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Chapter One
Christiana Montgomery Mathison put her hand in the tub of water to check the temperature and then began to disrobe. It was going to feel good to bathe after a day of hard riding and hours of sitting huddled over a desk writing. She had her story finished now and tomorrow she’d start the arduous journey back home.
When she was nude, she realized that she didn’t have her dressing gown and went to the big double-doored wardrobe to get it.
When she opened the right hand door, her heart seemed to skip a beat, for there was a man standing inside the cabinet, his eyes wide, his mouth open as he looked at Chris’s pretty little body in its unclad state. Chris, alert from years as a reporter, slammed the door shut and turned the key in the lock. Softly, obviously not wanting to be discovered, the man began to pound on the inside of the cabinet door. Chris had one foot toward the bed where she planned to take the spread off and cover herself, but then things happened too quickly for her to react.
The left side of the wardrobe opened behind her and out stepped another man, and he had her in his arms before she could even take a breath or see his face. Her face was buried in his chest, his arms around the back of her, one hand on her bare shoulders, the other resting just above the curve of her buttocks.
“Who are you? What do you want?” she asked and was appalled at the fear in her voice. The man was large and she knew she’d have no chance of success if she tried to escape him. “If it’s money you want—” she began but his arms tightened on her and she didn’t finish the sentence.
His left hand began to stroke her hair as it hung halfway down her back, gently tangling his fingers in its soft blondness, and even through her fear she found herself relaxing somewhat. She managed to turn her head sideways so she could breathe more easily, but he didn’t allow her to move the rest of her body as he kept her pinned close and intimately to him.
“Let me out of here,” hissed the man locked in the wardrobe.
The man holding Chris didn’t react, he just kept stroking her hair, his right hand inching down her back toward her buttocks. She’d never had a man touch her bare skin before and his rough, calloused hands felt good.
She recovered herself and began to struggle against him, trying to get free, but he held her firmly, not hurting her, but showing no signs that he ever intended to release her.
“Who are you?” she repeated. “Tell me what you want and I’ll see if I can get it for you. I don’t have much money, but I do have a bracelet that’s worth something. Release me and I’ll get it.” When she again tried to move, he held her fast.
With a sigh of frustration, she relaxed against him again. “If you plan to take me by force, I warn you that I’ll put up a struggle such as you’ve never seen before. I’ll take some of your skin to replace what you take from me.” She tried to twist her head to look up at him but he didn’t allow her to see his face. Am I saying the wrong thing? she thought, wondering if what she’d just said were words that were inflammatory to a…a rapist, she finally said the word to herself. In spite of her brave words, she began to shiver and his arms tightened around her in a way that, had the circumstances been different, Chris might have found protective.
“We’ve come from your father,” he said in a voice that Chris felt through her cheek. It was a very deep, very rich voice. “There are two of us and we’ve come to take you home.”
“Yes, I’m ready to go home. But first I have to—”
“Ssssh,” he whispered, snuggling her against him as if they were lovers and familiar with each other’s bodies. “You have to go home now whether you want to or not,” he said, obviously not listening to her. “You can fight it out with your father later, but now we take you home to him. Do you understand?”
“But there’s a story that I—”
“Chris,” he said and the way he said her name made her try to look up at him, but he still wouldn’t allow her to see his face. “Chris, you have to return to your father. I’m going to release you and I want you to get dressed, then I’ll let Prescott out of the wardrobe. I’ll meet you outside with the horses. Pack only what you’ll need for the trip. We’ll be going through the rain forest and it’ll take a few days so take rain gear if you have it.”
“Through the rain forest! But no one can travel through that.”
“There’s a way and I know how. Don’t worry your lovely little self about that, just get ready to leave.”
“I have to take my story to John Anderson,” Chris said. She didn’t seem to be in all that much of a hurry to move away from him and sometime during the past few minutes, her hands had moved to his waist. She wasn’t exactly hugging him but she wasn’t pushing him away either.
“Who is John Anderson?”
“My friend and the editor of a newspaper. He’s the one who first suspected Hugh of selling rifles to the Indians.”
He moved his head so that his face was buried in her hair and she could have sworn she felt his lips against her scalp. “We’ll talk about that later, but now we have to go. We’ve taken too long as it is. You’ll have to get dressed so we can leave.”
Chris waited, but he just held her, his hand now stroking gently across her shoulder blades. “Are you going to release me or not?”
“You aren’t cold, are you?”
“I am not in the least cold. What I am is being kidnapped by a man who may or may not be from my father, but knowing him, you probably are, and I am standing here in my birthday suit being smothered by a man I’ve never even seen, much less been introduced to. Now, will you please let me go so I can put on some clothes?”
“Yes,” he said in that voice of his, but he made no effort to release her.
Chris made a sound that was half a cry of rage and half a scream of protest.
“If you hurt her, Tynan, you’ll answer to me,” came the voice of the man in the wardrobe who had been surprisingly quiet for the last several minutes.
The man called Tynan held her for a few more minutes, then with what seemed to be a heartfelt sigh, he released her and turned away toward her bureau all in one motion.
