Passion's Dream (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 1) (3 page)

“I don’t want your fucking money, Burke,” Clay’s voice was terse, “I don’t want anything from you.  You destroyed my cousin Rosemary!  She ran off to marry you and wound up committing suicide!  Why should I help you?”

Everett Burke permitted himself a small smile.  “Rosemary loved you very much, Clay.  She thought of you as a brother and talked about you incessantly.  She missed you so much.”

“Then why the fuck didn’t she ever call me?” Clay whispered.  “Why didn’t you let her contact any of her family?  Why did you keep her away from us?”

Everett Burke looked shocked.  “I never kept her away from you!  I begged her to stay in touch with you, urged her to call you, invite you for a visit—at the very least send you an invitation to one of her showings.  But she always had an excuse.  ‘Oh, he’s probably busy,’ or ‘oh, he’s probably out of the country’, or ‘he probably won’t want to come.’  So, after a few years I quit suggesting it.”

“I don’t understand.  Why didn’t she want to see me?”

Everett Burke gave Clay a long, calculating look before answering with a sigh, “She didn’t want to see anybody who knew her.  Because she was too ashamed.”

“What the hell did she have to be ashamed of?” Clay demanded angrily.  “She never did anything to anybody!”

“No,” Burke agreed, “she didn’t.  It was done
to
her.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come right out and say it.  Your cousin Rosemary was molested from the age of seven, first by her father and, after he died, by her older brother, Franklin.”

“That’s a goddamned lie!”  Clay jumped to his feet and turned to leave.  “You bastard, I’m not listening to any more of this.”  He threw the photo and the credit card on the desk.  They both slid across the smooth surface and fell to the floor on the other side.  “Find someone else to do your fucking job.  I’m done.  I
knew
coming here would be a waste of time.”

“Wait!”  Burke jumped up from his desk and came around to put his hand on Clay’s arm.  “Clay, please.  Think about it!  Don’t you remember how unhappy she was?  How withdrawn?  It took her a year to work up the courage to tell me about her father, Mason Nighthorse.  He was a drunk and a bully and abused all of his children, except Franklin, his oldest.  Franklin was the golden child who could do no wrong, and when Mason died, Franklin took over.  Surely you remember the bruises she always had.  Didn’t you ever wonder?”

Suddenly Clay couldn’t breathe.  He sucked in great gulps of oxygen, almost paralyzed by the sudden memories of his cousin, who was always sporting terrible bruises on every part of her body, including her arms and legs.  Come to think of it, she’d suffered more than her fair share of broken bones, too—her arm, her wrist, her leg—“She was such a tomboy,” he murmured, almost as if talking to himself, “playing as hard and rough as the rest of us.  I just thought…”

“I’m sure that’s what she wanted everyone to think.  Nobody likes to admit they’re being beaten,” Burke persisted.  “Do you remember Ella?”

“Of course I do.  Rosemary’s niece, born when Rosemary was fourteen and Franklin was in his early twenties.  He’d been married to a local gal for around a year.  It was their first child.  Ella died when she was still a baby—heart problem, I believe.”

“Yes.  Except she wasn’t Rosemary’s niece.”

What?

“She was her daughter.”

Clay recoiled as if he’d been struck. 

“Fathered by her brother Franklin, who raped her over and over until she conceived because his wife was unable to give him the son and heir he demanded.”

Oh!  My!  God! 
Vehement words of denial sprang to Clay’s lips, but he never uttered them because the analytical part of his brain had taken over and he knew the old man’s words were true.  When his mind stopped reeling, he began talking in a low, halting voice. “Rosemary was fourteen, supposed to be in the seventh grade that year.  Except she wasn’t.  She was off visiting relatives, at least that’s what Franklin told everybody.  She showed up a year later, but she was…different.  She seemed…sad.  Broken.  As if something bad had happened to her while she’d been away.  But she refused to talk about it.  She became almost reclusive, no longer wanting to play or even just sit around and talk like we used to.”  As memories of his cousin came flooding back, Clay felt bile rising in his throat, vowing to make Franklin Nighthorse pay for the things he’d done to Rosemary.  And he would do it, too, quietly, in the dead of night, like the wind spirit, leaving no trace behind.

“She was going to tell you,” Burke put his hand on Clay’s arm in a desperate attempt to get him to listen, “the day you completed basic training.”

Clay just stared at the older man while his mind went back to the last time he’d seen his cousin Rosemary.  He’d just finished at Great Lakes Naval Training Center and was shocked when she’d approached him after the graduation ceremony, the only member of his family to show up. Not that there were all that many members left.  His own parents were dead, and he didn’t have any brothers or sisters of his own.  Just Rosemary and Franklin.  Not that he would have expected Franklin to show up.  The man had always been an ass wipe.

At that point in his life he hadn’t seen Rosemary for nearly five years.  She hadn’t attended either his high school or college graduations—nobody had.  But she had made the effort to fly to Chicago for his Navy Basic Training graduation.  And had insisted on taking him to lunch afterward.

By that time, her talent for weaving exquisite wall hangings had been “discovered” by Everett Burke, owner of several art galleries, including the one they were currently in, where he sold works by many Native American artists.  His high-end, enthusiastic clients had made Rosemary Nighthorse a wealthy woman.  She should have been happy and carefree.  But as he looked back upon that luncheon now, he recalled how gaunt she’d looked, and thin, almost wasted, with big, sad eyes, as if life had become too much of a burden.  She’d never been carefree, but that day she seemed to bear the weight of the world on her slender shoulders.  She’d mostly listened to Clay talking about his own shit, waffling over whether to apply for SEAL training or not, and even though he’d picked up on her long pauses and her forced smiles, he hadn’t questioned her about them.

Now he wished he had.  He’d sensed at the time that she’d been holding something back.  That she’d had things she wanted to say, if only he’d only allowed her to get a word in edgewise.  That was the day she’d flown back to San Francisco and married the man sitting across the desk from him now.  Everett Burke, the gallery owner who had discovered her talents.  Clay had never heard from her again.  Perhaps she’d still be alive if he’d listened back then.

And as the memories flooded back, he thought about the last thing she’d said to him, at the main gate to the naval base, where she’d dropped him off.  She’d lifted her hand to his cheek and smiled, her first genuine smile of the day, and said, “I’m so proud of you, Raven, you’re a good man.  I think you definitely should apply for the SEALs.  You’ve got the true warrior spirit, and they need that.  Just remember that wherever life takes you, I will always love you.  In my whole life you’ve been the only one who made me feel safe, and I want to thank you for that.”

Stunned by her unaccustomed show of emotion, Clay had stammered something idiotic, but she’d simply given him a hug and a kiss on the cheek and said, “Good-bye
,
Raven.  May the spirits of our ancestors guide your steps and be with you always. 
Egagahan.
”

Till we meet again.

“Why did she go to you?” Clay asked around the constriction in his throat.  His chest was so tight he feared he was having a heart attack.

“Because she knew I would never hurt her.”

“Why?” Clay scoffed.  “Because you’re British?”

Burke smiled.  “No, dear boy.  Because I’m gay.”

Clay just stared at him, eyes wide with shock.

Burke just chuckled.  “Sit down, boy, before you fall down.”

Clay sat.  The older man sat as well, leaning his elbows on the desk and steepling his fingers.  “I loved your cousin very much,” he said, “but it was purely platonic.  She knew I was gay.”

“Then why marry her?”

“To make sure she was well taken care of after my death,” he explained.  “At the time I had no one else, except some very greedy, distant relatives who would surely have contested any will that left my considerable estate to anyone who was not related or married to me.  And so I could look after her the way she needed someone to look after her.  To try and make her life as free from care as possible.  After I finally gained her confidence enough for her to tell me what had happened to her, I insisted she get counseling.  She went to several eminent psychiatrists over the years, and, for a time, she would seem better, but it never lasted.  None of them was ever quite able to reach the core of her melancholy.”

He lowered his voice, tears glistening in his eyes.  “When she committed suicide, it tore me apart.  I blamed myself, even though I knew it wasn’t my fault.  That I had done everything I could do.  By that time, Leah had become my ward.  She and Rosemary had become close and she was as devastated by Rosemary’s death as I was.  So I devoted all my attention to her, and together we got through the grief.”

“If I agree to do this job,” Clay’s voice was terse, “and that’s a really big ‘if’, by the way, it wouldn’t be for you, Burke.  It would be for Leah.  And for my cousin Rosemary.”

“It would be a fitting tribute to her.”  Burke smiled, his eyes still glistening with tears.

Clay gave him an assessing look.  “I believe I may have misjudged you.  You seem to be a good man.  And I believe you when you say you loved Rosemary.  I-I wish I’d known about”—he spread his hands.  “If I had, I guarantee Franklin Nighthorse would now be taking his nourishment through a stomach tube, and blinking once for yes, twice for no.”

“He’ll get his eventually,” Everett said philosophically.

Clay’s smile drained from his eyes. 
Count on it.

“My car will follow you back to your ranch and drive you to the airport after you pack.  I now have men watching Richard Gordon.  If he somehow finds out where Leah is and makes a move to follow her to Palm Beach, I’ll alert you.  And, thank you, Clay.  I appreciate this more than I can say.”

Adjusting the Stetson on his head from back to front, Clay touched the brim with two fingers.  “Don’t worry, Burke.  I’ll take good care of your girl.”

“Careful,” the older man warned with a smile.  “She might end up
your
girl.”

Yeah.  I could live with that.

CHAPTER TWO

“Good grief,” Leah Stanhope gasped aloud, recoiling as though struck a physical blow.  “How can anybody live in this place?”

She had just stepped outside the air-conditioned terminal building into the suffocating heat and humidity of West Palm Beach, Florida.  It was a physical, palpable presence, rising from the pavement in waves to envelop her in its thick folds.  It was like being smothered in a cloak of wet air. Already a thin sheen of sweat was forming on her skin and all she’d done was step outside the door and stop. She was grateful that she’d had the foresight to pull her thick, strawberry blond hair up off her neck and into a twist at the top of her head.

“Geez!” she muttered, squinting against the harsh, painful glare of the afternoon sun.  “How do people breathe in this?  It’s like trying to breathe water!”  Lifting her hand to shade her eyes, she looked around the flat, almost alien landscape and sighed heavily.  The hot, heavy air clogged her nostrils.  She’d expected it to be a lot warmer than her beloved San Francisco, but nothing had prepared her for
this!  And it’s only April, for goodness sake!  Not even the hottest time of the year!

Moisture beaded on her upper lip and forehead.  Sweat trickled down her spine and gathered in the valley between her breasts.  Fanning herself with her hand, she looked around idly.  In spite of her care in selecting what to wear on the plane, Leah knew immediately that she’d picked the wrong clothes.  Her long-sleeved, tailored, turquoise silk blouse was already sticking to her clammy skin, and the tan, linen pants looked like they’d been wadded up at the bottom of a laundry basket for the past hundred years.  It was like wearing a sweat suit in a sauna.  Disheartened, she looked around.  Where the hell was Julio Rodriguez?  He was supposed to meet her at the baggage carousel and take her to the estate.  He’d been described as short and stocky with graying black hair, a plump, weathered face with skin like alligator hide, and a smile featuring a prominent gold tooth.  She’d waited until everyone else on her flight had retrieved their luggage and gone about their business.  Until the luggage conveyor was empty except for a single battered box.  Squashed almost flat, and threatening to spill its contents in spite of the fraying cord and duct tape optimistically wrapped around it, it kept going in and out, around and around, trapped in the endless cycle of the baggage conveyor.

Poor thing, Leah thought with a wry twist of her lips, watching it emerge through the plastic strips yet again and crawl past her on its solitary journey, crushed and abandoned in a strange place.  She sucked in her breath, nearly swept away by a tidal wave of sheer misery.  Licking her lips, she closed her eyes, unable to look at the box any longer.  Her unthinking analogy had been painfully close to her own circumstances.

Her divorce three years ago had been bitter and acrimonious, but ultimately the judge had believed her story of Richard’s betrayal and had found in her favor.  Richard had been ordered to leave her the house and the Mercedes, while he kept the Bentley, the apartment in downtown San Francisco, and the sailboat which he had insisted they purchase and which Leah had loathed.  It was purely a status symbol he used for impressing clients.  She’d been seasick every time he’d insisted they go out on it.  He had also been ordered to turn over half the income he’d earned over the duration of their marriage.  Unfortunately, by the time the judge’s ruling came down, he’d managed to hide all his assets and here she was three years later, still waiting for the first payment.

And now he was stalking her, sending her threatening letters.  And she was reasonably certain he was behind a dead cat being placed in front of her door and the recent so-called “accident” that had very nearly killed her.  Without warning his image rose in her mind.  Tall, lean, extremely good-looking, extremely rich, extremely spoiled.  Suave, charming, and urbane when he wanted something.  Arrogant and petulant when he didn’t get it.  All their friends had envied them, had called them the perfect couple.  And why not?  Richard had been the image of a devoted husband…in public.  Attentive, solicitous, given to intimate little gestures carefully calculated to foster just such an image.  In private, however, he’d been a different person altogether, cold, distant, often cruelly indifferent to Leah’s needs and desires.  He hadn’t really wanted a wife when he’d married her.  He’d wanted a hostess.  Someone cool and elegant to prepare and plan all his intimate little dinner parties with brittle, sophisticated people, carefully chosen because they were in a position to help advance his career.  Someone whose looks and background and wealth would be an asset to his ambitious career plans.

Leah’s guardian, Everett Burke, had seen through him immediately and had tried to warn her in his gentle, round-about way, but she’d been too much in love to listen.  She had ignored the rumors for months…Richard with this client, Richard with that socialite.  But she’d loyally refused to believe them until the day she had stopped by the house to get something she’d forgotten to take to work that morning and had found Richard in their bed with his firm’s newest associate.  God, how trite!  What a cliché!  And he’d even had the unmitigated gall to utter that most clichéd of all phrases, “Leah, please, this isn’t what it looks like.”

Oh, my God!  Seriously? 

“Of course it’s what it looks like, you moron!  Nothing else looks like this!  Lady, you have exactly thirty seconds to get your ass out of my bed and out of my house.  And if I ever see your face or any other part of you, I’m calling the cops to report you for theft.  As for you, Richard, you’ve got the same thirty seconds.  Don’t even think about coming home tonight.  Or ever again, for that matter.  This marriage is over.  My lawyers will be in touch.”

Okay, that’s what she
should
have said.  That’s what she should have done.  Instead, she had covered her mouth with her hand to keep from throwing up and run like a scalded cat.  She’d gotten into her car and just…driven.  For hours.  Until she’d found herself at her favorite spot on the beach and spent the next few hours mourning the loss of her marriage.  Oh, not the marriage she’d
had
, because it had never been a good one, not even in the beginning.  She’d realized early on that she wasn’t really in love with Richard and he certainly wasn’t in love with her.  No, she had mourned the loss of her
illusions
about marriage.  The way her marriage
should
have been, now shattered forever in the most humiliating way by Richard’s betrayal.

Three years ago, Richard Gordon had been on the fast track.  He’d been a virtual shoo-in to be named the next partner at Lawson, Summerfield, Whitson, and Barnes, one of San Francisco’s most prestigious law firms.  But he had ruined his career with his philandering and drinking, and had been unable to find work in the three year interim since he and Leah had divorced, also because of his philandering and drinking.  Of course, having once breathed the rarified air at Lawson, Summerfield, Whitson, and Barnes, taking a job that he considered beneath him was out of the question.  It wasn’t
his
fault that he considered
every
job beneath him.  So he’d remained unemployed.

And he blamed Leah for all of it.

She shook her head
.  I will not think about Richard.  I will not devote one nanometer of my brain to that rat bastard. 

But his betrayal of her had been so devastating to her self-esteem and the pain was still so raw, that his image lingered in spite of her efforts to dislodge it.  Feeling the familiar prickle of tears behind her eyelids, she drew a steadying breath and lifted her eyes, only to find herself looking straight into a pair of smoky gray eyes, so dark they were almost black.  Eyes belonging to one of the most ruggedly handsome men she’d ever seen.  And in that instant she was transported back three years in time to that day at the beach where she’d walked and cried and walked and cried.  Until she’d been approached by a man who had, inexplicably, offered her comfort.  He had sat in the sand and simply held her in his arms, murmuring softly in her ear, nonsense words mostly, and words in a foreign language.  Not judging or offering platitudes, or demanding that she explain herself.  Merely giving her permission to just let herself go and get it all out.  All the disillusionment, all the humiliation, all the regrets and anguish and pain that she’d been storing up inside her over the entire three years of her unsatisfactory marriage to Richard Gordon had come pouring out.

How had she done that?  What instinct had made her react with so much trust to a complete stranger?  The answers to those questions were still unanswered to this very day.  There had just been…something about him, an inner core of quiet stillness, that had reached out to her and she had grabbed onto it with both hands and held on for all she was worth, accepting his comfort as if it were her due.  How odd was that?

But then reality had set in and she’d jumped up, embarrassed as hell, stammering out an apology and fleeing without even thanking him or getting his name.  And she’d never forgotten him.  Never forgotten the peace she’d felt in his arms.  Nor the jolt of pure sexual attraction she’d felt the minute she’d jumped up and gotten a full, clear-eyed look at him.  It was as if they’d been connected somehow and that connection had lit her up like a light bulb.  And as she stared at him now, she realized that same connection was still there, humming and vibrating, stronger than ever.

Clad in flip-flops, faded denim cut-offs, and a pale blue T-shirt, stained with sweat, he was leaning one shoulder against the side of the terminal, his muscular arms—the ones that had held her so gently—folded casually across his chest.  Anyone else dressed in such an outfit would have looked scruffy and disreputable and she would have looked away.  But this man exuded such an aura of power and potent masculinity that an electric shock jolted through her, making her skin tingle.

Their gazes locked and held and she realized without surprise that he’d been watching her for some time, waiting for her to look up.  And now that she had, she stood as though mesmerized, drowning in the lambent depths of his eyes, her breath coming in short, shallow bursts.  The hubbub around her receded, leaving only the two of them isolated together on a tiny island of awareness.  And she took the opportunity to get her first really good look at him.

He was tall, probably around six foot three, with long, blue-black hair pulled back and tied with a leather thong at his nape.  His copper-colored skin gave his hard masculine features the appearance of having been cast in bronze, like a statue of some ancient pagan warrior.  She had no trouble at all envisioning him on a galloping horse, arm raised, with his hair streaming out behind him, as he turned his head to urge his warriors forward into battle.  With his broad, smooth forehead, hawk’s beak of a nose, his full, beautifully sculpted lips, those slashing cheekbones, and strong, square jaw, he projected a primitive sensuality that sent her pulses leaping.  He could easily be a model for, say, underwear.  Or men’s cologne.  Or Rolex watches.  Something masculine.  And very, very sexy. 

His hooded expression was unreadable as his smoky gaze bore into hers, kindling a tiny flicker of curling excitement in the core of her being.  She told herself to move, turn her head, something,
anything
to break this current that seemed to be pulsing between them, but she did neither of those things.  She couldn’t.  It was as if she had disappeared and someone else had taken control of her body.  A stranger, no longer subject to her command.

What on earth is he doing here?  Is he meeting someone?  A girlfriend, maybe?
 
A wife?
  Abruptly she pushed that thought away, not wanting to admit that he could possibly have either one of those. 
How can it be possible for us to meet again?

After what seemed an interminable length of time, his eyes reluctantly left hers, but they didn’t go far.  They just moved a few inches south to land on her soft, expressive mouth.  She could almost feel their touch.  The banked fires beneath the swirling gray smoke blazed to life, causing her to catch her breath. 
Oh, my God, it’s like he’s actually kissing me!

She should have been outraged, incensed, at the very least coldly disdainful of the blatantly sexual invitation he was issuing.  Instead, her lips parted unconsciously, invitingly as she responded in kind, lowering her own gaze to study the full, sensuous curve of his lower lip.
What would it be like to be kissed by that gorgeous mouth?  To feel those lips moving against mine?  To feel those hard arms around me, pulling me into that lean, muscular body?

Oh, my God, Leah, you have
got
to get a life!

Crimson color rose in her face at the inexplicable, erotic turn her thoughts had taken.  Yet, still she stood there, immobile, as his dark, heated gaze wandered lower still, skimming over the firm, ripe globes of her breasts, and the hard peaks of her nipples poking against the silk of her blouse in blatant invitation.  Her skin prickled and instinctively she knew that those piercing eyes were not seeing the clothes she was wearing, but rather, picturing what lay beneath.

Good God!

She shut her eyes on a sudden wave of embarrassment and turned her head away.  A shudder passed through her.  Had she gone completely mad?  Had dealing with Richard taught her nothing?  Despite what had happened on that stretch of beach three years ago, this man was a total stranger, and here she was sending out signals like some…some…
tramp
!  What on earth was the matter with her?  Where was her common sense?  Where was her self-respect?