Dana held her tightly and tried to offer comfort to the crying girl. "Hey, that's enough of that; you're going to make yourself sick." She pulled Josie away slightly and smiled gently. "Actually, I think it was they," she said with a nod at the others around them, "who saved us."
"It was Rose,”Henry said admiringly, speaking up for the first time. "Wow, I've never seen anyone better in a crisis. We were all running around like chickens with their heads cut off, yelling for a ladder. But she ran inside with Mark in tow and had him pull down the drapes from the front room."
Dana looked at her feet, noticing for the first time the thick brocade fabric they had used to catch them. It was now looking a little frayed around the edges where fists had gripped it.
"It was the closest thing around that looked strong enough to use as a makeshift net. There wasn't time for a ladder, assuming we could find one," Rose said.
Everyone jumped when, with a groan and a final shudder, the wrought iron railing of the widow's walk gave up its tenacious hold on the castle and crashed into the bushes beside them.
Looking at Rose with heartfelt gratitude, Dana pulled the older woman into a group hug with Josie, who had refused to give up her hold.
"Thank you," Dana whispered fervently. "Thank you."
"Hey, hey, let's not get mushy." Rose pulled away gruffly, clearly embarrassed. "You'd have done the same."
"Dana, what happened?" asked Grace.
Expectant, curious faces looked at Dana. "Why don't I tell you about it inside?" Dana tugged ineffectually at Josie's arms, the girl still clinging to her like a barnacle. She was afraid she'd have to be surgically removed. "Shouldn't it be about time for lunch?"
Seemingly the result of some kind of second-sight, a light and simple lunch had been laid out, consisting of steaming bowls of thick and buttery tomato bisque and lightly toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. Chilled pitchers of fruit punch complimented the meal. After everyone was seated around the table, Oscar turned to his niece. "Josie, what were you doing up there? I know I told you, I didn't want anyone up there."
"Uncle Oscar, the door was open-”she began, but Dana interjected quickly.
"That was my fault," she insisted. "We saw the door was opened and that someone else had been up the stairs. I convinced Josie to do a little exploring. It seemed," she shrugged helplessly, "like fun."
"Yeah,”Josie shuddered, her eyes bright with remembering, "Until someone shut us up in there and began stalking us."
The already keen interest around the table sharpened at her words. "We thought it might have been one of you playing a gag." Dana decided not to mention the intuitive sense she'd had that whoever had followed them on the stairs had meant them real harm. She was aware that Josie had felt the same thing and hoped the girl would follow her lead. "I guess maybe we just overreacted."
"Overreacted!" Uncharacteristically silent for the past several minutes, Jack finally exploded. "Jeepers, you were almost killed!"
Josie's face blanched white and Dana cut Jack a warning glance.
Noah put a hand on his arm in an attempt to calm him down. "Hey, man, chill out, okay?" With a disgusted snort, Jack stormed out of the dining room. They all stared after him, everyone except Noah and Dana surprised by this unexpected display of temper. Noah shrugged an apology. "He had a bad scare. It makes him cranky."
"What about us?" Josie burst out uncharitably. "Someone tried to scare us to death and that was before we fell off the castle."
Everyone traded looks with everyone else and then looked back at Dana and Josie. Nobody admitted anything.
"I can't say for certain where everyone was just prior to the collapse of the widow's walk,”Oscar said, "but I do know that everyone participated in getting you down." He looked around the table. "We were all right there outside."
"Maybe," Brett, offered, strangely tentative, "you just imagined it?"
Dana stared at him incredulously. "Both of us?"
He shrugged. "Mass hysteria?"
"Could there be someone else in the castle?" Grace asked breathlessly.
Rose rolled her eyes. "Have you been reading those gothic romances again?"
"The only one here, besides all of us, is the Cook. She's an elderly lady that I highly doubt would be chasing young girls on darkened stairwells," Oscar said.
"A caretaker?" Grace continued stubbornly. "A handyman? The gardener?"
Oscar simply shook his head. "Josie and I have been doing all of the work ourselves. I haven't been able to afford part-time help since the contractors finished their repairs."
"What about a hobo or homeless man?" Grace said.
"With so many people constantly about? He would have been discovered by now."
"Maybe it was a ghost,”Noah said with a laugh, then subsided when no one else laughed, too.
"Oh, good God,”growled Austin.
"Hey, I was kidding."
The lunch conversation petered off after that with no satisfactory conclusions reached. Dana excused herself to her room. In the bright light of day, Dana was beginning to wonder if maybe she had overreacted to a simple prank and had infected Josie with the same paranoia. And once the joke turned nasty, the perpetrator was too ashamed or too embarrassed to now admit it. Somehow this explanation didn't feel right, but it made more sense than anything else did.
Chapter 6
She had barely made it two feet into her bedroom before Jack was at the door. She felt as if he had been laying in wait. "I ought to turn you over my knee."
Dana grinned and said, "Kinky."
Her attempt at humor fell flat on its face. Jack had clearly passed cranky right into furious. "What the hell did you think you were doing? You knew you weren't supposed to be up there. But you couldn't resist, could you?"
The adrenaline in her system had not completely abated and Dana felt her own temper start to sizzle from it. "No, and neither can you. If you had been with me, we both would have been going up those steps. So you can lay off the parental tone."
"This isn't about me." He then put lie to the words by adding, "You took five years off my life."
"Well, it wasn't any picnic for me, either," she said shouting, practically nose to nose with Jack. "So you need to back off and calm down! You don't have the right to be angry with me!"
Putting her hands on Jack's chest, Dana shoved futilely in helpless frustration, trying to push him out of the room.
Jack grabbed her wrists, pulled her roughly against him and kissed her fiercely with all the anger, all the fear, all the longing that boiled inside of him. Everything went into that kiss. All the years of hiding what he felt, all the years of waiting for her to feel the same, all the years of desire, of want, of need–poured into that kiss. When he broke away, it was hard to say which one of them was the most shaken.
He looked down at her, her face white with shock, her lips bruised from his kiss, her eyes dazed from the power of it. "Now tell me I don't have the right,”he ordered hoarsely.
Behind him Noah cleared his throat. "Uh, guys?" He edged into the room cautiously, like one might approach a spooked horse. "Everything all right?"
Jack released her slowly, never breaking eye contact. Dana cleared her throat. "Yes,” she said quietly, her eyes troubled. "Everything's fine." Liar, liar, lair!
Without a word, Jack spun on his heel and left the room. Dana sank onto the bed and pressed her hands to her face. The skin under her fingers felt hot.
Noah closed the door and sat down beside her. "That was pretty intense. What's going on?"
"I only wish I knew,” she whispered. Liar! Dana looked at her brother and smiled faintly. "Don't look so stricken. This isn't the first time Jack and I have had an argument."
"I know, but-" Noah suddenly sounded very young, "I don't like it when you fight."
"I know." She touched him briefly on his cheek. "Neither do I."
Noah hesitated as if he wasn't sure how much to say. "The two of you, there's something different…"
"I don’t know…different. For one thing, I've never seen him kiss you like that before."
Unconsciously, Dana rubbed her fingers across her lips. "That's because he never has." She was still awed by the emotions that had swirled over and around them in those few seconds. The foundation of her life, in which her friendship with Jack was such a huge part, had trembled with that kiss. This went beyond the warm glow of physical attraction she had been trying to get used to earlier in the morning, which now seemed like such a long time ago. This was something more, something infinitely more dangerous and frightening.
This feeling inside of him, this feeling inside of her, held within it great risk, the risk of losing everything they were to each other for a chance at something new. Is it something better than friendship? It appeared that Jack had the courage to take that risk. Did she?
"Maybe you could go talk to him?" Dana said nothing. She just shook her head rather sadly.
Noah watched his sister for a moment as she stared off into space, lost in her thoughts. He had wondered for quite some time why Dana had never tumbled to the fact that Jack always seemed too busy for girlfriends but had plenty of time for her. And why Jack couldn't see that Dana continued to pick boyfriends that just didn't get her the way he always had, making them destined to fail.
Noah had had plans in mind when he agreed to take this trip with them. He had intended to try his hand at a little matchmaking, to try and get them to open their eyes and realize that they were perfect for each other. But it didn't turn out quite the way he had expected. For one thing, Josie had distracted him. Now it appeared that they were opening their eyes all on their own, with little help from him. Except things between them had become tense and intense, and now they were mad at each other.
Noah left Dana's room and headed down the hall to stop and knock softly on a different door. "Hey. Can I come in? I need your help."
*****
Dana spent the rest of the afternoon in her room, feeling the after-effects of her time on the roof. She allowed herself a long, hot shower, letting the water run over the soreness in her arms, in her neck and across her shoulders. Her back felt like one long bruise where it had been yanked and pulled.
Dana basked in the sensuous warmth of the water flowing over her, letting it ease the stiffness already forming. Normally, she would have asked Jack to give her a back-rub, but she doubted that at the moment he would be receptive to the request. Often, one of their little adventures had resulted in tired and achy muscles and they would take turns working out the kinks with ointment and gentle fingers.
One Christmas, Noah had surprised them with a joint gift, a book of therapeutic massage techniques. They had attempted to try them out only to end up laughing and tickling each other breathless. Dana smiled at the memory then felt tears spring to her eyes. This was the first time she'd felt unable to ask Jack for anything.
Dana decided to put off thinking about it. Everything in her body and in her heart hurt too much right now. She took a couple of pills and slept until dinner.
The few hours rest did wonders and Dana's mood was much improved by the time Noah knocked on the door to announce dinner. Surely, Jack had calmed down by now. This hope was dashed when she walked into the dining room to find him still sullen and sulky. Already seated at the table, he glanced up at her briefly then without a word went back to pushing his food around his plate.
Dana felt an unfamiliar pain pierce her heart. She jumped slightly when Rose walked up from behind and touched her sleeve. "Hey, kiddo, how you doing?" The look she gave her was full of understanding and Dana felt that Rose wasn't asking after her health. Apparently, Noah had not been the only one who had heard her and Jack shouting at each other.
She shrugged and gave her a smile. "I'm fine."
Grace walked up and patted her shoulder kindly. "You hang in there." She clapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes appalled. "That didn't come out right."
Dana laughed and then kissed them both gratefully on the cheek. "Thanks, I needed that."
The Cook, or rather Mrs. Babineaux, Dana corrected herself, had laid out another stunning spread, but was once again nowhere to be seen. The theme of the meal this evening was fried: fried oysters, fried frog legs in cream sauce, fried catfish filets, fried crawfish tails, deep-fried hush puppies, pan-fried hominy, fried dill pickles and French-fried sweet potato chips. The only relief from all this greasy goodness was a sweet and tangy tartar sauce and bowls of green tomato pickles and pickled okra. Tall glasses of ice-cold milk accompanied the meal. A golden-brown pecan pie awaited them for dessert.
Henry was already deep into a story. "Here he was only a freshman and already leading his division in blocked passes. But that game he actually caught one." He slapped Mark on the back. Breaking open a hush puppy, the boy seemed embarrassed yet proud of his grandfather's praise. "Ha! For a second he seemed shocked, like he couldn't figure out what the ball was doing in his hands. Then he took off down the field running heel over elbow, with two other kids hanging on him like he was playing flag football and they were the flags. It took three more to bring him down. Boy, I did some whooping and hollering that night. I was happier than a jackass eating bumble bees."
Caught by an uncontrollable burst of laughter, Noah, who had been chewing at the time, shot food halfway across the table. Red-faced and mortified, he quickly cleaned up the mess. Rose poked Henry with her elbow and announced to the table at large, "I do love the way this man talks." Henry surprised everyone by turning a bright pink.
Without bothering with dessert, Brett and Austin finished their meal and left the table without as much as a word to anyone. By this time the others were used to the idea that these gentlemen weren't here to socialize. As soon as they were out of earshot, Josie looked across the table. "Dana, is Noah lying to me?"
Not having heard what Noah had said, she wasn't sure how Josie expected her to answer the question. But seeing the glint in her brother's eyes, her own narrowed in suspicion. "Probably," she said, "Why, what did he say?"
"All I was telling her was that this past spring they put up a bungee jumping tower at the Holiday in Dixie festival and you and Jack were one of the first ones to jump off."
Grace squealed with delight. "Did you really? I've always wanted to do that."
"Not only that," Noah continued dramatically, "but they went off the tower together. They had them trussed up like a package and they both jumped at the same time."
A little bell of warning rang in Dana's head and she began to have some inkling of what her brother was up to. "Noah," she began warningly.
Ignoring his sister, he looked around the table gratified to see that he had everyone's interest. "They are always doing crazy stuff like that. Boy, I could tell you stories."
"Why don't you not,”said Jack in the first words he'd spoken since dinner began. The tone was curt, but Dana could see a thawing in the look he quickly cast her way.
But with an appreciative audience, Noah continued undeterred. "For example, last year they watched this documentary about the guy who made the first cross-country road trip. Next thing I know, Jack and Dana have loaded themselves down with maps and are flying off to San Francisco, planning to rent a car and recreate the route he took."
Rose looked at Dana with admiration. "You go, girl."
"Now they're saving up to someday walk the Camino de Santiago." Noah turned to Josie to explain, "That's a famous road in Spain. People come from all over the world just to walk it."
Henry nodded his head, clearly impressed. "I knew you two were my kind of people."
"And you wouldn't believe some of the stuff they put each other through. Jack works for our local paper and part of his job is restaurant and movie critic. If you only knew how many lousy meals and rotten movies he has dragged Dana to throughout the years. But she never complains, does she, Jack?"
"Actually she complains about it all the time," Jack
said.
This comment gave Noah pause for only a second. "Well, maybe, but you know she doesn't mean it, because she still goes." Noah cut a quick look at his sister, trying to gauge her mood. Whatever he saw must have reassured him because he went on. "And trust me, she's just as bad. Dana has never met a recipe she didn't feel the need to tinker with. Some of them turn out really great, like a pie she made once that was both apple and cherry. In the same pie! But some stuff I wouldn't eat even on a dare. Not Jack, he has tried every one of her experiments. Hasn't he, Dana?"
Knowing that nothing short of murder would stop Noah now, Dana looked down the table to where Jack was sitting. Jack, his eyes warm with memories, looked back at her and smiled. "Yes," she agreed softy, "He has."
Noah and Josie traded expressions of relief. They had spent the afternoon with their heads together trying to figure out how to get them talking again. Once one idea after another had been looked at and discarded, Josie had suggested reminding them what great friends they had always been to each other. To Noah that had sounded too simple, too basic. But it seemed to be working. Still, Noah hadn't brought out the big guns yet.
"Yeah, for nearly my entire life, Jack has been there for her. Dana, remember that night at Mrs. Chance?" he asked, referring to an old family friend. Noah shook his head and frowned. "You really scared us that night." Addressing the others he said, "One minute she's fine, the next minute she's screaming and crying from one of the worse ear infections the doctor had ever seen. Jack rushed her to the hospital, stayed with her the whole time they checked her out, took her home, gave her the medicine the doctor prescribed, put her to bed and then sat up with her all night to make sure she was going to be alright." He turned to her. "Remember?"
Searching For Treasure Page 6
