No Desire Denied

by Cara Summers

  “How nice of you to join us, Mr. Sutherland. It will be better for Nell if you put the gun down right now.”

  Don’t. Nell tried to get the word out, but the arm around her neck cut off her breath.

  Reid let one full beat go by before he let the gun drop. Then he raised his hands, palms outward. “Let her go.”

  Orbison laughed. “After all the trouble she’s caused?”

  “She found the necklace.”

  “Good point. I’ll make her death as quick and painless as possible.”

  “You won’t get away with it,” Reid said, his voice calm. “You’ll never make it off the castle grounds. And you haven’t killed anyone yet.”

  “High time I did then.” Orbison took the gun from her temple and swung it toward Reid.

  The instant his grip on her loosened, Nell used all her weight and the adrenaline of terror to stomp hard on James Orbison’s foot. Twisting, she grabbed the arm that held the weapon with both hands. The sound of the shot deafened her as she used all her weight to shove him to the floor.

  She was barely aware of pain and the coppery flavor of fear in her mouth as she scrambled to straddle him, never losing her grip on the wrist that held the gun. “You are not going to shoot Reid. He’s mine.”

  They rolled once, twice. Nell used all her strength to hold on. But her hands had become slippery, and Orbison was strong. She couldn’t keep him from raising the gun again. In seconds, he would have it pointed at her.

  Reid stood frozen. He’d retrieved his gun, but he couldn’t get a clear shot. Then everything happened so quickly that immediately afterward he wasn’t sure of the sequence. Nell still had the sapphire necklace wrapped around one of her wrists, and suddenly it caught all the light in the room and nearly blinded him.

  It did blind Orbison. Fully.

  “Mine.” The greedy voice was almost drowned out by the clatter of his gun hitting the floor when Nell knocked it out of his hand. He reached for the necklace. As Reid moved for him, he saw Nell smash her fist into Orbison’s face. Reid kicked the gun aside and pulled Nell off. He made quick work of using Orbison’s belt to secure his hands.

  Pushing her hair out of her face, Nell watched Reid work quickly, efficiently. She felt as if she were watching a movie. It was over. And Reid was alive. Relief. That’s why she felt dizzy. And her arm was stinging. Glancing down, she saw the red stain on her shirt. “Reid...”

  He turned to face her. “I had it under control. You could have been shot.”

  “I think I was shot.” She might have laughed if it hadn’t been for the second wave of dizziness. Then all she felt was Reid’s arms around her as the world went black.

  With fear snaking through his gut, Reid pulled Nell into his arms and cradled her on his lap. Feeling the warmth of her blood on his hands, he had to swallow hard. He should have protected her from this, and he hadn’t. Not that she’d needed him. She’d fought Orbison like a demon.

  Ignoring the thoughts of blame, he ripped off the sleeve of her shirt and made himself examine the wound. The bullet had gone cleanly through the flesh. Nell’s flesh. His stomach rolled.

  It was only slightly deeper than a scratch, he told himself as he used her shirt to bandage it tightly. By the time he finished, his throat was dry from the rawness of his breathing. He heard footsteps pounding in the corridor outside. While he waited for the cavalry, he held her close, rocking her. “You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”

  “Yes,” she murmured without opening her eyes. “He wanted to kill you. I couldn’t...let him do that. Because I love you, and I never kissed you beneath the stones.”

  Reid felt his heart take a long tumble. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could even form a word, Daryl burst into the room.

  “She took him out, but not before he shot her,” Reid said. “A flesh wound. She’s going to be fine.” If he said it often enough, he’d start to believe it. “We need a doctor.”

  “Glad you left something for me to do,” Daryl said as he punched a number into his cell phone. “Our Gwen is neutralized thanks to Skinner. That man has good moves. If he were twenty years younger, I’d recruit him.”

  * * *

  REID PACED BACK and forth outside the door to Nell’s bedroom. A headache pulsed at his temple as thoughts and fears danced through his mind. When he’d lain her on the bed, she’d looked so small, so pale, she might have been dead. The moment the doctor from the clinic at nearby Huntleigh College had arrived, she’d cleared the room of everyone but Vi. That had been nearly half an hour ago.

  “Nell is going to be fine.” Daryl pocketed his cell phone and leaned against the wall. “Our local doctor is very good. The college hired her when she retired from the E.R. at Boston General. Her record there was stellar. I checked her out.”

  Reid ran his hands through his hair. “We didn’t check deeply enough into Orbison.”

  “I agree that we didn’t do it quickly enough. But the reports that I’ve had in the past half hour from Cam and my man in D.C. substantiated everything he told you. Your maternal grandfather is a direct descendant of Ennis Sutherland, so you and your brothers have a legitimate claim on those sapphires.”

  Reid waved a dismissive hand as he continued to pace. “Do you think I care about that?”

  Daryl chuckled. “Not yet. But it was the main motivation behind everything Orbison did. Obsessed as he was with getting his hands on the sapphires, he did everything he could to destroy any evidence of that claim.”

  As Daryl answered a call on his cell, Reid’s mind veered once more to what Nell had told him just before she’d lost consciousness. She loved him. The emotions those words had triggered were still spinning through his system. He also recalled what she’d told Orbison in those seconds when Reid had stood helpless and watched her struggle with Orbison. “He’s mine.” But she’d spoken in the heat of the moment. She might not even remember.

  “That was Skinner,” Daryl said as he pocketed his phone. “Gwen is furious with Orbison, and she’s singing like a bird. The only thing more dangerous than a woman scorned is a con woman who’s been outconned.”

  The doctor stepped out of Nell’s bedroom. When Reid made a move to go in, she placed a firm hand on his chest. “She’s a lucky girl. She’s going to be fine, but she needs her rest. I cleaned and bandaged the wound and left her a sedative.”

  “I have to see her,” Reid said.

  The doctor stood her ground. “She won’t take that sedative if you go in there. Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.”

  No. It can’t. Reid barely kept himself from shouting the words.

  “I’ll make some tea,” Vi said, drawing the doctor down the hall. Reluctantly, Reid followed to the head of the stairs. Then he paused, waiting until the two women rounded the landing and began their descent to the foyer. “I have to call Cam,” he said to Daryl.

  “I’ll tell the doc that you’ll join us shortly.” Smiling, he patted Reid’s shoulder before Cam ambled after the two women. At the landing, he paused. “If you’re smart, you’ll take her out to the stone arch. That’s where I would have taken Vi if she hadn’t beat me to it.”

  The stones. Daryl was right. Whirling, he strode back to Nell’s room. The only way to settle things between them was to talk beneath Angus’s arch. He was reaching for the knob when the door swung open.

  “We have to talk.” They spoke the words together. When Nell grabbed his shirt to pull him into the room, he swept her up and into his arms.

  “Where—”

  “We’re going to finish this once and for all under Angus and Eleanor’s stones.”

  Finish? A band of pain tightened around Nell’s heart, and it sharpened with each step Reid took. He was down the stairs in seconds. Tapping in the security code delayed him only a few more, and then he was running with her through the gardens.

  He wanted to finish things between them.

  Nell drew in a breath and felt the burn in her l
ungs. Night sounds filled the air—the hoot of an owl, the soft rush of wind through the trees, and farther away, the lapping of the water against the shore. She had to think. If he wanted to end things between them and walk away, doing it beneath the stone arch made some sense. To her knowledge, no one had ever used the stones that way before. But if kissing beneath the stones bound you to a person for life, breaking up beneath the arch might also tap into the power of the legend.

  She could imagine Reid developing a strategy like that. She could even see herself writing it that way. In fact, for her book, it would make a great opening scene. Her hero and heroine who’d kissed beneath the stones would break up there, trying to undo the spell. It would definitely add a layer of conflict to the plot, and it would serve as a trigger to the romance. And Alistair MacGregor’s tragic love story would serve as a background to everything. It would add a layer of tragedy to her book.

  A mix of panic and fear bubbled up when he stepped into the wide arc of light that surrounded the stone arch. This was her story. And it was not going to end the way Alistair’s had. Nor was she going to allow Reid to break up with her. She was going to use the power of the legend before he could.

  The instant Reid stepped beneath the stones, she grabbed his face, drew his lips to hers and planted a kiss. She’d meant it as a statement, but the moment his mouth covered hers, her intention changed. Everything else faded but Reid, and she let herself simply sink into him—his scent, his taste, the strength of his arms wrapped so tightly around her. This was what she wanted. This was everything she wanted. She was never going to let him go.

  When he finally drew back, she had to tell herself to breathe, to swallow, to think. She was stunned, when he dropped his hands to his side, to discover she remained upright.

  “Nell...”

  Shadows prevented her from reading his eyes. But his action had been clear. How could he have kissed her like that and still want to finish things between them?

  “Nell,” he repeated. “I brought you out here to talk.”

  A flare of anger stiffened her spine, and she jabbed a finger into his chest. “Save your breath. No amount of talking is going to change what’s between us. I kissed you, and you kissed me back. It’s settled.”

  “Nell...”

  She poked him again, hard enough to send him back a step. “You’re going to say you didn’t want this. Too bad.” Whirling, she paced to the side of the arch and then turned back, her chin lifted. “Neither did I. But a girl has a right to change her mind. And now it’s too late. We’re stuck with each other. End of story.”

  Reid walked toward her then. It wasn’t what he had planned, but then nothing had been from the day he’d encountered her again. “Okay.” When he took her hand and linked their fingers, the surprise in her eyes gave him some satisfaction.

  “You’re not going to argue?”

  Raising their joined hands, he kissed her fingers. “You kissed me under the stones. I love you, Nell MacPherson. We are definitely stuck with each other.”

  She gripped his fingers hard as if she were determined to never let him go. “Then why did you stop kissing me?”

  “Because in another moment, I was going to do more than that.” He lifted her in his arms. “You’ve been shot. I have to get you back to the castle.”

  “Wait.” Her grip on him tightened.

  “Nell...”

  Her smile had his determination wavering. “I’ll go quietly on two conditions. First, I get a rain check on the kiss and ‘more than that,’ and second, we just sit here on the ledge for a minute.”

  Reid sat and settled her on his lap. When she snuggled her head into the crook of his shoulder, nothing had ever felt so right.

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  His laugh blended with the whisper of the wind in the trees and the far-off sound of the water. “I got the message when you kissed me.” He tipped her chin up. “I brought you out here to talk you into marrying me and beginning a new life together. Thank God you are a woman of action.”

  “That’s just what Angus must have done with Eleanor.”

  Reid glanced out over the gardens to the castle and the lake. “I can almost feel them here.”

  “Can you? I thought the practical Secret Service agent didn’t believe in that kind of woo-woo.”

  “It gets better. Remember that theory you had that Angus helped her hide the jewels so that you and your sisters would find them? I’m willing to buy into that, too. It’s the only scenario I can come up with to explain how they ended up back where Eleanor would have wanted them—with Alistair MacGregor’s heirs. I don’t know how he did it, but Angus found a way to help her deal with the guilt she felt.”

  “It makes sense. When you consider that Angus spent his entire life granting Eleanor’s every wish, it’s a logical conclusion. I am sure I can use it in the book I am writing. I’m going to weave in all the aspects of Angus and Eleanor’s story—even the tragedy of Alistair’s death.” She reached up to place her palms on his cheeks and looked into his eyes. “And, of course, the hero and heroine, after fighting against it for the length of the story, will find their happy ending, as we finally have.”

  “No.” Reid brushed his lips softly over hers. “Not an ending. This is just the beginning of our story.”

  Then he kissed her again beneath the stones.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from BACK IN SERVICE by Isabel Sharpe.

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  1

  “I HAD A great time today, thanks, Crystal.” Kendra Lonergan smiled at the attractive middle-aged widow and got a wide smile back. A first! This was good progress. They’d spent the past hour down on Rat Beach tossing balls into the Pacific waves for Byron, the golden retriever Kendra regularly borrowed from a friend for appointments with her dog-loving clients.

  “I had fun, too.” Crystal bent and stroked Byron’s reddish fur. “It felt good to be on the beach again. Thanks, Kendra.”

  “You are welcome. See you next week!” Kendra tugged Byron’s leash and gave Crystal a quick wave before leading the dog back down the block to the Lexus minivan that had belonged to her parents. For a while now she’d been intending to sell the car and buy something smaller, but she didn’t ever seem to have time, and wasn’t sure what she’d replace it with. In the meantime, it was a nice—if a bit tough—reminder of the family she’d lost. “Up you get, Byron. I’ll take you home now.”

  She unhooked his leash; Byron bounded into the car and settled on the towel Kendra kept on the backseat. What an amazing animal—she never had any trouble with him. His owner, Lena, Kendra’s friend since kindergarten, worked typical lawyer hours and was delighted to have Byron out getting exercise whenever Kendra needed him. Kendra had thought about getting a dog herself, but...she hadn’t done that yet either.

  The Lexus swung smoothly out of its parking place on Pullman Lane in Redondo Beach; she turned it south onto Blossom Lane, heading toward the Pacific Coast Highway and her hometown of Palos Verdes Estates, a hilltop oasis overlooking the vast urban sprawl of L.A. She was back living in the house she’d grown up in, a temporary situation that had stretched on as the weeks and months passed. The house was much too big for one person, but it was stuffed with memories Kendra wasn’t yet ready to
leave behind.

  Climbing the steeply curving roads of Palos Verdes Estates, windows rolled down to enjoy the cool November breeze, she turned up the volume on a Mumford and Sons song she loved, “Little Lion Man,” peeking occasionally at the view of Santa Monica Bay, which became more and more spectacular as she ascended.

  She left the view behind and turned onto Via Cataluna, then into the driveway of the house where Lena lived with her husband, Paul. Her cell rang, a private caller.

  “This is Kendra.” She switched off the engine.

  “Kendra Lonergan? It’s Matty Cartwright.”

  Kendra blinked, taking a moment to place the name. Matty Cartwright? From Palos Verdes High School? Whom Kendra had last seen years ago? How typical of a Cartwright to think she’d need no further introduction than her name. “Hi, Matty.”

  “I’m calling to— Oh, uh, how are you? It’s been a long time.”

  Kendra pushed out of the car, rolling her eyes, not in the mood for friendly small talk. She hadn’t seen Matty since her sophomore year, when Matty was a senior, and didn’t think she’d ever spoken to her. “I’m fine. What a surprise to hear from you.”

  “I’m calling about Jameson.”

  Jameson. Kendra grimaced, opening the car’s rear door. Matty’s younger brother had been in Kendra’s grade from Montemalaga Elementary School through Palos Verdes High School. Not her favorite classmate.

  She followed Byron to Lena’s front entrance, where she fumbled for the borrowed keys in the pocket of her sweatshirt, not really anxious to be having this conversation. “What about Jameson?”

  “I wondered if you could work with him.”

  Kendra froze. Work with Jameson Cartwright? As in help him? After the way he’d treated her? Byron whimpered impatiently. She unlocked her friend’s door; the dog raced toward the kitchen. “Whoa, back up a second, Matty. Where is he, what happened to him and how did you hear about me and what I do?”

  A sigh of exasperation came over the line. Kendra gritted her teeth, tempted to tell Matty where to stick her Cartwright attitude.