When her son David broke his neck in the hunt field, Maribelle grew old overnight. She padlocked his studio in the back garden after covering the two canvases he was working on with white sizing paint. She didn’t want anyone ever to see the girl’s shadowy face painted behind her son’s.
She and Karen kept Delaney Farms healthy so that Trey would inherit even more than David had from Conrad, but Maribelle was functioning like a robot. Addy didn’t think she ever felt any remorse over Michelle’s death.
After Maribelle died, Addy planned to travel.
But when it actually happened, when she was finally free with a little money of her own, she didn’t dare leave her house and the rose garden. She burned the two carbons of her confession, but her mind had begun to fail. She couldn’t remember what she’d done with the original. She worried about it until the day she died.
“HERE’S THAT PICTURE you wanted, Chief,” the patrolman said. He handed the silver frame to Buddy.
He stared down at it for a long time. “A man never forgets a woman this good-looking.”
“What?” Ann asked.
“Don’t get me wrong, I was already in love with your mother. I hadn’t been on the Rossiter police force long. Didn’t know everybody in town the way I do now. I just figured she was visiting somebody on Main Street.”
“You saw her?” Paul asked. “You remember her after more than thirty years?”
“It was hotter than the hinges of hell. I do remember that. She was tottering down Main Street on those high heels, wearing some kind of black-and-white dress. I remember because she looked so miserable and hot. I think it was this one in the picture. Never saw her again.”
“My God,” Paul fell back in his chair.
“We never got a missing persons report or anything about her. I haven’t thought about that girl from that day to this.” He shook his head.
“You couldn’t know, Daddy,” Ann said.
“Doesn’t stop me feeling guilty.” He pulled himself to his feet and called to the patrolman, “Ray, get some tape, some shovels and some floodlights. I think we got us a crime scene.”
BUDDY REFUSED to allow Paul to work beside the men as they dug up the rose garden. Paul stood as close to the dig as he could.
Ann huddled on the back steps of the mansion and watched him.
She was glad Paul would have his mother’s remains after all this time. He’d be able to give her the burial she deserved. He would probably bury her close to her sister. He might even take her remains back to France.
He’d be relieved that his search was finally over, but he’d also be grieving. No matter how long he had known in his heart she was dead, the final confirmation must be terribly painful.
Ann longed to be with him, support him through his grief. But his body language said he needed to go through this alone. She had to respect that. Not once had he looked around to find her.
Of course he was focused on what was happening in the back garden.
But he seemed to have forgotten she existed.
He’d accomplished everything he’d come to Rossiter to do. No matter how hard the Delaneys tried to hush things up, the story would be all over the county within twenty-four hours. They might never officially acknowledge Paul, but everyone would know he was David Delaney’s son.
He had his revenge.
There was nothing—and nobody—to keep him in Rossiter.
If Ann ever intended to hold her head up in this town again, she had to act as though none of it mattered to her. They’d had a fling. Period.
She could sob to Dante in private.
Paul would no doubt protest that he truly loved her. Maybe he even believed it. He’d swear that they’d stay in touch, that he’d come back for her. But once he was back in that other world, he’d forget Ann, forget Rossiter. Neither of them was of any use to him any longer.
She would allow herself anger. She had every right to be angry. He’d used her.
The only way to avoid throwing herself into his arms and begging him to stay was to remind herself of how he’d conned her. She had to stay angry. She had to avoid him.
She stood up. She might be able to manage that. She’d have to run home before she started crying.
“CHIEF, I THINK we got it.” Ray said from the hole in the rose garden.
“Stop right there. I’ll go call the ME.” He touched Paul’s shoulder on his way by. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I can’t take it in. To find her body after all this time. I never truly believed it would happen. What now?”
“Everybody connected with this crime is long dead. Nobody to charge. The ME will have to identify the remains officially. We’ll need a sample of your DNA.”
Paul laughed bitterly. “Ask Karen Lowrance. She has a brand-new report.”
“Yeah. Okay. After she’s identified, I guess we release the…remains to you for burial.”
“Thanks, Buddy.” Paul’s arm and shoulder ached. He felt drained. For the first time since his mother disappeared, he didn’t have his quest to drive him. He felt numb.
“Go home, Ann,” Buddy said. “You look like hell.”
PAUL STARTED TOWARD HER, but she glanced quickly at him, shook her head and walked away.
“Look, Buddy,” Paul said, “this place is going to be crazy. Is it all right if I pack up and go to a motel?”
“Sure. Leave word with the office where you’ll be. I’ll call you later.”
“Thanks. Could I…see her?”
“Don’t advise it. Nothing but bones.”
“Sure. Right.” He walked upstairs. He longed to call Ann, bang on her door, break through this barrier she’d erected, but he didn’t know how. He wasn’t thinking clearly, anyway. He shoved his few belongings into his suitcase and carried it downstairs to his car. Beyond the floodlights that surrounded Buddy’s crime scene he could see the first lightening that signaled dawn.
The dawn was red. “Sailor, take warning,” the old saw said. A red sky usually meant a storm before nightfall. At least it did in the north. Down here it frequently only signaled a dry day with dust swirling in front of the sun.
He closed his trunk and started toward the driver’s door. Buddy came up behind him and said softly, “Paul, you given any thought to how all this is going to affect your…well, your position in Rossiter?”
Paul leaned on the side of his car. “I’ve thought of little else.”
“I know you revealed a crime that should have been solved thirty years ago, and I know you and your mother are actually the injured parties here, but folks around here may not see it that way.”
“I’m a stranger. The Delaneys are not.”
“That’s what I mean. Some folks may not take kindly to your coming down here under false pretenses, picking everybody’s brain, causing a bunch of scandal to one of Rossiter’s oldest families…”
“Seducing one of its prettiest girls.”
Buddy looked away. “That, too.”
“How do you feel?”
“I’m an officer of the law. I’m glad the crime is solved no matter how and when it happened.”
“And about Ann?”
“Haven’t figured out how I feel about that yet.”
“When I started this benighted enterprise, I hadn’t met Ann, didn’t know any of the people who live in Rossiter, didn’t even know my half brother. I was operating strictly on theory. By the time I wanted to back out, it was too late. Too many things had happened.”
“Like Ann.”
“Like Ann. I hurt her badly. I don’t know how to make it right.”
“Don’t know as you can, at least right now. Tell her what you’ve told me. Maybe that’ll help.”
“Thanks.”
Later as he lay in the comfortable king-size bed at his motel, he ached to have Ann beside him. He felt as though he might never sleep again. He’d really screwed up. He reached for the telephone and called her. When she answered, he said, “Please, don’t hang up.�
�
“I won’t hang up.” She sounded cool and detached. Much worse than if she’d been angry or in tears.
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me. You used me.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It was precisely like that. Tell me, Mr. Bouvet-Delaney, now that you’ve gotten exactly what you wanted, when does your house go on the market?”
“What?”
“I assume you’ll be leaving as soon as you can.”
Then she hung up on him.
ABOUT TWO in the afternoon, in a uniform that looked as though it had been slept in, an unshaven Buddy knocked on Ann’s door.
When she opened it, he saw that she had on her safety goggles and a piece of plywood in her hand. “Come in, Dad,” she said. “I’m trying to cut a template for those sconces at the summerhouse.”
“You sound like nothin’s happened.” He scratched Dante’s ears.
“I’ll get around to thinking about it when I can stand to. At the moment I’m trying not to think about anything except this stupid piece of plywood that refuses to do what it’s supposed to.” She hurled it across the workroom. It cracked against the wall and split down the middle. She took a deep breath. “You have to admit I’ve still got my pitching arm.”
“Sit down, Ann, and stop acting like a drama queen.”
“Why not? Want some iced tea?”
“Ann.”
“Okay.”
“Paul came back to the house a few minutes ago. He gave me this to give you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an envelope. How do I know what’s in it? Open it and find out.”
She pulled a legal-size document out of the envelope with a note attached to it. She said without looking up at her father, “Daddy, this is the deed to the Delaney mansion. It’s been signed over to me.” She gaped at him. “What does he think he’s doing? I can’t accept a house!”
“Read the note.”
She ran her eye down the page. “Oh, Lord. Read that.” She tossed the note to her father, dove through her bedroom curtains and began rummaging on the floor for her shoes.
“‘Dearest Ann,’” Buddy read aloud. “‘You said if you owned the house you’d never leave it, so I want you to have it. I know you’ll cherish it the way it should be cherished. Please believe that I never saw the consequences of my actions until too late to avoid hurting you. You’re wrong if you think what I feel for you is casual. I love you. I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you. I’d hoped to give you the house when you became my wife, but I guess that’s not possible any longer. I’ll spend the rest of my life in much more pain than I’ve ever caused you. Goodbye, Paul.’” Buddy looked up. “What’s he mean, goodbye? I haven’t given him permission to go anywhere but a motel room.”
Ann shoved her feet into her sneakers and grabbed her purse. “He and Hack finished putting his plane back together. Don’t you see? He’s flying back to New Jersey. Come on.”
“Where we going?”
“To stop him, of course.” She grabbed her father’s arm and pulled him off the couch. “And use the siren.”
AS SOON AS Buddy slammed on his brakes at the edge of the airfield, Ann was out of the car and running toward the hangar where Paul’s plane had been.
“Oh, no,” she said when she saw the empty space. “We’re too late.”
“Hey, Ann,” Hack said over her shoulder.
“How long ago did he take off?”
“Paul? I don’t know. Ten minutes maybe.”
“Can you communicate with him?”
“Sure.” Hack looked at her with curiosity.
“You have to talk him back down here.”
A couple of minutes later Hack called the tail numbers of Paul’s plane and asked him to come in.
Paul responded at once.
“Need you to turn around and come on back,” Hack said. “Over.”
“Why?” Paul asked.
Buddy yanked the microphone out of Hack’s hand and yelled into it, “Because if you don’t, I’ll trump up a charge that’ll get you extradited from New Jersey before you step foot on the tarmac.”
“Buddy?”
“Yeah. Right beside me stands my little girl, and I can sure borrow Hack’s shotgun if I have to. You don’t walk out on a Rossiter girl you been playing house with and not expect to get a shotgun up your backside.”
“Oh, Daddy,” Ann whispered. She was crying so hard, she could barely breathe.
“Is that Ann?”
Ann took the microphone. “Buddy’s right. You’ve toyed with my affections, Paul Bouvet or Delaney or whatever your name is. Giving me a house is not going to make up for that. It’s marriage or nothing.”
She heard Paul laugh.
“Sounds like relief to me,” Hack murmured.
“Even if I get run out of town on a rail?” Paul asked.
“When I get through telling people what happened, they’ll forgive you for my sake. I live here, remember. I’m not some damn-Yankee newcomer.”
“Does that mean I can live there, too?”
“Not as a bachelor, you can’t.”
“Ann, I’m sorry—”
“We’ll talk about that later. Do whatever you have to do to that plane to turn it around.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The three, Hack, Ann and Buddy, waited at the edge of the grass strip as Paul’s silver Cessna glided to a landing. Ann was running toward him before the plane had stopped rolling.
Paul climbed out and jumped down. “You’re not still mad at me?” he said.
“I am,” she said, reaching up to kiss him. “But I’ll get over it.”
EPILOGUE
December 22
THE HOUSE SEEMED to realize that tonight was its official coming-out party. It was no longer the sad harlot, but a shining, vibrant, great lady.
The columns on the front porch and the balcony were wound with garlands of fresh pine. Fairy lights shimmered in the trees. The wreath on the front door was heavy with holly, and the magnolia fan above glittered in the porch light.
In the front hall, the pine Christmas tree rose from the curve of the staircase and reached to the ceiling.
Candles and greenery decorated every table. Paul had been cooking for two weeks with Ann as sous-chef. Then he’d swung into high gear when Giselle arrived with Jerry and her two sons to spend Christmas with Paul and her new sister-in-law.
Melding the two families had been less painful than either Ann or Paul had feared. Jerry and the boys had never been on a duck hunt, so Buddy arranged one for them.
Giselle had been wary of meeting the family of Paul’s new wife. They were all, of course, at least marginally kin to the Delaneys.
“But we’re not Delaneys,” Gram had said. “Not really.”
“You’re aunts or cousins or something,” Giselle said.
Gram patted her hand. “Sometime when you come down for a nice long visit, I’ll show you the family genealogy and explain the relationships.”
Ann and Giselle had liked each other immediately and spent hours talking about their families.
Tonight Paul ladled champagne punch at one end of the dining-room table and watched his wife circulate, kissing a cheek here, squeezing a hand there. She wore a dark-green velvet empire dress that revealed a great deal of creamy bosom, but didn’t quite conceal the small bulge beneath her waist. The baby wouldn’t really start to show for another month, although Ann swore she no longer had a discernible waistline.
Paul thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
The fireplaces crackled cheerfully. The house was alive with warmth and gaiety and joy.
“It would seem Rossiter has forgiven your wayward husband. I think you’ve broken the curse,” Gram said to Ann.
“What?”
“The curse on this house. I said once that everyone who had ever lived here had been unhappy and the house knew it. Now I
think it finally knows that love has moved in to stay.”
“Let’s hope so. We’ve a long way to go before we finish it.”
“You won’t ever finish. It’s an old house. Old houses are always needy.”
The doorbell rang. Ann started toward it, but Paul was there ahead of her.
She came up behind him as the door swung wide. On the step stood Karen and Marshall Lowrance with Trey and Sue-sue.
For a moment nobody spoke, then Paul said, “Welcome, and merry Christmas,” and held out his hand.
Later Karen sought Paul out in the kitchen. “Could I speak to you alone?”
“Certainly,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anybody in the conservatory.”
She followed him across the hall, through the music-room door and into the conservatory.
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
“I very nearly didn’t, but Trey wanted to, and there’s something I must tell you. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Please, let me finish. You and I may never be friends, but you are my son’s half brother and you protected him from his own foolishness.”
“Fortunately no one was hurt. I know how sorry he is.”
“It could have been so much worse if you hadn’t acted like a gentleman. That’s why I owe it to you to tell you this.” She turned away from him and clasped her hands in front of her.
He waited while she assembled her thoughts.
“When my…when David had his accident, when his horse fell with him, I was the first to get to him, even before Maribelle.” She seemed to struggle with the words. “He looked up at me with the sweetest smile and whispered, ‘Michelle.’ An instant later he was dead.” She turned to face him then. “Can you imagine how much I hated that Michelle? How I feared her?”
He nodded.
“Strange, we all tried to do the right thing, and it all turned out wrong.”
“How do you mean?”
“David thought he was right to marry your mother. She thought she was right to get pregnant. We all thought we were right to bring him home and keep him here. I thought I was right to make him marry me, although I knew he didn’t want to. Even Maribelle must have felt she was right when she struck your mother down, just as Addy thought she was right when she helped cover up the crime.”
House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 25
