Never Kiss Me Again

By Christine Rimmer

“Christine Rimmer never disappoints. And Never Kiss Me Again has it all, characters you’ll love in a story you won’t be able to put down.” --New York Times bestselling author, Susan Mallery. “Sexy. Surprising. Satisfying. Christine Rimmer delivers the very best in romance.” --New York Times bestselling author, Christina Dodd. Never Say Never Again….The first familiar face Annie Dolan sees after four years away from home just happens to be the one person she’d hoped never to set eyes on again: her dangerously charming ex, Devlin Tenhawk. And it gets worse. Much worse. In no time there's a distinctly suspicious death in the family and Annie finds herself trapped in her hometown, unwilling heir to her grandmother's millions, stuck taking care of her thoroughly dysfunctional family, stalked by a mystery man who haunts her room at night—and way, way too tempted to jump back in bed with her ex.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ePublishing Works
• Release date: Jul 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781614170952

Christine Rimmer

A New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author, Christine Rimmer has written more than a hundred contemporary romances for Harlequin Books. She consistently writes love stories that are sweet, sexy, humorous and heartfelt. She lives in Oregon with her family. Visit Christine at www.christinerimmer.com.

Book preview

Dodd

Chapter 1

Devlin Tenhawk made it a point to be lounging against a pillar on the front veranda of the Cutter Territorial Mansion when Annie Dolan rolled up the sweeping front drive in her rental car. The car swung into the wide parking circle and pulled to a stop by the white marble fountain, which depicted a beautiful bare-breasted woman pouring an endless stream of water from an urn. It was Baroque, a little bit risqué and ostentatious, that fountain. Devlin liked it a lot.

For several very long seconds, Annie failed to emerge from the car. She had spotted him. He saw her there, behind the wheel—looking once, turning that blond head away, and then looking again. The car windows were slightly tinted. He couldn’t read her expression. Too bad. It would have been fun to see that first spurt of shock and outrage that he would dare to be standing on her grandmother’s front porch.

He allowed himself a slow grin as she shoved the car door open, jumped out, marched around the front of the car and came right for him.

The Oklahoma wind blew her hair into her eyes and plastered her snug skirt against her fine, slim legs as she marched up to the base of the wide porch steps, folded her arms across the front of her very business-like tailored jacket and tapped the toe of her pricey high-heeled shoe.

Oh, yeah. Sexiest bean counter he ever saw, bar none. In four years that much hadn’t changed.

What are you doing here? Each word was like a whip. Cracking.

It gave him enormous pleasure to answer. I’m a guest, he drawled, laying on the Oklahoma twang. "Your grandmother’s guest." He savored the words. He’d been looking forward to saying them for months.

Her cheeks flushed hot pink. I find that difficult to believe—I mean, given that my grandmother has always hated your guts.

He indulged in a lazy shrug. People change.

Not my grandmother.

You’d be surprised...

Oh, I don’t think so.

Fact is... He peeled himself off the pillar and stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Carlotta and I have become friends.

She tightened her arms around herself and muttered through clenched teeth, You are so full of crap.

He kept on grinning. Same old Annie.

And by that you mean?

You may sound like a Yankee now, but you still won’t say shit even when you’ve got a mouthful of it.

She shut those clear blue eyes, sucked in a big breath, let it out slowly and moved up the first step. He stayed right where he was—directly in her path. She glared some more, dared another step. Still he didn’t move. You’re in my way. She made the statement sound like a command. Such a damn princess—another thing about her that hadn’t changed.

He widened his stance. Truth is I’m buildin’ a house.

Like I care. Move aside.

... and until my house is finished, I’ve got an open invitation to stay here at the mansion whenever I’m in town. He watched the pulse beating in her smooth white throat. Oh, yeah. Mad enough to chew nails.

But she held it together. Do I have to use another door to get in my own grandmother’s house?

He made a show of looking right and then left. What? Well, what the hell? Am I in your way? He figured he’d razzed her enough—for the moment. ’Scuse me, ma’am. He moved aside.

Annie saw her chance and grabbed it, sweeping up the steps and swiftly past him. He turned to watch her go and couldn’t help admiring the view from the rear. Good as ever.

Myrna O’Dowd, the mansion’s longtime live-in housekeeper, pulled open the wide double doors just as Annie reached them. With a softly-spoken greeting, she ushered Annie in, pausing at the last moment to give him a questioning glance.

He shook his head and she shut the doors.

* * *

As Myrna closed the doors on Devlin, Annie told herself to be grateful for small favors. At least for now, he was out there and she was in here.

She wished she’d stayed in Manhattan. But under the circumstances, what else could she do? There was, after all, something about a dying grandmother. Even a mean, overbearing one. Annie had felt it was her duty to come home.

And though she’d sworn when she left Oklahoma that she’d never be back, she’d accepted that she had to come. She was okay with it.

But having to deal with Dev? With that, she was not okay. Not okay in the least.

She aimed a tight smile at Myrna. Devlin tells me he’s staying here at the mansion. She pitched her voice low. Even so, the words seemed to echo in the cavernous foyer, to bounce off the carved walnut paneling, to rise all the way to the ten-foot wide crystal chandelier suspended from the domed ceiling above the imposing curving staircase.

Myrna nodded. He has the Governor’s Suite.

The Governor’s Suite? Annie had never been one to throw things. But at that moment, she found herself fisting her hands at her sides to keep from snatching the Ormolu clock from the entry hall table and smashing it to the inlaid floor. The Governor’s Suite had gotten its name because Charles N. Haskell, Oklahoma’s first governor, had slept there back in 1909. It was right down the hall from Carlotta’s own rooms.

Incredible. Her grandmother had turned over the finest guest suite in the house to Devlin? How could this have happened?

Annie, are you all right?

Annie’s smile felt like it might crack and fall off. I’m just fine. Truly.

Well, you do look a little pale...

Annie waved a dismissing hand. JFK was a zoo. And there was turbulence—severe turbulence during my flight.

Myrna knew when not to belabor a point. Your grandmother asked me to bring you right up. Asked? Doubtful. Carlotta Jensen Arnold Revis Cutter never asked for anything. But it was the tactful way of putting it—and Myrna O’Dowd was the soul of tact. This way.

Might as well get it over with. Annie mounted the stairs behind the housekeeper.

In Carlotta’s rooms, Myrna led Annie through the private foyer and the front sitting room, which was just as Annie remembered it: red as a beating heart, done up in heavy velvets, with silk tassels on everything. Victorian down to the crimson velvet fainting couch by the window and the rubber plant in the corner. Annie’s older brother Freddy had once referred to that room as Grandma’s private bordello. Carlotta was not amused.

The housekeeper approached the carved pocket doors that led to the bedroom. She tapped and called discreetly, Miss Annie to see you.

Annie heard footsteps on the other side. The pocket doors slid wide, revealing a hefty middle-aged woman with a helmet of gray-streaked brown hair. She wore lavender scrubs, the smock-like top printed with cherubs floating on cottony clouds.

Lola Pierce, said Myrna by way of an introduction. Your grandmother’s nurse.

Hello, Annie said.

Howdy. Nurse Lola stepped aside, clearing the view of the massive mahogany bed where Annie’s grandmother lay propped against the mountains of white silk pillows, a red scarf tied around her head. Annie stifled a gasp at the sight of her. She looked so thin and frail.

Frail.

It was just not a word Annie had ever associated with Carlotta Cutter. Or it hadn’t been.

Until that moment.

As Myrna turned and left them, Carlotta spoke. Annabeth. It’s about damn time. Her voice was reedier than Annie remembered, reedy and... old.

Old. Impossible. Not Carlotta.

Her grandmother had always seemed ageless. Not old, not young. But vital. Yes, she was cruel and totally self-serving, but the air around her always crackled with excitement. She’d taken good care of herself over the years, eating healthy, working out in the mansion’s basement gym with a personal trainer. And for any part of her that good nutrition and exercise couldn’t keep smooth and wrinkle-free, she had a topnotch Oklahoma City cosmetic surgeon. Carlotta was a big fan of plastic surgery. At the slightest sign of sagging, she’d happily go under the knife.

She waved Annie forward, the sleeve of her black lace bed jacket falling away from the shockingly crepey skin of her scrawny arm. Come on. Get over here.

Annie went to her, bent close and pressed an obligatory kiss on her sagging cheek. Hello, Grandma. She straightened, shaken anew by the faint, strange scent that wafted from her—a cloyingly sweet smell, like an apple left too long in the fruit bowl.

Carlotta gazed up at her through eyes that, while probing as ever, had somehow faded—the blue gone to gray, the whites slightly yellowed, threaded with tiny red veins. Took you long enough. I called you weeks ago.

Annie spoke patiently. For a tax accountant, March and April are the most important time of the year. And I just landed this job in January. She’d been hired as tax manager, and was on the fast track to becoming a partner. No way could I cut out on my clients before tax day. I’d have been fired.

What does some piddly-ass job matter when your grandmother is dyin’?

Annie kept her mouth shut. Nothing she said would have mattered anyway. Over in the far corner stood a hospital bed, no doubt in preparation for the day when Carlotta would need it. A silver tray on a marble-topped table near the door to the bath was crowded with prescription bottles—at least twenty of them.

Carlotta was busy making huffing, unhappy noises. Finally, she gave Annie a sideways glance. Say it.

What?

That I look like holy hell.

It was so exactly what Annie had been thinking, that she flinched before she could stop herself.

Carlotta crowed, There. See. I do, don’t I?

Oh, Grandma...

Carlotta shut her eyes and sighed. On second thought, don’t tell me. I’ve got mirrors and I know how to use them. She patted Annie’s hand. Annie glanced down at the touch. Her grandmother’s hand was way too thin. But her fingernails, as always, were perfectly manicured, filed in the old-fashioned way into graceful ovals, painted the same red as the scarf that covered her chemo-bald head, as the velvet drapes in her private sitting room. Now, listen up. I’m going to tell you why I called you home, so you can start getting used to how it’s going to be.

You look tired. Maybe you should just—

Shh. Carlotta slapped her—a light, sharp sting to the back of her hand. I was speaking. You know better than to interrupt me while I am speaking. Well, Annie thought, she’s not so different, after all. Her grandmother demanded, Are you listenin’?

Yes.

Good. As I was saying, you’re here because I want you to be prepared. I want you to fully understand the part you are to play when I am dead. I have decided to endow the Cutterville Territorial Museum with a new wing, a wing which is under construction as I speak.

Cutterville, Oklahoma, forty miles or so north of Oklahoma City, had been named back in 1902, after the first in a long line of Jack Cutters. Now mostly a tourist town, it boasted a historically significant downtown area, the centerpiece of which was the museum.

Carlotta continued, The wing will be named after my darling Jack. The Jack J. Cutter Memorial Wing. It will house antiques, art and significant documents that belonged to generations of Cutters. I am talking about all the best pieces from the house and from the storage rooms in the attic and the basement...

And that was a whole lot of antiques. The Cutter mansion was a massive, rambling, mostly-Victorian monstrosity. Back at the turn of the previous century, the first Jack Cutter had built the heart of the house. Subsequent Cutters had added on, a north wing and then a south wing, both of which were as large as the main house. Beneath the house, the basement went on forever, a catacomb of dim concrete hallways and dark cell-like rooms. The attics were equally extensive.

And down the generations, Cutter women had loved to travel—and to shop. They brought home boatloads of furnishings and accessories from England and France, from Italy and the Orient. After a trip and a big shopping spree, they would redecorate. Extensively. And rather than get rid of the old pieces, they would store them in the basement or the attic.

Annie listened with building dread as her grandmother continued, I need someone organized and trustworthy to oversee the cataloging of every treasure and the disbursal of the most important pieces to the museum. I’ve decided that person will have to be you. Carlotta flicked a glance at the nurse. Juice.

Nurse Lola, who’d moved to a chair in the corner, rose. She stepped up to the bed on the side opposite Annie and she smiled a friendly, no-nonsense smile. Then she picked up the can of pear juice from the hospital-style swinging bed tray—a can easily within Carlotta’s reach—and she held it out. The can had a straw in it. Carlotta sipped and swallowed.

Enough, Carlotta said, imperious as ever.

One more sip, Nurse Lola urged, her focus on her patient, her smile nothing short of fond.

Oh, all right, all right. Carlotta sipped again. Happy now?

Good job, the nurse said with real enthusiasm. Then she set the can back on the bed table and retreated again to the corner chair.

Carlotta swung her laserlike gaze to Annie. Well? Cat run off with your tongue?

I take it I may speak now?

Don’t be snippy, Carlotta huffed. Simply say you’ll do what a dying woman requires of you.

Let me remind you that you—

Oh, that. Though she did not allow interruptions when she was speaking, Carlotta had zero compunction about butting in when someone else was trying to talk. Forget that. I’ve changed my mind.

Annie hadn’t forgotten. Not by a long shot. Grandma, you disinherited me.

Yes, I did. And you deserved it. Runnin’ off like that, when I needed you here.

I did not run off. It was time for a new beginning. I couldn’t stay here, not after—

Don’t start. It’s just too tiring. You ran off and I cut you out of my will. Given the same circumstances, I’d do it again. But everything has changed now. I’m not long for this world and a dying woman has a responsibility to see that the treasures entrusted to her care are suitably distributed after she’s gone. So. Carlotta smoothed the lace at the front of her bed jacket. When you come home for my funeral, you can expect to stay for a while. Probably a long while. You’ll be workin’ with Marilee Putnam, curator of collections at the museum. I’ve had several meetings with Marilee. She’s a lovely woman. She’ll assist and guide you. Once the job is done, you’ll be free as a bird. You can take the huge sum of money I’m settling on you, after all, and go back to New York—or wherever else your little heart desires. I don’t care where you go then, as I will be dead. She granted Annie a tight smile and trilled out with fake brightness, Fair enough?

Annie took care to speak slowly and clearly. "One. I’m no expert on antiques. Two. I have a life of my own and a good job in Manhattan, a new job I worked hard to get. I can’t just walk away from it for an indefinite period of time. Three. There’s absolutely no reason why Mom or Sarah can’t deal with the museum for you—if you really even need it done for you."

What do you mean, if I need it done? Of course I need it done.

Maybe you’ll discover you want to do it yourself.

I won’t be able to do it myself, Carlotta said in a saccharine sing-song. Remember? I’ll be dead.

Who says for certain you’re dying?

My breast surgeon. And my oncologists—both of them, radiation and chemo. Oh, and Doctor Browning, too. Browning was the family doctor.

But cancer isn’t the death sentence it once was. There have to be treatments that—

I have stage four breast cancer.

I know, but—

Stage four, Annabeth. That means it has metastasized, spread to my liver, my lungs and my brain. I’ll be dead within the year. And if the cancer doesn’t kill me by then, the next cycle of chemo probably will—not that I’ve even decided on whether to take that next cycle. There is the issue of quality of life. What’s left of it, I mean.

Grandma—

I’m dyin’. I’ve accepted it. You’d better do the same, my girl.

I’m sorry, Annie said gently.

I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to do what I’ve asked you to do.

I can’t.

You can and you will.

Mom or Sarah can—

No. Carlotta pushed out a hard sigh and put her too-thin hand to her bony chest. Oh, if only I had a real Cutter to count on. Annie’s mother, Ruth, though adopted by Jack Cutter, was actually the child of Carlotta’s first husband, Dickson Arnold. But I never bore my darlin’ Jack the child we both wanted so very much. Now I must make do with what I’ve got. I have to choose—your mother, your brother, your sister, or you. Let’s examine each option, shall we?

Let’s not.

The question was purely rhetorical. To continue. Your brother is hopeless. We all know that. Your mother wants the house. And she’ll get it—once the best antiques and important historical documents are turned over to the museum. Though I know Ruth enjoys learning about antiques and even has a certain expertise on the subject, she simply can’t be left in charge of decidin’ what goes and what stays. She’d keep all the finest pieces for herself. And Sarah, well, we have to face facts. She’s your mother’s daughter, after all, a shifty, whinin’ little mouse with zero initiative. No. You are the only workable choice.

Some things never change, Annie thought. Her grandmother might have grown suddenly old. She might be dying much too soon. But the specter of approaching death had neither humbled nor mellowed her.

Very patiently, for the second time, Annie said, No. I’m sorry, Grandma. But I won’t do it. I won’t and that’s all there is to it.

Carlotta raised an arm and delicately patted the red silk scarf that covered her head. Oh, yes, you will. You will do it. You will abide by the terms I lay down in my will. Those terms are that until your duties concerning the museum are discharged, you will stay in Oklahoma, you will not even leave the county. No trips back and forth to New York—or anywhere else, for that matter. I want your mind on the job I’ve got laid out for you.

Annie just stood there, waiting. For the axe to fall.

Which it did. "Also, in my new will, it clearly states that if you don’t do what I require of you, then your mother, your sister, your brother and your stepfather won’t get a dime. It all goes to charity. I’m fully aware that you have no problem throwing away your own inheritance, given that you’ve already done it once. But what about your family? Do you want to be responsible for the whole bunch of them endin’ up on the street? Given that none of them have ever worked a day in their parasitic little lives, you will have to wonder how they’ll get along without my money and my roof over their heads."

George has worked, Annie said, just to be contrary. George Sillwood, Annie’s stepfather, was a civil engineer. Before he married her mother, he’d held a job just like regular folks.

Not for twelve years, he hasn’t, her grandmother said. George continues to consider himself a gentleman gardener. He can afford to, as long as I’m supporting him. He spends his days fiddling around in his greenhouses and fooling with his silly ponds on the back grounds.

Grandma, I can’t.

Yes, you can.

Wouldn’t you know? Home not even half an hour and Annie wanted to wring her dying grandmother’s alarmingly wrinkled neck—and shoot her ex-husband, as well.

And the thought of Dev had her asking, Why is Devlin staying here? though she knew she shouldn’t.

Because I like him. Carlotta’s smile was sweet and deadly. He amuses me.

"You like him?"

Yes, I do.

This had to be a nightmare. It couldn’t be real. You used to call him ‘that gardener’s boy’—and that was when you were being nice. Dev had never known his father. His mother had died when he was ten and he’d come to the estate to live with his uncle Jerry Smith, his mother’s half-brother. Jerry, dead for seven years now, had been the estate’s head groundskeeper. The way I remember it, you spent every day of the six years Dev and I were together trying to break us up. You forbade me to see him for the two years I loved him before we got married. And after I eloped with him, it was just more of the same.

Carlotta shrugged. We all make mistakes, even the best of us.

Are you trying to tell me you regret that time you offered him a hundred thousand dollars to divorce me? That you wish you hadn’t called him a ‘no-good bastard’ and a ‘useless piece of half-breed trash’ more times than either of us can count?

"Well, and see? He never took my money. And you ended up divorcing him."

That’s not the point.

And he’s not a half-breed anyway, now is he, technically speakin’? What’s he got, maybe a few drops of Cherokee blood from way back six or seven generations ago?

Grandma. My point is that you called him cruel and demeaning names, not how true those names were.

And I was wrong. I admit it—and now... Carlotta paused to hide a yawn behind her hand. I really must get some rest. You have thoroughly exhausted me. Think about my wishes. Find a way to make your peace with them. Because you will be comin’ home for an extended stay in the not-too-distance future.

No, I—"

Now. About this evenin’. In honor of your visit home, we shall all dress for dinner in the main dining room. At eight. By then I should be better rested. For now, you may go.

Annie opened her mouth to argue some more, but changed her mind and shut it before she made a sound. She’d run out of fresh and effective ways to say no, anyway. A few hours to chill and regroup sounded like just the thing. Have a nice nap, Grandma.

Humph, said Carlotta. Eight o’clock. Sharp. She turned to her nurse. Shut the doors after her, turn off this light and check the curtains. I want them pulled tight.

* * *

Devlin, in his own rooms by then, kept the door to the hall open a crack so he could see when Annie left Carlotta’s suite. He grinned at the sight of her. She had that blond head high, shoulders back, sweet mouth a grim line, as she stalked off down the hall, probably headed for the south wing and the suite of rooms that had been hers when she was growing up.

Once she was gone, he pulled the door wide, strolled down the hall and knocked on the door Annie just had come through. The big nurse answered. She gave him her usual wide, cheerful smile. Hello, Devlin. Sorry, but she’s not to be dis—

Lola? Carlotta called from somewhere deep in the over-decorated suite. Is that Dev?

Yep, the nurse said over her shoulder.

I’ll see him.

So Lola stepped back and Dev went on in, through the oppressive red room, and on to the bedroom beyond. In there, the lights were out and the curtains shut. A barely detectable scent haunted the air, a too-sweet scent, like spoiled fruit. Dev knew that scent. His mother had died of cancer, too.

Annie’s grandma lay in shadow, bolstered by a mound of pillows.

Where have you been? she demanded. It’s been days.

A little action down in Dallas.

Did you win?

I did all right.

She chuckled, low. So modest for such an arrogant bastard.

I’m not arrogant, he said.

And she laughed out loud then. Oh Dev, you do amuse me. She fluttered her skimpy eyelashes at him. What have you brought me?

He played it puzzled. Brought you?

Oh, stop. You’ve got your hand behind your back. I may be dyin’, but I’m not blind.

He whipped out the flat box wrapped in gold paper and tied with a big silver bow. What? You mean this?

She clapped her hands like a kid. Oh, I knew it. What is it? She reached out, wiggling her fingers. Gimme. Come on. So he handed it over. She ripped into it with gusto, had the ribbon off and the box open in less than ten seconds. Oh! Oh, Dev... She lifted the black scarf from its nest of silver tissue. The beading on it