Until You (57 page)

"Miranda,
ma petite,
let us show some honesty, now that we have reached such an important juncture in our relationship. I gave you my name, took you into my home, and how did you repay me? By cringing when I touched you, just as you cringe now. By crying for your mother and running off with her, as soon as she appeared."

"Edouard, please, I was only a child."

"Your mother was no better. Calling me names. How dared she?" Edouard leaned towards her, his eyes bright with hatred, the phony smile gone from his lips. "I am the Count de Lasserre and she—she is nothing. I knew it, in my heart, and I set out to prove it."

"Edouard, God, will you listen?"

"Eva Winthrop," Edouard de Lasserre said, spitting out the words. "Wife of Hoyt, founder of an empire—and all the time, she was nothing but a whore. A Colombian
putain,
with pretensions of grandeur." He stood up and jerked his chin at Vince. "Turn on the lights."

Vince grinned. "Here we go, Joey."

Lights blazed on overhead. Miranda blinked and tried to turn her face away from the glare.

"Get the video cameras and the tripods. You know where to place them."

"Edouard," Miranda sobbed, "Edouard, please..."

De Lasserre bent down and back-handed her across the face. She felt blood well at the corner of her mouth.

"Shut up,
putain
."

"Edouard, don't do this. Please, please, just tell me what you want!"

"It is too late for begging, Miranda." Edouard shrugged off his suit jacket, folded it carefully and lay it over the back of a chair. "I offered your mother one last chance but she chose to ignore it."

"What last chance? I don't know what you're talking about."

He undid his tie and put it on top of his jacket.

"No, no, Vincent," he said impatiently, "do not put that tripod there. Further back, near the wall."

"Edouard," Miranda said desperately, "what chance did you offer Eva?"

"It does not matter, beloved." He smiled as he stood over her and stripped off his shirt. His torso had thickened; she remembered that he'd been lean and muscular but now there was a power to his shoulders and chest that seemed almost brutish. "Eva denied me a business opportunity but I will deny her the pleasure of her daughter. As for the little gem of a video we make today—it will be a memento, if you will, a reminder of our marriage that I shall always cherish."

Still smiling, he kicked off his shoes and opened his belt.

"No!" Miranda sobbed as she struggled against the scarves. "No, you can't really mean to do this, Edouard!"

He sat down beside her. "First I will have you," he whispered, "and then, though it pains me to do so, I will give you to Vincent and to Joseph, who deserve something for their role in this,
n'est-ce pas?"
He reached out and moved his hand over her, his touch lazy and loose. "And then I will take you again, Miranda, but this time, when I climax, you will die." He bent towards her, his breath hot and wine-scented on her face. "I promise, darling, I will make this extraordinary. You will feel such joy, such pleasure, that your death will be a small price to pay for—"

Miranda's head shot up from the pillow and she spat into his face.

Edouard reared back. Slowly, he raised his arm and wiped the spittle from his cheek.

"So much for pleasuring you," he said coldly. "And so much for dying quickly. I shall prolong my climax, Miranda, and Vincent, who is really quite clever, shall prolong your death." He stood, unzipped his fly, and nodded at Vincent. "Untie her ankles and strip her."

Miranda screamed, even though she knew no one could hear her. Vince worked at the scarves that bound her feet while Joey held her legs down. They were strong, the both of them, but terror made her strong, too. She kicked out, hard, and she heard Vince warn Joey to hold her tighter, and she kicked again and again and suddenly she felt her foot smash into something.

Vince grabbed his eye and stumbled backwards.

"Bitch," he snarled. "Joey, for crissakes, hang onto her!"

She kicked again, lower this time, and Joey doubled over in agony, but by then Vince had staggered back to the foot of the bed and grabbed both her feet.

"I've got her now, Mr. de Lasserre," he yelled, and someone ripped off her jeans and her panties and Edouard's face loomed over her, and his hands clasped her thighs and forced them apart—

The door crashed open. Miranda looked up and saw a miracle.

Conor!

She breathed his name, afraid to say it aloud, afraid it was a dream and not reality. But then he looked at her and said, "I'm here, baby," and she began to cry because he was real, and because she'd almost lost him.

She lost track of things after that. There was a lot of shouting and a blur of bodies, and she shut her eyes against it. When she opened them again, Edouard and Vince were both lying very still on the floor. Joey was on his knees in a corner, babbling incoherently.

And she was in Conor's arms.

"I love you," he whispered.

"I know," she whispered back, and she smiled through her tears and knew that she'd never have to be afraid again.

Epilogue

The house was big and old, and it still needed lots of repairs, even after almost five years.

You couldn't take a shower on a cold winter morning without running the risk of turning into an icicle, and the basement leaked if the rain was too heavy.

They'd put a lot of money into the place already and, as Conor sometimes said, they'd have to put in a lot more before it was all fixed up they way they wanted it. And Miranda would sigh and say, yes, he was right, and they'd look at each other and say, well, maybe they should sell this house and buy something newer, now that his law practice was beginning to do so well.

But each of them knew that they never would.

The house was big and old, and it needed work. But it rang with laughter and glittered with happiness, and it was the first real home either of them had ever known.

They loved it.

And they adored Susannah, who'd been born three years to the day after their wedding. Conor said it was a good thing their daughter looked like her mother because he'd feel sorry for any kid that looked like him, but now that Miranda was pregnant again, she lay in his arms in the dark of night, her hands lightly cupping her belly, dreaming of the little boy she carried, one she just knew would be the perfect image of his daddy.

Sometimes, on a summer's evening such as this, while she sat curled beside her husband on the creaky glider on the back porch, crickets chirping in the meadow and the baby tucked safely away in the nursery upstairs, she thought about what a miracle it was, that life had given her this chance at such happiness...

That it had given her Conor.

He was her passion and her strength, and his love had changed her life forever. Her past had faded away, even the kidnapping. Conor had made it happen, not just by loving her or rescuing her but by vanquishing all her ghosts. Edouard was dead and so was Vince Moratelli. Joey would be in prison until he was an old man.

As for Hoyt... she'd never seen him again. But Conor had, and a couple of days later, the papers had reported that Hoyt Winthrop had decided to decline the appointment offered him by the President and to sell his interest in his securities firm.

Winthrop, it was said, had decided to devote his money to good works and to lead a life of seclusion.

By some amazing coincidence, after Conor spoke with Eva, she, too, had opted to perform charitable deeds. The week after Hoyt turned down the ambassadorship, Papillon announced it was going to use the entire profit from its new cosmetics line, Chrysalis, to endow a fund for abused and neglected children.

"As a mother," Eva said, her eyes damp with emotion (but her mascara intact) during a
Sixty Minutes
segment, "I know how much it means to give a child a good start in life."

Miranda, who'd watched the televised interview from the safety of Conor's arms, had snorted with laughter.

"What an actress," she'd said. "She knows she couldn't buy this kind of publicity for Papillon at any price."

But tears had risen in her eyes and it had taken Conor to kiss them away.

Oh yes, Miranda thought as the old glider creaked and swayed, Conor O'Neil had surely changed her life.

She smiled, thinking how she had changed his.

Conor wasn't running around the world anymore, playing those dangerous games for Harry Thurston and the mysterious members of the Committee. Days after he'd rescued her, Conor had stumbled through an explanation of what it was he really did for a living and she'd let him, trying to look stern while she'd watched him blush, but it hadn't been much of a revelation. By then, she'd begun to figure things out and, to tell the truth, learning the man she loved was a man who worked just outside the law had delighted her—once he assured her he was giving it up.

There was something about being married to your very own James Bond that was almost sinfully exciting.

Once, a year or so ago, she'd asked him if he missed his old life. Did he have any regrets?

Conor had smiled, taken her in his arms and told her with words and with his body that this life, the one they'd made together, was the only one he wanted.

It was how she felt, too.

For the first time ever, she was part of a family. There was her husband, and her baby; there was Jean-Phillipe, living in California and happily out of the closet, directing films instead of acting in them and being, as Susannah insisted,
the very
bestest uncle in the whole wide world. There was Conor's father, who was doing his best to learn how to give love unconditionally. There was the unborn child in her womb, who would make the magic circle complete.

But always, always, the center of her soul, the very heart of her, would be her husband.

Miranda moved more closely into the curve of his arm, and laid her head on his strong shoulder.

"Conor?" she said softly.

Conor looked at his wife. Her head was tilted back and she was smiling and his heart kicked the way it always did, the way it always would, at the knowledge that she was his.

He smiled back, shifted into the corner of the glider, and drew her onto his lap.

"What, baby?" he murmured.

Miranda lifted her hand to his cheek. There was so much she wanted to tell him but she didn't have to. He knew what was in her heart.

"Nothing," She took his hand and brought it to her lips. "I just like to say your name."

Conor's arms tightened around her. "Do you have any idea how much I love you?"

The answer to his question was in her kiss.

Low on the horizon, a creamy white moon slipped from behind a screen of lacy clouds and caught in the branches of an old apple tree. Conor rose to his feet with his wife still in his arms.

"Let's go to bed," he said, and as he carried her into the old house and up the steps, the cricket chorus swelled and swelled until the night was alive with song.

The End