Jesse Kuger and his group went on to become very famous and immensely rich—and idolized by millions of women across the globe. Audrey was very bitter about it, and it wasn’t until Tracy was eight that she discovered that one of her absolute idols was her own father. It was right after a group of her school friends had been over and they’d all been screaming with delight over the newest album by the Limelights. Tracy mentioned very casually that she had dreamt of Jesse Kuger falling madly in love with her and marrying her in a dream. Audrey had turned pale, and then she’d been furious all over again. She’d told Tracy that she was Jesse Kuger’s daughter, and that if she had any sense, she’d dislike the man intensely.
There was no way that Audrey would ever be rational about the man, so Tracy’s stepfather was the one to bring her to meet her natural father.
He was wonderful to her; he was all a child could dream of. At his massive estate in Connecticut she met his wife and her baby brother, and she received all kinds of presents. Except that she wasn’t really wanted, of course.
She wanted to daydream that her famous and unique father could be a prince to marry her mother. But she adored her stepfather! And then, of course, there was Carol, Jamie’s mother.
Jesse’s marriage to Carol had only lasted ten more years, but by the time they divorced, Tracy had been seventeen and in total rebellion. Jesse had written to her steadily over the years—but never again had he seen her. He was just so busy…
She loved him; she hated him. Just as she resented and adored her mother. There had really been nothing for her to do but create her own separate life and seek out her father again herself…
Tracy started to shiver in the cool of the night; she turned away and reentered the suite. There was a bottle of champagne cooling in her salon, too, and though she felt as if she’d like something stronger, she decided champagne would be better than nothing. She uncorked the bottle, then sat back on the sofa with a little sigh, sipped the bubbling brew, and continued remembering.
She managed to get close enough to see him at a party to which she had obtained an invitation through her own merits—she had sold a ballad to a country-and-western singer and the song had risen high on the charts. In gratitude, the singer had urged her to come to a massive bash she was having in Nashville. “Everyone” who was “anyone” was supposed to have been there.
The champagne went down badly suddenly; Tracy felt a hot flush rise to her cheeks, and her palms went instantly damp.
She was tiny, but she’d always looked so mature. At seventeen she had passed for twenty-five. She wrote her songs under a pen name. And after everything, she’d had this vivid dream that her father would see her, cry joyously, and welcome her with absolute adoration.
The dream had been dashed when Jesse Kuger hadn’t recognized her and hadn’t given her a second glance. Crushed, still shy of her eighteenth birthday, she had reacted horribly. She’d wanted to hurt Jesse as badly as he had hurt her. And being so young and inexperienced, she hadn’t cared how she set about to do it.
In the end, she’d been the one to pay because Leif Johnston had been there. Leif was slightly aloof, but charming—a center of attention. Striking in his manner, striking with his brooding dark eyes.
Leif—untouchable until now, so the gossip went. Since he’d returned from the service he’d been very private and very discreet, shunning the press—and living quietly with a beautiful blond classical pianist he had met in Paris. According to the gossip columnists, he and Celia had suddenly parted, and no one knew why. They only knew that he might be available again…
Tracy hadn’t been bowled over by him at first—she’d been upset and furious and determined to get even with her father. When Leif had started to flirt with her, she’d been more furious still. So stupidly determined to get even! She hadn’t known where the idea had begun, or if it had ever really been a solid idea. She’d never seduced anyone in her life. She’d coldly set out to seduce Leif Johnston just to be able to tell her father that she was his best friend’s latest conquest.
“I will not think about it!” Tracy whispered aloud.
But it was as if a dam had broken, and she had no choice.
She couldn’t hate Leif for what she had done herself; she’d lied about her age, and her first taste of martinis had certainly given her boldness.
He’d been a wonderful lover and he’d been stunned by her lack of experience. Quiet, pensive—and then irritated. But even then she’d played it well. Perhaps it hadn’t been play—she’d been in awe, terrified of intimacy. Then she’d made her fatal mistake—she’d started to fall in love with him. Her game didn’t mean anything anymore.
She’d spent a month with him. Secretly, they’d traveled to Connecticut, and in that time they’d shut out the world. There’d been no plan in Tracy’s mind anymore; she was simply in love. She didn’t want to get even with her father; she just wanted Leif. Someday she knew that she would have to tell him who she really was—she knew that. But she couldn’t break the spell. Not then. She let herself believe that the right time would come. And she lived in the enchantment. Waking up beside him, sipping morning coffee on the terrace that overlooked the rose garden and the pool, curling beside him and watching movies late at night, clad in velour robes that could be so easily shed…
Enchantment.
Then her mother had finally reached her father, and, with Arthur Kingsley in tow, they had burst in upon a most intimate moment. Tracy had been furious and indignant, but not half so much so as those around her! Her father had accused Leif of horrible things—and Leif had been the most furious of all, glaring at Tracy with those smoke-and-fire eyes, aware that he had been duped in Tracy’s plot against her father. There was no way to tell him that it had only begun that way. She didn’t have a chance.
Oh, God! It had been horrible! Tracy could still feel sick, recalling that night. Her father—Leif—
They’d come to blows. Jesse had been wild, thundering against Leif. And Leif had taken it for a while, trying to tell Jesse that he hadn’t known, that he hadn’t had the faintest idea—that Tracy had gone by her pen name and told him that she was twenty-three.
In frustration, Leif had finally decked Jesse. And her grandfather had come up from behind and decked Leif with his old baseball bat, and Leif had gone out like a light.
Well, she’d meant to hurt her father. And she had.
He and Leif didn’t speak for a year after the incident. And protesting all the way, she’d been hauled back to grandfather’s estate in Switzerland, her nightmare really just beginning. She’d expected to pay for the incident— never as seriously and painfully as she did in that cold retreat where she felt she had lost everything.
Automatically, she sipped more champagne. Maybe it had all done something—though that price she had paid had been so high. She’d seen her father right after Zurich, and afterwards they had been close, seeing each other somewhere at least every six months.
Until he had died.
Tears welled hot behind her eyes; she swallowed and did not shed them. He’d been dead almost a year. It still hurt. Tracy knew all his faults so clearly! She had borne the brunt of many of them. But she’d still loved him and now she had to find the truth. At first she’d been stunned, then so terribly hurt—then furious because he had been such a young man—barely forty-two—and because he’d had so much more to give the world. He’d been so full of life…
Her father’s murderer had been shot down before he’d ever left the park. For Tracy that hadn’t been enough. She’d dug into the man’s past with the help of a private investigator. And when she’d found out about the money, she’d realized with horror that one of Jesse’s love/hate relationships had been dangerous enough to bring about his death.
“Which one had him killed?” she whispered aloud.
“Me—remember.”
Naturally, she screamed. Luckily, she was so stunned that the sound was nothing more than a pathetic squeal.
Le
if was in the salon and the draperies were drifting softly behind him.
“How dare you?” she whispered, embarrassed that he had caught her so off guard, annoyed that all his emotions were neatly hidden behind the smoke-gray shield of his eyes.
He shrugged, moving easily into the room, plopping down on the sofa as if he intended to stay. Relaxed, long, jeans-clad legs stretched out on the teak coffee table, fingers laced behind his dark head as he settled into the plush upholstery. He shouldn’t fit there, she thought; he was in worn Wranglers and a blue denim work shirt, and the room was far more conducive to a man in a tux.
But Leif fit. Here, in a park, on a horse, in costume, out of costume, Leif simply fit. He could be comfortable in any surrounding, with any group. He liked to be comfortable; he liked casual clothing. He looked wonderful in three-piece suits and tuxes, too. He would be forty in May, she knew; he could have passed for thirty. He was lean and trim—and not a speck of gray yet to dust his dark hair. Only his eyes and his manner reflected his maturity. His smoke-and-steel gaze gave off a certain hard-edged confidence, a certain weariness; a look that somehow warned he was not a man with whom to trifle.
“What are you doing here? Sneaking in through the balcony,” she muttered.
“You just sneaked into my suite.”
“My brother’s suite.”
“It was reserved in my name, Miss— Just what name are you going by these days, Tracy? Your father told me you had it legally changed to Kuger—but you don’t use it, do you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“It’s none of your business. You didn’t answer my question; you were after me for coming in through the balcony—why didn’t you knock at the door?”
“Would you have let me in?”
“No.”
“I rest my case.”
“Good. Get out, then.”
He didn’t move. She grew acutely uncomfortable as he studied her with blunt curiosity, his unfathomable gaze moving at a leisurely pace from her eyes to her toes. “You haven’t changed, Tracy.”
“I most certainly have. Drastically.”
“Well, you’ve got that same nasty streak. Once upon a time you used me to get to your father. Are you using Jamie now to get to me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I never expected to see you again. I had no idea you were with Jamie.”
“But I’m at the top of your suspect list. How were you planning on proving that I was in on a conspiracy to commit murder without seeing me?”
Tracy took a breath without answering him. She didn’t know how she was going to prove anything—she only knew that she had to get to the truth.
He waited for several seconds, watching her. She wished that she could run into her bedroom and wrap herself in an all-encompassing blanket to ward off that scrutiny, but she didn’t move. She didn’t intend to show a single sign of weakness in front of him—ever. Not after the way that they had last parted—he furious, she screaming and in tears.
He took his feet off the coffee table, folded his hands before him, and sighed softly as he stared down at them.
“Tracy, you’re being a fool when it’s a dangerous time to be one.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded.
He hesitated a moment, then stood, coming toward her. Instinctively, she backed away, but he didn’t appear to notice. His hands fell upon her shoulders. His hands! Seven years, and she remembered them so well! Oh, feeling them again… Fingers long and tapering, magic upon a keyboard or a guitar, magic upon bare flesh…
She almost screamed with the crippling memory of it. She didn’t, because he was already talking.
“Tracy, I know, too, that there was something more to your father’s death. I hired a detective, too. I know all about the money deposited into Martin Smith’s account.”
She inhaled sharply, staring up into his eyes. Years were swept away. She knew his gaze—dark, passionate, tense.
“If you know—”
“Tracy, you can’t wander around making accusations—unless you want a hired assassin coming after you.”
“I’m not making accusations—”
“You accused me.”
“You belong in a list of suspects!” she cried out. And it was too much for her. She wrenched away from him and started for the door to the suite. “Leif, there’s no need for you to leave by the balcony. Please, go by the front door.”
She turned around and discovered that he was standing patiently where she had left him, still watching her, still waiting.
“Tracy, we’re not done.”
“We’ve been done for years.”
“I wasn’t talking about the past, but we can discuss that, too, if you wish.”
“I don’t wish.”
“Fine. But come back here and sit down.”
“Leif—”
“Tracy,” he interrupted, “you can come back and sit down, or I can come over and insist that you sit down.”
“I’m not eighteen anymore!”
He laughed bitterly. “You weren’t eighteen then, either, Tracy.”
“I was almost—”
“Almost, but not quite. You convinced me that you were twenty-three. I would have believed it until I died— if your grandfather hadn’t threatened to have me locked up for twenty years on several counts of statutory rape! Which, at that point, was exactly what I felt I deserved. I felt like a child molester!”
“My grandfather wouldn’t have—”
“No—he wouldn’t. He couldn’t have born the publicity. He decided to knock me out with a baseball bat instead.”
“Dammit! I’m sorry! I had no control over what happened then! I was a minor. They dragged me out— they—”
“Yep—they dragged you out and whisked you away. And thankfully Jesse decided that he didn’t really want me dead and he called an ambulance. Okay, Tracy, so your grandfather controlled you. He controlled your mother all her life, too. I’m surprised your stepfather is sane. But tell me, Tracy, does he still control you? You turned eighteen a month later. You never called with an explanation—or an apology.”
“You’re forgetting something, aren’t you, Mr. Johnston?” Tracy queried softly. She felt like she was strangling. “You were married to Celia a month later. I didn’t know if it was something you had discussed with your bride or not. I presumed, like everyone else, that you wanted to pretend it had never happened.”
“Oh, it happened, Tracy. It most certainly happened!”
Tracy felt the blood drain from her face. Seven years hadn’t really eased one bit of that horribly humiliating day. It suddenly seemed very unfair that such a miserable mistake of her youth should haunt her forever, that there was no going back. She could never explain the truth to him now; she could never tell him how sorry she was. And she could certainly never tell him that she had already paid far more dearly than he could ever know. She made an impatient sound and inhaled deeply. “Leif—has it occurred to you that being near you right now is a very difficult experience for me?”
“Tracy—it’s not exactly easy for me! But I’m talking about life and death! Yours. Now get over here and sit!”
How much had the man changed? she wondered a little nervously. Or had he changed at all? The way he was staring at her, she didn’t think she wanted to risk his temper, although she despised the fact that she was going to obey him. She felt seventeen again—with someone else taking charge of her life.
“Tracy!” It was the softest whisper of her name; it was a warning and again recall came upon her in a staggering burst of lightning. Tracy! He had said her name just the same way that awful night when he had discovered himself betrayed—and when he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Tracy! Is it true?
She lowered her lashes, set her jaw, and returned to the couch, sitting quite stiffly upon it.
And to her horror, he came to her, lowered on one knee to take her hands in his in such a grip that she couldn’t wrench away; she could onl
y meet his eyes. His encompassed her own.
“Tracy, listen to me. You can’t do anything, and you can’t say anything. You should have never said anything to Jamie—”
“He’s my brother!” she burst out passionately. “He’s the only one that I can trust in this!”
Leif shook his head impatiently. “Tracy! This isn’t the way to go about it! Now you’ve gotten Jamie involved, and I’m willing to bet that you haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re going to do!”
“Leif!” With a gasp she pulled away from him, retreating around the back of the sofa and facing him again from that safe distance. “Jamie needed to know!”
He lifted a brow to her, then started down the hall and made a left. Tracy frowned, aware that he had gone into the little kitchenette. She trailed quickly after him, pausing in the doorway.
In amazement she stared at him while he switched on the drip coffeepot and rifled through the shelves for coffee and filters.
“What do you think you’re doing now?” she demanded irritably. “Leif—it’s close to four o’clock in the morning and you’re—”
“Making coffee. You can help, or you can sit, because I’m not leaving until we’ve gotten this straightened out.”
“Leif—”
“What?” He poured the water through the coffeepot, leaned against the counter, and watched her, a dark brow arched. “What is it, Tracy? Have you got Mom and Gramps stashed away somewhere? Should I expect another concussion?”
“No!” she retorted with a saccharine smile. “You can expect me to give you a concussion if you don’t get out of my suite!”
“Ah, that’s right. You are legal these days, aren’t you? You’re twenty-five years old. A quarter of a century. That’s a long, long time—and yet it’s not so long at all.”
“Leif—”
He moved across the room quickly. To her annoyance, she let out a little gasp as his arms stretched out and his fingers splayed across the wall on either side of her head. “Your father couldn’t even find you for a year!”
She ducked to crawl beneath his arm and escape him; he caught her chin and held it so that her eyes were locked with his.
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