by Adrianne Lee
He picked a path across the viscous floor, crunched broken glass with every step, and twice lost his footing on the syrupy spillage before managing to reach the two toppled wine racks, which now lay clumped together looking, Spencer thought, about as harmless as a dismantled gallows.
Squatting, he grasped the fractured two by eights and examined them at closer range. Logic told him it was a waste of time; April’s rescue would have destroyed any evidence of villainy which might have existed. Still, he had to look.
After inspecting every contorted board, Spencer was more confused than when he started. The wood had aged to the point of rotting, exhibited by the jagged, top to bottom splits in both of the side supports. How long since anyone had taken a bottle from this particular rack? The damned thing must’ve been a potential deathtrap, awaiting any imbalance in weight that would set it vibrating enough to careen, collapse. He uncurled his long body and stepped over the heap of splintered wood. Was it really that simple, that innocent? Lord, he wanted to believe it.
His gaze circled the room. Racks, and dust laden bottles alike, looked polka dotted from the outgushing of wine that had taken place. Bending his head forward, Spencer combed his fingers up his chin, across his face and through his hair. The splotches blurred before his tired eyes, but the image of other spots darted into his brain; damp patches on red fabric. Ice grazed his heart. July had sprayed Mother’s skirt with her wet hair, hadn’t she? God, of course she had! He felt despicable for even entertaining such a notion.
Yet…. He slumped against the wall, recalling how jealous his mother had been of Lily. Reflecting on it now, he realized she must have been in love with August years before he was widowed. She’d certainly taken every advantage to console him after Lily’s death. He frowned, trying to remember if she’d also been the one to suggest the private sanitarium in Arizona for April. But all he could say for certain was how upset she’d been when April accepted her father’s invitation to come to Calendar House for the engagement party.
His gut wrenched as though someone had dragged a fish hook through it. For God sakes, had he lost his mind? How could he suspect his own mother of something so unspeakable? Nooooo! April’s mishap had been an accident. Hell, a damned fool could see the repairs needed in this room—if they’d ever bothered to notice. He glanced around again, uncertain if the standing racks were listing or if his overwrought imagination was making them appear too top heavy. Concluding he’d lost his objectivity, Spencer decided the best thing was to leave and come back in the morning.
That was where April found him after lunch the next day. It had taken every ounce of courage she could muster to come down here, but she had to see the room, the devastation, the proof that what had happened was no accident. Steeling herself against flashbacks the cloying odors raised, she tucked the box of plastic garbage bags she’d brought beneath her arm, and leaned into the heavy door.
Three sides of the cellar and the ceiling were carved from the earth, but the back wall and overhead beams were man-made from rough hewn pines. Spencer had swept clear an area of the floor and was divesting the standing racks of their precious wares. Already, his Levis and sweatshirt displayed dirty smudges from his labors.
In spite of his betrayal with Lily, her pulse sped faster through her veins at the sight of him and no amount of coaxing could keep a smile from her lips. “How many hundreds of dollars of wine do you suppose was lost?”
Spencer glanced over his shoulder. The frown tugging his brows eased, and his heart gave a leap. God, she was beautiful, even in baggy gray sweats with her hair pulled back like horses’ tail and a tiny bandage, nearly hidden by her golden bangs, forming an x on her forehead.
“I’m amazed you can joke about it.” He knew he didn’t find the thought of losing her the least bit humorous. Relegating the bottle in his hands to a place beside the others, he straightened and faced her. “How did it happen April?
“I’m not sure.” Heat sprang to her cheeks as she moved into the room, debating whether or not to tell him about the noise she’d heard. Or thought she’d heard. Today, she wasn’t so certain what to make of it. Had someone pushed the rack over on her or not? At the time she’d been positive, but now she realized her only evidence—another person’s breathing—would have been impossible to detect above the clamor her pulse had created in her ears.
Then again, what if she’d been right? The possibility soured her stomach equally as much as the stench lifting from the floor. It would mean someone in the household, a member of her family—or Helga or Karl, whom they all considered family—had deliberately tried to kill her. How could she suggest that to Spencer? He’d be furious, and she doubted he’d believe it without proof.
“Well, you must have some idea what happened.” Obviously, he wasn’t going to quit questioning her until she gave him a satisfactory answer.
“What happened?” Being deliberately evasive, April moved between the wine racks like a cat looking for a place to settle. She meandered toward the back wall, talking as she went. “All I did was lift a wine bottle from the bottom shelf, but you’d have thought the rack was a living thing and I’d just pulled off an arm the way it screaked. The next thing I knew, it came toppling over on me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough to avoid the fallout.” The memory sent a shiver through her.
“However I was lucky it fell the way it did, otherwise—I wouldn’t be here now to help you clean up the….” Her voice trailed off as she spied a golden object poking from between shards of glass and wood. Bending, April retrieved the item, realizing what it was the second she lifted the chain from amid the debris. She carried it to Spencer. “Look. Cynthia’s cross. I noticed she was missing it last night. The chain is broken. It must have pulled loose when she was helping me.”
Spencer stared at the swinging cross as though April were using it to hypnotize him. Disbelief scurried through his brain. His mother hadn’t lost the cross when helping April. She’d lost it before they’d found her trapped beneath the wine rack. The implication was unavoidable. “I’ll give it to her.”
There was an odd flatness in his voice. Puzzling about it, April released the necklace to his extended palm.
Spencer stuffed it into his jeans with uncalled for speed.
Whatever was the matter with him? She wondered, as she picked up a nearby broom and began sweeping furiously.
Deciding to give him some space, April fished two of the few remaining wine bottles from the last rack, then returned them to the center of the room. The empty space she had created revealed a section of wall behind the rack that had planks nailed crosswise in a haphazard fashion from floor to ceiling. One of the accessories to the smuggling tunnels. If the boards were loose, it could be a means of escape for someone deliberately scaring or otherwise harming someone else. Reaching through the shelves, she gripped a plank and tugged. It gave slightly. No one, she thought disappointedly, had used this access since it had been boarded up.
“What have you found?” Spence asked, bearing down on her.
“It’s one of the openings into the tunnels, but it’s boarded up tight.”
He gave the wall a cursory glance as he reached her side. His attention swung to her upturned face. Under his intense gaze, April felt her poise slip. Breath seemed to sputter to and from her lungs. “Have you ever been in the tunnels?”
“Nope.” Spence braced his arm against the wall with the flat of his palm, and leaned nearer her face. “August had all the accesses closed off about the time we four hellions started skating in the other room—probably didn’t want to chance losing one, or all of us, in that maze.”
The scent of his spicy aftershave filtered through the heavy wine, adding to her discomfiture. “How did the smugglers get into the passageways from the Haro Strait side?”
Spencer felt her warm breath on his mouth and an instant response in his loins. God, how he wanted to pull her into his arms and crush her against his needy body. The air between them seemed to crackle and h
e knew it had nothing to do with talk of smugglers and secret tunnels. “Rowboats. There were stairs cut into the cliff wall, but I think erosion’s probably destroyed them by now.”
April saw the desire in his gray eyes, and felt her traitorous body respond in kind. “Vanessa says she’d love to explore in there, but I can’t say I’ve any such temptations.”
“Me neither.” He lowered his face until their lips were mere inches apart. “I’m a man of simpler temptations.”
Swallowing hard, she planted the box of garbage bags against his belly, forcing him to grab it, and skirted around him. Trying to steady her breath, she walked to the center of the room.
Behind her, she heard him chuckle. “If you change your mind, I’ll gladly shove this rack aside, rip the planks free and go exploring with you. ‘Course, God knows how secure the rafters are in those caverns—not to mention how dark they are, or how full of rats.”
“No thanks. I’ve had a year’s worth of rats and darkness in the past couple weeks.” She shuddered, recalling.
Spencer extracted a trash bag from the cardboard container and shook it hard, snapping it unfolded. April moved to help him gather the rubbish from the swept-up heap. As he handed her the black vinyl bag, insisting she hold it while he scooped up glass bits and dumped them inside, their fingers bumped, sending disturbing tingles up her arms. Unable to look away, April watched his coffee-brown hair swing across his forehead as he bent and lifted, bent and lifted, saw his eyes seek hers each time he emptied the dustpan into the bag, and tried to ignore the sweep of his tongue across his sensuous mouth, and the quivering in her middle.
Could she feel this strongly for a man who’d been intimate with her mother? Perhaps she wasn’t being fair to Spencer. All she’d remembered was a kiss, and a kiss was hardly reason to condemn a man. Confused, she didn’t know if he’d meant the words he’d said to her beneath the stairs moments before Lily intruded, or if he’d meant the kiss to Lily. He deserved a chance to defend his actions as much as she deserved to know the truth.
Nervousness made her tongue feel too thick. “I had a memory the other night about Lily and you—an incident that occurred shortly before she fell.”
Spencer’s head shot up and his compelling gray eyes seemed to search her face. His odd expression washed away the underpinnings of her resolve. Instead of what she’d intended, she heard herself say, “I remembered she was headed to the wine cellar and that her voice was slurred, as though she’d had too much to drink.”
For ten whole seconds, she waited for him to tell her what had happened next, waited for him to explain why he’d been kissing her mother. Disappointment knotted her stomach as it became obvious he wasn’t going to say anything. Was this his way of sparing her the truth?
Out of nowhere, a thought struck her. “Do you think Lily’s drunken condition contributed to her fall?”
Spencer dropped the dustpan and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Damn it, April! Why can’t you let that subject alone? No one wants to be reminded of Lily’s accident.”
No one? Or just him? The anger swimming in his eyes was mingled with a more disturbing emotion. Fear. The realization rocked her to her toes. Did he somehow know what had taken place immediately after he’d left Lily on the landing; that she must have rushed up the stairs and accused her mother of trying to steal him? She could almost remember the argument; hear the words inside her head. Was that what he wanted to keep from her?
She had to know. As she started to ask, Spencer caught her mouth with his own in a rough, bruising kiss. The trash bag slipped from her grasp. April levered her palms flat against his chest and shoved, but her body ignored all brain signals to the contrary and arched against him. The heat spiraling through her melted sensibility and doubt from her mind. She felt Spencer kick the vinyl sack out of the way, felt him drag her tightly to him, and felt the pressure of his kiss soften as his tongue invaded her willing mouth.
Need rose hard and fast inside Spencer at April’s eager response. He slipped his hands inside her sweatshirt and up, across the silken expanse of her back, around the slender span of her waist to the flat of her midriff and higher. A groan spilled from him as his fingers pushed aside her bra and felt her nipples grow taut beneath his touch. God, how he’d ached for this moment. No woman had ever been able to make up for the loss of April.
Lifting her clothing, he gazed at the wonder his fingers had experienced. Her breasts were full with upturned, bronze-hued tips. He cupped one breast in his palm and stared at it lovingly, then tasted it. She was even sweeter than his dreams.
Want throbbed in his gut. He searched her face. Was this what she wanted, too? The smoldering glaze in her lush aqua eyes said yes. Would it be so wrong? Just once? To hold the memory of her forever in his heart? Yes, it would be if she was as innocent as he suspected. “Have you ever—“
As if she knew exactly what he was asking, April interrupted, “No. I always hoped you’d be the one.”
Her answer was everything and nothing Spencer wanted to hear. He was the last man on earth who deserved what she was offering. If April ever remembered what had happened between himself and her mother on the landing, there was no doubt in his mind that she would hate him forever.
No, he couldn’t add to her pain, wouldn’t make her live with the shame of giving her innocence to the man responsible for her mother’s death and her own years in a sanitarium. Wearing his guilt like a suit of armor, he stepped away from April as though her very touch burned his skin. Reaching for the dustpan and vinyl trash bag, he murmured, “Cover yourself up.”
Disconcerted and smarting with humiliation, April swung away from him. Her thoughts were in as much disarray as her clothing. Adjusting her bra and her sweatshirt, she stared at a nick in the earthen wall and forced herself to take several calming breaths. Damn him! He’d made her feel as worthless as one of the chips of glass she could hear him depositing in the vinyl bag.
Well, this was the last time he’d ever use her feelings for him to distract her from a purpose. She rounded on him, her knuckles curled against her hips, and demanded, “Tell me, Spencer, what is it you’re so afraid I’ll find out?”
Chapter Fourteen
Spencer opened his mouth then shut it. Feeling like a complete heel, he yanked the vinyl drawstring closed and hoisted the full trash bag as easily as he would a pouch of marbles. He was a man whose honesty bordered on bluntness, but on this subject, with this woman, he could no more find the words than look her in the eye. “April, there’s nothing to find out,” he lied.
The tips of his ears glowed as tellingly as the dying ember of hope in her heart. The truth had been there all along, waiting for her to see, but she’d refused to face it. Now, she had no choice. The only reason he was attracted to her, desired her, must be her resemblance to Lily. Always Lily.
Her anger dispersed in a blur of self-pitying tears. Second best. Nothing more than a surrogate, a substitute. The awful thing was, a part of her would willingly accept this man who owned her heart and soul on those terms, on any terms. But admitting she was a virgin had spoiled any such possibility. A liaison with a naive, inexperienced lover could never simulate the memories he had of her adept mother.
Never before had April rued her decision to stay chaste until marriage, but in light of Spencer’s rejection, it suddenly seemed foolish beyond belief.
Making to leave, he glanced over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”
“In a second.” She managed to choke out the words from her tear-blocked throat.
Spencer set the bag on the floor with a sigh. “April, I’m not leaving you down here alone.”
She didn’t want to be left down here alone. What she wanted to do was rush past him and up to her room before he witnessed her complete collapse. But he filled the doorway and she couldn’t get through without touching him. Feeling her self-control slip another notch, she stubbornly snatched a new plastic sack from the pack and snapped it open. She had to get rid of him before
she further humiliated herself.
“I don’t need a nursemaid, Spence.” Gingerly, she bent and swept glass shards into the dustpan, keeping her back toward him as the tears slid from her brimming eyes. “My therapist says I have to learn to face the things that scare me the most. I won’t stay here any longer than it takes to fill this trash bag.”
“Dammed stubborn…” The rest of his diatribe was lost to her in the clatter of glass as he hefted his own trash bag. Listening to him leave, she felt her world crash around her ankles in as many broken pieces as the shattered bottles of Bordeaux and Chablis.
Minutes ticked by as April stood there, silently crying, allowing enough time to pass to assure herself that she wouldn’t run into Spencer on the way to her room. At length, the dreadful stillness had her wiping her wet cheeks and eyeing the room uneasily. She was certain she was alone, but the fact did little to quell the goose bumps lifting along her arms and legs.
Moving faster than necessary, she stumbled through the basement room into the cellar, charged to the stairs with the speed and tunnel vision of a race horse wearing blinders, and barely managed to skid to a stop centimeters from being stabbed by the two-by-eight planks Karl was carrying through the larder.
“Whoa!” The boards hit the floor with a muted clatter. Karl caught her by the upper arms to steady her. “Hey, pretty lady, where you headed in such a hurry?”
“Nowhere special,” she muttered. Afraid he’d realize she’d been crying and would pry into the reason for it, April purposely kept her head averted.
But that didn’t stop Karl. He took hold of her chin with one beefy hand and tilted her face toward his. She meant to pull away, but the look of compassion he gave her stymied the intention. He wiped the damp area beneath her eyes with the pads of his thumbs with a gentleness she wouldn’t have expected from a man his size. “You get scared—being down here all alone? No, you don’t need to explain. Not after what you’ve been through.”
