Thirty Nights. JoAnn Ross

gets busy with his experiments, it’s like pulling teeth to drag him out of his lab.” She handed Gillian an envelope. “I was instructed to give you this soon as you arrived. I expect it’ll explain everything.”

      That said, the housekeeper opened one of two doors leading into what was obviously the master bedroom suite. The walls were constructed of the same logs as the rest of the house, but in here they’d been stained a lustrous golden brown. They were also, Gillian noted, the only warm thing about the room.

      Decorated in shades of black and gray, with lots of jet lacquer and glass, the bedroom had an edgy, avant-garde look. More suitable for a modern art museum or a Fifth Avenue penthouse, it was decidedly too cold and remote for this gloriously wild place.

      A huge bed, covered in a slick ebony spread, took up the center of the room. Gillian glanced up, cringing as she viewed the mirror over the bed.

      Both Ben and Mildred studiously ignored both the mirror and Gillian’s involuntary reaction to it.

      “The bath’s in there,” Mildred said, pointing toward an arched doorway where an oversize Jacuzzi tub sat invitingly on a black-lacquered pedestal in front of a window. The wide expanse of triple-paned glass looked out over the darkening waters of the sea. “Dr. St. John had me clean out that bureau for your clothes.” She waved her hand in the direction of a tall chest of drawers that matched the pedestal.

      “I’ve got to serve and get on my way,” Mildred continued briskly. “So, if you’ll just get your washing-up done, I’ll show you the way to the dining room.”

      “If I’m going to be eating alone, the kitchen will be fine,” Gillian assured her.

      “Dr. St. John said the dining room.”

      “And Dr. St. John always gets what Dr. St. John wants,” Gillian muttered, beginning to get a handle on how things worked around here.

      “Best you remember that,” Mildred said with a brief, decisive nod. “The man’s a good employer. He’s demanding. But fair,” she said, echoing what her husband had told Gillian earlier. “Even so, I wouldn’t want to cross him.”

      And that, Gillian told herself ten minutes later, was why she was sitting all alone at a table designed to comfortably seat twelve. On some distant level she realized that the hearty corn chowder, green salad and brown bread was delicious, but although she hadn’t eaten since boarding the plane in San Francisco, she couldn’t work up any appetite for Mildred Adams’s dinner. Not after reading Hunter’s letter.

      No, she considered, taking another sip of the red wine she’d found waiting at her place, it wasn’t really a letter. It was more an instruction manual.

      Written in a bold scrawl, it had begun without preamble.

      Gillian,

      Welcome to Castle Mountain. I trust you will enjoy your time here on the island and that when you leave you will take fond memories with you.

      Her mistake had been, of course, allowing those words to soften her, to make her able to believe that this trip to Maine was nothing more than a well-deserved vacation after her grueling tour.

      The next paragraph proved otherwise, bringing home with a vengeance the true reason for her being here on this remote island. In this even more remote house.

      You’ll find a gown on the bed. After you bathe, put it on. Wear your hair down, and if you’re wearing makeup, take it off. The image I want you to project is the one from your concert at Stonehenge—pure and innocent, yet with that aura of untapped sensuality surrounding you.

      I’ll be working late, but I expect you to remain awake until I join you in the bedroom. I trust the next month will be enjoyable for both of us.

      However, if you find my demands not quite to your taste, just remember, if you leave before the thirty days are up, I will, without a moment’s hesitation, ruin your father.

      The choice is yours, lovely Gillian. I trust your arrival here, albeit a day late, reveals your willingness to accede to my wishes. Whatever they may be.

      It was signed merely with a dark H.

      “Damn.”

      Gillian cursed yet again as she stared out into the well of darkness. It was a new moon; the sky and water were both pitch black, extending for what seemed forever.

      For the first time since her arrival on the remote island, her isolation, along with what she’d foolishly agreed to, came crashing down on her.

      Hunter had promised he would not hurt her. But what if he was lying? What if he was as cold and unfeeling as his hateful letter?

      After all, she reminded herself, what kind of man could even think up such a scenario in the first place? What if he planned to literally hold her captive, using her in ways too horrific even to imagine?

      The scenario—the virgin sent to some remote lair to pay off her father’s debt—could have come straight from the pages of some lurid melodrama.

      “Damn you, Father.”

      Her flare of anger was immediately followed by a heavy sense of despair. And impending doom.

      “Oh, God,” she murmured. “What have I done?”

      SO, HUNTER THOUGHT as he watched her on the monitor in his book-lined office. It’s finally sunk in. Good.

      He’d watched her enter the house as if she were merely arriving at some ritzy seaside spa where she expected to be pampered and perfumed, wrapped in mud and dine on pretty little salads made from flowers. He hadn’t missed the derision on her fragile, porcelain-pale face as she’d looked up at his mirror.

      The brief flashes of self-assurance she’d displayed to Mildred and Ben Adams suggested that Cassidy had been telling the truth about one thing. The woman did have a mind of her own. Which, he considered, made her even more of a challenge.

      He’d promised Cassidy that he wouldn’t harm her. Which was true. But Hunter did have every intention of spending the next thirty nights bending Gillian to his will, teaching her things about herself, revealing the dark, forbidden secret corners of her sexual psyche he suspected she’d never known existed.

      Her display of self-pity turned out to be short-lived. Hunter watched as she cursed—a rich, earthy word that drew a faint smile from him. She threw her napkin onto the table, stood up and left the room.

      The hall camera caught her flashing eyes and firmly set lips as she strode purposefully back toward the master suite.

      Oh, yes, Hunter told himself, his body humming with savage anticipation, the ethereal-appearing pianist’s surprisingly independent spirit would only make their little game more intriguing.

      And it would definitely make his victory all the sweeter once George Cassidy’s daughter had been properly, thoroughly tamed.

      THE STAGE IN THE MASTER suite had been set for seduction. The flames coming from the fire in the black-tiled fireplace warming the bedroom were in stark contrast to the icy sleet the ocean wind was driving against the windowpanes.

      The flickering orange light danced on the ceiling like a shimmering display of aurora borealis. On the table beside the bed, a fat ivory beeswax candle sat on a hammered-tin holder.

      The nightgown—a pale sea-foam green rather than the blatant black she’d been expecting—was draped across the bed, just as Hunter’s insulting letter had promised. Since it hadn’t been there earlier, and Mr. and Mrs. Adams had left right after Mildred had served dinner, Hunter had obviously left his precious laboratory long enough to lay it out for her.

      The idea of his prowling unseen through the sprawling house, entering her room, perhaps even going through her personal belongings, gave Gillian goose bumps.

      It also made her madder than hell.

      The gown was empire style, the top created from hand-tatted lace so gossamer it could have been spun by fairies from cobwebs. In