in a mood of self-loathing, strode angrily into his enormous penthouse suite at the Warwick. He was carrying a single Wedgwood cup fashioned of pink roses—all that was left of the smashed china set that he had been forced to buy for an exorbitant price.
Because she loved flowers, dozens of yellow tulips in silver vases emblazoned the four bedrooms and the beautiful living room of the suite. Two balconies overlooked the city. Potted geraniums now decorated them, too.
The suite had been stocked with whiskey and champagne and a dozen other silly romantic items. There was a filmy black negligee lying across his king-size bed in his master bedroom. Perfumed bath oils lined his immense marble tub. A stack of CDs of romantic music lay beside a player. There was even a pile of lurid paperbacks on the bedside table to tempt a lady of dubious literary tastes.
Foolishly, arrogantly he had believed that tonight would be the night Cheyenne would share his suite and his bed.
He focused on a single pink china rose on the fragile china cup.
No way. Not after what he’d done.
Once again he had made a grave miscalculation where the troublesome Cheyenne Rose was concerned.
He remembered the day she had come to him and begged him to help Martin. She had been so beautiful with that rose in her hair. Too beautiful in her prim white suit with her red hair drawn back from her face in that ridiculously tight chignon. Except for the flower, by wearing no makeup and excessively tailored clothes, she had done everything possible to erase her sexuality. Yet she had fired his blood as never before.
As she’d sat in his office he had remembered her naked on the island with flowers in her hair. He had remembered touching her breasts and thighs with his lips and tongue. He had remembered the guttural whimpers that had risen from her throat. He had remembered all the equally sexual things she had done to arouse him. He had remembered how incredibly tender and sweet and wild she was. Last of all, he had remembered sharing the secrets of his soul with her, and he’d felt grim and frightened at the thought that he might still be genuinely in love with her. It was then that the thought of Martin possessing her for all those years had driven Cutter so mad with jealousy that he’d propositioned her by undoing the buttons of her jacket and touching her, saying he’d help her—for a price.
When she’d tried to run, he’d grabbed her hand and yanked her closer, aligning her body to his for a second or two. She had struggled, and as always she had felt hot. So hot. So incredibly hot, and yet so soft and dark and mysterious. His fury had heightened his lust; he had wanted her then more than he had ever wanted a woman. He had seen his own savage desire reflected in her angry eyes.
She had said very softly, almost sobbing, “You just don’t get it, do you? I am not for sale. That’s not why I married your brother. That’s not why I came to you.”
He’d let her go.
With trembling fingers she’d tried to refasten her jacket.
Then she’d run.
He hadn’t believed her then.
He wasn’t so sure now.
So—why had she married Martin?
Damn.
He would ask her. Not that she’d tell him.
It had taken him a month or so to realize he’d treated her abysmally and feel ashamed. He would have to stop bullying her the way he bullied his business subordinates.
Tonight he had let liquor and his temper get the best of him again. After tonight, convincing her she had no choice other than him was going to take much longer than he’d originally expected.
The phone kept ringing.
He was tired.
Too tired to dwell on his remorse about her or talk business to one of his vice presidents on the other side of the world.
He needed a drink. Then a shower. Then sleep. After the stunt he’d pulled at the auction, it was a miracle he wasn’t spending tonight in jail.
The caller could go to hell.
Cutter stepped out onto the balcony and gazed at the sliver of moon in the starless sky and then at the blaze of the city spread out before him and at the cars flying beneath in the dark, the fire of their lights flashing brighter than diamonds and rubies.
The beauty of the night did nothing for him. He had never given a damn for pretty views, and tonight this particular view depressed him. Perhaps there was some emptiness inside him, some secret flaw in his psyche that prevented a response. He saw a city filled with more than a million people, and he hated the sight of it because it only made him feel his own isolation more fiercely.
People said he was incapable of love. Maybe they were right.
Again he saw Cheyenne’s pale face and her tear-glazed eyes and felt swamped by guilt. He drew a harsh breath. In the bar he had wanted her more than ever, but she had rejected him.
He left the balcony for the kitchen where he splashed whiskey into her ridiculous cup made of roses.
Finally when the phone wouldn’t quit, he grabbed it and barked, “Cutter Lord here.”
Hysterical sobs. A shrill cry of anguish that cut all the way to his soul.
He slammed the cup down on the stove so hard he damn near broke it.
“Cutter! Thank God! I—I thought you weren’t ever going to answer!”
A woman was sobbing so incoherently he could neither understand her nor identify her.
His heart began to beat very fast. “Who is this?”
All she could do was repeat his name. “Cutter! Cutter ....”
“Cheyenne?” he whispered, his low voice becoming tense and yet uncustomarily gentle. “Cheyenne?”