by Ann Major
“Yes. Yes,” she rasped.
Then she dropped the phone.
“Damn.” Her terror shook him as he waited while she fumbled to pick it up.
“Cutter—! Are you still there?”
“I’m here.” His voice was calm.
She was breathing fast, way too fast.
“Honey, take a couple of deep breaths and then tell me what’s wrong.”
But he knew. Before she said a single word, he felt as if a fist had slammed viciously into his chest and was gripping his heart in a stranglehold.
“They took him! They took Jeremy.”
The fist tightened like talons. This was his fault. He had known the danger she and Jeremy were in. He should have forced her to accept his terms. “Who?”
“I don’t know. Maybe whoever murdered Martin.”
He knew who Martin’s killer was. And how dangerous he was.
“Cutter, you have to help me. Please. There’s no one else I can turn to. I’ll do anything, everything you want, sleep with you, marry you—if only you’ll—”
So—he had found her price.
But it wasn’t money. Or marriage. It was the life of their son.
He felt more disgusted with himself than ever.
None of that mattered now. “Stay where you are,” he growled. “I’ll get over there as fast as I can.”
Cheyenne went down to see about Kurt and Mrs. Perkins. They were still lying in the exact positions she had left them with their eyes closed. This time she saw the halfopen bottle of sleeping pills on the floor beside Kurt. Most of the pills were in the cap and the bottle. Which meant they hadn’t taken them all. Still—
Cheyenne felt their wrists.
Their pulses were strong.
She began slapping them lightly on their faces and shouting their names.
Kurt groaned and lashed at her drunkenly.
“Don’t take him,” Mrs. Perkins moaned, her words slow and uncustomarily thick. “He’s just a little boy. Please don’t take him. Please don’t kill him.”
Cheyenne sank to the floor beside them in despair. “Where is he, Mrs. Perkins? Where is he?”
“Cheyenne!”
She heard Cutter’s running footsteps.
Dimly she was aware of Cutter bursting into the brilliantly lit mansion like a volcano.
“Cheyenne!” Cutter’s voice boomed everywhere, echoing in the cold, empty house.
She got up slowly, listlessly. The bottle of pills fell from her hand and rolled across the concrete floor. Panther meowed and raced excitedly up the stairs ahead of her.
She followed, careful not to trip over the cat. Dazed, she almost ran into Cutter in the hall.
He took her into his arms and crushed her against his hard chest. He was strong, yet he cradled her to him very gently. He cupped her delicate chin in his huge hands and smoothed her hair out of her eyes. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered.
She was stunned by such tenderness from him. Gone was the crude brother-in-law who’d tried to undress her in his office. Gone, too, was the fierce, dark stranger who had bid for her at the auction. In his place was the lover who had captured her heart on the island and had become the father of her only child. The man who had made love to her first and then bared his soul.
Hungrily she drank in his words.
“I’ll find him. I swear I will. But you’ve got to help me, Cheyenne. You’ve got to pull yourself together. I can’t do it without you.”
Very gently, with his hand at the back of her waist, he guided her into the kitchen. “Honey, I’m going to make a pot of coffee while you tell me everything. Absolutely everything.”
He was at the stove when she foolishly threw herself into his arms again and began weeping inconsolably. “He’s gone. And it’s all my fault. I should never have left him alone. It’s no use.”
“You’ve got to stop it,” Cutter ordered, petting her hair. “Please ... stop. I can’t bear it if you cry now, Cheyenne. You can cry later, if—”
His voice broke.
She stared at him in horror, understanding his allusion.
Then something outside her fear and their distrust took charge and made mockery of all the years of hurt and anger and despair. They clung to each other hungrily, each as desperate as the other. Each understanding perfectly how the other felt.
Their loss bound them. He was hurt and afraid—as she was. In their mutual need to console and comfort and soothe the other, everything that had stood between them melted away. She felt shattered inside, and so did he. And yet because he was there, she could bear it because in that moment she felt that more, far more than just her son bound her to this man she had never been able to forget or forgive.
She closed her eyes when she felt him begin to shake helplessly.
“It’s my fault, too,” he said abruptly, breaking the spell, letting her go, almost pushing her away. “But we can think about that later. We’ve got work to do now.”
“Yes... Yes,” she agreed dully, sinking into a kitchen chair, feeling strangely bereft and more afraid without his hard arms around her.
Outside—the night was totally dark.
Jeremy needed to pee real bad, but he was afraid to ask Baldy if he could go.
“I’ll be Mr. X to you, and you’ll be Jerry-O to me,” the kidnapper had whispered in the pirogue as he poled through dark water carpeted with water hyacinths.
Baldy was great big. He had the ugly bald head of a yucky toad and the thick body of a wrestler. He wore wirerimmed sunglasses even in the swamp. His fatigues smelled as yucky as the dead, rotting smells that seeped up through the hyacinths.
Jeremy was used to adults being impressed with him ‘cause he was smart and pretended to act brave. He wanted to act big. To pretend he knew all the answers. To be unafraid. But everything about Baldy sent chills down Jeremy’s spine.
Tears leaked behind Jeremy’s eyelids all the time now. They were in a shack in the swamp, and as Jeremy stood tensely on a rickety wooden chair in front of a blackened mirror, Baldy held his knife so close to his face, the blade got all blurry. Suddenly Baldy heard what he thought was a motor. He snapped the blade shut and tiptoed to the door.
Outside there were only birdcalls, liquid ploppings in the pea-soup water and the hum of giant mosquitoes.
Jeremy’s bladder felt like it was about to pop.
He wished he were home with his mother. The mere thought of her tenderness and gentleness, of the way she would hold him if he were scared or kiss him if he were hurt brought more tears and then total loss of control.
Suddenly it was all too much.
Three things happened at once.
He wet his pants like a baby.
He screamed as the warm urine trickled down his legs.
Then he bolted for the trees.
If he could be fast enough—And climb high enough—
But even though he raced at top speed, it was as if he moved in slow motion.
Baldy was that much faster.
“You’re going to be sorry, Jerry-O.”
A large hand gripped his collar in a stranglehold. Then the knife handle slammed into Jeremy’s head, and the cabin exploded in tiny red dots.
Cheyenne was tired. So tired. And yet too restless to sleep. She’d wanted to go out and look for Jeremy with Cutter and his men, but Cutter had said she had to stay by the phone in case the kidnapper called back.
For once she’d obeyed him without a quarrel. After she’d told him everything she knew, he’d interviewed Mrs. Perkins and Kurt. Then he’d made dozens of calls to people on both sides of the border, calls he hadn’t allowed her to listen to. When two of his men had shown up to guard her, he’d gone out without telling her where he was going.
“Cutter, I want to know everything,” she had begged.
They had looked at each other for a long moment. He hadn’t trusted her any more than she trusted him.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes. But in this case, the
less you know the better.”
“who?”
“Martin was involved with some very dangerous people.”
“No kidding.”
Cutter had stared at her.
“Do you know who they are?” she asked.
“Do you?”
“Martin never told me anything.”
That statement revealed too much about their marriage.
Cutter’s face darkened with grim sympathy. Tenderly he kissed her brow. “I have to go.”
“Tell me who—Tell me where you’re—”
“Shh! Paul’s here, if you need him.”
“I need you.”
“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” Cutter said gently. “You warm my heart.”
“How can you joke?”
He took a long breath. “I’m not joking.”
“When will you be back?”
“Look—” Again, his voice was gentle.
Cutter opened the door, and she felt the vastness of the chasm between them.
“I will go crazy here with nothing to do. Without you.”
“We’ve been through this. You must wait by the phone.”
When she’d nodded, calmer for an instant, he’d left before she grew hysterical again.
So, now, here she was—in her bedroom, the bedroom that she’d filled with antiques, the pink bedroom that had always been hers alone, and never Martin’s. Tonight, denuded of its best furniture, without Cutter, the room felt every bit as much of a prison as it had all those years of her unendurable marriage.
She lay down on her bed to wait. Odd, how she longed for Cutter’s return. He had been so kind. So concerned. So helpful. Not blaming her at all even when she’d professed her guilt again and again.
He had taken her into his arms and said repeatedly, “No, it’s my fault more than it’s yours. I was blind to what you and Martin were going through. But after you came to see me that day when you asked me to help Martin, I investigated Martin’s operation. Since then, and since his death, I have learned a great deal about the people he was doing business with. I know how dangerous they are.”
If he knew who they were, why was it so hard to find their son? Why did he have all his men scouring the city and state for Jeremy? Why were his top executives from all over the world flying in tomorrow morning to help with the search? Why had he told his pilot to load his jet with rifles and high-capacity assault weapons? With hundreds of rounds of hollow grade ammunition, and extra clips? With pump shotguns, and side arms? When she’d asked, Cutter had refused to answer, infuriating her by insisting that the less she knew the better.
“But why do you need guns?”
“You don’t want to know,” he’d said.
“If Jeremy gets hurt, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Another crime to add to your long list.” His skin had gone gray, his eyes bleak. “Honey, do you think I’d ever forgive myself?”
“I’m sorry I said that,” she had whispered then, feeling his pain in all its intensity because it was hers.
Again she felt bound to him, as she’d felt on the island, as she’d felt through all the years of her unhappy marriage to his brother. Again, everything melted away but their need for each other as two human beings sharing a terrible crisis.
“I’m sorry for belittling you at the auction,” he whispered.
She put her hand very gently over his. “Maybe... No. Not maybe. I should have been nicer to you, too. Maybe it’s time we started giving each other the benefit of the doubt—”
They had looked at each other in a new way, and yet in the old way, too.
“Sounds good to me,” he had said, cupping her chin. “Be strong. I need to know you believe in me.”
Then he had left her.
She lay in the darkness, her mind spinning crazily with cherished memories and nightmarish visions. She remembered the day Jeremy had been born. She had nearly died, and Martin hadn’t cared. The pain had been terrible, and she had lost control and screamed and screamed for Cutter. Then days later when he’d come, she’d let Martin throw him out even though she had longed for Cutter to stay forever.
She remembered Jeremy cutting his first tooth, saying his first words, taking his first steps, climbing his first tree, falling out of a tree and breaking his arm—his first broken bone. He had been reading books at three and doing multiplication tables, too. He had always tried so hard to do everything well and had passed out of two grades. Martin, who’d rarely noticed him, had despised his son’s accomplishments because they reminded him of Cutter’s. For the same reason he had disliked Jeremy’s avidly curious nature and his tendency to snoop and eavesdrop.
Cutter who might have felt pride in his son, had never been there for any of the first events in his son’s life. Maybe now, Cutter would never know Jeremy.
Was Jeremy even still alive? She kept hearing his final scream before the kidnapper had hung up. Hours later she was still awake when Cutter, his dark face even grimmer and more haggard, returned alone.
“Jeremy?” she whispered, pushing herself up by the elbows when Cutter came and sat wearily in the chair by her bed and turned on a lamp.
Golden light spilled over them both and shone in his black hair. The shadows under his tired eyes were as dark as those moon-shaped circles under hers. For no reason at all she felt again that vague urge to touch him, to stroke his hair soothingly, to fling herself in his arms and seek her own comfort. But some other part of herself was determined to reject him.
“Nothing yet,” he told her. He picked up one of her paperbacks on the table and thumbed through it with a grim smile. “How can you like this junk?”
“For the happy endings,” she whispered.
He was silent.
“Any progress at all?” she asked.
His face was unreadable as he set her book down. His voice was clipped when he leaned closer. “I told you—don’t ask. False hopes are too painful. For both of us. I’ll tell you when I know something.”
Her mouth thinned when Cutter got up from the chair.
She ached for him to stay near her. She distrusted this closeness she felt toward him since she’d decided long ago that he had to be the coldest man on earth.
“So—any calls?” he demanded.
Wearily she shook her head.
He went into her bathroom and turned on the water.
Feeling abandoned, she called after him, “What are you doing?”
When he didn’t answer she couldn’t bear the room without him, so she arose and trailed after him as if she were a lonesome puppy.
He was sitting on the side of her tub, steam billowing around him in perfumed plumes, as he tested the hot water with his hand.
His kind smile made her feel warm and safe and long to be in his arms.
“You’re worn-out. If you can’t sleep, you can at least take a bath,” he said, his voice concerned.
“No—”
Outside the sky was streaked with red. The sun was coming up. She saw a new bud on the magnolia tree.
“It’s nearly six,” he said. “It’s going to be a long day. You’re going to take a hot bath. When you’re through, you’re going to come downstairs and I’ll cook us both some breakfast.”
She protested even though she liked his protective treatment and kindnesses. “I’m not hungry. I’m not—”
And yet, she wanted all these things from him. And more.
“I know. Neither am I. We’re both going to eat anyway. Then we’ll go outside and walk in your garden. You can tell me about Jeremy’s daredevil, tree-climbing adventures.”
With Jeremy gone, she shouldn’t care about bathing or eating or talking or being with Cutter or about anything, but because Cutter wanted her to, she did those things and felt stronger. Because he was with her, she didn’t feel so alone.
Because he shared her burden and, thereby, lightened it, she almost felt—hope.
Later, when neither of them could sleep but both of th
em were even more exhausted, he drew her down on the couch in the library beside him where they both tried to read—he a business magazine, she a trashy thriller. But it wasn’t long before she found her eyelids drooping. She laid her head back against the couch, thinking to rest her eyes.
Some time during the night she awoke and was startled to realize she had been dreaming of Cutter. She was even more startled to find her body was nestled intimately into his. Her head lay upon his shoulder. Her splayed fingers fanned out over his thigh. His arm lay burningly across her breast.
They had slept together as trustingly and as contentedly as they had on the island. Yet now the knowledge of it made her skin grow hot and her breath come raspily. When she grew rigidly still, not daring to move, lest she wake him, he intuitively sensed the change in her and drowsily opened his eyes.
“Cheyenne?” he whispered softly, solemnly. “Are you still here, my darling?”
Darling?
He had called her his darling.
She jumped at the gentleness of his husky voice, intending to run.
But he held her there in the soft, hot darkness.
Not with his hands or by any use of force. Not even with more huskily spoken words. His stark gaze was enough to make her know how much he needed her.
If he wanted her that much, she wanted to stay.
She wanted to go on lying with him.
And for a long time they did continue to lie together in the darkness, their legs and arms tangled, neither of them daring to speak again or bat so much as an eyelash for fear of frightening the other away.
At last he stirred, and she felt his warm hand brush her brow.
She lifted her face against his fingers and closed her eyes like a contented cat as he stroked her.
He brushed his lips against her hair, his breath burning into her scalp. Then his mouth stole lower across her face, bestowing tingly, feathery kisses upon each closed eyelid. She held her breath as his mouth slowly trailed down her velvet cheek to her lips.
He kissed her very slowly, making her wait until she felt so hot she ached.
At the same time she willed herself not to feel anything as he kissed her and caressed her. Not when Jeremy—