“Hand me the phone. We’ve got to tell Daddy.”
He put his hand over the telephone. “Tell Daddy what? Somebody doesn’t like me? We can’t truly prove the incidents were sabotage and not some kid’s idea of a prank gone wrong.”
“Both incidents? I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences.”
“I don’t, but juries do.”
“Whoever it is could try again.”
“I’m on guard now. I don’t think he’s trying to hurt anybody but me, but you’ll be safer if you keep your distance from me, at least in public. In private is another matter.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not joking. I can look after myself, Ann, but not if I’m worrying about you. Be careful.”
“I promise.” She shivered. “It’s time for the heating pad. Do you mind if I come over there to the couch and let you take its place?”
“My pleasure.” He helped her up and settled her against him on the couch with her quilt over them both.
“Um. You’ve got more heated area than a heating pad,” she said drowsily.
“Parts of me are considerably hotter, too.”
After a few minutes she asked, “What are you going to do about the…pranks, jokes, attacks, whatever they are?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Maybe you should go on a vacation someplace until the house is finished.”
“You want me to?”
She tilted her face so that she could kiss the underside of his jaw. “I want you here. But I’d prefer you alive.”
HE FINALLY EASED Ann into bed about midnight and lay down beside her without undressing. Dante came over, licked the hand he’d trailed over the side of the bed, then lay down on the floor with a sigh.
Paul planned to lie awake and work out the identity of his attacker, but the day had been too long and he was too comfortable lying by Ann’s side. He fell asleep. He didn’t hear Ann get up. The aroma of good coffee finally forced his eyes open.
“Good morning, lazybones.”
He groaned. He was certain his belt had left a permanent crease in his waistline.
“I will kiss a man with whiskers, but I draw the line at unbrushed teeth.”
He opened his eyes. “I expected you to be too sore to move.”
“Your therapy must have worked. I’m hardly sore at all.”
“You passed your aches on to me,” he said. “Give me that coffee this instant, woman.”
He borrowed a new razor and toothbrush from Ann and took a long shower. He suspected his aches came from his wild carriage ride with Mrs. Adler. He dressed, but padded back to Ann’s kitchen barefoot. “Thanks for the new toothbrush. Now you can kiss me.”
The kiss turned long and passionate. He pulled her tightly to him, at which point she yelped and drew away. “I’m still a little sore,” she said.
“Feel up to driving into the city for breakfast?”
“The café’s not open, so either we eat dry cereal or we go hunting for bacon and eggs. I’m game.”
“I have to stop by the house to change clothes.” He turned back to her. “Speaking of toothbrushes, the craziest thing happened the other day. My toothbrush disappeared. It was there in the morning and not there in the afternoon.”
“One of the workmen probably used it to clean grout or something and didn’t want to admit it.”
“Hmm.”
“Dante, stay. You’ve had your breakfast.”
During the brief moments before sleep overcame Paul the previous night, one name had come into his mind. Karen Bingham Delaney Lowrance. Had she guessed his identity? Was she behind these…accidents?
Paul had always assumed that his father had killed Michelle on his own. The more he learned about his father, however, the less likely it seemed that he was a murderer. He seemed too weak, too feckless. But he could have had help.
Karen seemed quite capable of committing multiple ax murders if she felt they were necessary. Getting rid of one young Frenchwoman who threatened her and her family wouldn’t have required more than a moment’s consideration.
Could Michelle have met Karen instead of Paul? Karen had been charm itself when he’d interviewed her, yet she might be trying to kill him. His unsophisticated and romantic young mother would have been easy prey. Especially if Karen had offered her consolation, sympathy, even assistance.
Had he spent his whole life blaming his father for a murder he did not commit?
He spent a comfortable, lazy Sunday with Ann. He missed sharing the Sunday Times, but the local newspaper wasn’t bad. They put Dante into the back seat of Paul’s car and drove down back country roads and lanes for a couple of hours while Ann showed him some of the sights. She directed him to LaGrange, where several pilots had restored a number of elegant houses much older than his. Paul couldn’t remember ever feeling as content. They drove all the way down to the Mississippi River, which was in flood and therefore considerably mightier than it would be in the summer.
Finally they picked up a couple of steaks to grill on Ann’s back stoop.
And that night they made wonderful love.
They had agreed that if Paul left before six-thirty in the morning, when the café opened, he could make it home without arousing suspicion, then meet Ann for breakfast at seven-thirty as though they had not seen one another since yesterday.
It might have worked, except that a Rossiter squad car driven by a cop Paul did not know saw him cross the square and waved as he drove by.
Busted. No doubt Buddy would be informed before he got to the job site to check on the progress of his crews.
Paul didn’t care about his own reputation. He did worry about Ann’s, however.
Maybe the entire town had banded together to get rid of him before he became the second man to ruin Ann’s life. No. That was absurd.
After breakfast, as he and Ann strolled back to the house, he looked up at the shining front facade and said, “I had no idea it could possibly turn out this well.”
“We’re not nearly finished. And you’ll have to get rugs, window treatments, real live furniture—”
“Window treatments, at least. When I sell it…”
Ann stopped dead. “When you sell it? You plan to sell it?” She looked horrified.
“I mean if…if I sell it,” he stammered.
“You said when.”
“People do sell houses, Ann.”
“You’re doing this on speculation? To make big bucks off your investment, then move on to the next old house?”
“Look, let’s talk inside. Out here on the sidewalk is too public.”
“Suits me if everybody hears. If I ever owned a house like this, I’d never sell it. Not for a billion dollars. My God, I’ve put my heart and soul into this restoration and so have my father’s crews. We’ve opened our houses to you, not to mention our beds—”
“Ann—”
“Because we thought you were going to be here in Rossiter, a part of the town.”
“Ann, calm down. We’re fighting over a word, a single word.”
“So you’re not planning to move?”
What could he say? “Not anytime soon, but things change. That doesn’t mean my feelings for you or Rossiter will change. Dammit, I love you!”
A grizzled carpenter just climbing out of his truck grinned and said, “Good for you,” and walked into the house.
“Oh, glory,” Ann said. “That’ll be all over the county by noon. What did you say?”
“I said I’m in love with you. I don’t know what that means, and I definitely did not intend for it to happen, but it did.”
“Oh.”
“So let’s just play it as it lies, all right?”
“What if I love you back?”
Paul closed his eyes. “I thought I had everything figured out. Now I don’t know anything. Whatever happens, remember that at this time and forever, I do love you. You got that?”
“Right.” Her eyes were curious.
“Okay.”
“I am now going to kiss you in full view of the entire town of Rossiter.” He pulled her to him and did precisely that. Then he trotted around to the back of the house, climbed into his car and drove off at a pace that would have earned him a traffic citation if Buddy had been watching.
ANN SUSPECTED her father’s guys were snickering at her behind her back, but nobody had the nerve to mention Paul’s kiss. She decided to play it safe and eat lunch at home rather than risk going to the café.
After eating her tuna sandwich, she curled up on the couch with Dante beside her.
Paul’s kiss should have left her with a pure champagne high.
Instead her elation was tempered by unease. She’d learned to trust that instinct—first in her work, then eventually in her life. She could look at a painting and sense a hand, an expression, even occasionally an entirely different painting, invisible beneath layers of varnish. She’d be willing to give long odds that something was concealed beneath Paul’s surface.
She scratched Dante’s head. He edged closer.
“I’m being silly and oversensitive,” she told him. “Travis conned me so often that I can’t trust any man.”
Dante moaned.
As a cop, Buddy knew about identity theft. Before he’d signed the contract he’d checked Paul’s identity and credit rating. He was precisely who he said he was. He wasn’t lying when he said he’d never been married, and he wasn’t supporting any children.
“Maybe he’s the sort of guy who has to have an adoring female at all times and considers me the best choice of a limited lot. Does he fall in and out of love as easily as Travis did? Will he convince me to give him my love, my trust, then walk away the minute my job is finished?”
In a town like Rossiter, everyone would know. She’d already suffered enough sorrowful glances when she’d divorced Travis. She couldn’t endure any more pity.
But Paul seemed serious. He must know that if he dumped her, Rossiter would line up on her side.
Lord, what a prospect!
She shoved Dante off her lap.
“I need a project for the afternoon that does not involve dental picks. If Aunt Addy’s journal hasn’t been sold or destroyed—if it’s still in the house somewhere—I am darn well going to find it.”
Presenting Paul with Addy’s journal would serve as the perfect apology.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AFTER LUNCH Ann got busy with the tile replacement in the front bathroom of the mansion. There was no time to consider possible hiding places for Aunt Addy’s journal. She would give it more thought later.
She decided that she had no right to force Paul to talk about his plans for the future. Maybe she should just take Marti’s advice and enjoy the moment.
She and Paul had another picnic on his porch that evening and were sharing an after-dinner apple when his cell phone rang.
“Giselle. Hi. Sorry, I know I should have called before this.” He looked at Ann, got up and walked through his room and into the hall beyond.
Why was he so secretive? He’d already said Giselle was the sister-cousin he got along with. Ann couldn’t bring herself to eavesdrop, but she wanted to. He talked for fifteen minutes, and several times when he raised his voice, she did understand the words. “I’m as confused as you are,” he said once.
“I think I may have figured this out wrong from the beginning,” he said.
Figured what out?
He came in and sat down beside her on the porch again after he’d hung up. “My sister Giselle. I told you about her. She’s annoyed because I haven’t been keeping in touch the way I promised.”
“Will she visit you when the house is finished?”
He looked startled. “I hadn’t given it any thought. I suppose under the right circumstances she might.”
Ann shivered. She’d borrowed one of Paul’s plaid shirts for warmth, but it only fell halfway down her thighs. The rest of her was getting colder by the second.
He pulled her up and into his arms.
“Come on, I’ll clean up this mess tomorrow morning before I head out to the airfield.”
“I thought you said you were through dusting?”
“For the moment. Now I’m working on the Cessna with Hack. It’s one hell of a job.” He thought for a minute. “Who around here can fly a plane?”
“I don’t know—some of the farmers, I guess. The airline pilots obviously can, maybe some of the doctors can, as well. Hack would know who has a private plane.”
“Only if they park them with him.” He nearly asked about Karen Lowrance, but she’d be too smart to sabotage his plane herself. She’d hire someone.
Later, as Ann lay in his arms in the rosy glow of their lovemaking, she asked drowsily, “Tell me about your mother.”
“My mother? Why?”
“Because I want to know everything about you.”
“She disappeared when I was very young. End of story.”
“No, it’s not. Don’t you have any keepsakes, any pictures?”
“Only one. I’ll show it to you sometime.” He sounded drowsy.
She sat up. “How about now?”
He groaned. “All right, but it’s just an old photo.” He dug around in his suitcase and came up with a framed eight-by-ten, black-and-white photo of a woman holding a child in her arms.
“That’s you, isn’t it? Look at all those long curls. You wouldn’t last two minutes in a day-care center.” She took the picture from him. “You have her dark hair.” She returned the photo and waited for him to come back to bed so that she could spoon against his back. It wouldn’t have been politic to tell Paul that his mother looked as though she’d been rode hard and put away wet. She looked too thin to be carrying around a bruiser like her son. Still, there was something familiar about that photo…
She took Dante out and slipped home before dawn. Something about that photo nagged at her, but it wasn’t until she was standing under her own shower that it hit her.
She jumped out of the shower and ran into her workroom naked. The pictures they had taken from Uncle David’s studio were carefully stacked on one of her work counters. She pulled the Paris street scene aside. There she was—the girl with the wind in her hair. She looked young and joyful in this sketch, while the woman Paul had showed her looked desperately tired and much older. But bones didn’t lie. The girl in this sketch was Paul’s mother.
One by one she looked at the other sketches, and then the sketch of the girl naked and obviously sated with lovemaking.
She threw on clothes, tied a scarf over her damp hair, grabbed Dante’s leash and her keys and walked across the square to the mansion.
Paul’s car wasn’t in the parking area. He must have gone to the airport early. She ran home, jumped into her truck with Dante and peeled out just as her father pulled up. As she passed him, he yelled out his window, “Slow down!”
She stabbed the brakes and kept to a sedate thirty miles an hour until she reached the highway. Then she floored it. If her father was checking on the house, he wasn’t aiming his radar gun down the highway.
By the time she bumped over the railroad tracks in front of the airfield and slid to a stop beside the hangar where Paul kept his plane, she was furious.
She saw him leaning into the engine compartment chatting to Hack. She stomped over to him.
“Hey, Ann, honey,” Hack said. Then his eyes widened. “Uh-oh.”
Paul came out from under the cowling and turned to her. “Ann? Hi. Something wrong at the house?”
“You’re damn right something’s wrong.”
He blinked. “Huh?”
“Get down from there. We have to talk.”
“Now?” He glanced at Hack.
“I could use a cup of coffee,” Hack said. He backed away and limped toward his trailer.
Paul wiped his oily hands on the t
owel hanging from his belt and reached for her.
She jumped back. “Don’t you touch me, whoever the hell you are.”
“I beg your pardon? Ann, what’s gotten into you?”
“Did you think that photo was so old and faded I wouldn’t make the connection? Did you think she’d changed that much?”
“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You damn well do. The girl in Uncle David’s sketches is your mother.” He started to respond, but she held up her hands, palms front. “Don’t bother to deny it.”
He hung his head. “No, I won’t.” He turned away. “Damn! I was half-asleep when I showed you that picture. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Maybe other people wouldn’t have caught the resemblance, but I’m an art restorer! I spend my life dealing with faces.” She took a deep breath. “Who the hell have I been sleeping with?”
“I know I should have told you, but I still haven’t discovered what I came to find out. There didn’t seem to be any right time, and I didn’t want to drag you into my problem.”
“What problem?” Ann screamed. “Who are you?”
“Calm down, just calm down.” He realized that behind her Dante was standing at attention and the hair on his back had risen. “Tell Dante I’m not going to attack you.”
She turned. “It’s okay, Dante. Sit.”
The dog did as he was told, but he stayed alert.
“Now, can we go someplace where we can talk?”
“What’s wrong with this place?”
“It’s a long story.”
“There are a couple of folding chairs over there. I’m not going anywhere until I know who I’m going with.”
“Fine,” he snapped. He brought over the chairs.
She sank into one. He stood in front of her with his hands in his pockets and a defiant look on his face. Like some kid who’s been called to the principal’s office, she thought. But he was no kid.
He told her everything. His mother’s marriage, his birth, coming to America, her disappearance, his adoption, his lifelong certainty that his mother had been murdered by the man who’d abandoned her. He told her that he’d finally discovered evidence that led him to Rossiter and David Delaney. “The house’s being for sale was coincidence,” he said. “I only planned to come down here long enough to substantiate my suspicions, but then buying and restoring the house seemed like the perfect cover. It gave me a reason not only to live here but to ask questions about the family.”
House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 19
