Belladonna, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Excerpt
Dear Reader
Title Page
Dedication
CAST OF CHARACTERS
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
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Copyright
“Who’s after you, Bella?”
Her breath caught tightly in her chest as she stared into his midnight-dark eyes. This was ridiculous. She had every right to be scared—but not to be attracted to this man called Malone. Why did he have to be so damn appealing? “I don’t know,” she maintained. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”
Reaching out, he caressed her cheek with his fingertips, sending shivers through her. “Oh, but it is,” he said softly, gazing into her eyes. “Either you tell me the truth here and now, or I’ll take you back to the people who kidnapped you.”
He wouldn’t, she thought, then looked at him again and sighed. He would. Malone was not a man to make idle threats. “Oh, all right. I’ll tell you the truth. I’m not a hardened criminal. I just have a problem with the first nine years of my life.”
An uncomprehending ridge formed between Malone’s black eyebrows. “What kind of problem?”
She looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t remember them.”
Dear Reader,
When a woman’s alone, who can she trust, where can she run…? Straight into the arms of HER PROTECTOR. Because when danger lurks around every corner, there’s only one place you’re safe—in the strong, sheltering arms of the man who loves you.
In this exciting promotion, you’ll meet women in jeopardy and in love—with the only person who can keep them safe.
Jenna Ryan brings you the story of Bella Conlan, a woman with a past that she can’t remember but that is coming back to haunt her. After careers in modeling and the travel industry, Jenna is now a full-time novelist who makes her home in British Columbia.
Look for all the books in the HER PROTECTOR series!
Regards,
Debra Matteucci
Senior Editor & Editorial Coordinator
Harlequin Books
300 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
Belladonna
Jenna Ryan
To Kathy for putting up with me.
To Mom and Dad for putting up with us.
To Shauna for thirteen years of being an atypical cat.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Belladonna Conlan—Childhood amnesia has rendered the first nine years of her life a blank.
Sean Andrew Malone—A finder of missing persons, he finds Belladonna—for money—then rescues her.
Larsen Rudge—A bounty hunter who values money above all else.
Mick Tock—A hired henchman with more brawn than brains.
Charmaine—Cool, calm and elegant; she is one of the notorious Birds of San Francisco— and she knows Belladonna.
Madame X—The mystery Bird whose main goal is to destroy Belladonna.
Hobson Crowe—The enigmatic third Bird who seems well acquainted with Belladonna.
Ronnie MacMalkin—Malone’s quirky Scottish cousin.
Lona Conlan—Posing as Belladonna’s grandmother, she knows more than she is telling.
Prologue
“Lona, please, you have to help me.”
The woman’s voice on the Alaska phone line crackled. Yet even accounting for that, Lona Conlan was certain she didn’t recognize the caller. “Who is this?” she demanded. Clamping one sturdy hand over the end of her long gray plait, she tightened the other on the receiver. “Do you realize that it’s the middle of the night?”
“Yes, yes, I know.” The woman’s tone verged on desperation. “I’ve been driving forever, all the way from Seattle in a malfunctioning Subaru. Before that it was buses, trains and planes, even a boat. We sailed from Dover to—” The line snapped, causing Lona to pull the earpiece away. “I had to escape somehow, some way. Any way. Please, Lona, there’s no one else I can turn to.”
“Who are you?” Lona repeated, unmoved.
“Amanda.” The woman had to shout above the rising static. “I’m Geraldine Johnson’s daughter. You must remember Geraldine.”
Geraldine Johnson. Of course. Amanda was her only child. Why, Lona hadn’t seen Geraldine for thirty years or more, about ten years before she’d died. But she did remember her, and fondly so. Lona’s manner softened instantly. “What is it, my dear? What has you so frightened?”
“I can hardly hear you,” Amanda shouted. “Oh, Lona, please, you have to help me help my little girl. There was trouble…. I couldn’t get… out. I’m sure we were seen They’ll be after us by now. But I have to try, have to be smart…. It’s too important. I can’t leave—”
Confused, Lona interrupted her. “Can’t leave what? Who’ll be after you? Amanda? Amanda!”
“Knows I ran…took Bella… Couldn’t get… No time…completely single-minded, Lona… and evil.”
Although she strained to hear, Lona caught only snatches of Amanda’s sentences. Something about her child and someone pursuing them—a husband, perhaps.
Wind whipped December snowflakes around the window, the Christmas window that Lona lit day and night for the twelve days of Christmas, a tradition started by her Norwegian grandmother. “Can you come to me?” she asked in her soft Nordic accent. “Can you get here from where you are?”
“I think so.” Amanda’s voice faded. “I’ll come tonight, or try… Have to get Bella to safety, before I…”
“Before you what?”
But Amanda’s answer, if indeed she offered one, was swallowed up in a loud burst of static.
Wind rattled the panes of Lona’s large home, as if mocking the circumstances under which she had chosen to live.
“I burned our papers.” Amanda was yelling now. “No identification…too dangerous…hope you’ll recognize me. I’ve no proof.”
“I’m sure I’ll recognize you well enough,” Lona answered. Running a capable hand around the back of her neck, she massaged a rheumatic kink. “You and young Bella come to me. We’ll talk then.”
Amanda protested, “No time… so powerful…. Please
take care of Bella.”
“Who is this person after you?” Lona demanded.
A sob reached her ears, surprisingly clear over the crackling line. “Not a person anymore, Lona, a monster… wants to control everyone. Gave a poisoned nickname to my ba… Like Romaine, only worse. Deadly nightshade, a deadly poisonous flower. I should have seen it, should have realized the truth behind Romaine. Deadly nightshade. Oh God, it is, it’s just like Romaine….”
A series of pops came on the line. Just like Romaine? Deadly nightshade? What did she mean? Lona compressed her lips. She would wait for Amanda to arrive with her daughter, Bella. Then the story would come out.
“I’ll be here, Amanda,” she promised. “You’ll need chains for the roads and a good four-wheel-drive vehicle. Do you have these things? Amanda? Can you hear me?”
But although she repeated herself three times, she heard nothing except the brittle sound of static on the line and the taunting howl of winter wind about the windowpanes.
Resting the phone against her shoulder, Lona moved her eyes to the frosted glass. Snowflakes bobbed like Russian dancers about the Christmas lights, then swirled off into the darkness. A treacherous winter darkness through which a distraught young woman and her daughter would soon be traveling. With what tale to tell? Lona wondered, and what form of danger following in their wake?
A chill feathered along her spine as the old woman settled herself on the pink-and-black-flowered sofa. Pulling her rose-patterned shawl tight, she watched the snow with wary eyes and waited.
“YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER? Hell on wheels, you sure about that, Lona?” The sheriff scratched his grizzled head. “You ain’t even seen the girl yet. Or the accident scene, either, for that matter. Come to think of it, how’d you hear about this mess? Power’s out all over town.” When she didn’t reply, he grunted. “She’s cute, you know. Pretty and quiet. Maybe eight, nine years old. Hasn’t said two words since Daly found her huddled next to that snowdrift. Old Polly reckons she has amnesia.” He pronounced the last two letters separately. “Don’t know how she got out of the car before it went over, but it’s a good thing she did. Can you imagine anyone stupid enough to drive a junker Subaru with bald tires on these roads? It was her mother driving, you say? Well, so far we can’t find hide nor hair of her. Saw a dead raven, of all things, near the cliff, but so far no mother.”
Lona held tight to her composure. “May I please see Bella, Win?”
“That her name? What is she, Italian?”
“She’s my granddaughter,” Lona lied again. “Bella’s father died when she was born. My daughter, A—” She started to say Amanda, checked herself and substituted firmly, “My daughter was bringing her to live with me.”
“Is that so?” The sheriff nodded. “Funny you never mentioned hav
Lona forced a smile, gathering her cabbage-rose shawl tighter. “I haven’t mentioned many things, Win. May I see the girl now? Alone,” she added, when he would have accompanied her to the back room.
“Well…”
“Please.” She laid a beseeching hand on his arm. “If it’s as you say, she’ll be terribly frightened.”
The sheriff hesitated, then nodded in agreement. Lona gave a nod of her own and started for the rear of the jail, where apparently the little girl had spent the night with old Polly, the retired nurse who’d spotted her next to that snowdrift. With the roads so bad she hadn’t been able to make it home.
Giving the door a firm thrust, Lona entered the room. It smelled faintly of wood smoke and was lit with four fat red candles that had been placed in a green bowl. The girl sat in a stuffed chair between wood stove and bowl. Old Polly was gone; the girl was alone. Alone and staring unblinking at Lona.
She was pretty indeed, Lona acknowledged, summoning an encouraging smile. Quite beautiful, really. Fine featured and delicate looking, but no doubt as wiry as a Gumby doll. Her eyes were very large, very dark and highly mistrustful. Her small chin was thrust out at a determined angle. Lona would have called it a defiant angle had it not been for the telltale quiver of her lower lip.
She greeted the girl with a blend of compassion and brisk efficiency. “Hello, Bella. I’m your grandmother, Lona. Your mother was bringing you to me. Do you remember that?”
The girl stared intently for several seconds, then slowly shook her head.
Relief coursed through Lona’s body. She stepped closer, one sturdy hand extended, palm up. “You must trust me, Bella,” she said. “You must let me help you, yes?”
It might have been her face—she’d been told she resembled an old-style European grandmother—or merely the absolute conviction in her tone. Whatever the case, the child responded. Tentatively at first, she inched slowly forward in her seat.
“Come to me, Bella,” Lona coaxed. “I will tell you the story of your life as only I know it.”
An ironic statement, given the circumstances, but Lona didn’t think that was what made the little girl suddenly stop moving. Her dark eyes lit up, looked away, then returned to Lona’s face. “Bella,” she said carefully. She had a slight English accent. “Bella—donna. Belladonna!”
Amanda’s words roared back into Lona’s mind. “A poisoned nickname,” she’d said. “Deadly nightshade—just like Romaine.”
At the little girl’s uncomprehending look, Lona gave an emphatic nod. “Belladonna Conlan, that’s your name. But I will call you Bella. There will be no poison in your life, child, as long as I am a part of it.”
Chapter One
“G’night, Bella. Happy New Year.” Irish Max, the theater prop man, nudged open the rear door and treated her to a toothy smile. “Accept an old codger’s advice, my girl, and take a stab at acting. You’d make a dandy Nancy.”
He was talking about the Market Street Playhouse’s current production of Oliver, a musical based on the Dickens classic.
Hoisting her leather backpack over one shoulder, Bella grinned at the podgy, white-haired man she’d known for more than fifteen of her thirty years. “I can’t sing, Max. Besides, my knees turn to rubber in front of a live audience.”
“That is a problem, all right,” he agreed. “So you do makeup for bad actors instead.”
“I consider it an art.”
Irish Max gave a disbelieving snort. “Temporary art,” he said in his heavy brogue. “All your hard work gets washed into the bay at the end of every performance.”
“I can handle that.” Bella propped the door open with her foot. “Happy New Year, Max. And no trying to sell fake stocks to that nice Nob Hill lady who praised your props tonight, okay?”
He chuckled. “You shoulda been a cop, Bella girl. Or better yet, a crook. You can pick a pocket better than anyone I’m acquainted with. And we both know you didn’t learn that little trick from Lona.”
“Hah, you make me sound like a professional thief.” Bella poked his stout chest with one finger. “I only did it once, Max, and then only to save your slippery hide. Next time you decide to pass counterfeit bills, don’t do it to the theater’s prime investor.” Grinning, she gave him a peck on the cheek. “I have to go. I’m spending my week off in Bodega Bay. I’ll say hi to Lona for you.” She arched a wry brow. “I’ll tell her you’ve gone straight.”
“You do that, and she’ll laugh in your face. We go way back, your grandma and me. With a few gaps, of course.”
Just like herself, Bella reflected. Except that her “gap” embraced the first nine years of her life. That, however, was a problem she preferred not to dwell on. “I’ll tell her you went half-straight. Night, Max. See you after the New Year.”
“Watch out for Hitchcock’s Birds,” he warned in parting.
Bella surveyed the alley as the door clicked shut behind her. A blanket of fog from the bay enfolded her like mummy cloth. She shivered, though not with fear so much as anticipation, because as far back as she could remember, she’d loved being frightened. Lona called it a quirk; Bella called it a fascination. She considered Alfred Hitchcock, Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley to be geniuses. What a talent they had possessed, to inspire fear in a seamless and spellbinding fashion. Violence of the mind was Bella’s preference. Only the reality of the streets had the power to unnerve her…and sometimes late at night, the blank pages of her past.
Freeing her long dark hair from the collar of her gray-green raincoat, she turned in the direction of her car. Theatre Lane ran between the Playhouse and Straw Hat theaters. Usually a well-lit alley, tonight it had all the earmarks of the Twilight Zone, right down to the indistinct murmur of voices ahead of her.
Bella listened. Probably a couple of actors, she decided.
Probing the fog with her eyes, she located the source of the muted voices—two men. A stocky blonde was handing an envelope to his taller, dark-haired companion.
Whatever the exchange entailed, Bella knew better than to interrupt it. With a stealth she credited to Irish Max, she slipped past the fog-shrouded men to continue on her way.
She’d almost made it to Market Street when the sound of measured footsteps reached her ears. Squishy steps, like sneakers on wet pavement.
Were they coming toward her? With all the murkiness and fog in the alley, Bella couldn’t tell.
One thing was certain, though. Lona would sharpen her tongue on her for walking alone in San Francisco after dark.
Bella glanced into the gloom. A chill feathered along her spine, but she ignored it in favor of pinpointing the direction of the sound. Behind her, definitely.
Her heart knocked against her ribs. It must be one of the men she’d glimpsed earlier. Had she witnessed an illicit deal in the works? If so, had the men spotted her?
The shadow materialized before Bella could turn her head again. She saw a gloved hand, a handkerchief, then smelled an odor so potent it made her senses spin. Although she struggled to overcome it, the drug flowed into her mind and lungs as surely as if she’d been pricked by a needle.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” a gravelly voice said in her ear. The speaker sounded smug. Bella hated smugness. His tone, more than his actions, impelled her to fight harder. But only for a moment and only to the point where she was able to wrench her mouth free and twist her head around far enough to glimpse her attacker’s face.
He had short blond hair and strong, broad features. He looked tough and unrelenting despite the smirk that lingered on his lips. “Relax, baby,” he crooned. “Make it easy on yourself.”
“No…” Bella’s protest echoed along the alley. She knew her elbow made contact with the man’s ribs when she heard his surprised “Oomph” of pain. However, all that her struggles earned her was a none-too-gentle sideways jerk and a gruff, “Toss her in the back and let’s get the hell out of here.”
