Katherine O’Neal (11 page)

Blackwood’s office was in a far comer, away
from the city room. The corridors leading to his office were dark,
since this part of the building wasn’t generally used at night. But
she thought she saw a faint flickering light below the closed door.
She paused to take a steadying breath, warning herself that it
might be no more than her imagination. When she felt ready, she
threw open the door.

The room was lighted with a single gas lamp,
turned down low to offer the meagerest illumination. Blackwood
stood behind his desk, a cigarette dangling from his lips, going
over a list with a man she recognized as Morgan, the assistant
managing editor. The lamp threw their shadows up the wall and
across the ceiling, so they loomed eerily across the room like
imagined monsters in the shadows of a child’s room. The men looked
up in surprise. She saw Blackwood’s eyes flick over her, then
harden as his lip curled in a sneer.

“Miss Voors,” Morgan greeted her. “It’s a
pleasure to see you again. I’m so looking forward to the wedding
tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she murmured automatically. It
was clear from the look on his face that he couldn’t fathom why she
was there. But Blackwood knew.

“That’s all, Morgan,” he said, dismissing
him. “I don’t care how you do it, just get it done. Don’t bother me
with details.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Archer.” He paused, looking
back at Saranda uncertainly. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,
Miss Voors.”

“Will he?” Blackwood asked when Morgan had
closed the door behind him.

She stepped forward so her shadow leapt
upward and entwined with his. His devil’s face was hard, wary in
the half-light.

“You bloody,
double-dealing—
Blackwood!
” She didn’t bother to maintain her
American accent.

He ground his cigarette into the ashtray and
exhaled a last stream of smoke. “You didn’t really think you could
get the better of me?” he said softly. His accent, too, was
suddenly more pronounced, less cultivated—as if, faced with his
opponent on equal footing, he no longer needed the facade.

“I might have known you’d stoop to something
as low as turning me in. You and your family always took the easy
way out. There’s a code about such matters, Blackwood, or haven’t
you heard of it? I must be out of my mind even to ask such a
question. Look whom I’m talking to!”

“The Sherwins, I take it, are shining
examples of humanity.”

“At least we Sherwins lived within the
boundaries of the accepted rules of operation. I could just as
easily have told the Van Slykes who you were. I knew from the
beginning. But that would have been too easy. And not much ripping
fun, at that. I chose to play the game. To use my brains and
abilities to outsmart you every step of the way. But then, you
Blackwoods always fall back on dishonorable tactics when your wits
fail you.”

He came around his desk with angry strides.
“You call your family turning mine over to the authorities
fair
play?
We were exposed to the worst kind of public ridicule
because of you—humiliated in every corner of England.”

“You deserved it! You stepped over the line.
It wasn’t enough for you to kidnap that American, and plan for your
brother to take his place. We couldn’t blame you for that. Why not
give it a go? The most spectacular assemblage of wealth and jewels
on a single ship? A leisurely cruise down the Nile? It was just the
sort of con we’d have played to perfection. That’s where you made
your first mistake. The aristocracy was ours. You had the arrogance
to invade our territory, without the ingenuity to back it up.”

“And you couldn’t stand the thought of
someone elbowing you aside.”

“You’d think that, naturally. If you’d done
it with grace, with finesse, with something approximating
planning
, we might have applauded your success.”

“Since when did a Sherwin applaud anything a
Blackwood did? You’ve looked down your noses at us for two hundred
years.”

“With good reason, I might add. Look at the
mess you made of that con. It was in motion. You’d kidnapped the
American. Your brother, Lance, was to take his place on the ship
and relieve the passengers of their no doubt ill-gotten gains. But
you couldn’t stop there. You had to kill the man. You broke the
code before we ever stepped in.
Confidence artists don’t resort
to murder
. If you’re any good, you don’t have to.”

“You’re so bloody superior, you and your
whole family. Informing the authorities and having my parents
arrested before they could pull the job. My mother was ill—did you
know that? She hadn’t flammed anyone in years. But they dragged her
to the gallows and hanged her in front of that pack of wolves that
passes for polite society. You know nothing of what that meant to
us,
nothing
about what really happened.”

“Tell me, by all means. I enjoy a good fairy
tale as well as the next woman.”

She saw in his eyes a deep and abiding hatred
that mirrored her own. “I owe you nothing,
Princess
, least
of all an explanation.”

His derisive use of her father’s pet name
turned her cold. She balled her hands into fists of rage, her arms
shaking with the effort to keep from swinging at his smug,
conspicuous jaw. “That’s where you’re wrong. You owe me more, Mace
Blackwood, than you can ever hope to repay. That lunatic brother of
yours didn’t stop with the American. He killed my parents. Listed
an advertisement in the personals stating that the Blackwoods
respectfully
announced they would have their revenge on the
sixth of June. Did you help him word the ad? It possessed just the
ring of reckless insolence that appeals to you.”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“We stayed home that night, thinking it best
to play it safe.
Home
. A tiny cottage in the country we’d
just moved into. My mother excited because, in all her life, she’d
never had a house of her own.”

He turned away. “I don’t want to hear
this.”

“Somehow, your illustrious brother found out
where we lived. He blocked the doors and set fire to the house. I
crawled out the chimney, but it was too small for them to fit
through. He wouldn’t let me help them. He held me down and
laughed
while my parents burned to death right before
us.”

Her words reverberated in the silence as he
absorbed them. Then, tonelessly, he said, “That’s not the brother I
knew.”

Saranda cocked her head impertinently.
“Surely, Mace Blackwood—consummate con artist that you are—wasn’t
fooled by someone as inept as his late brother?”

He turned back to her, with all the furies of
hell burning in his eyes. “And how did
you
escape?” he asked
cruelly. “If what you say is true, I can’t imagine my
illustrious brother
passing up a morsel like you.”

She slapped him then, with all the wrath
she’d been denied through the years, hit him so hard, her hand felt
broken. The sound of it rumbled like thunder through the room. “I
was
thirteen years old.
” Her voice broke. She couldn’t go
on. She couldn’t even tell him what his brother had done. “Don’t
talk to me about shining examples of humanity. You Blackwoods are
the very scum of the earth.”

“I don’t answer for my family,” he ground out
through tightly clenched teeth.

“If I came from your family, neither would
I.”

He caught her arms and jerked her up against
him. His power, unleashed, enveloped her sensibilities like a gale
at sea. She could feel his ferocity in every line of his hard body
as he slammed her against him with a passion that had nothing to do
with tenderness or caring or love.

“All my life, I knew you as an enemy to be
crushed.”

Even as her mind reviled him, her body leapt
at the contact. The animosity between them clashed like swords,
throwing sparks of emotions that surpassed their rage. Like flint
on steel, there struck a recognition that the rivalry between them
was more erotic, more primal in nature, than any caress could ever
be.

“But it’s you who’ll be crushed,” she warned,
breathing heavily, backing up a step. “Because I’ve defeated you at
your own game. Do you know what the Van Slykes said to me when they
learned the truth?”

“That they love you. That you’ve brought a
breath of fresh air into their stale lives. That they don’t care
who or what you’ve been. They believe in you and want you for their
own.”

“Practically
verbatim.
”

He narrowed his gaze. “I assume you spared
them the shock of my true identity.”

“I told you, if I’d wanted to expose you, I’d
have done so. I shall have a much grander time establishing a
position of power for myself that will eventually surpass your own.
As Winny’s wife and Jackson’s daughter-in-law, I’ll be in a
position to manipulate your every move. Step by step, I shall take
a hand in the running of the business. I shall—subtly, of
course—turn them so sour on you, they’ll wonder they ever trusted
you. In the end, you’ll be humiliated and—ultimately,
publicly—kicked out on your ear. And I shall have the great
pleasure of watching it happen, and of knowing it was my doing.
You’ve wasted your time here, Blackwood. You might as well pack
your bags now.”

“Then I suppose I’ve lost.” He took another
step forward, forcing her backward so she came up abruptly against
the desk at her back. “Still, it doesn’t have to be a total
defeat.”

The timbre of his voice had changed. It was
hushed and silky, deceptively smooth. She could read his intentions
in the gleam of his midnight eyes. “Stay away from me,” she
gasped.

“Surely, you’re not afraid of me? I’ve
already admitted defeat.”

“As if I’d trust anything you’d say.”

He raised a brow. “Trust? No, sweetheart,
it’s not about trust between us.”

“You’re right. It’s about a battle between
our families that has finally come to an end. The Sherwins have
won, Blackwood. You have no further hand to play.”

Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true.
Despite the bad blood between them, they had unfinished business.
Because the game, this time, had gone too far.

“That’s separate. The feud, the
competition—that has nothing to do with what’s happening between
you and me.”

“You must think I’m the rankest kind of
amateur. Do you think I don’t know what you’re up to?”

He put his hand to her cheek and stroked the
softly shadowed contours of her face. “What am I up to?”

He was so close, she could feel the muscles
of his chest toying with her breasts. Against all sense, she
hungered to be touched.

“If you can succeed in seducing me, you can
run to Winston with the news and effect a last-minute
cancellation—”

His hand drifted from her cheek down the
naked column of her neck, to softly caress the slope of her
gleaming shoulder. “I could tell them you slept with me whether you
do or not. But you know as well as I do they wouldn’t believe
me.”

“That argument won’t work either, Blackwood,”
she said in a dangerously breathy tone.

“Very well, Miss Sherwin. Why don’t we just
lay our cards on the table?”

“Why not indeed?”

“Then here it is. I don’t like you any more
than you like me. In fact, I can’t think of a woman I’d be less
likely to covet. My family cared for yours no more than yours cared
for mine. But I find myself in the unfortunate circumstance of
wanting you to distraction. My—body wants you.” He took her hand
and pressed it against him. He was enormous, straining for release.
He leapt like a tiger beneath her hand. So she’d been right, she
thought euphorically. He
did
want her! “For some reason I
can’t even fathom, I can’t look at you without wondering what you’d
look like panting in my arms. Without wanting to feel your naked
skin beneath my hands. Or taste your sweat on my tongue. Without
needing to come inside you and make you cry out in passion and lose
some of that
goddamned
control.” A faint moan escaped her
throat. “You’re all I think about. You’re like a fever in my brain.
I keep thinking if I took you
just once
, I might finally
expel you from my mind. So I don’t suppose either of us is leaving
this office before we’ve had what you came for.”

“I came to tell you—”

“You could have done that any time. You could
have left me wondering for the rest of the night if the wedding
would take place. But you didn’t wait. You knew if this was going
to happen, it had to be tonight. Because once you’re Winston’s
wife, I won’t come near you. The minute you say ‘I do,’ you and I
take off the gloves, darling, and the real battle begins. So it’s
now or never.” He lowered his mouth to her shoulder, and her breath
left her in a sigh.

“Now or never,” she repeated in a daze.

“One night to forget who we are and what it
all means. You’re so confident of winning. Surely, you wouldn’t
deny me the spoils of the game. Or more to the point... deny
yourself.”

She looked up and met his sweltering gaze.
After three days of not seeing him, she’d forgotten how
devastatingly handsome he was. “I shan’t fall in love with you, if
that’s what you’re thinking. This will give you no advantage over
me. I’m still going after you with both barrels loaded.”

“Stop trying so hard to figure it out. I
don’t give a hang what you think of me. And I don’t need your
tender mercy. I tell you point-blank, if you think you’ve won, you
may be in for a surprise. But that’s beside the point.” He wrapped
one of her curls around his finger. Then, taking the pins from her
hair, one by one, he dropped them to the floor. She felt her taut
nerves jump as each pin clicked against the tile.

He ran both hands through the silvery hair,
fluffing it with his fingers, dragging them slowly through the
length as he watched the play of light on the silky strands. It
spilled like moonlight over her shoulders. “Did you have to be so
beautiful?” he rasped.