Nobody's Child. Ann Major

      Prologue

      The night was black and wild. The wind was so fierce that every flower and leaf in Texas had blown off all the trees.

      Cutter Lord, who lived life on a dangerous edge, was driving way too fast. He was used to delegating unpleasant errands. Not that he hadn’t tried to delegate the troublesome Miss Rose, but his younger brother’s unsuitable fiancée had bested his top man.

      “You’ll have to deal with Miss Rose yourself, or else—” Paul O’Connor, his vice president, had thundered, rubbing his bruised wrists on the steps outside the Dallas city jail after Cutter had bailed him out. Paul was black and smart and tough, and not easy to scare.

      “Or else?”

      “I quit. The lady snuck up behind me with a vase of the biggest purple pansies you ever saw, hit me with it and locked me in her gardening shed. I nearly froze before she called the cops.”

      Cutter was used to chauffeured limousines...to the luxury of his private jet... to other people shouldering all the hassles when he traveled. Which was often. And to far more glamorous places than south Texas.

      Not tonight.

      As if hurled by the brute force of the worst winter storm to hit Texas in ten years, the hail-dimpled, black Lincoln and its grim driver shot from the mainland onto the narrow causeway that led across the Laguna Madre to the barrier islands.

      The radio said the windchill was now minus ninety degrees in Crookston, Minnesota, and that two hundred cars were stranded on Nebraska roads. Tornadoes had ripped off roofs in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. In the panhandle the temperature had dropped forty degrees in two hours. Three people had died in windstorms near El Paso.

      The devastating norther that had closed the Dallas airports and grounded Cutter’s jet was roaring into the humid warmth of the state’s southern coast with bands of galeforce winds and icy rain.

      Cutter Lord, who preferred to spend his nights in a warm bed with a beautiful woman, was bone-weary from having driven too many miles on ice-slick highways.

      One woman was responsible for Cutter’s foolhardiness. One woman had so infuriated him that he had lost all his judgment. Thus, he and the storm raced toward the island together, like two angry giants, determined to trample whatever got in their way.

      With his ebony hair, black eyes and strong dark face, Cutter was blessed with the kind of virile good looks most women found exciting. He was six-two, lean, and powerfully built. He had brains, drive and an iron will. His fierce dedication to his family’s business was legendary. His friends attributed his astounding success to his genius and high energy levels. His enemies said he was ruthless. The bottom line was that he usually made money. Lots of it.

      Suddenly—ahead—the causeway vanished into a dark, inky froth. Brake lights flashed as cars began to back up.

      Hell. The tide was rising and surging inland.

      Instead of turning back, Cutter inched forward into the purple waves. He had to hurry, before the authorities closed the causeway—the only road to the barrier islands and, thereby, to Cheyenne Rose.

      He’d come this far; he wouldn’t let anything stop him from dealing with Miss Rose.

      Every time he remembered her midnight call, his blood ran colder than a shark’s on the trail of blood. She hadn’t liked his calling her a gold digger.

      Her husky voice had had the taunting, singsong quality of a nursery rhyme.

      Fight, fight, as hard as you can. If I want to marry your baby brother, Mr. Lord, you can’t stop me. I’m the gold digger girl.

      She had giggled as she tossed his taunt back at him, “the gold digger girl.”

      Then she had laughed again.

      At him.

      “You know what your problem is, Mr. Lord. You’re spoiled!”

      Cutter’s hand had clenched on the receiver, his nostrils flaring even as some part of him had dissolved in her velvet voice.

      Then—right before she hung up—she had purred, “Oh, by the way, Mr. Lord, I had your mean, tough Paul O’Connor arrested for peeping into my bathroom window—he’s handcuffed to a metal chair beside a prostitute down at the city jail. Just thought you’d like to know. Also, I’ve left town so I can decide without any more interference from you whether or not I want to marry Martin and become your sister.”

      His sister! The hell she’d be his sister!

      Cutter had slammed down the phone and demanded to know one thing once Paul verified she had, indeed, left town.

      Where the hell was she?

      Within an hour his men informed him that Martin had flown her to the beach house on Lord Island, and that she planned to stay there all by herself for a week.

      All by herself.

      On Cutter’s remote private island off the Texas coast.

      Perfect.

      Or it would have been except for the storm.

      Cutter wasn’t afraid of her. Nor of a mere storm. And her call had only made him all the more determined to stop her.

      Only now, he had to do the dirty work himself.

      Spoiled?

      He wasn’t spoiled!

      He just had to win.

      The black waves in the Gulf had risen to Goliathan heights. Not that they were that big in the protected marina.

      “Boss, you shouldn’t go till morning,” Miguel screamed above the howling wind as Cutter untied a dockline. “Maybe not then.”

      “Right. Like I drove all night through sleet and hail so I could sit the storm out in a Port A. bar or a cheap motel.”

      The boat, which Martin had named Jolly Girl one sunny summer day, was the only way to reach Lord Island tonight.

      Fight, fight as hard as you can—

      Damn right, he’d fight her as hard as he could. Cutter would fight because he knew he’d go mad if he had to listen to her singsong voice flit through his brain till morning.

      When he jumped from the dock into the bucking sloop, he slipped on the wet fiberglass and almost fell. He opened the hatch and began casting off.

      “Loco,” Miguel yelled frantically. “You crazy, boss. You don’t know enough about boats. Your brother Martin—”

      Cutter glared at him.

      Cutter was a remarkable entrepreneur.

      He was a less than remarkable yachtsman.

      Not that he could have ever admitted there was anything he couldn’t do better than his playboy brother.

      Cutter stubbornly primed the bulb and then pushed in the automatic choke before starting the engine.

      Only when Cutter cast off the last line, and the little boat hurtled free of the dock into the purple waves, did Cutter begin to doubt the wisdom of having let anger and arrogance rule him.

      But by then it was too late.

      Almost immediately, the lights of the shore and Miguel’s alarmed cries were lost in the troughs of black waves and driving rain.

      The cold wind tore at his foul weather gear, and rain rushed inside it. Cutter’s teeth began to chatter as he headed toward his island.

      An