The Ivory Key Read online

  Mills & Boon – Temptation

  THE IVORY KEY

  Rita Clay Estrada

  Synopsis:

  Their time had come…

  Hope Langston needed to be alone, so she retreated to her island cottage. But even there, in her private haven, she had no sense of solitude. Something kept beckoning, pulling at her. Someone was watching, waiting…

  Armand Santeuil had waited lifetimes for her – the woman he loved with an ageless and burning passion. And finally he had Hope. Nothing would stand in the way of their boundless love, he vowed. Not even destiny…

  CHAPTER ONE

  Someone was watching her.

  Hope Langston sat on the crest of the small hill and stared out at the shimmering blue Minnesota lake while almost silent waves lapped the shore of Teardrop Island. Peaceful, partially forested terrain surrounded her. She should have been relaxed and content, absorbing the barely tamed wilderness. Instead her whole body had become rigid, the small hairs at the base of her slim neck bristling like starched cat fur. Someone was watching her again. She knew it. She could feel it.

  Carefully Hope lowered her camera to the bed of soft moss next to her. She leaned casually against the coarse-barked pine trunk and stared at the water coursing slowly around her tiny island. Birds chirped in the trees, flitting gaily from limb to limb, stopping only briefly to exchange chatter. The warm summer breeze caressed her cheek, touched her hair and then moved on. Hope ignored it all, her concentration elsewhere. Her heartbeat was a heavy thud within the constriction of her rib cage. The breath wheezed through her throat short and fast.

  Someone was watching her. She was sure of it.

  She turned her head quickly, dark brown eyes darting through the webbed green foliage of the trees, stopping at shadows and at leaves stirred by the breeze. Nothing had changed. A large boulder was just to her left. It grew out of the ground as if it had been one of the first things God planted the day he made the rich, brown earth. Late-afternoon sun made the rock's shadow resemble a giant eggplant, and Hope chuckled nervously at that thought. That must be it. She was still spooked from her recent experiences.

  Both her father and her boss had been right. She desperately needed a vacation, away from everything that reminded her of that nasty little Central American country whose policy was to kidnap the wealthy, torture them and apologize later. Two months in their idea of jail should have been enough to kill her, but she had been lucky and lived through it . . . barely.

  As her father's closest relative, she should have taken better precautions. He headed an American oil company based in Central America, and the politics there were in constant turmoil. She was just damn lucky she had lived. Other prisoners hadn't.

  Hope picked up her camera and fiddled with the controls, aimed it toward the giant-sized rock and clicked; then she focused on the surrounding woods, the shadow, the tops of the trees and the edge of the small path that led off the crest of the hill and to the shore below. There was nothing there but the scenery.

  Her brain, usually so alert, was playing tricks on her, and she was falling for them. Every time she had ever sat on this particular spot, the highest and widest on the ten-acre island, the strong sensation of being closely observed had come over her. When she was little, after her parents' divorce, she and her mother had vacationed here during the summer. Then she had loved the feeling that someone was monitoring her actions, as though God was looking benevolently over her shoulder. She had been a lonely child, and it had given her peace. As an adult it was an unusual feeling, but one that vanished quickly when she left the small hilltop.

  Sunset began its beautiful, heart-stopping show, turning the day into night. Dark shadows formed and merged to produce even larger, more sinister shapes of gray. The mournful, laughing call of a loon echoed across the water.

  Slowly Hope descended the hill and angled toward the old white two-storied farmhouse, relaxing as she walked along. The house had been here for over fifty years. Originally it had belonged to a fisherman and his family, but rumor had it they had done more truck farming in the field behind the house than commercial fishing in the lake.

  She marveled that she felt more comfortable on the island, isolated and alone, than she ever had anywhere else. Even when she thought she was being watched, she knew whoever it was wasn't hostile or angry. Perhaps curious, sometimes caring…occasionally loving.

  No, that didn't make any sense. How could someone, especially someone around here, love her, when she didn't know anyone who cared two figs or a camera filter for her? Her imagination had truly gone haywire.

  Dinner was a bland affair: a frozen dinner of chicken breasts on toast, smothered with cream gravy and instant mashed potatoes the consistency of melted whipped cream. At least it was an attempt at a balanced diet, something that had been missing from her life for the past several months. She fortified herself with one of the many vitamin pills her doctor had prescribed. As she did, she looked out the kitchen window toward the small knoll beyond, debating whether or not to develop the film she'd exposed that afternoon. Why not? She didn't have anything better to do, and the familiar routine would be soothing.

  Hope's darkroom equipment was set up in one of the closets. On other stays here, when her mother was still alive, she had never visited long enough to establish her own working area. Now she was in residence for the rest of the summer and the fall—or for as long as it took to get herself back into shape after being held hostage.

  She slipped a Paul Horn cassette into the player, fidgeted with the speaker balance until she was satisfied, then reached for her camera, automatically rewinding the film as she headed for the stairs. It would be fun to see if there were any photos worth selling to one of the many magazines who'd purchased her work before. It was a game to her, one that she had played often.

  Right after graduating from college, she had acquired a camera, finding an affinity with it that she had never known with anything before. Since then, she had carried it everywhere, and it had become her entree into places that nice young women usually didn't go. Her subjects always thought she was a professional. It had worked so well that in no time photography had developed into a career. Whenever she was at a political affair, her camera focused and shot while she took mental notes, her mind clicking right along with her camera. The politicos hadn't seemed to mind enough to stop talking because they had never seen her with a pencil in her hand.

  Still, she was surprised how often a shot she had thought was ordinary when she clicked it turned out to be terrific. A few of them had sold for top dollar. Some were hanging on the farmhouse walls, along with the framed awards they had earned. A few more hung in the headquarters of Today's World, the magazine she now worked for exclusively. Well, almost exclusively. She still free-lanced for others occasionally.

  But at Today's World she also wrote copy. Exciting and fulfilling, the dual role gave her the best of both worlds. She could document a scene with her camera and fill in what she couldn't see with what could be written about. She had put her life on the line many times, and that was why she had become so successful.

  The story she had just finished would be her best yet. Perhaps ever.

  And that opinion was echoed by her editor, Joe Bannon, a rotund man who looked sixty, was closer to fifty and revered the written word, “You know you've done a brilliant job. You also know you look like hell, and need more time to recuperate than you're asking for. Two weeks is not enough!” he had exclaimed. “More than a month wouldn't be enough for you in the shape you're in!” He tried to bend his roly-poly body over the desk as he hunched toward her.

  She was slumped in a straight-backed chair, hardly able to keep her head up. She had returned three days earlier from her ordeal in Central
America and, after a brief hospital stay, had gone straight to a hotel room, pounding away at a rented typewriter with a blurred e, writing copy for the photos she had processed earlier.

  Who would have believed her captors would have returned her luggage and the exposed film? They had even allowed her to take a farewell picture of them as a memento! The piece was good, sharp, concise. Her best. And her boss knew it. But right now she didn't give a damn about the story or anything else.

  “Two weeks, Joe. Then I’ll phone in to see what else is on the schedule,” she insisted, combating the floating feeling that suddenly seemed to take charge of her head and limbs. Her torso was leaden, but the rest of her wanted to soar.

  “Hope, I don't think you realize what bad shape you're in. You're exhausted. You've been starved and threatened. Don't you have sense enough to call it quits for a while?”

  His words drifted in and out of her small sphere of reality. He kept on ranting, but as she watched him with mild curiosity, he disappeared in a cloud of bright white light that pierced her eyes. She moaned once, squeezing them shut before the floor rushed up to meet her.

  Within the hour she was back in the hospital—this time in Chicago, five days later she was released with dire warnings about recovering her health before going back to work. An hour after her discharge she was packed and on her way to the airport. She was delivered to a flight bound for Duluth, where a car waited to take her into the Arrowhead area of northeast Minnesota, just beyond Two Harbors. Punctuated by flashing blue lakes, dotted by dollops of fern-green islands and dense with surrounding forest, it was one of the most beautiful spots in the world. Once there, she took a small motorboat to her island, situated just below Superior National Forest on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

  She was unable to control the direction of her thoughts. Her mind skipped back over the past year, refreshing and enlightening her with the wisdom of clear hindsight. Her boss had always employed her talents to the fullest, making sure she got two- and three-week assignments with good potential. She'd been sent to France, then come back home only to fly out to Egypt, then home again, then South America.

  Despite the rigors of such a hectic schedule, she had jumped at the assignment in Central America because her father was living there at the time. It was a chance to renew a relationship that had never had the cement of familiarity to begin with. After her parents' divorce when she was twelve, Hope had moved to Minneapolis, where her mother began a career in computer programming. With the exception of short, awkward visits, Hope and her father never saw or corresponded with each other. The breach had widened until, when Hope was seventeen and her mother died, her father hadn't even attended the funeral. From that time on, Hope had referred to her father by his given name, Frank. It was easier to keep distance that way.

  But time had a way of healing wounds, and she had been ready to make peace when the Central American assignment came up. Only she hadn't been there twenty-four hours when a suburban uprising had evolved into a full-scale, heavily armed, first-class civil war.

  Hope and her father's secretary, Joanne, were kidnapped, taken at gunpoint from a car returning them to Frank's hacienda from a shopping spree in the city. For the first two weeks they were held in a dark, musty cellar somewhere in the city. Then, because the U.S, government couldn't make up its mind whether or not to pay the ransom, and because her publisher couldn't, the kidnapping became enmeshed in negotiation.

  Hope and Joanne were separated. Hope was held captive in the jungle, the cruelest jail of all, for two months, barely making do with insufficient food and no sanitary facilities. It wasn't until after her release that she realized just how lucky she had been. Joanne hadn't made it back at all. . . .

  But now she was out and safe, cared for by friends like her editor, Joe. Joe had taken care of everything, including stocking enough food to last a few weeks. When that ran out, she could head back to the main-land and replenish her supplies. He had been wonderful as a boss . . . and a friend, worthy of the name.

  Hope glanced at the roll of film in her hand. She'd develop it tomorrow. Any tomorrow. Time no longer mattered. Setting it on her darkroom counter, she flipped off the light and went on down the hall to her bedroom, heading toward the window as she began to unbutton her blouse. She slipped out of her jeans, leaving them in a small faded puddle on the floor. There was no bra to join the pile. There were no underpants tonight, either. That choice had felt distinctly odd and, strangely enough, defiant. She didn't have to wear anything if she didn't want to. Not here.

  Naked, she stood in front of the second-story window and stared out at the small knoll that rose from the back and side of her ‘yard’. Moonlight flowed over her skin, making it translucent, as if she were glowing from the inside. Wherever the moon touched her, she felt a warmth, a caressing, as if a gentle hand was stroking her flesh.

  Hope shivered. She must need the company of a man desperately to have such strong, if fleeting, thoughts of making love while staring at a hillside! Her mind was playing tricks on her again, as it had in the jungle prison. As it had that afternoon when she was sitting by the rock at the top of the hill. Perhaps she was lonelier than she had thought. Had Joe been correct when he had declared she needed more than a month's rest? Maybe thinking about making love was a way to wipe out bad memories. . . .

  The following day was beautiful, a tourist ad for the ideal Minnesota summer vacation. The sun sparkled on the water. The gaily colored sails of a small sloop could be seen bobbing in a cove about a mile away. Even the air was tepid, a breeze blowing barely enough to flutter the fine lace curtains that gracefully framed the windows.

  She had slept through the night in a sleep deeper than any she had experienced in months. Energy filled her to the brim, causing a tingle to shimmy all the way down to her fingertips. Today was not a day to lie around.

  Within half an hour, breakfast had been eaten and the kitchen cleaned, and she was ready to develop her film.

  Mixing the developing chemicals was second nature to her, and she did it with a minimum of fuss. The film was developed quickly in a portable tank. Now came the best part: turning the negatives into prints.

  Ever since she could remember, Hope had loved photography. For her, the real creativity came in when the negatives became photographs; shadow and light could be toyed with, the definition of the lines softened or accented. This time in the darkroom often made the difference between an ordinary photo and a great one. This was the fun time.

  For a moment she thought of making a contact sheet of the photos, to see which ones she wanted to blow up. Then she discarded the idea in favor of printing each picture separately. This was her vacation, not actual work where she had to decide what would produce the most money in the shortest amount of time. She grinned. A busman's holiday.

  One by one, she framed each negative in the enlarger and focused the image on the paper, switching the bright light on and off at the sound of the timer. Then she swished the exposed paper around in the chemical tanks and watched the images come to life before hanging the sheets to dry on a small clothesline above the counter. She worked efficiently in the rosy glow cast by the lamp she had fitted with a red bulb, long habit controlling her movements. Soon all the prints were in the solution trays, or being washed or dried.

  She hummed a soft, wordless melody, stopping only when she realized she'd never heard the tune before. Without thinking, she had started humming it yesterday while up at the rock.

  Shrugging her shoulders as if to rid herself of introspective ramblings, she checked the rinse tray, then did a double take.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  Bending over, she peered into the water at the black-and-white print floating there. It was supposed to be a picture she had snapped of the rock yesterday. The rock was there, smaller than she remembered it, but so were small white flames darting across the paper.

  She continued to stare long after she had absorbed every detail. Once again
, the small hairs on the back of her neck bristled, just as they had yesterday. Making certain the unexposed paper was in the closed cabinet, she pulled the cord that filled the tiny room with light.

  “I must be insane!” she muttered as she lifted the dripping photo from the water and stared at it as if her eyes could wipe out the small silver-white darts. “Now I'm imagining ghosts when all this is damaged paper.” Water dripped from her trembling hand and stained the polished oak floor a darker hue. There had to be a reason. There should be something or someone to blame for this, this . . . “Someone was sloppy when they unpacked my equipment. That's all,” she reassured herself.

  Hope looked down at the print again, then at a few others, hardly daring to check the rest, yet knowing even before she did that only the pictures of the large rock on the top of the bluff would have the flawed paper. Her heartbeat quickened. She was right.

  Once again she went over the photos. The small streaks resembled the figures of men standing in a rough semicircle. No features were visible, but legs and arms shot out from the streaks as if the figures were imprisoned by lightning.

  Impossible. Her stomach clutched at what her mind refused to accept.

  She turned out the overhead light and began again. Reaching into the cabinet under the enlarger, she pulled out a larger sheet of paper and began the process of blowing up a small portion of the rock, where the darts of silver seemed to etch the stone itself. She timed the exposure, then slipped the paper directly into the developing solution, tapping her foot impatiently until the first faint images began to appear.

  Eyes widening, she sucked in her breath. Those little darts of white weren't darts at all. With shaking hands, she picked up her tongs and swished the photo back and forth, then moved it into the tray of fixing solution before washing it and hanging it on the makeshift clothesline above her head. There were five photos of the large rock, all with the darts of light. Now she would blow up the other four. Forcing herself to move slowly, methodically, she set to work. If her suspicions were correct, she'd be all day puzzling out this mystery.