Playing with Fire (24 page)

Yesterday afternoon, during a meeting of major importance with his top executives, his usually sharp attention had wandered from the reports to the redhead. That had never happened to him before. Not once had a woman, for whatever reason, kept him from concentrating on his work.

It wasn’t until later that he had found out the little tidbit he’d missed while daydreaming. His construction company had been underbid again by C/Mac Construction, his biggest competitor for the last six months. He was still furious with himself and his staff. He had warned them the last time it happened that they’d all better start looking for new jobs.

But he hadn’t fired anybody. Yet. Instead he had ordered an intense investigation into who was backing Charles MacMillan, president of the newly revamped company. Someone had poured big money into Mac’s flagging business. The man now had the best engineers and architects working for
him. It was no wonder C/Mac had undercut him three times with more environmentally sound proposals at the same cost or less! Abbott Industries’s construction subsidiary was undergoing a complete overhaul. It needed new blood to compete with C/Mac.

Morgan jogged along, letting his business thoughts flow in a cadence to his pounding feet. The thin strip of tarmac wound like a black ribbon through the lush grass, and on through a small copse of pine trees.

He noticed another jogger up ahead on the path. It was a woman, and her long red hair swayed from side to side with her rhythmic movements.

Staring, Morgan slowed, then halted as a funny kind of explosion went off in his chest. It was she! It had to be.

“Hey!” he shouted, breaking into a run.

The woman glanced over her shoulder. Suddenly she seemed to take flight, as her long strides ate up the jogging path. She disappeared into the trees fifty yards ahead.

“Wait!” he bellowed, running faster than he’d ever thought he could. She was not going to get away again!

But she didn’t wait. A laugh floated on the air above him, and Morgan, determined to catch her, ran even faster. He passed quickly under the trees. On the other side his dream woman had just reached the incline of a small rise. He wasn’t worried, knowing that after the rise was an open picnic/playground area. There was no place to hide there, and he would finally catch her.

Or so he thought. As he topped the incline all he saw was the tables, swings, one hundred yards of straight jogging path, and no woman. Impossible!
She would have to be an Olympic gold medalist to cover that distance in the few seconds since she had disappeared over the incline. For a moment he wondered if she
was
a track star, then dismissed the ridiculous thought.

In the center of the picnic area was a low, squat building. Of course! he thought. The bathroom. He ran over and entered the men’s side, but no one was there. Quickly walking outside again, he hesitated in front of the door to the women’s side. She might not appreciate a visitor if she was innocently using the facilities.

“What the hell,” he muttered, and strode inside. There wasn’t a sound, or even a foot peeking out from under a stall.

This was silly, he told himself. She was a very real, incredibly beautiful woman who had been seen not only by him, but by whomever he had been with at the moment. He could still feel her kisses. She was somewhere around here, and he would find her.

He went outside again and checked around the back of the building. He looked behind the shade trees in the picnic area and beat through the underbrush of the little wooded area where he’d first seen her. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, as he searched out every conceivable—and inconceivable—spot she might have picked as a hiding place. He even looked under the picnic tables, but somehow she had managed to elude him again, leaving him to wonder if he had just imagined seeing her in the park.

Finally accepting what his eyes were telling him, Morgan stood in the middle of the playground and knew he was going crazy. He decided he might as well make his insanity complete.

Glancing upward into the quiet gray-blue sky, he bellowed, “You forgot my kiss!”

Cecilia St. Martin grimaced and scratched her arms as she let herself into her narrow, three-storied Victorian home in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco. Hell! she thought. That must have been a cashmere tree she’d been stuck in while playing hide-and-seek with Morgan Abbott.

“Hi, Idiot,” she said, looking down at the gray-striped cat that swirled its body lovingly around her calves. She picked the cat up and they purred at each other, their noses touching. Cecilia laughed.

“I should be allergic to plain old wool, or strawberries, or even you. But no, I’m allergic to cashmere, and now somebody’s discovered a way to grow the damned stuff on trees.” She sighed wistfully and nuzzled the cat against her chest. “All the lovely sweaters I can’t wear. And the trees I can’t climb anymore.” She put the cat down on the brown carpet. “Time for a nice, long bath.”

Cecilia walked past the stained-glass double doors of the foyer to the gleaming mahogany stairs; opposite the doors. She climbed the first three steps, then backed down them again and walked down the long hallway to the kitchen, at the back of the house.

“I’m later than I think, kitty cat.”

Standing in her cheery yellow-and-oakwood kitchen, she picked up the telephone receiver and punched out a number. A familiar, Boston-accented voice answered.

“Harper?” she said. “It’s me.”

“I expected your call hours ago, Cecilia. I was worried,” was the calm reply.

Cecilia wondered in amusement how her attorney worried. Did an eyebrow lift, or did his brows furrow? In all the years she had known Harper Madison, first as her father’s friend and financial adviser and now as hers, he had never showed a single emotion. At most, he might give a slight smile if he was overjoyed, or a tiny frown if he was extremely upset.

“Sorry about that,” she replied cheerfully. “I was stuck up a tree, and now I’m itching like crazy. I must be developing hay fever, or something. I’ve got to get into a tub quickly, so we’d better make this short. How are the stock purchases coming along?”

“Excellently. I really appreciate your volunteering to help me out like this, but—”

“Stop right there, Harper,” she ordered. “You lost a bundle when Morgan Abbott bought that computer manufacturer you’d invested in, and then let it go bust just for a tax write-off. Don’t tell me that he bought it with good intentions and discovered too many problems afterward, so that the company had to be declared bankrupt. That’s the usual pap for the Securities and Exchange Commission, so they won’t prosecute the buyer on fraud. Not only are you my friend and adviser, but you got me through my parents’ deaths when I was seventeen. And much more. Nobody else would have done what you did. And if this is a small way of repaying you, since you won’t let me give you the money—”

“Cecilia,” Harper broke in, obviously trying to stem the rising emotion in her voice, “I still have a hefty paycheck coming from you every year, so stop
the grateful-Annie nonsense. Besides, I was saddled with you, if you remember. And you were a brat. You still are. But your heart’s always been in the right place, although your methods are outrageous. You’re the only person I know who would dream up kissing a total stranger just to keep him off-guard and preoccupied while you buy up enough of his stock for a take-over threat. You’d bring Wall Street to its corporate knees if you ever decided to take up the reins of Parkhurst. But I’m glad to see you finally taking an interest in some aspect of corporate life. You’ve been drifting around the world for too many years, poking your nose into other people’s business.”

Cecilia gave a wavering laugh. “Archaeology is poking your nose into
dead
people’s business, so I don’t think they mind. Besides. I sponsor other people to poke their noses in the dirt. And I’m not the least bit interested in corporate life. Morgan Abbott just needs a little scare put into him for what he did to you, and I’ve got the resources to do it.”

Although few people knew of the connection, Cecilia was the major stockholder of the Parkhurst Group, an international holding conglomerate rated as one of Fortune magazine’s top one hundred. It had grown over the years, from the three whaling ships owned by an ancestor in the early 1800s.

At seventeen, Cecilia hadn’t been ready for the overwhelming responsibility she’d inherited at her parents’ deaths. Then, just after graduation from Princeton, she had discovered the fun, and risks, of sponsoring a dig for a friend. So she had never bothered with the daily running of Parkhurst. Other, much more adept people were already doing
it. She didn’t even vote at board meetings. Harper did it for her. In fact, making sure a few days ago that Cormier received the contract was the only time she had actually had anything to do with the corporation itself. Voting had been split down the middle between Abbott Industries and Cormier, so she had ordered Harper to vote for Cormier. Morgan didn’t know it, she thought, but he had a very formidable adversary.

While Harper wouldn’t risk a cent of her money on an investment gamble, she knew he loved to do it with his own. Maybe the fiasco with the computer company had taught him a lesson. But it was Morgan Abbott’s little stunt that had made her furious. She didn’t like someone taking advantage of another human being like that.

She absently scratched at her arm, and Idiot suddenly leaped into the air, trying to catch it. The cat missed, and Cecilia wagged a Scolding fìnger at her.

“Harper, I’ve got to go,” she said. “Enjoy sunny Boston, and I’ll see you after we’ve got enough stock to scare Morgan with a take-over threat.”

She said a quick good-bye, then peered at her arms for a moment and frowned. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like little red bumps were developing on her skin, and the itchiness was definitely worse. Maybe she had come across some poison ivy this morning. Morgan Abbott was poison, of course, but he didn’t count.

The kiss in the elevator ran through her mind again, and Cecilia felt the heat rush to her cheeks. For a man who was supposed to be cold, ruthless, and inhuman, Morgan kissed like a sailor just home from a year at sea. And she had responded like a woman starved for him.

She had never experienced that kind of physical chemistry with a man before. Why did it have to be with Morgan Abbott? She didn’t even
like
him.

Remembering how he had looked the first time she’d seen him, she reluctantly decided that he was attractive enough to catch any woman’s eye. He was tall, over six feet. His eyes were very blue, although she thought they had an icy look. Then, of course, his rich coffee-brown hair, long enough just to touch his collar, had a few distinguished gray streaks at the temples. His features were too sharp and angular to be truly handsome, but he wasn’t ugly. In fact, the saturnine face was appealingly virile. His build wasn’t overly muscular, but had more of a tough leanness to it. He carried an easy mantle of command that Cecilia knew she would recognize, even without his expensive haircut and custom-made suit. She had grown up around men like him, and thought herself immune. Until now.

It was disturbing to discover she could feel an attraction for a man she didn’t like. She had studied him extensively before implementing her plans, trying to find a way to distract him. She had discerned that he was used to being in control of his surroundings. Having a strange woman kiss him would force him out of that control. And would keep him thinking about the woman, and why she was doing it. He should be very distracted by now … she hoped. All her plans depended on it. He mustn’t notice that various stockbrokers throughout the country were buying his stock for her. If he discovered the purchases too soon, he could put a stop to it.

“What I’m doing is just as bad as what Morgan
did,” she said to her cat. Then she added with a grin, “But I won’t allow that little fact to stop me.”

She owed Harper too much to allow his losses to go unrevenged, and the idea of using Morgan’s own methods amused her. Besides, she wasn’t seriously going to take over Abbott Industries. She would just show Morgan he wasn’t quite the omnipotent executive he thought himself. After she’d finished, he would have learned to be more loyal to his own stockholders.

Realizing that she was furiously scratching her legs, Cecilia grimaced. Her hot soak was long overdue.

“Come on, Idiot. Let’s take a bath.” The little cat’s ears perked up, and she meowed. Cecilia chuckled.

“I’ll be sure to put in plenty of bubbles for you,” she promised. “Rrroowww!”

She forced herself to stay awake in the relentless dark, clinging to a slim hope, a simple plan. Her sense of time had vanished days before. But she could still tell night from day. Night felt different, colder.

That’s when
be
came. Always the same routine. He’d open the door, angle the flashlight-beam at her, and throw down a sandwich in a Baggie and a carton of milk or juice. Then he’d close the door, leaving her alone in the total blackness of the small damp basement. All without a word.

Except when be—

Automatically shutting off the memory, she realized the whole nightmare would forever be divided not into days or nights, but into the time
before
he killed Jenny and the time
after
he killed Jenny. He’d kill her too. Maybe not tonight, but soon. No one was going to save her. No one was coming for her. She didn’t expect them to. Now that Jenny was gone, she was completely alone.

Shivering against the cold and the fear and the aching loss, she lay on a bare mattress that smelled of
mold and something worse she couldn’t name. Anxiously she raised herself to a sitting position and pulled back the corner of the mattress. A little sigh escaped her as she felt carefully with her hand, reassuring herself for the hundredth time that it was still there. She hadn’t dreamed it.

The long shard of glass was dagger shaped with a wicked point. She had found it in the corner where it must have fallen when someone pulled out the window and bricked in the opening. Her fingertips brushed softly against the cool glass, remembering how it had been half buried in loose dirt, a treasure waiting to be discovered. That’s when the idea had come to her; that’s when she had decided to try.