Led into Temptation

by Cara Summers

  “Right. I’m not quite the complete fool you took me for, Michael.”

  “Maybe not.”

  She ignored the tightening in his voice. “Here’s the way it is. The notebooks are in the tower in a secret room. I’m the only one who knows where that room is, and Dane here is your only bargaining chip. You’re not going to shoot him.”

  “You want me to let him live.”

  “Yes. Thanks to Leo, he’s out for the count. Besides, I know very well that you’re still planning to kill me. I saw you shoot Leo King. But the only way to get your hands on those notebooks is to come with me to the tower.” That would buy Dane some time. And once Michael was in the tower, maybe she could count on Hattie to help.

  There was a beat of silence as Michael flicked a glance at the tower. “If you’re lying…”

  “There’s only one way to find out. Unless you can’t go back there.”

  “Of course, I can go back there.” Carefully lowering the gun, he tucked it into his waistband beneath his shirt. Then he took her hand. “If you try anything—even so much as look at anyone the wrong way—I’ll cut my losses, but I’ll shoot a few of your guests before I make my escape.”

  Together, they started toward the hotel.

  FEAR HELPED DANE CLEAR THE remaining fog from his mind. Hearing Michael Davenport’s voice had jump-started his brain, but his body was still giving him trouble. When he’d moved a foot to let Naomi know that he was regaining consciousness, that was all he’d been able to move.

  But she’d gotten his signal. And she deserved kudos for managing to fill him in on what she planned to do.

  There was nothing wrong with Naomi Brightman’s brain. One part of him admired the plan because it bought her some time. Another part of him was scared shitless.

  She was taking Davenport up to that tower room, where she’d have to deal with both the man’s greed and his gun—and an unpredictable ghost in the mix.

  He made it to his knees and fought off a wave of dizziness. By the time he staggered to his feet, Nate joined him. The sheriff glanced down at the body. “Do I want to know about this right now?”

  “It’s Davenport’s work. C’mon. I’ll fill in the details as we go. The big picture is Naomi figured out the stamps are in her notebooks and she’s taking Davenport to them. He’ll kill her once he has his hands on them.”

  NAOMI TRIED TO IGNORE the buzzing sound in her ear as she and Michael joined the line of guests who were now moving back into the hotel. She had to get him away from Dane. If she could just get Michael past all the people he could hurt to the tower… Walking as quickly as she could, she forged an unobtrusive path through the crowd to the stairwell then started up the stairs.

  “Good girl,” Michael murmured as they passed the first landing. “So far, so good.” When they began ascending the stone staircase to the first level of the tower, she felt the hard press of the gun in her side once again. And he made sure she felt it again when they reached the oak door to Hattie’s tower.

  “No tricks. I won’t be buying in to them this time.”

  Somehow she kept her hand steady as she fished out the key and turned it in the lock. Dane was coming. It was that thought, that certainty, that had panic tightening inside of her. He’d waste no time in following her. She had to get Michael into the tower room first. Then she had to find a way to distract him.

  “No tricks,” she promised as she pulled the door open. But the sudden rush of cold air gave her hope that Hattie might be up to a few.

  “What have you got—some kind of super air-conditioning in this place?”

  Naomi flipped a switch, and the stairwell was flooded with light. Then she started up the stairs. She sensed the hesitation behind her. Not yet, Hattie. She sent the thought spiraling upward. “Coming?”

  As they climbed the circular stairs together, Michael’s breathing became more labored.

  Waiting until they’d both stepped into the tower room, she said, “This room was the one Hattie Haworth used as a bedroom. Do you know anything about her?”

  “Yeah.” Michael flicked a glance around the room. “She was a washed-up movie star who came here and turned herself into a hermit. Greta Garbo with none of the glamour.”

  The beveled mirror was out of her sight line, but she caught the flash all the same. Hope and the connection she’d always felt with Hattie helped her, but Naomi knew that the spirit of the dead ex-movie star wasn’t the whole answer. And she could sense that Dane was getting closer. Stall. She had to stall and keep Michael distracted.

  If he were on one of her juries, she’d know what approach to take. Turning, she faced him and suddenly it came to her. Ego. “Will you just tell me one thing, Michael? How did you manage to hide the stamps in one of my notebooks without my knowing?”

  “Easy. I did it that night at the Four Seasons. When you went to the ladies’ room, you left the notebook on the table.”

  She had, she recalled. She’d gotten it out to jot some notes while he’d been gone for those few moments. “What if I hadn’t gone to the restroom?”

  He smiled then. “I would have suggested that you needed to powder your nose.”

  The confidence in his tone had her spine stiffening.

  “You would have gone. You’re very…malleable.”

  Not anymore. But she didn’t say the words aloud. Behind him, she could see just the top of Dane’s head appear on the spiral staircase.

  Knowing she had to keep Michael focused on her, she said, “Hattie’s still here, you know. She haunts the tower.”

  “You’re not going to scare me with a ghost.”

  The air trembled.

  Michael’s gun hand didn’t. He stepped forward and jabbed the gun into her. “I won’t kill you with the first shot. Before I’m done, you’ll beg me to let you show me the secret room.”

  Slowly, she backed to the wall, felt for the lever and pulled it. Though she didn’t spare them a glance, she knew the notebooks were there on the floor just where she’d left them. And she knew the instant that Michael spotted them. If he would just step into the room, she would shut the door and trap him….

  But Michael didn’t go into the room. Instead, he met her eyes. “Good girl. Now, I’ll give you your reward. One quick shot. You’ll barely feel it.”

  “Do that and you die.”

  Dane.

  In a lightning fast move, Michael’s arm went around her neck, and he jerked her in front of him as he whirled. Before fear could register, she felt the hard press of the gun against her temple.

  “Wrong,” Michael said. “You’re the one who’ll—”

  The sentence ended on a choked sound as Hattie Haworth materialized in front of them.

  “You—” Michael said. “You’re not real.”

  But Naomi felt his heart race against her back as the image grew stronger, and light flashed brightly in the beveled mirror.

  Hattie was just as Naomi remembered her—the long tumble of red gold curls, the flowing dress that didn’t quite touch the floor. But she wasn’t in the mirror this time.

  As she drifted toward them, hysteria tinged Michael’s voice. “Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot.”

  The problem was that Hattie had positioned herself in front of Dane as if she were trying to protect him. But Naomi was pretty sure that a ghost couldn’t take a bullet.

  When Michael’s gun arm swung toward Hattie, Dane sprang forward.

  “No.” Fueled by both adrenaline and fear, Naomi flung herself on Michael’s gun arm. The shot made barely a sound, but she felt the heat of the bullet. Off balance, she stumbled and landed on the floor just in time to see Dane tackle Michael. And he’d lunged right through Hattie to do it.

  Both men crashed into the wall, then rolled across the floor, first one on top and then the other. As Dane gained the upper position and pounded a fist into Michael’s face, Nate reached the top of the stairs. “Hey, MacFarland, save me a turn.”

  But Michael was no longer moving.
>
  Naomi’s head spun as Hattie’s image began to fade. Before it disappeared completely, Naomi was almost sure it winked at her. She tried to shake the dizzy feeling out of her head, but it wouldn’t go.

  “Are you all right?”

  The moment Dane’s hands closed around her upper arm, she gasped and her vision began to gray.

  “Dammit, Naomi. He shot you. You’re bleeding.”

  She saw the proof of that on Dane’s hands before her world went black.

  EASING HER LEGS OVER THE SIDE of her bed, Naomi said, “I want to get dressed.” By her rather hazy calculations, she’d been in bed for over a day and a half.

  “You’re still several short of the forty-eight hours of bed rest the doctor ordered,” Reese said.

  “And you always insisted that we follow doctor’s orders,” Jillian added. “Payback time.”

  “Besides, we just got here this morning.” Reese yawned. “If you get dressed, then we’ll have to change clothes, and I’m still suffering from jet lag.”

  Naomi frowned at Reese. Since her youngest sister seldom wore anything but jeans and a T-shirt under her chef’s jacket, she didn’t see that changing clothes would be an exhausting process. But she didn’t say that.

  “Besides, we have something we want to talk to you about,” Jillian said.

  They were trying to distract her, and it was a strategy she was very familiar with.

  For a second the images of those last few moments in the tower room flashed into her mind just as they had each time she’d drifted into sleep. She experienced once again the tightening of Michael’s arm around her throat and the fear and desperation she’d felt as he’d swung his gun arm toward Dane. But in the fitful dreams she’d had ever since she’d been sedated, the bullet always flew through Hattie and found its target. Dane had fallen to the ground and blood had blossomed on his shirt.

  Ruthlessly she pushed the picture away. She had a goal here. She wanted to see Dane. He hadn’t visited her. At least she couldn’t remember that he had.

  “I don’t think that young man who stitched me up was a real doctor. You didn’t see him. He looked like he was twelve.” But she didn’t push to her feet. For one thing, Reese had propped her own feet on the side of the bed so that Naomi would have had to climb over them to get to the closet. For another, she still had enough pain meds in her system to make her reevaluate the effort it would take to actually select clothes and put them on. The sneaky little health practitioner had knocked her out for hours—long enough for her sisters to fly in from California and Europe. Too long.

  Reese rolled her eyes at Jillian. “I can’t imagine that the doc wasn’t fully credentialed. The FBI flew him in from the mainland. He wouldn’t have gotten past your private army if he wasn’t the real McCoy.”

  “My private army?”

  “Avery, the hunky sheriff and the even hunkier Dane MacFarland,” Jillian said. “They’ve been vetting anyone who wants to see you. So far we’re the only two they’ve permitted in. They’ve refused entry to some pretty intimidating guys in suits.”

  Naomi closed her eyes. “Probably the FBI.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Dane is filling them in on everything that happened,” Reese said. “He even hit the high points with us.”

  “The hundred million dollars’ worth of stamps were glued between the pages in one of your notebooks, Michael Davenport is in custody, and his unlucky partner—your old boss, Leo King—is dead. And Dane says that you may have saved his life.”

  “I didn’t. It was just that I didn’t think Hattie could stop a bullet. It was going to go right through her and—” She trailed off to block the images that threatened to flood her mind again.

  “I’m not sure that your trio of protectors has reported the role that Hattie played in all of this to the suits.” Reese waved a lazy hand. “Of course, if you suddenly get dressed and go down to the lobby, you can fill them in on the preternatural side of the case. They’ll probably keep running you through it for hours.”

  “Okay, okay.” Naomi inched her way back to lean against her pillows.

  “You really did see Hattie again?” Jillian asked.

  Naomi nodded. “I swear she winked at me.”

  “I don’t want to hear about Hattie,” Reese said. “She’s old news. I want to know about Dane MacFarland. Who is he?”

  Naomi pressed a hand against her heart to still the quick thud. She wanted the answer to that question even more than they did. Just who was Dane MacFarland?

  “Well?” Jillian prompted.

  Naomi raised her hands and dropped them. “That’s just it. I don’t know who he is.”

  Shooting an I-told-you-so glance at Reese, Jillian sat down on the foot of the bed and crossed her legs. “Avery said the two of you may have something serious going on.”

  “What else did he tell you?” Naomi asked.

  “That’s it. Then he locked up his lips and threw away the key.” Reese pantomimed the gesture. “He just didn’t want us to be operating totally in the dark.”

  “While you were still weaving in and out of the meds, we talked to Dane for a bit.” Jillian exchanged a look with Reese. “Just a little sisterly cross-examination. He told us he came to the island masquerading as a priest to catch Michael Davenport.”

  Naomi frowned. Evidently the man had time to talk to everyone but her.

  “Well?” Jillian prompted again.

  The look in Reese’s eyes was equally expectant. “We need the details. All of them.”

  Resigned, Naomi leaned back against her pillows and gave up the story.

  DANE HEARD THE LAUGHTER in the room when he and Avery stood outside the door to knock. It should have eased his nerves. It didn’t.

  When someone called out, “Come in,” Avery led the way and they found three women sitting in a circle on the bed.

  The instant he saw Naomi, a rush of emotions hit him again like a sucker punch to the belly.

  She was fine. He hadn’t lost her. Those were the words he’d repeated over and over again while he and Nate had fashioned a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. And they’d become a chant in the back of his mind in the long hours since as he’d waited for the doctor’s prognosis and dealt with the details of wrapping the Michael Davenport case up.

  The fear that had been rolling around inside of Dane since he’d stepped into the tower room and seen Davenport’s gun pressed against her temple only faded now as he saw her sitting up—alive.

  Then his heart didn’t just take a tumble. It went into freefall. He loved her. He wasn’t sure when it had happened or quite how. And dammit, he couldn’t quite feel his knees.

  When three pairs of eyes locked with his, he managed to say, “Naomi…” Then he completely lost his train of thought.

  It was Jillian who rose first and ushered everyone out of the room, leaving a deafening silence behind.

  “You brought flowers,” Naomi finally said.

  Dane glanced down at the bunch of roses he held, then back at Naomi. “Right. Avery’s idea.”

  And she didn’t look happy to see them.

  “I picked them from the gardens. Avery said it would be all right.” Then because he wasn’t sure what else to do, he set them on the foot of the bed. He’d come up here with a plan. The flowers were a part of it.

  “Naomi.”

  “Dane.”

  They spoke at the same time, then Naomi said, “You first.”

  “I like your sisters,” he said, stalling. He wanted to touch her but if he did, he knew the plan—whatever it had originally been—would change. So he stuffed his hands in his pockets.

  Silence thundered between them again.

  “Look,” Naomi said. “I know why you brought the flowers.”

  Good, he thought. At least one of them did.

  “You’re trying to say goodbye.”

  “No.” The sudden jolt her words gave him shocked him from his daze. “No.” He moved around the foot of the bed and sat d
own next to her. As much as he wanted to, he still didn’t touch her.

  “I brought the flowers because I want to start over with you. No.” He ran a hand through his hair. “That’s not it. I want to persuade you to start over with me. Clean slate.”

  She folded her hands tightly together in her lap and studied him in that solemn way of hers.

  Her silence triggered a new wave of panic.

  “Start over,” she finally said.

  “Yes.” He rose, paced away, then walked back. “I…had some time to think.” The seemingly endless hours when he’d been waiting for the young doctor’s prognosis and then while she was sleeping off the meds. “I talked to your sisters, and it occurred to me that we got off to a bad start. I told a lot of lies. I’m sorry for that.”

  He moved closer to the bed, but he didn’t dare sit down.

  “I want to give you time to get to know me. We can take things as slowly as you want.”

  She studied him for another long moment. “Do you really have a brother named Ian?”

  He winced. “Yes.”

  “And what you told me when we were on the beach about the cop who raised you and the brother and sister you haven’t been able to locate yet?”

  “All of that was true. I told you things I’ve never even shared with Ian. I couldn’t understand it.”

  He moved to the bed and sat down. “But I do now. I told you all of that because even then I was falling in love with you.”

  The shock in her eyes had fear gripping him with rusty claws.

  “You don’t know me,” she said.

  He grabbed her hands, held tight. “Yes, I do. That’s just it, I know everything about you. Ian’s good at research. I even know what brand of toothpaste you use. I knew about those notebooks, that you carried them with you everywhere. I should have figured out sooner that Davenport would have used them. I could have stopped—” He broke off as he glanced at the bandage on her arm.

  Then he drew in a deep breath and let it out. “From now on, Naomi, I’ll be honest with you. No more lies. The only thing that I didn’t know about you when I decided to pose as Father MacFarland was the fact that when you were fourteen, you fell in love with a young priest.”