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They began to move away then, their voices retreating. Ash remained still. Never act rashly, Grandfather Thorndyke always said. Make a plan. Then execute it.
Maybe the men who’d hired him were feds and maybe they weren’t. Maybe Tom Somerset knew what was happening and maybe he didn’t. Maybe Melina Somerset was in danger and maybe she wasn’t.
All that really mattered to Ash was the one thing he did know for sure. He’d been duped. Nobody duped Ash Thorndyke.
He located Tom Somerset again and began to make his way through the jungle of dueling perfumes and clashing voices. Somerset, when Ash reached him, was encircled by fawning men, men who rarely fawned over anyone, movers and shakers in business and entertainment and government. But Tom Somerset had more money than Hollywood had phonies and that meant everyone loved him.
Ash eased up behind the circle of people, planning his approach, knowing that getting the man alone long enough to ask about his daughter and her safety would be one of Ash’s more difficult heists. But as he studied the problem and formulated a plan, two gray-suited men whom Ash pegged instantly as private-security types came up behind Somerset and captured his attention. Ash moved in closer.
“... insists she’s coming down.”
Somerset looked like a man with dwindling patience. “Then lock her up. God knows what she’ll say if we let her out. I won’t have her exposing...”
A peal of laughter drowned out the rest of it, but the tenor of that exchange curdled Ash’s guts. For someone labeled America’s princess, Melina Somerset was not receiving royal treatment at anyone’s hands. Something was wrong with this picture, and Ash didn’t have enough information to figure out what it was.
He told himself the best thing he could do was walk away.
Then he remembered his father. What if those men who’d hired him really could help his father?
Thinking of his father made him think of something else, too. Honor. Both Grandfather Thorndyke and Bram Thorndyke had taught Ash and his brother a code of honor. And Ash was fairly certain there was something in that code about damsels in distress.
Shrugging it off as not his problem, Ash headed for the foyer. He would walk away. He reached the foyer about the time the two men who’d spoken to Tom Somerset reached the top of the marble stairway leading to the second floor.
“...break her pretty little neck.”
The words echoed in the cavernous foyer. Both men laughed. Ash told himself it was just the kind of flippant remark that family employees would make. Not a serious threat at all.
But after what he’d heard tonight, could he really be sure of that?
IN HER SECOND-FLOOR SUITE, Melina Somerset stood at the bank of windows overlooking the city of San Francisco. The city was built on hills, and this mansion was obviously atop one of them, for the view was panoramic and spectacular. To her left was the Golden Gate Bridge, shrouded tonight in fog and the mystique of legend. As her gaze swept right, she saw Coit Tower, then the lights of the city.
It had been more than a dozen years since Melina had set foot in America. After her mother and sister were killed, she and her father had moved to Europe, moving from one isolated town to another. Eventually, he’d placed her in private school under an assumed name. Then another. And another. Melina had missed the country of her birth. She had missed having a home, any kind of home.
She tried to imagine all the fun that was to be had beyond these walls if she could only make her way from this elegantly appointed suite—one more in a long line of luxurious prisons—to the places where all those lights twinkled.
Out there somewhere were hamburgers and French fries. Stores where blue jeans could be bought. Friendly coffeehouses where people wore those jeans and talked about movies and music and the baseball season. And somewhere, beyond all the lights, were split-level brick houses in the suburbs. Although Melina had missed all that went with being young and free, and regretted that, she now had different priorities. She was ready to grow up.
“Someday I’ll get a station wagon,” she said wistfully to the faint reflection of her own face in the window. “I’ll eat at McDonald’s every day and have my chauffeur drive me to aerobics class in my very own station wagon. I’ll be just like normal people.”
But tonight, she was still a prisoner to her father’s success, hostage to his fears. Tonight, she’d been locked in her room because she’d wanted to attend the party below. She’d wanted to dance and meet people and take just one sip of champagne, not enough to hurt anything, just enough to feel the bubbles on her nose.
Instead, she was locked away from life, as she had been locked away almost her entire life. Under guard and incognito, that’s how Melina had lived her life.
But no more.
Melina had run away before, and they’d always found her. But this was America, a country so sprawling that a person could vanish and never be heard from again. Here, millions of people lived their lives without a lot of fanfare.
This time, she wouldn’t fail. This time, there was more at stake than Melina’s own happiness. There was even more at stake than her father’s happiness. Yes, leaving this way would cause him pain. But he’d left her no choice. She’d tried reasoning with him, threatening him, pleading with him.
He was adamant.
Well, now, so was she.
Forcing a smile, Melina took a halfhearted spin around the room in her evening dress, trying to recapture the pleasure she’d had a few hours earlier in the feel of the silky fabric swirling around her calves and ankles. She knew she looked pretty in the dress and she regretted no one would see her in it. She unzipped the dress. Maybe she would take it with her. Surely even average American housewives wore evening dresses sometimes.
She thought she heard little snicks of noise at the door to the adjoining bathroom, but of course there would be no one there. She would have been delighted to find someone there, to invite a little adventure into her deadly dull life, but that was never going to happen. Not as long as her father treated her like a priceless family jewel instead of a living, breathing human being with a life of her own.
She slipped off her shoes. First, she would change into street clothes. Then—
A hand covered her mouth. A strong arm pinned her arms to her side. Fear shot through her. She fought. Kicked. Flailed about as best she could. But she was small. And the arms that bound her to a hard chest were strong. She struggled, panting behind the hand that covered most of her face.
Her assailant took her to the bathroom door. Soon she would be beyond rescue. If she could manage a sound, the guards right outside her bedroom door would hear her, would save her. She kicked, aiming for the bedside lamp. Missed. The strap of her gown slipped off her shoulder.
“Hold still,” he whispered into her ear, his voice a soft rasp. He slid the strap back into place on her shoulder. “They aren’t on your side.”
That stopped her, froze her in his grasp. He was right, of course. Who was he, that he knew that?
They entered the dark bathroom. Melina grew still and they moved quickly beyond the small room into another adjoining bedroom, also dark.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you,” he said. “I’ll explain. But first we have to get somewhere safe.”
A trick, of course. But there was something in the voice.... And there was the promise of escape. He might have something else in mind, but in her heart a notion of her own stirred to life. This stranger would help her escape from them, then she could escape from him.
The thought gave her courage. She drew the deepest breath possible, picking up the scent off his hand.
Something stirred to life in her mind. A memory, a feeling...
He shifted his grip on her. “I’m going to zip your dress. Then I have to gag you. Cover your mouth. I don’t want to, but...”
He stuffed something in her mouth. Something soft and silky but still unwelcome. She growled a protest as she felt him slide the zipper snugly into place.
“Sorry.”
Her nose was free now. She inhaled deeply. Recognition struck her. The soft voice. The distinctive scent of cypress on his flesh. Adrenaline gave her strength.
She burst free of his grasp and turned to face him, snatching the silk out of her mouth in the same instant. It was dark, but she could see the faint outline of his face. The square jaw, the slope of forehead, the fullness of the lower lip.
“You!”
He froze for an instant, then dragged her to the window, threw up the shade and let moonlight into the room.
He looked as stunned as she felt. “You!”
CHAPTER TWO
WHAT A NIGHTMARE.
Ash should have insisted on seeing a photo of the mysterious Melina Somerset. He should have made a point of watching TV the last few days, just to get a look at her. If he had, he would be somewhere else right this minute. A continent away.
He was almost furious enough to leave her right there in the dark second-floor room. But he heard the tone of her voice and suspected that if he didn’t take her with him, she’d see to it that her father’s goons were on top of him in less time than it took to finesse a home security system.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered furiously.
He’d never seen her angry before, although it was entirely possible she’d been a tad irate in London when she’d realized he wasn’t coming back. “Can we talk about this later? Somewhere else? Like in the next county?”
She glared at him a moment, then nodded abruptly.
They slipped through the window, down the trellis he’d scouted earlier in the week as a possible emergency escape route. They made their way to the parking area. Ash surveyed the cars, looking for the most nondescript and inexpensive car.
“Don’t you know which one is yours?” she said sharply.
“Whichever one I want, princess,” he retorted.
“I see. That one, then.”
He looked where she pointed. A vintage red sports car.
“No way.”
She marched over to it, her stance and her tone regal. “This one.”
“Too flashy. It’ll draw too much attention.”
“I like this one,” she said, treating him to a cool smile. “And I can make a scene if I don’t get what I want.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.”
Grinding his teeth in frustration, Ash hot-wired the convertible in a matter of seconds. At least he didn’t have to jimmy the lock on a convertible. He pulled quietly out of the parking area and eased down the long driveway without turning on the headlights.
“You have some interesting talents, Ash Thorndyke,” she said when they reached the street. “Kidnapping. Car theft. You’re much more fascinating than I imagined.”
She kept her tone light, but he couldn’t mistake the underlying bite.
“Can we keep it quiet,” he said softly.
“Oh, I hardly think they can hear us now.”
From the corner of his eye, he noticed that she leaned back and took in the stars, like a young woman without a care in the world.
Like Mel Summersby, the saucy and sultry young woman he’d thought she was in London.
“I’ve always wanted to ride in a convertible,” she said.
There it was—the soft purr of a voice that had been the second thing that drew him to her. The first had been her smile, sometimes naive and sometimes seductive, but always too big for her thin, fine-boned face, as were those sable-colored eyes of hers. She was like the girl next door wrapped up in the packaging of a temptress. He’d been seduced before. He could be again. That was the worst of it.
“Save the innocent-waif routine, princess.” He pointed the car toward the middle of town, where he could drive around long enough to decide what to do next.
She rode in silence for a long while. When they neared the city center, she edged forward in the seat. “There’s a McDonald’s.”
He spotted the famous golden arches. “So?”
“I want a hamburger.” She turned in the seat and watched as they passed the arches. “I said—”
“Not this close to the caviar-and-champagne set, princess.”
“My name is Melina.”
“So I’ve discovered.”
“Is that why you came back for me? You found out who I was?”
“Princess, I can assure you, if I’d known who you were, I would have stayed in Anaheim tonight.”
“Not a very likely story.” She pointed again. “Is that a grocery store? A supermarket? Could we—”
“No, we couldn’t.”
“You were never this cross in London.”
“I was young and foolish in London.”
“And now you’re old and cranky?”
“Something like that.”
In London he’d been mesmerized, hopelessly bewitched by the woman he knew as a winsome American student. Mel Summersby had shown him what it was like to be carefree and normal for the first time in his life. They ate fish and chips and rode one of those silly double-decker buses like all the other tourists, something he’d never deigned to do in all his many trips to London. They walked in the bleak drizzle of early March and didn’t care if their hair was plastered to their heads or their shoes squeaked with rain. And they made love in the little attic room at the bed-and-breakfast in Parsons Green.
For two weeks, three short months ago, Ash Thorndyke had tasted everyday life. And he’d discovered that he had an unfortunate appetite for it.
“What are you going to do with me now that you have me?” she asked.
“What I’d like to do is dump you in the middle of town and be out of this mess,” he said. It wouldn’t take her long to find some poor sap to dupe, he supposed.
“Fine,” she said. “How about that corner? They look like nice people.”
He glanced at the women posturing on the corner, wearing vinyl boots that covered their knees and stretch miniskirts that barely covered their fannies. “What they look like is hookers. Women of ill repute, Your Highness.”
“You know, you really should be nicer to me. I could land you in plenty of hot water, if I wanted to. My father—”
“Your father had his goons lock you up.”
She laughed lightly, but he detected a hollow sound to it. “So you were rescuing me?”
“Something like that.”
“I suppose the next thing you’ll be telling me is that you’re a man of honor.”
“No. I wouldn’t claim that.” He couldn’t after the way he’d left her in London, without a word of explanation, without a backward glance. It hadn’t been his finest moment. But he’d never been that scared before. Funny how a healthy dose of fear could make a man violate every principle he’d ever believed in.
