Worth Dying For (11 page)

Leslie Anne’s eyes widened in horror.

“The broken bones healed within a few months, but my injured brain didn’t heal so quickly.” Tessa spoke with little emotion, as if she were discussing someone other than herself. “I had to relearn how to do almost everything. I could talk, but I often got my words all mixed up. It was almost like being a toddler who had to learn to walk and talk and think. I was practically helpless for a long time.”

“It’s a miracle that your mother recovered,” Dr. Barrett said. “It took over a year of intense physical therapy and several years of psychiatric therapy for her to become a fully functioning person again. She worked long and hard and whenever she even thought of giving up, two things kept her going.” The doctor looked at G.W. “Your grandfather wouldn’t let her give up. Whenever Tessa became frustrated or felt she’d never get better, G.W. would remind her that she had a daughter to raise. And that’s all it took. She’d tell me she had to get well for Leslie Anne.”

Dante turned away, unable to bear watching both Tessa and her daughter in such emotional agony. And to make matters worse, he couldn’t stop thinking about what he feared his sweet Amy had gone through at the hands of a deranged killer. Images of Amy flashed through his mind. Her beautiful face, her glorious smile. And then blood. Blood everywhere. All over Amy’s face. All over Amy’s body…

Tormented by those thoughts, Dante screamed silently, demanding those images to vanish from his mind. But they lingered.

“Leslie Anne, please come back!”

Tessa’s pitiful cry snapped Dante from his anguished thoughts. He turned around just in time to see Leslie Anne fling open the French doors and run out onto the side porch.

“I’ll go after her,” Dr. Barrett said. “I believe she needs to talk to someone who can be objective.”

G.W. slumped down into the nearest chair, bent his head over and hung his hands between his spread knees. Gasping for air, Tessa tossed back her head and balled her hands into tight fists. Acting purely on instinct, Dante rushed across the room, came up behind Tessa and wrapped his arms around her. She tensed, then when he jerked her backward, pressing her against him, her shoulder blades to his chest, she relaxed into him and sighed.

“Don’t hold it all inside,” he whispered in her ear. “Let it go. Let it all go. I’m right here to catch you when you fall.”

As if all she’d been waiting for was his vow to take care of her, Tessa let out a high, shrill keen. The dam burst and tears flooded her eyes, poured down her cheeks and dampened her chin and neck. Dante turned her into his embrace and held her as she wept. The last time a woman had felt so right in his arms, he’d been nineteen and crazy in love with Amy.

Amy was gone and there was nothing he could do for her.

But Tessa was a different matter. She was alive. She was suffering. And if there was anything he could do for her, he would.

G.W. cleared his throat. “Everything’s going to be all right. Leslie Anne will calm down and see reason. She’s a smart girl. She won’t let this business about Nealy change her. Dr. Barrett will see to it. He helped you and he’ll help her.”

Tessa lifted her head from Dante’s shoulder and looked at her father. “I hope you’re right. I know she’s a smart girl, but she’s also a very sensitive sixteen-year-old. Dr. Barrett can help her only if she’ll let him.”

G.W. grunted. “I think I’ll take a walk. Would you like
to come with me, Tessa?” He glared at Dante, who understood the old man was issuing him a warning.

Tessa shook her head. “No, I…I want to talk to Dante. Alone.”

G.W. eyed Dante curiously, as if wanted to ask him something but thought better of it. “Just remember that he’s not a doctor or a lawyer, so whatever you say to him is not privileged information.”

“We’ll be fine, Daddy. Go take your walk,” Tessa said.

G.W. stood up straight and tall, then with one final intimidating glare in Dante’s direction, he left them alone in the parlor.

“He doesn’t like the idea of your being in my arms,” Dante said. “Even if my only motive is to comfort you.”

“I appreciate the comfort, but…” Tessa eased out of Dante’s arms. “Perhaps it would be best if another Dundee agent heads up the investigation.”

Puzzled by her request, Dante stared at her inquisitively. “Why?”

“I’d think that’s obvious.”

“Spell it out for me, will you?”

“All right. My life is a mess. I’ve never fully recovered emotionally from what happened to me seventeen years ago. And now I have to deal with my daughter’s emotional problems. I don’t have anything to give you. The last thing you or any man would want is to become personally involved with me and my crazy, mixed-up life.”

“Should I pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

Shaking her head, she offered him a fragile smile. “It won’t work, you know. The two of us. I’m terribly needy. It would be so easy for me to turn to you, to lean on those
big, broad shoulders. But I don’t want to use you that way because I know it isn’t me you want to help and take care of and protect. It’s Amy. Your Amy. You’ve gotten us all confused, all jumbled up together, in your mind. Maybe in your heart, too.”

“Tessa…”

“I think you should go now, while you still can. Before—” she swallowed a sigh “—before you become too involved.”

“I’m already involved,” he told her. “And yeah, maybe I have gotten you and Amy all jumbled up together up here—” he tapped the side of his head “—and possibly even in here—” he pointed to his heart “—but, lady, you’ve got to know that I can’t walk away from you.”

With tears in her eyes, she laughed softly. “Then heaven help you, Dante Moran, because I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay.”

S
HARON REMOVED
her sunglasses and slipped them into her coat pocket as Tad escorted her to his car, a sleek little silver Chrysler Crossfire. It wasn’t that she knew much about automobiles as a general rule, but since she’d purchased this vehicle as a gift for Tad on his twenty-ninth birthday last year, she was well aware of how much it had cost her—thirty-five thousand dollars. No one except the two of them knew about this special gift or the fact that it was only one of many expensive items she’d given her young lover. If G.W. had any idea that she had been having an on-again-off-again fling with his lady friend’s son, he would blow a gasket. But then G.W. tended to be old-fashioned about such things as women dating younger men. Her brother was such a hypocrite sometimes. It was perfectly all right for him to fool around with Olivia, who was at least a dozen years his junior. And it was totally acceptable for him to supplement Olivia’s income by paying her rent on a lovely waterfront home and giving her a monthly allowance. But God forbid his little sister pay for services rendered by Olivia’s son or any other man.

The moment they settled into the sports car, Tad leaned over and kissed Sharon’s cheek. “I’ve missed you something awful, sugar. I wish you’d taken me with you to Key West. I’ve been bored to tears around here without you.”

“I wasn’t gone that long. Only a few weeks.” She reached over and patted Tad’s smoothly shaven cheek. He was such a pretty thing with his curly auburn hair and dark eyelashes that any woman would envy. “Besides, you know I have friends in Key West who keep me busy and amused.”

“Another man, you mean.” Tad mimicked a sulky pout.

Sharon laughed. “You are adorable when you playact that way, but I’d prefer you save all your talent for the bedroom. That’s where I most appreciate you.”

“You’re cruel, Sharon. Why do you treat me this way when you know I’m mad about you?”

“Pooh. You’ve probably been out with a different young thing every night while I’ve been gone.”

Obviously peeved at her comment, Tad revved the engine, screeched out of the parking area at the airstrip and zoomed up the road. Sharon struggled to put on her safety belt, but finally gave up and just sat back to enjoy the wild ride.

“Who flew you into Fairport?” Tad asked. “One of your millionaire boyfriends?”

Sharon laughed again, but didn’t bother telling Tad that her old friend, Stuart Markham, with whom she’d been staying in Key West, had flown her straight from Florida to Mississippi. The last thing she wanted was to argue with Tad. What she did want was to savor every moment of freedom she had before they reached the Leslie Plantation. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her brother and his family. She did. But she and her brother didn’t get along. Mostly because G.W. had never approved of the way she lived her life. He was eleven years her senior and after their father died, he’d taken it upon himself to act as her domineering parent.

G.W. had married well. You didn’t do better in Fairport, Mississippi, than to marry a Leslie. Of course, giving the
devil his due, her brother had loved Anne Leslie almost beyond reason. Sharon had been twenty when G.W. and Anne married, twenty-two when Tessa was born. And from the very second he’d gotten himself engaged to the older Leslie daughter, G.W. had judged his little sister by an impossible standard. He had wanted her to be a lady. God, she would have suffocated in such rarified air, if she’d tried to please him. Which she hadn’t. Of course, the more he tried to rein her in, the more she’d rebelled.

Marriage and babies weren’t for her. Not when she’d been twenty or thirty or even forty. The thought of belonging to a garden club and the Junior League had bored her, as had most of the suitable young men G.W. paraded through the Leslie Plantation in the hopes she would marry one of them. She had wanted to live life to the fullest, to travel the world, to meet and bed exciting men. And that’s exactly what she’d done. But her big brother hadn’t understood her hunger for an exciting life; and he couldn’t forgive her for being a constant embarrassment to him. She supposed the thing he would really never forgive her for was encouraging a teenage Tessa to spread her wings and fly into the wild, glorious blue yonder. She and the teenage Tessa had been two peas in a pod, more like sisters than aunt and niece. Sharon had introduced Tessa to beer, marijuana and men, not necessarily in that order.

But after Tessa’s so-called accident, the fun-loving girl Sharon had so enjoyed tutoring became a different person. The rebellious hellion that had been the bane of her parents’ existence, matured by a trial of fire, had become the ideal daughter. Dutiful, respectful, dependable. And dull. Poor Tessa. The trauma to her brain had erased more than her memories. It had altered her personality.

To this day, Sharon felt partly responsible for what had happened to her niece. If she hadn’t led Tessa off the straight and narrow, it was possible she wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And she wouldn’t have encountered that monstrous man, Eddie Jay Nealy. Although her sister-in-law, Anne, who’d been a kind and loving lady, had forgiven her, she had never quite forgiven herself. And God knew G.W. hadn’t forgiven her.

While Tad chatted nonstop, about this, that and nothing, Sharon started thinking about Leslie Anne. When Sharon had left Fairport less than a month ago, her great-niece had been little more than a carbon copy of her saintly mother, so it had come as a complete shock when Myrle had phoned her in Key West to say that the little princess had run away from home.

“Have you seen Leslie Anne since they brought her home?” Sharon asked, interrupting Tad midsentence.

“No, but Mother went with G.W. early this morning to meet them when they flew home in a helicopter from somewhere over in Alabama. From what little G.W. told Mother, it seems the girl ran into a bit of trouble and some man tried to rape her in a motel.”

“What?” Had she heard Tad correctly? “Did you say somebody tried to rape Leslie Anne?”

“Those things happen to little girls who run away. You hear about it happening all the time. It’s on the news and in the papers nearly every day. She’s just lucky that one of the agents G.W. hired found her and rescued her before—”

“Agent? What agent?”

“Haven’t you talked to G.W. or Tessa?”

“No, only to Myrle, and she didn’t seem to know much of anything. First she called to tell me to rush home im
mediately because Leslie Anne had run off. Then she called to say that the child had been found and brought home.”

“G.W. hired this high-priced private security and investigation agency to locate Leslie Anne,” Tad explained. “According to Mother, your brother paid a small fortune to bring in four agents to do the job.”

“Does anyone know why Leslie Anne ran away in the first place?”

“I don’t have a clue. G.W. hasn’t told Mother anything. The reason seems to be some major secret. I thought surely you’d know.”

A shudder of uneasiness wound its way up Sharon’s spine. Totally crazy, wildly ridiculous thoughts went through her mind. What would possess a happy, well-adjusted sixteen-year-old to suddenly run away from home?

“I don’t have the slightest idea why she ran away,” Sharon said. “Teenagers do crazy things.”

“Not Leslie Anne.”

No, not Leslie Anne
. And that’s what worried Sharon. “Maybe she got sick and tired of being little Miss Goody Two-Shoes.”

Liar. You know there could be another reason. A more compelling reason. No, it can’t be. It just can’t be
.

There’s no way that sweet kid could have found out the truth about her father, was there? Neither G.W. nor Tessa would have told her. And Sharon knew that she sure as hell hadn’t. And no one else knows, do they? She’d never told a living soul about Tessa being raped. At least as far as she knew she hadn’t. Even when she was zoned out on liquor or occasionally on pills, she wouldn’t have revealed such a heartbreakingly tragic family secret.

When the iron gates guarding the Leslie Plantation came
into view, Sharon tensed. Something instinctive within her balked at coming home. And despite the fact that she loathed this pretentious old house and all it stood for, it was still home because her family—G.W., Tessa and Leslie Anne—was here. As much as she loved traveling and having fun with friends, she had found that as she grew older, family had come to mean a great deal more to her than it had in the past.

If Leslie Anne was in trouble, she would need her aunt Sharon. After all, she wasn’t likely to get any sympathy from G.W. He thought the girl was perfect or at least should be. Maybe her niece had a secret boyfriend and had gotten herself pregnant. If that was the case, Auntie Sharon would find a way to help her. Or maybe the problem was something a lot less serious. Something as silly as she’d failed geometry. First and foremost, G.W. and Tessa expected Leslie Anne to maintain her straight-A average.

Whatever the reason Leslie Anne had run away, it wasn’t because she’d found out the truth about her mother being raped by a maniac. No, no, that wasn’t the reason. It just couldn’t be. There was no way G.W. or Tessa could deal with having to face the past. And there was no way anyone could have found out about Tessa’s horrible ordeal, not after G.W. had done everything in his power to bury all evidence of what had happened.

T
ESSA KNEW
that with just the least bit of encouragement, Dante would kiss her. And even though she longed for that intimacy, she feared losing control. It seemed unreal to her that she could want a man—any man—but that she would yearn to be with a man she barely knew astounded her.

“Don’t shut me out, Tessa,” he said.

“I’m not—”

He gently placed his index finger over her parted lips. “Yes, you are.”

“Not intentionally.”

His finger traced the outline of her lips, then moved across her chin and down her neck. Momentarily lost in the sensual pleasure of his touch, Tessa closed her eyes, then drew in a deep breath and held it until Dante spread his hand out over her throat and cupped her chin.

Her eyelids flew open. Their gazes connected and melded, neither able to look away. “I don’t really understand what’s happening to me,” she admitted, wanting to be completely honest with this man.

“It’s called sexual attraction.” The corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly in a hesitant smile. “You know, it’s that feeling that makes a man and woman want to rip off each other’s clothes and go at each other like a couple of wild animals.”

“I know what it is.” She made an effort to return his smile. “But I’ve never experienced it. Maybe before the…the rape, but not since then.”

“You aren’t saying you haven’t been with a man since—”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. As part of my healing process, I had sex, but…Let’s just say I couldn’t work up very much enthusiasm. I haven’t really wanted someone. Not until now. And it shouldn’t be you.”

“Why shouldn’t it be me?”

He reached for her; she sidestepped him.

“You don’t want me to touch you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “That’s not it. The problem is that I want it too much. And my life is far too complicated right
now for me to deal with a love affair. The first real love affair I’ve ever wanted.”

“Ever? What about before you were raped? You said maybe before then. Why maybe? Either you did or didn’t. It’s my understanding that most women never forget their first lover.”

“I’ve been told that Charlie Sentell was my first lover. At least that’s what he told me,” Tessa said. “But Aunt Sharon swears I was sexually active long before Charlie. She said her guess is that my first time was when I was fifteen and—”

“You’re confusing me with all this Charlie told me and Aunt Sharon says. You talk as if you—” His eyes widened in realization. “My God, you don’t remember, do you? When you woke up in that hospital in Louisiana and didn’t know your own father or remember what had happened to you, it wasn’t just hysterical amnesia, not some temporary loss of memory. You can’t remember anything before that time, can you?”

Tessa clenched her teeth, trying to control her emotions. She didn’t want to think about how she’d felt all those years ago when she had awakened in that hospital ICU and had no memory of who she was or what had happened to her. Terrified didn’t begin to describe how she’d felt.

“I suffered minor brain damage,” Tessa said. “It took endless months for me to relearn how to do almost everything. How to put sentences together so they made sense. How to dress myself and feed myself and even to read and write. Actually, it took me several years to become somewhat normal again.”

“Oh, Tessa, honey…” He socked his right fist into the open palm of his left hand. “Damn, I wish I could have gotten hold of Eddie Jay Nealy. I’d have—”

“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you? About Amy and what he probably did to her.”

“There’s no telling how many young women he raped and tortured and killed. But you somehow survived. Not only survived, but recovered. God, Tessa, you’re living proof that a person can endure anything.”

“Maybe your Amy survived, too. Maybe she’s out there somewhere and has no memory of her past.” Unable to resist the urge to comfort Dante, she ran her hand up and down his arm.

He grabbed her hand and held it over his biceps, then squeezed. “If only that were possible.”

“Why isn’t it possible? I survived. And if my father hadn’t been notified that there was a woman fitting my description in that Louisiana hospital, I might never have discovered my identity. I could be out there somewhere alone, with no memory whatsoever of my past. If it nearly happened to me, it could have happened to Amy.”

Dante slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, his dark eyes boring into her as if he were searching beyond the exterior, seeking something inside her. In her soul.

“Until Helene Marshall survived, you were the only one of Nealy’s victims who was found alive. But I didn’t know anything about you. I didn’t know you even existed because there is no record of your being raped and beaten. Believe me, I’ve done my research over the years, and I’ve done some more since meeting you. There was no other young, blond woman reported raped and beaten around the time of Amy’s disappearance, not anywhere in the South or Southwest. If I hadn’t come to Fairport on this assignment, I’d have never known about you. Your father did a great job of covering up what happened to you.”