The Virgin And The Vengeful Groom

It was still hard to believe—sometimes, even now, she had to pinch herself—but people took her at face value. The bookstore manager had baked cookies and brought a lace tablecloth from her own home. Lily was so touched she felt like weeping. Nerves did that to her, and her own had been stretched to the breaking point. Her best friend, who was also her agent, had urged her to get out of town until the police could do their job. Instead, she had done as they suggested and changed her unlisted number, changed the lock on her door and had a chain installed.

That had hurt. One of the things she loved most about her apartment was that it was in such a safe neighborhood, half the time when residents visited someone else in the building, they left their doors unlocked. And while she had never quite gone that far, she’d never felt threatened. Until now.

At least here in broad daylight, in a busy mall bookstore, she should be safe.

There were already several people glancing this way, looking as if they might be coming over. The woman with two children—the teenage girls with the pierced eyebrows. The man in the black T-shirt…

Mercy. She would willingly go back to “clinch covers” if he would agree to pose. What was there about dangerous-looking men? she wondered. Men with dark, slashing eyebrows, shaggy, sun-streaked hair, unsmiling mouths and lean, hawkish features?

Hawkish features? Lily, my girl, you sound like a writer.

Then there was the way he moved, as if he had ball bearing joints. She could imagine a dancer moving that way, or a hunter silently gliding through the forest. Odds were this man was no dancer. There was no shotgun in evidence, which meant he probably wasn’t on safari, either. He could be one of those foreign correspondents who put on a battle jacket to stand before a camera and read a script, or he could be—

Oh, God, he was—he was coming over here.

What if he was the one?

Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.

He’s not going to hurt you here, not out in public!

Where was the security guard? Every mall had security guards, because stuff happened. There were creeps everywhere.

Uncapping her pen, she gripped it in her right fist and lowered her hand to her lap. Smile, Lily, smile! Don’t let him know you’re afraid, bluff! You can do it, you’re an old hand at bluff and run. Besides, even if he turned out to be her crank caller, the policewoman had told her that nine times out of ten, crank callers were harmless. Pathetic losers who couldn’t interact with women except anonymously.

The last thing this man looked was harmless.

He was staring at her. Now he was moving in her direction. Years of soft living had taken its toll, because she was suddenly having trouble breathing. Surely someone was looking this way—someone would notice if he started anything? The store manager—

“Miss O’Malley? I believe you have something that belongs to me,” he said in a voice that could best be described as chocolate-covered gravel.

It didn’t sound like the voice she’d heard on the phone, but voices could be disguised.

Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t have spit if her pants were on fire, but she forced herself to look him in the eye. Coolly, graciously she said, “I beg your pardon?”

Two

I beg your pardon?

Lily was tough. She had grown up tough. In the neighborhoods where she’d spent her formative years, toughness was a prerequisite to survival. Over the intervening years she had moved countless times, to different cities, different states. She had learned how to dress, how to speak, which fork to use for oysters, which to save for cake. The one thing she had never quite managed to do was lose the urge to slip away rather than confront trouble head-on.

And this man, whether or not he was actually her crank caller, was trouble.

“I said, you have something that belongs to me,” he repeated, never breaking eye contact. Her fingers tightened on her Montblanc pen, the one she had treated herself to after her first book went to number two on the bestseller list and stayed there for three weeks. As a weapon it was slightly better than car keys. As a reminder of who she was and how much she’d accomplished, how far she had come from the skinny kid who had scrounged for food from restaurant garbage, worn clothes snagged from backyard clotheslines because she didn’t dare risk getting caught shoplifting, it served well enough.

She opened her mouth to beg his pardon again, snapped it shut and looked around for mall security—for anyone bigger and tougher than the man towering over her.

“If you’d like to buy a book, I’ll be—”

“I’ll pay you whatever you laid out for them.” Unblinking. She’d heard of unblinking eyes—probably used the phrase herself a time or two. This was the first time she had actually been confronted by a pair of deep-set, intensely blue, unblinking eyes.

How the dickens could a man make her feel threatened and dithery at the same time? She’d been threatened by experts. The crank caller who insisted on telling her in detail what he’d like to do to her made her want to kick him where it would do the most damage. The creep who had actually invaded her home, leaving disgusting things in her underwear drawer!

But dithery? The last time she could remember feeling dithery was when she’d been offered her first three-book contract after her first book had gone back to press five times. Getting a grip on herself, she said in her best Masterpiece Theater voice, “I’m sorry, but you’ve obviously mistaken me for someone else.”

He glanced at the nameplate: Lily O’Malley, Bestselling Author. His unblinking eyes shifted to the newspaper clipping mounted on a poster along with one of her publicity stills. He said, “I don’t think so. Look, you’ll be finished here at two? Why don’t I come back later, and we can settle things then?”

Totally confused, Lily watched him turn and walk away in that odd, gliding way he had of moving. In a woman it would have been called graceful. He could have balanced a book on his head. In a man it was something else altogether. Subtle? Scary? How would she describe it as a writer?

She knew very well how she would describe it as a woman. In a word, sexy. He might not be the weirdo she had first taken him for, but any dealings with a man like that could definitely be classified as a walk on the wild side, and what woman hadn’t been tempted at some time in her life to walk on the wild side?

Not Lily, though. Thank you very much. She’d been there, done that.

Turning her attention to the woman who was examining one of her books, she eased into her famous-author mode. “What do you think of the cover?”

“Well, it’s real pretty, but I’d rather see who the story’s about,” the woman replied with a faint frown.

They discussed covers. They discussed her last two novels. By that time a line was forming, and Lily tucked the dangerous-looking man into a compartment of her mind and shut the door. It was another of her talents—compartmentalizing—that had stood her in good stead over the years. Some doors had not been unlocked in years.

A few never would be.

So that was Lily O’Malley, Curt mused as he sought out the food court and ordered a pastrami on rye with horseradish. She didn’t add up. Classy didn’t quite say it all. Neither did sexy. Yet she was both of those and more. Intriguing was a word that came to mind. He reminded himself that he wasn’t here to be intrigued, he was here to get back what she had stolen from him, legally or not, and get the hell back to the island, where he could take his own sweet time going through it.

The more he thought about it, the more important it became, now that he was the Powers in residence at Powers Point, even if only on a temporary basis. As far as he knew, he was the last of the lot, and while the concept of family had never meant much to him personally, the least he could do for those responsible for his existence was to hang on to what they’d left behind. For a professional rolling stone, it was a pretty heavy responsibility, but what the hell—he’d shouldered heavier loads. He could do that much before he moved on again.

Lily signed a respectable number of books. She’d done better, but she had also done a lot worse. She accepted a number of compliments—graciously, she hoped—and one or two criticisms: there wasn’t enough sex; there was too much sex; did the guy in her last book, or did he not, ever pay for that apple? She hadn’t said.

She answered each critic seriously and wished the stint would end. Fourteen minutes to go. After that, a few more minutes spent thanking the staff, and she’d be free to leave.

Idly she wondered about the dark-eyed stranger with the sexy way of walking. He’d claimed she had something of his—which was absurd, of course. She’d heard just about every pickup line in the books. Some people said the most outrageous things in an effort to grab her attention.

A few went even further.

Ten minutes and counting. “I’m so glad you liked it. It was one of my favorites. Shall I sign it for you? Adella…that’s a lovely name.”

Seven minutes to go. No one in sight. Lily reached for her purse, capped her pen and felt around with her feet for her shoes.

And then, there he was. Those same slashing eyebrows, several shades darker than his streaky tan hair. She hadn’t imagined the intensity of those eyes, nor that odd, sexy way he had of walking, as though his legs moved independently from his torso.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“I beg your—”

“You’ve already begged it. If you’re about finished here, why don’t we go someplace where we can talk?”

“Look, Mr….”

“Powers,” he supplied. “The name ring any bells?”

Powers. The voice might not have rung any bells, but the name surely did. What have we got here, Bess?

“If this has something to do with those old papers I bought at the auction—”

“I figured it might come back to you.”

“There’s nothing to discuss. It was a legitimate business deal. The things were up for sale—I bought them, ergo, I’m the—”

“Ergo?”

“What is your problem?” she demanded, rising to her full height, which was almost five feet eight inches, now that she had her shoes on again.

The store manager appeared, a questioning look on her round face. The man who claimed his name was Powers towered over both of them. “Just trying to decide on where to go for a late lunch,” he explained with hard-edged geniality.

Ignoring eyes that sliced through her like a welder’s torch, Lily forced a smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to wash the ink from my hands.”

There wasn’t a single smudge on her hands. She’d visited the washroom less than an hour ago, but if there was one lesson she had learned early in life, it was how to avoid trouble. She might look like a sheltered hothouse flower—it was an image she had deliberately cultivated, in keeping with her name—but she was far more like the kudzu vine that thrived in the most barren places, surviving droughts, floods, sweltering heat and withering frost. If there was one thing Lily prided herself on, it was being tough. If there was one thing she was good at, it was avoiding direct confrontation.

Emerging a few minutes later, she saw Powers talking to the manager. He was obviously the type who enjoyed impressing women, and Mrs. Saunders was visibly impressed.

Lily was not. At least not enough to impair her sense of self-preservation. Head down, she crammed her small purse in the large canvas tote she was never without and slipped behind the reference section, then out into the mall to merge with the crowd.

Early in life she’d been forced to become a chameleon, able to blend in with her surroundings, to disappear—to do whatever it took to avoid trouble or to keep from being sent back to whatever authorities she had managed to elude. During those years between the ages of eleven and fifteen, after she’d run away from a drug-addicted mother and her mother’s series of abusive men, she had managed, against overwhelming odds, to keep herself safe in an extremely hostile environment. Desperation was the mother of invention, she reminded herself as she unlocked her car, slung her tote inside and sat behind the wheel, unmindful of the dark-clad figure who watched from the shadow of an enormous evergreen outside the main entrance.

Lily had been a mean, homely kid. She’d been told that too many times not to believe it. As a woman she was mean and plain. The miracle was that she had never quite lost the ability to dream. In the end it was that very ability to escape into a world of her own invention that had led to where she was today.

She had stolen her first book before she could even read, shaping stories in her head to match the pictures. Once she discovered public libraries, she’d spent hours browsing, puzzling out words, afraid to ask for help, afraid of being chased out into the cold. Not until years later had she realized that the kind librarians probably knew why she was there, if not who she was. No matter how many hours she spent in that magic kingdom, they had left her in peace. Often they even “found” an extra sandwich that needed to be disposed of.

It was there that Lily had discovered kindness. Discovered a world—a whole universe—she had never dreamed existed. Once the doors closed behind her and she emerged into the real world again, she had carried that dream in her heart like a talisman.

Her writing career had been a fluke from the start. She’d been working at a car wash by day and cleaning offices at night when she had impulsively bought herself a package of cheap ballpoint pens and a spiral notebook. Writing had quickly become addictive—embellishing the harsh reality she knew with the fragile budding dreams she had somehow managed to keep safe inside her all through the years.

Next she’d bought a used, manual, portable typewriter from Goodwill. A year later she had stoked up her courage, marched into a publisher’s office where she’d cornered a startled editor, shoved a manuscript at her and growled, “Here, read this!”

It wasn’t supposed to happen that way, especially not when the editor she’d approached worked for a company that published technical books. By all rights she should have been kicked out on her skinny behind. She’d been terrified, which always came out as belligerence. But evidently something in her attitude had captured the woman’s sympathy. She had glanced at the first page, then the second and then reached for the phone.

Hot target! Take it out! The words rang in his ears.

But that was then, Curt reminded himself, and this was now. The lady might be hot—his internal sensors had registered that right away—but he had no intention of taking her out, in either sense of the word.

He waited until just before dark. Timing was vital. Go in too soon and she’d still be on guard. Wait too long and the evidence could disappear.

How the devil had she managed to handle those heavy boxes, anyway? A couple of them probably weighed more than she did.

Yeah, timing was vital. Planning, too, only he didn’t know how to plan this particular mission any more than he already had. Get in, get the job done, get out. SOP. Standard Operating Procedure.

Downstairs in a lobby that smelled of pine-oil cleanser, he checked the registry and found one L. H. O’Malley on the third floor. It was an old building. He would have figured O’Malley for something more modern. Something with a swimming pool and wall-to-wall parties. He eyed the elevator and reluctantly opted for the stairs. Climbing wouldn’t be comfortable, but he still had an aversion to being confined in an enclosed space.

Upstairs in the apartment that had until recently been her safe haven, Lily went through her routine. Lock the door, fasten the chain, then cross her fingers and play back the messages on her machine, praying any calls would be from her agent or editor.

“Hello, Lily, this is me, your best fan. What are you wearing? Have you taken off that pretty thing you were wearing in the store today? I was there, Lily. I stood so close I could smell your perfume. I almost touched you once, but you were busy signing books. Did you like my gift, Lily? I straightened your panties—they were all jumbled up. I bet you’d like it if I—”

She switched the machine off, swore in her old Lily style, and then took a deep breath. “Forget it, you creep, you’re not yanking my chain again, not tonight.”

Deep breath, flex shoulders, do one of those yoga thin-gees…’atta gal, Lil!

Carefully she removed her pearls, hung up her suit and blouse and peeled off her panty hose, tossing them at the hamper. After a few extravagant movements that bore little resemblance to any recognized exercise regimen, she headed for the kitchen to make herself a mug of cocoa. Even in the middle of summer hot chocolate was her favorite comfort food. There’d been a time when any food at all had been a comfort food, but now she could afford to pick and choose, and like millions of other women she chose chocolate.

And she needed it now. Oh, damn, oh, damn, oh, damn! Just when things were going so well—number two on the bestseller list, with a new contract in the works—and this creep had to go and ruin everything! She’d been told that crank calls were a part of being a high-profile woman living alone. She’d set herself up by being successful.

Or rather the PR firm her publisher used had set her up.

Thirty minutes. She would reward herself with half an hour of pleasure, because after all, she was between books. She didn’t have to start on her next one quite yet. And the signing had gone well today—she had sold more than half the stock and signed the rest. The manager had mentioned another session when Blood came out in paperback.

“I’ve earned this, and no slimeball with a damned telephone is going to take it away from me,” she muttered. Sliding open the drawer of the side table, she grabbed a package of cheese crackers. Opening one of the diaries, she munched and read and sipped, thinking, genuine pearls and fancy pens are okay, but this—this is real luxury. What more could any woman ask?

For twenty-five of those minutes she followed Bess down something called the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal, trying to imagine what it had been like to be a woman alone with three men in a small open boat. Not only had Bess been up against heat and mosquitoes, she’d constantly had to fight against the kind of male chauvinism that had prevailed in those days. What was a parasol, anyway? Something to wear? Something to spray on you to keep from being eaten up by mosquitoes?

Another word to look up and add to her growing vocabulary.

She read a few more paragraphs and murmured, “Way to go, girl,” as she reached for another treat from her chair-side cache. At five before the hour, she reluctantly laid her book aside, dusted the crumbs from her fingers and untangled her feet from the ratty old velour bathrobe. Her agent, Davonda Chambers, had called that morning to say that the contract was ready for review.

“You know I won’t understand a word of all that legal mumbo jumbo, Davie. If you say sign it, I’ll sign.”

“Oh, you are my worst nightmare, girl. Look, it’s your career we’re talking about here, not mine. You’re going to read every word, and then I’m going to Mirandize you.”

“Okay, okay,” Lily had laughed. “Bring on your whereases and heretofores.”

Davonda had made a growling noise, but she’d laughed, too. She knew better than anyone about the great gaping holes in Lily’s education. Schooling had not been a priority in Lily’s youth. Thank God reading had.

She wished now she’d put it off until tomorrow. Even without the stress of the past week, with that nutcase ruining her life, playing lady for any length of time was exhausting. Here in the home she had made for herself, she could relax, think about her work in progress—or think about nothing at all. If she wanted to sleep all day and write all night, it was nobody’s business but her own. She did the tours and signings because her publisher had more or less mandated it—another new word—and because she knew for a fact that it had a direct bearing on her sales. The one today, for instance, would probably gain her a few new readers, and that would multiply exponentially, in the words of her publicist. Lily had come home and looked up exponentially to see if it was going to be good or bad. Given a choice, she’d much prefer to put on her oldest sweats, stock up on junk food and get on with the task of disappearing into the nice, safe world of fiction. She could write her way into all sorts of trouble, knowing that she could write her way out again. It was…exponential.

But even without the overeager fans and the few cranks, there’d been changes in her nice, comfortable lifestyle once she started showing up regularly near the top of the bestseller lists. Not all of them were to her advantage. Like luck, success was extremely fragile. One flop—one disappointing sellthrough, and it could all go up in smoke. So she juggled her career, dealt with her fans, most of whom were wonderfully supportive, and tried to ignore the few who weren’t. She listened with half an ear to the experts, afraid to trust in today or to look too far into tomorrow because she couldn’t quite forget yesterday.

The doorbell caught her halfway to her room to change into something presentable. Other than the police, the locksmith and the pizza delivery man, the only people who knew where she lived were her agent and her housekeeper.

“You’re—” Early, she’d been going to say, already reaching for the chain. Her first impulse was to slam the door. Her second was to scream bloody murder. She was still debating when the phone rang.

“The cops are already on the way,” she lied, shoving hard at the door that was blocked open by a big, water-stained deck shoe.

Behind her, the machine picked up, and she heard the familiar whispery voice. “Lily…guess what I’m doing right now. I’m in bed, and I’m not wearing nothing, and I’ve got your picture right—”

“Oh—damn!”

Confusion, impotent anger, frustration—embarrassment—it was too much. She closed her eyes and leaned against the door, never mind that his foot was still in the crack.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Curt pushed against the security chain, half-tempted to extricate his foot, walk away and forget he’d ever heard of Lily O’Malley. He didn’t need any more complications at this point in his life.

Trouble was, the officer-and-gentleman stuff had been drilled into him at an impressionable age. Regardless of the fact that she was either an outright thief or a conscienceless opportunist, she obviously needed help. “Open the door, O’Malley.” He made an attempt to sound reassuring.

She was not reassured. Glared at him, in fact. “Look, I don’t have time to play games,” he growled. His back was acting up again, thanks to yesterday’s long drive and a night of trying to sleep on a bed that was too short, too hard, in a room where the window was sealed shut. His left leg still hadn’t forgiven him for those three flights of stairs.

“Or maybe you enjoy dirty phone calls? Some people even pay for the privilege of crawling through that particular gutter.”

She closed her eyes. Her face, already pale without the war paint, grew a shade whiter.

“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll just state my business, you can hand over my property, and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Property?”

He did a quick countdown, trying to hang onto his temper. “I believe I mentioned before that you’ve got something that belongs to me?” He wouldn’t have been surprised to find the lady in the process of sneaking out with all six boxes, after the way she had tried to elude him at the mall. He had let her get away, just to see what she was up to, but the game was over.

“Look, just hand over the boxes and we’ll call it even. I won’t prosecute and you can get back to your—”

“You won’t what?”

“Uh…prosecute?” Indignation wasn’t precisely the reaction he’d expected.

“Look, for your information, I don’t have one damned thing that belongs to you, and what’s more, I’m tired of jerks like you who won’t give up!”

“You’re tired? Well, that’s just tough, lady!”

Jerks like him? By the time he had tailed her here, nearly losing her twice in rush hour traffic, found a parking space a block and a half away, jogged the distance on concrete sidewalks and then climbed three flights of stairs, what little patience he might have been able to scrape up had eroded down to bedrock.

“If you want your friend to quit calling, sic the cops on him. The advice is free. Now you can hand over my personal property. I won’t even press charges.”

“Charges! What charges? You’re crazy, you know that? I’m going to call 911 right now and report—”

“Fine. Then you can explain how you came to be in possession of six boxes of my personal, private property!”

Gray eyes. Clear as rainwater. You’d think a woman with eyes like that couldn’t hide a damned thing, but she was hiding something, all right. Guilt, obviously, because if she’d been innocent, she wouldn’t have run away. “I’m waiting. Want to make the call or shall I make it for you? I’ve got a cell phone in my truck.”

She was leaning against the door now, one hand gripping the edge so hard the tips of her fingers were white. She wasn’t anywhere near as cool as she would like him to believe, not by a long shot.

He shoved his foot another inch through the crack and hoped to hell she didn’t throw her weight against the door. His metatarsals were about the only bones that hadn’t been busted at one time or another in his colorful career. He would kind of like to keep it that way. “You going to call the cops?”

“The cops,” she repeated numbly.

“Right, O’Malley. The men in blue. So I can reclaim my boxes and you can get your boyfriend off your back. That is, if you want him off your back?”

Heavy sigh. Her fingers slid down the edge of the door. They both knew she was fighting a losing battle—evidently fighting it on two fronts. Hell, even the U.S. armed forces had trouble doing that in these days of military cutbacks. “Miss O’Malley? You want to talk about this?”

Somewhat to his surprise, a few protective instincts kicked in. It was part of the code every SEAL team operated under, only this was no team operation. If there were rules to cover a situation like this, he’d never heard of them. With his back on the verge of spasms, his left leg giving him fits and his gut complaining about the pastrami and horseradish he’d had earlier, he had to reach deep for patience. “Look, there’s obviously something going on here. You need to call 911. I can wait out here, or I can wait inside. Either way, I’m not leaving.”

Small gasp. Could’ve been a sob, but he didn’t think so. And then the chain fell and she opened the door. Roughly 110 pounds, swathed in a shapeless velvet tent, hair spilling over her shoulders like a dark waterfall, not a speck of color in her face except for those wide gray eyes…and she was mad as hell. Ready to knock his head off.

Ignoring an inappropriate and totally unexpected sexual response, he held up both hands. “Unarmed, see?”

She backed down half an inch but still had that pit-bull look on her face. He couldn’t blame her. Evidently there was more going on here than six boxes of stuff he owned and she was trying to claim. “You want to make that call now or shall we get our personal business done first?”

“Personal business.” She was stalling, trying to come up with a good story, so he pushed a little harder.

“We can do this the easy way, or we can fight it out in court. Your choice.”

“You’re still upset about those papers? I’ve got this fruitcake who won’t let me alone—someone breaks into my apartment, meddles in my underwear drawer, and you’re worried about some papers?”

Oh, boy. “You want to run that by me again? Your underwear?”

“It probably wasn’t you, because you were right here at the door when he called, but…but—oh, dammit, I am so tired of this…this harassment!”

“It’s happened before?” He was inside her door now, automatically sizing the place up. A few nice pieces—way too much clutter. Potted plants, books, papers—bottom line, it looked like a cross between one of those house-and-garden spreads and a city dump.

“It happens almost every day. Not the…the flower and the awful underwear, but the calls.”

“The, uh, awful underwear?”

“Some creep left a rose and a pair of really disgusting panties in my underwear drawer day before yesterday, and then he had the nerve to call me and brag about it. I just want it to stop!”

“Have you reported it?”

“Well, of course I’ve reported it, what do you take me for, an idiot?”

He didn’t think she really wanted him to answer the question, and so he didn’t. “What did they advise?”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Change my phone number, change my lock—go on an extended vacation until the creep loses interest.”

“And?” Curt prompted. He needed to get on with his own business, but no officer who called himself a gentleman would walk away, leaving a lady in this much distress. Not that he was much of a gentleman—in name only, maybe.

And not that she was that much of a lady.

“Oh, I did it all—the works. The caller missed one day, and then he started in again. I hope he fries in hell. I hope he catches an awful disease and rots from the toes up. Slowly!”

“Remind me never to tick you off,” he said dryly. “Uh, about the other. My boxes?”

She took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her small but definitely feminine chest. “Look, whether you like it or not, I bought those boxes. They’re mine, along with whatever happens to be inside them, end of argument.”