Finding Bess Read online

Morning brought the first frost of the season, and with it a sense of hopeless desperation tinged with the anger of frustration. Her anger with Geoffrey had long ago mellowed to a mild annoyance and Bess realized it was nothing compared to the anger she now felt for her father. Her own father! Giving out her address and telephone number, treating her as if she were some corporate whore!

  To hell with him! He could send his Englishman next week at his leisure, because she wasn’t going to be home to worry about it. Once the sun had melted the frost from her battered VW Cabriolet, she drove into downtown Colorado Springs and parked as close as she could get to her favorite travel agency, a firm she often used because she found them reliable, the staff friendly and helpful. Her meanderings across the country for book signings often presented unusual travel difficulties, and so far they hadn't let her down.

  Nor did they this time. It was a matter of moments to confirm that yes, there was an open-ended ticket to Tasmania and return awaiting her in Los Angeles. The only problem would be the Australian tourist visa, but even that, it seemed, was easily solved.

  “Your visa can be secured electronically,” Sandi Pontius, the owner, assured Bess.

  “If I left Wednesday, when would I arrive in Australia ... Tasmania, Sandi? I'd have to be picked up at the airport, collected I guess he ... they'd say.”

  “Depends, Bess. Do you want to lay over in Hawaii for a couple of days? I’d advise it. Australia is a long, long journey, although I guess whoever wants you there must want you pretty bad. You’ve got a first-class ticket to get you from L.A. to Melbourne. And back again, of course.” Wearing an impish grin, Sandi glanced up from beneath thick lashes as if to will Bess into admitting she had a rich lover footing the bill for all this.

  First class! Bess might never have left the continental United States, but she knew about first class air travel. And how much it cost.

  Her opinion of Geoffrey Barrett altered perceptibly as she drove home, her mind already occupied with what to pack, what not to pack, and the arrangements she would have to make before departing the following Wednesday morning.

  The entire thing was daunting. But not even in the same league as waiting for her father's hedonistic business associate, who would wine her and dine her and give her expensive jewelry and expect compensation, which, of course, she was not willing to give, not even if her father threatened her with...

  With what? It didn't matter. Her one and only rebellion, moving to Colorado, had brought a certain amount of relief. But she knew her father lurked, biding his time, hoping to permanently snare her in his sticky spider's web. And she feared his power – especially over her – more than she feared flying. Or Geoffrey Barrett.

  Sometimes Father reminded Bess of Howard Hughes. Hughes wouldn't take no for an answer, either.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tempted to bark into the speaker phone, Warren Cornwall bit down hard on his lower lip. Just in time and just as well, he thought, sliding easily into a more amenable tone of voice. He needed Reginald Bingham – not the other way around – and it wouldn’t do to put the Brit off with an unseemly show of temper.

  “Well really, Reg, I can’t imagine what might have happened,” Cornwall said in a voice that, even to his own ears, sounded false. “You say there’s no sign of Elizabeth anywhere and she hasn’t answered your telephone calls?”

  As the conversation continued, Cornwall was forced to grasp more strongly at his temper. While his words to the rich British industrialist were honey-sweet, another part of his mind was cursing.

  Once the phone call was over, he dropped the facade like a hot potato, punched the intercom as if it were some live opponent, and shouted, “Get Rossiter in here! Immediately, if not sooner!”

  When Tom Rossiter, a huge, hulking ex-cop with a brain that belied his rumpled appearance, entered the opulent office, Cornwall’s instructions were specific and to the point.

  “Get out to Colorado Springs. Now. Take the Lear. Find my daughter and get her back here. I don’t care if you have to kidnap her, but get her back before that damned Bingham returns from his tour of the Rockies.”

  The word “but” sprang to Tom’s lips, and never got past them. He’d spent years with Cornwall, and knew when to speak and when not to. After darting a quick glance at Cornwall's framed photos of a young Howard Hughes in aviator garb and an older Hughes with actress Jane Russell, Tom turned and left the office.

  But while his mouth had stayed silent, his mind raised a clamor. What the hell was the boss up to? Tom had always liked Elizabeth, although the feelings were confined only to her; he had actively disliked Paul Bradley and never bothered to hide it. He had positively rejoiced at Bradley’s suicide, and quite enjoyed his own part in helping to orchestrate it. The only drawback was that Elizabeth had been there to witness Bradley's “execution.” Tom had always thought she deserved better, and was dead certain she deserved better when it came to fathers.

  A feeling of raw trepidation burned in his guts when he phoned from Colorado Springs. It had taken little time to ascertain what facts were immediately apparent.

  “She’s gone,” he said without preamble. “Mail’s canceled, paper’s canceled. Her car’s here, which tells me nothing, and the neighbors aren’t talking. Seems they took a dislike to Bingham, if that means anything, and now any stranger is suspect.”

  “Find her. I don’t care what it takes, but find her. And drag her back here by the hair if you have to. Check the bus lines, airlines ... hell, Rossiter, you know the drill. She can’t have gone very far.”

  “I think I could get into her apartment, maybe check her computer and see if it tells me anything. And her answering machine.” Tom was cautious in raising this. Despite Cornwall’s insistence, the old man might not like having his daughter’s privacy invaded. And Tom had been at the sharp end of Cornwall’s legendary wrath often enough; he didn’t relish a repeat performance.

  “Whatever it takes, do it,” Cornwall barked. And the phone at the other end crashed down.

  Once back in New York, Tom was even more apprehensive about facing his boss. The news was not good.

  “Australia?” Cornwall's huge fist slammed down upon the surface of his custom-built executive desk with sufficient force to rock the enormous structure. “You can't be serious. Elizabeth doesn’t even have a passport. What the hell would she be doing in Australia? Writing about kangaroos?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Then find out! That’s what I pay you for!”

  “I got into her apartment, but it was a waste of time,” Tom said patiently. “She’s been using a laptop hooked up to a monitor, and she must have taken it with her. I did think it was worthwhile trying the local travel agents, and sure enough she left for Australia last Wednesday, mostly on someone else’s money.’

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Tom shrugged. “Someone organized an open ticket for her in L.A., according to the travel agent. Then the woman started getting spooked and wouldn’t tell me any more. I’ve got people checking out there now, but it’s still the middle of the night. No one in L.A. gets up before noon, it seems.”

  “Get somebody up! Get somebody up and working on this, damn it, or tell them to start looking for another job!”

  Tom again chose silence as the best course, and left the huge penthouse office without speaking further. This was going to be a bastard of a job, and although he wasn’t, and never had been, a superstitious man, he felt tremors of black dread running along his spine.

  Inside his penthouse office, Dover Warren Cornwall was over his tantrum. Now he was merely fuming, staring at the wall and wondering how he could have made such a hash of this whole business with Elizabeth. Ever since her mother’s untimely death, he seemed to have had increased problems with the girl. In retrospect, letting her marry Paul Bradley had been a huge mistake, but at the time he’d been thinking more of an heir to his empire. He had determined that a child raised at least partly by Bradley – with
his own influence, of course – could emerge a winner.

  Well, that hadn’t worked out. They’d gotten rid of Bradley, but Elizabeth was still too damned independent for her own – and his! – ultimate good.

  Australia? That simply made no sense. What the hell was she up to now?

  ~~~

  Bess leaned forward in her seat to see the landscape of Tasmania sprawling below her in a welter of greens and browns.

  Her mind raced as her meeting with Geoffrey loomed like a specter before her. What in God’s name was she doing here? What had ever possessed her to believe this choice was a better one than having it out with her father, once and for all?

  “Because with Father there is no once and for all,” she muttered, as the plane touched down and taxied toward the terminal. “He never stops trying, never stops pushing and shoving and manipulating. He’s like a dog with a bone, a big, mean, powerful dog. One that always wins in the end.”

  Luckily there was no one in the seat beside her, and the flight attendant merely gave Bess a puzzled smile.

  Damn it, now she was talking to herself! What next?

  Come to think of it, emails were like talking to yourself, Bess thought. She had often read introspective posts, followed by an apology saying the poster had hit the send button too quickly. If Miss Bess-make-a-mountain-out-of-a-molehill had simply ignored Geoffrey's webpage book cover and poem, would she be halfway around the world, visiting a man she'd never met? Well, technically – and technologically – she'd met him. But what if the picture on Geoffrey's website wasn't his picture? How many times had she heard stories about men luring women to one place or another via the internet? Sometimes they even faked their photos, altering the features of a Sean Connery or a Brad Pitt ... or a Mel Gibson.

  Geoffrey could have done that! After all, he'd altered her Sweet Primitive Passion book cover easily enough. Come to think of it, no author photo had ever graced his books. And his website photo looked like the kind of picture found at a discount mart; a handsome 5 X 7 executive, athlete or cowboy, smiling from hundreds and thousands of marked-down-for-quick-sale frames.

  “Nonsense,” Bess said, giving the flight attendant a dark look, daring her to produce another puzzled smile. “A stalker wouldn't pay for first class tickets to Australia, would he? That's a tad extravagant, even for Jack-the-Rich-Ripper.”

  Still, Bess wished she could just huddle in her seat. Perhaps she would be overlooked and allowed to return to Melbourne and, eventually, home. Indeed, she did let everyone else off the plane before she managed to summon up the nerve to follow. Grabbing her laptop case and purse, she stumbled her way to the exit door, mumbling thanks to the staff as she emerged into sunlight so bright it almost blinded her. Then, straggling along at the tail of the line of passengers moving toward the terminal, she finally stepped inside to meet another form of blindness, and realized that her pupils had shrunk.

  As passengers ahead of her dispersed like so many pigeons, Bess found herself waiting for her eyes to adjust so she could search the recesses of the terminal for some recognizable sign of Geoffrey.

  Logically, he should also be looking for her...

  And there he was, leaning against a pillar about twenty feet away, a lean, trim figure in checked shirt and moleskin trousers. He sported shiny, low-heeled boots, quite different from American riding boots, and his arms were folded across his chest as he scanned the crowd…above her head!

  Bess would have laughed if it hadn't been such a common phenomenon. She was so short it happened every time she was met by a stranger at a railway station, airport or bus station. Or restaurant or theatre ... just about anywhere.

  Ducking her head so she wouldn't meet his eyes, she tried to alter her gait, to shift into the shuffling, nondescript movements of a teenager at that worst stage of development, where neither child nor adult is fully in charge. Her mane of auburn hair obscured her face, and was such a riotous rats-nest of curls after her long flight that she was certain it – and she – looked nothing like her photo.

  She moved at an angle, ending up beside Geoffrey, but sufficiently out of his line of vision. Her sense of fear and apprehension had disappeared, replaced by a wave of puckish humor she had never in her life been able to control.

  “Hello, sugah, are you lookin' for me?” she said in a Scarlett O'Hara drawl, batting her eyelashes shamelessly as Geoffrey turned to stare down at her. A long way down; he was all of six feet tall. Green eyes met turquoise, widened in recognition in a movement so fleeting she wasn’t totally sure of having seen it, then narrowed in deliberation as his gaze swiftly flickered up and down her body, touching her breasts in a tangible caress, lingering between her thighs, flashing along the inch or so of leg between her culottes and her leather boots. It occurred to her that he'd never seen her below the waist, as his gaze rose to meet her eyes again while his mobile mouth twisted into a wry half-grin.

  “Frankly, my dear, you'll do very nicely,” he said, sounding exactly like Clark Gable. “Tell you what, darlin'. If you come along with me, I'll...” He paused, as if to let her fill in the blanks. Then he simply said, “I'll carry your bags for you.”

  He laughed, a totally masculine laugh so filled with fun, with delight, with genuine pleasure that Bess couldn’t help but join him. Whereupon, he stepped back a pace and bowed ... actually bowed! And reached out with long, graceful fingers to take her hand and raise it to his lips as his eyes searched her face, searching for a reaction…demanding a reaction. And getting one. Bess blushed, but couldn’t tear her gaze away as his lips brushed her knuckles ever-so-slightly. A butterfly kiss, barely felt but impossible not to remember.

  “Welcome to Tasmania, Ms. Carson,” he then said very formally. “Shall we collect your bags now, or wait until the scrum dies down a bit?”

  “Let’s wait,” she found herself saying, wondering why he hadn’t released her fingers, yet glad he hadn’t. If only he would stop undressing her with his eyes.

  “Forgive me,” he said, as if he had read her mind. And something in his eyes changed, the predator sign going off to be replaced by one of warm welcome. “It’s just that ... well, you’re much more attractive than your picture reveals.”

  “A lot shorter, too.” Bess grinned, and would have laughed aloud at the expression on his face, except that he seemed genuinely contrite. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Geoffrey. Happens all the time.”

  His second burst of laughter was even more contagious. “You snuck up on me, didn’t you? I suppose I should have expected it, but I didn’t, even though I obviously deserved it. Guess that’ll teach me not to underestimate you, Bess.”

  Somehow the way he said her name was a sigh, a soft wind against her cheek that flowed in an eddy down the hollow of her throat to lodge in the hollow of her breasts, and Bess sighed in response. She couldn’t check it, didn’t try, didn’t care. At least not for that single, never-to-be-forgotten instant. Then all her panic mechanisms came alive, and without realizing it she was stumbling backwards, away from him, almost falling. Would have, had he not reached out quickly to grasp her arm and hold her upright.

  “You okay?” And the concern in his eyes – those damned brigand's eyes – was genuine enough, as was his voice.

  “Fine,” she managed. “Just ... just stiff from sitting too long, I guess.”

  As good a lie as any, and not all that far from the truth. Bess saw his eyes narrow in speculation, and realized she must be very, very careful with Mr. Geoffrey Barrett. He was far too astute for comfort.

  Too considerate for her comfort as well, she decided. He maintained his grip on her arm as they moved to the baggage trolleys, now mostly empty, then was forced to release her so he could pick up her suitcases.

  Moving side-by-side out and across to the airport parking lot, he seemed to be totally aware of her movements, ready to drop her bags and grab her again if she should stumble or – as perhaps he feared – faint. She did neither, and within minutes they were at the rear of a large
four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser in which a bouncing, demented small dog danced as if heralding their arrival;

  “Wait,” Geoffrey said absently, as he pressed a button on his key ring to unlock the vehicle’s doors, then reached out to open the rear door. He raised one finger silently, and the brown-and-white spaniel backed halfway along the rear compartment and obediently sat down, eyes flickering wildly from Bess to Geoffrey and back again.

  “This is Lady,” Geoffrey said, and at the sound of her name the spaniel flopped over and began to wriggle with excitement.

  “Bloody fool of a dog. Who’d have a Springer spaniel, eh? Who could love a dog like you?” Geoffrey reached out to tickle those few parts of the dog that would hold still long enough. “And if you piddle in the car, my girl, we’re going to have words. Now settle down. Bess came to see me, not watch you make a fool of yourself.”

  Then, to Bess, “I’d rather you didn’t pet her right now, although I can see you’re dying to, because if you do, she will piddle, I guarantee it. It’s the one thing about her I can always be sure of. Time enough when we get home, okay?”

  “Okay,” Bess replied, somewhat disappointed. She backed out of the way so Geoffrey could load her baggage in beside the still-wriggling spaniel, then clambered up into the passenger seat, after having first attempted to get in on the driver’s side, which would have been the passenger side at home.

  She'd have blushed at that faux pas, had not Geoffrey chuckled softly. “I did that almost daily for a week, last time I was in New York,” he said with a slow smile that diffused her embarrassment without adding to it. Of course, the fact that he took her arm to help her into the passenger seat after holding the door for her didn’t hurt.

  Too smooth, too polite, too ... everything, Bess thought, and spent the fifteen minute trip to town rebuilding her defenses. Which, she realized, badly needed rebuilding. Geoffrey Barrett was – and why, after exchanging emails with him all this time, hadn’t she expected it? – apparently on a wave length so close to her own that it was almost impossible not to be relaxed in his presence. Almost impossible not to laugh with him, because the humor they shared had taught her to know when he was spoofing and when he was serious.