Dangerous Attraction

by Melinda Cross

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  About the Author

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Copyright

  “You’re Marcus Flint”

  The gray eyes narrowed, fastened intently on hers. “That’s right,” he said, and his voice seemed to vibrate the air around them. “So who the hell are you?”

  Rebecca blanched a little at his abruptness, then wondered why she had expected anything else. “You’re very rude!”

  “I’m supposed to be! Rude—and ruthless!”

  Melinda Cross claims that romance has always been the ruling factor in her life. It was romance that sidetracked her from a career in medicine, romance that lured her from the eastern United States to settle in the Minnesota countryside, and a love of romance that shifted her writing focus from short stories and essays to the novels she now creates for Harlequin. She and her husband live in a restored farmhouse near Minneapolis, surrounded by horses, cats and wildlife.

  Dangerous Attraction

  Melinda Cross

  CHAPTER ONE

  REBECCA held the steering-wheel in a white-knuckled grip, guiding the little rental car over the climbing twists of narrow road. She wasn’t used to this kind of driving; she was used to Los Angeles bumper-tobumper traffic and eight-lane freeways that sliced through mountains—not a skinny, squirmy strip of tar that struggled to climb over them.

  Her cheeks puffed with a nervous exhalation as she tried to relax. Driving was driving, she told herself, and if she was skilled enough to dodge the seemingly murderous intent of thousands of California’s freeway commuters she could certainly manage a deserted, backwoods New England road.

  Outside the car the Green Mountains of Vermont were putting on their annual October color show, and Rebecca, born and raised in the arid Los Angeles basin, had never seen anything like it. When she could manage to tear her gaze from the road, the scenery took her breath away.

  The woods hugging the two-lane strip of tar looked like the canvas of a painter gone mad. Brilliant reds and sun-bright yellows spattered the forest, mocking the dignity of the occasional sedate green pine. It was a wild, fickle sort of beauty, and Rebecca wondered what it would be like to live in a place where nature was always shocking you with a new change of clothes. Unsettling, she decided, preferring the bland predictability of the Los Angeles landscape.

  Rebecca had a special appreciation for predictable things—things that looked exactly like what they were. There seemed to be some sort of cosmic law that made everything in nature wear its characteristics on the outside—everything except a man, of course. You knew a tortoise was slow, a horse was fast, and a grizzly bear was dangerous, just by looking at them. People, on the other hand, were masters of disguise. Weak ones could look strong; enemies could smile like friends; and the meanest spirits could lurk beneath the most beautiful faces.

  She sighed as the old bitterness inside started rising like high water, and, with a mighty effort of will, forced it back down.

  When her face finally relaxed again, she looked like her California home. Her sun-streaked hair was the color of beach sand, and she wore it short as a matter of practicality. The boyish cut suggested a waif-like appearance, but the illusion vanished when you looked into her eyes. They were large, thickly lashed, and precisely the color of the Pacific on a hot, clear day; but they were also deeply cynical—the visible badge of a young woman who had learned early that trust was the blind gift of fools. The eyes were widely set in a face as placid and unchanging as the West Coast climate. As dull as the West Coast climate, her stepsisters had used to say over and over.

  She frowned abruptly, disturbed that those knifeedged memories still had the power to leap unbidden into her thoughts. It had been years since she’d closed the door on that particular phase of her life; years since she’d allowed anyone to come within emotional striking distance of those old, wrenching feelings of inferiority. So why should they resurface today, of all days?

  Because, she answered her own question, at the end of this road you will confront another one of those men who measures the value of a woman by the same yardstick your stepsisters used—physical appearance—and you, Rebecca, fall terribly short of the standard in that department. She shrugged irritably as the road dipped beneath her tires and began a steady, gradual climb upward.

  There had only been sporadic signs of life for the past half-hour of her drive from Vermont’s small northern airport—the white-tipped fluff of a squirrel’s tail, the colorful flash of a bird—but not a single sign of man in the forest that marched alongside the road as it dipped and climbed.

  Although the illusion of utter solitude was almost pleasant for a young woman who studiously avoided the company of people, Rebecca shivered a little at the thought of being lost and helpless in such a wilderness, especially at this time of year, when the night fell like a frigid curtain. For all its beauty, nature’s world was even more savage than man’s, and she caught herself wondering yet again if she would have survived the nightmare she was here to write about. It was a terrifying thought, just as it had probably been a terrifying experience—and it was going to make a hell of a movie.

  She’d read the book less than a week before she’d been hired to write the screenplay, and, although Test of Courage certainly hadn’t made the best-seller lists on the basis of literary merit, the story had all the earmarks of a blockbuster film—money, lust, betrayal, and tragedy. Rebecca knew that a successful adaptation of the book just might put its screenwriter on the awards stage.

  Not that she wanted to be on any kind of a stage, of course—the very thought of being the focus of attention made her throat close up and her eyes water.

  But that kind of recognition would be a bittersweet personal triumph for the plain girl no one had ever believed in. If only this dreadful trip hadn’t been part of the package…

  She scowled hard, trying to dismiss thoughts of the unpleasantness that waited at the end of this road, concentrating instead on the story, and how she would rewrite it for the screen.

  Charity Lauder, the pampered New York socialite who had lived through Test of Courage and then written the book in record time, had been ill-prepared for the nightmare she’d experienced in these very woods, just last winter. Crashing in a small plane in a blizzard, watching Johnny Rivard, her fiance, die in her arms, and then her horrific two-week struggle to survive the snow and bitter cold as she tried to find her way out of the wilderness and back to civilization—that was more than enough for a blockbuster movie, and yet it was only part of the story. The rest of it—the blackest part—was at the end of the road Rebecca now traveled, and his name was Marcus Flint.

  He’d been Rivard’s partner in Sugar Ridge, one of Vermont’s largest maple sugar operations. Charity’s book described him as ‘a visibly evil man, thoroughly contemptuous of women and totally unworthy of Johnny Rivard’s trust and affection…’, and his actions last winter seemed to support that assessment.

  When Johnny had shown Charity up to Sugar Ridge to see the estate and meet his partner and supposedly best friend, Flint had shocked her by making improper advances whenever Johnny left them alone together. She’d been rebuffing one such advance when Johnny had walked in, and after a brief, savage argument between the two men Johnny and Charity had fled t
he estate in their small plane, in spite of approaching bad weather.

  Rebecca’s mouth twitched in distaste as she recalled the story. The ending of Test of Courage might have been a ‘testament to the strength of the human spirit’, as the book jacket proclaimed, but it was basically unsatisfying. Indirectly, at least, Marcus Flint had been responsible for the death of his partner, and yet, as heir to Johnny’s half of the business, he had profited enormously from that death.

  She shuddered at the thought of actually spending time with such a man, but, like it or not, that was precisely what she would be doing for the next few days. If she’d had her way, she would have written this screenplay straight from the book as she usually did, in the solitude and serenity of her rented Los Angeles beach house. But screenwriters didn’t often get their way when they worked with producers like Victor Madden.

  ‘Sorry, Becca,’ he’d told her in his Hollywood office last week, ‘but if you want to write the screenplay for Test of Courage you’re going to have to go to Vermont.’

  She’d reacted dramatically to his announcement, sighing, flopping into a chair, donning the most pathetically miserable expression she could muster. She hated to fly, she’d reminded him, she seldom left her home, let alone her home state, and she didn’t much care for dealing with people in general, let alone the villain of the screenplay she was about to write.

  He’d listened patiently, even sympathetically to her objections, then had shrugged in apology. ‘I don’t see how we can get around it, Becca. Flint’s threatening a libel suit. Says the whole book is a pack of lies, and he’ll go to court for an injunction to stop the production of the movie unless he gets a chance to tell his side of the story to the screenwriter before the script is written. Look at the upside. You’ll be on the grounds, staying in the very house where the story happened. You can’t buy that kind of inspiration for any price. And the deal doesn’t require that we believe him, just that we listen.’ He’d paused and smiled grimly at that point. ‘It won’t be so bad, Becca. I’ll be right there with you. It’s not like you’ll have to spend any time alone with the man.’

  She made a face behind the wheel at the memory of those words. So where are you, Victor? she thought irritably, braking to negotiate a hairpin curve in the road. He’d missed today’s flight from Los Angeles, leaving a message that he’d catch the morning plane, rent another car at the Vermont airport and meet her at Sugar Ridge tomorrow.

  Suddenly the car topped the long hill it had been climbing, and her eyes lightened with interest. A valley lay just ahead, at the bottom of a steep incline. After being closed in by the dense woods for so long, the sight of so much open grassland was like taking a deep breath of fresh air after a long time underwater.

  The valley lay in a circle of mountains that rose in waves of dizzying autumn color. A small, busy river gushed through the center, and even from a distance Rebecca could identify the graceful skeletons of yellowing willows bending toward the water. In one instant she thought it was perhaps the most beautiful place she had ever seen; in the next, she decided it looked eerily empty, like a lost world populated only by the ghosts of those souls who had never found their way out.

  As the car drew closer, she could see an enormous building backed up to the side of one hill—the main house, no doubt—with a scattering of other buildings circled around it. One of those was large enough to serve as a hangar for Johnny Rivard’s small plane; another was long and narrow and reminded her of bunkhouses she’d seen on ranches in the west.

  But even these were dwarfed by the brick house that presided over the collection of buildings like a mother hen towering over her chicks.

  Spooky, she thought, following the road to its end in front of the house and stopping there. The entire complex seemed deserted. She turned off the engine but remained in the car, looking around, perhaps waiting for someone to come out of the house to inspect the new arrrival. It was more mansion than house, looming three full storeys above the little car she’d rented at the airport, and certainly the maintenance of such a place would require a staff of some sort.

  She rolled down the window and listened to the tick of the engine as it cooled, the occasional shrill call of a bird from the vast meadow. After a few minutes she frowned at the silence and folded her lips together. The obvious course of action was to climb up those steps to the broad pillared porch and ring the bell, but she wasn’t all that anxious to confront her host. Maybe she’d just stretch her legs and take a look around first. She buttoned her black suede jacket against the October chill and climbed stiffly out of the car.

  Maybe it was just relief to be moving under her own power after the prolonged immobility of sitting in a plane and then a car for the past seven hours, or maybe it was the awesome, pervasive silence of the wilderness after the incessant noise of Los Angeles, but, whatever the reason, Rebecca felt a strong, unexpected wave of something like giddiness wash over her the minute her feet touched ground. She controlled it, closing her eyes and pulling the crisp, fragrant air of autumn deep into her lungs, then she strode away from the buildings toward the river that sliced through the valley, long, jean-clad legs scissoring through the tall grass.

  It was a longer walk than she’d thought, and halfway there she turned to view the house from a distance. Even from this far away, it looked huge. Made entirely of dark red brick, with only the white shutters and the front porch relieving its somber face, it backed up to the mountain like some enormous, crouching beast afraid of its own surroundings. She almost felt sorry for the place, it looked so dark and full of gloom, and, somehow, very lonely.

  Suddenly some sixth sense made her turn toward the sound of the river, away from the house. There was a man approaching her, the tall dried grass whipping against his jeans as he walked. At first he was just a pillar of blue slicing through the sand-colored field, but gradually his shape and his face took on definition.

  It has to be him, she thought, and her mouth .tightened. Almost exactly as Charity Lauder had described him in her book. Very tall, broad in the shoulder, an angry slash of dark hair swept back by the force of his motion.

  Her eyes coursed over the jeans, the matching blue bulky sweater, and she caught herself thinking that he ought to be dressed in black. Villains always wore black, didn’t they?

  As he drew closer, Rebecca’s eyes narrowed in surprise. Whatever else Marcus Flint was, he was also incredibly attractive. The book hadn’t mentioned that.

  By that time he was standing a few feet away, his hands flattened in his jean pockets, his thumbs resting on his waistband. He had Rebecca’s full attention.

  Good lord, she thought, a little numb, who will play this man’s part in the movie? Her thoughts fluttered through the images of all the tall, dark and handsome heart-throbs that commanded big box office, eliminating each and every one of them because they were simply too ugly.

  It was the eyes, she decided, steady, storm-cloudgray eyes that caught you like a fish on a hook…

  ‘Yes?’ The word was more demand than greeting, rumbling like thunder over the mountains, and Rebecca’s gaze shot down to his mouth, as if she needed confirmation that a sound like that could have actually come from a human being. Men aren’t supposed to have mouths like that in real life, she mused absently. She’d seen one like it only once before, on Michelangelo’s statue of David. She’d never forgotten those full, sharply sculpted lips, drawn down at the corners in the essence of masculine confidence, but she’d never expected to see them in the flesh.

  She blinked hard, wondering if he’d disappear. When he didn’t, she swallowed and licked her lips. ‘You’re Marcus Flint,’ she said in a voice she barely recognized as her own.

  The gray eyes narrowed, fastened intently on hers. ‘That’s right,’ he said, and his voice seemed to vibrate the air around them. ‘So who the hell are you?’

  She blanched a little at his abruptness, then wondered why she had expected anything else. ‘You’re very rude!’

 
‘I’m supposed to be. Rude, ruthless, and let’s not forget explosively violent!’

  Rebecca fought the impulse to take a quick step backward. She hadn’t expected him to quote passages from Charity Lauder’s book. Dammit, this was awkward. She should have stayed at the airport and waited for Victor. Maybe she should have stayed in Los Angeles.

  ‘You’re trespassing,’ he said, his voice a coiled spring of anger barely kept in check. ‘No interviews. No photos. No Press allowed. Now get out.’

  ‘I’m Rebecca Hutchinson.’

  One corner of his mouth twisted a little. ‘I don’t care if you’re the editor of The New York Times. You’re not welcome here. Now…’

  ‘The screenwriter,’ she said levelly, only the hint of a blue flash in her eyes revealing her irritation. She spoke with exaggerated slowness, as if she were addressing someone who hadn’t quite mastered the language yet. ‘The person you begged to come here and listen to your side of the story, remember?’

  The moment the words were out of her mouth she wished she could call them back. Marcus Flint hadn’t ‘begged’—he’d threatened. She steeled herself for an angry rebuttal, but he just jammed his hands even deeper into his jean pockets and rocked back on his heels, studying her.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said finally, without sounding sorry at all. ‘I thought you were another one of those scandal-sheet reporters.’ He cocked his head, gray eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t look like a screenwriter. You look like a kid.’

  Her gaze hardened. ‘I’m no kid,’ she said crisply. ‘Test of Courage will be my third major screenplay. The first two were not only box office successes, but—’

  ‘This isn’t a job interview, Miss Hutchinson.’

  Rebecca swallowed the last of her indignant reply, coloring slightly.

  ‘Are you settled in at the house?’

  She felt the childish urge to look away from his eyes, to clear her throat, but refused to allow herself to do either. ‘I just arrived. There didn’t seem to be anyone around.’