Stranger In His Arms

by Charlotte Douglas

  He kissed the sole of her foot. “Any other little tidbits of information you haven’t told me?”

  She drew a deep breath. The moment of truth had arrived.

  Raising her head, she met his gaze head-on. “Just one.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “I’m not Jennifer Reid.”

  Chapter Ten

  While Dylan sat in stunned silence, she stepped from the tub and wrapped a terry robe around herself.

  He suddenly found his voice. “What do you mean, you’re not Jennifer Reid?”

  She jerked the robe’s sash tightly around her waist. “Jennifer Reid is dead.”

  His mouth dropped open in horror. “You didn’t—”

  “No, I didn’t kill her. She died in a train derailment.”

  Dylan stood and climbed out of the tub. His firm, tanned body glowed golden in the soft light, and the veins in his neck stood out in anger. “If you’re not Jennifer Reid, who the hell are you?”

  “It’s—”

  He grimaced and held up his hands. “Let me guess. It’s a long story, right?”

  “I was going to tell you earlier tonight. Honest. But then we got—sidetracked.”

  “Earlier tonight? How about several weeks ago? You lied to Miss Bessie about your identity, and you lied to me. What kind of woman are you?”

  “Scared to death.” She tilted her face to meet his gaze.

  He looked achingly handsome, even with his face etched with indignation and his dark eyes flashing with anger. “This story about Crutchfield and Thorne’s murder—did you make that up, too?”

  She shook her head. “Everything I’ve told you about Crutchfield is true. I did work for him. But my name isn’t Jennifer Reid. I’m Rachel O’Riley.”

  The name sounded foreign on her lips. She had posed as Jennifer for so long, she had begun to think of herself as Jennifer.

  Dylan yanked on a robe, turned and stalked into the bedroom. She followed.

  He stood before the fireplace, his back to her, hands gripping the edge of the mantel, and he didn’t turn around when she sat in the chair beside the fire. He was shutting her out, just as she’d feared he would. She had offended his honor and his pride, and she doubted he’d ever forgive her.

  “I’ll tell you everything from the beginning—no more lies,” she promised, “if you’ll listen.”

  He sat in the chair across the hearth and fixed her with a laser-like stare. He would know if she lied. She had probably already spoiled all her chances with him, but she would try to redeem herself with the truth. She hated to think how she’d feel if the truth wasn’t enough.

  “My real name is Rachel O’Riley,” she said. “I was born in Missouri and lived there on my parents’ farm until just a few years ago. My parents both died shortly after catastrophic floods ruined their land. I left Missouri to attend college for a couple of years and returned after graduating with an associate degree as a paralegal.”

  “Missouri’s a long way from Atlanta,” he said with the bluntness of a ruthless interrogator. “How did you end up there?”

  “My college roommate was from Atlanta. When I visited her after graduation, I saw Crutchfield’s ad for a paralegal. With my parents gone and the farm sold, I had nothing to hold me in Missouri. I applied for the job, and Crutchfield hired me.”

  “When?”

  “Almost a year ago. But I knew as soon as I started working for him that I’d made a mistake. I couldn’t stand the man.”

  “Why didn’t you leave?”

  “Holding my first job only a few months wouldn’t look very good on my resumé. I decided to tough it out.

  “About six months ago, I saw an ad in a national newspaper from a rancher in Montana. He was offering a business arrangement, a marriage in name only.”

  “Good God! Why would he do that?”

  “He was a widower who needed someone to care for his young son, someone his son could call “Mom.” But he wasn’t ready for the emotional involvement of a real marriage. He promised not only regular pay but a portion of the ranch’s profits. The marriage—and salary—would end when the boy graduated from high school.”

  “And you seriously considered this?” He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  She realized if she hadn’t been desperate, she would never have considered the offer. “I was miserable at the law office. I had no close ties, no living relatives. Being part of a family again seemed an attractive idea at the time, so I corresponded with the man, Wade Garrett. Eventually I told him I’d come to Montana to meet him and his son Jordan before making a final decision.”

  Dylan shook his head in amazement. “This has to be the truth. Even you couldn’t make up a story this crazy.”

  She winced at his oblique insult. “When I discovered that Crutchfield had killed Max Thorne, I knew I had to leave. Escaping to Montana seemed the perfect solution. I could hide on the Garrett ranch, and by marrying, I’d have a new identity.”

  “What changed your mind? Or did you just finally come to your senses?”

  She flinched again at the sarcasm in his voice. “Crutchfield followed me. He caught up with me at the train station in Chicago, saw me through the window as the train was leaving the station. From his letters, I knew Wade Garrett was a good man. I couldn’t place him and his son in danger from Crutchfield.”

  “How does Jennifer Reid work into this?”

  She closed her eyes, remembering Crutchfield’s face, contorted with anger when he spied her through the window of the departing train. “It started in Chicago.”

  Not leaving anything out, she told Dylan her story.

  WITH A SIGH of relief, she had felt the train lurch forward and move slowly from the depot in Chicago. She had risked a peek from behind her paper and caught Crutchfield’s malevolent gaze as he stared, rage coloring his face, at the departing train.

  Her heart had thudded louder than the crescendoing clack of wheels against the rails. She wasn’t out of the woods yet. If he’d recognized her, he could travel by car and be waiting at the next station.

  She forced herself to breathe deeply. She couldn’t think straight if she wasn’t calm. If she could avoid Crutchfield until she reached her destination, she would have that new name, new home and safety at last. Surely those changes would throw him off her trail. The farther the train clicked along the tracks, the more optimistic she felt.

  But her fear had returned with a vengeance at each stop, and she’d hidden in the rest room until the train started up again. Once it was rolling, she had carefully searched the cars to make sure Crutchfield hadn’t boarded. The train had sped through Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota. By the time it entered eastern Montana with no sign of him, she was hoping she’d lost him.

  But she knew from experience how persistent he would be.

  He’d followed her all the way from Atlanta. Now he knew she was heading for the Northwest. Unless she changed her plans, it was only a matter of time before he tracked her down.

  Her apprehension grew as the train passed through Glacier National Park. She tried to block her fears by striking up a conversation with her seatmate, Jennifer Reid, a woman about her own age, who was on her way to Seattle.

  “I’m a widow,” the blond-haired, green-eyed woman explained. “My parents died when I was young, and I have no other relatives. After an unhappy marriage, I’ve decided it’s time to start a new life and leave my past behind.”

  An orphan herself with no living relatives, Rachel felt an immediate affinity to the woman. They chatted for a long time, experiencing the freedom that comes from conversing with a stranger you know you’ll never see again. Rachel didn’t tell her seat-mate, however, about the man who stalked her. For a few blessed hours, she managed to push Larry Crutchfield from her mind.

  A sudden jolt interrupted their conversation.

  With a swiftness that sucked the oxygen from her lungs, the railroad car jumped the tracks. It lurched sidewa
ys and jackknifed away from the steep mountainside. She watched in horror as thick timbers that supported snowsheds above the tracks snapped like toothpicks. The car barreled through the timber barricade and slid toward a deep ravine.

  Flung like a rag doll by the careening coach, she smacked hard against the armrest. She winced in pain as her ribs cracked.

  The car upended.

  She grabbed in vain at something, anything, to keep from bouncing like a sock tumbling in a dryer, and caught hold of the back of a seat.

  The toppling car churned with tossed bodies and flying luggage. A hard-sided suitcase collided with her shoulder blades and rebounded into the chaos.

  “Help!” her seatmate cried and lunged against Rachel, seizing her arm in a viselike grip. The woman’s panicked shriek blended with the terrified screams of other passengers.

  Acrid smoke filled the air, blinding Rachel as the car shifted again. The derailed train gathered speed and plunged unchecked into the mountain gorge.

  With her seatmate’s wail reverberating in her ear, Rachel pitched against a window. Flames erupted a few feet away and blasted her with a wave of searing heat.

  Oh, God, they were going to be burned alive!

  The real Jennifer had released the grip on her arm, and Rachel glanced down to see the woman unconscious on the floor, blood seeping from a wound on the back of her head. She slapped the woman gently on her cheeks, trying to rouse her, but without effect. Grabbing up both their backpacks, she dragged the injured woman toward the entrance, barely managing to keep a few feet ahead of the flames licking their way up the aisle of the car.

  Other passengers battered past them, shoving and screaming, but no one stopped to help. Rachel knew she could move faster and would have a better chance of saving herself if she deserted Jennifer, but she also knew that leaving the woman would condemn her to a horrible, fiery death.

  Eyes and lungs burning with smoke, her arms and back aching from strain, Rachel tugged the dead weight of her dazed companion toward the exit, its glowing red sign barely visible through the haze. When she reached the door, she saw with horror that this end of the car was elevated. It was a good six-foot jump to the ground.

  Suddenly arms reached up out of the smoke to help her, and a conductor with a torn uniform and soot-grimed face received Jennifer’s limp body as Rachel eased it out the door. Still holding both backpacks, she leaped from the car, her speedy exit hastened by the flames at her back.

  She followed the conductor who carried Jennifer to a level spot on the rock-strewn floor of the gorge, a safe distance from the burning train. The roar of a river swollen with melted snow sounded nearby. The conductor laid Jennifer on the ground and felt for a pulse.

  “Is she okay?” Rachel asked.

  He shook his head sadly. “I don’t think she made it.”

  Rachel felt a sharp pang of loss.

  The conductor peered at Rachel through the haze. “You hurt? A doctor and nurse among the passengers have set up a triage station a little ways down the gorge. Medical teams—and the damned media—will be flying in by the dozens.”

  “I’ll be okay. I just want to sit here a while with my friend.”

  He nodded grimly and hurried away to help someone else.

  Rachel glanced at the woman stretched on the ground beneath the gigantic evergreens and experienced a wave of deep sorrow. Jennifer had seemed so excited about starting her new life, and now all her expectations had been canceled in an instant.

  The way Rachel’s life would be if Crutchfield caught up with her.

  The conductor’s parting words came back to her. The media were on the scene, and soon the spectacular crash would be broadcast over every television station in the country.

  He would be watching.

  She had to hide. She had to retrace her steps in the opposite direction, leave the Northwest and throw him off her trail.

  But first she removed her jacket and gently covered Jennifer’s face. Kneeling beside the body, Rachel issued up a fervent prayer for the woman’s soul. In that instant, like a divine message, a solution to her own dilemma occurred to her.

  Scrambling quickly before anyone else approached, she removed her identification and the address where she was headed in Montana from her backpack and placed them in Jennifer’s bag.

  Jennifer was close to Rachel’s height and weight, and her eyes were also green, although her blond hair lacked Rachel’s fiery red tones. With the switched identification papers, Jennifer would be identified as Rachel O’Riley. When the obituary hit the national papers, Crutchfield, thinking his goal of killing Rachel had been achieved by the train wreck, would abandon his pursuit.

  She glanced quickly into the dead woman’s backpack and removed all Jennifer’s papers and any form of identification. Among them she found a Tennessee driver’s license.

  Rachel’s new name would be Jennifer Reid.

  She stuffed the dead woman’s license and other papers into her backpack and hoisted it onto her aching shoulder. After tying a scarf to hide her red-hued hair and covering her eyes with sunglasses, she had made her way down the gorge, away from the crowd gathering around the wreckage.

  “IN WHITEFISH, I caught a bus and headed for Tennessee,” she told Dylan. “If I was going to become Jennifer Reid, I had to learn all I could about her. I spent a week researching in the Memphis library. My paralegal skills helped me discover all I needed to know, including the fact that Jennifer had no living relatives.

  “Once I had enough information, I moved on to Nashville and took the waitress job at the resort, just like I told you.”

  “And you left Nashville when Michael Johnson showed up asking questions?”

  She nodded. “I remembered Jennifer telling me on the train about her childhood visits to Casey’s Cove and how secluded it is. I decided it would be a perfect place to hide. I went to Asheville first, and that’s where I saw Miss Bessie’s ad in the paper. It seemed like an answer to a prayer. I had no idea how good Crutchfield’s hit man would be at tracking me down.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me the truth when we met? I would have tried to help you.” His iron demeanor cracked, and she glimpsed regret in his eyes.

  “I didn’t know Johnson was still on my trail. And I didn’t know that I’d be falling in love with you,” she added, her voice heavy with sadness, her eyes filled with tears.

  Dylan sat staring silently at the dwindling flames licking the embers in the fireplace. His expression was neutral, and she feared his feelings for her had burned into ashes like the ones he studied so intently.

  “You stole another woman’s identity,” he said finally.

  She nodded. “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Did you access her bank accounts, use her credit cards?”

  “No! What do you think am I?”

  At the look he shot her, she wished she could grab back the question. He obviously considered her a thief. And a liar. And maybe even worse.

  “Jennifer…” he paused, “…what am I supposed to call you?”

  She shrugged. What he called her didn’t matter anymore, not when his feelings toward her were so negative. “I’m used to Jennifer.”

  He nodded. “It’s late. You’d better get some sleep.”

  “In a while. I’m too keyed up to sleep now.”

  He stood. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Goodnight,” she whispered, wishing circumstances were different, that she could climb into bed and fall asleep in his arms. With his present attitude, lying next to him would be like sleeping with a glacier.

  She focused on the fire, but she heard him drop the terry robe, and in her imagination, she could see his magnificent body, lean from exercise and golden from the sun, as he slid beneath the covers. Just a short time ago, they had made passionate love in that bed, and she’d experienced the greatest happiness of her life.

  But she’d gone from ecstasy to agony in less than sixty minutes.

  She waited until his even
breathing indicated he’d fallen asleep. Careful not to waken him, she lifted a folded blanket from the foot of the bed, draped it around herself, and lay down on the cushioned window seat. Closing her eyes, she prayed sleep would come quickly and put her out of her misery.

  DYLAN WAKENED with a start and sat upright in bed. For a moment, he couldn’t remember his surroundings, but as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he realized where he was. The luminous face of his watch indicated he’d overslept. It was almost nine o’clock.

  A glance at the other side of the bed revealed it empty, unslept in, and his gaze scanned the room until it lit on Jennifer, curled beneath a blanket on the window seat, her blond hair spread like sunshine on a quilted pillow. A pleasing warmth spread through him as he remembered their lovemaking the previous night, but it quickly dissipated as the memory of her confession surfaced.

  Jennifer wasn’t Jennifer at all, but a fraud and a thief. He should never have allowed himself to care for her, but he hadn’t been able to keep himself from it.

  Earlier last night when he had first awakened and found her gone, he’d guessed immediately what she was up to. He’d tiptoed down the hall toward Crutchfield’s room to find her and had been surprised by Crutchfield coming out his door.

  “I’m going down to the car for that present I bought you,” the attorney had called to Elissa before shutting the door.

  Dylan had ducked into the alcove that housed the ice machine until the attorney had passed, then tailed him down the stairs to the rear entrance. Dylan’s heart had stuck in his throat when he glimpsed Jennifer plowing through the hedge on the other side of Crutchfield’s Mercedes. When the attorney spotted her and gave chase, Dylan had followed, fearful of what Crutchfield might do if he caught her.

  But Jennifer had been as facile at hiding as she had been at dodging the truth. She’d managed to conceal herself in a thicket until Crutchfield gave up his search. Dylan had hidden as well until the attorney returned to the inn. When Jennifer had emerged from her hiding place and he’d grabbed her, the look of stark terror on her face had stirred his emotions. Giddy with relief that she was unharmed, he’d kissed her.