Her Forbidden Bridegroom

Now it was time to pay for those treasures in whatever coin Mitch Ellery decreed. Though she knew the payment was certain to devastate her, she’d pay quickly and, because she was guilty, she wouldn’t complain.

As she finally turned onto her street then pulled into the driveway between her building and the next one, she resisted the urge to glance around for unfamiliar vehicles. She made it all the way inside to her apartment before she heard the buzzer sound from the call box outside the front door of the small lobby downstairs.

The simultaneous knock on her apartment door came before she could cross to the tiny foyer and press the button on the intercom. Rattled, Lorna belatedly recognized the knock and gratefully opened the door.

Melanie Parker, her closest friend, greeted her with a wide smile that vanished the moment she glimpsed Lorna’s pale face.

“What’s wrong?”

Lorna let out a nervous breath. “I’m so glad you’re home. I need a favor.”

The buzzer on the call box sounded again and Lorna reached to grip Melanie’s hand. “You remember Mitch Ellery?”

Mellie’s pretty face showed her alarm. “Oh, no, Lorna. What can I do?”

Lorna felt the sting of grateful tears. Though Melanie knew she’d silently indulged her craving to spend time with her sister, Mellie had never made more than a couple of remarks to caution Lorna about the risk. She’d kept her disapproval mostly to herself because Melanie Parker, more than anyone, understood. But Mellie knew as much as Lorna did what Mitch’s arrival now meant.

“If he comes up,” Lorna said shakily, “I’d like you to check on me in a few minutes. Just a quick phone call, you don’t need to come over.”

Melanie was distressed by that. “Do you think he’d hurt you? Could he become violent?”

God, she hadn’t thought of that, but she doubted it. She shook her head.

“He’s very angry, but I don’t think he’d hurt me. Not like that. I’m probably overreacting.”

The buzzer on the call box sounded again and Lorna urged Melanie back into the hall.

“I can’t make him wait, Mel. Please. Call me in…twenty minutes?”

“That long?”

“Twenty minutes,” Lorna repeated and tried for a smile, suddenly feeling guilty for worrying her friend. “It’ll be all right.”

Melanie nodded, though she didn’t look convinced as she backed toward her apartment door across the hall. Lorna let her door close, then reached to press the intercom button before Mitch could ring again. If she was very, very lucky, the person downstairs would not be Mitch Ellery.

Her soft, “Yes,” sounded strained.

Mitch’s gravelly voice was curt. “This the right apartment?” He’d apparently recognized her voice.

No proper greeting, no “Is this Lorna Farrell?” no “May I please come in?” No acknowledgment that she had a choice in whether she buzzed him into the building or not. Almost as if the only thing that had made him pause from charging in like an angry bull was the need to make certain he’d be charging into the right apartment.

On the other hand, building security was sometimes lax. He could have waited until another tenant came along to slip past the locked door. The fact that he hadn’t was at least honest and some indication of a sense of propriety, if not also fair play.

Her soft, “Yes,” was resigned. She hesitated a moment, then pressed the button that would release the lock downstairs and let him pass into the lobby.

Real fear surged then. This was it. And, as she’d sensed, Mitch Ellery was about to charge in like a bull. Far too soon he’d cleared the stairs and she heard him striding down the hall. The cadence of his heavy boot heels was a confirmation that he was angry and would charge in. The relentless sound of his long stride coming so quickly near cranked her dread up at least a thousand notches.

She didn’t think her nerves could take the sound of him pounding on her door, so she reached out to open it.

CHAPTER TWO

AT THE sight of Lorna Farrell standing so primly at the open door, Mitch stifled the same private shock he’d felt when she’d walked into John Owen’s office with Kendra.

Lorna Farrell was slim and petite. Her dark head of glossy, shoulder-length hair curved under, her eyes were large and deeply blue, and her facial features were fine and delicate enough for a Renaissance portrait. The resemblance between her and Kendra was unmistakable.

Five years had smoothed out her features and turned her into a beauty. She had polish now, class, and the poise of a queen. But what she had by the bucketful was a resemblance to Kendra she’d not had five years before. No doubt it was now that stronger resemblance that had made her think she could engineer another try at Doris.

Mitch might even have given her some leeway had she simply tried to contact Doris again. His stepmother had finally confided that she’d given up a child for adoption years ago, but she’d denied the possibility that Lorna Farrell could be that child. A simple blood test might have thwarted Miss Farrell a second time. Surely she knew how easily she could be proved a liar if someone called her bluff.

But instead of inflicting herself directly on Doris, she’d managed to wedge herself into Kendra’s life. That alone undermined her in his eyes. In the past few hours, he’d found out that Lorna had worked for John Owen long before Kendra had become engaged to him, but she’d had no business befriending Kendra, no business at all crossing the line as far as she had.

Kendra was a sweet, naïve child-woman. Strong-willed, a little spoiled, but blinded by the optimism and generosity of youth. She hadn’t yet learned that the world was full of liars and opportunists. She hadn’t been bitten by the bitter truth that jealous people would do their damnedest to knock her down for having money or that the greedy ones would play her for a fool to get a piece of it.

Lorna Farrell’s slick intrusion into Kendra’s confidence marked her as the second kind. And though Mitch had long thought his stepsister needed to wise up to the ways of the world, he was determined that Lorna Farrell wouldn’t be the one to educate her.

Lorna didn’t speak and neither did he as he strode through the open door into her apartment.

Lorna had done much better for herself these past five years than the cramped one-room apartment she’d had back then. These rooms were painted bright white, and the furniture was tasteful blend of nice pieces, though probably second hand. She liked color and she liked interesting little accents, like the whimsical caricature of a gangly palomino pony with inch-long eyelashes that stood almost a foot tall on the floor in front of an antique bookcase lined with hardcover and paperback books.

The dove gray sofa was plush and artfully scattered with old-fashioned needlework pillows. There were a few inexpensive but tasteful paintings on the walls and she had a fondness for dark tables with delicate legs. The dining room had a bowl of vivid silk flowers in the middle of the table, and every surface throughout the two rooms he could see were polished to a deep luster.

Everything was neat and orderly without a single thing out of place. Was this the rigid care of a woman who’d only recently come up in the world and appreciated that enough to take religious care of everything? Or was she an opportunist who liked to have nice things and by such diligent care demonstrated not only a lust for material possessions but a hunger for more and even better?

Because he was so suspicious of her, he discounted the idea that she kept her things so neat and orderly because it was an admirable habit.

He didn’t bother to take off his Stetson. Though it was polite to do so and expected indoors, he didn’t intend to pay her the compliment. He heard the tremor in her voice and sent her a surly glance.

“Would you like to sit down, Mr. Ellery? Can I get you something? Coffee? A s-soda?”

He watched color flash across her cheekbones at the small stutter and took note of the way she gripped her slim fingers together. He detected the tremor she clearly tried to suppress in the faint vibration of her shoulders beneath her suit jacket.

“I didn’t come to be sociable, Miz Farrell. Your pretty manners are wasted on me.”

Now he saw the color vanish from her cheekbones, confirming the notion that she was as completely intimidated by him as she’d been five years ago, and thus would be easy to manage.

He lifted his hand to his chest, frowned at the small start she gave at the movement, then slipped his fingers into his suit pocket to remove the check. He held it out so she could see the amount.

Her deeply blue eyes dropped automatically to the digits. There was a spark of something then. Surprise? Or was it a flash of pain?

“Give Owens two weeks notice, then quit,” he told her brusquely. “This should hold you over until you can find another job. If you leave San Antonio to take a job, I’ll give you double that amount. Every year up to five years, I’ll leave a matching check for that double amount in an account with my attorney. Every year up to five years that you stay out of San Antonio and have no contact with Kendra, the attorney will transfer that yearly amount into whatever out of town bank account you choose.”

Mitch paused because she appeared to sway. He hardened his heart to that show of shock because it was more likely shock that he’d given her what she’d wanted so easily. And from the amount on the check, she could surely see that multiples of that kind of money, if carefully handled, would soothe the sharper edges of her lust for riches for a long time to come. He went on.

“After five years, the money deal expires. By then there’ll be a record of every transaction. If you approach Kendra again, we’ll have a money trail to take you to court for extortion.”

“How dare you?”

The words were choked and Lorna’s stormy gaze came up to his. She’d stood stiffly before, but now she looked so rigid that movement might make her bones crackle.