Dangerous Ladies

by Christina Dodd

  The old son of a bitch was crying.

  Meadow halted. She stuck the silver key in her jeans pocket. She shuffled her feet and, at last, knelt in front of Bradley. She touched his arm. “Are you okay?”

  He took a few long breaths, then lifted his head. His papery cheeks were wet, and he looked at the tears in his hands as if he didn’t know what they could be. Then he gazed at Meadow, and his eyes filled again. “My granddaughter?” He touched her cheek. “You’re my granddaughter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She didn’t betray me, then. When she said she slept with him, I just . . . just wanted to kill them both.”

  Meadow caught his hand and squeezed. “I know.”

  “Because I loved her. I loved her so much.”

  “She knew that. She told me she knew that.”

  “Did she? Did she really? Because I don’t want to imagine she died thinking I didn’t love her.”

  Meadow nodded.

  “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to get a plane ticket.” Bradley slapped at his pockets. “All right. I’ve got my wallet. All right.” He started to walk away, then made an abrupt turn and came back to Meadow. He bent and kissed her forehead. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  Devlin sent his mother a speaking glance.

  “I’ll show you to a phone.” Grace tucked her hand into Bradley’s arm, and together they exited the room.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, Devlin said, “Meadow, we need to talk.”

  Whatever compassion Meadow felt for Bradley Benjamin, she clearly didn’t feel for Devlin. She walked toward the door. “We’ve already said it all.”

  “No, we haven’t. Please, Meadow. I don’t want you to go.”

  She didn’t slow.

  He went after her. “I want you to stay, to marry me.”

  She headed for the stairway.

  “You’re like her, and I’m like him, but we are not your grandparents.”

  She climbed the first steps.

  He held on to the newel post and looked up at her. “Meadow. I love you.”

  She turned on him, her cheeks flushed, her blue eyes narrowed and furious. “You would say anything to win, wouldn’t you?”

  Of all the reactions he’d imagined, he’d never envisioned this one. “You think I’m lying? I’ve never said that to another woman.”

  “Anything to win,” she repeated.

  “I’m not saying that to win. I’m saying that . . . because it’s true. I love you.” How could he articulate it so she believed him?

  With Meadow, one way always worked.

  He ran up the stairs. He pulled her into his arms. He tried to hug her, to kiss her.

  She held herself stiffly. She dodged his lips. In a voice rife with irritation, she said, “Look. Yesterday I was feted as your wife. Last night I was knocked unconscious. Today I found out I was pregnant, that my mother has come out of remission, told my grandfather the truth—and got my heart broken. Let’s just drop this for right now, shall we?”

  “No.” She was slipping away even while he held her. “I can’t let you leave me.”

  She looked up at him and spoke slowly and clearly. “Listen to me. I won’t marry you.”

  36

  Devlin let her go. “Before you leave, don’t you want to see how I recognized you?”

  Meadow so badly wanted to walk away. But she couldn’t. The clever bastard had said exactly the right thing to keep her here. “You always knew who I was?”

  “From the first moment you opened your eyes.”

  Her heart took a hard thump. Her eyes. He’d recognized her eyes. “So tell me.”

  “I have to show you.” He walked toward her, toward the door.

  She stepped back. She didn’t want him touching her. She might say she didn’t want him, but that was only her mind and her good sense talking. Her body thought otherwise.

  He didn’t look at her or acknowledge her caution, although she never doubted that he noticed. He noticed everything, so he could win—by any means. With Devlin, it was victory at any cost.

  But he walked past her and down the corridor, not looking back to see if she followed him.

  At first she didn’t. Stupid, but she suspected a trick.

  “I found the proof in the attic,” he called back.

  That made her start walking, although she kept a safe distance. “What attic?”

  “Did you think a great house like this would not have an attic?” He pressed the up button on the elevator. The doors opened at once.

  She stopped a few feet away.

  “Would you rather take the stairs?” he asked, and to his credit he used no mockery.

  She thought about it before she answered. She didn’t want to step into the small, confined space with him. She didn’t want the discomfort of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him, not speaking, pretending they were strangers while he sucked up all the oxygen. Or worse, having him talk to her about whatever, while she remembered the times, so numerous over the last weeks, when he’d taken a private moment in the elevator to kiss her silly.

  “This is fine.” She stepped in.

  Fine. A tepid word indicating indifference—a false indifference, but he got the message. He didn’t like it—his hands clenched—but he kept his voice low and soothing. “When this house was new, the servants lived in tiny rooms under the eaves, and one huge attic room was used for storage. It still is.”

  She’d seen the dormers sticking out of the roof, but . . . “There isn’t any access.”

  He stared at her. “You looked.”

  “Of course I looked. I even asked the maids. They said there wasn’t; they should know.”

  “Not this time.”

  The elevator doors opened on the third floor, and he led her down the corridor toward the blank outer wall paneled with dark wood. Leaning down, he reached into what looked like an outlet and popped a latch. He pressed on one side—and a five-foot section of wall swung on a pivot, revealing a dim, airless passage and, off to the left, narrow, steep stairs. He flicked on the light switch and gestured with an open hand. “You first.”

  The stairs had a worn carpet covering the treads, and ended in an open space—a corridor above, or perhaps the attic he’d talked about. The passage smelled old, closed up. She didn’t like this place. The atmosphere felt . . . unhappy.

  “Do you want me to go first?”

  She didn’t care that he sounded sardonic, as if he believed her vacillation had less to do with an impression of sorrow and had more to do with him. “Please.”

  “Then be careful. There’s no rail.” He started up, ducking his head to clear the low ceiling.

  She followed. The walls on either side of the stairway weren’t more than two feet apart, and she put her hands on them to balance herself.

  One tread creaked. “I’m having that one replaced,” Devlin said. “Step lightly.”

  She was glad to do as he instructed. The landing came none too soon, and she breathed a sigh of relief to be on level ground.

  But the sensation of unhappiness increased as she stared down a corridor lined with closed doors.

  “The servants’ quarters.” Devlin strode toward the great room at the end.

  “What’s in them?”

  “Rusty iron bed frames. Battered cupboards. Trunks full of junk. When I bought the house I had everything appraised. Some of the better pieces were cleaned, and we’re using them in the main part of the hotel. But most of the stuff up here is worthless.” Entering the main part of the attic, he moved from one window to another, flinging them open. “Once the hotel is running smoothly, I’ll get rid of it.”

  She followed him. The ceiling slanted from the peak at the middle down to the three-foot-high walls, with windows jutting out in dormers every twenty feet. The sunlight streamed in, and dust motes danced on the beams. The pine floor was unpolished, but in good condition. Scattered throughout the room was a jumble of shabby trunks, cracked vases, and wardrobes tilting dru
nkenly on three legs.

  He stood with his hands on his hips and shook his head. “It’s worse than I remember it.”

  “What a waste.” She picked up a pottery bowl, and it fell into jagged halves.

  The South Carolina spring made it warm up here. The open windows flushed the heat away, but by no means did they make it cool. She wanted to go hang out the window and pant like a dog in the car. Instead she loosened the top button on her shirt. “Where is this reason why you knew who I was?”

  “Watch your step.” He wove in and out of the wrecked furniture, making his way to the far wall.

  “I will,” she said, glaring at a spot right between his shoulder blades. Since he’d discovered she was pregnant, he acted as if she needed to be enclosed in bubble wrap. “I’m simply going to have a baby.”

  He glanced back.

  She banged her knee on the corner of a steamer trunk. She cursed—quietly. That was going to leave a bruise.

  Red and blue and yellow oil paints splattered the wall with color. A dusty wooden easel and a large framed canvas was turned backward and leaned against the wall.

  Meadow’s skin chilled, then heated.

  Fifty-five years of accumulated junk had been piled into the room, but she had located the source of the unhappiness.

  This was her grandmother’s studio. Here Isabelle had painted her last painting. Here she had decided to walk away from Bradley Benjamin. Here her heart had broken.

  Was the painting leaning against the wall the lost painting? Had she found it at last?

  Devlin knelt on the floor before it. “Come and see.”

  She almost couldn’t bear it. She so badly wanted it to be that painting, yet even if it was, even if Devlin allowed her to take it to pay for her mother’s treatment, it wouldn’t make any difference now.

  The only thing that would save her mother was a match to her bone-marrow donor. To Sharon’s father.

  And the chances of a match were never great. Never.

  Everything Meadow had done had been for nothing. She’d achieved none of her goals, and she’d had her heart broken.

  She pressed her hand to her belly. At least she had her child.

  Besides, the painting couldn’t be the painting she sought, or Devlin wouldn’t have recognized her eyes.

  She shrugged off the hovering sense of defeat.

  Perhaps the sorrow was not, after all, emanating from the attic, but from her.

  Yet she had made the right decision for her and her baby. She didn’t dare take the chance of having her child grow up with a father as sour and demanding as Bradley Benjamin. She only wished she were sure Sharon would be there to play the soothing chimes during Meadow’s labor, and lift the newborn to the sky and offer it to the sun, and put its handprints in plaster and hang them beside Meadow’s in her art studio.

  Devlin watched Meadow without smiling, and in a soothing voice he said, “The bone marrow will be a match. Bradley Benjamin has to do one good thing in his life, and this is it.”

  Devlin’s intuition about her thoughts gave her an uneasy feeling, as if she’d already allowed him too much familiarity with her mind to easily dislodge him.

  “What is that?” She knelt beside him.

  He turned the canvas—and she gazed into a face dominated by large blue eyes framed with sorrow. She saw the tanned skin, the jutting chin, the dark hair, so black there were blue highlights. The technique wasn’t polished, and Meadow had never seen her look so young, but she recognized her anyway.

  “Grandmother.” She broke into a smile. “That’s my grandmother.”

  37

  Meadow examined the portrait from every angle. “It’s a self-portrait. I’d recognize her style anywhere.”

  “I know. Look. She signed it, ‘Isabelle Benjamin—Herself.’ ” Devlin pointed at the scrawl in the corner.

  “She’s so solemn!” Meadow touched the paint that formed her grandmother’s cheek lightly with her fingertip. It felt dry and almost crumbly. “She must have painted it right before she left Bradley.”

  “I think so.”

  “But I don’t look like her.” She rubbed her fingertips together and frowned. A hint of rose pigment stained her skin.

  “Your eyes are exactly like hers.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked, pleased to think she resembled the woman she had loved so much. Pleased that he thought her eyes were as expressive and beautiful as her grandmother’s.

  “You can’t argue with me. This is how I knew who you are.”

  She didn’t want to argue with him. She was already alone with him in a secluded spot—and considering the short time they’d been acquainted, she comprehended the workings of his mind far too well. He would try to convince her she wanted to stay with him. And she knew the danger there, for her body was a traitor to her mind.

  So she ignored the remark and asked the next logical question. “Where did you find the painting?”

  “Right here.” He gestured at the wall. “After she left, Benjamin must have hidden it so he didn’t have to look at the face of the woman he loved.”

  “Yes. Serves him right,” she said. “Poor, stupid old man.”

  “What will I look at? I have nothing of you.” He managed to look rugged and gloomy at the same time—an impressive feat.

  “You have photos from our engagement party. You have the clothes you bought me hanging in your closet. And what the heck—as a memento, I’ll make you a glass vase.” When she realized his shoulder pressed against hers, she ruined her derisive effect by scuttling to the side, away from him.

  “Will a glass vase contain your smile? The way you burst into the morning full of enthusiasm for the day? The way you dance in the moonlight, naked and glorious? Will it contain the love you’ve lavished on me without a single thought to how unworthy I am?”

  “Right now, I’m thinking about how unworthy you are.” She kept her gaze on the large painting, bordered by a wide frame of black enamel and gold leaf. “Look, I’m not going to let you seduce me again.”

  “I’ve never seduced you. Not once. You took me every time, took me on joyous trips into forgetfulness, into celebration. So no. I’m not trying to seduce you.” His voice grew deep and smooth, as irresistible as heated glass and just as dangerous. “I want you to seduce me.”

  It was true. Always she’d allowed her joy in him to carry her into intimacies. Stupid, ill-advised intimacies. Exasperated, forlorn, she faced him.

  A mistake.

  His rugged, Liam Neeson face hadn’t changed; it was as striking and as manly as ever. But his eyes, his wide, dark eyes, humbly pleaded with her.

  But she had learned her lesson. She didn’t believe them. She would not believe him. And it infuriated her that she wanted to. “What do you want? Is this about winning? Before I walk out of your life, do you have to win one last time?”

  “Yes. You’re walking out of here, taking all the sunshine with you, taking my soul, taking my heart. You’re going to go across the country, and I’ll see you once a month when we fly to some airport to hand our baby to each other, and the best I can hope for is that she looks like you. I want you to stay here with me. I want to make you happy, and have you make me happy. I consider that winning.” He sat down on the floor, crossed his legs, and looked at her. “So yeah. This is all about winning.”

  Clever, clever man. He’d managed to take a humble, supplicant posture—as if she believed he could ever be humble or a supplicant. “I’d be more impressed if you’d mentioned your heart and soul before you found out I was pregnant.”

  “I didn’t even realize I had a heart until you said you were leaving me. Haven’t you wondered why, once I knew who you really were, I didn’t go to your family and demand an explanation? Why, once I learned of your mother’s cancer, I didn’t corner you? Threaten you to discover what you thought you could find? I didn’t want to expose you. If I did that, I would have had no reason to keep you by my side.” He took her hand. “Meadow, I love
you.”

  She pulled it away. “You wanted to use me to get to my grandfather.”

  “Honey, I did that the first time he saw you. That angina he suffered was perfect. Not fatal, just painful.”

  “Typical.” And very like Devlin. Don’t kill your enemies; hurt them so you can watch them suffer.

  The trouble was . . . she wanted to believe him so badly. She wanted to live with him, have him there while she delivered the baby, watch him carry their kid around in a little hard hat while he dealt with his construction projects. She wanted to dance in the moonlight with him, wake up at his side, make love until they were both exhausted.

  But he’d proved she didn’t know him at all.

  She didn’t know his mother, either. She had thought Grace would jump at the chance to get rid of her unconventional daughter-in-law. Instead she’d been upset, and her pleading stuck in Meadow’s mind. Please give him a chance. He’s not bad—yet. You make him happy. You can save him.

  She didn’t want a man she had to save. She wanted a man to stand at her side, solid and dependable, a man to be the father to her children, a man who supported her art . . . a man who loved her.

  Devlin could be that man.

  Or he could be a fraud, lying in every way about everything.

  There was no in-between.

  And in her heart of hearts, she didn’t think he was a fraud.

  “The baby . . .” she began.

  “I like children. I’ve never had much to do with them, but no matter how this turns out between the two of us, I promise I’ll be a good father to our child.” He took her hand again.

  Typical. Never give up.

  He continued, “But the baby has nothing to do with this. I would still love you so much I’d make love to you without a thought to a condom, because whenever I’m with you, all the shields I’ve built over all the years disappear and I’m as open and as vulnerable as any fool in love.” He tapped his chest. “You can refuse me now and know I’m bleeding.”

  She couldn’t help it. She grinned at the way he phrased it. “So if I refuse you now, you’ll bleed and never try to make me change my mind.” She watched him struggle to find the best, most tactful way to explain he didn’t give up.