Nobody's Child Read online

  “Cheyenne?” He Whispered Softly, Solemnly. “Are You Still Here, My Darling?”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Books by Ann Major

  About the Author

  Letter to Reader

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  CHILDREN OF DESTINY

  Copyright

  “Ann Major pulls you into the story and doesn’t let go...”

  —Rendezvous

  “Cheyenne?” He Whispered Softly, Solemnly. “Are You Still Here, My Darling?”

  Darling?

  He had called her his darling.

  She jumped at the gentleness of his husky voice, intending to run.

  But he held her there in the soft, hot darkness.

  Not with his hands or by any use of force. Not even with more huskily spoken words. His stark gaze was enough to make her know how much he needed her.

  If he wanted her that much, she wanted to stay.

  She wanted to go on lying with him.

  And for a long time they did continue to lie together in the darkness, their legs and arms tangled, neither of them daring to speak again or bat so much as an eyelash for fear of frightening the other away.

  Dear Reader,

  The celebration of Silhouette Desire’s 15th anniversary continues this month! First, there’s a wonderful treat in store for you as Ann Major continues her fantastic CHILDREN OF DESTINY series with November’s MAN OF THE MONTH, Nobody’s Child. Not only is this the latest volume in this popular miniseries, but Ann will have a Silhouette Single Title, also part of CHILDREN OF DESTINY, in February 1998, called Secret Child. Don’t miss either one of these unforgettable love stories.

  BJ James’s popular BLACK WATCH series also continues with Journey’s End, the latest installment in the stories of the men—and the women—of the secret agency.

  This wonderful lineup is completed with delicious love stories by Lass Small, Susan Crosby, Eileen Wilks and Shawna Delacorte. And next month, look for six more Silhouette Desire books, including a MAN OF THE MONTH by Dixie Browning!

  Desire...it’s the name you can trust for dramatic, sensuous, engrossing stories written by your bestselling favorites and terrific newcomers. We guarantee handsome heroes, likable heroines...and happily-ever-after endings. So read, and enjoy!

  Senior Editor

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  ANN MAJOR

  NOBODY’S CHILD

  To Ted, my husband; To Tad, my son, for the book material;

  To my mother, for her love and sweetness;

  To Lauren, my niece, who told me about Brazil;

  To Anita and Tara, for their professional guidance;

  To Kimberly, my daughter, for making the dean’s list;

  To Dr. Michael Heckman, my doctor, for mending my knee and

  reassuring Ted I would ski again;

  To David Cleaves and Diana Gafford, for being there;

  To Ann Engel, the megatalented Realtor who not only sold my house

  but became my new best friend and therapist.

  Books by Ann Major

  Silhouette Desire

  Dream Come True #16

  Meant To Be #35

  Love Me Again #99

  The Wrong Man #151

  Golden Man #198

  Beyond Love #229

  In Every Stranger’s Face #301

  What This Passion Means #331

  *Passion’s Child #445

  *Destiny’s Child #451

  *Night Child #457

  *Wilderness Child #535

  *Scandal’s Child #564

  *The Goodbye Child #648

  A Knight in Tarnished Armor #690

  Married to the Enemy #716

  †Wild Honey #805

  †Wild Midnight #819

  †Wild Innocence #835

  The Accidental Bridegroom #889

  A Cowboy Christmas #967

  The Accidental Bodyguand #1003

  *Nobody’s Child #1105

  *Children of Destiny series

  †Something Wild

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Brand of Diamonds #83

  Dazzle #229

  The Fairy Tale Girl #390

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Seize the Moment #54

  Silhouette Romance

  Wild Lady #90

  A Touch of Fire #150

  Silhouette Books

  Silhouette Christmas Stories 1990

  “Santa’s Special Miracle”

  Silhouette

  Summer Sizzlers 1992

  “The Barefooted Enchantress”

  Birds, Bees and Babies 1994

  “The Baby Machine”

  Silhouette

  Summer Sizzlers 1995

  “Fancy’s Man”

  ANN MAJOR

  loves writing romance novels as much as she loves reading them. She is the proud mother of three children who are now in high school and college. She lists hiking in the Colorado mountains with her husband, playing tennis, sailing, enjoying her cats and playing the piano among her favorite activities.

  A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

  Dear Reader,

  As a little girl, born and raised in south Texas, my favorite game was riding broom horses and playing cowboys and Indians. As a teenager I spent a lot of time visiting my small-town cousins who had horses. We fed them and rode them and loved them. My closet is still filled with jeans, cowboy boots and Stetsons. No myth is greater or grander in Texas than that of the cowboy.

  Perhaps it is only natural that I wrote my CHILDREN OF DESTINY series, which deals with the Jacksons and the MacKays—modern ranchers, who were the descendants of great pioneer ranching families. Once I began writing about these mythic people, I couldn’t stop.

  Nobody’s Child continues the series with the passionate love story of Cheyenne Rose, or Witch Girl, an enchanting woman of mysterious powers, and the dangerous entrepreneur, Cutter Lord, whom she loves even though he is determined not to love her.

  Then next comes Secret Child, out in February 1998 in time for Valentine’s Day. Once again I write about a modern-day cowboy and the woman he loves.

  When Jack West’s wife vanishes, no one knows that she hired a plastic surgeon to change her face. Five years later, through a bizarre twist of fate, a young kindergarten teacher, Bronte Devlin, loses everything—even her face. When the same plastic surgeon who helped Jack’s wife gives her the face of the most beautiful woman in the world, Bronte finds herself in terrible danger. Forced to masquerade as her dangerous double, Bronte is abducted by Jack and soon finds herself fighting for her life as well as for the heart of this rugged rancher whose real wife turned his heart to stone.

  I hope you enjoy Nobody’s Child.

  Sincerely,

  Prologue

  The night was black and wild. The wind was so fierce that every flower and leaf in Texas had blown off all the trees.

  Cutter Lord, who lived life on a dangerous edge, was driving way too fast. He was used to delegating unpleasant errands. Not that he hadn’t tried to delegate the troublesome Miss Rose, but his younger brother’s unsuitable fiancée had bested his top man.
/>   “You’ll have to deal with Miss Rose yourself, or else—” Paul O’Connor, his vice president, had thundered, rubbing his bruised wrists on the steps outside the Dallas city jail after Cutter had bailed him out. Paul was black and smart and tough, and not easy to scare.

  “Or else?”

  “I quit. The lady snuck up behind me with a vase of the biggest purple pansies you ever saw, hit me with it and locked me in her gardening shed. I nearly froze before she called the cops.”

  Cutter was used to chauffeured limousines...to the luxury of his private jet... to other people shouldering all the hassles when he traveled. Which was often. And to far more glamorous places than south Texas.

  Not tonight.

  As if hurled by the brute force of the worst winter storm to hit Texas in ten years, the hail-dimpled, black Lincoln and its grim driver shot from the mainland onto the narrow causeway that led across the Laguna Madre to the barrier islands.

  The radio said the windchill was now minus ninety degrees in Crookston, Minnesota, and that two hundred cars were stranded on Nebraska roads. Tornadoes had ripped off roofs in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. In the panhandle the temperature had dropped forty degrees in two hours. Three people had died in windstorms near El Paso.

  The devastating norther that had closed the Dallas airports and grounded Cutter’s jet was roaring into the humid warmth of the state’s southern coast with bands of galeforce winds and icy rain.

  Cutter Lord, who preferred to spend his nights in a warm bed with a beautiful woman, was bone-weary from having driven too many miles on ice-slick highways.

  One woman was responsible for Cutter’s foolhardiness. One woman had so infuriated him that he had lost all his judgment. Thus, he and the storm raced toward the island together, like two angry giants, determined to trample whatever got in their way.

  With his ebony hair, black eyes and strong dark face, Cutter was blessed with the kind of virile good looks most women found exciting. He was six-two, lean, and powerfully built. He had brains, drive and an iron will. His fierce dedication to his family’s business was legendary. His friends attributed his astounding success to his genius and high energy levels. His enemies said he was ruthless. The bottom line was that he usually made money. Lots of it.

  Suddenly—ahead—the causeway vanished into a dark, inky froth. Brake lights flashed as cars began to back up.

  Hell. The tide was rising and surging inland.

  Instead of turning back, Cutter inched forward into the purple waves. He had to hurry, before the authorities closed the causeway—the only road to the barrier islands and, thereby, to Cheyenne Rose.

  He’d come this far; he wouldn’t let anything stop him from dealing with Miss Rose.

  Every time he remembered her midnight call, his blood ran colder than a shark’s on the trail of blood. She hadn’t liked his calling her a gold digger.

  Her husky voice had had the taunting, singsong quality of a nursery rhyme.

  Fight, fight, as hard as you can. If I want to marry your baby brother, Mr. Lord, you can’t stop me. I’m the gold digger girl.

  She had giggled as she tossed his taunt back at him, “the gold digger girl.”

  Then she had laughed again.

  At him.

  “You know what your problem is, Mr. Lord. You’re spoiled!”

  Cutter’s hand had clenched on the receiver, his nostrils flaring even as some part of him had dissolved in her velvet voice.

  Then—right before she hung up—she had purred, “Oh, by the way, Mr. Lord, I had your mean, tough Paul O’Connor arrested for peeping into my bathroom window—he’s handcuffed to a metal chair beside a prostitute down at the city jail. Just thought you’d like to know. Also, I’ve left town so I can decide without any more interference from you whether or not I want to marry Martin and become your sister.”

  His sister! The hell she’d be his sister!

  Cutter had slammed down the phone and demanded to know one thing once Paul verified she had, indeed, left town.

  Where the hell was she?

  Within an hour his men informed him that Martin had flown her to the beach house on Lord Island, and that she planned to stay there all by herself for a week.

  All by herself.

  On Cutter’s remote private island off the Texas coast.

  Perfect.

  Or it would have been except for the storm.

  Cutter wasn’t afraid of her. Nor of a mere storm. And her call had only made him all the more determined to stop her.

  Only now, he had to do the dirty work himself.

  Spoiled?

  He wasn’t spoiled!

  He just had to win.

  The black waves in the Gulf had risen to Goliathan heights. Not that they were that big in the protected marina.

  “Boss, you shouldn’t go till morning,” Miguel screamed above the howling wind as Cutter untied a dockline. “Maybe not then.”

  “Right. Like I drove all night through sleet and hail so I could sit the storm out in a Port A. bar or a cheap motel.”

  The boat, which Martin had named Jolly Girl one sunny summer day, was the only way to reach Lord Island tonight.

  Fight, fight as hard as you can—

  Damn right, he’d fight her as hard as he could. Cutter would fight because he knew he’d go mad if he had to listen to her singsong voice flit through his brain till morning.

  When he jumped from the dock into the bucking sloop, he slipped on the wet fiberglass and almost fell. He opened the hatch and began casting off.

  “Loco,” Miguel yelled frantically. “You crazy, boss. You don’t know enough about boats. Your brother Martin—”

  Cutter glared at him.

  Cutter was a remarkable entrepreneur.

  He was a less than remarkable yachtsman.

  Not that he could have ever admitted there was anything he couldn’t do better than his playboy brother.

  Cutter stubbornly primed the bulb and then pushed in the automatic choke before starting the engine.

  Only when Cutter cast off the last line, and the little boat hurtled free of the dock into the purple waves, did Cutter begin to doubt the wisdom of having let anger and arrogance rule him.

  But by then it was too late.

  Almost immediately, the lights of the shore and Miguel’s alarmed cries were lost in the troughs of black waves and driving rain.

  The cold wind tore at his foul weather gear, and rain rushed inside it. Cutter’s teeth began to chatter as he headed toward his island.

  An hour later, the little engine coughed and died. It had made almost no headway against the wind and the waves. He heard the crashing surf and knew he was too close to shore. The electricity on the island had gone out, and without lights to guide him, without the motor, he’d never make the channel to the island’s man-made harbor.

  He had to restart the motor. But as he leaned over the stern, a large wave slammed into the boat, foaming into the cockpit. When Jolly Girl lurched violently, Cutter lost his footing and slid overboard. As the cold rushing water swallowed him, he fought to reach the surface.

  One gurgling breath. Then he gulped water as another wave crashed over him and dragged him under.

  He clawed his way through the darkness to the surface again.

  This time he didn’t quite make it and gulped salt water instead.

  As he sank, he heard the taunt of her husky purr.

  Mr. Lord, you can’t stop me. I’m the gold digger girl.

  She was laughing at him as he kicked against the undertow that sucked him down, down, ever deeper into a cold, wet hell.

  A feeble sun broke through the gray, making the calmer waters glimmer like polished silver.

  Waves curled around a man’s bare foot.

  Freezing. Hungry. Cold

  Freezing. Hungry. Cold.

  Again and again like the feeble tattoo of a drum, the words fluttered through Cutter’s tired brain.

  Cutter was barely conscious. His skin
was pale, his lips blue. His shoes and most of his clothes had been torn off. Grit and sand filled his wet black hair, nostrils and ears. Every time he tried to swallow, his throat burned.

  He had lost all sensation in his legs and arms and fingers and toes.

  Where the hell was he?

  Who cared? He was so cold, he just wanted to sleep.

  Forever.

  Then he heard a husky cry that was somehow familiar.

  “Oh, my God—” A woman’s terrified voice.

  With great effort he opened his eyes and saw the upturned hull of Jolly Girl.

  But he wasn’t looking at the wreck. A breeze whipped a gauzy, white skirt high up a pair of shapely legs.

  A woman.

  Cheyenne Rose.

  The troublesome witch blurred in a red haze of pain as if she were no more than the figment of a nightmare.

  He forced his heavy burning eyes open again.

  She wasn’t what he had expected.

  She was slim and lovely—as lovely as her voice. She had a sweet face. An enormous, white gardenia bloomed in her hair.

  He shivered violently, not wanting to like her.

  What the hell was the matter with him? Was he delirious? Dying?