by Ann Major
“You shouldn’t have come,” she rasped.
“I was worried about you. I came to offer my services.”
The innuendo in his low voice further infuriated her. Rudely she snatched his handkerchief and dabbed at her sweater.
“No. What’s more likely is that you couldn’t bear to miss my social execution. How did you get a ticket anyway?”
“Chantal.”
“I should have known. She’s always made my life miserable the same way you did Martin’s.”
Cutter frowned. “Is that what you think?”
“What do you really want?”
“Many things.” His eyes were hot.
He picked up the rose. This time he trailed the soft petals across her lips. “Your body is at the top of my wish list. So is your soul.”
She shoved his flower aside. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
He broke the stem, and placed the flower behind her ear. “I’m glad you did. I want the boy.” His eyes drifted over her in that maddeningly, heated way that made her seethe. “You. Everything. And I’m willing to pay exorbitantly.”
Pay? The word cut more deeply than he knew.
She didn’t doubt that he genuinely wanted Jeremy. But what did he really want from her?
They studied each other. She with hurt and fear and an odd resentment that her father had never once come to her mother and tried to claim her as Cutter was trying to claim Jeremy. He with an intensity that unnerved her.
“I’m asking you to marry me, Cheyenne,” he said quietly.
Flushing, her hand clenched the brass bar rail. “You hate me.”
His dark brows lifted. “We both wish.”
“I couldn’t bear another loveless marriage.”
“Then we’ll pretend.”
“No!”
His black head tilted to one side as he studied the sudden sadness in her eyes and the rebellious tilt of her chin. “You are the mother of my only son.”
“You refused to help me or Martin when—”
“I underestimated Martin’s problems. I was very, very angry at you. I’m sorry. I behaved badly that day—”
“Sorry? Martin’s dead and you’re sorry? For all I know, you killed him!”
The color leached from Cutter’s cheeks, leaving his hard face as waxen and pale as her magnolia blossoms in the moonlight. His good humor vanished, and he seized her. “I was mad as hell at you when you came to me that afternoon, looking so sweet and sexy, pleading for Martin. That’s why I did and said those things. But I have an alibi the night of the murder. Do you?”
“That woman who said she was with you all night would say or do anything to please you.”
“Most of the women I’ve dated would,” he muttered smugly. “You are the exception. But I didn’t kill Martin.” His heated gaze wandered from her face down her body.
She closed her eyes to shut him ouL
Abruptly he let her go. “Honey, you don’t have a whole lot of options.”
“And you do. All those redheads, each younger and more beautiful than the one before. Even Chantal.”
“None of those other women were the mother of my son.”
First she hadn’t been good enough, so he’d seduced her to ruin her chances with Martin. Now he only wanted Jeremy.
“Were you jealous ... of those other women?” he goaded softly.
“No!”
“Too bad. I damn sure wanted you to be.”
“Well, I wasn’t!” Why did she spit the words at him then? Why did she see visions of lightning branding the sky above her with a C and her magnolia tree bursting into full bloom?
“So—I didn’t live like a monk. What did you expect? You got married.”
“It was your fault I had to marry Martin—” She stopped herself.
He watched her in silence, a new tension in his pose. “Go on.”
“Nothing...”
When he kept looking at her in that strange, intense way, she flushed. “You think you’re so smart. You figure it out.”
“Well, I got lonely,” he finally said. “I am a man. But, if it matters to you—if you accept my offer—I won’t complicate our situation with other women. You have my word. And no matter what Chantal told you, there has never been anything between Chantal and me. I took her to dinner. Twice. I asked her about Martin. And about you.” He paused. “I wanted to know what your life was like before you got married—”
“How could you go to Chantal?”
“How could you marry my brother and keep my son from me seven damn years?”
To survive. To protect Jeremy from the kind of unbearable childhood she’d had.
“As if that’s my fault! No doubt you want revenge against me for that! You want to hurt and humiliate me—”
His face hardened. “I want Jeremy. You’re part of the package.”
Even though she knew it was impossible to make him understand, she had to try to explain one last time. “Cutter, the last thing I want is another marriage of convenience. I want to be free. I want to pay off Martin’s creditors and run.”
“You don’t have any money. I do. I thought your ambition was to be the wife of a wealthy man.”
“I want my own life now. And to be my own person.”
“Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than that. Martin’s killer is an exceedingly dangerous man. If he doesn’t get his money, he will track you down and kill you.” When she stared at him in mute horror, he continued. “If you don’t care about your own life, do you really want to risk Jeremy’s—”
“God—” Something inside her broke. He had no way of knowing that ever since Martin’s murder she’d had constant nightmares about Jeremy. “You don’t play fair, do you?”
There was a hard-driving fear in his face. “It depends on the game, honey. I can’t gamble when the stakes are my child’s life ... and yours.”
No matter what he said, he didn’t care about her. He never would. He just wanted Jeremy. She had been used in that game of tug-of-war too long not to know that truth.
Tears welled beneath her lashes. She felt hounded from all sides. Her husband had been murdered. Her mother was dying. And her son’s life was in danger. Still, she couldn’t bear for Cutter to know how near she was to the edge.
“I just want this nightmare to be over,” she whispered.
“It’s just beginning, Cheyenne. For both of us.”
In her mind’s eye, she saw a great thornbush take root in her garden and begin to grow at a frantic pace like Jack’s bean stalk in the fairy tale until it had smothered every other plant as well as her mansion.
“Don’t say that!”
“Wishing for the moon won’t make it fall from the sky. You’re a strange lady, with strange powers. But you’re in one helluva fix. I want to help you.”
She felt his fingers brush her cheek. Gently he tried to turn her face to his.
She hesitated, liking his hand there too much, knowing that it would be all too easy to need things from him that he could never give. She jerked away. “Accepting your terms would be like selling my soul to the devil.”
“Ditto, honey.” His voice hardened.
“If you hate me, why... Why do you now want—”
“I identified Martin in the morgue. Remember? I saw what they did to him. It’s no secret I want to sleep with you. Because of Jeremy, I’m willing to marry you. I’ll protect both of you.”
She couldn’t forget that Cutter had abandoned her when she’d most needed him. That ever since, all he’d ever done was insult or publicly humiliate her.
She caught a tight breath. Her voice was cold. “But who ... will protect me from you?”
The auctioneer climbed up to the podium and banged his gavel. At the same moment Jeb and Megan called to Cheyenne.
“I have to go,” Cheyenne whispered.
“Not yet! I’m not through with you!”
She spun on her heels like a dervish, the scarlet rose flying out of h
er hair. “Oh, yes, you are!”
Even though she was wild-eyed with panic, she paused to stamp his flower into pulp with her sparkly black shoe.
Their gazes locked. His was black with raging emotions. Hers was filled with fear.
She hated her own helplessness and his easy power over her.
“You stay away from me, Cutter Lord! And Jeremy, too! You are the last man on earth I would ever marry. The very last! Don’t come to me with any more of your sordid bargains! Jeremy doesn’t want you any more than I do! You’d just ruin his life—the same way you ruined mine!”
“When you calm down, call me at the Warwick Hotel.”
“I’ll never, never call you!”
“Honey, like I said before—you don’t have a whole lot of options.”
Tears filled her eyes as she turned from him and ran.
Cutter watched Cheyenne’s slim retreating figure with a mixture of explosive fury, wounded pride and utter exasperation.
He wanted her too much. Women always sensed when they had the edge. She’d definitely use it to try to bring him to his knees. She’d married his brother to get even, hadn’t she?
“Damn!”
She was always running out on him. Rejecting him. He never chased after women who didn’t want him.
Cheyenne Rose had always been the exception to every rule.
She was way too quirky for him. He went for sophisticated, well-read women. Women who’d gone to the best schools. Women who read real books, not cheap, paperback thrillers with insipid, pleasant endings. Women of class and breeding who had impeccable reputations and lived without a hint of scandal in their lives, women who did not draw attention to themselves and distract him from the main thrust of his life. Controllable women.
Cheyenne was a bold creature of incomparable dazzle. She could dress, too. Not that she ever looked quite at ease with the rich set. Yet maybe that was why she stood out. Maybe that was why he was drawn to her. He had always sensed that beneath the dazzle, she was hurting inside.
Still, she was trouble with a capital T.
He had always known it.
She had treated him abominably.
Still, her vulnerability touched a wellspring deep within him. Her seemingly sweet and ingenuous nature enchanted him. And in bed, no other woman came close.
After his divorce he had never thought he’d consider remarriage, but he couldn’t get over Cheyenne.
Chantal had once told Cutter that Cheyenne’s mother had been so weird people had thought she was a witch, that Cheyenne had lived with this mother in a ramshackle house on the edge of a marsh where tropical plants had bloomed in her garden while the surrounding landscape had been arid.
Sometimes he wondered if there was something to Chantal’s outlandish stories. Maybe Cheyenne had stuck a pin in a doll and cast a spell on him. Maybe she simply represented his one failure and, thereby, had remained a challenge. Maybe—
Cutter leaned down and retrieved his ruined rose. It felt heavy and lumpish in his callused palm. Tossing the broken bits of stem and petal into an ashtray with pretended indifference, Cutter ordered another Scotch.
But he was not indifferent.
As always Cheyenne had smelled of flowers. Tonight her heady scent of magnolia blossoms had made his pulse tick faster. Even if she wasn’t a witch, every cell in his body ached for her. He hated himself for his weakness, but he was through fighting it.
Not that he wanted to marry her any more than she wanted to marry him. Indeed—she was the last woman he wanted to tie himself to. All he wanted was to bed her till he got as bored or disgusted with her as Martin apparently had. But there was Jeremy, who adored her, to consider. She could help Jeremy accept him. Nor could Cutter stand the thought of another man ever owning her again. And there was the danger. If he didn’t step in, she would die.
Cutter had several reasons for attending the auction. One was to buy Cheyenne’s possessions so he could return them to her. Thus, he should have felt angry every time she stood up and spoke into the microphone during that long night to drive up the prices. Instead, his heart quickened with a powerful unwanted emotion each time he heard her husky voice.
She was a user and a taker. She had wanted glitz and glamour—more than she had wanted him. She had thought he was some penniless drifter who’d washed up on the beach. She’d slept with him and gotten pregnant and then married his brother because she had thought Martin the better catch. Greed was a vice Cutter understood better than most. Little had she guessed that Cutter had controlled Martin’s fortune and could cut them off without a dime.
Still, for a while, she had had everything her way. She had put her past behind her. She’d had her grand marriage. Martin had used the Lord name and his “expectations” to borrow money and invest. She’d had her name in all the magazines and newspapers. She’d made friends with prominent Texans such as the Jacksons. Even the Wests—her father’s family who had always shunned her—had attended her parties.
Cutter had tried to forget her. But when she’d given birth to his son and passed him off as Martin’s, she had crossed a line. Cutter had stared through the glass at the hospital nursery at Jeremy with a fierce and terrible longing. He had believed then that he could never forgive or forget her. He had wanted to hurt her as she had hurt him. Then he had held Jeremy, and she had wept. Ever since that moment, the longing for his son, and for her, too, had grown stronger. But the years had passed. She had stayed with Martin, and Jeremy had grown up without knowing his real father.
Cutter had lived in Europe, made enough money for a hundred men, slept with the most beautiful European beauties. Other men had envied him, but always he’d felt the same loneliness he’d felt growing up in his parents’ strifetorn marriage and in all those soulless boarding schools. Deep down he had wanted a real family and a home.
Not that he’d believed he could ever have that sort of life. Thus, he’d thrown himself into his work, but there had not been a night during those seven years that he hadn’t thought of Martin and Jeremy and Cheyenne without envying Martin his perfect family.
Cheyenne thought she drove a hard bargain.
She thought she was going to make him pay dearly to get what he wanted.
Maybe it was time he showed her that he could play hardball, too.
Even if Ivory Rose was on her deathbed, everyone knew the kind of woman Ivory had been in her prime.
Her daughter was no different. Cheyenne had proven she was for sale.
It was time he showed the world she was that kind of woman. All that was left was to determine her current market price.
There was a lull in the bidding as a set of English Wedgwood china was placed on the block.
Once again Cheyenne arose and took the microphone, but before she could begin what was sure to be still another poignant tale about how precious those damn dishes had been to Martin, several guests pushed their chairs back with a yawn.
The show was beginning to bore people.
Not for long. Cutter felt a furious urge to get even with Cheyenne by humiliating her publicly.
From the back of the room, Cutter’s deep, liquor-slurred voice rang out. “For the person of Mrs. Martin Lord, and not a single one of those damned sissy dishes with the pink roses on them—I offer one million dollars. In cash.”
Everyone swiveled in their chairs. An expectant hush fell over the crowd. He met their openmouthed stares with a drunken grin.
But it was Cheyenne he saw; Cheyenne whose luminous green gaze widened with hurt.
Damn. Why had she haunted him? Even in Europe? Why did she have this damnable power to lure him? To destroy him?
Cutter kicked a chair out of his way and strode toward her.
Her eyes never left his face even as she whispered to the auctioneer and then began backing away.
“That is impossible, sir,” said the auctioneer, signaling to someone behind Cutter.
“Two million then.”
Tears sprang into Ch
eyenne’s eyes.
“Sir, this is a respectable gallery. Not a brothel.”
Cutter loped up the aisle toward her. “Three million,” he yelled.
Shaken, Cheyenne suddenly leapt from the podium and ran.
Cutter vaulted onto the stage after her. “Cheyenne! Wait!”
She looked at him one last time and then dashed wildly out the back door, which slammed so hard the set of rosespattered china began to shake.
The auctioneer banged his gavel again. “Sold to the gentleman for three million dollars.” A pause while the china continued to rattle. “Sir, do you want your china shipped or will you be picking it up this evening yourself?”
With a sweep of his large, brown hand, Cutter raked his arm across the eight place settings of china and sent plates and cups and saucers crashing onto the stage.
There was an instant hush.
“Get him!” a security officer yelled.
Pandemonium broke as armed guards stampeded Cutter.
The guards seized him and hurled him roughly down the stairs off the stage.
As the guards seized him, all he could think of was Cheyenne’s pale face as she’d run out the door. Her eyes had been blazing with pain. Tears had spilled down her cheeks as she’d stared at him.
If he had wanted to hurt her and publicly humiliate her, he had ruthlessly succeeded. But he found no pleasure in his success. His behavior tonight was unforgivable.
Loneliness washed over him. As well as regret and selfdisgust.
He had been a drunken fool.
Why?
Why hadn’t he realized her pain was his?
Three
Cheyenne brushed tears from her burning cheeks as she drove into her circular driveway that was bordered by the tallest magnolia and oak trees in the city. Acres and acres of sweeping green lawn and huge, pink-blossomed azalea hedges that had grown to magical heights encircled and dwarfed the house even though it was a mansion of vast proportions.
Not since her childhood had Cheyenne ever felt so humiliated. Wrong. Not since Cutter had seduced her and abandoned her as if she were trash that had washed up on the beach, had she felt so unwanted and unloved. She had worked so hard, learned so much to get past her early life and those hurts.
