“Have you never heard of morning sickness?” Letter to Reader Title Page PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“Have you never heard of morning sickness?”

Ash stared at the teenager. “Emily, what are you talking about?”

The girl rolled her eyes in that expressive way she had. “Like anyone with half a brain couldn’t have figured it out. There’s going to be a baby! Your baby Mel’s baby!”

“Oh my God.” Ash wondered if this was how it felt to be in shock.

“Now I suppose you’re going to hyperventilate?” Emily snatched her milk glass off the table and stalked to the sink. “Get a grip, for cripes’ sake. People have babies all the time. Especially when they fall in love. If you can’t figure out what to do next, well, I give up.”

“Next?” He was supposed to do something. But what? Buy insurance? Baby formula? Cigars?

“Next. As in, go after Mel and make nice.” She rolled her eyes again. “Do I need to write a script here?” She took Ash by the arm and turned him in the direction Mel had run. “Go. Now. And repeat after me, ‘Mel, I love you.’ And work on your delivery while you’re looking for her.”

All Ash could do was follow orders and try to steady his heart.

Melinda and a baby. Could he really be that lucky?

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Hope Springs, Virginia.

I hope you’re enjoying the people of Hope Springs as much as I am. I love small Southern towns. I love the people and the way they rally around when you need them. I love the sense of tradition. I love the colorful names and the quaint shops and tree-lined streets.

My heroine in All-American Baby doesn’t know much about small-town U.S.A., but she wants to. She wants to find that sense of community, a place where she can feel a family connection with everyone she meets. She hasn’t experienced much of that in her life and she is determined that her baby will grow up with all the things she missed.

Thank you for joining me on another visit to Hope Springs.

Regards,

Peg Sutherland

All-American Baby

Peg Sutherland

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

Hope Springs, Virginia

“TOOD GRUNKEMEIER, you’re ornery as an old rattlesnake today.”

That was Whiskey Rowlett, a regular at Fudgie’s Barbershop whenever he wasn’t out for a few weeks pursuing the interests that had earned him his nickname.

Tood eyed Whiskey. Whiskey wasn’t known for his sweet disposition, either, so it was no surprise Tood’s complaints about the heat had struck Whiskey the wrong way. “Rattlesnakes don’t bother you if you don’t bother them,” Tood pointed out.

“Besides, Tood’s right,” said another of the regulars, who liked to keep peace at Fudgie’s because his daughter-in-law and three grandkids had moved in with him and the missus, making peace a scarce commodity in his life at the moment. “It’s too dang hot for May.”

“’Specially if you’ve got a houseful, eh, Eb?”

Eben Monk nodded ruefully and conversation drifted off to kids and approaching summertime. Tood’s attention strayed. He didn’t know much about kids. The last kid he knew anything about was his nephew and he’d had bad news about the boy this very day, from the detective hired by Tood’s attorney. His nephew was dead. Found in an abandoned warehouse in Omaha, dead from an apparent drug overdose. Thirty-four and he’d already beat his old uncle to the promised land. And the capper was that nobody seemed to know what had happened to the boy’s teenage daughter.

“Lookie there!”

Everybody in the barbershop turned in response to Whiskey’s excitement. Whiskey was pointing at the TV mounted in the corner, its sound muted to a low murmur. On the screen, a dark-haired young woman was being scurried from a jet to a limousine waiting across the tarmac.

“That’s Melina Somerset,” Whiskey said.

Eb and Fudgie took two steps closer to the television.

“Naw. Can’t be.”

“The devil it’s not.” Whiskey grabbed the remote and inched up the sound.

“How do you know?” Eb asked. “Ain’t nobody seen a picture of her for I don’t know how long—fifteen years, maybe.”

“I know ’cause I seen it on the noon news outta Roanoke. Announcer said it was her.”

“Then what’s she doing here?” Fudgie said.

“She ain’t here, you old fool. She’s in San Francisco.”

“What for?”

“Well, now, if I knew that, I reckon I’d be putting up with Jerry Springer’s fool questions instead of yours, wouldn’t I?”

“You’re cross, Whiskey. Just as cross as can be. You ought to go off on another one of your benders. You know that? We’re tired of listening to you.”

Then the barbershop grew quiet as the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the young woman. She was dark and thin, with eyes too large for anyone’s face beneath the brim of a man’s gray felt fedora. The collar of her raincoat was turned up, but neither it nor the hat had managed to hide her delicate beauty.

Someone in the barbershop whistled low as one of the men surrounding the young woman moved in to block her from the camera. She disappeared into the limousine and the camera panned to a female reporter who did not look nearly as elegant in her raincoat.

“Dang! Imagine that,” Fudgie said. “Melina Somerset. How old’s she now? ’Bout twenty?”

“Musta been more than a dozen years since they wiped out her mother,” Eb said. “She was just a little one then.”

“Her mother and her sister,” Whiskey said. “She’s twenty-six now. Said so on the noon news.”

“Low-life scum.” Fudgie sat in the empty barber chair and linked his fingers behind his head. “Never did catch ’em, did they?”

The debate raged about whether justice had been done for the people who had killed Melina Somerset’s mother and sister, but Tood didn’t much care. Oh, he knew how the country felt about the mysterious young woman who had apparently arrived in San Francisco the evening before. Melina Somerset, daughter of computer magnate Tom Somerset, was like America’s royalty. And all the more intriguing because she’d lived in seclusion, her whereabouts shrouded in mystery, ever since the tragedy had struck her family. Tom Somerset had paid a big price for his enormous wealth.

At least, Tood thought, Somerset had his daughter. Whereas Tood had nobody.

Seventy-one and a bad ticker marking his days and not a soul in the world to care. The only one on God’s green earth who even shared his blood was a runaway fourteen-year-old. He supposed he could send the detective off on her trail now. But he had about as much chance of ever seeing her again as he had of seeing Melina Somerset walking through the door at Fudgie’s, that’s what Tood reckoned.

Yep, he was going to die alone. That was about the size of it.

CHAPTER ONE

San Francisco, California

ASH THORNDYKE FELT the first stirring of lust as his gaze lingered on the diamond-and-emerald pendant pointing the way to the perfect breasts of the Hollywood agent’s young bride.

The breasts were clearly faux and interested Ash not in the least.

But the diamonds and emeralds were the real thing. Magnificent specimens. Ash could almost feel them in the palm of his hand, their cool ice, their weighty heft. His breath grew a little quicker and he forced himself to look away.

“A lifetime of training doesn’t vanish overnight,” he muttered to himself.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

The black-tied waiter balancing the silver tray of champagne flutes paused, a questioning expression on his young face.

“Oh. I... Nothing.”

The young man gave Ash a quizzical smile, then seemed to remember that it wasn’t his job to analyze this mob of well-dressed, well-heeled, well-known revelers. “Champagne, sir?”

Training. “Not for the moment, thank you.” Not while working. Ash had learned that at his father’s knee. Never drink on the job.

Ash scanned the crowd. He no longer even had to school himself to look as if his perusal of the gala gathering was casual. It wasn’t, no matter how blasé he managed to look. As always at this kind of bash, Ash Thorndyke was working.

Tonight, however, he wasn’t on a mission for the kind of expensive baubles worn by the agent’s trophy wife. Tonight, Ash Thorndyke had been hired to kidnap Melina Somerset.

Ash’s stomach cramped. Maybe he should have that champagne after all. Maybe he should get the heck out of Dodge. Kidnapping beautiful young heiresses wasn’t his cup of tea, as Grandfather Thorndyke would say. Cat-burglary—safecracking, pulling off heists that always made the papers but never made the court dockets—was Ash’s specialty. It was all a part of the family business. Each member had a specialty. Counterfeiting was what his dad, Bram Thorndyke, did—a skill he’d passed on to Ash’s brother, Forbes. Confidence games targeting the sinfully rich, that was Grandfather Thorndyke’s forte. For four generations, the Thorndykes had been running their circumspect little family business.

Kidnapping, however, didn’t sit right with Ash. The very idea violated his moral code. In this instance, however, family was more important than anybody’s moral code.

“Anything for family,” he said quietly to the canapé he snagged from a passing silver tray. His payoff for tonight’s distasteful little caper was his father’s freedom. And Ash was prepared to do anything to ensure that his dying father didn’t spend his final days in prison.

The men who had hired Ash promised him that much. They worked for the government, at least that’s what their identification said. And Ash had surely been around enough phony papers in his day to recognize a fake when he saw it. Of course, there was always the chance that he was being fooled, but it was a chance he was willing to take. Anything for family.

His quarry had not yet made her appearance. When she did, Ash was certain, she would be hard to miss, even though he couldn’t recall having seen a picture of her since a family funeral more than a decade earlier. The family was reclusive, everybody knew that, which made their sudden appearance in California all the more intriguing. Somerset was apparently developing some new technology for the film industry and was here to network and to research the project. Of course, the national media vultures had managed to catch the Somersets’ arrival in San Francisco, but Ash made it a policy never to watch television. Now, he just needed to be patient. The rich, headstrong heiress was waiting until a fashionably late hour to make her grand appearance at the gala in her father’s honor. Ash would know her from the stir she would create in the crowd.

“Rich women,” he said. “A pain in the backside.”

Another young waiter was at his elbow. “Champagne, sir?”

Ash’s mouth felt a little dry. His nerves were beginning to get the better of him. Bubbles rose lazily to the top of the elegant crystal flute. He could taste them, a sweet, tart explosion against his tongue.

He could also imagine those delightful little bubbles fuzzing his brain and slowing him down just as the time came to execute his plan.

He shook his head.

At midnight, when he turned over Melina Somerset to the government agents who had hired him to confiscate her, he would find a bottle of the finest bubbly in the city by the bay and relax in style. Then, tomorrow, he would be on his way East, to retrieve his father. At last. It had been a long four years since his father’s incarceration, far too long.

Ash sidled through the crowd, engaging in only the briefest of conversations with the people he passed, making sure he didn’t stand out from the crowd. In fact, his appearance was one of Ash Thorndyke’s greatest assets in his line of work. He was nondescript. Average-looking. Tall but not too tall. Average build, with a slight tendency to be too lean. Light-colored hair a shade past blond but not quite brown, worn too long to be called short and too short to be called long. Eyes that might be described as gray. Or green. Or hazel. Depended on who you talked to. Ash looked like the young attorney who drew up your will or a representative of the investment company that managed your finances. He looked like your daughter’s best friend’s husband, whose name you never can remember.

There was no doubt that Ash Thorndyke’s ability to blend in with the crowd was one of the things that had made him so successful.

That, and a sharp wit, unflappable nerves and fingertips that could feel the tumblers working in a safe lock. Ash Thorndyke could romance a safe the way some men could romance a woman. He was the best.

Had been the best, he reminded himself. After tonight, it was all over. That was the deal. His deal with himself.

He kept moving. Kept listening. Kept watching. He saw Tom Somerset, who looked as anxious as Ash felt. Ash overheard the excited chatter as the cream of California society anticipated Melina’s appearance. No one knew quite what Tom Somerset had in mind, finally bringing his cloistered daughter out into society. But they were greedily excited to be a part of it. Ash could smell their agitation.

He backed against a wall near the corridor leading to the kitchen and continued to survey the room. He registered every detail. Bits and snatches of conversation floated in and out of his mind.

“... to marry her off, and I personally am convinced that the only man in Hollywood worthy of her...”

“...career as a model. Have you seen that bone structure? Darling, she’s a natural.”

“... get our hands on her and get her out of the country, half our problems will be over.”

“...say she runs away about twice a year. Can you imagine? Everything one could ever want and all she can think to do is behave like a spoiled...”

Ash frowned. What was that? A snippet of conversation about getting our hands on her? Getting her out of the country? He began to cast about in the din of gossip for that particular conversation. He located it and realized it was coming from the corridor behind him.

“...a plane is waiting.”

“And then?”

“Then she disappears for a while.”

The voices goaded Ash’s memory. He strained to place them, but he’d heard too little. More disturbing, however, than their faint but unidentifiable familiarity, was what they were saying.

“For a while?” the second man said. “But not for good?”

There was a silence. Ash could almost see the first man shrugging and it was then he pinpointed their voices.

He was listening to the two men who had hired him. And the scheme they were discussing sounded alarmingly unlike the innocuous plan they’d outlined for him. A headstrong young woman, a worried father who wanted nothing more than to keep her safe during her stay in the U.S., and government officials with orders from way up the food chain to do anything to keep Tom Somerset happy. That’s the way it had been explained to Ash, by the two men claiming to be government operatives.

Something wasn’t adding up and Ash couldn’t decide exactly what it was. Was the government pulling a fast one on Tom Somerset? Was Somerset the one with the extra card up his sleeve? Was the government playing Ash Thorndyke for a fool?

“Hard to say,” the first man replied. “We can’t anticipate every eventuality.”

“Can we trust this Thorndyke character?”

“To get the job done? Sure. We’ve got what he wants, tight?”

The two men laughed. There was little humor in the sound.

They began to move away then, their voices retreating. Ash remained still. Never act rashly, Grandfather Thorndyke always said. Make a plan. Then execute it.

Maybe the men who’d hired him were feds and maybe they weren’t. Maybe Tom Somerset knew what was happening and maybe he didn’t. Maybe Melina Somerset was in danger and maybe she wasn’t.

All that really mattered to Ash was the one thing he did know for sure. He’d been duped. Nobody duped Ash Thorndyke.

He located Tom Somerset again and began to make his way through the jungle of dueling perfumes and clashing voices. Somerset, when Ash reached him, was encircled by fawning men, men who rarely fawned over anyone, movers and shakers in business and entertainment and government. But Tom Somerset had more money than Hollywood had phonies and that meant everyone loved him.

Ash eased up behind the circle of people, planning his approach, knowing that getting the man alone long enough to ask about his daughter and her safety would be one of Ash’s more difficult heists. But as he studied the problem and formulated a plan, two gray-suited men whom Ash pegged instantly as private-security types came up behind Somerset and captured his attention. Ash moved in closer.

“... insists she’s coming down.”

Somerset looked like a man with dwindling patience. “Then lock her up. God knows what she’ll say if we let her out. I won’t have her exposing...”

A peal of laughter drowned out the rest of it, but the tenor of that exchange curdled Ash’s guts. For someone labeled America’s princess, Melina Somerset was not receiving royal treatment at anyone’s hands. Something was wrong with this picture, and Ash didn’t have enough information to figure out what it was.

He told himself the best thing he could do was walk away.

Then he remembered his father. What if those men who’d hired him really could help his father?

Thinking of his father made him think of something else, too. Honor. Both Grandfather Thorndyke and Bram Thorndyke had taught Ash and his brother a code of honor. And Ash was fairly certain there was something in that code about damsels in distress.

Shrugging it off as not his problem, Ash headed for the foyer. He would walk away. He reached the foyer about the time the two men who’d spoken to Tom Somerset reached the top of the marble stairway leading to the second floor.

“...break her pretty little neck.”

The words echoed in the cavernous foyer. Both men laughed. Ash told himself it was just the kind of flippant remark that family employees would make. Not a serious threat at all.

But after what he’d heard tonight, could he really be sure of that?

IN HER SECOND-FLOOR SUITE, Melina Somerset stood at the bank of windows overlooking the city of San Francisco. The city was built on hills, and this mansion was obviously atop one of them, for the view was panoramic and spectacular. To her left was the Golden Gate Bridge, shrouded tonight in fog and the mystique of legend. As her gaze swept right, she saw Coit Tower, then the lights of the city.

It had been more than a dozen years since Melina had set foot in America. After her mother and sister were killed, she and her father had moved to Europe, moving from one isolated town to another. Eventually, he’d placed her in private school under an assumed name. Then another. And another. Melina had missed the country of her birth. She had missed having a home, any kind of home.

She tried to imagine all the fun that was to be had beyond these walls if she could only make her way from this elegantly appointed suite—one more in a long line of luxurious prisons—to the places where all those lights twinkled.

Out there somewhere were hamburgers and French fries. Stores where blue jeans could be bought. Friendly coffeehouses where people wore those jeans and talked about movies and music and the baseball season. And somewhere, beyond all the lights, were split-level brick houses in the suburbs. Although Melina had missed all that went with being young and free, and regretted that, she now had different priorities. She was ready to grow up.

“Someday I’ll get a station wagon,” she said wistfully to the faint reflection of her own face in the window. “I’ll eat at McDonald’s every day and have my chauffeur drive me to aerobics class in my very own station wagon. I’ll be just like normal people.”

But tonight, she was still a prisoner to her father’s success, hostage to his fears. Tonight, she’d been locked in her room because she’d wanted to attend the party below. She’d wanted to dance and meet people and take just one sip of champagne, not enough to hurt anything, just enough to feel the bubbles on her nose.

Instead, she was locked away from life, as she had been locked away almost her entire life. Under guard and incognito, that’s how Melina had lived her life.

But no more.

Melina had run away before, and they’d always found her. But this was America, a country so sprawling that a person could vanish and never be heard from again. Here, millions of people lived their lives without a lot of fanfare.

This time, she wouldn’t fail. This time, there was more at stake than Melina’s own happiness. There was even more at stake than her father’s happiness. Yes, leaving this way would cause him pain. But he’d left her no choice. She’d tried reasoning with him, threatening him, pleading with him.

He was adamant.

Well, now, so was she.

Forcing a smile, Melina took a halfhearted spin around the room in her evening dress, trying to recapture the pleasure she’d had a few hours earlier in the feel of the silky fabric swirling around her calves and ankles. She knew she looked pretty in the dress and she regretted no one would see her in it. She unzipped the dress. Maybe she would take it with her. Surely even average American housewives wore evening dresses sometimes.

She thought she heard little snicks of noise at the door to the adjoining bathroom, but of course there would be no one there. She would have been delighted to find someone there, to invite a little adventure into her deadly dull life, but that was never going to happen. Not as long as her father treated her like a priceless family jewel instead of a living, breathing human being with a life of her own.

She slipped off her shoes. First, she would change into street clothes. Then—

A hand covered her mouth. A strong arm pinned her arms to her side. Fear shot through her. She fought. Kicked. Flailed about as best she could. But she was small. And the arms that bound her to a hard chest were strong. She struggled, panting behind the hand that covered most of her face.

Her assailant took her to the bathroom door. Soon she would be beyond rescue. If she could manage a sound, the guards right outside her bedroom door would hear her, would save her. She kicked, aiming for the bedside lamp. Missed. The strap of her gown slipped off her shoulder.

“Hold still,” he whispered into her ear, his voice a soft rasp. He slid the strap back into place on her shoulder. “They aren’t on your side.”

That stopped her, froze her in his grasp. He was right, of course. Who was he, that he knew that?

They entered the dark bathroom. Melina grew still and they moved quickly beyond the small room into another adjoining bedroom, also dark.

“Nobody’s going to hurt you,” he said. “I’ll explain. But first we have to get somewhere safe.”

A trick, of course. But there was something in the voice.... And there was the promise of escape. He might have something else in mind, but in her heart a notion of her own stirred to life. This stranger would help her escape from them, then she could escape from him.

The thought gave her courage. She drew the deepest breath possible, picking up the scent off his hand.

Something stirred to life in her mind. A memory, a feeling...

He shifted his grip on her. “I’m going to zip your dress. Then I have to gag you. Cover your mouth. I don’t want to, but...”

He stuffed something in her mouth. Something soft and silky but still unwelcome. She growled a protest as she felt him slide the zipper snugly into place.

“Sorry.”

Her nose was free now. She inhaled deeply. Recognition struck her. The soft voice. The distinctive scent of cypress on his flesh. Adrenaline gave her strength.

She burst free of his grasp and turned to face him, snatching the silk out of her mouth in the same instant. It was dark, but she could see the faint outline of his face. The square jaw, the slope of forehead, the fullness of the lower lip.

“You!”

He froze for an instant, then dragged her to the window, threw up the shade and let moonlight into the room.

He looked as stunned as she felt. “You!”

CHAPTER TWO

WHAT A NIGHTMARE.

Ash should have insisted on seeing a photo of the mysterious Melina Somerset. He should have made a point of watching TV the last few days, just to get a look at her. If he had, he would be somewhere else right this minute. A continent away.

He was almost furious enough to leave her right there in the dark second-floor room. But he heard the tone of her voice and suspected that if he didn’t take her with him, she’d see to it that her father’s goons were on top of him in less time than it took to finesse a home security system.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered furiously.

He’d never seen her angry before, although it was entirely possible she’d been a tad irate in London when she’d realized he wasn’t coming back. “Can we talk about this later? Somewhere else? Like in the next county?”

She glared at him a moment, then nodded abruptly.

They slipped through the window, down the trellis he’d scouted earlier in the week as a possible emergency escape route. They made their way to the parking area. Ash surveyed the cars, looking for the most nondescript and inexpensive car.

“Don’t you know which one is yours?” she said sharply.

“Whichever one I want, princess,” he retorted.

“I see. That one, then.”

He looked where she pointed. A vintage red sports car.

“No way.”

She marched over to it, her stance and her tone regal. “This one.”

“Too flashy. It’ll draw too much attention.”

“I like this one,” she said, treating him to a cool smile. “And I can make a scene if I don’t get what I want.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that.”

Grinding his teeth in frustration, Ash hot-wired the convertible in a matter of seconds. At least he didn’t have to jimmy the lock on a convertible. He pulled quietly out of the parking area and eased down the long driveway without turning on the headlights.

“You have some interesting talents, Ash Thorndyke,” she said when they reached the street. “Kidnapping. Car theft. You’re much more fascinating than I imagined.”

She kept her tone light, but he couldn’t mistake the underlying bite.

“Can we keep it quiet,” he said softly.

“Oh, I hardly think they can hear us now.”

From the corner of his eye, he noticed that she leaned back and took in the stars, like a young woman without a care in the world.

Like Mel Summersby, the saucy and sultry young woman he’d thought she was in London.

“I’ve always wanted to ride in a convertible,” she said.

There it was—the soft purr of a voice that had been the second thing that drew him to her. The first had been her smile, sometimes naive and sometimes seductive, but always too big for her thin, fine-boned face, as were those sable-colored eyes of hers. She was like the girl next door wrapped up in the packaging of a temptress. He’d been seduced before. He could be again. That was the worst of it.

“Save the innocent-waif routine, princess.” He pointed the car toward the middle of town, where he could drive around long enough to decide what to do next.

She rode in silence for a long while. When they neared the city center, she edged forward in the seat. “There’s a McDonald’s.”

He spotted the famous golden arches. “So?”

“I want a hamburger.” She turned in the seat and watched as they passed the arches. “I said—”

“Not this close to the caviar-and-champagne set, princess.”

“My name is Melina.”

“So I’ve discovered.”

“Is that why you came back for me? You found out who I was?”

“Princess, I can assure you, if I’d known who you were, I would have stayed in Anaheim tonight.”

“Not a very likely story.” She pointed again. “Is that a grocery store? A supermarket? Could we—”

“No, we couldn’t.”

“You were never this cross in London.”

“I was young and foolish in London.”

“And now you’re old and cranky?”

“Something like that.”

In London he’d been mesmerized, hopelessly bewitched by the woman he knew as a winsome American student. Mel Summersby had shown him what it was like to be carefree and normal for the first time in his life. They ate fish and chips and rode one of those silly double-decker buses like all the other tourists, something he’d never deigned to do in all his many trips to London. They walked in the bleak drizzle of early March and didn’t care if their hair was plastered to their heads or their shoes squeaked with rain. And they made love in the little attic room at the bed-and-breakfast in Parsons Green.

For two weeks, three short months ago, Ash Thorndyke had tasted everyday life. And he’d discovered that he had an unfortunate appetite for it.

“What are you going to do with me now that you have me?” she asked.

“What I’d like to do is dump you in the middle of town and be out of this mess,” he said. It wouldn’t take her long to find some poor sap to dupe, he supposed.

“Fine,” she said. “How about that corner? They look like nice people.”

He glanced at the women posturing on the corner, wearing vinyl boots that covered their knees and stretch miniskirts that barely covered their fannies. “What they look like is hookers. Women of ill repute, Your Highness.”

“You know, you really should be nicer to me. I could land you in plenty of hot water, if I wanted to. My father—”

“Your father had his goons lock you up.”

She laughed lightly, but he detected a hollow sound to it. “So you were rescuing me?”

“Something like that.”

“I suppose the next thing you’ll be telling me is that you’re a man of honor.”

“No. I wouldn’t claim that.” He couldn’t after the way he’d left her in London, without a word of explanation, without a backward glance. It hadn’t been his finest moment. But he’d never been that scared before. Funny how a healthy dose of fear could make a man violate every principle he’d ever believed in.

The alluring young woman he’d known as Mel Summersby had him thinking about going straight. Starting a family. Getting a... Even now, the blasphemous idea elevated his blood pressure. Getting a job.

“I think we should leave town,” she said.

“I think we should have a plan before we do anything.” He’d had a plan, of course. Get the heiress out of the house, meet the feds—the so-called feds—at the Embarcadero, get a good night’s rest at the Ritz-Carlton and head for the East Coast, where Bram Thorndyke would soon be the recipient of clemency in exchange for tonight’s little escapade. That had been Ash’s condition for participating.

“If we don’t get out of town now, we may not have another chance,” she said. “They’ll be looking for me very soon. Every highway out of town will be covered. Plus, we have a stolen car. A very ostentatious stolen car.”

She was right about the all-out search, of course. “So you’ve done this before.”

“Well, not quite this dramatically.”

“So you must have plenty of aliases. Aside from Mel Summersby.”

She was silent. And he’d been feeling guilty for dumping her. What a chump. She’d probably been twenty minutes away from doing the same to him. Apparently dalliances with the working class were a way of life for the rich and famous Melina Somerset.

“The highway to Big Sur is that way,” she said. “I’ve never been to Big Sur.” There she was, an edge of girlish delight in her otherwise sultry voice. Despite everything he knew, it made him want to give her whatever she longed for. Quite a talent she had. Well, she could find another way to Big Sur.

At the last minute, he made a sharp, tire-squealing turn.

“But don’t get the idea we’re going to Big Sur,” he said. “All we’re going to do is get out of town. Then we’re going to make a plan.”

MELINA ALREADY HAD a plan. The trick, she realized as they left San Francisco behind, was to get Ash Thorndyke to help her implement her plan.

They sprinted along the freeway to the south and Melina sat up and took notice. The highway was lined with precisely what she longed to see. American suburbia. Neon and fast food, billboards and discount stores. Parking lots full of SUVs and minivans.

She was in America. Somewhere there was a place for her, a place where she could belong and blend in and become average.

Ash turned on the car radio, cruising the dial, pausing whenever he landed on a news report.

“It won’t be on the news,” she said softly.

Tom Somerset would never let the world know that his daughter was on the loose. Sometimes it felt to Melina as if she only existed in her father’s imagination. Out of his sight, beyond his control, she ceased to be a real person. Deep in her heart, she knew that wasn’t so. Beneath the anger she felt toward him for completely disregarding her wishes for her life, she loved him as only a child who has already lost one parent can love. But she couldn’t dwell on that. She couldn’t think about how much she would miss him or how much pain this would cause him. He’d left her no alternative. Time and again he’d refused to treat her like an adult

That’s what she had to remember, her anger and her frustration. Not her love or her guilt.

“Hungry?” Ash asked. “I seem to recall that you eat like a workhorse coming off a diet”

She decided not to take offense at the comparison. It was unarguably true. Besides, he must recall more than that. She certainly did. The smell and the taste and the touch of him, all of it unavoidably poignant in her memory. Of course, it had been an adventure for her, one more thing she’d never done in her life.

For him, she supposed, it was just another meaningless romp.

“I want a cheeseburger,” she said. “Two all-beef patties, pickles, the works. French fries.”

“I wouldn’t subject a princess to fast food.”

“I don’t think you have a choice,” she said, not allowing her longing to show. If he knew how much she wanted to go into an American hamburger joint, if he knew how many months and years she’d daydreamed about doing just that, he’d never let her out of the car. “It’ll be fast. We need to keep ahead of them.”

Ten minutes later, they sat in a brightly lit hamburger restaurant, sacks of food on the table in front of them. The place was packed with teenagers and families with young children. Real Americans. Melina’s heart fluttered with excitement. Even when her family had lived in the U.S., they’d never visited a fast food restaurant. They’d had a French chef.

“I think we’re overdressed,” she said, smoothing a paper napkin over the lap of her evening dress and doing her best impression of nonchalance. “Although I do seem to have forgotten my shoes in our haste.”

“Black-tie is never in bad taste.”

Melina caught herself in a laugh—he was hard to resist. But she didn’t want to laugh with him, to get caught up in his easy charm again. She turned her attention to her food. She set the paper-wrapped cheeseburger in front of her, placed the little box of French fries beside it, then put a straw into her milk shake. Perfect. She relished the picture it made before she slowly unwrapped the sandwich. It looked just the way it looked on television.

“Quit staring at it as if you’ve never seen one like it before,” Ash said. “You’re the one who wanted to stop here. This is eat and run, remember.”

If he only knew. The closest she’d ever been to a real American cheeseburger was a thirty-five-inch television screen. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. “I savor my food.”

The first bite was heaven. Ground beef and melted cheese and grilled onions and crunchy pickle slices. She closed her eyes and smiled.

“You realize you’re calling attention to yourself,” he said, “acting orgasmic over a cheeseburger.”

She glanced around and realized the only one paying her any attention was Ash. She started to tell him the only person in the entire world who might recognize she looked orgasmic was one Ash Thorndyke. She decided against that reminder.

But for just one moment, she was sufficiently distracted from her food to notice the hands wrapped around his sandwich. His fingers were blunt, the nails clipped with precision. They were clearly strong hands; what was not so apparent was how sensitive those same hands were.

But Melina knew.

To head off any more disturbing memories, she smiled at him brightly. “So, what are you doing here, if you’re not kidnapping me for ransom?”

“Could we have this conversation later?” His gold-flecked eyes narrowed as he darted a glance around the dining area. He looked nervous and off center.

“I’d like to have it now. Explain yourself, please.” She took another rapturous bite.

“I overheard some people at the party. I thought you were in danger.”

Another paranoid man? Melina’s life had been so distorted by her father’s obsessive fear that it was a disappointment to find out that Ash was cut from the same cloth. His fears did not concern her in the least. She swallowed and chased with vanilla shake. “What people? What were you doing at the party? What kind of danger?”

“You don’t sound especially concerned.”

“If I flew apart every time someone worried about me, I’d have three ulcers now. Then I would not be able to enjoy this cheeseburger.”

“You won’t enjoy it anyway if it gets any colder.”

He was right. She ate another bite, dragged two fries through catsup, ate another bite of hamburger. Ash, she noticed, was barely touching his meal.

“What people?” she pressed, determined to ferret out what he was actually up to. “My father’s security people?”

“Yes.”

“You heard my father tell his security people to lock me up and that made you think I was in danger? Don’t you think that’s overreacting?”

“Do they routinely lock you up?”

“You don’t read many fairy tales, do you? Princesses are always locked up.” She feigned casual indifference, finishing her hamburger. Then she started on the fish fillet sandwich and the chocolate milk shake she’d also insisted on sampling. The fish was crispy and the milk shake sweet and thick. She sighed with pleasure. She couldn’t wait for breakfast. Eggs and hash browns, maybe, at a greasy spoon. Then, for lunch, pizza. A meat-lover’s pizza. And for dinner tomorrow, tacos and burritos. Or maybe fried chicken.

Life was good. Very good.

She finished her food. Ash had only picked at his. She’d studied him carefully. Funny what tricks the mind could play with memory in only a few short months. Before, in London, he’d always seemed so worldly, so mature, so versed in life. Tonight, he looked younger, troubled, as if he were adrift in a current he couldn’t navigate. She found she liked him at this disadvantage; it made him seem vulnerable. It made her feel strong.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” she asked.

He looked at her intently, the way he had sometimes after they made love. Rather, after they had sex. Clearly, there had been no lovemaking. That had been her delusion.

“You’re a grown woman,” he said quietly. “Why do you keep running away? Why not just leave? Permanently.”

She had noticed in looking around that average Americans cleaned up after themselves, wadding up their paper wrappers and stuffing everything back into the sacks. She busied herself doing the same.

“What kind of danger?” she asked, to keep him from pursuing his own questions. “What else did you hear?”

He snatched their bags from the table and stood. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I like it here.”

“Well, I don’t. And I have the car keys.”

She smiled. “No, you don’t.”

His eyes grew dark and troubled. “No. I don’t. But neither do you.”

She stood and walked toward the door with him. As they exited, she looked up at him sweetly and said, “I watched what you did when you hot-wired the car. I think I could do it, too.”

He made tiny slits of his eyes and jabbed one of his blunt fingers into her chest. “Don’t even think about it.”

She merely smiled. She liked distressing him. She liked the little sizzle of danger that pinged through her when his fingertip met her chest.

“I mean it, princess. A night in the pokey might sound like a lark, but it could be the least of your problems.”

“Oh?”

“Some people wouldn’t mind shooting a car thief.”

They were walking away from the restaurant, away from the sports car they’d driven up in. “I see. Like horse thieves.”

“Yeah. Like horse thieves.”

“We’re going the wrong way,” she pointed out.

“No, we’re not.”

They made their way to the darkest part of the parking lot, beside a massive discount store.

“Are we shopping for a new car?” she asked.

“You’re sharp, princess.”

“I like that one.” She pointed to another convertible with sleek, sporty lines.

“This time I pick.”

He chose a boring sedan with faded brown paint. It had a canvas bag of knitting in the passenger’s seat and an array of straw hats in the back seat.

“We shouldn’t take her knitting,” Melina said.

“She’ll get it back before she can count the stitches in the next row.”

The car rumbled to life when he hot-wired it, and they headed out of the parking lot.

Melina reached in back for one of the straw hats, a rolled-brim number with an orange-and-lime band. It didn’t fit. “I guess that’s why we’re leaving the other one. So its owner can get it back soon.” She didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm in her voice.

He said nothing.

They drove through the traffic, beyond the neon, into the darkness that soon led them to the coastal highway. Moonlight glittered off the restless Pacific. Melina rolled down the car window to let the sound of the surf break the silence.

“Why’d you have to lie?”

His question came out of nowhere, but she knew what he meant. Why had she pretended to be someone she wasn’t when they’d met in London? She wished she could have seen his eyes when he asked. Was there hurt? Anger? Or just idle curiosity? Melina didn’t know how to answer his question truthfully. Three months ago she would have been happy to confide in Ash. But she knew better than to trust him now.

She decided on another lie. “It was just a game.”

“Who won?”

She didn’t know how to answer that, either. He was the one who’d walked away, so some might call him the winner.

But she knew better. Their...liaison had been much more than a game, and in about six months, she’d have the evidence to prove that. “Why, I did.”

SWEET IDA’S TEAROOM stayed open late that night, to accommodate the Hope Springs high-schoolers finishing up their prom dates. Granted, most of them ended the evening at Confederate Cove with a flask of vodka, a carton of orange juice and steamed-up windows. But Sweet Ida’s was a tradition, too.

Ida Monroe had been staying open late on prom night for longer than any of these young ’uns had been alive and she expected to keep up the tradition as long as she still had anything to say about it.

Ida perched on her stool behind the counter, smiling fondly at the half-dozen youngsters attempting to look and act grown-up. She knew them all by name, remembered each and every one of them in diapers. Ida loved prom night.

There was Honey Lou Weidemann, looking like Scarlet O’Hara about to fall off her platform shoes. And Richie Holcomb, who didn’t know what to do with the tails on his cutaway when he sat. Stacy Tillman, the sheriff’s daughter, elegant as a model. And Winnie Wickerstaff, poured into something that ought to be illegal for underage girls. All of them sipping tea or coffee and nibbling on pastries and giggling over the night’s activities.

Ida was content to sit and watch.

Finally most of the couples paid up and left. She was down to one lingering couple, and preparing to lock up after they left, when the front door of the tearoom opened to admit a couple who weren’t dressed in formal wear. Maddie Sheffer and Leon Betton wore the uniforms of emergency medical technicians. They looked wrung-out.

“Thank goodness you’re still open,” Maddie said. She sounded as worn-out as she looked. “If we don’t get some coffee, they might have to come haul us down to County General.”

“Bad night?” Ida was already pouring the last of her coffee for them.

“Could’ve been worse, I suppose,” Leon said, taking the cup she brought and sprinkling in some sugar. “Didn’t lose anybody.”

“Yet,” Maddie added.

Ida stood beside the third chair at their table. “What happened?”

“Tood Grunkemeier. You know Tood?”

Ida’s breathing grew shallow. “What’s wrong with Tood?”

“Massive heart attack. He’s lucky to be alive.”

Leon shook his head. “He might not make it till morning. Seems sadder, somehow, him not having anybody.”

Maddie rubbed her eyes, a weary gesture. “When we were hooking him up to the heart monitor, he said, ‘Don’t bother. Ain’t nobody going to care one way or another.”’

“That really choked me up,” Leon said.

Ida felt her own heartbeat going haywire on her. She clutched the back of the little white metal chair. The room seemed to swim around her. Tood Grunkemeier, not expected to live.

“Ida, you okay?”

She tried to reply, but the words of reassurance wouldn’t come. Maddie reached for her and guided her into the seat.

“Sorry if we gave you a start.”

Ida nodded, realizing there were tears in her eyes. Tood Grunkemeier lay in a hospital a few miles away, his sad old heart giving out. Thinking nobody cared. What if he died without ever knowing the secret she’d kept all these years?

It was almost more than she could bear.

CHAPTER THREE

“WHERE ARE WE going to sleep?”

Ash hadn’t been thinking of sleeping. He’d been thinking of putting as much distance as possible between him and anyone who might have it in mind to harm Melina. He also had no cash to pay for sleeping anywhere and his credit cards would create a trail leading straight to him—and Melina.

“In the car,” he replied.

“This car?”

“What’s wrong with this car?”

“I get the back seat,” she said.

Figures. “I could look for a van.”

“Something in red, maybe? Brown isn’t my color.”

“Of course not. I wasn’t thinking.”

Now he was. Now he could see the impish quality he’d been drawn to three months earlier for what it really was. She was spoiled, that was all.

“Aren’t you getting sleepy?”

“It’s not even midnight.”

“That’s right. You’re a night owl.”

A spark touched off in him. She’d been a morning person. She’d laughingly suggested they compromise and spend the entire day in bed, getting up from ten at night until ten in the morning to accommodate them both. They’d spent the day in bed, all right, but they hadn’t slept.

“Are we going to get different clothes? Something to sleep in? Something for tomorrow?”

“Of course,” he said.

“When?”

How could a grown woman sound so guileless and so eager? She was good, no question of that. A shame she was so rich; she could be quite a success on stage.

“Soon,” he said brusquely.

But the truth was, he didn’t know where or when or how. He didn’t know what to do with her or who to trust. Worst of all, he was damned if he even knew why any of it mattered. This was her problem, not his.

They passed through a little town that promised to be the last one for quite a few miles. Ash slowed down, studying carefully the narrow, quiet streets, the tidy. little houses with their spring gardens that seemed to speak of trust and safety.

“Are we shopping for a new car again?” she whispered.

He wished she wouldn’t whisper. It stirred him in spite of himself. It reminded him of other whispers, other sighs, other nights alone with her in the dark.

When he didn’t reply, she asked, “Are you casing the joint?”

He was getting grumpier by the minute and he knew it. Her lack of concern for the gravity of their situation wasn’t helping. “You watch too much television.”

“I know.” She sounded pleased with herself.

He was looking for something with legroom, as well as something old enough that it could easily be hot-wired. He found a comfortable-looking van parked in the dark corner of a lot surrounding a stucco condominium. He left the brown sedan in its place and took some satisfaction in knowing that the knitting would be returned to its owner very soon. Ash didn’t like stealing cars; the last one he’d stolen was when he was fifteen, and his father had grounded him for six months. Cars were a necessity and stealing them was for emergency situations only. Bram Thorndyke had been clear on the matter of stolen cars.

Diamonds and rubies, however, were sheer extravagance and therefore fair game.

On the way out of town, Ash spotted a little boutique. He parked in a narrow alley behind the row of pastel-colored shops, hemmed in by a brick wall at the edge of a municipal golf course. “Wait here.”

She was already getting out of the van. “I’m not letting you pick out my clothes.”

He pinned her between the open door and the van.

“Yes, you are.”

She stared at him with those dark eyes and he knew he’d be undone if he didn’t back off. He could almost feel her breath, sweet with chocolate milk shake but no longer cool. Warm. Hot, even. He grew warm himself in the chill northern California night air.

“What if it doesn’t fit?”

“It will fit.”

And that mouth. Soft. Full. Wide. Trouble any way you looked at it.

“What if I hate it?”

“You’ll get over it.”

She looked ready to pout. He supposed that worked a lot when a person was rich and spoiled. “I want to go with you. I’ve never been on a break-and-enter before.”

“And you aren’t coming now.”

“I can help.”

She was wheedling. He was dismayed to find he was susceptible to it. He had to toughen up. “You’ll be in the way. I know what I’m doing. You don’t. It’s too dangerous.”

“Are you a professional criminal?”

“In the car, princess.”

She studied him carefully, but he remained unyielding. She finally relented and backed into the car. As he walked toward the dark back entrance of the shop, she hissed out the window, “Size six. Jeans. I want blue jeans. Boot cut. And sunglasses. Ash, do you hear me?”

He turned and glared at her. “I hear you. Barney Fife hears you. Every neighbor for miles around hears you. Could you please pretend you have some common sense? Just for the next twenty minutes.”

She raised the window and turned away from him, nose in the air. She had the perfect nose for it, too. Narrow, straight, very aristocratic. Along with a very stubborn chin.

Accessing the shop was easy. He did harder jobs every day. But he didn’t like doing it. He wasn’t accustomed to stealing from people who probably couldn’t afford it. He told himself the shop had insurance and the insurance company could certainly afford it. But he also saw the three snapshots taped to the side of the cash register—an attractively plump middle-aged woman and two younger women just past their teens who had to be her daughters. This was who he was robbing, for the sake of a spoiled heiress.

He didn’t like himself.

He loaded two shopping bags. One for him, with a limited selection of unremarkable khakis and polo shirts. Then he started on a second shopping bag. He got jeans, size six. Underwear, cotton and serviceable, size selected by memory. Unwelcome, distracting memory. He selected a very ugly T-shirt with gold sequins in the design of a cat, a flouncy nightshirt in pink and yellow, a floppy-brimmed straw hat and a pair of gaudy sunglasses.

To heck with her if she didn’t like his choices.

He made it out of the shop and back to the red van—its selection had been based purely on availability and had nothing to do with Melina’s color preferences—without incident. Melina took the bags and began rummaging through them as he stuck conscientiously to the speed limit all the way out of the sleeping, unsuspecting town.

“If you’re not a professional, you certainly have an interesting hobby,” Melina said, pulling clothing out of a bag.

The judgment in her tone raised his hackles. “I am not a two-bit thief,” he said, aiming for a tone that wasn’t defensive. He knew he’d failed.

“Aren’t you?”

“No, I certainly am not.”

“You’re right! You’re a very classy thief. This is wonderful. Blue jeans! Movie star sunglasses! A gold-sequined T-shirt! You can steal for me anytime, Ash.”

“You were supposed to hate my choices.”

“That’s because you look at me and see a princess. I’m really just a suburban housewife in disguise.” He heard the click of her seat belt and looked to see her clambering over the seat into the back of the van.

He glanced over at her. “What are you doing?”

“Changing clothes.” She winked at him. “You’re welcome to look, but we’ll probably be better off if you keep your eye on that big truck heading this way.”

He quickly focused front and center. The road ahead was as deserted as it had been moments before. But that was okay. He really had no desire whatsoever to watch her change clothes.

Well, maybe a tiny bit of interest. Idle curiosity. She wasn’t exactly a Baywatch babe. A little on the skinny side, actually. Little-boy hips and lots of rib action. Breasts—

Okay. Eyes and mind on the road.

“If you aren’t a two-bit thief,” she said, her voice momentarily muffled by clothing going over her head, “I don’t suppose you’d like to explain how it is you know how to hot-wire cars and break into clothing stores without even turning a hair.”

He thought of trying to explain his childhood, his upbringing, his family. Not possible. You see, we’ve been thieves and con men for generations. But we only steal from the rich. Probably direct descendants of Robin Hood, don’t you see. With a slight variation. We might steal from the rich, but we definitely do not give to the poor. “No, I would not.”

“Is it a compulsion? An addiction of some kind. I’ll bet they have a twelve-step group for it. You could get help. Lead a normal, productive life.”

“The only way I’m going to lead a normal life is to figure out what to do with you.”

“I’m not your problem, Ash Thorndyke. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” The sound of delighted laughter floated up from the back of the van. “And I am perfectly stunning in my new wardrobe.”

She climbed back into the front seat and Ash noted that she did indeed look stunning. The jeans fit like second skin—had she filled out in the last three months, or was his memory that faulty? The T-shirt looked campy and fun, the 1950s sunglasses went perfectly with her gamine-like grin.

“Mel’s the name,” she said, adopting a familiar midwestern twang.

It was the same voice she’d used in London.

“We’ve met,” he said dryly.

Her enthusiasm wilted. “So we have.”

She lapsed into silence. They drove along the coast until he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. He saw a trail off the highway and followed it to a secluded clearing overlooking the ocean.

“Welcome to the Holiday Inn,” he said gruffly.

She scrambled into the back of the van again, making a little nest of her slightly bedraggled evening gown. For a pampered heiress, she looked not the least perturbed to be preparing for a night on the hard floor of a van in the middle of nowhere. She looked as cheerful as a kid on an adventure.

She’d used that to reel him in before, too.

He yanked off his tie and pitched it onto the floor behind the driver’s seat. The cummerbund followed, then his tuxedo jacket, cuff links, watch and shoes. He contemplated the gym shorts and T-shirt from the boutique and decided there was no way he was disrobing with her in the vehicle.

“Would you roll down the windows?” Her voice had a dreamy quality to it. “So we can hear the surf?”

His first impulse was to say no simply for the sake of saying no. Then he realized there was no good reason to be hard-nosed with her. After all, this had been his decision. Nobody’d said he had to bring her with him. As soon as he’d figured out that the deal he’d agreed to was not what he’d thought, he could’ve walked.

But no. He’d had to play hero. Rescue the woman in jeopardy.

He’d had no idea what he’d been getting himself into.

Thoroughly disgruntled with the way his day had gone, he rolled down the windows so Her Highness could hear the surf, crawled into the back, selected the corner farthest from Melina and stretched out on his back.

“Good night” she whispered.

His reluctant response was gruff.

The full moon spilled in through the front windows. The sound of the surf was mesmerizing, stirring a matching rhythm in his pulse—a little wild, a little fast. And Melina Somerset—his Mel Summersby—lay two feet away.

She was fun to kiss, he remembered that in sharpest detail. She could make him laugh right in the middle of a kiss, then keep right on going without spoiling the rhythm of their lovemaking. She liked to tickle him awake in the mornings when he still had lots of sleeping to do—little tickles, feathery tickles that made him smile.

He’d never laughed and smiled so much in his life as he had those two weeks with her.

And it had all been a lie.

THE OCEAN CALLED to Melina, its sharp scent and steady roar beckoning. She lay curled in the back of the van, head resting on her silky pillow, and thought of slipping out of the van and walking along the rocky shore she’d glimpsed through the trees. Lying here in the dark with no one to talk to wasn’t very relaxing. She kept thinking of her father and his anguish when he discovered she was gone again, and how much worse it would get when he realized he wasn’t going to find her this time. She kept thinking of the new life she was going to make for herself. Her thoughts were a whirlwind of guilt and excitement. And, she had to admit, a little anxiety.

A walk along the coast, surely, would quiet those troublesome thoughts.

She doubted she could get away without waking Ash. Every time she rustled around, his deep breathing stopped and she could almost sense him tensing, waiting to see what she had in mind. He slept like a cat, with one ear alert.

What kind of man could sleep that way? What kind of man knew how to hot-wire cars and break into dress shops?

What kind of man made love to you, then took off in the night without a word of explanation?

Who was Ash Thorndyke, anyway?

That mystery had haunted her for months.

He’d been a mystery from the moment they met. But she’d been naive enough to find that intriguing, alluring, downright exciting.

They met on her first day in London. Despite the constant cold drizzle, Melina had been almost giddy with her freedom. She had managed to elude her father’s people through northern France, then taken the Chunnel to England. Surely in a city the size of London, one could simply vanish.

She had next-to-no money and even less experience. All she possessed was the small valise she’d had at her side when she escaped, containing a few changes of clothes, some toiletries—and her mother’s diamond wedding choker. She was standing at the entrance to the Underground, London’s subway, studying the map that was a confusing maze of colored lines. She had the address of a pawnshop and no clue how to translate the map on the wall.

The voice over her shoulder was friendly and American. “You look like a damsel in distress.”

The voice alone would have been enough to make her fall in love with him instantly. An American. She could barely catch her breath as she turned toward the voice.

“Yes, I guess you could say that’s what I am.”

“Ash Thorndyke.” He’d tipped forward slightly, almost an old-fashioned bow. “At your service.”

His face was kind and his dress impeccable. And his gold-on-green eyes held just a hint of the rogue in them. Oh, yes, she might just be in love. “Mr. Thorndyke, how very kind of you.”

He moved a little closer then, looking over her shoulder at the address she’d written on a slip of paper. He was tall, too. An all-American hero. No doubt about it. Melina’s heart tripped wildly.

“A pawnshop, Miss...?”

Melina opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. Oh, my. What now? The last thing she’d counted on was meeting someone.

Not someone.

Her all-American hero.

How could you be incognito when your all-American hero walked up?

“Mel,” she said. “S-Summersby. Mel Summersby.”

“Mel?”

“Mmm, yes. Melinda, actually. But I’m much more the Mel type, don’t you think?”

His eyes had roamed her up and down. Melina felt the caress of his eyes clear from her toes to the roots of her hair.

“Mel suits you quite well,” he said, smiling. “What doesn’t suit you is a pawnshop, I’m afraid.”

Melina felt herself flush. She lowered her eyes. “Oh. Well, I have this...item. And I’d very much like to be rid of it.” She had to think fast. Wouldn’t do to have him think of her as destitute. “Bad associations, you know.”

“An...item?”

“A bauble, really. It would... It would give me satisfaction to simply be rid of it.”

“Well, then, we’re off to the pawnshop.”

“Oh, really. I couldn’t—”

“Nonsense. I wouldn’t dream of sending you off to such a place on your own.” He took her by the elbow. “But please, allow me to treat us to a taxicab.”

“Oh, no, please. I’d really like to ride the tube. I’ve never ridden the tube, you see. It’s part of the adventure, don’t you think?”

“Adventure is precisely the word I might have chosen, Mel Summersby.”

He’d guided her through the maze of the London underground, teaching her the etiquette of standing to the left on the long, steep escalators so those in a rush could pass on the right. He taught her how to hang on to a pole and plant her feet before the train left the station so she didn’t lurch against others or land on her backside when the train screeched to a halt at the next station. He explained the map to her during the ride and signaled her when it was time to get off.

By the time they reached their destination, Melina was quite hopelessly in love with American Ash Thorndyke.

At his urging, she allowed him to guide her to a different establishment than the one whose name she had been drawn to in the telephone listings. The narrow lane, it turned out, was awash in pawnshops, and Melina felt a thrill at the slightly shabby row of businesses.

She also allowed her new American friend to handle the bartering with the gentleman who operated the place. The negotiations sounded quite civil to Melina, but she could tell that Ash was happier than the elderly shopkeeper when the bargaining was completed.

Melina, too, was quite happy with the neat stack of pound notes he pressed upon her at the end of the transaction.

“Thank you ever so much,” she said. “I would have been hopeless without your help.”

“My pleasure. It would also be my pleasure to have your company for dinner.”

“Oh, that would be lovely. My treat.” She saw him ready to protest. “At a pub. Oh, please say yes. I’ve never been in a pub, you see.”

They found an authentic-looking pub in the neighborhood and ducked in out of the drizzle, which was growing colder still as the sun sank out of sight behind the dingy gray buildings. The bar was dark, infused with the mingled scents of ale and damp umbrellas. They chose a table near the fireplace, where the embers glowed and flickered. He ordered two pints of dark ale and she chose their dinner—shepherd’s pie.

“Tell me this, Mel Summersby,” he said, touching the rim of his mug to hers when the lukewarm ale arrived. “How does it happen that a young woman who’s never ridden the tube or eaten in a pub is running around London alone looking for pawnshops?”

She sniffed the ale and took a tentative sip, buying time. She had the foolish urge to confide in him. He had the face of an honest man, and he had certainly proven himself trustworthy. But she was clearheaded enough to know that she had to be careful. The wrong word from her and she could wind up back with her father, confined to a life that was nothing more than a prison.

Besides, she wanted to know if a man like Ash Thorndyke could possibly like her for herself, and not because she was heiress to one of the world’s largest fortunes. She tamped down the bitter thought that her father would probably attach strings to his will, keeping his ironclad hold on her even from the grave. She would probably inherit only if she took a vow to be a lonely, celibate recluse in Siberia for the rest of her life.

No, she couldn’t tell Ash the truth yet. She wanted nothing to spoil this time, however short it might be.

“I’m a student,” she said. “An American graduate student. I was to visit a...a friend. But when I arrived, things had ... changed.”

“Ah. The friend who made the gift of the item that’s financing our dinner tonight.”

“That’s right.”

She smiled brightly, looking for some sign that he didn’t believe her story. Shadows fell across his golden skin, highlighting his full lips. Raindrops glistened on his slightly rumpled hair. He sat back casually in his seat, loose-limbed and at ease. A man with the confidence to be in command of the world.

She wondered if there was a way to make a man like that fall in love with a woman who knew precious little about the world.

“So I’m on my own, you see. I should probably go home ... to ... Omaha.”

“It seems a shame to go without seeing some of the sights.”

“That’s precisely what I was thinking. Do you ... do you think I can manage it? On my own?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t?”

“I think you need a guide. Someone who knows his way around.”

She longed to believe there was a hint of innuendo in what he said. She tried her best to find an easy, flirty tone. “Where would I find someone like that?”

“I’ll give it some thought while we eat,” he said with a faint smile.

They sat in the soft glow from the fireplace, ate foul-tasting shepherd’s pie and drank a little too much of the dark, bitter ale. He told her about his family back home in the States—a kindly grandfather and an ailing father. Without going into the boring details, he mentioned their investment business, which had brought him to London. And she made up a lovely family, in which she was the oldest of three children living in a large two-story house. Her brother, sister, mother and father looked remarkably like the family in Father Knows Best.

She didn’t make that comparison aloud.

She told him she was studying classical literature in graduate school, the only subject she’d managed to learn much about in the years she’d flitted from one convent school to the next. She confessed that she’d never driven a car before she remembered that revelation might label her as unusual in America.

And when he learned that she didn’t yet have a place to stay, he took her to the home of a friend who operated a bed-and-breakfast out of her home. Mrs. Wentwhistle was a silver-haired lady with a hitch in her walk, and her home was a narrow, three-story Victorian in Parsons Green. It was three flights up to the refurbished attic.

Ash insisted on carrying up her valise for her. “It’s a good thing you’re not staying,” she said as he ducked the sloping ceiling.

He placed her valise in the chair beside the narrow bed tucked beneath a dormer window. “Is it?”

He came back to stand beside her now. He seemed very close. The room was small and he was not.

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible. “It’s sized for me, not you.”

“That’s true.”

He looked down at her, his eyes searching her face. She imagined that he knew all her secrets.

“I’ll join you for breakfast, if that’s okay.”

“That would be lovely.”

He stepped back. “Then, until morning ...”

He was leaving. She thought she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he left without touching her. “You really should kiss me good-night.”

“I should?”

“Oh, yes.”

He stepped in her direction. Their bodies brushed. She felt the heat, caught the scent of him—faintly evergreen, like the cypress trees that had dotted the landscape at her favorite convent the year she’d turned sixteen.

“What kind of kiss?” he asked softly.

“What kind?”

He touched her hair where it trickled against her cheek. “A peck-on-the-cheek kiss? A brush-of-the-lips kiss? A lingering, promise-her-anything kiss?”

She closed her eyes as he spoke, contemplated each alternative, mesmerized by his deep, velvet voice and the images he conjured. “Oh. Well. What about the blistering, ravaging, curl-her-toes kiss? You forgot about that one.”

He chuckled, deep in his chest. “I think, with Mrs. Wentwhistle waiting downstairs, I’d better play it safe.”

Then he drew her into his arms and brushed his lips against hers. His were soft and they tasted of ale. He didn’t let her go.

“That’s really quite unsatisfactory,” she said.

He took her face in both his hands. He whispered against her lips. “I know.”

“You could try the lingering variety.”

“Maybe I should.”

“Oh, yes.”

He pressed his lips to hers again, gentle but insistent. She felt all of him pressed to her, as well. He was lean and hard and his hands cupped her head as he tilted her face to deepen the kiss. His tongue touched hers lightly, the promise of more, just as he had said. Had he not been holding her, Melina felt certain she would have melted right into the floor.

“Will that do until morning?” he murmured.

“Not in the least.”

“Then it must have been satisfactory.”

“Quite.”

She hung over the railing and watched as he circled down the stairs to the attic door. “But I’m holding out for blistering.”

“Let me guess. You’ve never done blistering.”

She smiled. So did he. The air between them crackled.

“You know me too well, Ash Thorndyke.”

“Let me assure you, Melinda Summersby, as your guide to London, you won’t leave for Omaha without experiencing all the city has to offer...”

He had delivered on both his promises—both the spoken one and the one in his kiss. By day, he showed her everything that made London charming, unique and memorable. They toured the Tower, rode double-decker buses, marveled over an exhibit of Queen Victoria’s clothing, cried over Romeo and Juliet at the reconstructed Globe Theatre. The changing of the guard, the tolling of Big Ben, the swarming pigeons at Trafalgar Square.

London by day was a magical adventure.

London by night was every woman’s fantasy of how she should be introduced to the ways of love.

Ash became her first lover and, she had been certain at the time, would be her only lover. He was tender and passionate, considerate and thrilling. He taught her everything only guessed at or dreamed of by a girl raised in convents. Ash Thorndyke was the man she’d been hoping for all her life.

When he left her at Mrs. Wentwhistle’s on their fourteenth night, she perched on her knees and watched from the dormer window as he headed for the tube. She loved his loose, easy walk. She loved everything about him.

“I love you,” she whispered to his retreating figure.

The need to tell him so was becoming an impatient ache. But she knew she couldn’t tell him how she felt until she told him the truth about herself. She made up her mind as he turned the corner. She would tell him tomorrow. Then there would be nothing in the way of their love.

Except that he didn’t come the next day.

When she phoned his hotel, he was gone. Checked out. Only then did she realize she knew nothing about him, not the town he was from, not the name of his family business. Nothing.

Except that he was not the man she’d believed him to be.

He was, instead, a rogue. The kind of man who could cavalierly seduce an innocent woman and walk away with no explanation.

Her heart was broken. Bereft, she was almost grateful when her father’s men found her a day later.

On the hard floor of the van, Melina tried not to dwell on the way she’d felt when they made love, on the way she’d trusted him, on the way he’d betrayed her. What irony that he should be her rescuer.

Rescuer he might be, but he was no hero. He’d proven that and she would do well to remember it.

But she would find a hero. America was full of them. Yes, somewhere in this country she would find the perfect all-American town, and the perfect all-American hero to help raise the baby she now carried. A father for her baby.

And no matter what the biological facts were, Ash Thorndyke would not be that man.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE TWO MEN with military-issue haircuts and nondescript charcoal-gray suits arrived at the rendezvous point forty-five minutes early.

“Thorndyke must be good,” said the one who was built like a prizefighter gone to pot. “Not a peep of a problem at the party.”

“He’s good all right.” That from the one who looked like a college professor, thin and bespectacled. “Oughta be. Runs in the blood.”

“Yeah. What’s his old man in for, anyway?”

The professor studied the tips of his shoes, which were marred by pinpoint specks of dirt. “Counterfeiting. Ran a big real estate flimflam in Chicago, the whole thing backed by play money. Very slick. Hell, the whole family oughta be locked up. They’ve handled more hot ice than the first guys to climb the North Pole.”

“Didn’t nobody climb the North Pole, dumb ass.”

“Yeah, well, you catch my drift.”

They waited, each contemplating how he would spend the money he would receive when the Somerset woman was handed over to the guys at the Tokyo airport. They didn’t know what would happen to her then and it really didn’t matter. They didn’t even know the identity of the nutcase who wanted something to hold over Somerset’s head.

“You still planning to invest your take?” The professor glanced at his watch.

“Gotta plan for retirement.” The boxer tossed a cigarette butt onto the ground and tamped it out with his shoe.

“A waste of good dough, I say. What’s the likelihood either one of us’ll make it to a ripe old age?”

“Like spending it on some bimbo’s a wise use of resources?”

“She ain’t a bimbo,” the professor said, his carefully correct speech falling away as easily as the shine on his shoes. “She’s classy. A dancer.”

The boxer’s chuckle was gravelly. “Yeah, at Tony G’s in the Bronx. Some class.”

“Listen, pal—”

“Aw, never mind. You spend your way, I’ll spend mine. We’re gonna have too much to squabble over.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

At the appointed time, Thorndyke didn’t show. Not a huge cause for alarm. Traffic could account for that.

Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty. Still a no-show.

The professor and his pal exchanged uneasy glances. Neither of them relished the idea of explaining why they didn’t have the woman.

They waited two hours. The professor had used up every profanity he knew and his pal had smoked every cigarette in the pack in his pocket.

The professor spit out one more string of words that his mother would have slapped him silly for using. “He ain’t coming, is he?”

“I think that’s a safe bet.”

“We gotta find him.”

“The hell with him. We gotta find the girl.”

“Then we gotta find him. ’Cause you’re gonna ruin that pretty face of his.”

“That’s right, professor.”

ASH AWOKE the next morning to find the van empty except for her discarded evening gown and the ravaged shopping bags.

He leaped up, head still groggy, eyes gritty, and stumbled out of the van. She’d been helpless enough in London; how could she survive on a busy California highway with unknown enemies on her trail?

She could be dead already, for God’s sake.

He saw her sitting on the rocky cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, legs hugged to her chest, chin on her knees. Wind off the water played with her hair, tossing it around her shoulders. The sun was already high. She wore the funny sunglasses he’d stolen for her, but her feet were bare and the hat dangled from the tips of the fingers curled around her legs.

She looked like a magazine ad for the Eccentric Traveler.

At that moment, he would have followed her anywhere. She was more appealing than he remembered, more of a woman, sensuous without trying. And he was so glad to see her, he could have scooped her into his arms and covered her face in grateful kisses.

He took a moment to remember that this maddening woman was the one who’d first stirred in him the notion of going straight, of settling down and leading a normal life. The whisper of that idea had sent him scurrying for cover. He’d thought that if he ran away from the irresistibly charming American student, the crazy notion would leave him. Instead, the idea had taken hold, kept shaking him to the roots of his hair. And all the time, she’d been deceiving him.

What a joke. The con man conned.

“Do you suppose you could steal me some makeup today?” she said without turning, without moving, without any other indication that she’d been aware of his presence.

“We’re not going to steal anything else today.” His voice was still jagged with unfinished sleep.

“We’re not? How boring. I was growing fond of a life of crime.”

She was thoroughly aggravating.

“We’re not keeping these cars,” he said pointedly. “We’re borrowing them.”

“That’s right. And my jeans? My sunglasses?”

“We’ll let your daddy pay them back.”

She stood in one fluid motion, unfolding with the lazy ease of a cat. Unbidden came the image of the way she moved beneath him, effortless, liquid, like no other woman he’d known. He hadn’t been able to forget her. He hadn’t wanted anyone since.

“I’m never going to see my father again,” she said with quiet intensity.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She strode across the rocks as deftly as a bird on a ledge and faced him defiantly. “I’m not going back there. If that’s your plan, we can part ways right now.”

“I’m not letting you go off on your own.” And why not? he wondered. Wouldn’t that be the simplest thing? The sanest thing?

“You’re not letting me?” He saw her emotions rising, saw her dark eyes go stormy with rage. “Mr. Thorndyke, you’ve got nothing to say about it!”

“You’re in danger. Someone hired me to kidnap you. You think they’re going to let you waltz around the country without—”

“I’m not in danger! And you don’t—What did you say?”

“I said someone hired me to kidnap you.”

She cocked her head to one side—as charmingly as a 1940s screen starlet—and stared at him. “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Now she tossed her head in another classic starlet move. This time the fiery vixen. She couldn’t have done it any better if she’d been personally trained by Bette Davis. “So when do you deliver the goods?”

Ash realized his heart was thumping, his fingertips aching with the urge to sift through her soft, thick hair. He remembered the feel of it with stark clarity. “I...” What had she said? Oh, yeah. Delivering the goods. “I’m not. I... I realized... I thought it was for your own good. That’s the only reason I was in on it.”

“Well, I can certainly understand why you’d think that.”

“They said it was your father’s idea. To keep a closer eye on you.” He thought her gaze hardened at that. “Then I overheard the plan and realized you were in danger. Possibly.” He hesitated. This wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to say to anybody, but it had to be said. “Your father wouldn’t... You just said you don’t want to go back to him. Is there a reason? Would he harm you?”

“That’s so ridiculous it doesn’t even deserve an answer.”

“You’re positive?”

She stalked off, leaving him staring for the moment at the spit and roar of the ocean. His heart raced out of control. He was on the rising edge of an adrenaline surge, the kind that he always rode through one of his capers.

He went after her.

She sat in the open side door of the van, putting on the little canvas shoes he’d brought her. They were red with big yellow silk ribbon, which she’d tied into a remarkable bow.

“You have impeccable taste,” she said, holding up one narrow foot, pointing the toe and striking a pose. She had the legs of a dancer, muscular and taut.

She also had the nerves of the best burglars in the business. He’d just informed her that her life was in danger and that her father might be behind the plan to get rid of her, and she was striking poses and taking playful jabs at his taste. Amazing.

“I used to think I had good taste,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder, princess. Come on. Let’s get another car. We’re too close to home to hang on to this one much longer.”

“And breakfast? I woke up this morning with a hankering—that’s an Americanism, isn’t if—for ham and eggs. With pancakes and syrup. And maybe toast and grape jelly.”

They ditched the van in a wooded area just past a collection of shops, then walked back there for breakfast. Ash ordered a bagel. Melina ordered everything she’d mentioned earlier, along with a large orange juice. She probably weighed all of a hundred and five pounds. Yet she’d outeaten him the night before and now again this morning. She’d done the same thing in London. She ate the same way she soaked up life, like a starving person invited to a banquet.

Why was this happening to him? he wondered. He’d managed, using every bit of willpower he possessed, to walk away from her once. Could he manage it again?

“We need a plan,” he said. That’s it. Focus on logic, on reason. “If you’re sure we can trust him, I suggest we call your father and—”

“Please.” She held up her hand to stop him. “I’d really rather not walk out on my food.”

“Why won’t you at least—”

“Besides, I have a plan.”

“I can hardly wait.”

She smiled. Her lips were sticky with maple syrup. She licked them with obvious relish. The tip of her tongue caught his eye and sent his pulse galloping.

“You’re not paying attention,” she said.

He tried to forget about her sweet lips, her teasing tongue. “Yes, I am.”

She grunted her disbelief. “I was saying I want us to tour the countryside.”

“Tour the—Melina, people want to kidnap you.”

“My father has been telling me that all my life. Maybe it’s even true. But I don’t care.” She dunked a forkful of pancake in syrup, drowning it. “I want to see Hollywood—the big sign, you know. And the desert. Las Vegas—maybe I could be a showgirl, do you think? I’m thin and I have long legs.”

“You’re five-two. You don’t have long legs.” He really didn’t need a conversation about her legs. He remembered them too well as it was.

“I don’t?” She popped the bite of pancake into her mouth and glanced down at her legs. “I always thought I did. Maybe it was being around Mother Aloysius. She was very short, I suppose. Under five feet I always felt statuesque around Mother Aloy-sius.”

“Well, you aren’t. You’re petite. You’re no match for the kind of men who—”

“Okay, forget Las Vegas. But there’s the Grand Canyon. And Texas. Do you suppose I could get a pair of hand-tooled boots? Now, if I had a pair of cowboy boots and a Stetson hat I would certainly be tall enough to—”

“Are you crazy? Look me straight in the eyes and tell me you’re not crazy.” If not, she was at the very least making him crazy. Because he was falling for it—for her, God forbid—all over again.

She paused, put her sweetly pointed chin in her palm and looked at him with dark-fringed eyes. She didn’t need makeup, stolen or otherwise.

“I’m not crazy,” she said. “I’m just making up for lost time.”

“Making up for lost time. You’ve had more advantages than ninety-nine point nine percent of the world and you want more. You are crazy ... and spoiled!”

She tossed her fork into her syrup-logged plate with a dull splat. She stood and snatched her sunglasses and hat off the table. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“That’s for sure! It’s hard to get to know a mirage, Mel.”

Her dark eyes snapped. “If I’m a mirage, what are you? Showing up in my life, disappearing, showing up again and snatching me right out from under the best security money can buy. Traipsing me down the California coast in stolen cars and pilfered—”

He slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the table, took her by the arm and directed her toward the door. “If you’re trying to attract the highway patrol, you’re doing a very good job,” he said between clenched teeth as they exited the restaurant.

She kept silent but snatched her arm out of his grasp. When they were almost out of the parking lot, her gait slowed, and then she came to a complete halt as she stared into the woods.

“Oh, my,” she said.

He followed her gaze. A black-and-silver Harley-Davidson was parked off the path, near a shed.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said.

“Oh, Ash.” She turned her best coaxing gaze on him.

“I know. You’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”

She smiled, all sign of her temper gone. Her emotions were as quick as summer lightning. “What fun.”

The way she said it held all kinds of promise. Not knowing what visions she had in her mind, Ash suddenly had plenty of his own. Her thighs pressed to his hips, her small, pointed breasts nudging his back, her excited breath in his ear.

He heaved an exasperated sigh.

“Just for a few miles,” she said.

“Mel, you don’t understand. People and their Harleys—this is asking for trouble.”

She pushed her sunglasses up and propped them on her head. “Ten miles. Five. Then we can trade it in for the most boring tan sedan you’ve ever seen. And we can make a plan. Whatever kind of plan you want.”

“Then you’ll call your father?”

“Not that plan. But any other plan.”

Ash knew when he was being had. But he simply couldn’t resist her.

He had to push the bike through the woods to another trail that led to the highway to avoid starting its engine close enough to attract the attention of the owner. And he was doing it, he reminded himself and her, on half a bagel and two cups of black coffee.

But when the Harley-Davidson roared to life and Melina curved her lithe body to his and linked her arms around his chest, Ash knew he would have done it a dozen times over, with an army of enraged Hells Angels behind him. They rode for twenty miles before his arousal subsided.

TOM SOMERSET STARED out the window of the room his daughter had vanished from sometime during the night. Mid-morning sun was burning the mist off the Golden Gate Bridge. The bay glistened a glorious blue. It was going to be a beautiful day in the city by the bay.

Tom fought dry heaves.

His daughter was gone. The only thing left in the world that mattered to him had vanished. He’d been through this before. He wasn’t sure he could survive it again. That’s why he’d insisted on bringing her to the United States with him. She hadn’t been out of his sight since his men picked her up in London three months ago. He’d been in hell the entire time they’d searched for her. Because each time she disappeared—and it had happened three times before this—Tom was convinced it was a replay of that day fourteen years ago.

No, he told himself. Not that. She’s run away. That’s all. You know that’s all.

He knew that was all because she’d warned him. The day before, in no uncertain terms, she’d told him he had to allow her to lead a normal life or she would find a way to escape.

This was his fault. The result of his excessive fear. He knew it. And he hated himself for what he’d done to her. But he didn’t know what else to do.

Yes, she’d run away again. That was all.

He turned and looked around the room. Tom didn’t know anything about decor, but he knew it was the kind of room that should have delighted any young woman. The high iron bed was covered with a fluffy rose-colored comforter and ruffled pillows. He could almost see his daughter at the dressing table, her long, dark hair shining in the sunlight that streamed through the bank of wall-to-wall windows. To him, the room looked like something from a fairy tale.

It’s just another prison! Another in a long line of prisons!

Tom closed his eyes against the memory of Melina’s angry accusation the afternoon before. She hadn’t wanted to be here. She’d wanted to go to some museum, had wanted to wander around Haight-Ashbury, for God’s sake. Her eyes had communicated her frustration.

And, as he had done for half her life, Tom Somerset had insisted that he knew what she needed far better than she knew herself.

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