The Curse of Raven's Cliff

“Nicholas!”

The fear that had twisted his gut now morphed into outright terror.

It was her.

Camille.

Before he could stop the automatic reaction he was at the door, preparing to open it.

When had she been released from the hospital?

What was she doing here?

Though the immediate dangers to Raven’s Cliff and all who resided there had passed, evil still lurked close by. Nicholas could feel it deep in his bones.

The curse.

Nothing would stop it…except the full restoration of the lighthouse and its precious lantern.

And only he could make that happen.

“Nicholas, I will not go away!” Camille’s voice reverberated through the closed door. “Let me in! Please.”

The last word trembled from her.

Something was wrong.

Unable to ignore her urgent plea, he slid back the dead bolt and opened the door.

His heart stumbled at the sight of her. He’d forgotten it was raining outside. A violent storm had come and gone, leaving in its wake a persistent and cleansing rain. Camille stood on his stoop, her clothes soaked and clinging to her shivering body. For one moment his gaze was lost to her beauty. The wet clothing formed to her skin, accenting the curves his hands, even now, longed to caress. Fool.

“I need your help,” she pleaded.

His eyes met hers, and the fear there launched a new terror inside him.

“Come inside.” He stood back, opened the door wider.

She stepped over the threshold, her arms hugged tightly around herself.

That treacherous uncertainty plagued him even as he knew what he should do. “I’ll get you a blanket.”

She started to argue but he turned his back and walked away. In the hall, he rummaged in the linen closet for a towel and a blanket. His housekeeper’s work was reliable. Despite the cottage’s run-down condition she worked diligently to maintain a certain level of cleanliness and orderliness.

Nicholas was grateful she did so without question. She appeared not to care who he was or what he did, only that he paid her a good wage for a good day’s work. For nearly five years that had been enough.

Bracing himself, he returned to where Camille waited. She looked pale and tired. Not well at all. Damp curls snuggled her soft cheeks, underscoring the dark circles beneath her eyes. His pulse reacted with worry and other emotions he fiercely wanted to deny.

“When were you released from the hospital?” He handed her the towel first.

She scrubbed at her face, then smoothed the terry cloth over her hair. “Two days ago.”

The frown etched more deeply into his brow. “You’re feeling better now?” She had teetered on the edge of death for days. He couldn’t believe she’d awakened and walked out of the hospital as if death hadn’t very nearly claimed her. “They determined what made you so ill?”

She clutched the towel at her breast and focused a glower on him. The vulnerability vanished, replaced by what looked like anger. “Don’t pretend to care about my well-being.”

He flinched at the accusation. “Of course I care about your well-being.” He took the towel from her, tossed it aside, then carefully draped the blanket around her shoulders.

She stiffened at the slightest brush of his fingers. The reaction was like a kick to his midsection. But then, what did he expect? Any tender feelings she’d had for his memory had vanished in the wake of the impact of his return…of his betrayal. He had allowed her to believe him dead.

“I need your help.”

Part of him wanted to assure her that whatever she needed he would gladly provide. He’d been supporting Raven’s Cliff’s recovery efforts since he returned. Anonymously, of course. It was the least he could do. But helping Camille would be another tragic mistake. She wouldn’t need money; her family was quite wealthy despite her father’s, the former mayor’s, recent fall from grace. Whatever help Camille thought she needed from him, she was wrong. He would only bring more pain to her life.

“You should go.” He cleared his expression of any emotion. It would be in her best interests if he acted like the beast he appeared to be. “Coming here was a mistake.”

She blinked, stood mute for a long moment as if she didn’t know how to respond to his refusal.

“Your presence could give away my identity. The villagers are already overly curious and suspicious about me,” he offered. He shouldn’t have bothered with an explanation, but that foolish part of him that still loved her so dearly wouldn’t allow the slight.

“I should have known,” she snapped, something far too much like disgust in her tone and her eyes. “Of course you wouldn’t want me to risk revealing the truth. You might be inconvenienced with having to explain yourself.”

He clamped his jaw shut against the denial. Let her believe what she would as long as it sent her on her way.

“If my being here causes you trouble, that’s too bad,” she said, standing her ground. “You have to help me.” She pulled the blanket more tightly around her but even that couldn’t disguise the way her body trembled. “No one else will believe me.”

“Stop.” He couldn’t deal with this. Being in the same room alone with her was difficult enough. She deserved better than him. Far better. He couldn’t allow her to drag him into whatever was going on in her life. He couldn’t risk hurting her again.

More important, his entire focus had to be on gaining access to the lighthouse, on stopping whatever plague the curse would send next. He wasn’t about to try to explain that to her. Even he didn’t fully understand. But he knew. He knew what he must do.

“Camille.” He swallowed, the taste of her name on his lips taking his breath. Forced away the need to touch her…to do anything she asked of him. “You cannot come here again. No one can know who I am. If someone sees you here, suspicions will be aroused and trouble will follow.” He reached for the door. “Go home. Your family can help you with whatever problem you’re encountering.”

“No.” She shook her head adamantly. “You’re the only one who can help me.”

Nicholas closed his eyes and struggled to maintain his composure. He could not be tempted. He could not permit himself to be drawn into her life again.

“Go home, Camille. I can’t help you.” He opened his eyes and leveled an icy glare on her. Whatever it took to push her away. “Go. Now.”

“Someone took my baby.”

Her words shook him. Shocked him. “Baby?” Camille had a child? Then he remembered, she’d gone missing on her wedding day. The day she was supposed to have married Grant Bridges. Misery ached inside him.

She nodded jerkily. “While I was…missing.” Her head moved side to side with the weight of uncertainty. “I don’t remember anything. The man…” She shrugged, clearly unsure of her words. “The man who held me kept me drugged or something. I don’t remember anything after falling from the cliff. All I know is that I was pregnant and now I’m not. The doctor said I’d given birth only a few weeks before I was found.” She drew in a jagged breath. “My baby’s missing and Chief Swanson thinks I…”

Tears welled in those big blue eyes. “Chief Swanson thinks what?” Nicholas heard himself ask, no matter that he knew with every fiber of his being that he should usher her out the door. He should not allow himself to be distracted…not even for Camille.

He’d made that mistake once. And it had cost them both far too much already.

“He thinks I did something—” she moistened her quivering lips “—with my baby. He won’t help me because he thinks I did something unspeakable.”

“Swanson is a reasonable man.” Nicholas steeled his emotions. He could not help her. “You should talk to him again. Insist that he at least consider all avenues, including the possibility that whoever held you took your child.”

The vulnerability disappeared once more. “He won’t help me,” she argued. “He and his men are investigating me. They’re not looking for my baby.” The anguish tormenting her trickled beyond the determination she attempted to exhibit. “I’ll have to do this without the help of the authorities.” Another big breath. “And I can’t do it alone.”

Enough. He had allowed this to go too far already. If he didn’t send her away now he would end up agreeing to her request, and that would be a mistake for her and for him. Trouble would soon descend upon Raven’s Cliff once more if he didn’t complete his quest.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.” He moved to the door. “Go home, Camille. You have the means to find the help you need. Hire a private investigator.” He met her worried gaze once more. “You don’t need me.”

“No.” She lifted her chin in defiance. “I need your help. There is no one else I can depend on.”

Anger flared, burning away the tender emotions he had foolishly experienced. If she needed someone, she should turn to Grant Bridges. After all, she had been ready to marry him before she’d disappeared. He was assuredly the child’s father. Why didn’t she go to him now?

“Go to Bridges.” The words ground from between clenched teeth. Nicholas hated that jealously was reflected in each word, but some part of him was obviously still human. Grant Bridges had once been his best friend. As much as Nicholas wanted to hate him for almost marrying Camille, he had no right. Camille deserved a good man, and Bridges was a good man.

“I can’t.”

Patience thinning, Nicholas gestured to the door once more. “I’m certain he will be glad to help you in any way you need. He was supposed to be your husband as I recall. He faithfully visited you in the hospital.” Nicholas stared out the open door and into the dark night as he said the rest. “Bridges would never shirk his responsibilities. Go to him.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t go to him.” She still made no move toward the door. “You’re the only person who can help me.”

A muscle in his jaw jerking with tension, Nicholas moved in close to her, a blatant act of intimidation. The sweet scent of her filled his nostrils, almost defeated his determination. “It’s only right that the father of the child have a hand in the search. Go to Bridges, Camille. He’s the one you should be talking to right now.”

“But he’s not the father.”

Nicholas’s tense jaw fell slack. Confusion obliterated any possibility of rational thought. “I don’t understand.”

“You have to help me, Nicholas.” She searched his eyes, her own filled with fear and a tangle of other pained emotions. “You’re the only one who can. If you won’t do it for me, do it for the baby.”

He shook his head. “You’re not making sense.”

“The baby isn’t Grant’s.” She stared straight into Nicholas’s eyes, took a deep breath. “It’s yours. You’re the father.”

Chapter Two

Camille Wells shivered uncontrollably as she waited for Nicholas’s answer. She didn’t care that she had just blurted out the fact that he was a father. Or that he looked completely stunned.

Right now, she didn’t care about anything but finding her baby.

He didn’t look directly at her, kept his face turned slightly to the left in an effort to shield that damaged side from view. “You should sit down.” The words were scarcely a whisper, wholly uncharacteristic for the gruff man he had become.

The beast. That was what the villagers called the scarred recluse who had purchased the cottage on the outskirts of town. And like the new owner, the cottage was damaged very nearly beyond repair.

With all that she knew, how could she still feel anything for him?

“I don’t need to sit down,” she argued. “I need to find our baby.” Evidently the reality of what she had told him hadn’t gotten through the first time. She had to make him understand.

He shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

Exactly the response she had expected. “We had sex, Nicholas.” She drew in a deep breath, summoned her patience. Time was wasting. They needed a plan. They needed to start looking. Now! “That’s how babies are made, or have you forgotten?” She trembled inside at the memory. What was wrong with her? Her baby was missing!

Another shake of his dark head. “But that was—”

“Nine months, four weeks, two days ago.” Just after dark…at the same place they’d last made love. Only this time she had been the one on the verge of getting married. The irony of the situation was almost laughable. But the pain in her chest, the ache in her very soul left no room for amusement. Her baby was missing. A baby she couldn’t remember giving birth to.

A baby whose first kick she couldn’t recall. A baby she had carried for nine months and she had absolutely no recollection of that time save for the first four weeks. Those precious days between making love with Nicholas and walking arm in arm with her father toward her fiancé, Grant Bridges.

How could she look back on any part of that time as precious when she had cheated on the man she was to marry? They had agreed to abstain from sex the final month before their marriage to make their wedding night even more special. And what had she done?

Grant. God, he had been so good to her. He had been perfectly willing to marry her and raise the child as his own. Marrying him without telling him the truth had been out of the question. Camille had told him everything. And he’d forgiven her. Even more incredible he’d still wanted to marry her. Camille had recognized the second chance and pulled herself back together. She would be Mrs. Grant Bridges. Her child would be raised by two parents and no one would ever know the truth.

Then, in one unexpected gust of gale force wind, everything had changed.

She had lost months of her life…her baby…the future she had planned.

Everything.

“But you were going to marry Bridges,” Nicholas argued as if that was a logical reason the child couldn’t be his. “Did you know…?”

She nodded, shuddered at the chill that had bored deep into her bones. “I found out a few days before the wedding.”

Suspicion reared its ugly head in his startlingly blue eyes. “But you were going to marry Bridges anyway.”

Not a question. An accusation. She squared her shoulders. “Yes. I told him about the baby. He was willing to marry me anyway.” She glared into those piercing eyes. “In fact, he insisted that it was the only right thing to do.”

Her words hit the mark. She saw the sting in Nicholas’s eyes. Good. He deserved it.

“When I wouldn’t have,” he suggested, fierce indifference pumped into his tone.

“Have you ever?” She hugged the blanket closer against the quivering she couldn’t quite conquer. “Think about it, Nicholas—you never were exactly reliable. You didn’t have the courage to stand up to your parents when it came to us. And then, when your grandfather died in the lighthouse fire, you deserted all of us.”

Fury tightened his jaw, sent a muscle there jumping rhythmically. “I had my reasons.”

That was the part that frosted her the most. “Oh, yes.” She angled her head and glowered at him. “It was for my own good. For the good of all of Raven’s Cliff. How could I forget?” Yet another logical excuse spawned by selfish, illogical reasoning.

“You don’t understand,” he snarled, that beastly side showing in his voice and in his eyes as he stared straight at her.

Camille didn’t flinch. It wasn’t easy. The left side of his face was disfigured from the lighthouse fire. The damage extended down his throat, along his left arm and the upper portion of that side of his torso. Camille had felt the raised, calloused skin that night they’d made love. But it hadn’t been until the clouds had cleared from the moon that she’d gotten a good look at his face. The sight had stunned her, sent anguish searing through her. Her reaction had hurt him. She’d tried to explain, to apologize, but he refused to listen. He’d pushed her away, deserted her, as surely as he had four years prior.

He hadn’t given her a chance to tell him that what she really saw was the lines and angles of the handsome face he’d always had. The broad shoulders and powerful arms. The lean waist and the masculine contours of his chest.

As sorry as she was for all that he had lost, for the suffering he had endured from the burns, she would not feel sympathy for him. That soft feeling had vanished the night he made love to her and then walked away.

For a second time.

“I understand perfectly.” She reeled in her emotions. They were still wasting time. What happened between them made no difference. All that mattered was finding her child. “And frankly, I don’t care. I need to find my baby. Nothing else matters.”

He turned his profile to her once more, concealing the left side from view. The rigid set of his shoulders and the fists his fingers had balled into told her he was considering how to handle this situation.

No matter that she had never once been able to depend on Nicholas, no matter that until his sudden so-called death he had been viewed by all of Raven’s Cliff as a self-centered rich boy, Camille knew she could depend on him to help her.

Nicholas had learned something about responsibility in the past five years. At first she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, but during the better part of the past two weeks as she had lain in that hospital room under guard, she had come to terms with many things.

She had suspected that the recluse living in the cottage was responsible for a number of anonymous gifts to the village. Everyone had talked about how some philanthropic soul had heard of Raven’s Cliff’s tribulations and had decided to help. But Camille had recognized a pattern. As the then mayor’s daughter, she spent a lot of her time doing charitable work with her mother. On the few occasions when she had heard of the recluse’s presence in town, she had begun to mentally chart what she heard about his visits along with the unexpected donations that oddly coincided with those rare appearances. Like how badly Miss Louise Patterson had needed a new playground for her day-care center. There were numerous other instances she could think of, but now wasn’t the time to bring up her suspicions.

Still, those instances were solid evidence, in her opinion, that Nicholas had changed. He needed to assuage his guilt with good deeds. If playing upon that guilt was wrong, so be it.

She had to find her baby.

Anguish tore through her. “Are you going to help me?” She didn’t add the “or not” that filtered through her head. He couldn’t refuse her. She wouldn’t let him. He could help her. She was certain. A man who had been to such dark places could no doubt reason out the thinking of someone evil enough to steal a newborn baby.

As if she’d said the last aloud, Nicholas’s gaze drifted to the rough plank floors. Her heart thumped harder in her chest. Please, please say yes.

“What do you want me to do?”

Though he didn’t look at her, his voice told her he had resigned himself to the obligation. Part of her wanted to be angry that it had taken such prodding to secure his help, but the reality was she didn’t care. As long as he helped her it didn’t matter why.

Another harsh reality shook her with an impact that would surely register on the Richter scale. Where did they start?

“I…” She swallowed at the lump of emotion lodged in her throat. “I don’t know.”

Blue eyes tangled with her own of a paler shade. Her mind immediately considered the idea that their baby would likely have blue eyes as well.

She shook her head. Absolute focus was essential. “I was found abandoned and alone.” And half dead, she didn’t bother adding. “No one discovered the fact that I’d recently given birth until right before I regained consciousness.” The truth was the hospital staff had been so focused on keeping her alive that nothing else had mattered at first. Eventually when all other possibilities had been exhausted in an attempt to trace down the source of the near-lethal staph infection, the indications that she had recently given birth were discovered.

“Have they uncovered the cause of your amnesia?” At her questioning expression, he went on. “Raven’s Cliff is a small village. I heard through my housekeeper that when you awoke you remembered nothing since falling from the cliffs.”

Funny, nothing went without discussion in this small village and yet her child was missing. Someone had held her for months, delivered her baby, and then disappeared without anyone noticing. Evidently right here in Raven’s Cliff.

Her legs wouldn’t hold her anymore. She shuffled to the nearest chair and collapsed there. “The experts believe the amnesia is drug related. At first it was assumed that I’d suffered head trauma from the fall, but there was no indication of major or permanent damage.” She closed her eyes a moment before she continued. “The theory is that I was drugged for the duration. Then, before the drugs wore off, the staph infection worsened. Between that, dehydration and God only knows what else, I slipped into a coma. My last memories are of my wedding day.” She took a bolstering breath. “Then of waking up in the hospital.”

The psychologist working on her case theorized that perhaps the missing time was too painful to remember. Since she was physically recovered with no apparent reason for the lapse in memory, the cause had to be psychosomatic. She couldn’t rule out that theory, and quite frankly she didn’t care why she couldn’t remember. She only wanted to find her child.

Nicholas remained silent for an endless minute as he obviously considered all that she had told him and whatever he had heard since she was found.

“We have no way of knowing where you were held,” he began, his tone somber.

Her chest tightened as she nodded her agreement.

“We have no idea who held you or why.”

Another nod of concurrence wasn’t necessary, and that was just as well. If she moved she might very well throw up. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d eaten, but the nagging desire to empty her stomach persisted, gained force with each passing second.

“And—” his gaze leveled fully on hers “—we don’t know if the baby survived beyond birth.”

Ice slid along every nerve ending, hardened in her blood. “There’s no reason to think otherwise,” she argued.

Was that pity in his eyes? Or regret?

“You said yourself that the experts believe you were drugged for all those months…”

He didn’t have to say more.

He was right.

Maybe someone at the hospital had even mentioned that possibility to her but she had wiped it out. Denied the potential.

No. She refused to consider it now. “Lots of babies survive prolonged drug use by their mothers.” Mothers hooked on illegal drugs delivered living babies all the time. There were problems, but at least the child was alive.

“My baby is alive.” She dredged up her courage and exiled the fear and uncertainty.

With one downward sweep of his dark lashes, the regret or pity she’d noted vanished and was replaced by the fierce indifference of the beast. “How do you know? The odds are not in your favor. Give me one valid reason we should even bother with a search and I’ll do all within my power to find your child.”

Your child, not our child. Fine, if that was the way he wanted to play it.

“I only have one,” Camille said, pushing to her feet so that she could look him squarely in the eyes. She swayed but steadied herself in time to prevent his reaching out to her. “I can feel it. Right here.” She released the blanket, allowing it to puddle around her feet, and pressed both hands over her heart. “My baby is alive. He’s out there waiting for me to bring him home.”

The undamaged corner of his mouth twitched. “And you know the child is a boy.”

Camille nodded. “Yes.” She hadn’t actually come to that conclusion until that moment, but somehow she knew with every fiber of her being that the baby was a boy. Her little boy.

He sighed, the sound weary, reluctant. “All right.” He pushed the tousled hair back from his face. “We’ll start with who found you. We need as much information as possible.”