Книга - Blade’s Lady

Blade's Lady
Fiona Brand


ONLY IN HER DREAMS…Her gallant knight was a fantasy–or so Anna Tarrant believed. For years, he had sustained the hunted heiress whenever her nightmarish reality became too much to bear. Now, about to emerge from hiding to claim her fortune, Anna encountered her hero once again–this time, in the flesh…Though her cries for help invaded his sleep, Blade Lombard was never convinced Anna existed until she stood before him: beguilingly beautiful, chillingly imperiled. Driven by a connection he didn't understand, consumed by a need only she could fill, Blade was determined to protect his woman–at any cost…







“Fiona Brand has become one of my favorite writers. She has that magic touch with heroes that gets me every time.”

—New York Times Bestselling Author

Linda Howard




It was him, she thought starkly. Her knight.


He said she’d been unconscious. Maybe she still was, because the man gripping her arms could have strode straight from her dreams. She knew those midnight eyes, the bold slant of his cheekbones, the exotic hollowing beneath; the carnal promise of that mouth framed by that squared warrior’s jaw.

In her dreams he had been vague, veiled, as if a mist had obscured her vision, shifting occasionally to allow tantalizing glimpses. Now it was as if a strong wind had blown the mist away; he was pulled into sharp focus, and he was…overwhelming.


Dear Reader,

What is there to say besides, “The wait is over!” Yes, it’s true. Chance Mackenzie’s story is here at last. A Game of Chance, by inimitable New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard, is everything you’ve ever dreamed it could be: exciting, suspenseful, and so darn sexy you’re going to need to turn the air-conditioning down a few more notches! In Sunny Miller, Chance meets his match—in every way. Don’t miss a single fabulous page.

The twentieth-anniversary thrills don’t end there, though. A YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY continues with Undercover Bride, by Kylie Brant. This book is proof that things aren’t always what they seem, because Rachel’s groom, Caleb Carpenter, has secrets…secrets that could break—or win—her heart. Blade’s Lady, by Fiona Brand, features another of her to-die-for heroes, and a heroine who’s known him—in her dreams—for years. Linda Howard calls this author “a keeper,” and she’s right. Barbara McCauley’s SECRETS! miniseries has been incredibly popular in Silhouette Desire, and now it moves over to Intimate Moments with Gabriel’s Honor, about a heroine on the run with her son and the irresistible man who becomes her protector. Pat Warren is back with The Lawman and the Lady, full of suspense and emotion in just the right proportions. Finally, Leann Harris returns with Shotgun Bride, about a pregnant heroine forced to seek safety—and marriage—with the father of her unborn child.

And as if all that isn’t enough, come back next month for more excitement—including the next installment of A YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY and the in-line return of our wonderful continuity, 36 HOURS.






Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor




Blade’s Lady

Fiona Brand







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Thank you to coroner Heather Ayrton for supplying me with all the interesting information on missing persons, and for telling me what I really wanted to know—how to make the missing person fit my plot.




FIONA BRAND


has always wanted to write. After working eight years for the New Zealand Forest Service as a clerk, she decided she could spend at least that much time trying to get a romance novel published. Luckily, it only took five years, not eight. Fiona lives in a sub-tropical fishing and diving paradise called the Bay of Islands with her husband and two children.




Contents


Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue




Prologue


Sixteen years earlier, Australia

Eleven-year-old Anna Tarrant clung, wet and shivering, to the log that jutted boldly from the riverbank. The brutal strength of the current pinned her against the thick trunk with such force the breath was pressed from her lungs. Water swirled and tossed icily around her face, threatening to push up into her nostrils, into her mouth—threatening to fill her up, then drag her down.

The sound of her name registered above the pounding rush of the river that usually wound, slow and shallow, through the contoured hills of the Tarrant estate. Anna’s head jerked up, eyes straining wildly to see beyond the pitch-black curve of the undercut bank to the night sky, which was thickly studded with stars and awash with the cold light of a full moon. Violent shivers made her teeth clack together like castanets.

Henry de Rocheford. Her stepfather.

He reached down, his hand wavering before her eyes. It was his left hand. She could see the ancient, heavy gold of her father’s signet ring on his finger, could almost read the inscription that went with the distinctive Tarrant crest.

Anna stared at the ring with stark misery, and grief for her father shuddered through her small, thin body. She intensified her grip on the log, refusing to reach out to her stepfather. He would let her go.

He would let her be swept away, pulled down into the dark, strong coils of the river. She knew that because, when she had slipped on the muddy bank further upstream while calling for her missing puppy, Toto, Henry’s helping hand had sent her plunging into the water.

After an eternity of time, Henry’s wavering face and hand were replaced by another’s—William, the gardener. His craggy face was crumpled with concern, eyes wide with fear, not empty, like Henry’s.

Reaching out to William was another thing entirely. Anna was afraid to release her grip on the tree. She was cold, so cold, her fingers numb. She could no longer feel what she was holding on to. Her mind felt slow, stupid. She was afraid that if she let go with one hand, her whole body might let go, and then she would be snatched away. Gone. Like her father. And now Toto.

She didn’t want to die.

Terror exploded deep inside her chest, shoved her heart into overdrive and robbed her lungs of precious oxygen. For a moment she thought she would lose consciousness, and in an act of sheer panic she squeezed her eyes shut and reached out in her mind, seeking the magical inner place she’d found, searching with a sharp-edged desperation for him. Her secret friend.

Ever since Mama had married Henry, Anna’s secret friend had been there when she needed him, and now she needed him very, very badly. Anna wasn’t sure who or what he was. She had decided early on that he wasn’t an angel, although, from the shadowy details she’d been able to make out, he was beautiful enough to be one. There was a hum of energy, of excitement, about him that just didn’t fit with angel’s wings.

He was probably a knight. Her knight.

The sound of her name penetrated the odd, lucid calm that had settled over her. It came again, more urgent this time, and Anna’s lids flickered sleepily. She felt dazed, disoriented, caught between the dizzying delight of that inner place and the relentless, numbing power of the river.

William leaned lower, hanging directly over her, and for a moment Anna thought that he might tumble into the river, too. His powerful hand wrapped around her wrist—the heat of it searing—and she realised with a beat of fear just how cold she had become.

Abruptly, she was hauled up the bank, her body leaden as a puppet’s. William was talking to her, low words of comfort, as he stripped off his jacket and wrapped her in its blissful warmth.

Henry’s face loomed. Fear rocketed through her, and, despite the shattering cold, she went rigid. She could feel the anger emanating from him like the spill of cold air from a freezer. She had long since learned to conceal the “oddness” of her senses, but now the strangeness rose up inside her like a primitive cry of warning.

She tried to speak, but her vocal chords were as paralysed as the rest of her. In a convulsive movement, she clamped her arms around William’s neck and clung to him as fiercely as she’d clung to the log in the river. He kept hold of her.

As if from a great distance, she heard snatches of Henry’s smooth, creamy voice, the rhythm of it rich and soft. Measured. “Tried to save her…as unstable as her mother…needs special care…”

William’s voice rumbled deep in his chest, the word “hospital” little more than a vibration.

A whispery sob slipped past the raw tightness binding Anna’s throat as she burrowed in against his burly chest, burying her face in the rough folds of his sweater. If she was taken to hospital, she would be safe.

For a while.



She needed him.

Seventeen-year-old Blade Lombard clawed his way out of the dream, breathing hard. For long moments he was rigid, frozen, disorientation robbing him of the simple motor skills required to shove himself free of the tangled mess he’d made of the bed.

Moonlight flooded his room with ghostly white light, spilled starkly over the collapsed pile of books on his desk, the football plunked down in the middle of his geography project, the Walkman he blasted his ears with while he did homework.

With a stifled oath, he catapulted to his feet, strode naked to the window and pushed it wide. The chill of the hardwood floor was an anchor to reality he desperately needed as he braced both hands on the sill and leaned out, gulping in the liquid coolness of the night air. A fitful breeze drifted across his skin, bringing with it the familiar scents of his mother’s roses and freshly cut lawn, drying the sweat that slicked him from head to toe.

Blade shook his head in an attempt to clear the lingering sense of urgency, the miasma of despair, that still clung to him like heavy layers of wet clothing.

Even though he was only seventeen, he was already over six feet tall and broad in the shoulders. If he woke up sweating and shaking it should have been from a wet dream, not—his jaw clenched—not because a child had called out to him somewhere inside his head. Not because he could see the dark swirl of the water trying to drag her down, know that she was cold, intensely cold, and afraid.

Dammit, if she really did exist outside his dreams, he didn’t know what he could do to help. He didn’t know where she was, or even who she was.

He was beginning to wonder who he was.

All he knew for sure was that the child had been haunting him for the past year, and that she was alone—so alone he could taste it.

Pushing himself away from the window, Blade quartered the room in a silent prowl, not wanting to rouse his brothers, who had rooms on either side of his, but he was too wound up to sleep again just yet.

Oh yeah, there was one other thing he knew for sure, he thought grimly. If he ever told anyone he heard voices inside his head, and that the little girl had become so real to him that he was worried about her, they wouldn’t just think he was crazy, they would know it.




Chapter 1


Present day, Auckland, New Zealand

It was raining as Anna left the library, a slow drift of icy drizzle condensing out of darkness, swirling with a ghostly brilliance in the yellowish glare of sodium streetlamps.

She slipped on her raincoat as the heavy double doors were locked behind her and the tall, taciturn man who pulled late shift at the front desk flipped up the hood of his voluminous black coat and hunched into the night like a large, disgruntled bird searching for its roost.

Shoving long tendrils of hair back from her face, Anna strode down the shallow stone steps, gripped her briefcase and mentally prepared herself to be gently soaked before she reached the doubtful sanctuary of her flat.

Habit had her searching the shadows, checking the street, the cars. Nothing was out of the ordinary, but that wasn’t how she felt. Tonight she felt spooked, uneasy…haunted.

Despite her tension, a wry smile softened the line of her mouth. Haunted enough to consider that she might actually be cursed with some of the more spectacular preternatural talents of her Montague ancestors, which her grandmother had once regaled her with, along with the glories and history of her ancient, almost extinct family.

Extinct, that was, except for her.

The brief flicker of amusement disappeared. The stark fact that, since the death of her mother, Eloise, just months ago, Anna was the last of the Montague line, and almost the last of her father’s family—the Tarrants—also sat uneasily with her tonight, although she didn’t usually allow herself the luxury of dwelling on either her loneliness or her isolation.

But then, she didn’t often find a notice in the local newspaper declaring her to be legally dead.

A shudder swept her, part remnant of the fear that had shaken through her that morning when she’d read the neat black print, part winter chill. The dank coldness swirled and clung, threatening to penetrate her thin coat and sink in all the way to the bone.

She should have expected something like this. Her stepfather, Henry de Rocheford, had to be as aware as she was of her approaching birthday and what it would mean for both of them. They’d played a cat and mouse game for years, but now Henry had run out of time.

He wanted her dead.

Her stomach lurched. The knowledge still had the power to terrify her.

Henry hadn’t succeeded in killing her…yet, but he’d come close several times. The last attempt had been seven years ago, sending her into hiding. Now it seemed he had found a better way. He was trying to dispose of her, legally, before she reached her twenty-seventh birthday and qualified for control of her father’s massive mining interests—Tarrant Holdings—which had been held in trust for her.

The situation was tangled, frightening…potentially deadly. De Rocheford was a man of great intellect and power, a handsome, charismatic man with all the outward trappings of a gentleman and the resources of the Tarrant wealth at his fingertips. He was her father’s half-brother, and although he had no direct claim on his half-brother’s estate, he now controlled the company by virtue of his marriage to Anna’s mother shortly after Hugh Tarrant’s death.

A passing car sent cold mist pluming off the road, wreathing parked cars in a shimmering, ever-dissolving shroud as the drizzle intensified. Anna quickened her pace, her brisk step sounding oddly flattened, as if the mist and drizzle served to muffle even the sharpest sound. As she passed from the relative brightness of the library car park into the badly lit stretch of sidewalk that bordered Ambrose Park, she had the oddest notion that the night would swallow her whole.

She shouldn’t have delayed in the musty warmth of the library, huddling over her research materials, trying to lose herself in the medieval treasure trove of the Crusades, the beauty and the brutality, the rich splendour and intellect that rubbed cheek by jowl with ignorance and grinding poverty. It hadn’t worked. She hadn’t gotten any further along with the novel she was writing, all she had gained was a headache and gritty eyes that she would regret tomorrow, when she had to spend twelve hours solid on her feet at Joe’s Bar and Grill. Her mind had been consumed with that damned legal notice and her attempt to contact Tarrant’s lawyers earlier in the day.

An attempt that had failed.

Emerson Stevens, the partner who dealt with Tarrant business, most definitely hadn’t been able to see her. He had been killed in a hit-and-run accident just weeks before. The receptionist had been pleasant but officious. If Anna wanted to see anyone else, she would have to make an appointment. Not surprising, Anna thought, since she’d turned up in her waitressing uniform—Joe’s Bar and Grill emblazoned across her chest—and given her name as Johnson.

The shabby entrance sign to Ambrose Park loomed, lit by the solitary spotlight that hadn’t been broken or stolen. The park was pleasant enough to walk across during daylight hours, but at night it was devoid of all charm and more likely to hold vagrants than lovers.

A tingling of the nerves down her spine, a cold jab of awareness, presaged a whisper of sound, the scrape of a shoe on pavement.

Anna ducked, feinted, felt the rush of air as something passed close to her head. Instinctively, she lashed out with the briefcase; it connected solidly. There was a muffled curse, a grunt as whoever had tried to hit her slipped on the slick concrete and tumbled, almost taking her with him.

A booted foot caught her heavily on one knee. She flailed, grabbed for balance, almost dropping the briefcase. Her shoulder caught the edge of one of the unevenly plastered pillars that guarded the broad entrance to the park. She reeled, still off balance, and saw the cold gleam of light travel the length of a gun barrel as the man regained his feet.

Time seemed to slow, stop, freeze her in place while her mind groped past a paralysing blankness; then fear slammed through her, and with a gasping breath she plunged into the darkness.

In abrupt contrast to the blankness of just moments ago, thoughts and decisions now tumbled in a frantic cascade. The park was her best option; the trees were closer than any building, the undergrowth thick at the edges. And it was very dark. He couldn’t shoot her if he couldn’t see her.

Clutching the case to her chest, Anna lengthened her stride, but her sneakers kept losing their purchase, slipping on the wet grass.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. A burst of adrenaline punched hotly through her as she saw the man coming after her and knew this was no ordinary mugging. She stumbled, regained her balance. A sense of unreality gripped her as she passed by the darker outline of a set of swings and a slide—innocent reminders of a childhood that for her had ended brutally in a flooded river.

Oh God. She had allowed herself to become complacent, over-confident—lulled by the knowledge that her twenty-seventh birthday was only weeks away, and then she could end this madness. She had been wrong; she’d been found. Someone had been lying in wait for her.

If it hadn’t been for that burst of awareness, honed by years of running and hiding, she would be dead. She knew that as surely as she knew that Henry had set her up.

She had made a mistake. Stupid. Stupid.

The notice in the paper had served a purpose other than the obvious legal one; it had also been a ploy to flush her out of hiding. There had been someone watching the lawyer’s office; she had been followed from there.

She should have rung Emerson Stevens instead of showing up unannounced, only to be blocked. If she’d rung, she would have found out Emerson was dead, and that there was no point in approaching Stevens, Harrow and Cooper directly yet, because with Emerson gone, there was no-one there who knew her by sight. No-one who would believe that she hadn’t died when her car had plunged over a cliff into the sea almost seven years ago. No-one who would give her the time of day without irrefutable evidence of her identity.

It was a catch-22 situation. To establish her identity, she would have to reveal herself, turn herself into a target while the wheels of justice slowly ground their course. If she had to resort to DNA testing to prove her right to her own inheritance, that could take months, and money she didn’t have.

Panic grabbed at her insides as the ruthless simplicity of Henry’s strategy sank in and eroded her confidence. Henry was nothing if not thorough. Having her declared legally dead would finalise his claim on Tarrant Holdings, then he would make the legal fiction a physical fact by having her disposed of before she had time to establish her identity.

One way or another, the shadowed half life of Anna Johnson-Tarrant would cease.

She heard the pounding of footsteps above her own, caught the edge of a guttural phrase, and panic surged again. The man was gaining. She could hear the grunting rush of his breath as he strained to catch her, almost feel the brush of his fingers as he reached to grab her clothing, a shoulder, an arm. The trees loomed close, closer, then she was among them, branches whipping at her legs, tugging at her clothing as she weaved blindly, more by instinct than sight, because it was like running into a wall of darkness. She wavered, confused, slammed head first into a tree and fell to the ground, stunned.

She rolled and crawled on—the briefcase awkward—thankful that the thick layer of leaves was too sodden to rustle. A rough oath grated, low and harsh. Light dazzled her as the beam of a flashlight swept the trees, flooding the dense brush with an unholy radiance that backlit the short, stocky man who was after her. The beam scythed over her head. She dropped flat, damming her startled breath in her throat, hugging the cold, wet earth like a hungry lover.

After an eon, he moved on. She could hear the uneven thud of his tread—as if he was limping—feel the hot pulse of a lump forming on her forehead, taste blood in her mouth.

Her head spun as she regained her feet and started in the direction opposite from the one the man was taking, feeling her way from tree to tree, lifting and setting her feet down with care. The ground was uneven, an obstacle course of jutting tree roots and slippery vegetation.

The beam swung back, almost silhouetting her. She ducked and crouched behind a tree trunk, holding her breath for long, strained moments. When the beam swung away, she once more hugged her briefcase to her chest and headed for the only source of light she could see, a blue and red glow that she knew emanated from the towering neon Gamezone sign that garishly announced the presence of the video arcade near her flat.

Minutes later, she stumbled free of the trees and stepped into…darkness.

The fall was abrupt, shocking. For long moments she lay unmoving, facedown in what she dimly recognised as the deeply carved groove of a storm drain. The smell of mud and her own fear filled her nostrils; the sound of her racing heart jackhammered in her ears. She still had her briefcase; it was lodged beneath her, its hard edges digging into her stomach, her breasts. She was going to have bruises—lots of them.

Pushing herself onto her hands and knees, she gripped the case and fought to still the sickening spinning in her head. She fingered the tight, tender lump already forming there.

Clutching a fistful of icy grass, she began to climb out of the ditch. She was almost out, so close, when she lost her footing and, hampered by the awkward weight of the case, tumbled back. A sound broke from her throat. Pain flared, as if someone had just driven a thick spike through her skull, then dissolved into swirling shards of darkness.

Just before the blackness claimed her completely, the elusive threads of the old familiar fantasy she used to escape into when she was a child—and sometimes even now, when she dreamed—wound through her mind.

Her knight.

His face shimmered into vague focus: the long hair, black as midnight satin; fierce, dark eyes; the strong chiseled planes and angles of a face that was both grimly handsome and exotically sensual. Oh yeah, he was a fantasy, all right. Why couldn’t you be real? she thought hazily.

Right now, the fantasy, pretty as it was, just didn’t do the job.



Blade shoved free of the bed. And the dream.

His heart was pounding, his skin damp with sweat, his chest heaving like a bellows. He swore, a low, dark rumble of sound. Dragging unsteady fingers through his hair, he fought to banish the image of mist and rain and darkness. Trees, lots of trees, and a pulsing neon sign. The woman, lying crumpled on the ground, afraid…hunted. A dark bank rearing overhead.

The dream had been strong this time.

A shudder swept him, compliments of the disorientating aftermath of the dream—and other far more potent emotions: his powerful need to intervene, to protect and help her, to push back whatever darkness had hounded first the child, and now the woman with such ferocity that she was somehow propelled into his dreams, his thoughts.

Renewed tension coursed through him. He didn’t have a clear idea of what the woman looked like, or her name.

His jaw locked. How he longed to hang a name on her.

If she was real, he reminded himself grimly. Oh baby, if she was real.

Either way, like the other dreams he’d had, Blade had nothing to go on other than the belly punch of the woman’s emotions, her desperate thoughts, the stark images that haunted him.

The dreams weren’t always about her being attacked, helpless—sometimes they were entirely different.

His breath sifted from between clenched teeth as he pushed a set of bifold doors wide open and stepped naked onto the paved terrace of his penthouse suite at the Lombard Hotel.

A cold, fitful breeze swirled, disturbing the black mane of hair that tumbled to his big shoulders, evaporating the sweat from his skin. He welcomed the ensuing chill that roughened his flesh, made all his muscles tighten.

He stared blindly out at Auckland’s version of a winter night, eyes slitted, focused inward, his mind consumed with the woman who consistently invaded his dreams.

Sometimes he made to love to the shadowy woman.

Frustration burned, threatening to erupt into temper. He reined it in. Blade didn’t like losing control in any area of his life. This desperate, endless hunger for a woman who existed only in his dreams tormented him, made him helpless in a way he couldn’t—wouldn’t—tolerate.

Dammit, he didn’t even know what she looked like, beyond the fact that she was slim and delicately built, with a silky swath of dark hair that glowed copper in the light, and when he touched her…

A hoarse groan wrenched itself from deep in his throat. When he touched her, it was like touching fire—they both burned.

His jaw tightened. The raw need to possess the woman in his dreams, the flood of pleasure that swamped him at the simplest of touches, haunted him, mocked him. He had never felt anything remotely like it in real life.

Dispassionately, he considered the yawning gulf between the dreams and reality.

His libido was healthy, some might say too healthy, but he was no sexual predator. The primitive desire to possess the woman that permeated those sensual encounters was as alien to Blade as the dreams were. The fact was, he enjoyed women—plural—their friendship and the sex, but he had never needed any of his sexual partners beyond the act.

Broodingly, he paced the width of the terrace, gripped the cold iron of the railing, and faced the disturbing essence of his unease. He wanted the dreams to be real. More, he hungered for what he experienced in the dreams but had never found anywhere else. Every time he touched a woman, made love to her, he was aware that he was grasping for that exquisite, primitive intensity and not finding it.

The breeze kicked up, sending moist air whirling like a damp cloak about his shoulders. The deepening chill matched the bleakness of his thoughts. When he was buried deep inside a woman, he shouldn’t have to feel…alone.

Then there was the matter of control. If he made love to a woman, he retained control. All the way.

And he never made love with strange women. He had certain standards, a code of honour that was as simple and ruthlessly direct as a set of military orders. One of the rules of engagement was that he always insisted on an introduction first.

He began to notice the cold. His breath condensed in the air, mist wreathed the streetlamps below and hung in streamers across the road. It was also drizzling, a light, drifting drizzle.

Like the dream.

Traffic was sporadic, but still steady. He could see couples strolling, maybe catching a movie or supper at one of the street cafes.

It wasn’t that late. He had only been asleep for a short time. The dream must have taken hold of him the second his head had hit the pillow. There was an odd jolting sensation he’d come to recognise, as if some internal switch had been thrown. Then the dream unravelled. Images. Impressions. Sometimes nothing but a jumble, sometimes pictures that were startlingly clear. Like tonight.

He cursed as the images replayed themselves in his mind. He remembered the vivid blue and red of the neon sign. The sign had said…

Gamezone.

His head came up, nostrils flaring as if he’d caught an elusive scent, one he’d been seeking for more years than he cared to count. If only to disprove it.

“Gamezone.”

He said the name out loud, letting it linger on his tongue, as if testing the veracity of the syllables.

With a harsh exclamation, he strode inside, switched on a lamp and reached for the telephone book.

He was clutching at shadows. Maybe when he came up with another blank the stranglehold on his gut would ease up.

Despite reason and cold logic, his pulse hammered as he searched through the book, ran his finger down a page…and stopped.

“Son of a bitch.”

Blade’s heart slammed once, hard, against the wall of his chest. His gaze narrowed at the bold type advertising a games arcade in one of the seedier areas of town, but no matter how hard he looked at the address, it didn’t disappear.



Gamezone.

Blade stared at the garish blue and red sign. A sign he remembered but had never seen.

His gaze swept the surrounding area, noting the unmistakeable uniformity of state housing jammed cheek by jowl with clusters of badly built apartments. Definitely down at heel.

A darkened area caught his eye. A park.

He called himself crazy, but put the Jeep Cherokee in gear and cruised closer, noting the name of the park, the broken lights, the shabby plastered pillars guarding the entrance. Swinging the Jeep into a space, he pulled on a leather jacket, eased it over the fit of the Glock shoved snug in its shoulder holster, checked the knife in his boot and grabbed a torch, but didn’t turn it on.

Thunder rolled, giving a low-register warning of the incoming storm. The strengthening breeze scattered rain in his face, bringing with it scents that were city-tame, others that were earthy, wild. Something equally uncivilised unraveled inside Blade, and despite the fury and frustration that still ate at the edges of his temper, he bared his teeth in a cold grin. He stood by the Jeep for long seconds, his senses animal-sharp as he stared across the expanse of grass and trees with eyes peculiarly well-adjusted to the smothering blackness.

When he’d been with the Special Air Service he’d been called names—he’d been called lots of names—but he couldn’t completely deny the wolf’s blood that was purported to run in his veins. He felt like howling right now.

He should be tucked up in bed, getting his beauty sleep. Or, better still, tucked up in bed with a beauty and getting no sleep at all. Not hunting a…ghost.

A chill went through him, along with echoes of urgency and the compulsion that had driven him out into the night. He had to check. Gamezone had been real. For his own peace of mind, he had to check.

If she was real…

He rejected the thought. She couldn’t be real. Better to think about what he was going to do when he didn’t find a woman—like which psychiatrist he’d choose to oversee his therapy, and whether or not he should have himself committed.

He searched the area, coldly, efficiently, and found nothing.

Finally he walked the perimeter and found the storm water drain…and his ghost.




Chapter 2


She was lying, curled as defenceless as a baby, amidst grass, mud, crumpled cans and takeaway wrappers.

Her very stillness was chilling. For a moment, Blade thought he was too late and that she was dead, but the first touch told him that wasn’t so. The pulse beating at her throat was regular and strong. His ghost was alive, but hurt.

His relief was followed by a short, hard jolt of rage. Blade lived his life on simple terms. He was—or had been, until a few weeks ago—a soldier. In more primitive terms, a warrior. The art of war, the hunt, had been his game. It had excited him as little else had, and he had played it well. But one of his rules had been that women and children had no part in the action. He thought that rule was simple enough even for the bad guys to understand. It ticked him off big time when they didn’t.

Gently, he felt down the length of her body, testing for broken bones; then ran his fingertips over her scalp. When he encountered the goose egg in the centre of her forehead, he flicked on the torch, which was taped so that only a thin slit of light played over her pale features.

Long, wet hair was slicked back from a face that was less than beautiful, more arresting than pretty, an intriguing blend of delicacy and strength and Ambrose Park dirt. She was average in height, maybe taller, and despite having the firm muscle tone of someone who either exercised regularly or worked physically hard, she was finely built. Delicate.

Blade’s stomach twisted as the description registered, and for a dizzying moment a dream image rose up to overlay that of the woman lying on the ground. Fiercely, he shook it off. A lot of women were slender, finely built; it didn’t mean a thing. This woman was real, not a dream.

Cleaned up, he bet she would be something—the kind of woman who should be wearing a slick business suit and sexy high heels, not the loose jeans, sweatshirt and cheap nylon raincoat she was wearing. He put her age at mid-twenties, but something about the taut, moulded shape of her cheekbones and jaw suggested more than the usual strength and character of a woman that age. Even unconscious, there was no softness, just pared-down intensity.

He shook her. She stirred but didn’t open her eyes.

Lightning sheeted across the sky, throwing his shadow across the woman and burning her inert form into his retinas with a searing clarity. Thunder rumbled again, and tension coalesced between his shoulder blades as the rising wind buffeted his back. Too much noise to hear if whoever had attacked the woman was still skulking around, and he could do without the lightning.

He shook her again. She groaned, a husky thread of sound. Her head lolled toward him, and Blade saw the blood, angling across her temple, trickling down one of those exquisite cheekbones. Her eyelids flickered, ridiculously long, velvety lashes lifted, and her blank gaze fastened briefly on his before she sank back into unconsciousness.

Anna knew someone was shaking her.

She tried to wake up, but it was like swimming through molasses, she never quite seemed to make it to the surface. She was tired—so tired—all she wanted to do was sleep, but the voice was insistent, low, dark, with a kind of delicious rumble that she fixed on like a beacon. The hands that held her were shiveringly hot, like an electric charge tingling along her arms. The man, for it was a man, was like fire. The warmth from his body beat against her chilled flesh in waves, and that low voice continued to cajole—as soothing, as animal rough, as a purr. It wasn’t a voice she’d heard before, but it was oddly familiar all the same. It caught her attention and held it, even against the heavy drag of sleep.

She didn’t feel afraid of the voice, although a part of her wondered distantly at her lack of fear; she was too busy listening to the rich, dark cadences, the intriguing roughness, and soaking in the beguiling heat of his hands. She wanted to get closer to that whispery rumble, the magical heat that seemed to reach out and enfold her, and she wondered dreamily what it would feel like, how hot it would be, if she reached out and wrapped herself around him.

The tenor of the voice changed, became more urgent. Abruptly, Anna remembered where she was, the danger she was in. She needed to open her eyes, to wake up. Despite her puzzling response to the man, she didn’t know the voice, and she couldn’t afford to trust it.

Blade tightened his grasp on the woman’s shoulders and shook her again, this time more sharply. He wanted her out of here, ASAP. The drizzle had thickened into hard-driving gusts of rain, and he had a nasty itch running up his spine. He didn’t know how she had ended up in the storm drain, or who she could possibly be, but he didn’t intend for either of them to stay there any longer than they had to. The woman in his dream had been in some kind of trouble, and so had this woman.

It had to be sheer coincidence that he’d found her. City parks were prime spots for trouble of all kinds, especially in areas like this. There would be a logical explanation for her presence that had nothing at all to do with the dreams. He was determined to have that explanation.

Her eyes flickered, opened wide and fixed unblinkingly on him. She went rigid in his grip.

“It’s all right.” He pitched his voice low. “Someone attacked you. You’ve been unconscious. I’m going to take you to a hospital.”

“No hospital.” Her voice was husky, but surprisingly steady.

Anna stared at the man who held her, his large, powerful form crouched over her as he used his body to shield her from the thin, icy rain that whirled in the weak beam of a torch. She struggled to orient herself and failed. She felt as if a giant fist had closed around her heart, her lungs, squeezing until her head spun and she had to fight for breath.

It was him, she thought starkly. Her knight.

He said she’d been unconscious. Maybe she still was, because the man gripping her arms could have strode straight from her dreams. She knew those midnight eyes, the bold slant of his cheekbones, the exotic hollowing beneath; the carnal promise of that mouth framed by that squared warrior’s jaw.

In her dreams he had been vague, veiled, as if a mist had obscured her vision, shifting occasionally to allow tantalising glimpses. Now it was as if a strong wind had blown the mist away; he was pulled into sharp focus, and he was…overwhelming. He should have been clad in dark armour, a helm held carelessly under one arm, his face and hair damp with sweat as he grinned in reckless triumph at another jousting victory. He shouldn’t be here. Now. He belonged in a hundred other places, a hundred other times—between the pages of the novel she was writing.

She wondered if she had conjured him up, if the shock and strain of running from the man who had attacked her, the blow to her head, had affected her mind.

If she was hallucinating, the illusion was nice, she decided a little giddily. Very detailed. Better than the fuzzy images of her dreams, or anything she had ever imagined or committed to a page.

Deliberately, she inhaled, and caught the scents of mud and grass and rain, and the faint drift of something far more potent—warm male and damp leather. The scent of him grounded her with a thump.

He was here. She wasn’t dreaming. Whoever the stranger was, he was real.

His gaze was steady on her, piercing in the dim glow from his torch. “I need to get you out of the rain, and you need a doctor,” he murmured, his voice deep, laced with that smoky rumble.

The sound of it rippled down her backbone, tightened the tender skin at her nape in a primitive shiver of warning.

His hand lifted to her face, fingertips searingly hot against her jaw. “If you can’t walk, I’ll carry you.”

Anna grasped his hand, disconcerted at the sharp thrill of sensation as his fingers closed over hers, aware that the pads of his fingers and palm were rough and calloused instead of city-soft.

“No hospital,” she repeated as evenly as she could manage, given that her heart was still pounding with the aftershock of her discovery, fanciful or not, and a heavy jolt of what she could only label as acute awareness of the man holding her. “I—stumbled and fell. Hit my head. It’s just a bump, I…” She took a breath and pulled herself into a sitting position, wincing as her head spun anew. “I can walk. My briefcase. I need my briefcase.”

“It’s here.”

The relief as her fingers closed over the familiar grip was almost too much. “Good,” she said numbly, unable to prevent the tremor that shook through her. “That’s good.”

She couldn’t risk losing her briefcase. Everything that mattered to her was in it. Her laptop computer and diskettes. The notes for her book. Enough cash that if she had to, she could walk away from her shabby little apartment without her possessions and have enough to survive on until she found another place to live and a new job. Most important of all were the contents of her handbag when she had run all those years ago: credit cards, a driver’s licence, the passport she’d never been able to use. Over the years she’d also amassed a collection of faded newspaper and magazine cuttings—every time some journalist resurrected the mystery of the missing Tarrant heiress, the unstable young woman who had thrown away a life of wealth and privilege in the most flamboyant of gestures, by supposedly driving her expensive sports car over a cliff.

The documents and photos weren’t conclusive proof of her identity—she could have stolen them—but she clung to them; they were hers. She had changed—her breath caught in her throat when she thought of just how much she had changed—but the strong resemblance in those photos was all she had. When she’d stumbled, bruised and bleeding, from her wrecked car all those years ago, she had simply picked up her purse and run. She’d had the clothes on her back, the jewellery she had been wearing and some cash. She hadn’t dared use the credit cards.

She had escaped Henry’s last, clever attempt on her life by sheer blind luck. When her car’s brakes had failed, a tree had been all that had stopped a certain plunge over the cliff’s edge into the water far below.

Her utter helplessness in the face of her stepfather’s relentless determination to remove her from his path had almost paralysed her with fear; but she had known in that moment that she couldn’t afford to stay around—certainly not until she was twenty-seven—and give him another opportunity to kill her. When she’d later discovered that Henry had decided to cut his losses and had pushed her car over the cliff, making it look like she’d died, she had known she’d made the right decision.

She hadn’t gone to the police. She had already tried that avenue, and no one had listened. She’d been twenty years old, and Henry had seen to it that her credibility was less than zero. He had painted a convincing picture of a hysterical young woman balanced on the edge of mental instability. He had done a great job of character assassination, and she had played into his hands on several occasions by openly accusing him of trying to murder her, from the age of eleven on. It had been a case of people thinking she was crying wolf. Even her own mother had believed she was mentally unstable.

Until the sabotage on her car’s brakes, Anna had begun to believe it herself.

No one had given credence to the notion that Henry de Rocheford was doing anything more than looking out for the interests and welfare of the Tarrant family, as he had “selflessly” done for years.

She had to wonder if anyone would now.



Minutes later, they were standing in the shadow of the entranceway to the park.

Anna’s wet coat clung and dragged. Moisture was seeping through in several places, and she was shivering, but she didn’t protest; she wanted to check the street before she stepped out onto it.

Despite the fact that she’d insisted she was capable of walking, she felt disconcertingly weak and was sharply aware that she was in no shape to handle anything else the night might throw at her. She swayed, her hand groping for the rough surface of one of the stone pillars for support, and didn’t protest when the stranger wrapped his arm around her waist, clamping her close against his side. The solid barrier of his body protected her from much of the wind and rain, and the heat that poured from him drove back the worst of the chill. Anna stiffened at her ready acceptance of the stranger’s protection, the extent of her trust in him when she didn’t trust anyone, the disturbing memory of those moments when she’d actually wanted to get closer to him. The bump on her head must have skewed her judgement.

His voice vibrated close to her ear, making her jump. “Where do you live?”

Anna didn’t bother to dissemble. “I have a flat nearby.” There was no point in not telling him where. She would have to leave, anyway. Tomorrow.

“I’ll see you home.”

The statement was delivered flatly, and she wasn’t inclined to argue with it. The stranger was big, well over six feet tall, and from what she had seen and could feel, he was solidly muscled. His arm tightened around her as he urged her across the road to a Jeep.

He helped her into the passenger seat. The Jeep smelled new and expensive. For the first time, it occurred to Anna to question what a well-heeled stranger had been doing strolling through Ambrose Park in the rain, at night, and what had compelled him to even look in the storm drain?

She knew he wasn’t the man who had chased her earlier; he was too tall, for one thing. But what if he had been looking for her? She couldn’t discount that possibility, no matter how much she wanted to trust him.

He swung into the driver’s seat with a sleek, fluid grace that drew her gaze. He had taken his jacket off, and in the dimly lit confines of the cab, his muscled biceps gleamed copper as he twisted and placed the dark bundle in the rear, along with the torch he’d carried. In the short time it had taken him to remove the jacket, his T-shirt had gotten soaked, and now it clung slickly to his broad shoulders and chest.

With dawning apprehension, she realised just how big, how powerfully built, he was, and that he was dressed completely in black: black pants, black boots—even a black watch, with a cover hiding the face. The colour of thieves and assassins.

His hair was long, caught back in a ponytail. She hadn’t noticed that in the dark; she had assumed his hair was short. Anna swallowed, for a moment caught again in the hazy limbo between sleep and wakefulness that had swamped her when she’d regained consciousness. This was no dream, she told herself fiercely. And he was no knight in shining armour, despite the fact that he’d helped her.

She tipped her head back to meet his gaze, and her breath hitched in her throat despite her attempts at control. His eyes were as dark as his clothing, an intense shadow-black that seemed to absorb light, giving nothing back. The effect was sombre, electrifying.

The impact of his face hit her all over again, sending an odd quiver of mingled fear and elation through her, starting a queer shifting sensation deep in her stomach, as if her centre of gravity had just altered and she hadn’t yet found her balance. Heat rose in her as she experienced another heavy jolt of the awareness that had disoriented her so badly earlier, as if she were once more caught in the relentless grasp of one of the vividly sensual dreams that had haunted her through the years.

Abruptly, she transferred her gaze to the rain-washed windscreen. Cold logic and bitterness dashed ice on the mystifying, aching flare of emotion. Whatever improbable fantasies had played through her mind when she’d first seen him, they were just that: improbable. She no doubt had a mild concussion, and her mind was playing bizarre tricks on her. The guy was big, tough and drop-dead gorgeous; he would have women queueing. She wasn’t in the market for a relationship, and even if she were, she had absolutely no confidence in her ability to handle a man like him.

He shoved the key in the ignition; the engine rumbled to life. “Where to?” His gaze locked briefly with hers.

“Second left. Finnegan Street. Number fifty-four.”

Anna felt the touch of his gaze again; then he was all business, checking for traffic as he eased onto the road.

“If I had been going to hurt you, I would have done it back there,” he stated flatly, his voice like dark velvet.

Pitched just that way to soothe her, she thought, realising just how tightly she was wound, just how paranoid her thoughts had become. “If I thought you would hurt me, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

And it was the truth, she realised, startled at how bone-deep that trust had gone. Mysterious though he was to her, she couldn’t shake the extraordinary compulsion to trust him.

Seconds later, he pulled over outside her block of flats.

“Thank you.” She aimed a grateful look in his general direction, fumbled her door open, then almost cried with frustration when her briefcase caught under the dash, slowing her escape.

He was already swinging out, striding around to help her down. He gripped her elbow, steadying her when she almost fell—and another of those quivering shocks travelled up her arm. It was too much. She jerked free, stumbling back, almost oblivious to the cold, steady rain streaming down her face, penetrating the collar of her raincoat and trickling down her neck.

He was talking to her, that smoky, soothing rumble again, as if he were trying to gentle a wild animal. She stared at him blankly for long seconds, not comprehending a word he was saying.

He held both hands up, palms out, in a gesture that cut through her confusion and suddenly made her feel foolish. He had only been trying to help her.

Mortified heat warmed her cheeks. He’d sheltered and protected her, driven her home—his actions those of a man used to caring for women, used to handling them. If he hadn’t grabbed her just then, she would have fallen.

“I’m sorry, I’m not…” She stopped, feeling even more clumsy, more inept. Not what? she thought bleakly. Not used to kindness? Not used to men touching her?

“You’re shaken. You’ve got a head injury. All I want to do is see you safely inside.” His mouth quirked at one corner. “Out of the rain.”

The rain. God, the rain. They were both getting soaked. She drew a breath. “Okay.” With a nod that she instantly regretted, she started up the cracked concrete path.

Anna paused at the door to her apartment, which was little more than a one-room bedsit. She turned to thank him, but he forestalled her.

“I know you don’t trust me, but I’m not leaving until you’ve either called a doctor or you let me take a look at that bump on your head.”

Once again, Anna was struck with confusion. The mere thought that anyone wanted to help her, take care of her, was so alien that for a moment she couldn’t take it in. She fingered the swelling, flinching at the hot bite of pain. Her fingers came away streaked with blood. “You’re a doctor?” She didn’t try to hide her disbelief.

Blade curbed the desire to reach out and try to soothe her with touch. It wouldn’t work, he decided dispassionately. She was as jumpy as a cat with its paw caught in a trap, and just as likely to lash out at him. It wouldn’t take much for her to kick him out on his ass, and he couldn’t allow that to happen. Not until he’d found out the answers to some questions. “I’ve had medical training. I was in the military until a couple of months ago. ‘Combat’ medicine.”

For a moment, Blade thought she wasn’t going to go for it, and he was knocked off balance by another emotion entirely—one he wasn’t pleased to admit to. Something about his ghost caught at his gut, grabbed him deep and hard. He felt…proprietary, protective. He had found her, and he was responsible for her. He wasn’t willing to let her go just yet.

When she put her case down and began digging for her key in her raincoat pocket, relief and satisfaction uncurled inside him. She didn’t want to, but she was going to trust him.

His gaze narrowed as he noted the strain she was still under, and the unusual control she was exerting now, despite the scare she’d just had. She should be shaking, coming apart, and he should be comforting her, lending her a shoulder to cry on if that was what she wanted—but none of those things were happening.

He didn’t know what this woman needed beyond a painkiller and rest. She wasn’t asking for his attention, and, even though she’d given him a measure of trust, he’d had to prise it from her. She would snatch it back in a second if he gave her reason.

She inserted the key in the lock, pushed the door open, stepped inside and flicked a switch. The small, sparse room flooded with the dim light of a naked, low-wattage bulb. Blade followed her in, cataloguing the room in one smooth sweep, noting windows and doors—the action as natural to him as it was to carry the Glock he’d left folded up in his jacket in the Jeep.

His persona shifted from soldier to male as she set the briefcase down beside her tiny dining table and began unbuttoning her coat.

He’d already noted that she was slim; now he saw that she could stand to gain a few pounds, although he knew there were curves beneath those shapeless clothes. When he’d helped her from that ditch, she must have had a dizzy spell, because she’d stumbled. For a split second she’d gone boneless against him and he’d felt the firm pressure of her breasts against his stomach.

She was also shivering and pale, her eyes big in her face. Too damn big. They were an odd colour, a strange, riveting, silver-grey, as if mist and shadows had taken up permanent residence there.

And her mouth… Something kicked hard in his gut. He hadn’t noticed her mouth before, but now that she’d wiped off some of the mud, it took all of his attention. It was pale, lush, pretty and sultry. Grimly, he logged the growing tension in his groin as he closed the door behind him. Oh, yeah…in other circumstances, he would want that mouth.

She bent to unfasten the last button, and in the light, her wet spill of hair, which he now saw was caught back in some loose, intricate braid, took on a warmer hue. Blade stared, transfixed both by the length of her dark hair and by its coppery gleam. When it was dry, it would be a silky veil, cloaking her shoulders, falling past her waist.

Hit number two, he thought bleakly. She was delicately made, and she was a redhead. Now all he had to do was find out what she was running from, and whether or not she had a history of…unusual dreams.

Anna began to shrug out of her coat. She flinched, startled, as her rescuer helped her the rest of the way and then looped the coat over the hook on the back of the door. The easy, matter-of-fact way he carried out that small courtesy caught her attention. She had been right when she’d thought he was used to taking care of women, of handling them. The gesture had been pure gentleman, but the easy way he’d assumed she would let him take care of her had been one hundred percent male.

He studied her forehead, frowning. “You look like you’ve been in a fight. How did you say you got that?”

Anna tried to remember exactly what she’d told him, but her mind was a frustrating blank. The impression her rescuer had made on her was so vivid that she had trouble recalling anything but him. She decided to stick with the truth as far as she could. “Ran into a tree.”

His fingers skirted the edges of the bump, and her insides lurched, both at the tenderness of the bruised area and her tingling awareness of his slightest touch.

“Hate to see the tree,” he murmured.

That surprised a laugh out of her. The laugh hurt—as well as amazed her—and she groaned, lowering herself gingerly onto the single, hard-backed chair pulled up next to the table.

She heard him moving in the kitchenette. Heard her ancient fridge door reluctantly give way to the pressure of his hand, then suck closed with a tight-fisted finality, as if grudgingly giving up some of its meagre contents. A sharp sound had her eyes blinking wide in time to witness the brief tussle as he extracted ice from a frosted-up tray. A cube flipped out, evaded the snaking reach of his big hand and hit the floor. He swore as it skidded away, caught her eye and grinned.

In the dim light of her flat, his teeth were white against his skin—the wide smile so unexpected that she felt like he’d clubbed her with it.

Anna couldn’t drag her gaze from the mesmerising flash of amusement and what it did to the strong, utterly male contours of his face. She swallowed, abruptly stricken by a sense of isolation, of removal from the human condition, so intense that she had to fight the need to curl in on herself and weep. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d shared something as intimate, as silly, as that moment with the ice-cube—let alone the grin. Now that lack stunned her. She felt the deprivation as a piercing ache that drove deep, then burst outward, resolving into a twitching shiver that lifted all the fine hairs at her nape. She was starving for human contact, human warmth, and the knowledge filled her with desperate fear.

She had to pull herself together, and quickly. She was wary of any and all strangers, and had no friends to speak of. She lived this way for a good reason: to stay alive. To feel what she was feeling—this wild, famished hunger for a touch, a smile, from a man she had never met before and would never see again—was beyond odd; it was crazy.

“What’s your name?” Her demand was raspy, hollow, even to her own ears. She didn’t care. Suddenly it seemed very important that, if nothing else, she should have his name.

“Blade.”

He went down on his haunches beside her, and her awareness of the hot sensuality that was as much a part of him as that big-cat grace shuddered through her in another aching wave, as if she were caught in the grip of a fever. He’d wrapped the ice in a tea-towel, and now he gently pressed it to her forehead. All the while, he watched her with an intensity that was blatantly male, speculative, and that made her feel unbearably aware of her own femininity—something she had avoided thinking about for a very long time.

“Blade Lombard,” he finished softly.

Anna froze. Lombard. She blinked, for a moment unable to move beyond this new shock. She knew him. Or, at least, she had known him in another place, another lifetime, when she’d been a child.

A flash of memory surfaced, pitched and rolled with a disorienting sense of deja vu. Before her father died, they had lived in Sydney and moved in the same social stratosphere as the Lombards. Of course, Blade had been older—a lot older, to the five-or six-year-old child she’d been—close to adult status in her eyes. She remembered falling off a bike, and Blade helping her up. He’d comforted her, made her sit in a chair, just like this, while he cleaned her knee and applied a dressing. All the while, he’d resisted the taunts of the other children, bending all of his attention on her.

Would he remember her? she wondered on a beat of despair. And what would she do if he did? Could she risk revealing her identity to him?

The Lombards had had business connections with her father. She could vaguely remember, if not their actual faces, their occasional presence at social gatherings. She wondered if Tarrant Holdings still did business with the Lombards, if Blade and her stepfather were partners in some deal, if Blade was a potential threat to her?

She didn’t dare find out.

The incongruity of Blade Lombard strolling through Ambrose Park at this time of night, or any time—of even being in the vicinity of this rough neighbourhood—struck her more forcibly. Something was wrong. It didn’t fit. He shouldn’t have been there.

No. She couldn’t trust him, no matter how much she wanted to.

Her hand automatically rose to her face, as if she could shield herself from him. When she realised what she was doing, her fingers curled, forming a fist, and she let her hand fall back into her lap.

Blade didn’t miss the wild dilation of the lady’s pupils, her sharp intake of breath, although both reactions could have been attributed to the cold pain of the icepack settling against her forehead.

He didn’t think so. She knew who he was.

Not that recognition was entirely unexpected. Occasionally, some hack reporter got bored for news and sniffed around the Lombard family. The Lombard hotel chain was high profile by necessity, but some of the personal storms his family had weathered had turned into media circuses, adding a certain glamour and notoriety to the Lombard name. Like it or not, they were known.

“And your name?” he demanded quietly.

She stared at him, grey eyes as blank and opaque as a wall of mist.

“Anna Johnson,” she said, without hesitation or inflection, and Blade knew beyond all doubt that his ghost lady was lying.




Chapter 3


Anna let out a shaky sigh when Blade left her holding the ice against her forehead while he went in search of painkillers.

The piercing quality of his gaze had been so unsettling, she had almost given in and told him her real name. For the first time in years, the lie had seemed deceitful, rather than necessary armour against de Rocheford.

He handed her a glass of water and a couple of Paracetamols, then shifted away to lean one hip against the kitchen counter. Arms folded across his chest, he watched her swallow the pills and drink the water.

His steady regard was unnerving. The plain fact was that this room had always been small, but Blade made it seem claustrophobically tiny. It wasn’t just his size, although that was intimidating in itself. It was that he seemed larger than life, brimming with a male power that both fascinated and alarmed her, because he drew her so strongly.

“Have you got family you can contact?” he asked.

Carefully, Anna set the now empty glass down, glad for the bulk of the tea-towel wrapped in ice, because it served to obscure part of her face. “No.”

“A friend?”

She hesitated. If she gave him a name, she might be able to get rid of him sooner. “If I need help, I can call on Tony, from the flat above.”

He frowned. “Boyfriend?”

The sheer ludicrousness of the suggestion made her smile. Tony Fa’alau wasn’t an old man, but he was somewhere north of his fifties, tall and soft-spoken, with a limp. He often turned up at the library and walked her home, but tonight was one of the nights he helped his son, Mike, with security at the video parlour. “No.”

“Good.”

Her heart skipped a beat at the deliberate way he held her gaze, the satisfaction inherent in that one word.

“But you should still see a doctor. I could take you.”

His tone was neutral, but she could feel the relentless, underlying force of his will. He was a man used to taking charge, used to giving orders. With a sense of amazement, she realised he would take her over completely if she let him. “It’s only a bump on the head. Believe me, this one’s not so bad, I’ve had worse.” She stopped, aware that on top of everything else, she now had to squash the urge to confide in him.

“Someone hit you?” he demanded softly.

He didn’t move from his semirelaxed position, but Anna was aware of the change in him. His gaze on her had sharpened, and the relaxed pose was no longer indolent.

“No! I—that is, I was…accident-prone as a child.”

The intensity of his regard didn’t lessen. “What kind of accidents?”

The killing kind.

Anna closed her eyes briefly against the throbbing pain that thought elicited. “I had a couple of nasty falls that ended in concussions.”

She rose to her feet, setting the now melting icepack down on the table, forestalling any further questions, hoping he would take the hint and leave. Her head didn’t spin, and her legs no longer felt like limp noodles. The rest and the ice had helped, and soon the pills would ease the pain even further.

Blade took the hint, but in order to get to the door, he had to pass right by her. He stopped, one hand on the door handle, close enough that she had to reluctantly tilt her head to meet his gaze. Close enough that she realised with a sense of shock that he was more than just damp, he was wet through; that all the time he had cared for her, his clothes had been clinging to his skin. Even as she watched, a droplet of water trailed down his temple, but he ignored it.

“I’m glad you don’t have a boyfriend,” he said bluntly, “but I don’t like it that you’re alone tonight. I’ll leave now, because you’re out on your feet. You need to rest. But I’ll be back tomorrow to check on you. Do you work during the day?”

Anna thought that was a slightly unusual way to phrase the question. Most people worked during the day. “Yes,” she said, not supplying him with any details.

The omission didn’t seem to bother him. “I’ll take you out for dinner, then.”

Anna blinked at the flat statement, wondering if she’d heard wrong. Now she was completely confused. Dinner? That sounded like a date.

Again, her lack of reply didn’t seem to bother him. He lifted a hand, brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead and stared critically at the bump. She drew a breath at the strange tingling heat of his touch, that odd internal jolt, but forced herself to stay very still when he transferred his attention to her eyes, staring intently into first one, then the other.

“Your pupils look fine,” he murmured. “No uneven dilation. How’s the headache?”

“I recognise the beat.”

His mouth kicked up at one corner in a slow smile that did bad things to her heart rate. “I’ve heard it a time or two myself.”

He left in a swirl of damp air, his dark form merging so perfectly with the night that he seemed to dissolve into darkness rather than simply walk through it. Anna shut the door firmly behind him. Her fingers shook so badly, it took several attempts to hook the chain and drive the bolt home.

Too late, she thought blankly. Way too late on more than one count. She should have refused to let him inside.

He had seen through her. When he had questioned her, she’d been as transparent as glass, reeling from the twin blows of the incident at the park and her rescue by someone she knew.

Not to mention her state of disorientation. Usually she had no problems making judgments about people, but her instincts seemed to have gone completely hay-wire. Maybe that was so because Blade’s uncanny resemblance to the man in her dreams had somehow triggered the wild fantasy, so that for a time she had become hopelessly tangled between dreams and reality. The strange burst of heat, the charge of awareness whenever he had touched her, had kept her off balance. She had never felt anything like it—not even in dreams.

Leaning against the door, she pressed the heels of her hands into both eyes, trying to alleviate the gritty sting, the hot ache buried at both temples. The silence of the room slowly sank in, easing some of her tension. She had survived the attack, and she was still in one piece…more or less.

Reaction hit with the suddenness of a locomotive smashing into a concrete abutment. A low sound tore from her throat, and she wound her arms around her middle, hanging on tight as shudders jerked through her.

She had been found!

This time it had taken months and, unlike all the other times, there had been no warning, no quick word from a neighbour or co-worker telling her that someone was asking after her, or watching her flat. And this time someone had come to her rescue.

The memory of her childish pleas to an imaginary knight to rescue her surfaced, and she stiffened, pushing herself away from the support of the door.

“Get real,” she muttered into the quiet emptiness of her room.

Blade Lombard might resemble the knight of her dreams, he might even act like him, but there had been a seasoned edge of danger evident in those cool, black, marauder’s eyes. In ancient times he might well have been a knight, but he would have disdained spending his time hanging around at court or even participating in tourneys. He would have gained his experience in the heat of battle.

He’d said he had worked for the military, and she believed him. She was willing to bet he’d spent his time in the special forces. It would fit that ruthless competence, the easy way he’d taken charge.

He had helped her out, but if he’d been in Ambrose Park merely by chance, any interest he had in her could only be motivated by his sense of responsibility toward the lone female he had rescued, nothing more. She couldn’t question his chivalry or his manners—they were self evident—but that didn’t change what he was. Trouble.

Any woman who spent time with Blade Lombard would automatically attract attention to herself simply by being in his company. She couldn’t afford to be noticed, and she definitely couldn’t afford to have her photo published in any papers or magazines.

Gingerly, Anna stripped off her damp clothing, trying not to move her head any more than she had to. Her coat had kept off the worst of the rain and mud, but her jeans were soaked to the knees, and her sweatshirt was damp in places where her coat had let the water in. After slipping on a pair of baggy sweatpants and a sweater, she sat on the edge of the bed and bent forward to pull on fleecy socks. The motion made her head pound harder, and she straightened up, holding still, waiting out the ache.

Abruptly she was overcome by a barrage of images: the attack on the sidewalk, the outline of her assailant falling, cold light sliding along the length of a gun barrel. She began to shake again, despite the warm clothing, every muscle in her body rigid with tension.

She should be crawling into bed, pulling the covers over her head and sleeping, but she couldn’t afford to do that yet. She had to think, had to move. The man who had attacked her was still out there. He had been limping, which was probably why he had given up the search. He would be back, and it wouldn’t take him long to discover where she lived.

She would have to pack before she went to bed; make decisions about which of her meagre possessions she would take with her. That wouldn’t take long. She could only take what she could carry or load into the large pack she kept beneath the bed.



The following afternoon, Blade turned from the slice of Auckland’s bustling seaport that was visible from his office window to catch the eye of the man seated across from his desk. “You’re telling me she doesn’t exist?”

Jack McKenna, one of Lombards’ most senior executives and more family than employee, shook his head. “Nope. I’m telling you that legally she doesn’t exist. No birth certificate, passport or driver’s licence. No records of insurance, mortgages or bank accounts. No criminal record. Not even a parking ticket. Nada. Nothing.”

“So, Anna Johnson is a false name.”

Blade had suspected as much, but the reality still annoyed him. She’d met his gaze with those haunted grey eyes of hers, and she had lied.

Jack shrugged. “Easy enough to do, so long as she doesn’t own anything that requires record keeping—a house, a car, a bank account. She probably works for cash under the table, so there are no employment or tax records, and pays for any purchases with cash. There are plenty of employers willing to pay slave wages for an employee who’ll work all hours without complaint.”

The door popped open. Jack’s wife, Milly, who doubled as his personal assistant, strode into the room, vivid in a pants suit in some tropical print that was vibrant with blues and oranges. Somehow the colours didn’t clash with her red hair. Blade knew that Milly was forty-something, around the same age Jack was, but she looked closer to thirty.

She slapped some papers down on the desk, almost taking Jack’s nose off in the process. “Here’s the guest list for that charity bash on Saturday. Every man and his dog are gonna be there, including the Prime Minister.”

“Thank you,” Jack said meekly.

Milly planted her hands on her hips. “Don’t flash those blue eyes at me, Jack McKenna. You are not the flavour of the month.”

“No, ma’am.”

“In a few months time, you will be even less the flavour of the month.”

Jack rose to his feet, placed his hands on either side of Milly’s face and kissed her. When he was finished, he sat back down.

“Humph.” Milly glared at her husband, but Blade noticed the way her gaze lingered wistfully on the rumpled front of his shirt.

Before Jack met Milly, he had been obsessively neat. The knife-edge crease in his suit pants and his exquisite taste in ties had been a by-word in the business world. His ties were now definitely anarchistic, and he was frequently rumpled these days.

Milly strode out. The door closed firmly behind her.

Jack grinned and kicked back in his chair.

Blade’s brows went up; he didn’t think he had ever seen Jack so happy, or so satisfied, despite Milly’s bad temper. “Trouble in marital heaven?”

“Milly’s pregnant,” Jack said baldly. “She says it’s all my fault.”

Blade stared thoughtfully at the door, which Milly hadn’t quite slammed. He knew that she already had three grown children from a previous marriage. “Takes two to tango.”

“Amen to that. It was the tropical honeymoon that did it. She said I ought to be able to control her baser impulses. What can I say?” he murmured, picking up the papers Milly had brought in. “I tried.”

Restlessly, Blade paced the length of his office, halting in front of another bank of windows, this one facing into the city. He stared in the general direction of Joe’s Bar and Grill, the name that had been emblazoned on the front of Anna Johnson’s sweatshirt.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to keep a lid on the wild impatience that was eating away at his usual control. He should forget about her and turn his mind back to work—God knows, there was enough for him to do.

After spending several years with the Special Air Service, Blade had decided it was past time for him to take his place in the family business. He was almost thirty-four, and while he’d been injured twice on operations, once seriously, he counted himself lucky. No point in pushing that luck any further.

The construction of the casino and a retail complex was a massive undertaking. He and Jack were splitting the load between them. The risk involved in setting up the casino and the huge propensity for trouble it represented appealed to Blade far more than becoming involved in some of Lombards’ more conventional enterprises, and his family knew it; by nature, he was more conqueror than manager. At the same time, Blade was building his own dream further north, a quarter-horse stud on a wild piece of country caught between high, muscular hills and the Pacific Ocean. The property was remote enough—courtesy of the physical barrier of the hills—to be its own kingdom, yet close enough to Auckland to make for a reasonable commute. After years of travelling, he needed his own base. He was ready to settle down.

Instantly, his thoughts turned back to Anna. He frowned at both the way his mind had made the switch and the string of coincidences she represented.

She would probably be at work now, despite the fact that she should be resting. Her head would be throbbing, feet aching. She would be working for a damn pittance. He should let her get on with it.

If she was still there.

The thought slid into his mind as slick and easy as a knife. Anna was using a false name. She was as jumpy as a cornered cat, and she had been attacked. He was certain that she was on the run from something. Or someone.

She could be married and running from a husband.

The thought curled into his mind with the sour, savage taint of sexual jealousy. Blade’s jaw tensed. If he’d walked into a brick wall in broad daylight, he couldn’t have been more astounded. Jealousy. The emotion was alien, unsettling. As intrusive as the dreams. He enjoyed women, and he was naturally possessive, but he had never been jealous.

He remembered the softness of Anna’s breasts pressing against him when she’d scrambled out of that storm drain, and the thought that she might be tied in some way to another man filled him with fury.

He came from a long line of males who were used to taking what they wanted, and right now he wanted Anna. His genetic heritage was underlined by his name. Every few generations in the Lombard family, someone lost their head and named one of their sons Blade, after the original marauding rogue who had reaved and plundered, carving out the basis of the first Lombard fortune with raw muscle and the help of his trusty blade.

He fingered the ancient earring that pierced his lobe. The small cabochon ruby was said to have belonged to the first Blade and was traditionally passed down to whoever carried the name. He doubted this was the original gem—that had probably been lost in the mists of time—but it was certainly old.

Grimly, he wondered if his ancestor had had the same trouble with women that he himself was now having. If so, he could understand why he’d carved such a bloody swath through history. He had been a frustrated man.

Blade surveyed the bustling cityscape and let the irrational urgency that had chewed his patience to the bone have its way.

What if she was the woman in his dreams?

For the first time, he allowed himself to examine the possibility. He remembered how she’d looked last night: eyes wary with secrets, the exquisite curve of her cheekbones, and that pale, sultry mouth.

The primitive hunger that persistently invaded his dreams stirred to life. His jaw clenched against the hot flood of arousal and, more, an intense need to simply have her near.

He might have difficulty believing in anything with a supernatural bent, but he trusted his instincts, and he trusted his body’s reactions. He had never felt such a powerful physical response to a woman outside of his dreams. He fiercely resented the loss of control—giving in to the hunger went against the very essence of who and what he was. And yet, he was honest enough to admit that, in part, that was where the heady excitement lay.

The dichotomy should alarm him. It should scare the hell out of him. Instead, he felt a savage exaltation. He wasn’t prepared to admit that he had found his dream woman, but he had found a woman who touched him on some primitive level in a way he needed to be touched.

He might not understand much about what was happening, or why, but for Blade the problem had just been simplified. He understood his own burning sexuality very well, and when he needed a woman, his approach was time-honoured and straightforward: he went out and got her.

He spun on his heel. Jack was still lounging in a chair, watching him with an amused grin. Blade had forgotten he was in the room. “I’m going out.”

“I can see that.”

Blade’s smile was rueful, edged. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Believe me, I understand. Take all the time you need.”




Chapter 4


Anna hung up the pay phone, relief making her weak. She had finally found a room in a boarding house, although the cost of the bond would come close to cleaning her out financially.

She checked her watch, saw that she’d exceeded the fifteen minutes she had for a break, and started back toward the restaurant, her mind swiftly calculating all that she had to do and how quickly she would have to move. Just a few more hours and she could leave.

Sunlight flashed, diamond bright, off the side mirror of a nearby car. Her eyes squeezed shut to ward off the stab of pain and what it did to the throbbing at her temples.

As she reached the staff entrance of Joe’s Bar and Grill, the sunlight was abruptly smothered by heavy gloom. She glanced at the purplish-black thunderheads seething above, rain-rich and roiling with violent energy. She could smell the moisture in the air, feel the tension of the approaching storm.

More rain. Great, just what she needed when she had to shift out of her flat, she thought, as she strode inside, automatically bracing herself against the mental assault of working at Joe’s.

At least the lunch rush was well over. If Joe’s ever had a lull, this was it, the brief hiatus before the evening trade picked up, although the liquor licence ensured that the huge barnlike restaurant and bar was never empty.

Joe’s specialised in bad coffee, fast food and even faster beer, and attracted a clientele that was definitely on the seamy side. The sweeping wooden counter lined with stools emphasised where the money was made. The companionable wail of rhythm and blues soothed patrons into parting with that money even faster, and the pool room off to the side enticed swaggering groups of brash young men to stay until they were flat broke.

The mock saloon doors swished open on a low rumble of thunder, and Anna was glad her tray was safely set down on a table as Blade Lombard stepped into Joe’s as casually as if he ate there every day.

He was dressed for business in a suit made of some dark, fine material. The jacket fitted his broad shoulders like a supple, expensive glove. His gauzy grey collarless shirt was open at the throat and had probably cost the equivalent of a month’s worth of her wages. He looked wealthy, sleek and dangerous, and as out of place at Joe’s as an exotic jungle cat prowling a city alley.

His gaze found hers, night-dark eyes unblinking, and so direct that any fiction she might have entertained that he had just wandered in casually off the street died.

Heads turned as he angled around a cluster of tables. The steady hum of conversation dropped away, so that he walked in a spreading pool of silence.

A group of women in the next booth, regulars who Anna knew were hookers working out of the bar, stopped their heated debate over the love-life of one of their friends. They were dressed in tight jeans and even tighter low-cut tops, with jackets pulled capelike over their shoulders for warmth.

“Is that for real?” one demanded. “Nita, how many beers have I had?”

“Not enough if you’re still thinking of going home with that jackass you were eyeing before,” came the dry answer.

“He don’t have to pay,” another one murmured.

The first woman who had spoken sighed. “Speak for yourself. I was thinking of paying him.”

Anna jerked her gaze back to the booth she was supposed to be clearing. Blade had said he would check on her tonight, at her flat. She tried to isolate one believable reason for him to come looking for her today. There wasn’t one.

Abruptly, she swung on her heel, abandoning the table and the tray as she began threading her way through the tables, heading away from Blade toward a side door that led to the rest rooms. There was a small storeroom next to the Ladies that was generally unlocked, as it had nothing in it that anyone would want to steal—not even the patrons of Joe’s. It was usually crammed with mops and buckets and cleaning materials, but it had the added convenience of a bolted door that opened onto the dusty service entrance in back.

She quickened her step, her mind automatically putting together a strategy. If she could just get outside to the car park, there were any number of places she could hide. When she was sure Blade was gone, she could come back and claim her briefcase, which was stored in a staff locker. If she had to leave Joe’s early and forfeit her money, then so be it.

The flat of her palm connected with the swing door. She was into the hallway, her heart pumping wildly, head faintly dizzy at the fast movement. Her hand closed around the door handle to the storeroom. For a crazy moment she thought it was locked, but then the stiff handle gave way. She stepped inside and gently closed the door behind her.

It was pitch-black. She didn’t dare turn on a light in case he saw it and decided to check this room before the Ladies.

She heard the creak of the swing door as she picked her way gingerly forward, and her heart accelerated on another spurt of adrenalin. Her shin connected with a box, she gasped, shuffling sideways. The back of her hand brushed against a stack of what felt like broom handles. One more step and the door should be right in front of her. Her fingers encountered the heavy door, then searched for and found the cold metal of the bolt. She fumbled, easing the bolt back, then pulled the door inward.

Wind blasted into the room, thrusting the door back against her, almost knocking her off balance. A sound had her turning in time to see the widening arc of light as the other door swung open; then she was outside in the alley, damp wind cold around her legs, flattening her black skirt against her thighs and tugging hair loose from its knot so strands whipped around her face.

Anna heard her name, risked a glance over her shoulder, and saw him burst through the door. His black gaze seared into hers, and panic exploded through her. She knew Blade wouldn’t hurt her physically, but she was too much on edge, too hunted, to respond in a rational way. She rounded the corner and broke into a run, her breath shoving hard into her lungs.

She had only gone two steps when his hand fastened on her arm. Instinctively, she jerked to free herself, and when that didn’t work, she lashed out, her elbow driving back to connect with his stomach. He grunted as she pivoted to strike out with one foot, at the same time still desperately wrenching at his hold. But he was too strong, shifting every time she tried to hurt him, so that her blows glanced harmlessly off his body. Instead of breaking free, she found herself pressed face first against the unyielding surface of a concrete block wall, his muscled arm snaking around her waist, cradling her against the impact as his heavy weight pinned her.





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