Nobody's Child

Sometimes when she finished her sunbath, she walked on the beach.

Cutter, who had lain there willing her to come inside for more than an hour, smiled triumphantly when she got up and peered anxiously through the window. He beckoned her inside.

She opened the door, her body flushed from the sun, her smile bright and teasing, her red hair and the dune flowers in it mussed. At the sight of her, a wild rhythm started in his chest.

She met his gaze and looked away. “You have to stop doing that.”

“What?”

Breathlessly, she said, “Looking at me that way.”

“I thought you liked me to.” He got up and moved toward her, trailing his blanket across the bleached pine floor.

“I—I...”

“What’s the matter?”

Frightened, she began backing. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“So—tell.”

“I’m practically engaged to another man.”

“Do you love him?”

The beach morning glories quivered in her hair. The tiny scar beneath her left eye, which was the only blemish on her near-perfect face, whitened. “Of—I’m not sure.”

“So—how do you feel about me?”

Her frantic eyes burned into him the same way her spicy food did.

“I have to know,” Cutter insisted.

“His brother doesn’t want us to marry. He doesn’t think I’m good enough. I—I came here to be alone—To think about Martin and our future together.” Her eyes glistened with unspoken pain as she studied Cutter. “Not for—”

“Not for this.” With one hand Cutter grasped her shoulder. With his other, he caught her red hair and flower petals. His mouth slanted across hers.

Her lips parted hesitantly; he felt her soft, indrawn breath. Next she shocked him by the full heat of her response to his kiss as her tongue slid against his. Consumed by hunger, his arms tightened around her slim waist as she surrendered passionately.

“Cheyenne—”

“No!” She stiffened and drew back. “Please—” She threw the door open and ran.

“Damn,” he muttered, watching her, not following even though he sensed that if he pressed her now, he could win. He was tempted to go after her, to pull her into the sand and seduce her. Then he could tell Martin and advise him that Lords didn’t marry easy women like her.

But three days with her had robbed Cutter of the appetite to destroy her.

She had been so nice to him.

She had saved his life.

Which meant he owed her. Yes. But how much?

Surely not Martin’s future and fortune.

There was a new wrinkle. Cutter now wanted her himself.

Tom, Cutter hesitated—and that wasn’t like him.

Why the hell didn’t he just seduce her?

It was only later that he wondered if he had not sensed the impending danger she would be to his coldly ordered life. To his soul.

But—until he met Cheyenne Rose, Cutter had not known he had a soul.

Until Cheyenne he had glided through life. First as the precocious, brilliant son and dutiful brother. Then as the ruthless businessman who believed that life was about money, not love. He had married; divorced. But ultimately, always—until Cheyenne—he’d been alone, an outcast. Envied and never loved. He had sought admiration. Not love. His loneliness hadn’t mattered—until her.

Arrogant to the core, Cutter was accustomed to the glitter of exotic capitals and the easy pleasures of beautiful women. Long ago, when he had become strong enough to crush his opposition, he had not imagined that anyone, least of all a girl, could ever crush him.

Cutter had lived in many houses and in many foreign lands. He had made many fortunes and had had many women. But nowhere and to no one had he ever belonged, least of all to himself. He spoke many languages, but not one of them was the language of his own soul. He’d had little understanding of those weaker than himself. He had not cared that his younger brother felt jealousy for him instead of love.

And then Cutter had washed up on his island, and she had turned the tables on him by saving his life. His cynical world and all its rules had changed.

Not completely.

Because when she had asked his name, he had lied and said, “Lyon.”

Cheyenne was wearing her bikini and holding her paperback and gauzy cover-up, but she couldn’t work up the nerve to go out on the deck for her daily sunbath.

Because Lyon was somewhere outside.

She couldn’t see him.

Or let him see her.

Lyon had avoided her ever since he’d kissed her yesterday, and she was grateful to him for that.

And yet, somehow, his absence made her think of him even more.

Whenever Lyon came near the house, she kept to Martin’s elegant bedroom with its long windows and dark blue walls and white throw carpets and paintings of the sea.

But she felt miserable and trapped as she stared, with white-knuckled fingers against the shuttered windows, out to the sea and the primroses in the dunes and wondered where Lyon was. She wanted to go out and lie in the sun and listen to the surf and think.

Did she have an hour before he came back?

She wanted to love Martin. Only Martin. Why then did thoughts of Lyon possess her? Why had the dune flowers started to bloom the moment she’d seen Lyon?

This couldn’t be happening.