Cara Colter - Rescued by the Millionaire

* * *

Kevin was an internationally known photographer, Daniel the head of River’s Edge. His company was a software engineering firm that had developed some of the best technologies used in the Alberta oil fields.

In recent years, Daniel had applied his considerable ambition and business acumen to real estate, and investing in young companies that he thought had potential. So he was not accustomed to being brushed off by a building manager, who had told him, with a certain mean satisfaction, “I’ll give you the tenant’s name and phone number. You talk to her.”

The her in question was Patricia Marsh. When Daniel called, he had to shout to make himself heard over the caterwauling in the background. She’d sounded harried, exhausted and she had been totally apologetic. Her nieces were visiting. They were from Australia, the difference in times meant they were having trouble settling into a normal routine.

She had promised changes, and Patricia Marsh had possessed one of those lovely, husky voices that might have inspired belief in one less jaded than himself. He had ended the call on a curt note—probably more because of being harassed by his mother than anything to do with Patricia Marsh—but oh, well.

None of the promised changes had materialized, so he was less and less sorry for the curt note.

It was day four—make that night four—in the combat zone. There was sudden silence above his head, but instead of enjoying it, Daniel noted that his headache felt permanent, and his shoulders were bunched up with tension.

So, the visiting children were having a little break right now. He wished he could appreciate the silence, and he tried to. He closed his eyes, willed himself back to sleep.

He was closing the Bentley deal tomorrow. Months of groundwork were coming to fruition. He needed to be razor-sharp and ready. He needed his sleep. But instead of sleeping, he contemplated the silence with deep suspicion, like a soldier waiting for the firing to start again.

Five minutes. Then ten. Then fifteen. At half an hour of blissful silence, he took a deep breath, and allowed himself to be lulled into a sense of security. The knot in his forehead relaxed ever so slightly and he felt his shoulders unwind.

Tomorrow, he’d go get a hotel for the duration of the children’s visit. He’d been to that nice boutique hotel across from the Bow River at the invitation of a visiting female executive a few years back. They had luxurious, quiet suites. He remembered there were great jogging paths at Prince’s Island. He could run in the morning before he went to the office—

His eyes closed. Ahhh. Bliss.

* * *

Trixie Marsh’s eyes fluttered open, and for a moment she just felt the utter contentment of having rested. But the moment was fleeting.

It was very dark in her apartment. Was she sitting up? She felt deeply disoriented.

The twins! She had not rested properly since the arrival of her four-year-old nieces.

Even as she’d worried about her own twin sister Abby’s seemingly impulsive plan to drop off her children, she had been thrilled to have time with Molly and Pauline. She had envisioned finger painting and building with Play-Doh, romps in the park and bedtime stories. Trixie had envisioned time with the twins as a glimpse at the life she always wanted for herself.

And really she should have known better! The life she had always wanted for herself was really the life she had always had growing up: surrounded by family and laughter, a sense of safety and belonging.

Always had, until her parents had been killed in a car accident the year she had graduated from high school. Since then, it seemed the more she chased after what had once been, the more it eluded her like a ghostly vision, growing dimmer with each passing day of her life.

As it turned out, her nieces preferred their finger painting on the walls. And on each other’s faces. And on the cat. They liked eating Play-Doh and they loved that this unusual dietary choice made for very colorful poop.

They didn’t listen to Trixie ever, they were up all night and the man in the apartment below her—it couldn’t be that Daniel Riverton, could it?—was complaining. In a voice so sexy it made Trixie’s heart hurt!

“Enough,” she snapped at herself, out loud. It occurred to her it was night and her apartment was eerily silent.

Plus enough did not come out enough. It came out a garbled eblubluk. There was something in her mouth. It felt almost as if her cat, Freddy, a long-haired Persian, was nestled close to her face. She went to brush him away.

And that’s when Trixie realized she was trapped. Her arms wouldn’t move. And neither would her legs.

Suddenly, panic rising, it came back to her.

“Auntie,” Molly said, blinking her huge brown eyes at her, “this is our favorite game. Our mommy lets us play it. You sit in the chair, and Pauline and I go around and around you with the roll of toilet tissue.”

It had seemed harmless enough. And quiet, too. What she had not been counting on was the almost hypnotic effect of her nieces moving silently around and around her, pink tongues caught between little teeth in concentration.

What she hadn’t realized was the depths of her own exhaustion, and how relieved she was that they were being quiet.

What she hadn’t realized was that enough of that tissue could bind like steel. It wasn’t just tissue. She could taste the fluff of quilting batting in her mouth.

Frantically, Trixie pulled at her limbs. She was stuck fast to the chair.

Endless scenarios began to run through her head. None of them had a happy ending. She was going to die. She just knew it. Her whole life was flashing before her eyes: she and Abby growing up in their matching clothes, unwrapping gifts at the Christmas tree, baking cookies with their mother, at the cottage...and then the knock on the door.

So sorry, an accident.

And Abby marrying and moving to Australia.

And Trixie being so alone.

And so when Miles, her one and only boyfriend, had said, Move in with me, I’ll look after you, there had been no choice involved, really.

And when he left, he hadn’t given her a choice, either.

For a moment, she pictured him bursting through the door, rescuing her, admitting the error of his ways, giving her back her dreams.

Trixie blinked hard. That’s how she had gone through her whole life. Acting like someone else was in charge of her dreams. Acting as though she had no choice.

Now was she going to die the same way? As if she was powerless? As if she had no choice. No! She was going to fight and fight hard.

It wasn’t just about her. Her nieces were in peril, too. They could all perish here if Trixie didn’t act and act quickly.

She began to rock the chair.

Bang.

It sounded like an explosion, not a subdued pop, more like a mortar round had gone off right in Daniel’s trench. Whatever had hit the floor above his head had hit it so loudly the crystals in the chandelier clanged against each other dangerously. Daniel jumped up off the sofa, his heart beating fast.

He waited for the sound of running feet to start again.

Nothing.

The hair on the back of his neck rose. And he knew, to the pit of his stomach, something was wrong upstairs, in the apartment above him.

He paused only at his own door to shove shoes on his bare feet and then Daniel raced out of his apartment, down the hallway and up the steps.

Outside 602, he asked himself what he was doing. If he was so sure something was wrong, why not call 911?

And say what? I was busy composing a list of inane sayings and then, guess what? I heard a bump in the night!

He stood outside the door for a moment, listening. He found the silence eerie, and the hair on the back of his neck would not sit down. He knocked on the door. There it was—the pitter-patter of running little feet. But nothing else. No other sounds, including the one he was listening for, the husky, lovely notes of an adult voice, someone in charge.