Susan Napier is a former journalist and scriptwriter who turned to writing romantic fiction after her two sons were born. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand with her journalist husband, who generously provides the ongoing inspiration for her fictional heroes, and two temperamental cats whose curious paws contribute the occasional typographical error when they join her at the keyboard. Born on St Valentine’s Day, Susan feels that it was her destiny to write romances and, having written over thirty books for Mills & Boon, still loves the challenges of working within the genre. She likes writing traditional tales with a twist, and believes that to keep romance alive you have to keep the faith – to believe in love. Not just in the romantic kind of love that pervades her books, but in the everyday, caring-and-sharing kind of love that builds enduring relationships. Susan’s extended family is scattered over the globe, which is fortunate as she enjoys travelling and seeking out new experiences to fuel her flights of imagination.
Susan loves to hear from readers and can be contacted by e-mail through the website at www. harlequinpresents.com
Vendetta
by
Susan Napier
CHAPTER ONE
THE time had come.
Ten years…
For ten years he had looked forward to this moment with a savage anticipation that had blotted out all lesser ambitions. He had forced himself to watch, to wait, to plan, to carry on with the rest of his life as if revenge had not become the pivot of his existence.
Of course, outside the waiting, the plotting, he had gone through all the right motions, maintaining the fiction of Christian forgiveness…smiling, talking, moving, interacting with those around him, accepting their praise for his achievements, cultivating their admiration and envy, consolidating his wealth. But none of it had had any meaning, any reality for him.
The admiration, the envy, the wealth were necessary only as a source of power. The power to see justice done. The power to punish…
He pressed his right hand on the hard, highly polished surface of his desk, watching the faint mist of heat from his skin bloom across the cool, dark surface between his splayed fingers. A heavy gold ring engraved with an entwined briar and snake on the flat shield flashed in the firelight, the only source of light in the coldly elegant room, as he turned his hand over and stared at the bold tracery of life-lines on his palm. They mocked him with their energy. He had had such grand hopes of life until she had come along and casually crushed them.
But now the long, bitter years of waiting were over. He finally had her exactly where he wanted her…in the palm of his powerful hand. And the timing was perfect. She thought that she was safe. She thought that she had got away with it, that everyone had forgotten her crime. Soon, very soon, she would learn differently. There was no statute of limitations on murder.
He curled his fingers inward to form a brutal fist. All he had to do now was close the trap and watch her futile struggles to free herself. She would probably weep and cry innocence, or bluster and threaten, or, better still, cringe and beg for his entertainment. Then he would strip away her pride and her self-respect and stand witness to the death, one by one, of all her hopes and dreams. It was an image that he treasured in the depths of his embittered soul.
He picked up the squat crystal glass next to his hand and took a long swallow of potent, twelve-year-old Scotch. The raw, smoky bite at the back of his throat was pleasurable, but it was no match for the intoxicating taste of revenge that was flooding his senses. For the first time in a decade, he felt almost whole again.
The time had come…
CHAPTER TWO
VIVIAN took the last two steps in one grateful stride and then paused for breath, forcing herself to look back down the narrow staircase that was chipped out of the rocky face of the cliff.
In spite of the fact it was a cold and blustery day, typical of New Zealand’s autumn, sweat was trickling down her torso inside her cream blouse and her palm had felt appallingly slippery on the single, stout wooden rail that had been the only barrier between her and the rock-strewn, sea-green oblivion below.
She shuddered faintly as she watched the two men far below, unloading the cargo from the hold of the squat little ferry-boat.
Reaction hit and Vivian swallowed, her dry mouth suddenly thick with moisture. Her legs felt like jelly and she swayed, fighting the urge to sink weakly to the ground.
She pressed a hand to her abdomen, trying to control the unpleasant churning feeling as she turned away and followed the sharply rising, stony path up through the low, scrubby trees. She had to get a grip on herself before she reached her destination. She smoothed down her neat dark green skirt and adjusted the matching blazer as she went, nervously switching the soft-sided leather satchel from one sweaty hand to the other as she tried to calm herself by projecting a mental aura of professionalism.
She had a reputation to uphold. She was here as a representative of Marvel-Mitchell Realties to close a vital property deal. A lot was depending on her. It wasn’t just the money, but the future happiness of people that she loved that was at stake.
It hadn’t helped that what she had been told was a forty-minute journey from the north-east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula to the island had actually taken over an hour and a half in very choppy seas. After a rushed three-hour drive from Auckland last evening, and an anxious, wakeful night in an uncomfortable motel bed, her close encounter with the Pacific Ocean had not been pleasant.
Since her destination was the private island of a millionaire, Vivian had naïvely expected a luxury launch or hydrofoil to be her mode of transport, not the ugly old tub that she had been directed to at Port Charles. She had also expected the island to be a lush private sanctuary, with beautiful white-sand beaches and flourishing vegetation, rather than a wind-swept, surf-lashed rock in the middle of nowhere. Although the name should have given her a clue, she thought wryly.
Nowhere. She had thought it quaint; now she realised it had been highly descriptive!
What kind of man would drag someone out all this way to conclude a business deal that would have been better, and more safely handled in a city office? Unfortunately, she thought she knew exactly: a man bent on causing trouble. A machiavellian man who would not be appeased by an easy victory. If she was to thwart any of his aims she would have to play his game first.
Vivian came through a small, wind-mutilated grove of low-growing trees and halted, her mouth falling open in shock.
Across a small ridge, perched on a flat tongue of land at the end of a rocky promontory, was a lighthouse. If she hadn’t been so busy hanging miserably over the rail of the boat, wondering whether to cast up her rushed motel breakfast into the sea, she would have seen the tall white tower as they approached the island.
She lifted bleak eyes from the wide concrete base, up, up past the vertical line of four tiny windows to stare at the open balcony just below the diamond-shaped glass panes that housed the light. How many stairs to get to the top of that?
Her appalled gaze sank back down again and settled
