Dane’s expression was troubled. “Lord, I’m sorry, Serena. I meant to tell you, but everything happened so fast. Mendino evidently thought he’d parlay his bets, so he hit my father with a ransom threat too. He told me my father was flying into Mariba this afternoon to discuss terms for my release.”
Serena moistened her lips. “I see.” She could feel Gideon’s gaze on her face, but she didn’t look at him. It wasn’t over for her, either, then. Dane had his battle and she was going to have her own confrontation.
“Ill handle it,” Dane said quickly. “You don’t even have to see him. I’ll just show him that his son and heir is no longer a prisoner and the Marlbrent line is in no immediately danger of being stomped into oblivion. That’s all he wants to know anyway. You go on back to Santa Isabella.”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll do it.” She turned to Julio. “Can you arrange for one of your men to pick him up at the airport and bring him here?” No, that wouldn’t do, not here in the rain forest. She wanted to get Gideon away as quickly as possible. “That fishing village that you mentioned. Is there a place we can meet there?”
Julio nodded. “It shouldn’t be a problem. This end of the island is practically uninhabited, and I have a friend who has a small cottage on the beach that should be safe.” His lips curled. “Manuel won’t be using it today. He’s Consuela’s brother, and you can bet he’s going to want to be in on the kill in Mariba. Jeffrey can show you where the cottage is.”
“Serena, I don’t want you to—” Dane stopped. “Dammit, you swore you’d never see him again. I know what he did to you, and there’s no reason why you should have to face him.”
“I can deal with it.’ Serena turned to Gideon. “You don’t have to stay with me. I can meet you on Santa Isabella.”
He slowly shook his head, his eyes narrowed on her face. “A bushwhacker?”
“The biggest bushwhacker of them all,” she said softly. “And you can’t help me with this one.”
“What about your promise? We were going to share everything, remember?”
“I’ll let you share and comfort.” She smiled with an effort. “Later. I’ve got to face the bogeyman and convince myself that he never existed, or, if he did, that I created him.”
“I’ll have him delivered to Consuela’s cottage.” Julio turned away. “What’s his name?”
“The Honorable Edwin Marlbrent.” Serena’s voice was laden with irony. “Or so Burke’s Peerage refers to him. Personally, I don’t agree with their opinion of my stepfather as ‘honorable’ in any way.”
“We could arrange to have him brought to Santa Isabella,” Gideon suggested.
“No. Santa Isabella is special for me. I don’t want him to set foot there. Let it end where it began, here on Castellano.” She glanced inquiringly at Julio. “If it won’t endanger Gideon or Jeffrey?”
“In a few hours there won’t be a guardia or a government,” Julio said with a shrug. “And then no one will care less what you’re doing here on Castellano.”
“Well, that puts everything in perspective,” Serena said wryly. “And it certainly deflates any idea I might have of my own importance in the scheme of things.” She stepped back and waved. “Go on, don’t let me keep you. We all have our own fish to fry.” She smiled involuntarily at the accidental play on words. “And where could I choose a better spot to cook mine than your fishing village?”
Dane hesitated, and then climbed into the passenger seat, his expression still worried. “I’ll see you tonight.”
A few minutes later Gideon and Serena watched the helicopter lift off and then circle above the trees before turning toward Mariba.
The wind was warm and scented with salt as it brushed Serena’s cheeks in a soft caress. She kicked off her high-heeled sandals and padded barefoot down to the surf. Her footprints in the wet sand immediately filled with water and then disappeared as if they had never been. Time was like that, she thought, it rushed in, covering, healing, and, if you were very lucky, taking away the scar entirely.
Gideon was watching her, his eyes intent, yet gentle. He sat down on an overturned rowboat drawn up out of reach of the tides. “He should be here soon.”
“Yes.” She gazed far down the deserted beach toward the tiny palmetto-thatched cottage. “I asked Jeffrey to send him as soon as he could.” Her smile was bitter. “He won’t like it. He prefers people to come to him.”
He looked out over the horizon. “You hate him?”
“I did once. Now … I don’t know. He’s a terrible man, and I’ll never understand how he can do the things he does, but he has some qualities I admire. He’s brilliant, you know. He’s one of the foremost financial advisers and bankers in England and, as far as I know, his business deals are entirely honest. It’s only in personal relationships that he’s completely ruthless. What he can’t control, he has to destroy. He has to own the people in his world.” She turned and came back to stand before him. “I cut the strings, but he made me pay the price. I didn’t know until I came back to you how high that price had been. I thought I’d shot my bushwhacker, but I hadn’t, I’d only run away from him.”
She sat on the beach at his feet, her bare toes digging in the sand. “I’d like to tell you all about it.” She smiled crookedly. “I know it’s a little late. Do you still want to hear it?”
“I want to hear it,” he murmured. “I think it’s important I know.”
“I think so too.” She picked up a handful of sand and let it sift slowly through her fingers. “For one thing, it will illustrate how wrong you were to think you had anything to learn from my friends or family, any polish to acquire from them. You’re so far ahead they’d never catch up in a hundred years.” She paused. “I guess I should start with my mother. There’s no real harm in her. She’s just weak and selfish and can only see as far as her checkbook. I think she may even have loved my father; she always spoke of him as if she did. He was a race car driver and after he died …” She trailed off. “She likes money. She needs money to complete herself. Edwin Marlbrent had a great deal of money and he wanted an heir. She married him and Dane was born eighteen months later. He divorced her less than six months after that.” Her lips twisted. “Oh, don’t make any mistake about it. My mother was perfectly willing to give him the divorce. It was a very amicable arrangement. My stepfather gave her a generous allowance for life, and she gave him custody of Dane. As she wasn’t exactly the maternal type, the terms were exactly to her liking. A year later, she married someone else who suited her much better. Her French count had a lovely chateau in the wine country and no money so they dovetailed beautifully. The marriage suited my stepfather too. As long as she needed his money, he maintained full control over her and Dane.” She paused. “And me.”
“What were you doing while all this was going on?” Gideon asked. “Were you fond of Marlbrent while you were growing up?”
She shook her head. “He could be very charming, but he didn’t waste it on me. I was away at school during their short marriage, and only saw them on those few holidays during that brief time.” Her face softened. “But I was wild with joy when Dane was born. I’d always been a lonely child and I thought at last I’d have someone of my own to love. Of course, it didn’t work out that way.” Her face clouded. “No, I don’t think my stepfather knew I existed as a human being.” She paused. “Until he decided he could make use of me.”
Gideon reached down and took her hand, holding it without speaking.
“I was seventeen and attending a convent school in Switzerland. I was very naive, incredibly so.” She laughed mirthlessly. “You can’t imagine how stupid I was. My stepfather appeared at the convent one day and whisked me away on a holiday to Italy. I was thrilled and happy and—I told you how charming he could be. I thought he actually liked me. I told myself that it was only children he had no use for, and now that I was almost grown up, he wanted to be my friend. He introduced me to Antonio del Montaldo in Florence, and Antonio traveled with us
while we toured northern Italy. Antonio was handsome, charming, and a prince, and my stepfather heartily approved of him.” She laughed again. “How could I resist? It was a damn fairy tale. We were married in Rome two weeks after my stepfather had taken me away from the convent. He even took his yacht out of dry dock and treated the newlyweds to a honeymoon trip to the Caribbean.” Her lips curved in an ironic smile. “Just the three of us. I didn’t think it unusual. I was floating—no, drowning—in charm. They were both being so wonderfully kind and affectionate and I gobbled it up like a hungry orphan. Antonio wasn’t exactly passionate, but since I’d never had a lover, I didn’t realize.… I was living in a dream world.” She closed her eyes. “Until that night we docked at Mariba. I woke up and Antonio wasn’t in the cabin. I got out of bed and went looking for him.” She stopped and was silent a moment. “I found him. He was in my stepfather’s bed. My stepfather was making love to him.” She could feel Gideon’s hand tighten on her own, but she didn’t open her eyes. “I was stunned and almost hysterical. I can remember screaming at them, and the two of them looking at me as if I were a mosquito that had caused them a minor annoyance.” She ran her tongue over her lips to moisten them. “Then my stepfather sat up in bed and began to speak to me. His voice was very cold and reasonable. He was in love with Antonio, and in his position any rumor of homosexuality was out of the question. It would have seriously compromised his social and business status in London. There had already been a few suspicions voiced regarding his lack of female companionship since the divorce from my mother. The sensible thing to do was to bring Antonio into the family.” Her lips curled bitterly. “That’s the very word he used. Sensible. Our marriage tie would throw a cloak of respectability on his association with Antonio. Now all I had to do was to be a good little girl and keep my mouth shut while they used me.” Her eyes opened to reveal eyes glittering with remembered pain. “I think that’s what threw me into a tail-spin. Neither one of them had ever cared about me. They were only using me. I guess I went a little crazy. I ran out of the cabin, and down the gangplank. I didn’t know where I was running, or—”
“You were running to me.” Gideon’s voice was velvet with tenderness. “It was the time for us to come together.”
She met his eyes. “I believe that now, but that night I was confused and upset. I had suffered a shock that had shaken me to the foundations and sent me in a daze wandering through Mariba. I don’t even know how I got into that bar where you found me. Oh, I was brimful of a convent idea of sin. I’d taken a marriage vow and, even if I’d been duped, I couldn’t reconcile myself to the idea of breaking that vow.” She shook her head in wonder as she looked back on that bewildered child. “Perhaps my stepfather even relied on that convent training. It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“You shouldn’t have left me. We could have worked everything out if we’d been together.”
“He would have destroyed you,” she said simply. “I didn’t dare even mention you. I told you, what he couldn’t control, he destroyed. He was a very powerful man and you were just getting started. That night I lay awake and tried to think of a way out, but I knew there was only one solution. I had to let them use me, until I could gather the strength to break free.” She determinedly blinked back the tears. “That first year was bad. I wanted to run back to you a hundred times a day.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I started to close you out instead.” She lifted his palm and cradled it against her cheek. “Remember when I told you that everything I love becomes an obsession with me? When I came to you, I was starved for affection and you gave me everything I’d ever dreamed about. I had been alone and suddenly you held out the promise that I’d never be alone again. I loved you so much it nearly killed me. The only way I could survive was to shut you out entirely. If I couldn’t have all of you, I didn’t want memories. I painted the mental picture I wanted to see and put you in the past where you couldn’t hurt me.”
“You managed very well.” Gideon’s voice held a thread of pain.
She shook her head. “I thought I had, but it all fell apart when I saw you. Though I still had a king-size hang-up from repressing what I felt for you all those years. I think that was why I had trouble making a commitment.” Her lips lovingly brushed his palm. “I finished my education and then made a deal with my stepfather. I would stay married to Antonio on two conditions—that I didn’t have to live with them and that he would give me custody of Dane.”
“He went along with it?”
“He loved Antonio. I think perhaps Antonio was the only person he ever really did love.” Her lips curled. “And Dane was no personal loss to him. He’d been shipped away to schools since he was practically an infant. My stepfather probably thought I’d come crawling back to him when I found myself facing the world without a dime in my pocket.”
“But you didn’t go back to him?”
“No, but you were right, I gave up a few things. My work … and you.” She kissed his palm again. “But you wouldn’t stay in the nice little slot in my past where I had put you. You’re a very obstinate man, Gideon Brandt, and I’ll thank God for it every day for the rest of my life.” She raised her eyes and finished gravely. “I love you and you’d better get accustomed to the idea that I’ll never give up this particular obsession until the day I die.”
“I can hardly wait.” The long crescent lines in his cheeks deepened as he smiled down at her. “I’ve never been anyone’s obsession before. I expect to enjoy the hell out of it.” His smile faded. “I wish you’d let me stay. I don’t want you to have to face that bastard alone.”
She shook her head. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but I have to do it on my own. He dominated my life for a long time and, even when I got away from him, he still loomed larger than life. Don’t you see, I ran away from him. I’ve been avoiding him for nine years, because I was afraid to face him again.” Her expression was desperately in earnest as she tried to make him understand. “I thought I had beaten him when I took Dane and left him, but you can’t really claim victory until you come to terms with what you fear. I have to prove he’s not important to me anymore. It’s the only way I’m ever going to be able to shoot this bushwhacker out of the saddle.” She drew a deep breath. “Do you understand?”
He became very still. “Yes, I understand,” he said slowly. “And I think you may be right.” His gaze lifted from her face to the thatched cottage down the beach. “Is that your bushwhacker coming toward us?”
She followed his gaze and went tense. She hurriedly rose to her feet and nervously brushed the sand from her skirt. Edwin Marlbrent was still far down the beach, but she could feel the familiar fear and tension gripping her.
Gideon stood up and his hand clasped her shoulder in encouragement. “Good shooting, partner.” He started down the beach toward the cottage. “I’ll see you later.”
She scarcely heard him. Her attention was focused on her stepfather coming toward her. In his late fifties, he was an attractive and imposing man. His dark hair was slightly flecked with gray and his tall, heavily muscular body was clad with faultless elegance in an expensive dark business suit. He was frowning as his highly glossed shoes sank into the sand with every step. He had always abhorred the fact that the natural elements of nature were beyond his control and generally avoided exposing himself to the minor defeat they represented.
Serena automatically ran her hand through her rumpled hair to tidy it. She tried desperately to relax, but the habit of years was strong, and she felt as if she were encased in an iron straitjacket.
Gideon had come abreast of Marlbrent and he stopped, his head tilted to the side as he leisurely studied the older man. Marlbrent stopped, too, his frown deepening in puzzlement.
Gideon’s lean, whipcord body was dressed, as usual, in jeans and boots. The sleeves of his forest green shirt were rolled to the elbow revealing his tanned forearms, and his sunstreaked hair was ruffled by the breeze. In his elegantly sophist
icated apparel and with his imposing, heavily built physique, Marlbrent should have made Gideon seem to dwindle in comparison. Yet this wasn’t the case. Gideon’s strength dominated the scene with absolutely no effort on his part.
Gideon suddenly cast a glance at Serena over his shoulder, his eyes gleaming with humor and a touch of mischief. Then he turned back to Marlbrent, extended his index finger as if he were aiming a gun, and slowly made the motion of pulling the trigger.
Serena’s laughter rang out over the deserted beach as she saw her stepfather’s expression of befuddlement and outrage. Abruptly her tension and the ingrained fear of years disappeared as if it had never existed.
Without another glance, or speaking a single word, Gideon passed Marlbrent and continued down the beach toward the cottage. His stride was a careless saunter, but his bearing was totally indomitable.
Nine
It was done.
Serena watched her stepfather walk away and then turned once again to face the soothing rush of the waves against the shore. The episode hadn’t been pleasant, but now it was over she was experiencing a singing exuberance and a profound sense of freedom. She would give Marlbrent a few minutes to leave the village, and then she would find Gideon. There was no hurry, and she needed a little time to absorb exactly what had happened here today.
It was over fifteen minutes later that she picked up her shoes and strolled slowly back to the cottage.
Jeffrey Brenden’s keen brown eyes searched her face. “Are you all right?” he asked gruffly. “Gideon asked me to keep an eye on that big guy, but you didn’t seem to be in any trouble.”
She smiled. “No trouble at all. Where’s Gideon?”
“Gone.”
She became still. “Gone?”
“He said he’d be back in a couple of hours.” He looked at his watch. “We talked for a bit before he set out, but I guess he left about fifteen minutes after Marlbrent arrived, so he shouldn’t be long now.”