Читать книгу: «Whirlwind»

CHAPTER ONE

FAILURE DROVE Liza Baron home.

She went one cool summer night in a vintage Thunderbird convertible, the last personal possession she still owned free and clear. She started out in a rage in Chicago about midnight and drove toward no particular destination at first. It just felt good to go, with her hair whipping in the wind and the radio blasting rock and roll.

But around four in the morning, after aimless driving along highways she’d never known existed, Liza found herself in Wisconsin just ten miles from Tyler. After that, it was like automatic pilot. In the dark, she drove the white car up to the lake and her grandfather’s lodge, which she figured would be empty. Liza didn’t want to see anybody. The last thing she needed was a damned heart-to-heart with some well-meaning family member. Or worst of all, her mother.

Liza just wanted to be alone.

The sky began to lighten as she turned into the lane marked by two brick columns and started up the hillside under the canopy of century-old trees. The air was hushed. Magical, really. A dreamy white mist eddied upward from the lake and engulfed the car in a kind of swirling cloud. Someone who didn’t know the road might have plunged off into the trees or blundered into the rocks, but Liza drove confidently, her heart suddenly beating fast with anticipation. The Thunderbird’s tires crunched and spun in the gravel at the turns, until at last the car burst out of the mist, and the rooftops of the lodge appeared through the trees.

Timberlake, it had been called in its heyday. A grand name for a grand place—a summer house, a hunting lodge, the site of lavish prewar entertainments—and a few romantic intrigues, if the family tales could be believed. At night they used to turn on the tiny lights they’d strung through the oak trees and barbecue whatever game had been killed that day. Once there’d been a wedding on the veranda, and a swing band of ten played in the grand hall long into the night.

Liza caught her first glimpse of the lodge’s twin chimneys and her throat constricted queerly. They were crumbling now, and loose shingles hung crookedly on the steep-pitched roof and five gables. She saw the sagging shutters and dozens of ghostly black windows, some with broken panes. Seeing it all for the first time in many lonely years caused a great swell of sadness to sweep up from inside Liza Baron, blinding her for a split second.

Which was when the T-bird slammed into a fallen tree.

Liza fought for control, crying out as the car thumped over a branch and crashed straight into the tree trunk that lay across the drive. The impact threw Liza against the steering wheel, knocking the breath from her body.

“Dammit!”

She killed the Thunderbird’s rumbling engine with a shaky hand, and suddenly there was no sound—just the majestic, eerie silence of the forest and the forgotten lodge. The cool, soundless air enveloped Liza. The crisp scent of pine surrounded her, washing her with memories. She sat for a minute, wondering if her heart had stopped, if the whole world had ceased and she’d been transported to a magic place between heaven and earth. A place for ghosts.

But then Liza tasted blood, and she checked the rearview mirror to see how badly she’d cut her lip. The moment snapped, and she felt normal again.

“Not bad,” she said to her reflection. Reaching for the door handle, she muttered wryly, “As usual, you do everything in a big way, Liza.”

She got out of the car to have a look at the damage. The convertible’s nose was a mess, badly dented and half-embedded in the fragrant branches of the fallen tree. Liza tottered a few steps in her high-heeled suede shoes and climbed onto the trunk of the car despite a very short skirt. Perched there, leaning one elbow against a white tail fin, she crossed her long legs, lit her last cigarette and contemplated the ruin of the lodge. And her own life.

“You’re fired,” Sara Lillienstein had said, rather helplessly it seemed, as she sat behind her antique desk in Chicago. “I’m sorry, Liza, but you just don’t fit in here.”

“But I’ve been doing my best work!”

“We’re losing money on your projects, dear. You’re just too slow when it comes to the details.”

“But the details are everything!”

Sara sighed. It was an argument they’d had a dozen times before. “Take my advice, Liza, will you? Stop fighting your own personality. Take your skills to a smaller place. Try opening your own firm. Why not? You’re very talented. I’m sure you’ll be a success someday. But not here. At heart, you’re still a small-town girl.”

A small-town girl? Liza should have laughed at such a suggestion, except the whole situation wasn’t funny at all. Nobody knew how desperately she wanted to escape Tyler—the town, the attitudes, the life-style and, yes, her own family. Oh, she’d cut those ties with a very sharp knife indeed, made her own way through school, scraped by in one lousy job after another until landing the right spot at the top interior design firm in Chicago. Once there, she’d fought her way into some of the best assignments.

And blown it.

Now, it seemed, her subconscious mind had brought her home. Close, anyway. The old lodge was easier to handle than the staidly elegant Victorian house in town where the whole clan was ensconced now. Yes, the abandoned lodge suited Liza’s state of mind. It was big enough and empty enough to throw a first-class breakdown in, and nobody needed to know.

As the dawn grew lighter, Liza smoked her cigarette down to the filter and threw it into the tall grass by the edge of the lane.

“Careless, aren’t you?”

His voice shattered the moment, a low growl less than three yards away, behind her. Liza whirled around and cursed, scrambling off the car to meet her assailant headon.

“Who the hell are you?”

A dark figure stepped out of the dappled shadows. He had materialized soundlessly from the forest and stood larger than life on the drive. Having bent into the dewy grass, he’d come up with her still-smoldering cigarette, which he held out to Liza as if it were Exhibit A. “You want to start a forest fire?”

“Damn,” Liza said, still instinctively clutching her fist to her chest as if to start her breathing again. “I didn’t hear you coming. What did you do? Beam down from a spaceship?”

He was tall and toughly built, wearing a shabby, unzipped mountain parka over a faded black T-shirt and jeans. In one large, capable hand he carried a fishing rod and a string of slick bass, the latter dangling from his grip. With the other hand he extended the cigarette, but he might as well have been pointing a lethal weapon at her. His menacing body language said as much.

His face was arresting—sharply cut around the jaw and cheekbones, with the rest of his features blunt. A few steely-gray hairs to the left of his widow’s peak blended into the remainder of his thick, somewhat shaggy dark hair, combining with the lines in his face to allow Liza to guess his age somewhere just shy of forty. He was probably ten or twelve years her senior.

It was his voice rather than his appearance that most commanded Liza’s attention, however. It began as a powerful rumble deep in his chest and finished in a controlled, deceptively quiet growl. It was the voice of a man who’d never need to shout to make his point.

He said “I don’t like your cigarettes in my grass, honey. In fact, I don’t like you here at all, so turn your fancy car around and get the hell out, all right?”

“Your grass?”

“I’m in no mood for conversation this morning, so—”

“Neither am I, honey,” Liza snapped. “But I’d like an explanation just the same. Who are you? Does my grandfather know you’re trespassing up here?”

“Grandfather,” he repeated, and something dawned in his hooded, black eyes—something akin to recognition as he looked into her face for the first time. His eyes were very dark and full of shadows, quirking at the corners as he studied her standing there in the first break of sunlight.

“I see,” he said, dropping the cigarette onto the gravel and grinding it out with the heel of his boot. “I suppose you’re Liza.”

That surprised the heck out of her, but Liza put up a brave front just the same. “How do you know my name?”

“Educated guess,” he replied, meeting her gaze again with a penetrating, sidelong look. “Your grandfather talks about you. Liza’s the reckless one. The black sheep. The pain in the ass with the smart mouth.”

“Well,” she said tartly, “it’s nice to know I’m remembered kindly in my old hometown. What else do you know about me?”

He seemed for a moment on the verge of telling her, but something held him back. He leaned his fishing rod against the passenger door of the T-bird and dug into his jeans pocket for a handkerchief. Handing it to her, he said instead, “Your lip’s bleeding.”

He was very tall, Liza realized in that instant. Several inches more than six feet, and his body was whip thin beneath his loose jacket. His clothes were worn, and his boots were caked with trail mud. His hands, she noticed as she accepted the frayed handkerchief, were also dirty. From fishing, probably.

Watching her dab her lip, he said, “I also know you’ve made a lot of people miserable in this town.”

“Me? Do I look like the kind of girl who would make anyone miserable?”

He took the question as an invitation to examine Liza more carefully. With a glance that wasn’t especially flattering, he studied her stretchy minidress—skintight and black, her bare legs and the fuchsia-colored spike heels she wore just to make a statement. It was the kind of outfit that made Liza feel good in the city—sexy and exciting. She was a young woman on her way up—a woman with style and ambition. At the moment, though, she was damn cold. She could feel goose bumps on her arms, and if that weren’t enough to cast her in a vulnerable state, she realized her nipples were rock hard.

“You look like a tramp,” he said when he’d finished his inspection.

“What are you? The local fashion expert?”

He shrugged. “It looks like you’re going to a costume party, that’s all.”

“At this time of day?”

He gave her a thin, unamused grin. “From what I hear, you’d go to a party at the drop of a hat. That getup is sure to win first prize, if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t ask, buster. Just who the hell are you, anyway? What gives you the right to—”

“I’m Cliff Forrester,” he said. “The lodge caretaker.”

“Obviously, you’ve been doing a great job,” she cracked, indicating the time-damaged facade of the lodge with an exasperated wave of his handkerchief. “Besides the fish, exactly what are you supposed to be taking care of?”

“That’s between me and your grandfather,” he retorted, dropping his voice into the rumbling register again. “Are you hurt?” he asked then. “Besides the lip, I mean?”

Liza examined his handkerchief and saw a dime-sized splotch of dark blood staining the frayed linen. “I’m okay, I guess. Except for this. Am I going to need stitches, do you think?”

With one hand, he reached out and roughly grasped Liza’s chin. As if catching himself, he was gentler as he slid his fingertips along her jaw and tilted her head higher, stepping close to have a look.

At that instant, a feeble ray of sunshine pierced the tree branches overhead, and Liza closed her eyes against the sharpness of the light. In a heartbeat, a funny feeling stole over her. Standing there with his callused hand cupping her face, she realized she could hear Cliff Forrester breathing, and the warmth of his lithe body seemed to pull her like a magnet. Though a whole world pulsed around them, Liza felt as if the universe had narrowed to only two people.

She peeped one eye open to look at him again. For an older guy, he wasn’t bad to look at. Just too damn serious. In her mind’s eye, she tried to conjure up a mental image of how he might appear with a genuine smile on his face. Or how his laugh might sound. But Cliff Forrester didn’t seem the kind of man who did a lot of laughing. A tightness in his face told Liza he hadn’t lived an amusing life. The years had been hard on him. Maybe harder than Liza could imagine.

He could dish out abuse, though, and Liza almost smiled at the thought. She wasn’t afraid of him, of course. Liza Baron wasn’t afraid of anything. But she felt uneasy in his presence just the same. As if unworthy.

“Nope,” he said, releasing her as casually as he’d touched her. “No stitches. At least, I don’t think so. What’s wrong? Are you cold?”

She had begun to shiver. Liza told herself it was her abbreviated dress that wasn’t up to the challenge of a Wisconsin morning, but another thought flitted through her mind: perhaps Cliff Forrester had the power to make her shiver, too.

Abruptly, she said, “Nothing’s the matter. I’m leaving, anyway, and the car heater’s still working. Could I trouble you to help me with the car? Or must you hurry back to your caretaking duties?”

“I have a few minutes,” he said, ignoring the taunt in her question.

“What’s this tree doing here in the first place? Isn’t it your job to clear it away? Somebody could get hurt running into it.”

“Nobody ever comes up here.”

“What am I? Chopped liver?”

He tied his string of fish on a nearby branch and sauntered back to the car, stripping off his jacket as he came. “You could have been chopped liver if you’d been driving any faster. What was the rush, anyway? I heard the car from the lake and got to the boathouse in time to see you ram this tree like you wanted to push it into the next county.”

“I always drive like that.”

“Like an idiot, you mean?”

“Look, Forrester, why don’t you go jump—”

“Put this on,” he commanded, dropping his jacket across her shoulders, “before you freeze. Why a grown woman would wear a dress like that—”

“There’s nothing wrong with my dress!”

“You must have left half of it at home, that’s all.”

“If you don’t like it,” Liza said, fed up at last, “I’ll take it off.”

Cliff had heard a lot about Liza Baron in the ten years he’d lived in Tyler. She’d hightailed it out of town after high school and returned only a couple of times before a conflict with her mother drove her away, leaving behind a long litany of stories that celebrated her wild ways.

She was as beautiful as everyone said, he’d admit. As beautiful as her legendary grandmother. Nearly six feet tall in her heels and lean as a greyhound, she had the look of a cover girl right down to the damn-you gleam in her eye. Her platinum hair was an astonishing tangle, and her face had an oddly asymmetrical quality he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off. Her cold blue gaze challenged his, her patrician nose seemed perpetually upturned in a cocksure attitude and her slightly off-center mouth, a flaw that was accentuated by the ragged little cut on her lower lip, was...well, mesmerizing. She moved constantly, too—tapping her toe, swinging the mane of her hair over her shoulders or flipping it back from her forehead with an impatient hand.

Her earrings caught the morning light and glittered. From one ear dangled a golden angel with a glinting glass eye, but from the other ear swung a larger figure—that of a devil carved out of onyx. Oh, Liza was devilish, all right. But she seemed to be trying awfully hard to keep that bad-girl facade in place.

So Cliff wasn’t surprised when she let his jacket slip off her shoulders and started to peel off her dress.

He stopped her by grabbing one slender wrist just as she began to yank the dress. She looked up, feigning surprise.

“Take it easy,” he said, determined not to let the vixen ruffle him. “If you die of exposure, it’ll be me who has to answer a bunch of questions.”

Her gaze burned into him with the power of a hot laser. “I’d hate to trouble you.”

“Then keep your clothes on.” He released her wrist and turned away. “Let’s see what’s wrong with the car.”

A moment later she followed him around the convertible, quite composed and haughty. “You must be a pretty handy fellow to have around, if my grandfather hired you.”

“I do what I can.” He kicked some branches away from the hood of the convertible and bent over the mess to check on damage.

“Do you see him often? Granddad, I mean?”

“Now and then.” Cliff examined the damage to the car’s grille and headlights.

“Does he come out here?” she asked, standing behind him on the gravel. Her voice sounded casual. Maybe too casual.

Cliff glanced up at her. “Nope.”

She quickly mastered her expression, endeavoring to look unconcerned. “Does he look well? I mean...is he healthy?”

“What is this? Twenty questions? He’s your family, not mine.”

She flushed. “I haven’t seen him for a while, that’s all.”

“Three years, right?”

Her pouty mouth popped open, then snapped shut quickly as she covered her surprise. Her glacial eyes narrowed. “Exactly how do you know so much about me, Forrester?”

“I wish I could say that I get around a lot, but stories about the infamous Liza Baron are repeated all the time.” Cliff crouched by the front tire and pushed back the tree branches to get a better look under the car. “Even I’ve heard the one about how you spiked the punch at the homecoming dance. People still can’t figure out how you did it—and got crowned homecoming queen in the same hour.”

She shrugged. “I hid the bottle in my underpants until the time was right.”

“Hmm,” said Cliff, guessing that she’d said that just to see his reaction. He chose to ignore the lie and said, “The fender’s bent pretty badly. It’ll cut the tire if you try to move the car.”

She leaned over his shoulder. “Can’t you yank the fender out a little? I’ve got a tire iron in the trunk, I think.”

“It’ll ruin the fender.”

“Do it anyway,” she said blithely, bending over the closed door to tug the keys out of the ignition. Cliff couldn’t stop a glance down the amazing length of her bare legs, but she pretended to be unaware of his scrutiny. She straightened and led the way to the trunk with a taunting sashay, saying, “It’s good to know people still think of me now and then. My mother hasn’t poisoned everyone against me.”

Suddenly on guard, Cliff said, “Why would your mother do that?”

“We’re estranged. That’s a polite word for hating each other.”

“I know what it means.”

“We don’t communicate. Haven’t spoken for years.”

“And you’re proud of that?”

Liza snapped open the convertible’s trunk. “It’s a fact of life in our family. My mother despises me.”

“Alyssa Baron couldn’t despise anybody.”

Liza looked up from rummaging in the trunk and skewered him with those clear blue eyes of hers. “You know my mother?”

“We’re acquainted.”

“You talk about me with her?”

“Any mention of your name,” Cliff said, “causes her pain.” He took the tire iron from her hand, and with care added, “And I wouldn’t hurt Alyssa for anything.”

“Alyssa, is it?” Liza asked, her beautiful face suddenly stiffening with a frozen sort of smile. “My, my. You’re a little young, aren’t you?”

“For what?”

“For squiring her around town these days. I mean, she’s almost fifty—”

“My relationship with Alyssa is completely pure, I assure you, Miss Baron. We’re friends, that’s all.”

Cliff didn’t owe anyone an explanation for his tie to Alyssa Baron, the one person in the world he could stand to spend any time with these days. Alyssa’s quiet acceptance, her unspoken support, her— Well, there were many qualities in Alyssa Baron that Cliff appreciated deeply. Qualities he didn’t see in Liza at all.

Liza eyed him with one brow raised coldly. “You don’t strike me as the Garden Club type. And I bet you don’t sit on her precious hospital board, either. Which one of her bleeding-heart causes do you have in common, I wonder?”

“We’re friends,” he repeated.

“Oh, that doesn’t surprise me. She’s been very friendly with all kinds of men since my father died.”

“I don’t think I like your implication, Miss Baron.”

“Truth hurts?”

He laughed shortly and turned away. “I can see that everything I’ve heard about you is true. You find a weak spot and attack, don’t you?”

“Have I found your weak spot, Forrester?”

He chose not to answer that and returned to the front fender. “‘Liza’s always looking to make people uncomfortable’—that’s what your mother says, at least. Is that your way of getting attention, I wonder?”

She gave an unladylike snort. “In my family you have to practically die to get some attention. You must know my brother and sister, right? Both bright, shining examples of wonderfulness?”

“They’re well respected, I hear. And you’re not. So? Do you get your share of the family limelight by acting like a spoiled starlet?”

“Boy, who put the chip on your shoulder?”

He yanked the twisted fender with the tire iron. “Just don’t try muscling me the way you muscle the rest of your family, okay? I don’t give a damn if you go away and never come back—unlike your mother.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Expect maybe you’ll find she’s glad you’ve come home.”

“I haven’t come home,” she said quickly. “I’m just passing through. I may not even stop at the house. I don’t want to see them.”

He heard a new note in her voice and glanced up to see Liza frowning. “Scared?”

“No!”

Cliff laughed at the swiftness of her exclamation. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re scared, all right.”

“Who died and made you the Seer of All Things?”

Cliff didn’t care to talk about himself. Why had he managed to find a pleasant isolation at this forgotten lodge if he wanted to spill his guts all the time? He didn’t. His past was his own business, and he could take as much time as he liked forgetting it. So he kept his mouth shut, which infuriated the pretty Miss Liza Baron.

As he worked on the fender, she said, “You’re really annoying, you know.”

“Because I won’t play your game?”

“I don’t play games!”

“Oh, yes, you do.”

“I’m completely up-front with everyone. I—”

“Like hell. You make everyone jump through hoops to prove how much they love you.” Cliff stood up and looked her straight in the eye. “Well, you can needle me all you like, Miss Baron. I’m not going to jump.”

She leaned her backside against the car and crossed her long legs at the ankles, returning his glare with a measuring gaze. She raked her blond hair back with the manicured fingers of her right hand. “You like calling the shots, don’t you, Forrester?”

“I like being my own boss, yeah.”

“You like being in control.”

He wiped his hands on his jeans and said, “I don’t like surprises, that’s all.”

“Oh, really?” She began to smile wickedly. “Sometimes surprises can be nice.”

“Most of the time, surprises can be damned annoying.”

“Tsk tsk. What a boring attitude about life.”

“How I live my life is none of your business.”

“Want to know what I think?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“I think you could use a few surprises now and then, Cliff Forrester.”

With that, she came away from the car with a fluid motion and caught the front of Cliff’s shirt in her hand. Her grip tightened, and she tugged, pulling him close enough to kiss. Her face was almost level with his, and her laughing blue eyes teased him boldly. Suddenly Cliff could smell the sweet fragrance of her perfumed hair and feel the lithe strength of her legs against his.

She said, “How about one right now?”

She didn’t wait to be kissed, but lifted her mouth up to his and caught his lips swiftly. She tasted crisp and warm, and when she slanted her mouth across his, Cliff felt his senses quicken. His blood was suddenly tingling everywhere, a tide of heat beating hard in all his nerve endings. Liza’s tongue found his and played a mischievous game for a moment. Sensations Cliff had thought were long gone came bubbling up from a secret place deep inside, and surprised the hell out of him, all right. Standing there in a shaft of sunlight with the vibrant young body of Liza Baron pressed provocatively against him, Cliff felt his mind go blank. And his body come alive.

Then it was over. She loosened her grip on his shirt, leaned back and tilted her head to look him saucily in the eye. The lazy pleasure that shone in her gaze exactly matched the expression on the face of the little devil that swung from her earlobe.

“See?” she breathed. “A surprise can be very nice.”

Sometime in the past ten seconds, Cliff’s hands had found their way to her arms, and he held her very tightly. From between clenched teeth, he said, “You take a lot of chances, don’t you?”

“I like to feel good.”

“You like playing with fire, I think. I wonder if you’ve ever been burned?”

He couldn’t stop himself. Her cocky smile, the tease in her eyes, the supple contour of her body—yes, all those things combined to trigger an inexplicable anger in Cliff. He found himself gripping Liza hard, pulling her close and kissing her with every ounce of pent-up energy inside himself.

With a sigh, she gave herself to him, abruptly relaxing in his arms. One of her knees eased between his two, and her hands crept slowly around Cliff’s neck as the kiss deepened into a hot and savory contact.

But Cliff didn’t want her relaxed. He knew her game and intended to change the rules. Swiftly, he tightened his grip on Liza and forced her back against the car. She squirmed and choked on a protest. She clutched his shoulders for balance and then fought the kiss like a wildcat. Roughly, Cliff pushed her mouth open and ravaged her tongue with his own. He could feel her breast quiver against his chest, and her breath came in gasps.