Night Child Read online

  * * *

  Part of Ann Major's thrilling

  CHILDREN OF DESTINY Trilogy!

  The Bedroom Was Wrapped In total Darkness...

  ... and he was darkness, too. For the first time in Dawn's life, she was unafraid, because Kirk was with her, because she was discovering that there was a beauty in darkness that could never be found anywhere else, a beauty in touching, a beauty in listening to the hushed wordless sounds of love, a beauty in the closeness of two bodies coming together.

  Never had she been handled with such exquisite tenderness as she was by this hard, yet gentle, man.

  "Kirk," she whispered. "I—I don't know how."

  His fingers slid across her skin, barely touching her, yet arousing her until she was breathless. His lips caressed her throat, letting the sensuality that existed between them say what was so difficult to put into words. "Honey... Honey..." he whispered. "You were born knowing. You were made for this. I don't know how I'll ever get enough of you."

  After a lifetime without love, she had found it. Only to know that it couldn't last.

  He was the wrong man.

  She was the wrong woman.

  But neither of them would ever want another....

  * * *

  Dear Reader:

  Welcome! You hold in your hand a Silhouette Desire—your ticket to a whole new world of reading pleasure.

  A Silhouette Desire is a sensuous, contemporary romance about passions, problems and the ultimate power of love. It is about today's woman— intelligent, successful, giving—but it is also the story of a romance between two people who are strong enough to follow their own individual paths, yet strong enough to compromise, as well.

  These books are written by, for and about every woman that you are—wife, mother, sister, lover, daughter, career woman. A Silhouette Desire heroine must face the same challenges, achieve the same successes, m her story as you do in your own life.

  The Silhouette reader is not afraid to enjoy herself. She knows when to take things seriously and when to indulge in a fantasy world. With six books a month, Silhouette Desire strives to meet her many moods, but each book is always a compelling love story.

  For more details write to:

  Jane Nicholls

  Silhouette Books

  PO Box 236

  Thornton Road

  Croydon

  Surrey

  CR9 3RU

  * * *

  * * *

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names, They are not even distantly inspired by an individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All rights reserved The text of this publication or my part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 1989

  by Silhouette Books, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road

  ,

  Richmond, Surrey TW91SR

  @ Ann Major 1988

  Silhouette, Silhouette Desire and Colophon are Trade Marks of Harlequin Enterprises B,V.

  ISBN 0 373 57545 9

  22-8904 Made and printed in Great Britain

  * * *

  To Diane Gafford—

  for being one of the most

  beautiful people I've ever known.

  A Note from Ann Major:

  What matters to me are the cherished people in my life—most of all my husband and my three children. When I conceived my Children of Destiny Trilogy, the thoughts of family and love were uppermost in my mind.

  I was born and raised in South Texas, and I've always loved our vast, desolate lands that seem to stretch forever beneath blue skies. I grew up on stories of the legendary men who carved dynastic empires out of desert, men who fought Indians and bandits.

  Passion's Child, Destiny's Child and Night Child tell the stories of the Jacksons and MacKays, two such pioneer ranching families whose lives were intertwined for one hundred years by friendship, greed, betrayal and, ultimately, love.

  Other Silhouette Books by Ann Major

  Silhouette Desire

  Dream Come True

  Meant to Be

  Love Me Again

  The Wrong Man

  Golden Man

  Beyond Love

  In Every Stranger's Face

  What This Passion Means

  *Passion's Child

  *Destiny's Child

  *Children of Destiny Trilogy

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Brand of Diamonds

  Dazzle

  The Fairy Tale Girl

  * * *

  * * *

  Prologue

  The sky was flat gray, the washed-out color of old zinc. The trees were bare and dead looking; the windows shut against the cold. It was a day like any other of the season, a day without the slightest warning that the familiar pattern of her life was about to change, abruptly, completely, irrevocably, forever.

  Dawn Hayden's toe shoes banged against oak flooring.

  She wore a white leotard and tights. A gold medallion in the shape of a tiny sun flashed at her throat. It was the only piece of jewelry she ever wore. Where it had come from, who might have given it to her, she did not know. She only knew that of all the things she possessed, the necklace was the most precious. She never took it off—even when she performed. Lincoln had objected at first, but even he now regarded it as some sort of talisman, some secret ingredient in the formula of her phenomenal success.

  A cold northern light filled the studio and blazed from the cool glass mirrors. Dawn's long black hair was down, soft and caressing against her exquisite neck. She was dancing alone to the crashing discord of rippling piano notes, her shapely legs whirling in a series of endless turns. Other girls in layers of sweaters and leg warmers were lined against the wall, watching her in a state of breathless awe.

  No one in the company danced as Dawn danced. No one was like her. No one worked as hard, sacrificed as much for her art. In the studio she worked until she dropped. On stage she was an electric presence. The night before when she had danced Ondine, she'd received numerous curtain calls. Her dressing room had been packed with telegrams and flowers.

  Dawn Hayden was Lincoln Wilde's darling.

  There was magic in her dancing. When she danced, one had the feeling in the pit of one's stomach that something momentous was happening. Even during rehearsals.

  But not a single one of the girls envied her.

  Because she had no life, none at all, outside the theater.

  "Miss Hayden is the ice princess of dance," one critic had exclaimed, and the label had stuck.

  The studio door slammed, and the piano music faltered and then stopped abruptly as a tall golden man in a black turtleneck and slacks strode inside the huge studio and propped himself onto a stool dead center. All the girls sat up a little straighter and cast smiles in Lincoln Wilde's direction, hoping to catch his attention. But he frowned, cocked his head back, crossed his legs and watched Dawn.

  Dawn stopped dancing and glared at him for a long moment. Then she limped toward him on her bad ankle.

  "So," Lincoln murmured, "the rumors are true. You've gone behind my back and learne
d my new ballet when I told you I would never give it to you. Who taught you those steps?"

  Blazing dark eyes met his, and as always he was struck by her intense charisma. She was a small woman, her bone structure as fragile and delicate as a bird's, and yet she was a creature of infinite grace and loveliness. A power in his theater, on stage and off. She was white skinned, black haired, long necked. Not so different from the other ballerinas and yet completely different. When she danced, she was incomparable. Lincoln had lived his adult life surrounded by beautiful young women, all vying for his favor, but even he had been irresistibly drawn to her ever since she'd come to his ballet school as a lonely child on a scholarship and had thrown herself into ballet with such energy.

  She was perspiring, and she whipped the heavy mass of her hair forward over her shoulder and let it tumble loosely over her gently heaving bosom to her waist.

  "I watched you showing Marguerite," she said, leaning down and picking up a white sweatshirt.

  "You waste your time, and your time belongs to me. You should have been rehearsing for the gala."

  One of the girls along the wall hiccuped. There were nervous giggles. These battles between the artistic director and his ballerina were common. With an impatient gesture of his hand Lincoln dismissed the other girls, and they quickly fled. The pianist grabbed her sheet music and scurried after them.

  "They scare so easily," Dawn murmured dryly, yanking her sweatshirt over her head.

  "And you constantly rebel," he whispered fiercely. "You do so in front of the others to incite them, I think."

  She lifted her chin. Her hand touched her necklace and then fell away. "You constantly hold me back."

  "Because I, not you, am the artistic director here. I know what you can do better than you do."

  "I'm not a child any longer. I can't accept that."

  "You never come to my class."

  She would not look at him. "I have found my own teacher."

  "That broken-down Russian windbag, Princess Sonya. She hasn't danced a leading role in twenty years."

  "Sonya was the greatest dancer who ever lived."

  "She was only on top for six years."

  "Which underscores the problem." Dawn sat down and pulled on her leg warmers. "A dancer's life is short. I'm running out of time."

  "You're a child. Twenty-five. You have years and years—"

  "I have nothing except ballet." She stood up once more. "Do you understand? Nothing. You go home to a wife. I go home to a cat that doesn't even come when I call him. When I can no longer dance everything will be over for me. I will have nothing. You will have some new, younger ballerina. Marguerite, perhaps. You're wasting my time. Lincoln, unless you give me the role of Beauty, I'm leaving the company."

  He was thunderstruck. "What?"

  "Just for a while. To dance abroad. Then I want to go to Ali Naid and dance for that goodwill troupe to raise money for those people starving in—"

  "Hell no!"

  "You've given me your last order, Lincoln."

  "Damn it! Why don't you take a lover like the other girls? That's what's wrong with you!"

  Her eyes darkened. "You would think that!"

  She turned and walked out of the room.

  * * *

  One

  From the highest box in the domed theater a lone sharpshooter in black robes and a flowing dark kaffiyeh watched the glittering ballerina through the cross hairs of his scope.

  The girl swirled, leapt, seemed to hang suspended in the air, only to land light as gossamer on the brilliantly lit stage. Aslam Nouri squinted over his rifle as he struggled to follow her flight downstage. His cold black eyes gleaming with the predatory thrill of a fanatic, he zeroed in on Aurora's sparkling tiara, her pink satin, pink tulle and gold glitter. On the medallion at her throat. There! If he squeezed the trigger, his bullet would find her heart.

  His finger twitched, vibrating with his impatience. It was not time. Not yet. And the girl with the golden coronet was not his target.

  She was dancing the finale to the trombones in Act One of The Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky's decadent Russian work, which would have no place in the new world Aslam and his followers envisioned. Having just pricked her finger on the spindle, she was spinning wilder and wilder with the pain to the mad presto of Carabosse's theme.

  The girl began a dazzling feat of seemingly endless fouetti turns. Five thousand Arabs sprang to their feet, and the thunder of their applause swept the theater. The assassin grimaced, set down his rifle and stole a swift impatient glance at his watch. Then his eyes flicked to the darkest regions of the balcony where he thought he detected the shadowy forms of his men and the faint glint of light off a gun barrel.

  The constant bursts of applause were throwing all his careful calculations off, but it was almost time. The music began to build. His finger tightened as he waited for the cymbals.

  He lifted his rifle again, but this time it was not the fragile girl, but Prince Ali and his cabinet in the royal box that he studied.

  Despite his lavish uniform, Prince Ali was a coarse, arrogant man with coal-black hair and a thick curving mustache who'd begun life as a peasant. His dark eyes were deep-set and slightly bulging.

  Aslam would have known that cold face anywhere, even if it weren't emblazoned in every public square. It was the face that had haunted his nightmares for more than a decade. It was the face of the man who had ridden into Aslam's village, a small peaceful place on a barren slope dotted with mud huts. It was the face of the one who had obliterated his boyhood, who had rounded up every man, woman and child and shot them in the back of the head—Aslam's mother, his sisters, his only little brother.

  Hatred washed over Aslam in a thick, blinding red wave. The cymbals crashed. Now! He rubbed his eyes, but it didn't help. He couldn't see through the scarlet haze of his fury.

  He pulled the trigger anyway.

  On stage the hag Carabosse threw back her hood and cackled with evil laughter. In the prince's box, the bullet slammed a man in uniform backward. Aslam screamed with agony and frustration. The wrong man! He had shot the wrong man!

  In the royal box, blood was everywhere. A chair was overturned as a man in a resplendent uniform leapt to the stage. Other men in uniforms were running, shouting. Panicked, Aslam dashed from his box. The prince was escaping.

  On stage, four costumed princes unsheathed their swords and fell upon the evil witch, but in a burst of flame and smoke, she suddenly vanished. Aurora was placed on a litter as the real prince ran past them. There was a tremendous crash on the tam-tam and ffff chords from the brass. A rising mist seeped upward, veiling everything.

  On her litter, above the fog of swirling vapors, as she was borne solemnly aloft offstage, Dawn's heart pounded from the exertion of her recent dancing. Her body and costume were drenched with sweat. Her tightly wound black hair felt loose, as if she'd lost half her pins during those dizzying turns and it was about to come down. A prong of her tiara cut into her scalp, and her right ankle cramped with the old pain. She needed an ice pack and a drink of water. Only she couldn't drink the water here because Lincoln had warned her not to until she got back to New York. He hadn't wanted her to come here at all. Lincoln always thought he was an authority on everything, and he had said this tiny Arab kingdom was too unstable. It had been delicious fun to thwart him for once and promise to dance the benefit. What did Lincoln know of Arabs? They had loved her.

  Suddenly there were shouts. The music stopped abruptly at the crack of gunfire. Her litter careened madly, and she felt her body toppling even as she grappled wildly for something to hang on to.

  Her injured foot hit the wooden floor first, and she screamed. But brown arms caught her, breaking her fall, saving her fragile ankle. She was about to thank her rescuer when his brutal hands cut into her flesh.

  "You're hurting—"

  A hand clamped over her mouth, smearing her lipstick.

  "I will kill you, pretty American girl," the man whispe
red into her ear in an accent so terrible, in a tone so vicious and filled with hatred, it was amazing she could understand him.

  She stared up into blazing obsidian eyes, into a face, cold with maniacal hatred.

  "Stand you still," he ordered.

  She understood every garbled word.

  She felt the icy barrel of a gun against her hot perspiring skin. His long nose curved like an Arabic dagger above sensual-cruel lips. His savage features were those of a barbarian. If she lived a hundred years, she would never, never forget his face.

  "Please," she begged, her own voice a broken rasp she no longer recognized.

  Those merciless black eyes glittered above that dagger nose, and he smiled faintly, if one could call that menacing twist of his cruel lips a smile. He could slice her to pieces and relish doing so. His hand tightened around her throat, and he squeezed so hard she almost lost consciousness. The edges of the golden pendant she always wore dug into her neck, and a trickle of blood slithered in a greasily glimmering rivulet down her pale throat. Then he dragged her across the stage as if she were a sack of sand, shouting in Arabic, holding his gun to her head, using her slim stumbling body as a shield so he could escape. Her tulle skirt snagged on something and tore.

  Desperately she twisted her head and stared at him again. Then it happened.

  His dark face blazed at the center of fire.

  Fresh terror engulfed her.

  Cruel features whitened and blurred fleetingly into another equally cruel face from a long-forgotten past before vanishing altogether in the mists of her mind.

  Afterward she would remember that image, and it would inspire terror. She would think of it again and again during those long days and endless nights in that filthy stinking cell the Arab would throw her in, but she would not be able to understand.

  Her mind flooded with dazzling light, a blinding whiteness brighter than a million stage lights that obliterated everything. She could see nothing, but she was terrified. And she knew that this was an old fear. She had felt this utter helplessness, this utter aloneness, this terrifying sense of loss somewhere, sometime before. It was so terrible she'd never wanted to know that kind of fear again.