A Sinful Seduction. Elizabeth Lane
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“In that case, I may have something to tell you. My sources have tracked down a Megan Cardston who appears to fit the physical description of the woman you’re looking for. She’s working as a volunteer nurse for your foundation.”
Cal’s reflexes jerked. “That’s impossible,” he growled. “It’s got to be a coincidence—just another woman with the same name and body type.”
“Maybe so. You can decide for yourself after you’ve looked over this documentation.” Crandall thrust the folder across the desk.
Cal opened the folder. It contained several photocopied pages that looked like travel requests and personnel rosters. But what caught his eye was a single, blurry black-and-white photograph.
Staring at the image, he tried to picture Megan as he’d last seen her—long platinum hair sculpted into a twist, diamond earrings, flawless makeup. Even at her husband’s funeral, she’d managed to look like a Hollywood screen goddess, except for her pain-shot eyes.
The woman in the photo appeared thinner and slightly older. She was wearing sunglasses and a khaki shirt. Her light brown hair was short and windblown, her face bare of makeup. There was nothing behind her but sky.
Cal studied the firm jawline, the aristocratic nose and ripe, sensual lips. He willed himself to ignore the quiver of certainty that passed through his body. Megan’s face was seared into his memory. Even with her eyes hidden, the woman in the picture had the same look. And Megan, he recalled, had worked as a surgical nurse before marrying Nick. But was this image really the woman who’d eluded him for two long years? There was only one way to be sure.
“Where was this picture taken?” he demanded. “Where’s this woman now?”
Crandall slid the briefcase off the desk and closed it with a snap and a single word.
“Africa.”
Arusha, Tanzania, February 26
Megan gripped the birth-slicked infant and delivered a stinging fingertip blow to its tiny buttocks.
Nothing happened.
She slapped the baby harder, her lips moving in a wordless plea. There was a beat of silence, then, suddenly, a gasping wail, as beautiful as any sound she’d ever heard. Megan’s knees slackened in relief. The delivery had been hellish, a breech birth coming after a long night of labor. That mother and baby were both alive could only be counted as a miracle.
Passing the baby to the young aide, she mopped her brow with the sleeve of her smock, then reached over to do the same for the baby’s mother. The air was warm and sticky. Light from a single bulb flickered on whitewashed walls. Drawn by the glow, insects beat against the screened windows.
As Megan leaned over her, the woman’s eyelids fluttered open. “Asante sana,” she whispered in Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa. Thank you.
“Karibu sana.” Megan’s deft hands wound a cotton string, knotted it tight and severed the cord. With luck, this baby would grow up healthy, spared the swollen belly and scarecrow limbs of the children she’d labored so desperately to save in Darfur, the most brutally ravaged region of Sudan, where a cruel dictator had used his mercenaries to decimate the African tribal population.
Megan had spent the past eleven months working with the J-COR Foundation’s medical branch in the Sudanese refugee camps. Two weeks ago, on the brink of physical and emotional collapse, she’d been ordered to a less taxing post for recovery. Compared with the camps, this clinic, on the ramshackle fringe of a pleasant Tanzanian town, was a luxury resort.
But she would go back as soon as she was strong enough. She’d spent too many years feeling purposeless and adrift. Now that she’d found focus in her life, she was determined to finally make the most of her skills and training. She should be where she was needed most. And she was sorely needed in Darfur.
By the time the afterbirth came, the aide had sponged the baby boy clean and swaddled him in cotton flannel. The mother’s eager hands reached out to draw him against her breast. Megan took a moment to raise the sheet and check the gauze packing. So far, everything looked all right. She stripped off her smock and her latex gloves. “I’m going to get some rest,” she told the aide. “Watch her. Too much blood, you come and wake me.”
The young African nurse-in-training nodded. She could be counted on to do her job.
Not until she was soaping her hands at the outside faucet did Megan realize how weary she was. It was as if the last of her strength had trickled down her legs and drained into the hard-packed earth. Straightening, she massaged her lower back with her fingers.
Beyond the clinic’s corrugated roof, the moon glimmered like a lost shilling through the purple crown of a flowering jacaranda. Its low angle told her the time was well past midnight, with precious few hours left for sleep. All too soon, first light would trigger a cacophony of bird calls, signaling the start of a new day. At least she’d ended the day well—with a successful delivery and a healthy new life. The sense of accomplishment was strong.
Tired as she was, Megan knew she had no right to complain. This was the life she’d chosen. By now her old life—the clothes and jewelry, the cars, the house, the charity events she’d hosted to raise money for Nick and Cal’s foundation—seemed little more than a dream. A dream that had ended with a headline and a gunshot.
She’d tried not to dwell on that nightmare week. But one image was chiseled into her memory—Cal’s stricken face, the look of cold contempt in his glacial gray eyes, and the final words he’d spoken to her.
“You’re going to answer for this, Megan. I’ll hold you accountable and make you pay if it’s the last thing I do.”
Megan hadn’t embezzled a cent, hadn’t even known about the missing money till the scandal had surfaced. But Cal would never believe that. He’d trusted Nick to the very last.
Seeing Cal’s look and hearing his words, Megan had realized she had no recourse except to run far and fast, to someplace where Cal would never find her.
That, or be trapped with no way to save her own soul.
But all that was in the past, she reminded herself as she flexed her aching shoulders and mounted the porch of the brick bungalow that served as quarters for the volunteers. She was a different person now, with a life that gave her the deepest satisfaction she had ever known.
If only she could put an end to the nightmares....
* * *
As the sleek Gulfstream jet skimmed the Horn of Africa, Cal reopened the folder Harlan Crandall had given him. Clever fellow, that Crandall. He alone had thought to look in the last place Megan would logically choose to hide—the volunteer ranks of the very foundation she had robbed.
The photocopied paperwork gave him a summary of her postings—Zimbabwe, Somalia and, for most of the past year, Sudan. Megan had taken the roughest assignments in the program—evidently by her own choice. What was she thinking? And if the woman in the photo was really Nick’s glamorous widow, what in hell’s name had she done with the money? She’d stolen enough to live in luxury for decades. Luxury even more ostentatious than the lifestyle her husband had given her.
Cal couldn’t repress a sigh as he thought of the expensive trappings Nick had lavished on his wife. He’d always wanted her to have nothing but the best. His taste might have been over-the-top, but Cal had always been certain that Nick’s intentions were good, just as they had been back when the two had become friends in high school.
They’d graduated from the same college, Cal with an engineering degree and Nick with a marketing major. When Cal had come up with a design for a lightweight modular shelter that could be erected swiftly in the wake of a natural disaster or used at construction and recreation sites, it had made sense for the two friends to go into business together. J-COR had made them both wealthy. But they’d agreed that money wasn’t enough. After providing shelters for stricken people around the world, it had been Cal’s idea to set up a foundation. He’d handled the logistics end. Nick