by Brenna Todd
"Sounds as though no one from your time takes responsibility for their actions if nothing they do is their own fault."
Erin gave a wry grin. "Actually, you're not too far off base with that one. A better balance probably could be struck on the whole fault-blame thing."
She suddenly realized exactly what he'd said. "Hey! You just said, 'No one from your time.' Does that mean you're coming around?"
Waite allowed a glimmer of a smile in return. "Let's just say you make it seem possible. The more I listen to you, the easier it is to believe that you aren't from anywhere around here. But still, when I look at you, I see a woman I've known for years. You just have to understand how difficult—"
She brought one of his hands to her lips, bestowing a kiss on his knuckles. It was a start, she thought. Even if, in the end, he was never able to fully believe her incredible story, it felt wonderful to know that he didn't always think of her as Della. "I do. Really, you're talking to someone who can hardly believe it herself."
He nodded. "This diary. Why is it so important to you that I see it?"
"Well, I haven't read all of it yet, but I'm hoping it will give me a clue as to who murdered her. I have a feeling that's why I'm here. I mean, there has to be some reason, right? And I remembered something J.B. said...that someday I'd know why he was so grateful. Until I found this diary, I didn't stop to think about the why of it all. I was just intent on getting back."
Waite closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the sofa. "Now you have me completely confused."
"I'm sorry. I didn't tell you everything last night about how I came to be here, did I?"
"I thought you said something about the locket and the portrait—not that I don't have trouble with the story, you understand."
"You get an A for effort," she said with a grin. "The thing is, I met J.B. in my time. I know," she said when his head whipped around. "Hard to believe, but J.B. Munro will live to the ripe old age of one hundred and seven. Anyway, my unit—you'll remember I told you about my being a paramedic—was called to the mansion when he suffered a heart attack." Waite swallowed and glanced away. Erin squeezed his hand.
"I'm... sorry. I know this must be difficult."
"Go ahead," he murmured, his voice gruff.
"He... he knew me. That is, at first he thought I was Della, and kept asking me to forgive him. I thought he was disoriented because of the pain and his advanced age. Then he said, no, I wasn't her, and told me he knew who I was. I was the other one. Erin."
Waite watched her but said nothing.
"It was really eerie, you know? We got him to the hospital, but he... died that night. But before he did, he told the night nurse to tell me that someday I would know how grateful he was to me."
"Again, none of this makes sense to me, but gratitude for coming to his aid doesn't seem so odd tome."
"Well, it did to me at first, especially because he knew my name. But I finally wrote it off to coincidence—not the gratitude, but the name business. Anyway, months later, this mansion was opened for tours."
"Tours?"
"Yes. I guess J.B. left the estate to the city, since he died with no heirs. The tour guide told us about Della's murder, Waite. And guess who one of the prime suspects was?"
He sighed, looking more uncomfortable by the moment. "I couldn't imagine."
"You."
"Me!" He jumped to his feet. "I didn't murder her! Why would anybody think— Oh, Lord, what am I saying?"
"I know, I know...You just can't believe it happened, because if I'm Della, then there was no murder. But there was. It happened, okay? Just stay with me, here," she said wearily. "Anyway, the reason you were one of the suspects was there were rumors that you and Della were having an affair around that time."
"Imagine Della and I having an affair," he muttered dryly.
"Smart-ass," she muttered back. "You disappeared after they found her body. And you were never heard from again."
Waite's jaw worked, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. Turning away from her, he paced to the window that looked out over his friend's estate.
His body language revealed it all. Erin could only see him from behind, but she noted the tension in his shoulders, the hands that were now balled into fists at his sides. He swung around to face her, and the pain in his eyes made Erin wish she'd never told him about the future. But she'd had to. He had to be in on this if she was going to accomplish what now seemed to be her mission here.
She thought of her parents' lecture on that fateful day "back" in the nineties. Only days ago, she mused, but it felt as though she'd lived two lifetimes since then. They'd wanted her to "get a life." Well, she'd gotten one, all right. Never mind that it was someone else's.
She rose from the sofa slowly, an ache in her throat as she approached the man she had fallen in love with. The realization that she didn't have a lifetime to spend with him ripped her apart.
"Waite," she murmured, placing her palm on his jaw. "I didn't tell you all this to hurt you. Oh, I know what you're thinking. How can it hurt when it's all a huge, complicated delusion, a product of Della's overactive imagination, right?"
He tried to look away, but Erin wouldn't allow it. She raised her other hand to his face and forced him to look at her. "But it's not a delusion. Deep inside, you know that."
"I want to know it. Want to believe..."
She nodded. "Finding the diary made me understand why all this has happened. It's not just for Della's sake. You 're why I'm here."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WAITE DIDN'T KNOW whether to keep listening, leave while some of his sanity was still intact or tell her to go. But in the end, he continued staring into her eyes, which were the only physical evidence he had that she could be telling the truth. They were darker than before; that hadn't changed.
God, how he wanted to believe! But how could he? Now she was saying her little "journey through time"—he cringed even hearing the words in his mind—was somehow connected with him.
"Me? I'm why you're here?"
"Yes. It makes sense if you'll just use logic."
"Sense! Logic?"
"Okay, okay," she said. "Those might not have been the best words I could have used, but you're in this far, so you might as well listen to the rest of my lunacy, right?"
Waite's lips twitched. Who knew? Maybe she wasn't Della. Della Munro had never shown him a humorous side. She'd never joked or teased, and had thought him irritating when he'd tried to coax a smile out of her. He liked the smile that curved this woman's lips and sparked in her eyes right now. Her darker green eyes, he told himself again.
"Right," he said, and gave in to a smile, too.
"Oh, that's a killer," she said, her voice breathy. She reached to trace his bottom lip with her thumb. "You don't do that very often, do you?"
No, he supposed he didn't. He hadn't given it much thought, but what had there been to smile about in the past several years? Making more and more money? Enlarging the Munro empire? "No, I don't."
"I'm going to take it as a compliment. In fact, I think I'll take credit."
He covered her hand with his and pressed a kiss on her fingertips. "You should." It didn't matter if this woman who called herself Erin was in reality Della, she was a changed Della. And he loved the changes. Loved her. It might be insane, but hell, he was close to deciding that insanity might not be such a bad thing, after all.
She caught her breath.
"What? Is something wrong?"
"No, I just—" She gently wrested her hands from his, her eyes wide as she backed a step away. "Tell me if I'm deluded about that look. Does it mean... I mean, could it possibly be because you... Because if it is... I—I just—"
"You just what?" He was smiling again. At the blush in her cheeks, the way she couldn't finish a sentence... and just because it felt good to smile again.
"I just... I love you, too."
He pulled her into his arms, held her as close as was humanly poss
ible. Hell., .wasn't that where his soul would be consigned for the sin he'd so willingly committed? He had never been religious but had always respected the laws of God and man. Until now, it seemed. Because holding her next to his heart, tight in his embrace, he didn't give a uamn where he might end up. "That's what it meant," he said, and kissed her. She was crying. "What's this?"
"Oh, it's awful," she said, sobbing quietly. She wiped at the tears with the backs of her hands. "I mean it's wonderful, but it's awful, too. I...I wanted to find someone like you, and I needed a new life.. .and poof, here you are, and here's a life—boy, what a life!— only it's someone else's, and I can't keep it or you. I know I'll have to go back just as surely as I know what it is I'm here to do, and—" she sniffled, looked up into his eyes, then sobbed again "—and it's just not fair. I know that sounds childish, but damn it, you'd think after all I've been through..."
Waite could do no more than shake his head and stroke her cheek with his thumb. All this talk of having someone else's life and going back and forth through time... Well... what could he say to her? It was just so damned crazy. Wasn't it?
He felt a twinge of panic. What if it was all true? He didn't want to lose her, either.
"You don't have to give me up. I don't want that to happen, either." He leaned forward, placing a whisper-soft kiss on the tip of her nose. "I want to tell J.B. about us."
She pulled back, her eyes suddenly wide with alarm. "No! Are you crazy? You can't tell J.B.!"
"Yes, I can. And I will." Guilt made his chest feel tight. "He doesn't deserve what I've done to him. But more than that, he doesn't deserve insult on top of injury—to be lied to about it. No one does.
"Stop shaking your head and listen to me," he ordered, anchoring her face with his hands. "I think he'll give you a divorce. Your version of history will come true then, won't it? Because I want us to leave here. We won't have to be apart."
She squeezed her eyes shut. "No, no, no. Waite, I've told you, I'm not his to divorce. And you haven't done anything to him!"
When she opened her eyes, Waite saw that her sorrow had been replaced with anger. She folded her arms beneath her breasts. "And it's not my version of history, it's what really happens! I've been trying to tell you that!
"I put it all together after finding the diary. Della didn't just write about you, J.B. and Virginia. There are a bunch of references to other of her acquaintances ... friends, enemies. I haven't finished reading yet because I was summoned to breakfast by his royal highness, but when I do, I think I'll get some clues as to who killed her. I'll clear your name and you won't have to leave."
"You think you're here to find a killer?"
"What other reason could there be? This was someone's grand design," she said, her expression still piqued, "not an accident. There are simply too many coincidences."
"Coincidences?"
"like the fact that I look just like her, yet we're not related. And what about the locket? You gave it to her, and it was your mother's, right?"
"Yes."
"Yet in 1994,1 end up with it. I was born forty-one years after her death, yet I end up with a locket that's connected to you. I also met J.B. Munro on the last day of his life and he told a nurse I'll know someday why he's so grateful to me."
"Again, I think he was merely appreciative for-"
"Nope. I don't buy it. After reading Della's diary and finding out just what you have always meant to J.B.—the son he never had—I think that he was grateful to me because I found the real murderer. I saw him, the man with the beard. I'm the only one who can identify him, Waite. And that would clear your name."
He raked a hand through his hair. "Della—"
"Erin," she insisted.
He decided to go along with her. "Erin."
Her smile was beautiful, lighting up her entire face and making her eyes sparkle. "Do you know how much I've wanted to hear you say it, Waite?"
"I... yes, I think I do, but—" He turned away from her, looking outside again. He knew how much she wouldn't want to hear what he said next. "I will still leave, Erin. No matter what it is that you're here to do. Leaving has been on my mind more and more lately, and now I know it's what I have to do. Come with me."
EDITH COULDN'T GAUGE Mr. Munro's expression. He didn't seem furious at that slut of a wife, as she had hoped. And he wasn't grief stricken, either. He didn't seem... anything at all. Aside from the tic beneath his eye, his expression was flat, revealing nothing.
She wondered what that meant. Maybe he didn't believe what she'd told him and was about to fire her on the spot. She wrung her hands. For all that she complained about the sinful goings-on in this mansion, J. B. Munro paid his servants better than any of the other wealthy men in town.
He rubbed at the tic, his cold blue eyes still expressionless, and reached into the top drawer of his desk. Edith swallowed. "Mr. Munro, I hope you won't think of lettin' me go for what I told you. I-"
He cut her off with a sharp glance from those cold, blue eyes, and pulled out a leather-bound book. Flipping it open, he bent to write something on the first page. A bank draft? she wondered. From what some of the other servants had told her, Munro was forever and always paying off someone to keep their mouth closed about some scandal or other.
Good thing his pockets were so deep, she reflected. They'd have to be with that wife, wouldn't they? Her attitude brightened considerably at the thought that she might reap some rewards out of this. "I'm good at keeping my mouth shut, sir. You can count on that."
"Can I?"
"Oh, yes, sir. I know how to button my lip but good." Edith craned her neck, hoping to get an idea of just how much he wanted it buttoned. Her eyes widened when she saw the amount. A fortune! He was giving Edith a fortune to make sure she kept quiet! She could hardly believe her good luck. Her breathing quickened.
"That's good." He slid the draft across his desk. "I expect you to be packed and gone within the hour. Out of my home... out of Munro."
Edith's mouth gaped. "You... want me to leave town? But...I don't have no people anywhere else. Or no friends. Been here since I was a kid. I don't have no other home besides this one."
Munro rose from his chair, circling to the front of the desk. "With what I just paid you, you can buy new friends wherever you go."
"But, I-"
"An hour, Edith. Unless, of course, you don't want the money."
"No! No, I...guess I'll be leaving," she said quietly, then snatched up the draft.
"Good. We have an understanding, then. That money pays for your silence. But just in case you decide you can't keep that lip buttoned, I want you away from my town."
"HE'LL SEE YOU NOW, Mr. MacKinnon," Simmons said, holding open J.B.'s office door. The dour butler seemed in high spirits for once, whistling as he disappeared down the hallway, carrying a tray that Waite assumed held the remains of J.R's lunch.
Taking a deep breath, Waite stepped to the door, his gut twisted in knots. There had been a time in his younger days when confrontations about anything with J.B. had filled him with apprehension. Now it was only the fierce nagging guilt he'd felt since last night that ate away at him. He had to tell him, and now was the time—no matter what Della thought.
J.B. looked up from the paperwork on his desk, freezing him in his tracks with the look of quiet fury in his eyes. Waite had prepared himself for J.B.'s anger—felt he deserved it, of course—but he'd expected to see it after he told J.B., not before. Damn! He hadn't wanted J.B. to hear of it from anyone else. "You already know, don't you?"
"I was told by a servant who saw Della leave the guesthouse so late last night." His anger seemed to deflate slightly, and pain shaded his eyes. "I had thought maybe you had an explanation. Hoped, I guess, is the better word. When you asked to see me, I held on to the chance that you'd tell me nothing untoward—"
"Don't, J.B." Waite suffered along with his friend. He'd been Waite's only family, the only family he'd had since he was a boy. To think that he'd repaid him with th
is...
"It did happen. I won't lie to you. And you can't know how deeply I regret the pain I've caused you."
"Regret? You deeply regret?" J.B.S laugh was harsh and bitter. "That seems a weak word under the circumstances, wouldn't you say?"
Waite didn't answer. He deserved everything the older man had to say.
J.B. pounded the top of his desk with his fist, giving full vent to his anger. "You were at the top of your class in college, Waite!" he shouted. "Surely a man with your intelligence shouldn't find trouble communicating his thoughts. God, and after all I've done for you!"
Waite didn't comment. J.B. had given him his first break, but Waite had worked his ass off for everything else. Nothing had been given him, save that first job. "I'm grateful for all you've done for me, J.B. That hasn't changed."
"Grateful," he spat. "This is the way you show your gratitude? After all I've invested in you, taught you, you show me your deepest appreciation with disloyalty? This is the repayment I'm supposed to be happy with after taking you into my company, my home... my family. God, how could you do it, Waite? How? Do you hate me so much for marrying her? Is this your revenge for—"
"No," Waite cut him off quickly. "It wasn't revenge. I got over you marrying her a long time ago, J.B."
"I don't believe you."
"You have every reason not to. But it's the truth."
"If it is, then explain to me why you did something this stupid! Damn it, Waite, I thought you had more sense than this. You've never been a man to forsake your integrity and your morals for the likes of someone so far beneath you. A slut like Della."
Three days ago, J.B.'s words wouldn't have sparked this outrage in Waite. Now they suffused him with rage. "She's your wife, man! A member of your family since she was a child! How can you say that about her?"
A look of surprise showed in J.B.'s eyes. "Because it's true, of course. I have trouble believing that you, of all men, would forget that."
