him, are you?”
“Are you mad!” Melissa brushed away the half-sketched thought. “The man is out to ruin me. Of course I’m not going to sleep with him.” She sneered and slapped her left cheek. “Do you really think he’d want to take someone like me to bed? Or that I’d even know how to seduce a man?”
Gently Deanna wrapped one arm around Melissa’s shoulders. Melissa hated the pity in her friend’s eyes.
“You know that’s not what I mean,” Dee said softly. “It’s just that he’s not another of the battered creatures you like to take in. He’s much more dangerous.”
“I know that.” Melissa knew it with her mind, saw it with her eyes, felt it in the strange sensation shivering down her back. Shrugging off Dee’s hand, she sat down and pressed the remote to restart the movie. But there was also something about Tyler Blackwell, about the pain in his voice, in his eyes, when he called to his Lindsey, that touched her deeply.
“I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“I know.” But Dee, in her own well-meaning way, had also never encouraged Melissa to venture past these castle walls. All the field trips but one had been James Randall’s idea. Because of his generous donations, he’d had museums and galleries opened after hours just for her. And as dangerous as Tyler Blackwell was, his words could open a whole new world to her. The only way she could think to achieve that was to hold him prisoner until he saw past the witch.
Patrick Swayze kissed Demi Moore, and she arched back in ecstasy at his touch. After wondering all night and all day what she was going to do with her unwanted guest, Melissa had her answer. The only question left in her mind was whether she would have the courage to follow through on her brash decision.
“MR. BLACKWELL?”
A woman’s voice pierced through layers of drowsiness, and Tyler winced as he propped himself up to answer.
“What…? What time is it?” he asked, his voice hoarse with sleep. “Who are you?”
“I’m sorry to wake you up, but I need to talk to you. I’m Deanna Ziegler, a good friend of Melissa’s.” She looked at her watch and added, “It’s about two in the morning.”
“Two a.m.!” Tyler sat up. He was wide awake now and annoyed. “What the hell are you doing here at this time?”
“Visiting. For Melissa it’s only midafternoon—she keeps quite different hours from most people. I want to know what your intentions are.”
“Intentions?” His eyes adjusted to the night and he stared unbelievingly at the small woman peering at him through the bars of his cell. She sounded like a father facing his daughter’s suitor. By the moon’s soft light, spilling from the high window, he guessed she was about forty. Her hair, gleaming white and her smooth Germanic features drawn tight with worry betrayed her age more than the well-proportioned figure clad in fuchsia exercise pants and flower-print T-shirt.
“I’ll arrange for Grace to let you go in the morning. I suggest you leave the second you get the opportunity,” Deanna said.
Tyler guessed that “Papa” had judged him to be an unsuitable prospect. Who was Grace? The woman who brought him his meals?
“I can’t.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then leaned his elbows on his thighs and cradled his head in his hands. The angel of his hallucinations with her heavenly voice and jewel-green eyes had revisited him in dreams a man like him had no right to have. The angel was so far removed from the tabloid witch that he had to reconcile the two and find which one was real. Maybe he was doomed to repeat his mistakes, he thought, as the need for answers once again reasserted itself. How did he expect to find a new path if he followed the same old road?
“What do you mean you can’t?” Anger rose and turned the woman’s soft features surprisingly hard. “Melissa’s been through hell and can’t take any more of the kind of pain you bring.”
“I’m not here to hurt her.”
The knuckles of the hands gripping the bars whitened. She shook her head. “She doesn’t need the kind of notoriety your work brings. It’ll change the quiet atmosphere she’s used to and needs to survive. You’re an investigative reporter, and I’m telling you there’s nothing here to investigate or report.”
“I’m not going to hurt her,” he repeated flatly. Family feuds had a way of burning anyone foolish enough to cross the battlefield. Freddy had to know that or he would have come to the rescue himself.
“Maybe you really don’t mean to, but you have to understand, Melissa isn’t like the people you’re used to interviewing.”
“I don’t imagine she is.” How could she be after spending her life alone in a place like this?
“Put yourself in her place. You’re eight years old and you’re disfigured in the same accident that kills your mother. Imagine growing up without love, with scars that today even the best plastic surgeon can’t make disappear because they’re too old and set. Imagine being kept in a room all alone—just because your family thinks you’re too ugly for anyone to see. Imagine what that does to the psyche of a child, and then tell me that your words won’t hurt her.” She jerked at the bars. “Go back to your editor and tell him you can’t do this story.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You have nothing to lose, Mr. Blackwell. You’ll get other chances. The last reporter who did a story on her nearly killed her with his words. She’s had enough pain to last her a dozen lifetimes. Leave her alone. Go,” Deanna pleaded.
Deanna’s fierceness spoke of loyalty and love. Freddy wanted Tyler’s reason for being here to remain a secret until he could corroborate it, but he’d also said that to get to Melissa he had to go through Deanna. Nothing short of the truth would work here. “Freddy Gold sent me.”
She snapped back as if the bars were suddenly electrified. “Why would Freddy Gold send a reporter? He knows how she feels about them.”
“To do an article on Eclipse.”
“Freddy doesn’t send reporters. I send him Melissa’s copy over the Internet.”
Freddy, Tyler thought, had probably never gotten around to asking his secretary to call Deanna about the article on her stallion. Were Rena and the baby okay? “He thinks she’s in danger.”
“From what?”
Tyler sighed. Freddy’s hunches had garnered him untold scoops, but sometimes they were a pain in the butt to explain. But if he was to stay, he had to convince Melissa’s guardian that his presence was needed here. “He received a warning that someone wants her harmed.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. That’s why he sent me here. He knows Melissa won’t talk to him, won’t even pick up the phone when he calls. He knows she won’t accept his help except through a business transaction. That’s why he thought she’d go for an article about her horse now that show season is under way. His secretary was supposed to call.”
“She didn’t.”
The thing about Freddy’s hunches was that they were usually right. And if Freddy thought danger lurked around Melissa’s castle, then there was probably something to it. Sometimes the intuition proved nothing more than a leaky faucet. Sometimes it was the shot that killed the woman you loved. But it was always worth checking out.
“I promised Freddy I’d keep her safe. That’s all.” That was everything. And it was too much. Especially when she’d managed to haunt his dreams in less than a day. He rubbed at the pain pounding in his forehead. “The story is just a cover. I won’t write one word about her. Call Freddy—he’ll verify my claim.”
“She’s as safe as she can be behind these walls. The last thing she needs is an intruder—a reporter—with a hidden agenda.” Deanna