And so he had. He’d met Stephanie—flown up to Michigan, spent a weekend with her that went surprisingly well—then flew back to Savannah, where he was working temporarily. He was both stoked and terrified that he had fathered this lovely young woman and didn’t know a thing about her.
Over the next few months they got to know one another better—they talked on the phone, she visited him, he visited her, they emailed—and then over the summer he got the second unexpected phone call.
The one that really shuffled his life around.
“Dad.” She was sniffling and crying into the phone, and he felt a shocking surge of protectiveness blast through him. “I n-need to ask you for something. A really big f-favor.”
“What is it?” Terror, followed by a million questions. Was she in jail? Had she gotten knocked up? Had Cara’s husband done something to her? “What’s wrong, Steph?” He tried to keep the panic from his voice. Wasn’t sure he succeeded.
“I just found out”—she was really sniffling, but clearly struggling to keep her voice steady—“that Dad—my other dad—is being transferred to New Hampshire. And they want to move me to New Hampshire, and change schools right in the middle of high school.” Her gulp was audible through the phone. “And I was wondering if there was any ch-chance you could— Well, you could come here and I could live with you.” The last few words came out in a rush. “I know you move around a lot and you can do your work anywhere, otherwise I wouldn’t ask, but I really don’t want to move to New Hampshire.” Her voice rose in a desperate wail that she was clearly still trying to keep under control.
And before he realized what he was saying, what it would mean, Declan heard the words come out of his mouth: “I think I could do that.”
Yeah. Just like that.
Damn-ass marshmallow that he was, he couldn’t stand to hear a woman cry.
So, a little more than two months ago, just before school started, Dec found himself setting up house with his fifteen-year-old daughter—a sophomore in high school. A completely foreign entity to his thirty-three-year-old bachelor self.
“Steph! You here?” he called again, really tempted to do the back-hall-stripping thing. Usually when Stephanie was home, it was evident due to some sort of noise—most often music or her voice on the phone or Skype. Or the running shower.
Feeling as if the coast was clear, he’d just pulled off his shirt (which, while it was still decent, made him feel a little uncomfortable around this teenager he didn’t know that well, and really uncomfortable when her friends were around because he always had the sense they were whispering about him and gawking) and, with a glance through the half-open door that led into the kitchen, began to unfasten his belt.
“Hey, Dad!” The sounds of clomping feet from the depths of the house brought him up short.
Shit. He quickly refastened his belt and grabbed the sweaty mass of the shirt he’d discarded from the floor. He was still wearing a beater tee—which, hell, he might as well be shirtless the way it stuck to him—so he shrugged back into the sleeves of his flannel. Declan walked into the kitchen just in time to meet his daughter as she bounced in from the general area of her bedroom or the bathroom.
His daughter.
Declan still couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. This young woman, this bright-eyed, smart, I-can-even-talk-to-adults fifteen-year-old was his offspring. He didn’t remember himself at fifteen—or even seventeen or eighteen, or hell, even at twenty—being as mature, levelheaded, and confident as Stephanie was.
“Hey,” he said nonchalantly. “How was school? What are you doing tonight? Have lots of homework?” Those were the three questions he’d come up with that seemed reasonable and logical for a parent to ask his child, and so far, she hadn’t seemed to be bothered by them or feel as if they were an invasion of privacy.
Stephanie was at the counter, slamming jars of peanut butter and jelly onto the granite surface with no thought to the potential result of glass abruptly meeting stone. “I think I got a job,” she said, yanking a loaf of bread out of the pantry.
She had long, dark blond hair, which she usually wore in a messy bun or spent hours either straightening or curling and letting it hang down past her shoulder blades. Today, it was long and straight, and she wore a loose, long-sleeved shirt and skinny jeans (not skinny skinny jeans; he’d learned the difference between the two when he’d taken her shopping for school—an event he wasn’t sure she’d ever convince him to repeat).
“A job?” he repeated, eyeing the sandwich taking shape in front of her with interest. “Pass me those jars, will you?”
“Here,” she said, passing him her just-made sandwich. “You can have this one. I’ll make another.”
For some reason, this made the back of his throat burn with emotion. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “Didn’t mean to take the food out of your mouth.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyes big and dark and brown. If Declan hadn’t seen the results of the DNA test with his own eyes, he would never have believed she was his child. “It’s no problem, Dad,” she said. “I can make another one.”
Damn, the sandwich tasted good. Particularly good. “So, a job, huh?” He tried not to sound as completely surprised as he was. She hadn’t mentioned anything about getting a job. And she was only fifteen…
“Yeah.” Now he could see a giddiness beneath her demeanor. “It’s like a Gal Friday sort of position. I’ll be working a couple hours after school each day, and then more on the weekend. She’s really flexible, and I’ll be able to do a lot of different things.”
“She? After school every day? Don’t you need a work permit? Aren’t there child labor laws?”
“It’s under-the-table money, Dad,” she said, hands on hips, eyes rolling like a pro. “Like babysitting? I don’t need a work permit for that. And if it begins to interfere with my school—which it won’t—Leslie said I just had to tell her and we’d adjust as necessary. Did you know she used to be the CEO of InterWorks?” Stephanie’s eyes were wide. “She’s almost as famous as Marissa Mayer and Meg Whitman! She was even on the cover of Fortune magazine. And she’s only thirty-four—I mean, I guess that’s young for all that.”
Declan’s thoughts were galloping off in several different directions, and it took more than few chews and a swallow before he could rein them in. “Leslie? As in Leslie van Dorn? At Shenstone House?”
“Yes! And she hired me!” Stephanie was dancing around the kitchen, heedless of the goop of jelly that splattered off her knife and onto the hardwood floor. “Can you believe it?”
No. He actually couldn’t believe it. And he wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about it, for several reasons. “You didn’t tell me you were going to get a job,” he began. “And what exactly are you going to be doing for Ms. van Dorn—not Leslie,” he said firmly. “She’s Ms. van Dorn.”
“She told me to call her Leslie.” Some of the giddy light was fading from her eyes.
“She’s your employer—supposedly—and you need to show her respect.” Oh really? The kind of “respect” Declan had been known to show some of his employers? The little voice in his head reminded him smugly of the way that had turned out.
He batted the thoughts away and continued his lecture. “Ms. van Dorn it is—and you still haven’t told me what you’re going to be doing for her.” Already he had visions of her using a table saw, or lifting heavy sheets of drywall, or covered with dust and mold and bits of insulation…
What on earth was this woman thinking? Stephanie wasn’t equipped to work on that house. She was a high school girl, not a contractor! She was a high school girl, not some cheap laborer.
“Fine. Ms. van Dorn,” Stephanie said flatly. “And what do you mean by supposedly?”
“It sounds very informal to me,” he said, backing off a little in the face of her expression. His daily goal was: no tears and no shouting… “And vague. That’s not really a good way to start a business relationship.”
�
��She’s going to pay me ten dollars an hour, and I’ll be working from three to four thirty Monday through Thursday. Fridays I don’t work because of pom, and then I work noon till four on Saturday. How is that vague?”
That actually sounded pretty reasonable. But Declan was the father here, and though the last thing he wanted was a confrontation with his daughter—no way, no how—he still had a responsibility he was taking seriously. “We’ll see.”
“We’ll see? What does that mean?” Hands on the hips again. Now her eyes were flashing with fire.
“It means I need more information. Now, what sort of homework do you have tonight? And don’t you have pom practice tonight anyway?”
Pom. He was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that his daughter was a cheerleader—but, as he’d learned the hard way, she wasn’t a cheerleader, even though she wore a uniform that looked like that of a cheerleader, and had pompoms like a cheerleader, and stood on the sidelines at the football games and shouted and danced and did all the things cheerleaders did…
What the hell was she if she wasn’t a cheerleader? Apparently there was some difference between cheerleaders and pom, though he sure as hell couldn’t figure it out. All Declan wanted was to be certain she wasn’t one of those cheerleaders who slept with half the football team like they’d done back when he was in high school.
He happened to know about that from personal experience.
“Yes, I have pom. That’s why I was getting something to eat. But now I have to go.” She looked darkly at the half-made sandwich in front of her, and Declan submerged a rush of guilt. He had taken her food.
“Uh,” he said. “How about an apple?”
“It’s fine.” She spun and yanked open the pantry, rummaging around in there as he pulled the bread toward him and finished swiping peanut butter over it for her.
“Here. Can you eat it on the way? Am I driving you or is someone—”
“Brooklyn’s picking me up. I told you that yesterday,” she said, emerging with one of those really expensive granola bars in her hand and another in her mouth. They were hardly bigger than two of his fingers, cost more than two dollars each. And with only five or so in a box, he winced every time he saw her down two or three in a row. Apples and bananas, peanut butter and jelly, were a lot less expensive. And people said teenaged boys would cost an arm and a leg to feed them…
“Here,” he said, offering her the sandwich.
“I’m fine. I’ve got these.” She showed him two more granola bars and he sighed inwardly.
“All right. Well, we can talk more about this later,” he said as she snagged up her backpack, water bottle, and six dollars worth of dark chocolate and dried cherry granola bars—which was hardly a nutritional meal for a growing girl.
“Whatever.” The door banged behind her, leaving Declan holding the sandwich.
He sighed, then took a bite as he headed to the bathroom to shower. He figured he better put himself to rights before he went to have a chat with Leslie van Dorn, celebrity CEO.
~ FOUR ~
* * *
Every time Leslie walked by the dismantled stair rail in the foyer, she was drawn to it. There was something about that slender, gaping channel that ran halfway up the side of the stairs that called to her. It needed to be cleaned up—all that insulation and dust lingering in that hole were releasing God knew what into the air; not to mention critters using it for nesting. Besides, she wanted to know what that mold or discoloration was from anyway.
Not that she didn’t have a million other things to do—but thank goodness she’d found someone to help out with some of them. Stephanie Lillard had been eager, smart, and willing to jump in and help, and though Leslie had originally thought she might want to hire someone a little older, Stephanie had come highly recommended and Leslie decided to give her a shot.
It was into the evening before Leslie decided to tackle the project of the insides of the stair railing base. Between meetings all morning with contractors, then one with her bank, the late afternoon tea at Orbra’s, and an extended appointment with an interior designer to work on new window treatments for the entire house (Leslie didn’t even want to think about that bill), she’d hardly had a moment to spare, and she’d hardly been home.
“It’s really not that important,” she told herself as she donned heavy gloves and located the broom and vacuum cleaner. Declan Zyler was just going to put the railing back the way it was; who cared if there was dust or debris inside it?
But something compelled her to poke around in the long, narrow hole.
“There could be rodents nesting in there,” she muttered to herself, and shined a flashlight down into the depths. The sun had nearly set, and the light in the front hall wasn’t as bright as it would eventually be, because two of the sconces had to be rewired.
“I wish I could figure out what that rusty discoloration is.” Oh, damn—she needed to get a mold expert out here to check it out to make sure it wasn’t something she had to treat. “I knew I was forgetting something.” She made another mental note to call tomorrow. “Maybe I’ll send a sample off to one of the universities to see if they can identify it.”
With her gloved hands, Leslie began to pull out debris from inside the railing base and tossed it onto a large tarp she’d spread on the foyer floor. As she removed a large piece of something that looked like pink insulation, she realized with a start that it wasn’t insulation at all.
She withdrew the piece and held it up, frowning. It looked like a wide scarf, or—no, it was a lady’s wrap. The large crystal button, the size of a half-dollar, would have held it together right in the center of her bosom, and the stole would have covered the woman’s upper arms and torso like an off-the-shoulder dress. It was lined with white satin, and the exterior had been a lush rose-pink velvet. But now it was discolored in areas with rust. Or something else.
Weird location to put something like that. How in the world had it even gotten there in the first place? Leslie felt a shift in the air…something cool and eerie stirred, sending a chill skittering along her arms. She tossed the wrap aside—but not on the tarp—and gingerly looked back down into the hole. There was a definite lower temperature emanating from the darkness there, accompanied by the smell of age and…
Perfume?
She pulled back and sniffed the air. Yes, all at once there was the faint scent of something floral and musky in the air.
Leslie shivered a little and looked around. The windows were black, for the sun had set and she was still waiting for the curtains to be installed. The nearly leafless trees, pines, and thick bushes that in the daytime provided charming seclusion for the house now rose in dark shadows to ban more than a hint of streetlight and other illumination from the town below. The flashlight in her hand and the lamp that burned in the foyer reflected in the dark windows, and all at once she felt very alone. Very alone.
Silly.
This was the same house she’d slept in for weeks now, the same lovely, charming building she’d adored for decades, the same home that looked cheerful and welcoming during the day. The simple matter of the sun setting didn’t change a thing.
But the opening of the stair rail did.
Leslie caught her breath. Again with the creepy thoughts from nowhere! But the hair on the backs of her arms was taut and raised, and she rubbed herself briskly through the sleeves of her shirt.
The house had sighed when they pulled away the railing, hadn’t it? The entire place had sort of…exhaled. Shuddered. She hadn’t imagined it, had she?
But how could a house exhale? It was silly.
She looked at the exposed opening, slender and unassuming as it appeared.
What else could be down in there?
At least it’s too small for a body.
Leslie felt a wave of relief when she realized that and gave a short burst of nervous laughter. After all, Fiona had found a skeleton in the closet of her antiques shop back in Philadelphia. But Leslie was being r
idiculous—how often did that sort of thing happen in real life? Never. Hardly ever. This house had been lived in for decades. Surely if there was anything to find, it would have been discovered long ago.
And about the cold chill…probably the base of the stairway butted up to the cellar below, and that was likely the source of the draft, coming up from down there.
Nevertheless, she felt slightly off balance as she beamed her light down into the narrow opening and began to use the broomstick to poke around in there because it was too deep for her arm to reach any further. Besides…she didn’t know what she was going to find, did she?
Leslie dragged the handle along the bottom of the hole and felt it catch against something. Carefully, she slid it up along the side until she could remove the object. An evening glove, dirty and dingy, with three round gold buttons on it about the size of peas. It was stained with the familiar rusty discoloration that she wasn’t certain was actually rust.
Well, at least it’s consistent.
That chilly draft seemed to be a little stronger now, and Leslie just felt…strange. Like there was something in the air.
Maybe if I had a cat, it would sense the supernatural. Or better yet, it wouldn’t sense anything and I’d know for sure.
Once again, she looked around, half expecting to see something…and at the same time, berating herself for being silly. Forcing her attention back to the project at hand, though part of her was actually considering aborting it, Leslie dragged the broomstick through the bottom again. This time, she heard a soft metallic sound as it brushed something against the wall.
Shining the light inside the hole once more, she peered down, one eye closed, and saw the way the light glinted off something shiny in the depths. Not silvery—so not a nail. But goldish.
She tried for several minutes to use the broom handle to fish out the object, but it was too stubborn and kept sliding off. A wire hanger, she decided, suddenly determined to discover what else was down inside there along with a glove and a wrap.
The Gems of Vice and Greed (Contemporary Gothic Romance Book 3) Page 4
