Authors: Shirley Wine
"Friends don’t drop each other in unexpected situations."
Wilkins opened a paneled door and announced them.
It was too late to back out.
Victoria had little alternative but to brazen it out.
She walked at Logan’s side across a huge room, artfully lit to create pockets of light and shadow. Her attention focused on the elegantly dressed blonde whose hair she suspected owed more to her hairdresser than nature, and the tall, spare man at her side.
With a sick, sinking sensation in her stomach, she recognized a veiled hostility in the woman’s eyes. And any thought of a relaxed weekend evaporated like mist before the sun.
"Mother, my friend Victoria Scanlan." Logan drew her forward. "My mother, Muriel Donovan."
"Welcome to Darkhaven."
The limpid touch of Muriel’s fingers chilled Victoria to the bone. The hint of steel in the soft tones warned her that this woman was no pushover.
Logan turned toward the man. "My stepfather, Caine."
"Welcome Victoria," he said with genuine warmth.
Tanned and all whipcord strength, with a liberal sprinkling of silver in his dark hair, he gripped her hand. As she looked into his shrewd, dark eyes, she was more than a little startled by a weird sense of familiarity.
Yet she knew they’d never met.
Caine Donovan was not a man anyone would ever forget meeting.
"It was so kind of you to invite me. Logan’s told me so much about you."
"Has he?" Caine chuckled, squeezing her hand. "I look forward to knowing you better. You haven’t met my son, Keir?"
He turned toward a man standing in the shadows, almost hidden by another towering floral arrangement, so still she'd not realized he was there.
He stepped into the light.
A gasp escaped. Her heart stopped beating and her breathing suspended as she tumbled through endless black space.
A strong warm hand enveloped her outstretched one, frozen in mid movement. "Victoria, it’s been a long time."
"Seth!" The strangled word scraped past frozen vocal cords.
Chapter Two
Y
ou’re clever, Mommy. Why can’t you find my daddy?
Her little boy’s words were a hollow drumbeat in Victoria's cotton-wool brain.
Connor!
Keir Donovan
was Connor’s father?
Hysteria merged with the shock pulsing through her blood stream.
Suddenly lightheaded, she clung to his hand as her knees buckled and threatened to dump her at his feet.
His chocolate eyes narrowed.
That stern mouth compressed. His supportive grip strengthened as he clasped her other hand, fluttering helplessly like a wounded bird.
The unmistakable concern in his dark eyes reached right inside, steadying her.
"Seth?" Caine’s question was a muffled echo in her ears.
Victoria caught Caine’s frowning glance and managed a shaken breath and then another.
When did I stop breathing?
"A private joke."
Seth's deep voice pierced her numbness.
Some joke!
The words tasted as bitter as aloes.
That damn closet door jerked wide open.
She struggled for a rational explanation but shock and bewilderment made coherent thought all but impossible.
And she'd come here hoping to quote on flowers for his wedding?
Like that would ever happen!
With perspicacity, Victoria saw the chasm yawning at her feet and knew she teetered on the brink of disaster.
The foundations of her world crumbled and she was standing on quicksand. The wrong move and—
"You two know each other?" Logan looked from one to the other, dark brows drawn together in a forbidding frown.
Keir’s grip on her hands tightened in unspoken warning. Her understanding and instinctive response after all this time, shocked her rigid.
Oh God! This
is such treacherous ground.
"We met a few years ago. I’m flattered you remember me."
Not remember him?
His humor grated on emotions rubbed raw.
Victoria shrugged and, suddenly realizing he still held her hands, jerked them free. Disillusionment warred with outrage.
No wonder I could never find him.
Victoria searched for some plausible excuse to leave. She needed to escape.
This room.
This house.
This man!
It was Muriel Donovan who broke the escalating tension. "Where did you meet Victoria, Keir?"
"Victoria and I met one summer a few years back. She was staying with her uncle and aunt at their motor camp at Orere Point while her mother was in hospital." His velvet eyes brimmed with cynical amusement. "I’m sorry I wasn’t able to comfort you after your mother’s death."
And that quickly, Victoria was transported back to that fateful summer. Her mother's illness, her father insistence she take a holiday she didn't want, and Seth's quiet compassion and gentleness, a tenderness that had led to so much more.
Now, she looked at the man in question, shaking her head, as she struggled with disbelief.
"It was a long time ago. My father remarried last year." She shrugged and turned to Logan, the need to escape taking precedence over good manners. "Can I go to my room, please?"
Logan glanced at his mother. "Victoria’s come from work and needs to freshen up."
"Show her upstairs then come back down." Muriel’s smile never reached her eyes.
And we can discuss why you invited this woman.
Had the words been written in meter high letters, they couldn't be plainer.
It took every ounce of dignity Victoria possessed to walk sedately at Logan's side and not throw up her hands and run screaming from the room, this house.
With her thoughts in such a chaotic tangle, Victoria barely noticed the luxury of Logan's home. They climbed an ornately curved stairway. Desperate to escape, she cudgeled her brains for a credible excuse to leave Darkhaven.
Now.
"Mother wants me to explain why I invited you," he said wryly.
"
You
invited me? What about the flowers—" She broke off, mind spinning. "There never was a chance of that commission, was there?"
Bile stung her throat. She'd not seen this coming. Anger and betrayal fought for supremacy.
"The emerald suite." Logan opened the door and ushered her into a spacious bedroom.
Victoria gained a blurred impression of oppressive green as she turned on him, hands clenched, anger and apprehension waging war.
"What the hell’s going on, Logan?"
Too aware of his intense gaze, Victoria knew she was treading on egg shells.
"You tell me. Meeting with Keir really threw you. Why?"
As if I can explain?
She decided offence was her best defense. "Tell me why that’s any of your business?"
Logan's ice-blue eyes glittered. "You’re my guest. Why wouldn’t I be concerned?"
With a convulsive shiver Victoria knew that damn mental closet had sprung one humongous leak.
Connor.
Chilled to the bone, she rubbed hands up her arms as she fought down panic. Unable to hold Logan's keen gaze she looked everywhere but at him, desperate for inspiration.
Keir Donovan was Connor's father.
No matter how often that thought echoed through her head, Victoria struggled with the enormity of the discovery.
And the man she’d known bore little resemblance to that forbidding stranger downstairs.
Victoria bit down on her lower lip, and then said decisively, "I want to go home, Logan. I should never have come. Your mother doesn’t want me here."
"She’ll survive. Understand this, Victoria. My mother doesn't dictate my choice of friends or who I get to spend my life with." He gripped her hands. "Besides, if I took you home now, don’t you think they’d all be
mighty
curious?"
Horrified, she stared at him.
His words made a sick kind of sense he would never understand. The last thing she wanted was to rouse Keir’s curiosity.
Survive this weekend and she could fade out of Logan’s life. The Donovans would breathe a sigh of relief. And Connor would be safe.
Don't kid yourself. Life's never that simple.
"He was rotten to me that summer," she prevaricated. "I’ve never forgotten."
"Keir can be a fiend but he’d never hurt you." Logan tried to jolly her into a better mood. "Get past that crusty exterior and you'll find a kind, honorable man."
Not hurt her? Kind? Honorable?
Yeah, right!
Seth held the power to bring her to her knees.
"Please stay, Tori." Logan spoke quietly, catching her hands in his. "I'm sorry I misled you. Look on this weekend as a well-deserved break."
Like that's now remotely possible? With my son's father sleeping in the room next door?
Although anxious to shake the dust of Darkhaven
from her shoes, Victoria had never lacked for common sense.
Should she demand Logan take her home, she suspected she'd have his step brother on her doorstep in short order. And that was something she had to prevent at all costs.
"I'll stay." She offered up a quick silent prayer that she was making the right decision.
"You need this, Victoria." Logan gave her a quick hug. "Dinner’s at seven-thirty. Drinks at six-thirty. Okay?"
When the door closed, she stood staring at the panels, fighting down hysterical laughter.
Logan thought she needed a weekend of relaxation?
Dreams are free; it takes money to buy whisky!
How often had she heard her father say that?
She slumped onto the bed and buried her face in her hands.
What in God's name was she to do?
And how is sitting stewing going to help?
Anxiety brought her to her feet. As she paced the room prey to conflicting emotions, the luxuriousness of her surrounding barely registered.
Seth had lied to her.
Why?
The man she’d known and fallen for so swiftly had, to her, epitomized honesty. What else about those halcyon days was a lie?
She huffed out a shaken breath.
I have to come up with a plan. I need to protect my son.
She closed her eyes and saw, far too clearly, a little boy with his daddy’s sable hair and velvet brown eyes.
Restless, unsettled and worried sick, her gaze settled on another of Muriel’s ubiquitous silk arrangements.
It offended her sense of creativity.
And, without a moment's consideration, she strode over to the antique table and tore the floral arrangement apart. Hands flying, she set about recreating something interesting—well, as interesting as it was possible to be with such blah wherewithal.
Orange-red Oriental poppies formed a central cluster under her dexterous hands, their black eyes a sinister heart—
To her fevered imagination they represented Muriel, the sinister heart of this family.
Victoria’s hands stilled—where the hell had that thought come from?
But she never questioned her instinct.
Muriel Donovan was more than intimidating—she was one fearsome woman. Her limpid handshake, cold, ice-blue eyes and the steel undertone in her voice sent chills up Victoria's spine.
Logan could say what he liked, but she sensed his mother would fight tooth and claw to prevent him marrying someone who didn't suit her purpose.
Unnerved by the observation but unable to deny its truth, Victoria plucked up three dusky salmon poppies and added them to one side.
They softened the effect—Caine’s influence?
She shook her head at her fanciful imagination.
To one side, she grouped a handful of pale callistemon. The stems needed shortening and she pulled the pair of heavy duty florist’s shears from her business satchel, ruthlessly trimming them.
She always carried her shears, never sure when she would come across something she could use in her business.
Humming under her breath she cut the stems until they fitted her vision. Ready to discard them she decided to strip the leaves and poked spikes among the lush petals—a startling contrast.
Several silver foliage spears lay on the table and, with deft fingers, she slotted them in the back to tower over and above everything else—a looming Seth—a powder keg of testosterone.