Wolfe's Temptress

by Robyn Donald

  ‘I don’t know, but when I refused to go out with him he started stalking me,’ she said starkly, the little pulse in her throat hammering as she remembered the fear that had gradually overshadowed her life.

  ‘Stalking you?’ Wolfe’s comment, and the look that came with it, was little short of contemptuous. ‘You hinted that before. I don’t believe it.’

  Rowan walked across to the window and pushed it wide open. Dragging in a breath of fresh, warm air, she said unevenly, ‘I don’t know what else to call it. He rang the hostel night and morning, asking for me. He always seemed to know where I was going, what I was doing. If I went out at night he’d be there waiting, or he’d soon turn up. He sent flowers and gifts—which I sent back—and wrote letters. Hundreds of letters.’ Something in Wolfe’s face made her stop.

  ‘Do you have any of them?’ he demanded.

  She shivered. ‘No, I burnt them.’

  ‘So there’s no evidence. You’re going to have to do better than this,’ Wolfe said scornfully. ‘You said Tony was spoiled—he certainly was for choice when it came to women. He wouldn’t have dreamed of investing so much time and effort in one who turned him down.’

  The last colour drained from her face. ‘Why would I lie? If you don’t believe me, I’ll give you the names of my friends, the ones I confided in.’

  ‘Who presumably would lie for you,’ he said implacably.

  It was like hitting a stone wall. ‘They thought I was mad to be so uptight,’ she said, forcing the words out. ‘They called him the last of the red-hot romantics. Even my father felt I was making a mountain out of a molehill.’ She stopped, skin clammy as she recalled her growing fear, her frightening inability to do anything about Tony’s steady, patient, remorseless pursuit.

  Wolfe frowned. ‘Go on.’

  His ruthless insistence forced her to admit, ‘He never said anything that could be taken as a threat, but he was trying to take over my life, herd me into a place where he set the boundaries and made the decisions.’ She watched her forefinger drawing a pattern in the dried film of clay—slashing downward bars. In a shaking voice she went on, ‘I know it sounds melodramatic, but I felt that he wanted to coop me up in his own personal prison. He made my life a misery. He took photos of me with a telephoto lens, then posted them to me—without the negatives. I felt as though I was being watched all the time, even in the bathroom.’

  Acutely aware of Wolfe’s deepening frown, she turned back to the window and breathed deeply again, staring at the wreck of the tree on the lawn. Dark sap oozed slowly from the jagged end of the broken branch. ‘On my twenty-first birthday he talked a couple of my friends into staging a party, and I had to pretend to enjoy it. He was on a high…’

  That was when she’d felt real fear, because Tony’s gloating smile and the glitter in his eyes had promised something even worse. Aloud she said unevenly, ‘Halfway through the evening, in front of them all, he produced a ring and went down on one knee and proposed.’ She stopped, her hand going to her throat as she relived the suffocating feeling of being trapped. Beads of cold sweat began to gather at her temples.

  ‘What did you do?’ Wolfe’s voice was unyielding.

  From some reservoir of strength she found her voice. ‘I tried to laugh it off, but when he grabbed my hand and began to force the ring on my finger, I said no.’

  ‘What happened?’ Wolfe asked inflexibly.

  She sent him a swift glance, meeting cold eyes as polished as enamel. ‘He made it all into a huge joke, but underneath he was furious. When everyone had gone, we had a horrible, huge row. In the end, he—he cried, and begged me not to leave him and promised me…’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Money,’ Wolfe supplied harshly.

  ‘Yes.’ She looked down at the finger which Tony had gripped painfully while he’d tried to force a huge diamond ring onto it. In a muted voice she went on, ‘He wouldn’t listen—he was like a man possessed. He terrified me.’

  ‘Why? Because your chickens had come home to roost?’

  Nonplussed, she stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ Wolfe said sardonically, ‘that, having tormented him into the kind of humiliation no man could stand, you got scared when he lost control. Surely your father warned you about teasing men, and told you that sooner or later one of them would snap?’

  Fists clenching at her sides, Rowan took a step towards him, so angry she could barely articulate the words that frothed up inside her.

  But why blame him? Even her father had fallen for Tony’s facile charm, and he hadn’t had Wolfe’s natural affection for his younger brother. Tony had won again.

  Grey hopelessness drowning her anger, she said, ‘I realise you’re finding this difficult to believe—’

  ‘Difficult? Actually, I’m admiring your creativity.’

  Rowan had had enough. This morning, with the cold calculation of a cash register, this man had offered her money too—huge amounts of it, enough to buy her a future—after he’d made love to her and then rejected her. Why on earth was she trying to make this easier for him?

  She said with savage clarity, ‘Obviously you have no idea—and don’t have the imagination or desire to understand—just how terrifying it is to have someone try to take over your life, force you to fit into their mould, be what they want, do what they tell you. I hope you never discover it.’

  He gave her a long, intent look. She met it fearlessly.

  ‘Did you go to the police?’ he asked, giving nothing away.

  ‘My father was a cop! He brought me up from birth, and no one could have been more protective, but even he thought I was overreacting. If I couldn’t convince him, what hope did I have of making anyone else listen to me? Besides—’ She stopped.

  ‘Besides?’

  With difficulty she said, ‘I wondered whether I was in some way to blame.’

  To her surprise Wolfe didn’t take her up on that. She glanced across, saw a face sculpted from stone. If only she could make him understand—but how could she expect to? He’d probably never come up against a situation he couldn’t master, and it was his half-brother they were talking about. Outside on the lawn a blackbird watched a tuft of grass, head cocked on one side, before snatching a worm from the ground and flying into the flame tree.

  Knowing it was futile, Rowan went on, ‘I had no way of dealing with him except to be blunt. I told him I didn’t love him and I was never going to marry him—that I wasn’t going to marry anyone for years yet because I wanted to do something with whatever talent I’d been given.’ He’d seized on that, switching in a moment from pleading to laughing scorn. ‘He said that I was fooling myself, that my friends sniggered behind my back at me because everyone knew I had no talent.’

  She looked past Wolfe to the jaggedly broken branches outside. In a controlled voice she went on, ‘Eventually he left, but while I was at class the next day he stole my portfolio from my room at the hostel. He rang me and told me that I could have it back if I moved in with him. One page for each night in his bed. Otherwise he’d burn it.’

  Wolfe hadn’t moved, and she could read nothing in the disciplined angles and planes of his face. Her voice trembled as she said, ‘He knew I needed that portfolio for my final assessment. I threatened him with the police if he didn’t return it. He just laughed.’

  Tony’s laughter—assured, easy—had enraged and frightened her in equal measure. ‘So I told him I wouldn’t prostitute myself for a portfolio—anything I’d done there I could do again.’

  A muscle flicked in Wolfe’s jaw. Yes, now he knew how his offer of money had made her feel—like a woman who could be bought. It should have given her some satisfaction, but all she could feel was a vast emptiness, a cry of outrage echoing through her. She fell silent, imprisoned by memories of the lonely horror of those months under siege when she’d been unable to convince anyone of what she was enduring, but she said bleakly, ‘Ask your mother. She sent me the portfolio after—after he died. It wa
s in his apartment.’

  ‘And?’ Wolfe asked, so harshly that Lobo leapt to his feet and paced across to stand beside her, hackles lifting.

  ‘He said I’d never get away from him—that wherever I went he’d follow me until I realised that I belonged to him. I tried to reason with him, but he didn’t care about the real me—I was just a moving, breathing statue he had to possess. He was calm, completely confident. He knew what he was doing, and he didn’t care.’ Cold sweat gathered across her forehead, trickled between her breasts and down her spine. ‘That was when I realised I’d never be free of him. I couldn’t see how he could do this to me, make my life a complete and utter misery and get away with it, but he was doing it, and there didn’t seem to be any way I could stop him.’

  She paused before saying in a hoarse voice, ‘I ran home for the weekend to sort out what to do next. I had this crazy scheme of hiding in Japan—but I needed to make sure that Dad wouldn’t tell him where I was, because Tony had the money to follow me anywhere I went.’

  Wolfe’s eyes narrowed into piercing green slivers. ‘Go on,’ he said almost soundlessly.

  She wet her lips. ‘I went out one Saturday afternoon with a friend, and Tony turned up at the house just as Dad was going to the shooting range. Dad did pistol shooting competitively. Tony went with him, and from what Dad said afterwards they had what he thought was a really constructive chat about the situation.’ Her mouth widened in a humourless smile. ‘Tony confessed that he’d probably been too pushy, and he told Dad that he was going to pull back and wait until I was ready. He asked my father if he could have some time alone with me, and Dad couldn’t see any harm in it. I’d just got home when they came in.’

  She swallowed, remembering again the sick panic that had engulfed her at Tony’s grin as he’d followed her father into the house—a grin that had turned into vaunting triumph when her father had made an excuse and left the room.

  Wolfe watched her with opaque, unreadable eyes. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Fear and anger make a pretty powerful mixture. I lost it,’ she said wearily. ‘I ordered him out, told him once and for all that I wanted nothing more to do with him, that he was sick and getting sicker, and that no one had the right to do what he’d been doing to me.’

  ‘And how did he respond to that?’ Wolfe asked without expression.

  Rowan realised she was wringing her hands. Hiding them behind her back, she said in a muffled voice, ‘He laughed, as though it was the best joke in the world, then he said I should be grateful he loved me, and that this was one battle I wasn’t going to win.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  She closed her eyes and took a shallow, impeded breath, steadying her voice by sheer force of will. ‘He’d carried the pistols in and put them on the bench by the door, but he’d been fiddling with them, just casually, the way you do when your mind’s not on what you’re doing, when you’re just occupying your hands.’ She stopped and swallowed. ‘I saw him doing it, but I was so angry and upset it didn’t register. Until—until he lifted a pistol and pointed it at me. I saw Dad come through the door behind him at the moment Tony said quite casually that—that if I didn’t agree to marry him he’d kill me, and then himself.’

  Abruptly, moving with less of his usual litheness, Wolfe walked across to the window. ‘What happened?’ he asked harshly, without turning.

  ‘He meant it,’ she said tonelessly. ‘He said that I had to make the decision then. I—I told him that he didn’t need to go so far, but he gave me a sort of glazed stare and said that since his accident he’d realised that he was an all-or-nothing man. If he couldn’t have me, no one else was going to.’

  When Wolfe cursed beneath his breath she flinched. He said savagely, ‘For God’s sake tell me what happened!’

  ‘I talked to him, trying to calm him down. Dad always said that’s what you should try to do, and although I didn’t dare look at him tiptoeing in, I could feel him willing me to stay calm until he got to Tony, so I kept babbling, trying to cover any noise Dad might make.’

  In a cold voice Wolfe said, ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Tony listened, but he was smiling as though he’d already won. Dad was halfway across the room when Tony must have sensed he was there. He—he turned around, and then whipped back again.’ Her voice broke and she had to stop and drag in several deep breaths. Without looking at Wolfe she went on tonelessly, ‘The moment Tony moved Dad shouted at me to drop and I did, rolling myself up into a ball on the floor. I didn’t see what happened next, but the pistol went off.’

  At last Wolfe’s head turned. Stone-faced, merciless, he commanded, ‘Finish it.’

  She tightened her trembling mouth. ‘The bullet went right through Tony’s heart and he—he died.’

  Shuddering, she closed her eyes against the remembered horror, but when the vivid images froze against her eyelids she opened them again.

  Unmoving, silent, Wolfe loomed against the light outside. What else did he want? she wondered half hysterically.

  The truth.

  She dragged more air into her lungs. Still in the same blank voice she went on, ‘And then my father had a heart attack. I called the ambulance and the police, but—it was too late for Tony.’

  ‘So why did you keep quiet about all this?’

  Rowan wet her dry lips. ‘Because Dad killed Tony.’

  ‘What?’ Wolfe stared at her. ‘Killed him? How?’

  She wiped the sweat from her forehead. ‘While they were grappling he forced the gun around and tightened his hand over Tony’s on the trigger.’

  ‘And your father told you this?’ Wolfe asked incredulously. ‘Why?’

  ‘He—he thought I was my mother.’ Tears stung the backs of her eyes, clogged her throat. ‘He was dying, and he talked to her, explaining what he’d done.’

  ‘Why?’ Wolfe’s single word was like the crack of a whip.

  ‘Because he realised that Tony meant it—that I’d never be safe. He knew even before the coronary that he was dying, you see—cancer. He hadn’t told me, and I’m glad he died from a heart attack—he’d have preferred a swift death.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘But before that he—he coached me about what to say about Tony’s death, and said it would be all right, not to worry.’ The tears spilled over. ‘And he asked me to forgive him for not believing me.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell me this when I asked you first?’ Wolfe asked grimly. ‘Who were you protecting? The cop who took your father’s statement before he died? Did he coach you too? Or just look the other way?’

  ‘Why should I have told you? How will knowing what happened help your mother?’ she evaded bitterly. ‘I got what I wanted—I was free. But the price of my freedom was two lives. Can you blame me for not wanting anything to do with you and your family?’

  She stopped for a few tense seconds, then finished with anguished despair, ‘If your mother dies, that’s three people Tony will have killed.’

  There was a long moment of silence.

  Wolfe said, ‘My mother felt all along that you were hiding something.’ He paused before continuing in a cool, deliberate tone that successfully hid any emotion, ‘You’ve no reason to like us, have you? Tony terrorised you, my mother publicly blamed you, and I threatened you.’

  He believed her! A sudden, intense relief shook Rowan back into life. ‘I understood why,’ she said swiftly. ‘You love your mother—of course you wanted to help her. But I couldn’t—I don’t know whether Dad’s superior officer guessed what had happened, but he certainly made it easy for me at the inquest. He doesn’t deserve to lose his job because he looked the other way for a man he knew was dying. Wolfe, I had to protect him. Besides, I knew that the truth wouldn’t help your mother.’

  With flaying self-contempt he answered, ‘You’re too compassionate. Was that enough reason to harass you, just like Tony? And I didn’t have the decency or the self-control to keep my hands off you.’

&nbs
p; Rowan shivered. A barely formed hope had just been killed by his words and now lay shattered in her heart. ‘I always knew you weren’t like Tony,’ she said in a flat voice, aware that it was true.

  Coldly, quietly, Wolfe went on, ‘As a child he had tantrums when he couldn’t get his own way. And he was spoilt—he was his father’s only child, and his father was determined that no one should break his spirit. He grew out of any open display of anger, but we all knew that he had a violent temper.’ He struck a bench with his closed fist. ‘I was proud of the way he’d learned to control it. And proud of his persistence in getting what he wanted, even though his manipulative nature concerned me. But after the accident he changed. We put it down to his head injuries.’

  The skin on Rowan’s body tightened unbearably. She’d made love to this man, been so angry with him she could barely speak, feared him, been fascinated by his brilliant mind. Until then, she hadn’t been sorry for him. Quickly, meaninglessly, she told him, ‘It probably was. I know head trauma can alter people’s characters. Wolfe, it wasn’t your fault.’

  As though he hadn’t heard her, he said, ‘I think my mother must have some inkling of his pursuit of you. Possibly her need to find out what happened is to reassure herself that he didn’t hound you to something violent.’

  Rowan bit her lip. ‘It wasn’t her fault, either! What are you going to tell her?’

  ‘The truth,’ he said, implacable and uncompromising.

  Rowan opened her mouth to protest, met unsparing eyes and closed it again. He knew his mother better than she did.

  Something niggling at the back of her mind pushed forward and she said through the wave of exhaustion breaking over her, ‘How did you find out where I live?’

  ‘A friend of my mother’s—the one who came to the inquest with her—saw you in the café, and told my mother.’ He watched her with pitiless eyes. ‘She told me a few days before we met.’

  ‘Before we—’ Rowan’s heart stopped in her throat.