"Damn her," Conor whispered.
"She said she'd punish me if I didn't behave. I tried. God, I tried... but then one night, when he came to my room, he started to—to touch me differently, and I screamed."
Conor looked at the woman he loved. She wasn't weeping; she wasn't trembling. He had the strange feeling she wasn't even in the room with him. Her thoughts and memories had gone back to a night he knew had changed her life forever.
"Eva came bursting into the room," she said softly. "And she saw what he was doing. There was this one awful minute where everybody froze and then she pointed to the door and Hoyt skulked off like a dog that's been caught doing something it shouldn't. Then she closed the door, yanked me out of the bed, and told me that I was no good. She said I was evil, that I was just what she'd expected I'd be, and that she was going to send me away."
Conor nodded. He'd retreated into a detached coolness so he could listen without interrupting because he understood that what Miranda needed now was his love and support, not his rage, but God must have made women from different stuff than men because he knew he'd never be able to set aside what had happened to her until he destroyed Hoyt Winthrop, utterly and completely.
For now, though, he could only take Miranda in his arms and feel her tears hot against his face. He held her, and rocked her, and whispered that he loved her until, at last, the first rosy glow of dawn streaked the sky.
Chapter 17
Watching Miranda pose for the camera was heaven and hell combined.
She had a shoot a couple of days later at a loft in lower Manhattan, and Conor went along with her. He was still between assignments, he told her, and he wanted to see what fashion photography was all about.
"You'll make me self-conscious," she said, but she was smiling.
"You won't even know I'm there," he promised.
She gave him a coffee-flavored kiss.
"You're not exactly the inconspicuous type, O'Neil. But the truth is, I'd love to have you come with me. I'm sure Manuel won't mind."
Manuel, who turned out to be a little guy with a sad face, a lisp and an unusual, if interesting, devotion to leather, didn't mind at all. He eyed Conor up and down, told Miranda she had excellent taste, and got to work.
"Your lady has a special relationship with the camera," he said as Miranda sailed out of the dressing room in a shimmery column of white silk trimmed in gold.
Conor took only a few minutes to decide he understood what Manuel meant. He also decided that if he ever sensed electricity flowing between Miranda and another man the way it flowed between her and the camera, there'd be a classic tragedy in the making.
She smiled.
She pouted.
She teased.
And the camera loved it all.
"Yesss," Manuel kept saying, as he shot off photos from every imaginable angle and some Conor figured only a tightrope walker would have attempted, "oh yes, darling girl, you are superb!"
Every now and then, Miranda glanced over, caught Conor's eye and winked.
"Having fun?" she whispered once, when she rushed past him to make a costume change.
He smiled and assured her that he was. And he probably would have been, if he could have turned off the thoughts racing through his brain.
Every person Miranda had loved had lied to her. That included him. Would she forgive him when he could finally tell her the truth?
He had to go on telling himself that she would, just as he had to tell himself he could hang on and not wring Hoyt's neck, or de Lasserre's, until the time was right. And Eva's, too. Hell, he was a firm believer in equality of the sexes.
How could Eva have done such things to her daughter?
He had long ago reached the point where there was little that could surprise him. It was one of the things that happened, in his line of work. You discovered a basic truth about the human race and you learned to accept it.
Some people, most people, would do anything for a buck, if they thought they could get away with it. But not even that explained Eva's behavior. By the time she'd married Hoyt, she'd made her first million at Papillon, and probably her second and third. If she didn't need Hoyt's dough, what had stopped her from tossing him out on his ass? Not love. Whatever Eva and Hoyt Winthrop felt for each other, it wasn't the kind of passion that would make a woman blind to a man's faults.
And, dammit, they weren't dealing with small potatoes here, they were dealing with child molestation. With a grown man putting his hands on a defenseless little girl, and the little girl's mother finding out and blaming her...