Lisa Jackson's the Abandoned Box Set

by Lisa Jackson

  Adam told him. Right there in the old parking lot with the first few storm clouds rolling in from the west. Rain began to fall from the dark sky as Adam explained his theory of being set up and he didn’t stop, not even when Kent scoffed at him.

  Victor listened, though Marnie guessed he wasn’t buying any of Adam’s theories.

  “All I want is another chance to prove that I’m innocent,” Adam finally said, “and a public apology from you, absolving me of all guilt when that proof is uncovered.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Kent said. “You’ve got no proof of a conspiracy against you or whatever you think happened. You’re grasping at straws, man.”

  “Maybe your straw,” Adam said with a slow, cold smile, challenging Kent without so much as lifting a finger. Kent rose to the bait, his jaw set and his handsome face flushed dark. He was ready to fling himself at Adam, but he must have thought better of his actions, for he straightened his tie instead and backed down. For the moment.

  Victor remained unswayed. “All right, Drake, you’ve had your say. And I’ve listened. And I only have one thing to say to you—keep the hell away from my daughter. As for your cockamamy theories, keep them to yourself. You screwed me over, Drake, and I have a long memory. So don’t try to drag innocent people’s names through the mud, because it won’t work with me.” He’d slowly built himself into a rage. “Come on, Marnie—” He reached for her arm.

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “What?” Her father stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Of course you’re coming with me, now get your things and—”

  “Listen, Dad. Nothing’s changed,” she said, wincing at the lie. “I’m not coming back to the company. The paper I gave you was a resignation, not a request for a leave of absence. And I haven’t forgotten what you did on the night of the party.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Kent go white.

  “But you’re coming back to Seattle,” Kent said.

  “Not yet.”

  “For God’s sake, what’s gotten into you?” he sputtered. “Has Drake brainwashed you?” Flinging one hand in the air, he turned to Victor and as if Marnie hadn’t a mind of her own said, “You talk some sense into her and take her back with the car. I’ll sail the Marnie Lee into port and have her repaired.”

  “Over my dead body,” Marnie cried. “I’m responsible for the boat, and I’ll take care of her.”

  “And what about him?” Kent hooked an insolent thumb in Adam’s direction.

  “He’s his own person. He got what he wanted from me, didn’t he?” she said, coloring a little. “He got you both up here. He can do whatever he pleases.”

  “For God’s sake, Marnie, listen to reason,” her father begged, but she turned swiftly on her heel and headed back to the lodge. She was tired of men—all men—manipulating her, using her, thinking about her from their own selfish perspectives. Well, the whole lot of them could rot in hell. Victor for smothering her, Kent for betraying her and lying to the press about marrying her, and Adam for seducing her and playing with her heart.

  If only she could run to a nunnery, she thought sarcastically, but stopped dead in her tracks. She wasn’t running away from her problems, she was running to a new self-sufficient life. She’d start her own publicity firm, just as soon as the Marnie Lee was repaired.

  She threw things in her bag and listened, hoping for the sound of a car’s engine as it left, but instead she heard the door of the lodge open and slam shut. “You’re leaving.” Adam’s voice startled her. She’d expected her father.

  “That’s right.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Marnie, I—”

  She shouldered her bag and brushed past him. “Don’t bother apologizing, Adam. It’s not your style.” With one last glance that she hoped appeared scathing, she pressed forever into her memory how he looked just then, with three days’ worth of stubble on his chin, his hair uncombed, his clothes unclean. Her father was right. She was better off without him. So why, then, did her heart ache so?

  She left Adam in the lobby. Her father would see that Adam was duly thrown out and that Deception Lodge was secured. Oh, she’d bungled this first attempt at independence, she thought miserably as she hiked down the trail leading to the beach where the rubber raft awaited, but her mangled attempt was because of Adam. She should never have let him get so close to her.

  Rain peppered the ground, puddling in the sandy path and giving the forest a fresh, earthy cleanliness that reminded her of Adam.

  “You’ll get over him,” she predicted, but wondered just how long it would take.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HE’D BLOWN IT. With Marnie. With Victor. With Montgomery Inns.

  Adam threw his few new belongings into a nylon bag and slung it over his shoulder before heading to the office of the fleabag of a motel he’d called home for the past week. He’d stayed in Chinook Harbor, knowing Marnie had checked into a hotel on the other side of town. Several times he’d tried to contact her. So far, she hadn’t responded.

  He didn’t really blame her.

  Ever since the confrontation with Victor in the parking lot of the lodge, Adam had relived the scene over and over again in his mind. He should have anticipated the outcome. Marnie, furious with all of them, had left without so much as a glance over her stiff shoulder, and Adam had felt the unlikely urge to run after her. And what? Apologize? Ridiculous! He couldn’t start letting a woman foul up his plans—especially when that woman was Victor Montgomery’s only child, his princess.

  As for Victor, the old man had looked as if he wanted to kill Adam right on the front porch of Deception Lodge. Somehow, Victor had managed to control his thirst for blood and had, instead, made a big show of kicking Adam off Montgomery property. Victor had been white with rage, shaking as he’d chained the front door and slammed the padlock shut, swearing and threatening to call the police.

  “This is it, Drake,” he’d growled, his voice so hushed Adam had barely heard it over the sound of the surf. “You’ve pushed me too far this time. The inns were one thing. Money, I can always make. But my daughter…” By this time Victor’s lips were bloodless, his blue eyes colder than ice. “I’ll never forget how you used and humiliated her to get to me. If you breathe one word of this to anyone, I swear I’ll call the authorities and then I’ll personally wring your worthless neck!” With that, he’d stalked to his car, and Adam, every muscle aching with restraint, hadn’t lunged at the man, nor begged forgiveness. He’d just stood there and when Victor had opened the door of the Mercedes and stared at him, Adam had met Victor’s unwavering hate-filled gaze with his own steady scrutiny.

  Victor’s reaction had been predictable. As had Marnie’s. The odd man out had been Simms. Everyone else had acted right in character. Victor had been the indignant, furious father; Marnie a proud woman who’d discovered that her lover hadn’t cared for her. But Simms had been strangely quiet and subdued for a jilted fiancé.

  Thinking of Marnie, Adam winced. She had been an innocent in all this. Sure, she’d been in love with Simms, but she’d never done anything directly against Adam. In fact, if she were telling him the truth, she’d protested his innocence to the board of directors of Montgomery Inns and she’d trusted him not to hurt her.

  He closed his eyes, willing the image of Marnie’s beautiful face from his mind and concentrating instead on Simms—the man she was supposed to marry. Simms’s reaction to the scene at the lodge had been odd, to say the least. Instead of being pleased with Adam’s dressing down by Victor, instead of reveling in Adam’s verbal lashing, Simms had seemed more interested in Marnie and their damned boat. It had been all Victor could do to restrain Simms from chasing down the path after Marnie. No smug smile cast in Adam’s direction, no supercilious look down Simms’s nose. No, in fact, once over the initial shock of seeing Adam, Simms had only been interested in Marnie, the yacht and the well-being of both.

  Maybe the bastar
d really did care for her, Adam thought with a grimace, as he checked out of the motel. He handed the cashier his credit card, hastily scribbled his name and stuffed the receipt in the pocket of his stiff new jeans.

  Outside, the weather was warm, sunlight spangling the waters of the marina several blocks downhill. Boats of all sizes and shapes were tethered to the docks. The shipmasts looked like telephone poles spaced too closely together. Hulls gleamed in the sunlight, and sails flapped noisily before catching the breeze that blew steadily across the harbor. The air was thick with the smells of fish and seaweed, the cloudless sky littered with gulls and terns.

  He spotted the Marnie Lee as he walked toward the waterfront. Chinook Harbor was a sleepy little village where people knew everything about each other and loved to gossip. Adam, from nights spent at a local watering hole and from days lingering over coffee at a popular diner, had learned from a few discreet inquiries that Marnie had placed her yacht in the care of Ryan Barns, a sailor with a reputation of caring more for boats than for his wife and small daughter.

  He’d also learned that the repairs would take several weeks.

  Marnie would either have to stay on the island and wait, or return to Seattle, or continue on her flight for freedom by some other means of transportation. Though she’d never fully confessed that she’d left Montgomery Inns to start a life of her own, Adam had guessed as much. Her argument with Victor at the lodge had confirmed his suspicions. Her bid for independence won his grudging approval. Few women, or men for that matter, would give up the good life just to prove themselves.

  Yep. Marnie was one helluva woman.

  Marnie, Marnie, Marnie. It would be best if he stayed away from her. But right now, he couldn’t. Not yet. Despite all the pain he’d already caused her, he had to convince her to help him again.

  Fat chance, he thought, irritated with how he’d bungled their relationship. What relationship? he thought irritably, and sighed in self-disgust. He’d destroyed any chance of her trusting him again.

  A few tourists and townspeople wandered along the streets of Chinook Harbor. The air was clean and clear, the only evidence of the storm of the past week the streaks of mud lining the sidewalks and clogging the gutters.

  Adam trekked the two blocks to the pier, hoping to spy Marnie, but was disappointed. The woman behind the desk of Barns’s Charters and Repairs, Renada, if the smudged nameplate on her desk could be believed, cast him the same patient smile she always gave him, but she wouldn’t let him near the Marnie Lee.

  “Sorry, Mr. Drake, no can do,” Renada said, as she had each time he’d visited. “You know the rules. Now, if you’d like to talk to Mr. Barns, I’ll just call him…” She reached for the phone on the corner of her desk, but Adam shook his head. He’d already talked to Barns and gotten nowhere.

  He turned to leave just as Ryan Barns himself swung through a back door. The man was short, wiry, with several tattoos decorating his beefy forearms. Sweat stains darkened the faded blue material of a T-shirt that matched the color of his eyes.

  “Mr. Drake, back again, I see,” Barns drawled, snapping a grimy cloth from the hip pocket of sagging jeans and wiping black oil from his hands on the rag. He smelled of diesel and tobacco. “Don’t tell me. Ya come wantin’ to get on board the Marnie Lee again.”

  “I’m looking for Miss Montgomery.”

  Barns sniffed and stuffed the oily rag back into his pocket. “She ain’t here, but I told her you came snooping around here the other day and she was fit to be tied. Told me in no uncertain terms that you weren’t allowed on her boat, that you and some guy named Simms were strictly off-limits.”

  “Is that so?”

  Barns nodded and let out a whistle between slightly gapped front teeth. “I don’t know what you did to that little lady, but she’s madder’n hell at you.”

  “Just tell her I’d like to talk to her.”

  “Already did,” Barns replied amiably. “And she told me to tell you to—” he glanced at his secretary who was just lighting a cigarette “—how’d she put it, Rennie? Something about buying a one-way ticket to hell—no, no, that wasn’t it.”

  Renada let the smoke roll out her nostrils. “I think it was more like, ‘Tell Mr. Drake he can stow away on the next steamer bound for hell, but he’s not to set foot on the Marnie Lee.’”

  “That was it!” Barns grinned and snapped his fingers. “I thought she was jokin’, but she never once cracked a smile.”

  “Just tell her I was here again,” Adam said as he left Renada and Barns chuckling at his expense.

  In the motel’s parking lot, Adam tossed his bag into the trunk of his rental car, then climbed behind the wheel. He knew where Marnie was staying, he’d just wanted to give her time to cool down before he showed up on her doorstep. But she’d refused to return his phone calls, and the one time he’d stopped by her hotel, she’d refused to meet him for a drink.

  Adam couldn’t wait any longer. He had to talk to her. Whether she wanted to see him or not.

  So what’re you going to do? Shanghai her? That particular thought brought a lift to the corners of his mouth and a warm feeling deep in his gut. Though he’d tried, he couldn’t forget making love to her—hot and wild, savage and yet laced with tenderness, their lovemaking had burned bright in his mind. Especially at night.

  He’d thought about finding himself another woman; there were lots of bored women in this town who had cast interested glances in his direction, but he’d never so much as tried to catch their eyes. No, right now, all of his sexual fantasies were tied up with Victor Montgomery’s daughter.

  Forbidden fruit.

  Nonetheless, no other woman would do. Not until this mess with Montgomery Inns was resolved and Marnie was out of his blood forever. He flicked on the Ford’s engine and edged into the slow flow of traffic.

  One way or another, he had to convince Marnie to see things his way.

  * * *

  THE NOON SUN BEAT down with the intensity of July rather than late May, though no one had jumped into the pool, which sparkled invitingly near Marnie’s table. Beneath a striped umbrella, Marnie sipped her tea and finished the crumbs of her croissant. She scanned the headlines of a Seattle paper she’d purchased in the lobby, unable to keep from looking for any information on Montgomery Inns.

  The last time she’d seen her father, he’d been as angry as she’d ever seen him.

  And Adam. She couldn’t think of him without hurting inside.

  “Moron,” she muttered at herself as she sipped her tea. For the first time in days she’d felt like eating. So she’d ordered lunch on the veranda and settled in at this table flanked by planters overflowing with pink-and-white tulips and pale yellow daffodils. Only a few feet away, the aquamarine water in the pool shimmered invitingly.

  Maybe she was finally getting over Adam, she thought, still scanning the paper.

  Right. And maybe horses have learned to fly. Idly, she stirred her tea.

  Somehow, she had to get on with her life. Without Adam Drake messing it up. She thought about how he’d planned her seduction, how he’d played with her emotions and how gullible she’d been. Believing him. Trusting him. She’d even fantasized that she’d been falling in love with him.

  Silly, spoiled little girl. Used to getting your way. Well, when it comes to men and love, you just don’t seem to learn. First Kent. Now Adam. What a pathetic list of men to fall in love with!

  “I’m not, never have been and never will be in love with Adam Drake.” She shoved her plate aside, licked her fingers and flipped through the classified section of the paper. Maybe having the Marnie Lee put up for repairs was a turn of good luck. She couldn’t just climb on the boat and sail away from her problems. She had to face her future. A future without Kent, without Montgomery Inns and definitely without Adam.

  She could move anywhere she chose. She had enough money to start her own public-relations firm, and if she were frugal, she could manage for nearly a year before she’d have to
get a job to supplement her income.

  She couldn’t just take off on the boat and put off her decision about where she was going to live forever. She ran her fingers down the classified section of “business opportunities.” Maybe there was a firm she could buy—on a contract, of course—and in time…

  “Marnie?”

  The sound of Adam’s voice was like a jolt of electricity. She visibly jumped and snapped her head around to find him standing just outside the shade of the umbrella. Oh, please, God, no! Her heart thumped crazily at the sight of him, but she set her jaw and eyed him coolly. “I thought I made it clear—I don’t want to speak to you.”

  “I got the message.” He grabbed a chair from a nearby table, twisted it around and straddled it, his eyes squinting against the sun as he looked at her.

  “I don’t think you did. I never want to see you again.”

  “Never’s a long time.”

  “Not long enough.” She scooted her chair back, intending to leave, but he reacted too quickly, reaching out with the speed of a striking snake, his fingers closing tightly over her wrist. “Just hear me out, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s important.”

  “Believe me, Mr. Drake, we don’t have anything to discuss.”

  “I don’t blame you for being angry.”

  “I’m way past angry, Adam. In fact, I’m beyond furious and enraged. Even livid doesn’t quite describe—”

  “Just listen to me.”

  “No—”

  “Please,” he said softly, and her heart turned to mush.

  She had to remind herself what a black-souled bastard he really was. “There’s no point, Adam,” she said, pulling hard on her hand, but he didn’t budge. “Let me go.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll call security.”

  “And cause a scene?”

  “Yes! You don’t have an exclusive on creating a scandal, you know,” she gambled. She’d been brought up believing in decorum and doing the right thing, but Adam blew all her beliefs right out of the water.