Only in
her dreams...
Her
gallant "knight" was a fantasy-or so Anna Tarrant believed. For years,
he had sustained the hunted heiress whenever her nightmarish reality
became too much to bear. Now, about to emerge from hiding to claim her
fortune, Anna encountered her hero once again-this time, in the
flesh....
Though her
cries for help invaded his sleep, Blade Lombard was never convinced Anna
existed until she stood before him: beguilingly beautiful, chillingly
imperiled. Driven by a connection he didn't understand, consumed by a
need only she could fill, Blade was determined to protect his woman-at
any cost....
Sixteen years earlier,
Australia:
Eleven-year-old Anna
Tarrant clung, wet and shivering, to the log that jutted boldly from the
river bank. The brutal strength of the current pinned her against the
thick trunk with such force the breath was pressed from her lungs.
Water swirled and tossed icily around her face, threatening to push into
her nostrils, into her mouth--threatening to fill her up, then drag her
down.
The sound of her name
registered above the pounding rush of the river that usually wound, slow
and shallow, through the contoured hills of the Tarrant estate. Anna's
head jerked up, eyes straining wildly to see beyond the pitch-black
curve of the undercut bank to the night sky, which was thickly studded
with stars and awash with the cold light of a full moon. Violent
shivers made her teeth clack together.
Henry de Rocheford.
Her stepfather.
He reached down, his
hand wavering before her eyes. It was his left hand. She could see the
ancient, heavy gold of her father's signet ring on his finger, almost
read the inscription that went with the distinctive Tarrant crest. Anna
stared at the ring with stark misery, and grief for her father shuddered
through her small, thin body. She intensified her grip on the log,
refusing to reach out to her stepfather. He would let her go.
He would let her be
swept away, pulled down into the dark, strong coils of the river. She
knew that because, when she'd slipped on the muddy bank further upstream
while calling for her missing puppy, Toto, Henry's helping hand had sent
her plunging into the water.
After an eternity of
time, Henry's wavering face and hand were replaced by
another's...William, the gardener. His craggy face was crumpled with
concern, eyes wide with fear, not empty, like Henry's were.
But reaching out to
William was another thing entirely. Anna was afraid to release her grip
on the tree. She was cold, so cold, her fingers numb. She could no
longer feel what she was holding on to. Her mind felt slow, stupid.
She was afraid that if she let go with one hand, her whole body might
let go, and then she would be snatched away. Gone. Like her father.
And now Toto.
She didn't want to
die.
Terror exploded deep
inside her chest, shoved her heart into overdrive and robbed her lungs
of precious oxygen. For a moment she thought she would lose
consciousness, and in an act of sheer panic she squeezed her eyes shut
and reached out in her mind, seeking the magical inner place she'd
found, searching with a sharp-edged desperation for him. Her secret
friend.
Ever since Mama had
married Henry, Anna's secret friend had been there when she needed him,
and now she needed him very, very badly. Anna wasn't sure who or what
he was. She had decided early on that he wasn't an angel, although,
from the shadowy details she'd been able to make out, he was beautiful
enough to be one. There was a hum of energy, of excitement, about him
that just didn't fit with angel's wings. He was probably a knight. Her
knight.
The sound of her name
penetrated the odd, lucid calm that had settled over her. It came
again, more urgent this time, and Anna's lids flickered sleepily. She
felt dazed, disoriented, caught between the dizzying delight of that
inner place and the relentless, numbing power of the river.
William leaned lower,
hanging directly over her, and for a moment Anna thought that he might
tumble into the river, too. His powerful hand wrapped around her
wrist--the heat of it searing--and she realised with a beat of fear just
how cold she had become.
Abruptly she was hauled
up the bank, her body leaden as a puppet's. William was talking to her,
low words of comfort as he stripped off his jacket and wrapped her in
its blissful warmth.
Henry's face loomed.
Fear rocketed through her, and, despite the shattering cold, she went
rigid. She could feel the anger emanating from him like the spill of
cold air from a freezer. She had long since learned to conceal the
'oddness' of her senses, but now the strangeness rose up inside her like
the primitive cry of a hawk.
She tried to speak, but
her vocal chords were as paralysed as the rest of her. In a convulsive
movement she clamped her arms around William's neck and clung to him as
fiercely as she'd clung to the log in the river. He kept hold of her.
As if from a great distance, she heard snatches of Henry's smooth,
creamy voice, the rhythm of it rich and soft. Measured. 'Tried to save
her...as unstable as her mother...needs special care...'
William's voice rumbled
deep in his chest, the word 'hospital' little more than a vibration.
A whispery sob slipped
past the raw tightness binding Anna's throat as she burrowed in against
his burly chest, burying her face in the rough folds of his sweater. If
she was taken to hospital, she would be safe.
For a while.
She needed him.
Seventeen-year-old
Blade Lombard clawed his way out of the dream, breathing hard. For long
moments he was rigid, frozen, disorientation robbing him of the simple
motor skills required to shove himself free of the tangled mess he'd
made of the bed.
Moonlight flooded his
room with ghostly white light, spilled starkly over the collapsed pile
of study books on his desk, the football plunked down in the middle of
his geography project, the state-of-the-art walkman he used to blast his
ears with while he did homework.
With a stifled oath he
catapulted to his feet, strode naked to the window and pushed it wide.
The chill of the hardwood floor was an anchor to reality he desperately
needed as he braced both hands on the sill and leaned out, gulping in
the liquid coolness of the night air. A fitful breeze drifted across
his skin, bringing with it the familiar scents of his mother's roses and
freshly cut lawn, drying the sweat that slicked him from head to toe.
Blade shook his head in
an attempt to clear the lingering sense of urgency, the miasma of
despair, that still clung to him like heavy layers of wet clothing.
Even though he was only
seventeen, he was already over six feet tall and broad in the
shoulders. If he woke up sweating and shaking it should have been from
a wet dream, not... His jaw clenched. Not because a child called out
to him somewhere inside his head. Not because he could see the dark
swirl of the water trying to drag her down, know that she was cold,
intensely cold, and afraid.
Damn it, if she really
did exist outside of his dreams he didn't know what he could do to
help. He didn't know where she was, or even who she was.
He was beginning to
wonder who he was.
All he knew for sure
was that the child had been haunting him for the past year, and that she
was alone, so alone he could taste it.
Pushing away from the
window, Blade quartered the room in a silent prowl, not wanting to rouse
his brothers who had rooms either side of his, but too wound up to sleep
again just yet.
Oh yeah, there was one
other thing he knew for sure, he thought grimly. If he ever told anyone
he heard voices inside his head, that the little girl had become so real
to him that he was worried about her, they wouldn't just think he was
crazy, they would know it.
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