The Perfect Kiss (15 page)

That got Zach’s attention. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “What the hell do you mean, she didn’t show up?”

“Just what I said!” Hawthorne moaned. “We’ve been waiting for hours. The crew is being paid double time, Julian Sindel is storming around the studio, and Roland Sutton’s fit to be tied. He’s threatening to call Mr. Christopher…William Christopher…your father,” Hawthorne finished lamely. “This campaign is
my
responsibility. You put me in charge. This was my big chance and now this! I could lose my job—”

“You won’t lose your job unless I say you lose your job,” Zach snapped. “Dismiss the crew. Try to smooth Julian’s feathers, and tell Roland Sutton—hell, tell him I’ll deal with him in the morning.”

“What are you going to do?”

Good question, Zach thought, reaching for his clothes. A premonition of dread swept over him. Something had happened. Something had happened to Anya.

Fighting back a surge of panic, Zach hurriedly dressed and was out the door in less than five minutes.

* * *

By morning, all hell had broken loose.

Someone had leaked last night’s fiasco to the press, and the switchboard was going crazy. Panicky stockholders, irate board members, and bloodthirsty reporters were all on the scent of a new scandal. Renee Alexander’s new CEO and his brilliant publicity campaign for Seduction were going down in flames and everyone wanted to be present for the postmortem.

Zach yanked off his tie and flung it across the office. When the phone rang, he jerked up the receiver and thundered, “I said hold all calls!”

“I thought I’d better warn you,” Edna said in a low voice. “Your father’s on his way in.”

Before Zach could hang up the phone, William Christopher flung open the door, then slammed it shut behind
him. The two men eyed each other with open hostility. Zach thought fleetingly how strange it was that he should be the one standing behind the desk this time, in the power position.

However, William Christopher didn’t look the least bit daunted. His dark eyes blazed with fury as he walked across the room, not bothering to support himself with the ebony cane he carried. With his neatly groomed white hair and impeccable dark suit, he looked anything but a man in his last death throes.

“Forty million dollars,” William growled, taking up a position directly across the desk from Zach. His spotted hands flattened against the marble surface. “Forty million dollars! That’s how much this campaign’s costing us. You tell me how the hell this company can sustain such a loss.”

“How’d you find out?” Zach asked, striving for control as he seated himself behind the desk. He glanced up at his father. “No, let me guess. Roland Sutton called you.”

“You’re damned right he called me,” William raged. “He’s the only one in this company who’s seen fit to keep me informed. You’ve certainly never bothered. You wouldn’t come to me if you were down to your last penny. Which is where Renee Alexander may be heading, thanks to this brilliant scheme of yours.”

“You’re exaggerating as usual,” Zach said, feeling his anger surge in spite of his best efforts. “The entire campaign isn’t lost. We can salvage—”

“You can salvage! How? The campaign is designed in layers, Sutton said. Each picture tells a continuing story. I understand that was your idea, as well, along with hiring only one model for the entire campaign. An unreliable model at that. Now she’s up and run off, and without the final installment, the whole campaign is worthless. Forty
million dollars,” he repeated, “down the tubes because of your incompetence.”

“
My
incompetence?” Zach was standing again, leaning across the desk, eye to eye with his father. “This company was in trouble long before I came here because of your complacency—”

“
Complacency!
You call a conservative approach to business complacency. I call it common sense. I call it surviving the long haul. You always did think you had to set the world on fire to be a success.”

“And you always thought I had to play by your rules in order to win,” Zach countered.

By now they were shouting at each other, glaring at one another with years and years of pent-up anger and resentment.

“Just once, I’d like to hear you take responsibility for your actions, Zachary. Just once, I’d like you to come to me and admit you made a mistake. I’d like you to tell me that maybe, just maybe, I was right about something. The best thing you can do now is clear out of here and let me start cleaning up this mess.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Zach said with a calmness that surprised him. He looked at his father, saw behind the blustering facade to a faded old man who, in essence,
had
lost everything. William Christopher lived in an antiseptic world with an antiseptic wife. They lived a squeaky-clean life with no pain, no feeling, no threat of any kind. Since Matthew had died, they’d closed themselves off from emotion, which meant closing themselves off from their one remaining son, a son who had never been willing to play by their rules.

But in a way, Zach
had
played by their rules this time. He’d allowed them to shut him out. He’d closed off his
own feelings because facing up to his parents’ indifference would have meant facing up to his own guilt.

As he faced his father, Zach felt only pity for William Christopher. Pity and a small tinge of regret for what they might have been to each other.

It was a transient concern, however, one that would have to be sorted out later if he chose to do so. Both of them, father and son, had swept their emotions under the rug for far too long to simply start anew, especially in the face of such a potential business disaster. Right now, Zach had more pressing issues to worry about.

Anya had disappeared. When he’d gone to her house last night, it had looked abandoned, clearly deserted. She’d left him high and dry, knowing full well her actions could mean his ruin.

But it wasn’t over yet. Far from it. Somehow, he’d find her. Somehow, he’d bring her back here and make her finish what they’d started. Somehow, everything would turn out all right because he wasn’t about to spend the rest of
his
life thinking about what might have been.

“Are you even listening to me?” William shouted.

“No, not anymore,” Zach said as he headed for the door. “I’m tired of listening.”

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Zach turned and stared at his father for a moment. “You can stand here ranting and raving and blaming me for every disaster that’s ever befallen this family if that makes you feel better, but right now I don’t have time to listen. I have a company to run.”

Zach slammed the door on his father, and strode past a shocked Edna without a word.

Thirty minutes later Zach was back in his apartment, poring over the hundreds of newspaper clippings and magazine articles on Anya. He picked up a dozen or so scraps
of paper, letting her image slip through his fingers as he rummaged for a particular article. Toward the bottom of the stack, he found it.

It was a clipping from a small-town newspaper in Maine, a place called Towering Oaks, and the headline read Granddaughter Claims Inheritance. There wasn’t a picture this time, just a small, gossipy blurb in the tradition of smalltown papers about Anya’s grandmother having died a few months earlier, and about Anya returning from Europe to occupy the house her grandmother had willed to her.

There wasn’t even a mention of Anya’s notoriety as a supermodel, or her disappearance from the public eye. It was as though, to the citizens of Towering Oaks, her status as Cora Johnson’s beloved granddaughter was the really important aspect of Anya’s life.

The article ended with an obscure suggestion that because of Anya’s bereavement, her privacy should be respected. The byline read L. Traymore.

A friend of Anya’s? Zach wondered. The last sentence sounded strange to him, as though the carefully worded caution contained a deeper meaning. It sounded more like a warning, as though the writer sought to protect Anya from the outside world.

Had she returned to Towering Oaks again? The community had protected her once before when she’d retreated from the world. Had she gone back there now, to be protected from Zach?

It was a grim thought, this notion that Anya was so afraid of him she’d break their contract, risk ruining her reputation—and his—to avoid him. Why couldn’t she trust him? Why couldn’t she have talked to him? Why jeopardize everything? Why make him look like a complete fool?

Because that’s what you are.

He’d been warned all along about the rashness of relying
on only one model, of planning the whole campaign around a woman who had walked out on her responsibilities once before. But he’d believed in her. He’d had faith in her. He’d trusted her, and that was what hurt the most.

Zach let his anger override his concern for her as he hastily packed a bag and slung it into his car. She wouldn’t get away with this. She wouldn’t get away with ruining everything he’d worked so hard to achieve—not without a damned good explanation.

And if it was the last thing he did, he was going to hear that explanation from her own lips….

* * *

It was well after sunset by the time Zach drove into the little hamlet on the coast of Maine, having finally located it on a map he’d bought at a gas station. In the gathering twilight, Towering Oaks appeared to be a dismal town with a few antique buildings littering the main thoroughfare. The streets were swathed with mist from the sea, and the windows and doors of the businesses were all dark and tightly bolted against the coming night.

Rain drizzled from the bleak sky, streaking the dust on Zach’s windshield. He cursed at what seemed yet another barrier to his search.

There was no one in sight to ask directions, and within moments, Zach had left the town behind and was heading into a countryside so bleak and barren, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise up in alarm.

He started to turn around and go back, intending to beat on doors until he found someone willing to tell him how to find Anya’s house. But then the road narrowed to one lane, and the shoulders gave way to steep drop-offs on either side. Zach continued on, trying to find a place where he could safely turn the car.

Drifting like ghosts across the road, clouds of fog curled
and thickened in the headlights. The mist played hell with visibility. Zach leaned forward, peering through darkness.

Suddenly, the headlights parted the clouds, and he thought he saw something move in the road ahead, something huge and dark and…alive.

Zach slowed, straining to see through the curtain of haze. What the hell was it? His imagination? He was just about to chide himself for the hallucination when the mist parted again.

“What the hell—”

The thing rushed at him out of nowhere. He stared in disbelief as the shadow materialized into the shape of a huge black dog. It leaped straight out of his nightmares toward him. Stunned by the quickness, Zach impulsively hit the brakes, then felt the tires spin on wet pavement.

He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles burned. In the instant before the Viper’s rear tires started slipping off the pavement, a dozen impressions raced through Zach’s mind: gleaming, bared fangs; glowing red eyes; a gaping mouth moving in for the kill.

And then nothing. The dog seemed to vanish into thin air.

The car went into a full-fledged skid. Swearing profusely, Zach fought the wheel for control, but it spun uselessly in his hands. Within seconds he found himself heading straight down an embankment at a dizzying speed…directly toward one of the giant oak trees.

It was like being trapped on a carnival ride, Zach thought fleetingly, as he jerked the wheel under control just in time to miss the first tree. But another one was coming up fast. A string of expletives flowed from Zach’s mouth as the car bumped along toward an inevitable collision. Zach pumped the brakes, but they seemed worthless on the treacherous hillside.

And then the shadow moved again, just in front of him. The dog spun, and glared into Zach’s headlights, almost as though willing the car toward the tree. Red eyes glowed. Razor-sharp teeth gleamed. For an instant, for one brief second, Zach had the impossible notion that the dog had suddenly turned into a man.

Then Zach had no time to do anything but gasp another black curse as the car smashed into the tree.

The impact propelled him forward with such force that the breath shot out of his lungs. If not for the seat belt digging into his shoulder and stomach, Zach would have gone sailing straight through the windshield. As it was, his head snapped to the side and banged against the window. Pain exploded inside him. His ears popped like a cannon. A dizzying display of fireworks erupted behind his eyes.

Then everything was absolutely silent, excruciatingly still.

Just before the lights in his head turned completely black, Zach could have sworn he heard the dog baying somewhere outside the car. The bestial cry reminded him strangely of…laughter.

CHAPTER TEN

A
nya!

The wind seemed to sigh her name as Anya stood on her balcony, gazing into the darkness. No other impression came to her at first, just that, her name repeated over and over in her mind in silent entreaty.

Mist rolled over the countryside, giving the enormous oaks guarding the house a strange and surrealistic movement. Wind ripped through the branches, animating the giant limbs. Clouds raced in the sky. The night seemed alive with unspeakable dangers. Anya felt frightened, and she shouldn’t have been. He wouldn’t follow her here. He wouldn’t come to her.

Then why the nerves? Why the premonition?

Anya paused, still and silent, as she opened her senses to the night, letting the wind bring to her the nuances of the countryside. There was nothing unusual to be seen or heard. A few dead leaves blew across the yard. A loose shutter rattled against a window. Nothing unusual in that. Nothing extraordinary seemed to be about.

What was it then? Anya thought with growing unease. What was wrong with her?