Blackhawk's Sweet Revenge. Barbara McCauley

rose slowly. “On what grounds would they call a loan where the ink hasn’t even dried on the damn paper?”

      “I’ll start with fraud, based on the fact that the information supplied by you to obtain the loan was intentionally falsified. It not only invalidates the loan, it also happens to be illegal.”

      That voice. She knew that voice. But her legs wouldn’t move, couldn’t walk the few feet across the room to see the man’s face clearly. She stood frozen, with the silver coffeepot in one hand, a white bone china coffee cup in the other.

      “Just who the hell are you?” Mason roared, his face red with fury.

      “You remember Thomas Blackhawk, don’t you?” The man stood, looked directly down at her father. “You stole the Circle B from him, all ten thousand acres, then had him falsely sent to prison. I’m Lucas, Mr. Hadley. Lucas Blackhawk.”

      In the second before the coffee cup slipped from her hand, the second before the coffeepot followed, tune stood still....

      She was nine years old. Standing in this very room, behind the drapes, terrified, watching her father and Thomas Blackhawk. The nightmare had been with her for twenty years. The loud voices... the gun... the explosion...

      “Are you all right?”

      She felt his hand on her arm, realized that he’d moved beside her. How had he done that, so quickly, so quietly? Breath held, she raised her gaze to his. Those eyes, eyes that could see not through a person, but into them, into the darkness, into the truth.

      She couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t find the words to answer him. They stood there, eyes locked, her heart pounding so fiercely she knew he could hear it.

      Lucas Blackhawk. Here. In Wolf River.

      “Get the hell away from my daughter.”

      Her father’s shout brought her back. Spilled coffee, still steaming, pooled around her feet, stained her khaki pants and leather pumps. She bent down, reached for a piece of broken china. His hand was still on her arm as he bent down, as well, and righted the coffeepot.

      “I said get the hell away from her, you half-breed bastard,” Mason continued to rant. “Your kind ain’t fit to be in the same room with civilized people.”

      Shamed and humiliated by her father’s outburst, Julianna looked away.

      “You’re hurt,” Lucas said quietly, ignoring her father’s continued verbal assault. “Let go, Julianna.”

      She glanced at her fisted hand, saw that it was bleeding. Lucas gently pried her fingers open, removed the jagged piece of china she’d clutched tightly in her palm. His fingers were long, his hands large and callused. She shuddered at his touch, then quickly drew her hand from his.

      “Keep away from me, Lucas.”

      A hard, cold glint shone in his eyes. The strong, square line of his jaw tightened. Though it was less than a fraction of a second, she felt and saw the intensity of his anger and rage. It terrified her, and yet at the same time she welcomed it.

      She deserved it.

      Then, just as quickly, his expression was blank, replaced by indifference. “Still the Ice Princess, Julianna, or is it Queen now?”

      His words cut more sharply than the broken china, but she deserved that, too. She’d earned her title well, had sacrificed and struggled to maintain it all these years. How else could she survive? How else could she manage to live through the nightmare, other than to pretend she didn’t care, when the truth was she did care. She cared too much. Too damned much.

      Lucas rose and turned to face her father again. “As I said, Hadley, you have forty-eight hours to pay off the loan or clear out. And since we both know you haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of coming up with that kind of money, you may as well start packing.”

      “You can’t just come in here and make ultimatums, boy. I have a reputation in this community, I know people.” Mason slammed both fists on his desk, rattling his phone and knocking over his silver pencil holder. “I’ll see you fired from First Financial before this day is through. You‘ ll never work again.”

      “Your reputation does precede you, Hadley,” Lucas said coldly. “As does the stink from a skunk. And the only people you’re going to know from now on are creditors, lawyers and the district attorney’s office. Oh, and I guess I forgot to mention it, First Financial is one of several subsidiaries owned by Blackhawk Industries, which just happens to be my company. We’ll be bulldozing this house and the house by the creek. Maybe build a resort or a business center.”

      The house by the creek? Dread curled in Julianna’s stomach, then tightened her chest.

      “The house by the creek is mine.” She struggled to keep the panic out of her voice. “My mother willed it to me.”

      Lucas turned to her, his black eyes dispassionate. “Your father’s name is on the title. That makes it mine.”

      She looked at her father, and even through the rage on his face, she saw the truth. He’d taken her house. Somehow he’d stolen the one thing, the only thing, that had ever mattered to her.

      An icy chill seeped through her, and she clutched the neck of her sweater, not caring that blood still dripped from the cut on her palm. She wanted to scream at her father, knew that she should, but all she felt was numb. Defeated.

      A business center? Dear God, she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. When she opened them again, Lucas was watching her, his mouth a hard, thin line.

      She couldn’t let him see her like this. Couldn’t let him know that in his thirst for revenge he’d not only destroyed her father, but herself, as well.

      And why would it matter to him, anyway? Mason Hadley had taken Lucas’s father from him, had murdered Thomas Blackhawk as surely as if he’d put a gun to his head. He’d destroyed a young boy’s childhood, his family, his dreams.

      And she’d done nothing to help.

      Dimly, she knew that her father was shouting obscenities at Lucas, but Lucas ignored the insults. Instead he kept his eyes on her, staring at her, into her, as if he knew the truth.

      “Put something on that hand, Julianna,” he said without emotion, then turned and walked out of the room.

      Her father was shouting into the phone now, as the Ferrari’s engine roared to life, then shot out of the driveway.

      Lucas Blackhawk had risen from the past like a demon from hell. Full of hatred and vengeance, he’d come to even an old score. He had every right, and deep in her heart, no matter what the cost to her, she was glad. Because she admired him, because she respected him.

      Because she loved him.

      Two

      A cold wind blew in dark, angry clouds from the south. Lightning streaked silver against the black sky, and thunder shook the windows of the Four Winds Hotel suite. Rain, which had started only moments ago, already drenched the streets in town, not to mention any poor, unfortunate soul caught out walking in the downpour.

      Thankful to be out of the monkey suit he’d had on earlier, dressed now in a pair of faded jeans and his favorite, though well-worn, chambray shirt, Lucas stood on the small, covered balcony of the hotel room and listened to the steady pound of the storm. The scent of rain was heavy; the charge of nature’s electricity alive in the evening air. A Texas storm was always a force to be reckoned with, respected and never underestimated.

      A fitting end to the day.

      A slow, tight smile curved Lucas’s mouth. He could still see the shock in Hadley’s face, the fury in his eyes. Lucas had waited twenty years to see that look. Twenty years to watch Hadley’s recognition dawn, then grow as he realized that the crimes of his past had finally caught up with him. That it was time to pay, and payback was definitely a bitch.

      The