Dangerous Attraction

by Melinda Cross

  Her steps crunched slowly on the gravel drive as she circled the long black car and nodded to the driver inside. Whoever it was, he or she would blunt the awkwardness of taking her leave from Marcus alone, and for that, at least, she was grateful.

  She went up the porch steps on tiptoe and quietly opened the door and slipped inside. On first hearing the voices coming from the living-room, she thought only of sneaking upstairs to pack while Marcus was occupied. But voices drifted out the broad doorway and were amplified by the enormous empty space of the foyer, and before she had taken a single step toward the staircase she froze.

  ‘This is your one and only chance to settle out of court, Marcus, and all you have to do is write a check. What’s ten million dollars to you? You won’t even feel it, and you’ll get to keep this precious place of yours.’

  The voice was musical and cultured, and Rebecca knew its owner instantly, even though she had never heard it before. She closed her eyes and saw the photograph of a woman beautiful enough to possess such a voice. It had to be Charity Lauder, but what was she doing here?

  ‘My attorneys drew this up.’ There was an edge in the voice now, and then the sound of a sheaf of papers hitting a table. ‘Don’t worry. It’s a legally binding contract. You give me the ten million, I sign away all rights to Test of Courage, including movie rights. You can do what you want with it. Recall the books, burn them in the backyard for all I care.’

  Marcus’s voice quivered with rage, barely under control. ‘Did you think I didn’t know they already stopped production on the movie? Did you think you’d get what you could out of me before I found out? Well, you’re fresh out of luck at last, Charity. Becca already told me. You’re not getting a dime out of me…’

  ‘Becca!’ Charity spat the name, and Rebecca flinched involuntarily, as if she’d been struck. ‘So that’s your little pet screenwriter’s name. When Victor told me he’d sent some woman out here, and that she believed your story, I knew exactly what had happened. What did you have to do to get her on your side, Marcus? What did you have to do to convince her to stop the godddamned movie?’

  ‘Shut up!’ Marcus’s voice roared into the foyer like a hurricane.

  ‘My, my. I hit a nerve, didn’t I, Marcus? You slept with the slut, didn’t you? Probably promised her all sorts…’

  ‘Don’t…say…another.word.’ Marcus’s voice was low and trembling, as tight as glass spun to the breaking-point.

  Rebecca shivered in the ensuing silence, chilled by it, her eyes wide and her ears straining.

  ‘I’ll just take it to another producer, Marcus,’ Charity said quietly. ‘They were lined up like ducks for the rights to this story, and most of them wouldn’t give a damn if it was true or not, as long as it makes them money.’

  ‘Get out, Charity. Do what you want. I don’t care any more.’

  ‘You’ll care when that movie hits the screen and the whole country thinks you betrayed your precious Johnny!’ she shrieked furiously. ‘And you’ll damn well care when a jury hands over everything you’ve got to me!’

  Rebecca took a breath through her mouth and crept a little closer to the living-room doorway, pressing her back against the wall. She was close enough to hear Charity’s breathing now, agitated and ragged.

  ‘And while we’re at it you tell that slut screenwriter for me that she’s not getting away with this. You tell her to get ready to see herself on the silver screen, flopping around naked with the almighty Marcus Flint, selling out because she’s stupid enough to believe he actually cares about her…’

  Oh, God, Rebecca thought, her eyes starting to fall closed in a pained expression. It’s so obvious that even an outsider knows what a fool I was, and now the whole world will know…

  But just then Marcus shouted, ‘No!’ and the word echoed in the silence that followed. When he spoke again, his voice was shaking. ‘All right, Charity. You win. Sign the goddamned contract and give it to me. I’ll have the money wired to your bank tommorow.’

  His capitulation was so sudden, so unexpected that Rebecca just stood there, her lips parted in dumbfounded amazement.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ Charity breathed after a moment. ‘You’re really in love with the stupid bitch, aren’t you?’

  Marcus’s voice trembled with rage. ‘If you live to be a hundred, Charity, you will never comprehend a fraction of what I feel for Rebecca, and if you dare to say one more word against her…’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Charity muttered, but then her voice rang like a bitter bell, reverberating with hatred. ‘Oh, God, how I love to see the sanctimonious fall! All those high ideals, all those rigid morals and standards-in the end you were still brought down by a woman, weren’t you, Marcus? You were a fool not to. sleep with me in the first place. God knows it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper…’

  But Rebecca couldn’t hear any of that. Her mind had latched on to Marcus’s words and soared away to a private place where she could listen to them over and over again. For a few blessed moments she rested there, oblivious to the silent tears streaming down her cheeks, thinking that this was the hard, bright core of life that so many rushed past on their way to neon promises. Money, power, fame—all of them paltry, insignificant things that paled in the radiance of the only thing on earth that had real value.

  I love you, Marcus Flint. She moved her lips, but kept the words in her mind, and then quickly, quietly, she tiptoed toward the front door. For the first and last time in her life, the reclusive Rebecca Hutchinson was going to step on stage.

  ‘I want to hear you make the call to your bank or your broker or whoever the hell is going to transfer that money to my account,’ Charity was saying.

  ‘Fine,’ Marcus snapped. ‘Come to the office. I’ll do it now.’

  Rebecca’s heart caught in her throat as she hurried through the last few steps to the front door, straightened, then quickly wiped the tears from her cheeks. In the next instant she flung the door wide and turned around, pretending she was just walking in. Marcus and Charity appeared in the hallway just as she pushed the door closed behind her.

  ‘Marcus!’ she exhaled in a breath, her cheeks flushed and her eyes so bright, they looked almost brittle.

  ‘Rebecca, for God’s sake!’ he shouted, taking two running steps toward her before she stopped him with an upraised palm. He scowled at her, frustrated, and his eyes were wild, frantic. ‘Dammit, where the hell were you?’ he whispered. ‘They said you never made it to the sheriff’s office. I’ve been calling everywhere…’

  Rebecca felt the fluttering lift of a heart that knew it was cherished, but kept that sacred, precious feeling deep inside.

  ‘Yes, Becca,’ Charity drawled out a mockery of her name. ‘The poor boy was nearly beside himself with worry until I arrived to comfort him…’

  ‘Shut up,’ Marcus snapped without looking at her, but Rebecca turned her gaze on Charity and made her face reflect surprise.

  ‘Why, you’re Charity Lauder, aren’t you?’

  Charity’s chin lifted haughtily and she looked down her nose at her, and even from across the foyer Rebecca could feel the lash of her disdain.

  My God, she’s even more beautiful in person, she thought. Her knees trembled beneath her dress, responding as much to the quality of Charity’s contemptuous appraisal as to her own nervousness.

  She’d seen that look a thousand times before on the faces of her stepmother and stepsisters, and always it had evoked a miserable sense of inadequacy. She felt as if she was twelve years old again with orange lipstick smeared over her mouth, and in facing Charity Lauder she was facing those beautiful faces from her past all over again, like a recurring nightmare.

  Something inside Rebecca started to shrink and curl inward under Charity’s withering gaze, and for an instant she knew she was ugly and stupid and awkward and despicable…and then she remembered that Marcus loved her, and her mind stretched out like the wings of a great bird and touched the ends of the earth.

&n
bsp; Charity regarded her in dramatic silence, then blinked slowly, long, dark lashes fanning on her perfect cheeks, before lifting to half-mast. ‘So, you’re the little…’

  ‘Charity.’ Marcus’s voice was absolutely toneless, and yet it commanded immediate silence. His gray eyes were wide and deep, reaching across the distance between them, drawing Rebecca in.

  She looked at him for as long as she dared, then looked back at Charity and tipped her head in a gesture she hoped was innocently curious. ‘Why are you here?’

  Charity’s eyes narrowed and sparked brilliantly, ‘Marcus and I are doing a little private business, that’s all. Nothing that would concern you.’

  Rebecca shrugged and shoved her hands into her jacket pockets, looking at Charity with a pretense of mild interest. She saw the chic and appropriately somber black dress, then focused on the glitter of gold suspended from a delicate chain draped around her neck. Rebecca’s teeth clenched as her fingers closed around the half-heart charm in her pocket. Its mate looked obscene adorning that woman’s body.

  ‘I’ve been walking in the woods,’ she said steadily, and then allowed herself the flash of a nervous smile. ‘Well, it started as a walk, but I got lost almost immediately.’

  She knew Marcus was looking at her. She knew without seeing it that his expression was dark and puzzled and impatient.

  ‘I want you to know, Charity,’ she went on, lifting her chin bravely, ‘that, no matter what I believe about how this whole thing started, I respect your courage. Being lost in the woods, even for a short time today, was terrifying. I’m not sure I could have survived two weeks in that wilderness.’

  Charity’s brows arched in surprise.

  Rebecca took a breath and swallowed. ‘Of course, I suppose it wasn’t so frightening for you. Maybe the woods are like an old friend to someone who walks in them all the time…’

  ‘Pfft!’ Charity grunted contemptuously. ‘You think that’s why I survived? The bridle paths in Central Park are as close as I ever came to being in a place like that. I survived because I’m a survivor, period…’ She paused and smiled maliciously. ‘As I’m sure Marcus will tell you.’

  Rebecca let her eyes grow wide with disbelief. ‘But…I thought you must have known the woods; you must have walked them with Johnny…’

  ‘I most certainly did not,’ she sniffed haughtily. ‘And if you think you can take away from my ordeal with that sort of shabby explanation, you’re sadly mistaken. Aside from walking from the plane to this house, I never set foot outside this place, with or without Johnny.’

  Rebecca struggled to contain the hot thrill of triumph shooting through her. She kept her expression wondering, her features placid and unthreatening. ‘Then you really are to be congratulated…’

  Charity’s beautiful face tightened and she tossed her head, nearly dislodging the intricate coils of her lustrous dark hair. ‘Nice of you to give me that much, after you’ve cast doubt on every other facet of my story,’ she snapped, turning abruptly to Marcus. ‘I’ve had enough of this. Are we going to finish our business or not…?’

  ‘Wait!’ Rebecca said breathlessly, hurrying toward them. She could smell Charity’s perfume now; she could see the flawless perfection of her skin and see the glitter of hatred flashing from her eyes. ‘The charm you’re wearing…’

  Charity flinched, her hand darting to enclose the tiny half-heart possessively, but not before Rebecca had seen the inscription—’Love, Charity’. ‘It’s mine! Johnny was wearing it when he died. The funeral director gave it to me.’

  Marcus turned his head to one side in undisguised disgust, but Rebecca only smiled.

  ‘I know. I’ve seen those charms before. And you had the other half of the heart, right?’

  ‘I did…I lost it. In the crash, perhaps, or maybe here in the house before that…’

  ‘I found it.’ Rebecca beamed at her, almost rocking back and forth on her heels.

  Charity’s face stilled. ‘Oh?’

  Rebecca nodded happily, able to look at Marcus now, no longer concerned about the love that shone from her eyes or the pure joy that pulled the corners of her mouth up so tightly that the feeling was unfamiliar, as if she’d never in her life smiled before that moment. ‘I found it on the edge of the woods that overlook this valley, in plain sight of this house,’ she breathed. ‘What did you do, Charity? Sit up there and watch all the commotion? The search parties gathering, the emergency vehicles checking in, Marcus coordinating it all so frantically, so afraid and heartsick, when all that time you were living up there in that cabin?’

  She could hear the echo of her shout in the absolute silence that followed, and marveled at it. She had never heard her voice raised in anger before; she had never once felt the righteousness of striking out at injustice, daring to confront it face to face and call it by its true name.

  Charity had gone deathly pale, and the beauty of her countenance had been stripped away by the emergence of a hate so pure it would have terrified Rebecca not so long before. Now, without its power to intimidate, she found it merely pathetic.

  She turned her head slowly to Marcus and saw only sadness in his eyes.

  ‘I thought you were gone forever,’ he whispered, and she realized that he cared nothing for what had just happened here; that ending Charity’s nightmarish hold on his life was meaningless if he had lost her.

  She shrugged helplessly. ‘I heard what that lawyer said on the answering machine, what he’d told you to do…’

  His face darkened until the gray eyes looked like pin-points of light in a thundercloud. ‘And you believed that I had done it.’

  Her eyes begged forgiveness. ‘Yes. But even that couldn’t change how I felt about you.’ And then, without caring at all that by exposing her feelings she was laying herself bare in the presence of her enemies—old, imagined ones and, in Charity, a new, very real one—she spoke her heart. ‘I love you so much, Marcus. I think I forgot to tell you that.’

  The beautiful gray eyes darkened and softened like melting stones, and Rebecca watched with wonder as they filled and shone with the awesome power of his emotion—emotion he was finally showing unashamed, just as she had, in their greatest gift to each other. ‘Becca,’ he whispered, placing the whole of his world in her name.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I don’t have to listen to this!’ Charity snapped shrilly, fracturing the breathless quiet of the foyer.

  But Marcus and Rebecca never heard her, never noticed her leaving as she stomped furiously away. They were too lost in each other’s eyes, too entranced by this private, peaceful place, this blessed shelter from hatred and pain and injustice that only hearts could make, when they wove a fabric of love.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  AS THE limousine door opened on to a thick runner of red carpet, dozens of blinding camera lights focused on its occupants.

  Trying not to squint, Rebecca took the hand that was offered and stepped out of the car, followed by the billowing, cloud-like layers of her Pacific-blue gown.

  The noise and the press of the crowd beyond the soft golden ropes was disconcerting, strangely incongruous with the elegance and dignity of the grand old theater’s entrance.

  She stared down that narrow red tunnel that seemed to stretch endlessly though grasping hands and eager faces and fluttering autograph books, her gloved fingers tightening on her companion’s arm. ‘It’s like running the gauntlet,’ she whispered in an aside.

  He chuckled softly and covered her hand with his, bending to whisper in her ear, ‘Just remember what Victor said. They don’t even know what we look like. They’re just making sure we aren’t somebody important before they focus their attention somewhere else.there, you see?’

  In that moment the lights veered away and the crowd roared and surged backward, toward the limousine that had pulled up behind theirs. ‘Michael! Michael! Vanessa! Vanessa!’ they began to chant, mobbing the number-one male and female box-office draws in the country, the people they had really come to
this premiere to see.

  Rebecca drew in a relieved breath and began to walk forward, sequinned slippers that felt like glass sinking into the plush carpet. A single camera light followed her progress, and she watched it out of the corner of her eye warily. ‘What’s he doing?’ she hissed nervously. ‘Why isn’t he back there photographing Michael and Vanessa?’

  ‘Maybe there’s one cameraman in Hollywood who knows a real star when he sees one,’ he chuckled.

  Rebecca smiled up at the tall, broad-shouldered man at her right, resplendent in his tuxedo, ebony studs gleaming down the blazing white pleats of his starched shirt. His black hair was slicked back imperiously, but one stray curl dropped over his brow in impish rebellion. He had unsettling gray eyes and the most beautiful mouth that Rebecca had ever seen on a man. ‘You’re magnificent.’ She breathed a heartfelt sigh, and the beautiful mouth curved upward, then moved to plant a soft kiss on her brow.

  The high squeals of unbearably excited young women made Rebecca turn and look at the two stars following behind on the red carpet, good-naturedly dodging the desperate grasp of their fans’ hands. Her eyes focused on the dark-haired, large-eyed man, then shifted back to gaze lovingly at the man at her side. ‘Victor said he actually became Marcus Flint on the screen,’ she whispered, ‘but I don’t see how. He’s just too damn ugly. They all are. I knew that the first time I saw you.’

  Marcus chuckled low and deep and led her gently onward. ‘He heard from Charity’s old lawyers this week; did he tell you?’

  Rebecca shook her head, suddenly solemn, the mere mention of that particular name still powerful enough to darken her thoughts.

  ‘The very last copies of Test of Courage finally made it in after the recall, and the pre-release publicity on this film was enough to send the entire Lauder clan packing.’

  ‘To where?’

  He shrugged. ‘Out of the country for good, was all they were willing to say. They left a stack of debts behind, and a very bad taste in all the mouths that had once placed Charity Lauder high on their guest lists. At last she’s the pariah she always deserved to be.’