Groom Of Fortune

Her eyes flipped wide and she jumped to her feet, knocking over her chair. “Oh, my God! My parents! They must be worried sick. I’ve got to call them.” She whirled, searching for a phone, but Link lunged across the table, caught her by the arm and jerked her back around.

“You can’t call your parents, Isabelle.”

“Wh-what?” she stammered, blinking at him.

“No calls.”

“But I have to!” She tugged her arm, trying to pull free. “They’ll be worried. Frightened. I have to call them. I have to let them know where I am, that I’m all right.”

Link rose and ducked a hip around the edge of the table, rounding it. He caught her other arm and forced her to face him. “Isabelle,” he said, giving her a hard shake when she continued to struggle against him. “Listen to me. You can’t call your parents. The call could be traced.”

She stilled, her eyes going wide. “Traced?”

“Yes. Brad, or anyone else who wanted to, could trace the call to this cabin.”

She shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “But my parents. They’ll be sick with worry. You don’t understand,” she cried, and tried to pull free. “I was kidnapped when I was young. I know what they went through then. How much they suffered. I can’t put them through that again. I just can’t!”

Link scowled as he held on to her, refusing to let her go. He understood, all right. He knew all about the kidnapping of Isabelle Fortune. The memory of her parents’ faces on the evening news when they’d offered a staggering reward for any information that would lead to the recovery of their daughter would forever be burned on his mind—as would the image of Isabelle’s pale, haunted face when she’d been rescued three days later and returned safely to her parents.

He released her so quickly, she staggered back a step, unbalanced. “My cell,” he said, and turned for the bedroom.

“What?” she said in confusion and hurried after him.

“My cell phone,” he explained, pulling it from its holster on the belt of his wet jeans. He turned and held it out to her. “City issue. Calls can’t be traced through it.”

She reached for the phone, then glanced up at him in surprise when he didn’t release his own grip on it.

“You can’t tell them where you are,” he warned, his blue eyes piercing hers. “Or that you’re with me. If you do, you’ll jeopardize your safety and that of your parents’. Do you understand?”

Frightened by the rigidity of his gaze and sobered by the threat he alluded to, she slowly nodded. “Y-yes. I understand.”

He released the phone, and she turned away. She punched in her parents’ number, then brought the phone to her ear. At the sound of her father’s voice, she pressed her fingertips to her lips, forcing back tears. “Dad?”

“Isabelle,” he cried in relief, making fresh tears flood her eyes. “My God, honey, where are you? Are you okay?” He clamped a hand over the mouthpiece and shouted for her mother, telling her that Isabelle was on the phone.

“Dad,” she said loudly, trying to make herself heard over his shouting. “Please listen. I can’t talk long. I just wanted you to know that I’m all right. That I’m safe.”

Then her mother was on the phone, sobbing, “My baby, my baby. Isabelle, darling, where are you?”

“I’m okay, Mother,” she said, struggling to keep the fear from her voice, the truth, not wanting to worry her parents any more than they already were. “I’m with—” She felt Link’s hand clamp over hers and glanced up at him, saw the fierce, silent warning in his eyes. “I can’t tell you where I am or who I’m with,” she explained, her gaze frozen on Link’s. “I just wanted you to know that I’m safe and that I’ll be back in contact with you as soon as I can.”

“Isabelle!” her mother wailed. “Darling, what is going on? Brad is beside himself with worry. He’s in the library now. Your father’s gone to tell him that you’re on the phone.”

Ice spilled through Isabelle’s veins at the mention of her fiancé. “I can’t talk to him,” she said, her stomach knotting at the idea of him, a murderer, in her parents’ home. “I have to go. I love you, Mother. Tell Dad that I love him, too.” She quickly pressed the disconnect button, cutting off her mother’s desperate pleas for her to remain on the line.

Link eased the phone from her paralyzed fingers and Isabelle turned away, covering her face with her hands. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “They sounded so worried. So frightened. This must be just like it was before for them.”

She felt a hand on her shoulder, the gentle squeeze of comforting fingers through the flannel shirt. She turned and buried her face against his chest. “I can’t do this,” she sobbed helplessly. “I can’t do this to them again. I’ve got to go home. Talk to them. Explain what’s happened. Tell them about Brad.”

“No.” When she twisted in his arms, trying to free herself from his embrace, Link tightened his arms around her. “Isabelle,” he ordered sternly, “think what you’re saying, what kind of danger you’d be placing yourself and your parents in. Brad’s a murderer. You know that. You heard what those men said. Once Brad knows that you’re aware of the part he played in Mike’s death, he’ll kill you, or try to, at the very least. He’ll have to, in order to save his own hide.”

“But you didn’t hear them, Link,” she sobbed. “They’re so worried. It’s just like before. I can’t bear it,” she cried, balling her hands against his chest. “I can’t put them through this again.”

“This isn’t your fault,” he told her, trying to calm her. “And it wasn’t your fault before, when you were kidnapped.”

“It is,” she argued stubbornly. “I shouldn’t have run away. I should have stayed at the church, found my father and told him what I overheard.”

Furious that he couldn’t make her understand the danger she was in, he pushed her to arm’s length and gave her a hard shake. “Don’t you know what kind of man we’re dealing with here? Brad Rowan’s crazy. Homicidal. If you’d stayed at the church and told your father what you overhead, Brad would have you by now, and God only knows what he would do to you to keep you quiet.” He watched the blood drain from her face, saw the fear in her eyes and knew that he was frightening her even more than she already was. “Isabelle,” he said, trying to keep his tone even, calm. “You did the right thing by running away. I can protect you here. I can keep you safe.”

She stared up at him, wet violet eyes searching his. “Here?” she repeated. “We’re staying here?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

He set his jaw, wondering again how he’d survive being alone with her for even one night. “As long it takes to get the evidence I need to put Brad Rowan behind bars.”

“But my parents…”

He released his hold on her. “As long as they are ignorant of Brad’s guilt, he would have no reason to harm them.”

“But—”

“I’ll arrange for twenty-four hour surveillance for both them and Rowan. At the first sign of danger, I’ll have Rowan arrested on suspicion of murder. Until then, I need for him to think his secret is safe, in hopes he’ll make a mistake and lead us to the evidence we need to nail him.”

Link dropped down onto the lumpy sofa with a weary sigh, scrubbed his hands over his face, then leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs and his fists beneath his chin as he stared at the closed bedroom door.

Isabelle slept in the bed on the other side of the door. Isabelle Fortune. The woman he’d admired, even lusted after from afar, ever since her return to Pueblo less than a year earlier.

The irony of the situation didn’t escape him.

Link Templeton, criminal investigator, lowly employee of the city that the Fortune family all but owned, hiding out in a remote cabin with the Fortune’s only daughter, a woman thirteen years his junior, a woman whose innocence and privileged background was a stark contrast to the streetwise man who’d literally pulled himself from the gutter by his bootstraps.

As he stared at the door, knowing he was crazy for even thinking about her, an image of her as she’d appeared earlier that evening pushed itself, unwanted, into his mind. Standing in the bathroom doorway like a virginal bride on her wedding night. Her cheeks flushed, that thick mane of black hair framing a classically beautiful face and tumbling to hang past her slim shoulders. Breasts quivering beneath the thin silk that enhanced rather than concealed the feminine curves beneath it.

He could imagine himself stroking a hand down the smooth column of her throat, covering a breast, almost feel her flesh swell and arch against his palm, the heat rising from her skin to burn with his. Her head would drift back as he stroked her, her eyes would close, her lips part, and he would capture her mouth with his, sip at her sweetness, grow drunk on her erotic flavor, mate his tongue with hers even as he drew her hips hard against his.

Groaning at the image, he dived his fingers through his hair and held his head between his palms, trying to squeeze the lustful thoughts from his mind. “Crazy,” he muttered under his breath. “Insane. Impossible. Irrational.” Isabelle Fortune was out of his league, out of his realm. And he was out of his mind for even thinking about her. His job was to protect her. Nothing more.

Promising himself that he would remember that, he snatched his cell phone from the sofa beside him and quickly punched in a number.

“Hank,” he said when his partner answered. “It’s Link.”

“Where the hell are you? Isabelle Fortune has disappeared, and the whole town is in an uproar. The chief wants you on the case.”

“Isabelle’s with me. We’re at your cabin in the mountains.”

“Whoa. Back up, buddy, and say that again.”