The Heartbreaker Read online

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright

  Dear Reader,

  Fifteen years ago I began writing a story about a psychologist, a marine biologist and a scarlet macaw named Sigmund. That story became my first published novel, Harlequin Temptation #9, Mingled Hearts. A few of you may remember that story. I’ll never forget it. The publication of that book created a magic connection between us that has become more precious to me with each book.

  Over the years you’ve said my stories helped you through your mother’s illness, or entertained you while rocking a fussy baby late at night, or recharged your love for your husband. One of you was confined to a nursing home and my books were your link to the outside world. Knowing that the stories I write have provided a needed escape from the cares that beset us all is worth more to me than diamonds.

  The Heartbreaker marks my fortieth publication for Harlequin, and I think we should celebrate. At my request, stained-glass artist Jodie Ann Littlehorn designed and created “The Embrace,” an actual model of the fictional stained-glass piece created by Beth in this story. During the writing of the book, “The Embrace” hung in my office window, where sunlight streamed through the brilliant colors to light my keyboard. Beth would never sell this work, and neither will I.

  But as a gesture of appreciation, I’m giving it away to one of you. May it kindle the spirit of love in your home as it has in mine. And to all of you, I extend my deepest gratitude for helping me keep that magic connection.

  Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Vicki Lewis Thompson!

  Join us in celebrating the

  exciting, fifteen-year career of one

  of our most popular authors.

  To commemorate the occasion, we’re

  introducing a special offer, available

  only to Temptation readers.

  Please look for details about this

  wonderful opportunity at the end

  of the book.

  In the meantime, be sure to enjoy

  THE HEARTBREAKER.

  We’re sure it will find a special

  place in your heart.

  —The Editors

  Vicki Lewis Thompson THE HEARTBREAKER

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN

  MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  For Jodie Ann Littlehom, whose creativity and friendship inspired this book, and for sisters everywhere, whether united by the serendipity of birth or a recognition of spirit.

  1

  “WELL, PETE, I’ve sent my boy off to see your girl.” Ernie Tremayne lay in the white hospital room alone and listened to the beep of the heart monitor punctuate the rumble of thunder outside. “Too bad I can’t be there to referee, like in the old days.”

  A hell of a referee you were, Ernie, bribing those kids with ice cream if they’d stop arguing. Beth and Alana told me they used to start fights with Mike on purpose, just to get the damned ice cream!

  Ernie chuckled, although it made his chest hurt where they’d opened him up. “Yeah, Mike told me that once, too. I miss those days, Pete. Miss ‘em bad. This heart attack is a hellacious nuisance, but if it helps get those kids talkin’ again, then it’s okay.”

  A nurse walked by and poked her head in the door. “Mr. Tremayne? Visiting hours are...oh, you’re alone.”

  “Yeah. Just talkin’ to myself, Judy.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you? It’s not quite time for your injection yet, but—”

  “You got any cigars on you?”

  She grinned. “Sorry. I smoked my last one an hour ago.”

  “There ain’t nothin’ you can do for me, then. You’d best go tend to some sick folks.”

  “Okay. Buzz the nurses’ station if you need anything. Besides cigars, that is.” With a smile she backed out of the doorway and continued down the hall.

  Ernie wondered what Judy would say if he told her he was talking to his old friend and business partner Pete Nightingale. Probably wasn’t the first time she’d had patients in his particular fix, talking to dead friends and relatives. Of course she probably wouldn’t believe that Pete answered back.

  Ernie figured it was because he’d made contact with Pete during the few seconds he’d spent on the other side while the emergency room docs worked to get his heart beating again. Pete had been real glad to see him, and now they seemed to be able to talk to each other, which was a considerable comfort to Ernie, and he hoped it was the same for Pete.

  Of course Ernie wouldn’t mention any of this to the hospital staff. Sure as the world they’d write Senile on his chart, right next to Heart Disease. So Ernie kept the information strictly to himself. Someday, though, he might tell Beth and Alana.

  THE EVENING DRIVE from Tucson Medical Center to the small town of Bisbee gave Mike Tremayne an hour and a half to consider what he’d say to Beth Nightingale when he saw her. He could start with an apology. Hell, he had a basketful of them to make.

  What a mess he’d created eight years ago, alienating both sisters and ruining what had been the best friendships of his life. Worse than that, his guilt had kept him from spending time with his father. He’d only come home twice since he’d left town the night before he and Alana were to be married. His visits had been short, because like a damned coward, he’d been worried about running into Beth and Alana. For years he’d shortchanged himself and the man he loved most in the world. Although Ernie hadn’t spoken one word of reproach tonight in that sterile, frightening hospital room, Mike was filled with regret for the precious time he’d thrown away.

  As he drove across the desert, storm clouds piled against the dark mountains and fragments of lightning cut through the blackness. The sweep of night sky and the sparse vegetation beneath it contrasted sharply with the jungle environment he’d become used to. But Arizona could be as wild in its way as the Amazon, and he’d always loved these dramatic summer storms. So had Alana, but Beth had cringed with every roll of thunder.

  Beth. He hadn’t seen her in eight years—an eternity. And through those eight years, he’d been plagued with thoughts of what might have been, if he hadn’t run out on her and Alana. Yet even in the depths of the rain forest, thousands of miles away from Beth, he’d sometimes awakened from dreams so vivid he could still taste their forbidden kiss, the kiss that had changed everything....

  THUNDER GROWLED in the distance as Beth opened the back door of her glass studio and hurried inside. Flipping on lights as she went, she passed through the workroom into the gift shop, where rainbow-hued examples of her art hung in the windows and from wrought-iron racks Ernie had made for her in his machine shop. Colby Huxford would arrive any minute. She wished she’d had time to eat dinner, but seeing Ernie at the hospital this afternoon had been more important.

  Her visit to Ernie hadn’t worked out as well as she’d hoped, though. She’d thought he’d be relieved that she’d found somebody to take over manufacturing the glass cutters they’d begun marketing under the Tremayne-Nightingale partnership agreement. Although she and Ernie would have to lease the patent to Handmade, Colby’s Chicago-based company, at least orders would be filled on time.

  But Er
nie hadn’t liked the idea at all. He’d begged her not to lease the patent, promising he’d be out of the hospital and back in his machine shop in a matter of days. She didn’t believe that, much as she wanted to. Leasing the patent to Handmade seemed to be their only option.

  As she surveyed the studio, her glance lingered on the large circle of stained glass that dominated the front display window. Inside the shop the colors lost their brilliance at night, but to anyone standing outside on the sidewalk, the interior lights made the piece glow with passionate intensity. She knew she was tempting Fate to leave it hanging there, but Ernie hadn’t mentioned anything about Mike coming home, and the piece represented her finest work. Fortunately no one had guessed that it also represented the most sinfully glorious moment of her life.

  Mike would guess immediately, but last she heard, he was headed off to guide another botany expedition into the Brazilian rain forest—living his dream. He’d been fascinated with the Amazon jungle ever since he was a kid. She still remembered the mural that had covered one wall of his room with a panorama of parrots, monkeys and jaguars roaming in a lush tropical setting. Mike had loved visits to the zoo and had vowed to see each of those same animals in the wild. But leading scientists into uncharted jungles meant he was often unreachable, and Ernie’s doctors hadn’t been able to contact him after the heart attack.

  Still, it would be just like Mike to appear without notice. Perhaps she should take the stained-glass piece down, at least for the next few days. As she reached for the wooden frame to lift it from the hooks in the ceiling, a rental car pulled up to the curb in front of the studio. Beth abandoned the task as Colby Huxford got out of the car and started across the sidewalk.

  JUST OUTSIDE of Bisbee Mike entered the tunnel that penetrated the Mule Mountains guarding the west entrance into town. Locals called it the Time Tunnel, and as Mike drove through it and looked down on the lights of the former mining town, he wished he really could go back in time, back to that night eight years ago. If he could wipe out the single stupidest thing he’d ever done in his life, everything would be different now.

  The winding, mountainous streets of Bisbee were deserted at nine-thirty on a weeknight as Mike drove the rental car down Main toward Nightingale’s Glass Studio. His father had told him it was called Nightingale’s Daughter, now that Pete was dead, but the business partnership between the studio and Tremayne’s Machine Shop remained intact. Anxiety constricted Mike’s windpipe. He’d faced prowling jaguars and deadly vipers with more composure than this meeting with Beth. He would love to postpone it, but he’d promised his father he would talk to her tonight, before she made some irrevocable decision.

  Apparently a business shark from Chicago wanted to take over the manufacture of the glass cutters that were Beth and Ernie’s latest business venture. Ernie had asked Mike to step in and keep Beth from agreeing to anything. Mike had warned his father that Beth might throw him right back out again.

  “Don’t let her do that,” Ernie had said. “The cutter could make us lots of money. I think this Huxford fellow plans to swindle us out of it.”

  Some white knight he was, Mike thought as he neared the studio. Black sheep was more like it. But he’d try, for his father’s sake, and for Beth’s sake, too. He certainly owed her that much.

  The studio, a brick two-story with a storefront below and living quarters above, sat in a row of nineteenthcentury buildings along Main Street. Mike parked behind a nondescript sedan, no doubt Colby Huxford’s rental. Ernie had said Beth would be meeting Huxford tonight, which was why Ernie had shooed Mike out of the hospital room and told him to get his behind back to Bisbee before it was too late.

  Mike thought it might be eight years too late, but he got out of the car anyway and walked between the two vehicles to reach the curb. On his way he took his first good look at a large circle of stained glass hanging in the window. What he saw stopped him cold.

  He stared at the work, a good thirty inches in diameter, and couldn’t believe the scene created within it. Eight years disappeared in an instant, and his heart began to pound as memories came rushing back...her red silk dress whispering as he pulled her against him, her auburn hair caressing the back of his hand as she tilted her face up to his, her lily-of-the-valley fragrance surrounding him as he leaned close, inhaling her champagne-sweetened breath, touching his lips to hers...

  And now they were captured in a circle of glass hanging in the studio window, frozen in their forbidden embrace.

  Mike closed his eyes. He’d been slightly drunk and in a crazy mood. And that dress...Beth had never worn anything like it. He’d stupidly thought he could kiss her once, just to satisfy his curiosity before he became a married man. After all, he’d known her almost all his life, so what was the harm? But he’d known nothing—until his lips found hers. He could still feel the emotions that ran through him at that moment, the wonder of everything falling into place and the terror of knowing that everything would soon fall apart.

  He’d tried to imagine telling Alana that he couldn’t marry her because he was in love, and had probably always been in love, with her little sister. He simply couldn’t imagine it. Alana had been a substitute mother for Beth ever since their real mother had died when they were five and three. He, of all people, understood the bond between the sisters, and everything in him rebelled at the thought of driving a wedge into that relationship. The simplest solution had been to leave town. Then they could both hate him, which he was pretty sure they did.

  At least he had been sure until now, standing here looking at Beth’s interpretation of that passionate kiss. For one hopeful moment, he imagined she’d put the work in the window as a signal to him. But that couldn’t be. The doctors had spent a week trying to reach him and had caught him just as his float plane was about to leave Manaus. Another twenty-four hours and he’d have been deep in the rain forest, out of touch. Even Ernie hadn’t known he was coming until he’d walked into the hospital room tonight.

  He looked past the stained-glass piece into the studio and saw her standing inside, talking to a skinny guy in a gray suit. Nobody wore suits in Bisbee, so it had to be Huxford. Beth was listening intently, although she’d wrapped her arms around herself in a protective gesture.

  His gut twisted at how beautiful she was. He’d forgotten, or else pushed her so far to the back of his mind it seemed like forgetting. He ran a hand over his day-old beard and wished he could have taken the time to shave and change out of his rumpled khaki shirt and chinos, but his dad had told him to hurry.

  Now that he was here, hurrying didn’t seem as important. He took some time to study her. She wore a longsleeved purple blouse tucked into a flowing, anklelength skirt patterned in purple and blue. The blouse clung to her breasts, and the skirt’s waistband emphasized a figure as slim as he remembered when he’d held her in his arms. Beaded earrings dangled almost to her shoulders. He reacquainted himself with the delicate features and smooth skin that appeared as translucent as the glass she used in her work. She’d kept her hair the same luxurious length, and it rippled down to the middle of her back. The red highlights caught the gleam of the overhead fixtures as she moved behind the sales counter.

  When Mike realized she’d gone after a pen, he swung into action. His appearance would do no good three seconds after she’d signed away the rights to the glass cutter.

  The door to the studio was locked. He rapped on the glass set into the top panel of the door.

  She glanced up, frowning. Then her eyes slowly widened, and her throat moved in a convulsive swallow. She put down the pen and came from behind the counter as if she were a sleepwalker. Huxford must have asked her something, because she turned her head briefly and spoke to him. Then she brought her attention right back to Mike.

  Through the barrier of the glass in the door, he held her gaze. This was no time to look away. As she drew closer, his heart slammed against his ribs. He’d gazed into the eyes of several lovers in eight years and had never had a reaction
like this. He’d forgotten the mesmerizing intensity of those blue eyes. Yet her eyes didn’t sparkle in welcome as they had so long ago. Instead they burned with a cold, deadly fire.

  She twisted the lock and opened the door. “So, you’re here.”

  “I came from TMC.”

  “I was just there this afternoon.” She sounded out of breath. “Ernie didn’t say anything about you coming home.”

  Mike allowed himself a smile. “He didn’t know. Hello, Beth. It’s great to see you again, too. You’re looking terrific, as always.”

  Not even a glimmer of a smile answered his lame attempt at a joke. “What do you want?”

  “World peace.” When she moved to close the door, he added, “and a few moments of your time.”

  “I’m busy.”

  He massaged the back of his neck and sighed. How he longed to walk away. Although her icy response was exactly what he’d expected, it was still ripping him to shreds inside. But he remembered two things—his promise to his father, who was, after all, a partner in this business, and her circle of glass hanging in the front window. He lowered his voice. “Dad told me about Huxford and his offer. You’re not going to sign anything tonight, are you?”

  “That is none of your business. Good night, Michael.”

  He put out a hand to stop her from slamming the door in his face. “My dad’s your business partner, correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I’m his chosen representative, which makes this very much my business.”

  “Ernie sent you, then?”

  “Yes. With a proposal. You owe it to him to listen.”

  Her shoulders slumped and she glanced away. “He shouldn’t be concerned about what happens with the cutter.” When she glanced up, the hardness was gone and anxiety shone from her eyes. “The doctors have warned him about stressing his system with unnecessary worry. He’s supposed to stay calm and get better. Mike, he nearly—”