Raising The Stakes

Immerse yourself again in the drama and passion of Sandra Marton’s bestselling story.

The winner takes all…

Wealthy attorney Gray Baron has come to Las Vegas on a mission to find a woman—Dawn Lincoln Kittredge, the long-lost grandchild of his uncle. But feisty Dawn is not about to make anything easy for him…

After being hurt in the past, Dawn is wary of strangers, even gorgeous, sexy ones like Gray. But mutual suspicion doesn’t stop an undeniable passion from igniting between them. As the tension mounts, all bets are off!

Originally published in 2002.

Raising the Stakes

Sandra Marton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

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

EPILOGUE

Copyright

PROLOGUE

IN THE darkness of the hot summer night, Dawn lay curled like a baby in its mother’s womb as she listened to the frantic slap, slap, slap of the silk moth’s wings against the screen.

She couldn’t see the moth, not from here in the back bedroom, but she knew it was outside the kitchen window, shredding its beautiful wings in a useless attempt to reach the light.

The silk moth had turned up at dusk, right after she’d fed Tommy and put him to bed for the night.

“Sleep tight, sweetheart,” she’d whispered, and he’d given her his biggest, brightest three-year-old smile.

“An’ don’t let the bed bugs bite,” her son had replied, as he always did.

Dawn had kissed him, loving his sweet, baby scent. Tommy had rolled onto his belly and she’d drawn a light blanket over his upraised rump. Her smile had faded as she’d shut the door to his room and looked around the cabin, trying to see it through Harman’s eyes. Did she miss anything when she dusted earlier? Had she put all Tommy’s toys away?

She’d paused beside the sofa, smoothed down the flowered chenille throw that covered the seat cushion where the spring had popped. Everything looked fine but what looked fine to her didn’t necessarily look that way to her husband, especially on Friday nights when he cashed his paycheck at the Foodco and then stopped for drinks on the way home.

It didn’t always happen that way. Once in a while, Harman just came straight home. Those times weren’t perfect. He still liked things exactly as he liked them. “Everything in order,” he called it, “the way a man’s entitled, in his own home.” But it was easier on nights when he didn’t stop at the bar. Without liquor in him, he was still surly and he’d talk mean, too, but he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t—

Dawn blanked her mind to the rest.

The thing to do was keep busy, not notice that if Harman were heading directly for the cabin, he’d have been here an hour ago. She took a breath, glanced in the spotted oval mirror that hung over the table near the door. Did she look okay? Not too tired? Harman didn’t like her to look tired. It was the baby’s fault, he’d say, when she yawned too much or her eyes didn’t sparkle the way he liked. The baby was sapping her energy. Once she’d made the mistake of saying no, no, it wasn’t like that. The baby was the joy of her life.

“I am the joy of your life,” Harman had said coldly. “You remember that, girl.”

She would. Yes, she would. Because it wasn’t how he’d looked at her that had scared her, or how he’d sounded. It was the way he’d looked at Tommy afterward, as if their son was a trespasser in a world that had been perfect until he’d been born. It had never been perfect, not ever, not from the day after the wedding when she’d thoughtlessly left her lipstick and comb on the bathroom sink…

Dawn spun away from the mirror, went into the kitchen, took a broom from the closet and stepped out onto the sagging porch. It would need sweeping. The tall oaks that surrounded the cabin were what made the mountain so handsome, but Harman didn’t much care for seeing leaves and acorns on the porch.

“Got to be swept twice a day,” he said.

So Dawn swept it, twice a day. Sometimes more than that, just to be sure. And that night, as she’d swept, she’d seen the silk moth.

It wasn’t the first one she’d ever seen. Years ago, when she was a little girl, a moth just like it had come swooping in through the open trailer door. Her mother had screamed as if it was a creature straight out of hell, grabbed a rolled-up magazine and gone after it.

“Kill it,” she’d yelled, “kill it!”

Instead Dawn caught the moth and took it outside, feeling the delicate pink wings trembling with terror in her cupped hands. She’d set it free in the stand of scraggly trees between the trailer park and the highway.

“Go on,” she’d whispered, “spread your pretty wings and fly far, far away.”

Her mother slapped her when she went back into the trailer, not very hard because she was already high on what she called her pain pills, but just enough to remind her that she’d been disobedient.

“I tell you to do a thing,” she’d said, “you do it. You got that, girl?”

Dawn got it. Rules were to be obeyed. Still, she’d risked breaking another one the next day. She was supposed to go straight home after school. She had chores to do and stopping off anywhere, especially at the library to poke her nose into books that gave her, Orianna said, fancy ideas, was forbidden. But Dawn wanted to know the name of the beautiful moth whose life she’d saved. She found a picture of it in the encyclopedia. It was a Glover’s silk moth, a thing of rare beauty, and though she’d always hoped to see one again, she never had.

She knew it was silly but tonight she wondered if, by some miracle, the moth on the porch might be the one she’d saved years ago. She paused in her sweeping, watching the moth with delight until, suddenly, she heard the sound of a truck laboring up the mountain.

Her heart leaped into her throat. Was it Harman? So early? That would be good. It would mean he hadn’t stopped for more than a drink or two—but it would be bad, too. She wasn’t done sweeping and just look, she’d somehow gotten a stain on her skirt.

It wasn’t Harman. The sound of the engine died away. Dawn dragged a breath into her lungs and swept the porch until the unpainted boards were spotless. Not that it mattered. If he came home drunk, she could have swept a hundred times over and he’d still find a speck of dirt, a bit of leaf, something, anything, and when he did…

She switched the thought off, just clicked it to silence as if it were a station on a radio because she’d learned there wasn’t any sense, really, in thinking ahead. Whatever happened would happen. Nothing she could do would change it. She could only sweep harder and faster and not do anything stupid, like hurrying back inside the cabin and waking Tommy so he could see the silk moth. Her son loved all the creatures that shared this godforsaken mountain with them, but why take him from his bed to see something that would surely be dead by morning? And it would be dead, drawn by the light Harman insisted must be on so he could be sure she wasn’t in the arms of one of the nonexistent men he was convinced came around whenever he wasn’t there.

Once, exhausted at the end of a day spent cooking and cleaning in hopes of pleasing him, she’d forgotten the light. Harman had come in late and dragged her out of bed, to the front room and the unlit lamp.

“Did you think you could hide in here without my knowin’ what you were up to?” he’d said, and when she’d tried to explain that she hadn’t done anything, that his preoccupation with her leaving on the light didn’t make any sense, he’d called her a liar and a whore. He’d beaten her and then he’d unzipped his jeans, torn off her nightgown and pushed himself inside her.

She never forgot to turn on the light after that.

It was like a beacon, shining there in the blackness of the mountain night, luring the gossamer-winged creatures of the forest to their deaths. The silk moth would meet the same fate. It would beat its delicate wings to pieces in a fruitless attempt to reach a warm, shiny world that was only an illusion. Bad enough she knew that awful truth. Why would she want Tommy to know it, too? Her son had lots of time to learn about the world.

So she’d finished sweeping a floor that didn’t need sweeping and now she lay in the dark, listening to the pathetic slap of the moth’s wings, to the quick thud of her own heart as it grew later and later. At last, she heard the whine of her husband’s pickup truck as it made its way toward the clearing.

Dawn shuddered, held her breath. If she could only feign sleep…

The truck door slammed. Booted feet stomped up the wooden steps and across the porch. The door opened.

Maybe it would be okay. Harman had been good to her, once. When he’d asked her to marry him, when he’d offered to take her away from her mother and the trailer park and the endless stream of men who slept in her mother’s bed, he’d seemed the answer to her prayers.

“Shit!”

Dawn dug her face into the muslin pillow tick. Stay asleep, Tommy, she thought frantically, don’t, oh don’t wake up. Not that Harman would ever hurt their son, she was sure of that, but still…

Another noise. More cursing. The sound of Harman falling, then getting to his feet.

“Goddammit,” he roared. “What the hell is this?”

Oh, God! Had he tripped over something? What? What could she have left on the floor? She’d put the broom away. The dustpan. The chairs were lined up under the table just so, all of them neatly arranged. Tommy’s toys, such as they were, were carefully placed on the shelf in his room…

The red car.

The brand-new red plastic car she’d bought at the supermarket, even though it cost two dollars, because of the way her baby had looked at it, his blue eyes going all round with wonder. He’d played with it all afternoon, rolling it back and forth, back and forth while she folded laundry until, finally, he’d fallen sound asleep right there at her feet, the car clutched in his chubby fist. She’d smiled, scooped him up, carried him to his crib—and kicked the red car, by mistake. It had rolled toward the corner and she’d forgotten it, forgotten to look for it.

The bedroom door shot open. The light flashed on. Don’t move, Dawn thought desperately, don’t open your eyes, don’t blink, don’t stir, don’t breathe…

“Get up!”

She scrambled up against the pillows, clutching the quilt to her chin. Her husband loomed over her, looking as big as the mountain he came from and as mean as the storms that blew across it.

“Harman. Please. I didn’t mean to—”

The first blow caught her across her cheek. The second was better aimed and got her in the jaw. Her head snapped back; the coppery taste of blood was on her tongue.

“Where’d this come from, huh? Where’d it come from?”

He shook his fist under her nose, opened his hand, let her look at what lay in his palm. It was Tommy’s red car.

“Answer me, dammit. Where’d you get this?”

“I bought it. In Queen City.”

He hit her again, this time with the hand that held the toy. Dawn felt the skin split just above her eye.

“Ain’t no toy stores in Queen City, bitch. Try another lie.”

“I didn’t buy it at a toy store.” She was gasping for breath now. Harman was clutching her by the neck. He hoisted her to her knees and his fingers pressed hard into her throat. “Harman? Harman, please. I can’t breathe.”

“Who was here? What man came here and brought this to keep my son silent while you and he rutted in my bed?”

“Nobody. I swear it. Nobody was here. I bought the car. At the supermarket. They sell toys now, and Tommy saw this, and he wanted it so badly that I—”

She cried out as he lifted her from the bed and threw her against the dresser. Pain shot up her spine and into her neck.

“Liar,” he snarled as he bent over her. The stink of his breath choked her.

“It’s the truth. You know I don’t have men here, Harman. Why would I? I love you. Only you. Nobody but—”

He punched her. Dawn’s head jerked back and he hit her again, then curled his hand into the neckline of her nightgown and ripped it down to the hem.

“Whore! Harlot! Only a decent woman knows the meaning of love.”

“Harman. Please. Please, oh sweet Jesus, don’t—”

“Bitches like you ain’t fit to use His name.”

He hit her again. And again. By the time he tossed her on the bed and unzipped his pants, the world had become a gray blur.

“You won’t learn,” he said, as he came down on top of her. “I try and try to teach you to be a good wife but you—just—won’t—”

Dawn moaned as he seated himself deep inside her. She could feel her dry flesh tear as he pounded into her again and again until, finally, she felt the hot spurt of his discharge. He fell against her, his breathing harsh, the reek of him like sewage in her nostrils. She could feel wetness between her legs. Was it from him, or was it blood?

I hate you, she thought, God, I hate you, Harman Kitteridge. I wish you were dead!

No. It was wrong to think such things. This was her husband. She had taken vows that bound her to him. He was the father of her child.

Maybe he was right. Maybe all this was her fault. She didn’t lie with other men, she didn’t even talk to other men, but surely she did things that made him angry. She could learn to do things his way. The right way. She could—she could plan a little better, look at the sink and notice that she’d put the soap dish in the wrong place or see that she hadn’t folded his work shirts the way he preferred them folded.

She could leave him.

No. She could never do that. It wasn’t right. A wife was supposed to cleave to her husband. Besides, there was the baby to consider. She’d grown up without a father; she knew that a child deserved better than that. And Harman didn’t mistreat the baby. He’d never raised a hand to him. Tommy loved his daddy. He loved him. Wasn’t that worth the world?

Dawn lay stiff and silent under her husband’s suffocating weight. He was a heavy man, big and muscled from years of working the timber on the mountain. She was small, just like her mother. But she knew better than to complain that he was crushing her and, after a long time, Harman grunted and rolled off her.

Dawn waited. Then, slowly, carefully, she began inching toward the edge of the mattress. She had to wash, put some ice on her jaw and on her temple. Her little boy was getting older. The last time Harman had beaten her, Tommy’s eyes had gone wide when he saw her in the morning.

“Mama hurt?” he’d said, as he’d touched his soft baby fingers to the cut on her lip.

“No, darlin’,” Dawn had answered, “no, Mama’s fine…”

“Where you think you’re goin’?”

She gasped, jerked back as Harman’s hand closed hard on her wrist. “Nowhere. Just—just to the bathroom.”

“You was goin’ to check on the kid.”

“Well—well, yes. I thought the baby might have kicked off the blankets and—”

“He ain’t a baby no more. Don’t need you hangin’ over him all the time.”

“He’s only three, Harman. I just want to—”

She cried out as his fingers bit into her flesh. “He’s only three,” he mimicked cruelly. His voice dropped, grew flat and cold. “Three’s plenty big enough for him to know to put away his damn toys.”

“Yes. Of course. I’ll teach him.”

“You’d better. ‘Cause if you don’t, I will.”

A chill shuddered down her spine. “Harman. He’s just a baby. He’s just—Ahh. Harman. Please. Don’t. Don’t—”

Dawn closed her eyes as her husband climbed between her thighs and shoved himself inside her again. Each surge of his body was like a blow.

When he was done, she rolled away from him, rolled into a tight ball and lay shaking in the dark, her hand curled into a fist and shoved between her teeth to keep them from chattering. It had never been this bad before. Never. And it was her fault. Hers. It had to be. If she just learned to be a good wife…

“You’re no good.” Harman’s voice rumbled in the silence. “You never will be. You’re just like your mama. Don’t know how in hell I came to marry a bitch like you.”

Dawn bit back a sob. There was no sense in contradicting him, in reminding him that he’d seduced her into thinking a life with him would be better than the one she’d been living, that she’d gone to his bed a virgin.

“Don’t know why I ever thought you’d make me a good wife or that you’d be a good mother to my son.” The bedsprings squealed as he rolled onto his back. “The boy’s turnin’ out bad already.” He yawned; his voice took on the blurry softness of alcohol-induced sleep. “But I’ll fix that. I’ll teach him the right way. I’ll turn your little baby into a man.”

“No.” The word burst from her lips. “Harman, no. Not Tommy. You can’t—”

“I can do whatever in hell I want. This is my house. The boy is my flesh and blood. Startin’ tomorrow, I’m gonna start teachin’ him that.”

“Harman—”

A whimper drifted through the thin wall. Dawn grew rigid with fear as the whimper grew stronger.

“Wazzat?”

“The wind,” she said quickly, “it’s just the wind.”

“Mama?”

The baby’s cry was soft but it seemed as loud as a church bell in the silence. Tommy, she thought, Tommy, no, please, baby, no. Go back to sleep.

“Mama?” her son said, and began to cry.

“It’s the kid,” Harman grumbled. “Just listen at him, sobbin’ like a girl.”

“He’s not. He’s just—we must have woken him. He heard us and he’s afraid. He’s only a baby.”

“I’ll give him somethin’ to be afraid of,” her husband said. He rose up on one elbow, groaned and fell back against the pillows. “In the mornin’. I’m too wore out now. Man works all day, comes home for a little peace and quiet and does he get it?”

“Maaamaaa…”

“Go shut the kid up, you hear me, Dawn? You keep him quiet, or else.”

Dawn sprang from the bed. She tugged what remained of her nightgown together and ran into the next room. Tommy was standing up in his crib. He was too big for it, really, and suddenly she knew why she hadn’t suggested it was time to put him into a bed, because she’d been afraid of this all along, afraid of Harman taking a good look at their child and realizing he wasn’t a baby any longer.

“Mama?”

Tommy sobbed her name, lifted his arms to her and she scooped him up, held him close, soothed him with whispers and kisses.

“Hush, sweetheart,” she said softly. “Mama’s here. She won’t let anybody hurt you.”

Except, it was a lie. Harman would hurt him and she’d be powerless to stop it from happening. Hot tears burned her eyes. Why had she denied the truth for so long? Her husband was a monster. He took pleasure from inflicting pain on those too weak to fight back. Tommy’s life would be even worse than hers. He was a child, and helpless. Harman would brutalize him…and when he grew up, what kind of man would he be? One who’d learned to beat others into submission with his fists?

No. God, no. She couldn’t let that happen. She was the one who had brought her baby into this and she was the only one who could save him. Dawn knew it as surely as she knew that the silk moth outside would be dead by morning.

Sounds came through the thin wall. Harman was asleep and snoring. He’d snore straight through to morning and wake up mean-tempered and even more dangerous than he was now.

Quietly she stole from the baby’s room to the kitchen where the day’s laundry lay neatly folded in a wicker basket, awaiting the touch of the iron. She always ironed on Saturdays. Harman preferred it like that. He liked to sit by the stone hearth and watch her iron. She’d told herself it was a charming, homey thing to do. Now, for the first time, she saw it for what it was, a fabrication that made them seem like a real family when they were actually something out of a nightmare.

Tommy had fallen asleep. Holding him carefully in one arm, Dawn dug into the basket for a change of clothes for her son and a cotton dress and underwear for herself. Gently she laid him in the basket while she stripped off her torn nightgown and put on the fresh clothes. She knew she looked a mess, not just because her dress was unironed but because her face had to be bruised. Almost as an afterthought, she looked down at her feet. No shoes. Well, that was all right. Shoes were easy enough to come by.

Life wasn’t.

Dawn settled the baby in the crook of one arm as she took the flour canister from the cupboard and dug down inside it for the few dollars she’d managed to squirrel away from what she earned selling her blackberry preserves each season. She’d never let herself think about why she’d saved the money and hidden it; it had been a terrible risk that would surely have brought her a beating. Now, she knew she’d put the money aside in anticipation of this moment.

Harman’s keys lay on the floor, glittering in the light cast by the lamp. She picked them up, opened the door and stepped onto the porch where the thwarted silk moth still beat against the window screen. Dawn hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she went back into the house and reached for the lamp.

The light blinked out. The awful sound of the moth’s wings thudding fruitlessly against the screen stopped in almost the same instant. Carefully Dawn eased the door open and stepped outside. In the faint wash of the moon, she could see the creature hovering in confusion at the window.

As she had done so many years before, she scooped up the silk moth with her hand.

“Fly away,” she whispered. “Fly away, and don’t ever come back.”

The moth’s great wings beat. It lifted into the air, hung suspended before her for an instant, then flew into the night. Dawn climbed into her husband’s truck, strapped her baby into the seat beside her. She took a deep breath, stuck the key into the ignition, turned it and stepped down, hard, on the gas.

In her heart, she’d always known it would come to this, that she would have to take her child and run for his life and for hers.

She was leaving the monster she’d married and she was never, ever coming back.

CHAPTER ONE

Four years later:

GRAHAM BARON stepped out of the terminal at the Austin airport and wondered how he’d ever survived spending the first seventeen years of his life in Texas. He was thirty-three and lived in New York now but whenever he came back here, the fact that he’d been born in this place always surprised him. It all seemed alien. The people. Their lazy drawls. The vastness of land and sky. The weather.