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you.”
    “My God! I would never—I’m not his
territory.”
    “Not anymore,” Mitchell agreed, the words venomous.
“The minute you directed your come-hither smile in my direction,
you messed up in a major way. I didn’t know your name, but you knew
who I was last night, didn’t you? You heard me talking to Artie,
heard him call me by name.”
    “Yes,…I knew.” Her hesitant admission came out soft,
bruised almost by the onslaught.
    “You knowingly encouraged me, invited me out to the
veranda and begged me to ‘take you’.”
    Delanie flinched, his brutal recitation taking a
cherished moment and smearing it in the mud.
    “So now, I not only know that you’re a
conscienceless, amoral gold digger, you’re also as faithless as a
cat. You won’t ever be loyal to your old goat of a boyfriend, will
you? Even if he does have millions for you to steal. Just now at
breakfast with him sitting beside you, you were playing footsie
with me. With your boyfriend right there!”
    “He’s not my boyfriend!” she fired back, the edges
of her vision growing fuzzy.
    “Then why do you let him put his arm around you and
call you ‘sweetheart.’ Why are you taking his money?” Mitchell
demanded.
    Delanie fought to retain consciousness, clinging to
the rail to keep from collapsing. “Did Donovan tell you
we’re sleeping together?”
    “No,” Mitchell said, “being Old World, he wouldn’t
want to besmirch your reputation. But I’ve known my grandfather
long enough to know the pattern of his amatory adventures. You take
the cake, lady. You top them all. I might have let this little
relationship continue, but you stepped over the line when you
started trying to get The Cedars. I knew I had to do something when
Donovan hinted that he wanted to give you property that’s
been in our family for years?”
    “What property?” she asked wildly.
    “The Cedars, itself,” he said in a derisive tone, as
if she well knew the answer to her own question.
    “You can’t be serious,” she said faintly. “I love you. I’d never do what you’re suggesting.”
    The ugly sneer on his face grew more pronounced.
“I’m not interested in the kind of ‘love’ you’re offering. I can
buy that on any street corner.”
    Reeling back as if he’d slapped her, Delanie leaned
heavily on the railing, fighting the buzzing in her ears.
    “If you leave today, I won’t pursue prosecution,” he
said, his voice hard with fury. “But you can never come back, never
contact Donovan again.
    “I haven’t done anything illegal.” Her face averted,
the protest came out thin and faint. She couldn’t believe this,
couldn’t make sense of his venom.
    Mitchell’s short laugh was scoffing. “No? We’d start
with embezzlement and move from there. I bet the district
attorney’s office would like to see your books. You’d have a hard
time explaining the way the renovation money has been handled.”
    “No,” she protested. “It’s all there. I haven’t
stolen anything.”
    He took her upper arm in a tight grasp, turning her
toward him. “Don’t bother lying. You set out to snare my
grandfather, you wormed your way into his trust and took him for
everything you could get your hands on.”
    “No!”
    “I know your kind of woman. You use your sexy body
and your husky voice to drive a man insane,” Mitchell declared, his
face radiating hatred as he shook her. “I want you far away from
me, far away from Donovan. And if you ever try to contact him
again, I’ll sic the Internal Revenue Service on you. I’ll locate
and document every man you’ve ever slept with, every man you’ve
cheated!”
    His fingers bit into her arm as she tried to pull
away. “No! How can you say that about me?”
    “You’re a tramp and a con artist! You make a man
want you and then he has to pay.”
    “No!” She tore her arm loose from his grip. “No,
Mitchell!”
    Stumbling back over the uneven boards of the
walkway, she brushed a hand across her face to