He’d known he was going to lose her again but not so soon. God, not like this.
Jackson glanced up at the curving staircase, then reversed direction and sprinted to the street. He was going on instinct rather than logic. From the corner of his vision he could see two of the hotel’s security guards moving purposefully toward the corridor that led to the art gallery and the event rooms, but he didn’t pause. He burst through the front entrance. “Charlie!”
A long black limo was idling down the street from the hotel, its wheels encroaching on the sidewalk. A large man in a chauffeur’s cap was closing the rear door when a woman’s high-heeled shoe tumbled from the opening.
Jackson dived for the car and grabbed the edge of the door, trying to force it open. “Charlie!”
He only had a moment to glimpse the scene inside the limo, yet the image became seared into his brain. Charlotte was on the floor of the car, her legs a blur of motion as she fought to kick out at the men who held her. Dan Corbin had his arm locked around her throat and his other hand flattened across Charlotte’s mouth. Richard jammed a black revolver into the side of her ribs.
But that was all Jackson saw. An instant later, pain exploded through his skull. He was out cold before his face hit the pavement.
CHARLOTTE DIDN’T WANT to cry. She couldn’t permit herself the luxury of falling apart, even in private. She had to be practical. The Corbins could return at any time. She should be formulating a plan of escape.
But even if the door to this room swung open and a clear route to freedom appeared, she wouldn’t leave. Not without Jackson.
She cradled his head on her lap and peered at his face. There were no windows in this place. The only light came from a bare bulb in the center of the ceiling. It was more like a closet than a room, less than six feet wide and scarcely ten feet long. There were rows of holes in the cement-block walls, as if there had once been shelves fastened there, but nothing was stored in here now. All that was left on the musty cement floor were some flattened pieces of cardboard.
Charlotte shivered. Her silk blouse and short skirt provided little protection against the damp air, and her legs were going numb from kneeling on the cardboard, yet she didn’t want to move around. She didn’t want to leave Jackson. “Wake up,” she whispered. “Please, Jackson, open your eyes.”
There were purple bruises on Jackson’s forehead and right cheek and a lump on the back of his skull, but there had been no bleeding, thank God. The dried blood that smeared his cuffs and the front of his jacket wasn’t his, it was Luc’s. She tried to reassure herself that Jackson was going to be all right, that he was only temporarily knocked out, but her hope wasn’t based on any medical expertise. No, there was nothing logical about her feelings, she simply couldn’t imagine losing him.
It was because of her that he was hurt.
Yet this wasn’t the first time he’d been hurt because of her, was it?
She blinked hard, trying to keep the tears from falling, but one rolled down her cheek and dropped on Jackson’s forehead. She wiped it away, then ran her fingertips into his hair and automatically smoothed it back.
Their survival was at stake. This wasn’t the time to dwell on that horrible scene in her office. They were facing far more important issues than their personal relationship.
But it was as impossible to shut out the echoes of his anger as it was to shut off her fear.
All these years she’d resented Jackson for deserting her, but he’d had plenty of cause for resentment himself. She should have realized how sensitive he would have been about the difference between his background and Adrian’s, yet it had been such a nonissue for her she hadn’t dreamed he would have considered it.
And she’d held herself responsible for their failure at sex—she’d never guessed he would have blamed himself.
She licked at a tear that trickled into the corner of her mouth, passing her tongue over the welt on her lip. Most of the swelling was from Dan Corbin’s rough treatment. But not all. Some of the tenderness was from having her lip crushed against her teeth by Jackson’s kiss.
How was it that two people who cared so much about each other seemed destined to keep inflicting more pain on each other?
Men’s voices sounded from somewhere in the corridor beyond the room. Charlotte looked at the flat steel door, her pulse tripping with dread. She recognized Richard Corbin’s cigarette-roughened drawl and the calmer tones of his brother, but there was a third voice that was unfamiliar. Could it belong to the chauffeur who had struck Jackson? Although she strained to listen, the conversation was too far away for her to make out the words. Moments later it faded completely.
Jackson’s breathing changed, growing more rapid. A groan rumbled from his throat.
Charlotte stroked his cheek. “Jackson?” she murmured. “Can you hear me?”
He moved his head against her thighs. “Charlotte? What…?”
“You were hit on the head.” She placed her hand near the spot behind his ear where she’d found the bump. “Are you okay? Is there anything I can do?”
He opened his eyes. His gaze was unfocused, wandering around the room as if he didn’t register what he was seeing, before it finally steadied on hers. He touched the back of his fingers to her neck. His hand was shaking. “Did they hurt you, Charlotte?”
Her lip throbbed, her throat ached from Dan’s choke hold and her side was bruised from where Richard had shoved his gun, but those discomforts were minor. She had no cause to complain.
Except that Jackson was calling her Charlotte. He’d called her Charlie when he’d kissed her and when he’d tried to stop the Corbins. Now he’d gone back to Charlotte. Somehow it made the ache in her throat worse.
“I’m fine,” she said.
He rolled away from her lap and sat up quickly, then clenched his jaw and pressed the heel of his hand against his head.
“Oh, be careful,” Charlotte said. “They hit you awfully hard.”
Jackson breathed slowly through his nose for a while before he shifted to his knees. “I tried to stop them, but I didn’t do much good.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Jackson. It’s my fault. I should have been more careful, but I was worried about Luc and wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings. The Corbins came out of nowhere.”
“They were counting on Luc to be a distraction.”
“Is he…?”
“Luc’s a fighter. The last I saw of him, he was still hanging on.” He patted his pockets. “Damn, they took the phone.”
“You had a phone?”
“I found yours in the lobby.” He looked around. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. After they knocked you out, they blindfolded me and—” Her breath hitched as she remembered the terror of that ride. “I couldn’t see you. I didn’t know how badly you were hurt until they dumped us in here. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He ran his fingers along the back of his head, then scrutinized them. “No blood, not much swelling. I’ve probably got a mild concussion, that’s all. I’ll have a headache for a while, but it won’t need treatment.” He peeled off his jacket and reached out to swing it around her shoulders.
She started to shrug it off. “No, Jackson, you need this.”
“You’re shivering.”
“I’m all right.”
“Now’s not the time to be stubborn, Charlotte,” he said. “Keep the jacket. I can hear your teeth chattering.”
She slid her arms into the sleeves and his warmth enveloped her instantly. So did his scent, chasing away the dank smell of the room. She rolled the cuffs back above her wrists, remembering that she’d worn Jackson’s shirt the night before. It seemed impossibly long ago now.
“Better?”
She swallowed against another wave of tears. “Everything’s such a mess. How did we end up like this?”
He regarded her in silence, as if he wasn’t sure whether she was referring to what was happening to them or what was happening between
them.
He chose the less personal topic. “Luc overheard the Corbins plan to kidnap you. They obviously intend to hold you until Anne signs the hotel over to them.”
“She won’t do that.”
“She’ll do it in a heartbeat.”
Charlotte overlapped the front edges of Jackson’s jacket and crossed her arms over the extra folds of denim. Paper crackled in the breast pocket. Dimly she remembered that Marie had slipped the package with her gris-gris in there. God, that seemed impossibly long ago, too. “Mama can’t give up,” she murmured. “It’s more than just a pile of old bricks to her. She knows how important—”
“Anne loves you. She would never choose the hotel over you.”
Somehow the topic was turning personal anyway. Charlotte inhaled shakily and pressed her back against the wall. “I’m sorry, Jackson.”
“I’m sorry, too.” He braced his knuckles on the floor and shoved himself upright. He swayed for an instant, bumping into the wall with his shoulder, until he stretched out his arm to steady himself. He walked to the door and tried the latch. It didn’t move. “I should have been thinking of you, but I was too wrapped up in my job.”
“I didn’t mean I’m sorry about this situation,” she said, waving her hand at the room. “Although I am. But I was talking about what happened…before.”
He studied the door for a while, then returned to stand in front of her. He squatted and rested his forearms on his thighs. “So was I, Charlotte.”
The light from the bare bulb overhead was harsh. It accentuated the bruises on Jackson’s face and the taut lines beside his mouth. It also made the sadness in his eyes impossible to miss.
She wiped her cheeks, not surprised to find them wet. “I never cry, you know. I don’t lose my temper or raise my voice either. But since you came home, I can’t seem to stop doing all three.”
“The hotel was your home, not mine,” he said. “I was always a visitor.”
They were picking up the argument where they’d left off, except the passion was gone. That made it even sadder. Charlotte dropped her head back against the wall. “We’ve been abducted and locked into a windowless closet by a pair of criminals who are bent on stealing my family’s legacy. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that we’re still pulling apart our past?”
“Maybe. But now that we’ve opened the wound, we might as well let it drain.”
“Always the doctor.”
“Exactly. I’ll always be a doctor. It’s who I am.”
“I know. I’ve seen you in action. It’s what you were meant to do.”
His jaw tightened as he regarded his hands. The harsh light made the scar on the right one appear darker and longer than usual. “That’s true now, but it started out as a way to prove myself. That’s why I went into medicine instead of taking over my father’s appliance business or joining you at the hotel. I needed to feel I was worth something.”
“Jackson—”
“You said earlier that you wanted me to be honest. You deserve to hear all of it.”
She hugged his jacket more tightly as she looked around their prison. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that they were continuing the discussion. Jackson would have realized as well as she did that if they didn’t finish this now, they might not get another chance.
“I saw medicine as a means to give value to my life,” he said. “It was one way to put my meddling nature to good use. But that wasn’t the main reason I was so eager to accept that scholarship. I saw it as an opportunity to get out of New Orleans.”
“What?”
“You had a big family and deep roots, along with money and a snazzy hotel. I was jealous of it all. I felt I couldn’t compete. I knew that I’d never be happy here. Even as we were making all those plans when we were in high school I realized they weren’t for me. Once I left, I never intended to come back.”
Her throat closed. He really had meant to leave her. Hearing him admit it stirred all the old pain.
“My motives weren’t noble,” he continued, “they were selfish. I thought if I left, I could force you to give up your life here and choose me.” He briefly touched his index finger to her swollen lip. “I was wrong to try to force you. I’m sorry, Charlotte.”
She nodded.
He withdrew his hand, backed up and sat on the floor across from her. “That’s the real reason working overseas first appealed to me,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking about what would make you happy, I was mainly concerned with myself.”
The same could be said about her, she thought. She hadn’t considered what would have made Jackson happy when she’d stubbornly refused to go with him. Her dreams of a fairy-tale future had been centered around the needs of the princess, not the prince. “I stayed behind because I wanted you to prove your feelings by choosing me over your career.”
“I know.”
“It wasn’t right.”
“Neither of us was right.”
She licked away another tear. The problems between them had gone deeper than she’d imagined. “We really did make a mess of things.”
“Yeah.” He pulled up his legs and propped his arms on his bent knees. “But even if we could rewrite the past, it wouldn’t make any difference because no matter what detail we changed, we’d still be the same people.”
How often in the last few days had she told herself the same thing? As much as they tried not to, perhaps they really were destined keep hurting each other.
Yet her dream for her future hadn’t been only about the hotel or children or working as a partner with her husband. At its core, her dream had been about love, but she’d been too stubborn to make that her priority.
She should have. She’d loved Jackson from the first moment she’d seen him, the gangly boy with the crazy hair, the crooked smile and a gaze the color of a summer sky.
She loved the man he’d become even more.
The realization was no surprise. It was as undeniable as the tears that continued to trail down her cheeks. Oh, yes. She loved him. She’d never stopped. Why else was she crying? She’d done her best to rationalize it away, to call it nostalgia or stress or sex, but there was no mistaking what was in her heart.
She was in love with Jackson Bailey.
Again.
Still.
Probably forever.
And she had this grand realization when they were trapped in a windowless closet, at the mercy of criminals who were fully capable of killing them.
“Jackson?”
The look he gave her was hard to interpret. His eyes held regret mixed with the sadness, and his jaw was set with what could have been pain.
The words she wanted to say died in her throat. What good would a confession do now? It might make her feel better, but it would make Jackson feel worse. He hadn’t wanted this complication. He’d been adamant about that from the start. She should be thinking of his needs, not hers. She shifted to her knees and crawled across the space between them. Without any preamble, she placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him.
He responded gently, barely moving his lips, as if he worried about hurting her again.
She sobbed and opened her mouth, giving vent to her frustration. With the understanding he’d always shown, he slid his hand into her hair to hold her steady and deepened the kiss.
For a few precious minutes the floor didn’t seem as hard or as cold and the fear that sat on her shoulder was shrugged aside. She was once more his Charlie, in love with her Jackson, and life had limitless possibilities.
And oh, God, she wished with all her heart that she still believed in magic.
There was a sudden clunk from the other side of the room’s steel door.
Jackson got to his feet. Charlotte scrambled to stand beside him, but he caught her arm and guided her behind his back just as the door swung open.
Richard Corbin stepped into the doorway. He was holding a small black gun, probably the same one he’d used to force Charlotte into the car. Had he als
o used it to shoot Luc? Pointing the gun at Jackson, he stepped to the right of the door frame and pressed his back to the far wall so that he maintained the maximum distance between them. “It’s about time you woke up. You were one heavy bastard to drag.”
Jackson spread his feet apart and crossed his arms. “What do you want, Corbin?”
“You’re not that stupid. You know what we want. The Hotel Marchand.”
Charlotte moved to Jackson’s side. She’d lost her shoes somewhere between here and the hotel and she missed the illusion of confidence the extra few inches in height would have given her. Still, she wasn’t going to let this criminal see her cower. She drew herself up to her full five feet three inches and fixed Richard with a cold stare. “This is an outrage, Mr. Corbin. I demand that you release us immediately.”
He swung the barrel of the gun toward her. “Not before we get what we’ve come for.”
Jackson placed himself in front of Charlotte again. “If you think you can get the hotel through means like these, you’re mistaken.”
“Wrong.” He gestured with his gun. “And you can skip the human-shield heroics, doc. We don’t plan to kill her yet.”
Yet? Oh, God, Charlotte thought. This couldn’t be happening.
As if he could feel her horror, Jackson moved his arm behind his back and held his hand palm up in invitation. Charlotte clasped it gratefully, lacing her fingers with his.
“It’s not too late to get yourself out of this, Richard,” Jackson said. “Luc isn’t dead. You’re not facing a murder charge.”
Richard laughed. “Luc? Wrong again. He’s dead, all right. I heard he never made it to the hospital.”
Charlotte pressed closer to Jackson’s back, fighting to keep her whimper inside. She didn’t want to believe that the charming young man her family was so fond of could have succumbed to his wound. It seemed so unreal. Was that going to be her and Jackson’s fate?
Dan Corbin moved over the threshold and joined his brother at the side of the doorway. While Richard appeared edgy, his older brother was unruffled, his tie straight and his hair neatly brushed. He looked as calm as if he were conducting a normal business meeting.
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