If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Connor, Willa wouldn’t have majored in art in college. She wouldn’t have become the biggest success in her class by going on to the grand career of painting T-shirts for a living. Of course, real artists despised her. Or, at least, Willa imagined they did. But she did make a good living. Which was more than a lot of real artists could say.
If things were half as bad as McKade described, you were in a heap of trouble tonight, girl.
Willa always talked back to Mrs. Connor.
Tied to a bed in that vulgar, uncomfortable costume? Who me? McKade probably ripped it off some other woman and then embellished what happened to exaggerate his own importance and humiliate me.
As if he read her rebellious thoughts and saw through her denial, McKade grumbled and shifted his large body in that chair that was much too small for him. Poor boy. He probably wanted to attract her attention, so she’d feel sorry for him and invite him to bed.
Ha!
Not that she wasn’t grateful. If it hadn’t been for him, there was no telling what might have happened to her. But Willa didn’t have the sort of mind to dwell on such things. She believed life was an adventure. She believed in destiny, that everything that happened was supposed to happen—and all for the best. One didn’t have to understand. One had to accept and go on.
But tonight…Brand…
If half of what McKade said was true, and deep down she knew it was, tonight things had gone way too far. Well, she was safe now, or she would be when she got out of town and escaped McKade.
Soon.
Willa was warmhearted and irrational. High drama was her forte. From birth she had been a handful, getting herself into more mischief than ten curious little girls.
Was it any wonder? After all, she’d barely been five before she was the tragic heroine of a grand adventure. Her adoring parents, both every bit as whimsical and reckless as she, had been swept off their yacht in a stormy sea only seconds after they’d lashed poor Willa to the mast.
Willa had survived two days and two nights in that storm while the boat broke up beneath her. Like the ancient mariner in her favorite poem, she’d gone mad with grief and fear, but she’d found her courage, too. That was why, or so her imminently practical if ever-so-scandalous aunt, Mrs. Brown, said, “Willa’s exasperating because she can’t take life, or at least what normal girls consider life, seriously. She can’t plan for the future. She’s too busy living.” Not that the tyrannical Mrs. Brown was always so philosophical about Willa’s shortcomings.
To Willa, the moment was all. Nobody had more fun than Willa. Nobody got into more trouble. As a little girl, she hadn’t cared a fig about making good grades.
“She even fails subjects she’s a whiz in,” her teachers complained. “She could be so brilliant in math. And she’s fast when she takes a notion to be.”
But math had bored Willa. Why should a little girl waste precious life working problem after problem she already knew how to do? Especially when one preferred staring at mysterious creatures such as butterflies or pill bugs and wondering what the world was like to them? Did pill bugs have schools that were dreadfully boring with dull books and endless, repetitive exercises?
She never painted the same design twice on her T-shirts. She never cooked a recipe the same way, either.
Willa, the woman, had a fatal weakness for the wrong kind of man, the bossy, judgmental McKade running true to her type. He wanted to tie her down but blamed her for his own desire.
But surely, surely he wasn’t as horrible as Brand.
Ditch McKade. The sooner the better, said Mrs. Connor.
But he’s so cute. And he thinks I’m cute.
A girl does love to have fans.
I’d think you’d have learned your lesson.
He’s fun to tease.
With McKade on her mind, Willa drifted off to sleep and was instantly enveloped in nightmarish visions from hell.
Ever since her parents’ accident, she’d had bad dreams. Tonight, the monster was Brand. As always he was dressed elegantly. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Unaware that she clawed the sheets, unaware of Luke McKade growing alert in his dark chair, she moaned aloud.
Dreams move more quickly than reality and make connections and reveal secrets that terrify. At first, Brand was sweet and loverly—her very own Prince Charming. Then he was holding a plastic bag over her face and she was gasping, clawing holes in it to get air.
The bag shredded. Brand laughed and said he’d been trying to pull it off.
Then she told him about the baby.
“A baby?” He was smiling; that meant he wasn’t listening. “This is good, princess.”
“Oh, Brand, I’m so in love.”
He was laughing, but there was something dark about his eyes. “In love? With me? This is good. I love you, too.”
“What about our baby?”
“Willa, my princess, you’re so young.”
“You said you loved me.”
“And I do. But are you ready for a baby?”
“I’m pregnant. We have to marry.”
“Of course we do.”
She could tell he wasn’t listening.
“You’ll tell your parents?”
“The sooner the better. They’ll love you. We’ll have a huge wedding. We’ll go to Hawaii for our honeymoon. We have a house in Maui, you know. This is good.”
“We’ll be so happy…as happy as I was when I was a little girl and my parents were alive.”
She thought of all the sexy, shameful things Brand had forced her to do even when she’d told him she hadn’t wanted to. Oh, she’d tried so hard to please him. So hard, she often hated herself after they’d finished making love.
Irrational fear consumed her. Suddenly, she was running from something dark and monstrous that had a fiery green tongue.
Brand was so beautiful and golden, so rich and powerful. She had loved him ever since she’d been a little girl. He’d been so much older, he’d never noticed her back then.
If Brand was smiling, why was she terrified?
Not going to be a baby. Not going to be a baby.
Who had said that?
“Let’s get married tonight. In Mexico.” How Brand’s green eyes had sparkled.
“What about your parents? Our big wedding?”
“We’ll tell them later, my love. We’ll have a second wedding.” He’d made her drink…to toast the baby. She’d choked on the bitter stuff and then gotten woozy.
“Not good for the baby…”
“There’s not going to be a baby.”
That’s when he’d said it. Brand had said it. In Mexico. In the shack. Before he’d told her what he was really going to do.
Two men held her. She was weak, drunk or drugged, not herself in any case. Brand was ripping off her nylons, not caring that those awful men with those lust-filled eyes were watching them. She didn’t care much, either,