Cry Wolf
Page 17
He had pulled her close, his dark eyes insatiable, and as he bent his leonine grey head down to her he whispered, “By your own choice you’ve committed yourself and I will never let you go. I love you too selfishly.”
In the end the man in him had overcome the friend who would have given her whatever she desired, even her freedom, no matter what the cost was to himself. But the change in Harper was irrelevant, almost trivial, for Nikki had all she had ever wanted and he was standing right before her with his magnificent heart in his eyes. The change was almost trivial, but not quite, for by letting himself reach out and take what he wanted from her she hoped fervently that he would never again think to draw away.
But still the ghost of anxiety lingered in the clear, wide gaze that she turned up to his handsome face. The last six months had been almost too perfect, and she could not suppress her superstitious fear that their stormy beginning had scarred in her. Nikki whispered back, and did not hear the pleading in her voice, “Then you must hold on to me very tight.”
Her patient husband was very wise. He saw and understood the faint shadow in her blue eyes better than she did. But, just as he had taught her all the consummative joys in lovemaking, he would teach her about security and faithfulness, and constancy, and reaffirm the lesson all the years of his life, until that last faint shadow had gone forever.
He did not tell her that. She would grow to know it for herself. Instead he had enfolded her in his arms and said as a tender promise, “Always.”
He was coming after her now. Wicked glee bubbled up inside her as she fled throughout the crowded hall, parrying quips and exchanging pleasantries, while keeping one laughing eye trained behind her at Harper’s elegant, tall figure restrained from an all-out chase by social convention.
She watched as yet another acquaintance hampered his progress, and his intent face grew tight with frustration as he threw her one hard glance before turning with an urbane smile to the man beside him. Nikki came up to her mother and Helena, and chatted for a few moments until she saw Harper break free from the other man, his handsome expression eloquent in relief. She laughed out loud.
“You must excuse me,” Nikki told the two women hurriedly. “Harper’s trying to catch me; I’ve got to run!”
And off she went again, while Mrs. Heissenger stared in astonishment at her son-in-law’s tall, aggressive form in full hunt, and said, “She will try him too far.”
“On the contrary,” said Helena in thoughtful wisdom, catching sight of the hungry, reckless look in Harper’s eyes as he watched his incorrigible wife, “she will try him just far enough.”
He caught her at last, but then she let him, and as the orchestra began to play he whirled her around the great open expanse of the dance-floor in a sweeping waltz, while the whole crowded room stopped to watch. Nikki didn’t even feel her feet touch the floor. All her attention was focused on the wild, sexy man whose eloquent eyes played a music of their own just for her.
The waltz died away but their music didn’t stop. It swelled and rebounded on itself, and crashed in symphonic crescendo. Through it ran the unsteady strains of her uncertainty, until she had to ask him, “Will you forgive me?”
Harper smiled in incomprehension, fascinated by every change in her mood. “For what?” he asked, touching the pulsation at her throat with long, caressing fingers.
“For the picture I painted,” she whispered from a restricted throat, and she licked her lips, which had gone dry.
Harper’s body went still, the indulgent lightheartedness fading from his lean face. With one sharp, frowning glance into her apprehensive eyes, he stepped back, his arms falling away, and he turned to stride across the empty expanse of the dance-floor towards the covered canvas. The wedding guests made way for him, all eyes trained on him, and Nikki left standing alone.
Harper reached the large picture, grasped the cloth with one hand and threw it away. A sighing murmur rippled through the crowd as the painting was revealed. In one corner, Peter Bellis made a sound of ecstasy and loss.
Nikki could not see Harper’s face and she clasped her cold hands together in spasmodic anxiety. He seemed to stand forever in that stark, rigid posture, staring at the portrait of himself. She knew the terrible sense of exposure he must be feeling, as she knew her own, for the painting was everything.
Sober and light; exquisite sensuality in every brush stroke of graceful hands and ruthless mouth; tenderness and compassion and hard stamped features; longing and grief and the threshold of joy contained in the immutable expression of those dark painted eyes. The portrait was everything he was—timeless and irrefutable—but, most revealing of all, it was a transcendent statement of all her love and depth of understanding.
Nikki approached his rock-like graven figure tentatively, hoping, praying. She reached his side and stopped, and though he did not look around he must have known she was there, for he said from the back of his throat, “You were right. It is the best thing you have ever done. It deserved to be shown.”
But his face and words told her nothing; she did not know whether he spoke in accusation or agreement, until he turned his glittering, proud, moist eyes on to her and she saw how deeply moved he was. He whispered, “Thank you.”
She moved and smiled radiantly, and her world which had stopped began to turn again.
Time sped fleetingly, until, by unspoken consent, Harper and Nikki went to change clothes. Off came the splendid pageantry; he dressed in trousers and sweater and leather jacket, she donned jeans and the Harvard sweatshirt her brother Johnny had given her. They had to hurry, otherwise they would be late for their plane flight which would take them far south to the sunlit Nile for a two-week cruise, and as they came back out again their family and closest friends gathered around to say goodbye.
Nikki’s head spun from the flurry of hurried hugs. Her mother whispered simply, “Stay happy, darling.” Johnny crushed her ribs. Helena talked quietly to her son. Charles almost knocked her over and planted a clumsy kiss somewhere in the region of her nose, and Gordon gave her a naughty wink.
She withstood it all in a dream-like trance that was blown away by priceless reality when Harper turned to her at last with his heart-stopping smile, and asked, “Are you ready?”
Their loved ones bore witness when she gave his own earlier promise back to him, with a transparent generosity that enriched them all with a share in that most private commitment, as she whispered, “Always.”
About the Author
Thea Harrison started writing when she was nineteen. In the 1980s and 1990s, she wrote for Harlequin Mills & Boon under the name Amanda Carpenter. The Amanda Carpenter romances have been published in over ten languages, and sold over a million and a half copies worldwide, and are now being reprinted digitally by Samhain Publishing for their Retro Romance line.
For more information, please visit her at: www.theaharrison.com. You can also find her on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheaHarrison and on Twitter at: @TheaHarrison.
Look for these titles by Amanda Carpenter
Now Available:
Cry Wolf
Passage of the Night
Caprice
The Gift of Happiness
Reckless
Rose-Coloured Love
A Deeper Dimension
The Wall
A Damaged Trust
The Great Escape
Flashback
Rage
Waking Up
Writing as Thea Harrison
Novellas of the Elder Races
True Colors
Natural Evil
Devil’s Gate
Hunter’s Season
The Wicked
Coming Soon:
A Solitary Heart
The Winter King
Kidnapped in the name of love!
Passage of the Night
Kristie would do anything for her sister Louise, even if it meant kidnapping a man standing in the way of her sister’s big day. Abducting Francis Grayson and stashing him on a remote mountain in Vermont, she’s determined to hold him there until her sister is safely married.
Waking up in a totally different location from where he started, confused and understandably angry, Francis doesn’t know what’s going on. Yes, he was dating Louise, but he knew nothing about a wedding, for goodness’ sake!
Realizing she doesn’t know the full story, Kristie does know one thing—her captive has definitely captured her attention.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Passage of the Night:
Even unloaded, the revolver had a disturbing unfamiliar weight. The handle slipped slightly in her sweating palm, and Kirstie tightened her grip until her knuckles were ivory-white.
She wasn’t sure why Francis Grayson had surprised her. He wasn’t exactly what one would expect to find on the glossy cover of a magazine. Or perhaps he was. No smooth good looks here, but the way he had moved through the basement car park had awakened an irrational, primitive apprehension inside her.
He did not walk; he prowled. His fluid body was woven with a tight, animalistic grace that paid mere lip service to the civilized world. The aggressive jut of those broad, rolling shoulders, the casual swing of the slim hips, those long, distance-eating swift legs—all spoke of an integral, inherent power only tempered by the laugh lines by his mouth, the long, sensitive fingers. There was an all-encompassing masculinity that surrounded him like a physical scent, and Kirstie’s brows drew together in a painful frown.
His face, his powerful body, those beautiful hands—everything about him had gone into a waiting stillness when she had appeared on the other side with the gun. He said almost casually, his emerald eyes on the gun, “I don’t suppose it would do any good to point out that you are making a big mistake.”
Involuntary images crashed through her memory: her agonizing over the difficult decision, the sleeplessness, the anxiety, the heart-stopping point when she had walked toward this dangerous man. From the moment he had seen her, it had been too late and they both knew it. She said almost gently, her grey eyes dark, “No, it wouldn’t.”
Several years ago, Francis Grayson had made quite a name for himself playing football for the University of Notre Dame. He had been one of the nation’s leading sports figures and could have made his fortune as a professional quarterback, had he so chosen. Kirstie had seen film clips of the old games. His speed had a shocking elegance; the inherent threat she had witnessed from the moment she first laid eyes on him in the basement was no illusion, and, even with the car between them and the empty threat of the gun, she felt exposed, made vulnerable by the very self-containment with which he looked down the barrel of the gun into her eyes.
Oh, God, she didn’t dare underestimate him.
He shifted.
“Stop!” she cried, throwing herself back three steps in panic. Francis froze again. Their eyes clashed; she felt the impact shudder through her right down to the ground, and knew by his tight, savage smile that he saw just how afraid of him she really was.
“Believe me,” drawled Francis contemptuously, “I have no immediate desire to get shot. My wallet is in my right breast pocket. I will reach for it slowly with my left hand.”
Kirstie shook her head. “Never mind your wallet,” she said tersely. “Reach instead for your car keys—slowly. Unlock the back door and open it. Now, slide the keys over to me and step back. Back off!”
He did so, like a wild animal retreating from attack, checked but unbeaten. His voracious green eyes ravaged her appearance as he whispered, “Do you honestly think that I will let you get away with this?”
So gently said, so implacably meant. Not a threat, not even a warning, just a simple question ringing with devastating truth. She ignored the question as she began to pull nylon cord from the inside of her jacket. She had to, for if she thought any more about all the ramifications of what she did, of how she knew this man would never forgive, or forget, and how inevitably she would pay the price for subduing him, she would freeze and it would all be over.
She tossed the length of cord to him and he caught it with an automatic flex of his wrist. “Make yourself comfortable by sitting in the backseat and tie your ankles together.”
His hard gaze met hers over the intervening roof. Even now he showed no fear, but for an instant Kirstie saw the real man through that tough, calm exterior, and she sucked in a frightened breath. She had never seen such rage or reaction shielded with such utter control behind the mask of his face.
“And if I don’t?” he asked, with no more emotion than he would show when discussing the weather.
If you don’t, I am lost, she thought, and directed the gun with meticulous precision at his gleaming dark head. “Then so much for desire.”
After staring for a long moment at her poised, slim figure, at the unwavering grey eyes, in which were equal measures of pain and driven resolution, Francis eased himself into the car, bent, and tied his ankles together deftly, well aware that her sharp stare missed no detail of the act.
It was a major concession. Her shuddering sigh was silently exhaled as she walked around the back of the car. She tossed through the open door another item, which glinted steely in the air and chinked heavily as he caught it. Handcuffs. Francis raised expressive eyebrows and waited.
Concession, but again no defeat. She conceived the wildest suspicion that he had agreed to go along with her just to see where it led him, not out of fear, not out of any regard for his safety, and she drove her doubts away with deliberate harshness as she snapped, “Use them! Arms behind, not in front of you! Well done. We’ve gone past first base. Pardon me, that was baseball. Should I have said the kickoff instead?”
As she had intended, the dangerously unpredictable rage in those unique emerald eyes faded to speculation. “You seem to be a remarkably well-educated thief,” he replied.
Kirstie had lost none of her wariness, for all Francis Grayson’s apparent incapacitation. The sight of that big folded body lent itself to a great many images, but not one of helplessness. She kept dividing her attention between him and the direction of the lift doors. Every muscle in her body hurt, she was so tense.
However, she forced it all below the surface as with swift competence she swept his abandoned briefcase up from the ground and tossed it in beside him. “You persistently misunderstand,” she said, prior to slamming the door shut on him. “You are not going to be robbed. You are going to be kidnapped.”
Kirstie was very aware of that brilliant gaze dissecting her every movement, assessing threat and possible weakness. She now moved fast, racing to the front of the car where she had previously stashed two blankets and a backpack. Scooping them up, she put everything, plus herself, in the front.
She twisted in the driver’s seat to parry the slash of those eyes. The interior of the car was luxurious. It smelled of fresh clean aftershave and finer scents. Though her victim was very quiet, the air around him crackled. By sheer force of presence, he dominated the situation.
Two lines had begun to cut from either side of her delicate nostrils, and the short hair at her temples was darkened with sweat. With a movement as compulsive as it was sneaking, she wiped her mouth.
His attention never wavered; he saw her, damn him to seven kinds of hell. “It would be a pity to lose control at this late stage,” he said with hideous softness.
“Pity doesn’t come into it,” she attacked back. “One slip from me and you’d go for my jugular vein.”
His eyes shifted down. Malice glittered bright like gold in the air. “Such a delectable throat it is, too. Granted, you’ve done very well so far, but you will slip. And when you go down, you are quite right. I’ll be waiting.”
Her moving li
ps felt stiff, her eyes cold. “Don’t bother warning me, Francis. I know all about you. I won’t slip.”
Behind his answering silence, she could feel his mind, dagger sharp and unkind, working furiously. Quite in control now, her fingers flashed over the fastening of the backpack to draw out a thermos. She opened it and poured some of the liquid into the red lid. The bitter smell of coffee filled the interior of the car. She turned back to Francis and aimed her attack again at his composure. “Black, no sugar, I believe.”
Most would have noted no reaction to that. Kirstie saw a tiny muscle by his mouth twitch. “Very well educated indeed, for someone I’ve never seen before,” he said thinly. “What other information have you managed to dig up about me?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. It has been a very bad day for you, hasn’t it, down to your date cancelling tonight? What a shame about those theatre tickets. Getting them on such short notice must have cost you a fortune. I know your favorite meal, how well you ice-skate. I know about the scar on the inside of your left thigh.”
“Who are you?” he gritted. He had whitened as she’d spoken. His eyes were so dilated, they were almost black.
She had wondered when he would get around to that. Kirstie held up the cup. “We have reached a decision point. Will you drink this coffee?”
“Which bears the convenient drug that I am to swallow blind, and hope it doesn’t kill me. And if I don’t, do you threaten to shoot my kneecap? How I despise your kind.” His mouth twisted with the bitter words.
Kirstie leaned forward, compelled his gaze to hers and held it unblinkingly. For the first time he was close enough to see that her eyes were expressive like rippling water that reflected every mood of the sky.
“If I were a killer, you’d be dead by now.” The brutal truth of that was self-evident. “Even you should see that you’re worth more alive. I checked the measurement of the sleeping drug three times. I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, her eyes very clear. “But if you don’t drink this coffee I shall have to hit you over the head with the butt of my gun. It is your choice. Believe me, the drug is more precise and less painful.”