Wild Child

  Wild Child

  Suzanne Forster

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  A Biography of Suzanne Forster

  This one’s for Tara, whose support, enthusiasm, and generosity of heart have meant so much to me over the years.

  Prologue

  HIS TOUCH WAS RAPTURE. She arched her neck, and the soft sound in her throat was plaintive. Longing, such longing. She’d dreamt of this for years, his touch, his kiss. Midnight surrounded them, deep purple drenched with the scent of lilacs. Stars shimmered above him, paling against the moondrift of silver eyes.

  His fingers stroked her skin with fire. His breath murmured in her hair, teasing the mahogany tendrils. He rained a shower of kisses over her face, warming her temples, her closed eyelids, and at last, her mouth. She gasped softly at the taste of him. The nerve-spun sensation unfurling inside her was a need as sharp as life itself. Lord, don’t let me want this so much, she thought, as his lips moved over hers. Don’t let me need it.

  A moan, deep and thrilling, coarsened his breathing.

  His hands pushed through her hair, and she knew it was time. Another second in his arms and she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. He breathed her name and the sound of it was torment. Agony. How long had she waited to hear him say her name that way? How long had she waited for this moment? Now! she thought, her heart surging. Somehow she had to do it now. Stop him, push him away, hurt him the way he’d hurt her! It was his turn to feel the knife edge of need. His time to bleed.

  She twisted out of his arms with a muffled cry, and at the same time she found herself thrashing awake in her own bed.

  Her body was filmed with perspiration as she sat up and flung off the bedcovers. A dream! She had had the dream . . . again.

  “No subsequent humiliations can ever cut so deep as those of youth.”

  —Margaret Atwood, author of The Cat’s Eye

  One

  CITY OF STRONG HEARTS the welcome sign claimed.

  Catherine D’Angelo breathed in, then let the warmed air drain from her lungs. Excitement and apprehension mixed inside her. It was a mistake coming back, she knew that. But it was too late for second thoughts now. She was almost home!

  As she swung her red Mustang convertible onto the main drag of Cameron Bay, Oregon, she was hit with a gust of memories so poignant she could hardly catch her breath. The town’s landmarks flew by her: city hall, the old courthouse building. She slowed at a crosswalk, waiting for some laughing teenagers to pass, and her eyes were drawn to another ghost ship from her past. Bayside High School’s brick facade was piercingly familiar, from the cracks separating the letters to the pine trees dripping brown needles onto the street.

  Everything was just as she remembered it, and the sense of sameness brought the changes within her into sharp contrast. It had been ten years since she’d set foot in Cameron Bay. She was a different woman now. But would anyone who remembered her believe that?

  Moments later she pulled into the parking lot of the West End Youth Center, with an uneasy sense of destiny. In her fantasies she was the conquering heroine come home, but now, staring at the converted, ranch-style building, she felt more like the criminal returned to the scene of the crime. The center was an outreach agency for disaffected teenagers, and its small staff of licensed psychologists were trained to handle a wide variety of problems: runaways, broken homes, even juvenile criminal offenses.

  In her own “disaffected” teenage years, Cat had fit into the last category.

  If someone had asked her at that moment why she’d returned, she couldn’t have answered them, although she had a logical explanation. She needed supervised counseling hours to qualify for her psychotherapist’s license, and her own former counselor, Gwen Winters, had convinced her to spend the late spring and summer working at the center. “Who better to help troubled kids than the original,” Gwen had argued. That was the explanation. But was it the reason?

  As she cut the car’s engine, she reminded herself that she was there to help, not to be helped. She had a master’s degree now. She was a professional.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror and smoothed a few wayward strands of mahogany hair into the French knot coiled at her nape. A feathering of copper blush defined her cheekbones, and a light application of mascara separated her naturally thick, dark lashes. Tweaking the crisp white collar of her blouse, she scrutinized the way it set off the apricot tones of her complexion. She looked well groomed, thrifty, and punctual, a model of propriety. Yes, she had changed.

  “Catherine!” The name fairly bounced along the air waves.

  Catherine slipped out of the car and saw Gwen Winters hurrying toward her, arms outstretched. The sight brought such a welling of emotion that for a moment Catherine couldn’t navigate. This was the homecoming she’d imagined so many times. Now don’t get sappy, she told herself, but her eyes misted with tears anyway. She took a jerky step and opened her arms to her former counselor, laughing as they embraced. “Oh, Gwen, I’ve missed you.” She hugged the plumpish woman with all of her strength.

  “Come in, darling, come in,” Gwen cried breathlessly, urging Catherine toward the building. “I’ve got some fresh lemonade with orange slices, just the way you like it.”

  Once inside, the two women reacquainted themselves over tall glasses of iced lemonade and lingering reminiscences. Catherine went first at Gwen’s insistence, bringing her friend and mentor up to date since their last exchange of letters.

  “Yes, I did buy myself some new clothes,” she told Gwen, anticipating her friend’s question as she finished her recap. “And no, I’m still not dating. I don’t have time!”

  “Catherine, you’re going to shrivel up!”

  “Speaking of which,” Catherine came back, “how’s the diet going?”

  Now it was Gwen’s turn to “fess up,” and by the time she was through, the two women were laughing and exchanging gossipy tidbits like sorority sisters. But when their conversation wound down, Catherine sobered. “I hope you’re right about this pilgrimage,” she said. “I’m not at all sure Cameron Bay is ready for the return of its prodigal daughter. Or that I’m ready.”

  “We all have to face our demons sooner or later, darling.” Gwen brushed some imaginary dust from the coffee table they were sitting at and shifted in her chair. “And speaking of demons, did I tell you that he’ll be dropping by soon, to pick up a file on one of our clients?”

  “He? Who?”

  “Blake Wheeler.”

  If Catherine hadn’t been sitting, Gwen would have had to scrape her up off the floor. “Blake Wheeler is coming here? Why?” She stared at Gwen incredulously, then spun up and away from the table. “Why, Gwen, why?”

  Gwen’s lemonade hit the glass-topped table with a surprised clink. “Goodness, I’d almost forgotten how dramatic you are, dear. Blake’s the district attorney, though I doubt you’ve forgotten. One of our clients is to be a witness for the prosecution.” She smiled. “Nice to be on the right side of the law for a change, isn’t it?”

  Catherine wasn’t mollified. “I won’t be here.”

  “Oh, Cat, you can’t avoid him forever. It’s a small town.”

  “My name isn’t Cat! It’s Catherine—” Seeing the stricken expression on Gwen’s face, she cut off the tirade. “I’m sorry, Gwen, but I hate that man! You know how I hate that man.”

  “Catherine, really—all this anger, I think—”

  “He’s slick and cold,” Cat s
aid with conviction. “He’s ruthless, Gwen. How do you expect me to feel about the man? My father lost his life in the Wheeler Lumber Mill! Through their negligence, sheer negligence.”

  Gwen’s voice took on a note of reproach. “You can’t blame Blake for something his father did. Lord, the boy was only twenty-two at the time, Cat. He broke with his family over that accident, and you know it.”

  Cat knew what was coming next. The Blake Wheeler legend: how he’d made personal restitution to the survivors, how he was still paying their medical expenses. “A regular hero, right,” she muttered, “always the conquering hero.”

  Cat jammed her hands into her slacks’ pockets and glowered out the window at the sun peeking through the drizzly horizon. If she had to hear one more time how Blake Wheeler was the lifeblood of this town, how he was marked for greatness, she was going to scream! As far as she was concerned, the local newspapers Gwen had sent her were propaganda, pure propaganda. “Why does everyone here seem to think Blake Wheeler is the best thing since Charlton Heston played Moses, Gwen? Believe me, the man isn’t perfect. He’s a flawed human being, just like the rest of us.”

  Gwen sighed. “Own up, Cat,” she said at last. “We both know why you really hate him.”

  The room froze with silence. Astounded, Catherine gripped the back of the chair she’d been sitting in and stopped herself just short of the collision force she felt inside. Tears stung at her eyelids. “Not fair, Gwen, not fa—” The last word snapped off as the center door opened and slammed shut behind her.

  Catherine pivoted, her pulse running riot inside a flash-frozen body. As Gwen bustled over to greet their visitor, Catherine stared at the tall, golden-haired man balefully. Of course it was him, Blake Wheeler, the chosen one, the man to lead Cameron Bay and perhaps even the state of Oregon into the 1990s.

  A moment later, as Gwen wrapped up her chat with Wheeler and seemed inclined to bring him over, Catherine’s jaw locked along with her body. She couldn’t help it. Put simply, she loathed and detested the man. Years ago he had brought her the greatest heartbreak and humiliation of her young life. Because of deputy district attorney Blake Wheeler, she had served two years in Purdy Hall, the state reformatory.

  Catherine was hot-blooded by nature, but she wasn’t vindictive. That trait didn’t run in her family, and it wasn’t in her makeup either. And yet if she had ever nurtured vengeance in her heart for anyone, she nurtured it for him.

  “Catherine, you remember Blake Wheeler, don’t you?” Gwen’s voice was hopeful.

  As Wheeler and Gwen walked toward her, Catherine was given a gift. Speech. “How could I forget,” she said, icing down each word like an athlete ices her injuries. Amazed at her own resilience, she released the chair she was still gripping with one hand. “Yes, I remember.” Every wretched detail, she thought, staring into his steel-gray eyes. The aggressively handsome features, the Kennedy-like charisma, the ruthless heart. She remembered it all. And to think that once, long ago, she had adored this man. Adored him.

  “You’ve changed,” he said, assessing her quietly. “Radically.” The gloom of the day hid whatever might have been concealed in the depths of his eyes.

  “Yes, hasn’t she,” Gwen put in. “She’s right on the brink of qualifying for her counseling license. A brilliant student, Catherine is, Berkeley, Phi Beta Kappa.”

  “I never doubted it.”

  His voice was smooth, rangy, warm with amusement. Never doubted it? Catherine nearly gasped with outrage. This sacrilege from the man who’d put her in the slammer?! “Oh, now I get it.” She slapped her forehead, a gesture sharply reminiscent of her Italian father. “I see how it goes! When you suspect a child is destined for greatness, you let her cool her heels in the state reformatory for a couple of years. Character building, right?”

  He was obviously unprepared for her broadside. “Cat—”

  “My name isn’t Cat!”

  Gwen fluttered around them. “Blake, you look parched, dear. Wouldn’t you like some lemonade? How about you, Catherine? A refill?”

  Locked in visual combat, neither Catherine or Blake responded. From somewhere outside the center, a car horn blared, accentuating the barbed silence. The sound brought Cat up short. Forcibly reclaiming her errant emotions, she willed the ice floe back into her veins. She could not let herself fall apart with this man. She could not.

  “Well, fine then,” Gwen said uncertainly. “I’ll just run to the kitchen and get the pitcher.”

  As Gwen disappeared, Blake stepped away from the window.

  Catherine jerked back, rigidly maintaining the distance between them. At least she could see him clearly now. She registered his physical changes with a pounding heart and some surprise. He’d been twenty-six when she left, so he had to be thirty-six now. Time had improved him physically, she had to admit. If someone liked tall, muscular men with tons of burnished gold hair and a ruddy, sunswept look, that is. She didn’t. Not anymore. She also didn’t like his opened-neck shirt, the fashionably loosened tie, or the way his shirtsleeves were rolled up above his elbows. On another man it might have looked virile, even sexy. On Blake Wheeler it looked too damn much like a “have” trying to be a “have not.”

  How did he get that incredible tan? she wondered resentfully. He had the physique of a man who battled alligators in his spare time, and yet, she sincerely doubted that he ever set a foot outside except to play tennis at the country club. Image, she reasoned, anything for the ol’ political image when you were shooting to be governor of the state someday. He probably even had a tanning machine in his bedroom.

  While Catherine was ticking off Blake’s physical shortcomings and character flaws, he was taking in her transformation in a rather different way. The surprise she felt was magnified in him by a factor of ten. He could hardly believe the rebellious sixteen-year-old he’d tried and found guilty for car theft had become a woman. Lord help them all, a formidable woman. Her eyes were dark and glittery with anger. The lush hair he remembered was restrained almost painfully in a knot at the nape of her neck. She was tall, slim as a whip, and rigid as a pitchfork. But what fascinated him was her facade of icy indifference.

  Her body posture, her attitude said, “Live or die, fella, I could not care less.” She was glacial. She was aloof. But her eyes. Under the ice, her eyes were flamethrowers. He’d never seen such cold fury in a woman before. Or a man, for that matter. If she’d been anyone else, he would have talked it all out, but in her case his instincts told him to go slow. The woman was a walking bundle of contradictions. She was a powder keg.

  “What I meant earlier,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “was that I knew you were going to be extraordinary in some way, but I didn’t expect this.”

  “This?” she said suspiciously. “What’s this?”

  The word that flashed to mind was “ferocity.” He knew telling her would be like setting a match to the powder. Besides, it was more than anger that made her compelling. Much more.

  He considered the proud set of her shoulders and the boyish cut of her cotton twill slacks and couldn’t find the words. “When I get it figured out, I’ll let you know. Whatever it is, it looks good on you.”

  Cat faltered for just a second. Why had he said that? There must be a reason. The man she remembered didn’t do anything without a reason. “I’m sure you didn’t come by to bask in my self-assurance.”

  “Actually, I came by to pick up a file on one of Gwen’s clients, Johnny Drescher.”

  “I’ll get it for you.” She had no idea where it was, but any excuse to leave would do at the moment. Any excuse.

  “Cat—Catherine.”

  Startled, she swung around to face him. Her first impression was of gray eyes shot with silver, and male features so sharply etched in her memory that just to look at him brought her a glancing pain.

  “Maybe we ought to talk—you know, clear some things up.”

  She held his gaze, and all the biting things she’d ever wanted to say to him r
an through her mind. The air in her chest felt squeezed into a tight little tangle beneath her breastbone. “I’d rather not.”

  As she turned away to look for the file, she could feel herself shaking. Frustration lumped in her throat. After all the years of dreaming about a head-on confrontation with Cameron Bay’s DA, she’d wimped out! She hadn’t said any of the things she’d been burning to say. Not the important things anyway. And she wasn’t even sure why. All she’d known was that she couldn’t bare the thought of exposing herself to him, not the fury in her heart, or the truth of how badly he’d hurt her.

  Fortunately, she saw the file he wanted lying on top of a two-drawer cabinet. As she went to pick it up, Gwen returned with the pitcher of lemonade and a plate of cookies.

  “Peanut butter, anyone? A snickerdoodle?” Gwen’s breezy calm belied a less-than-steady grip as she refilled the glasses sitting on the coffee table.

  “No thanks,” Blake said, “I’ve got to be going.”

  Catherine had returned with the file and offered it to him, but Blake didn’t take it. Instead, he let his gaze drift from the dainty button cuff of her sleeve to the crisp white collar of her blouse. Pretty prim stuff for such an exotic creature, he thought.

  “Pretrial hearing’s at one,” he added, watching her flush as he ignored her outstretched hand. Years of courtroom theatrics had taught him timing. He’d learned the power of strategic silence, of making people wait for your next word, or move. By now it was a reflex.

  Catherine glanced at her watch and thrust the file at him. “You’re late.”

  Eyeing them both, Gwen tweaked the folder from Catherine’s hand, gently swung Blake around, and escorted him to the door. “Give a holler when you’re ready to meet with Johnny,” she told him, slipping the file under his arm. “I’ll set something up.”

  Blake nodded. “My office might be best,” he said, and then he departed without a backward glance.

  Gwen shut the door behind him and peered over her shoulder at Catherine. “Well?”