Inconnu(e)

by Vicki Hinze

  “What’s unfair about a good deal all around?”

  A win-win situation. Oh, how she wished they could have a win-win situation. But they couldn’t. She couldn’t. And she couldn’t wait any longer to get through her lose-lose one.

  Guilt stabbed at her conscience. If she had a heart that wasn’t shattered, she’d wait until they returned to Seascape to tell him. But she couldn’t take that risk. The roofers had finished with the Carriage House that morning. If she waited, MacGregor could hole up in there and she’d die of old age without ever seeing him again.

  Yes, at least by telling him here, he’d have a little time to adjust before he could stomp out of her life in a rage. And he wouldn’t have much choice but to hear her out. That didn’t mean he’d understand her rationale, give two figs about her motivation, or that he’d listen, but he would hear her side of the story and why she felt it wise to keep the truth about Carolyn to herself. Geez, how did something that started out so right, intention-wise, turn out to be so wrong?

  T.J. propped his hands on her shoulders and gave her a good frown. “You know, Maggie, you don’t do much for my ego.”

  “What?”

  “I ask you if you want a kiss and it takes you forever to decide. What’s a guy supposed to think about that?”

  “Do you have to think anything about it?”

  “You’re giving me an inferiority complex. How can I not think about it?”

  She wanted to razz him back, but her heart just wasn’t in it. Why, oh why, had she let herself fall in love with him?

  “Do you consider kissing me a chore?”

  “Only when you snarl, darling. Otherwise, I rather like it.”

  The drone of an engine reached her ears. She turned and, as if by magic, the boat suddenly docked at the pier and Aaron stood, baseball cap shading his eyes, grinning at them. “Wow!” he said, checking his Mickey Mouse watch. “That’s the fastest time I ever made that run!”

  How had he gotten there without them realizing he was coming?

  Guess.

  Tony. She grimaced. I should’ve known it was you.

  My subtle way of letting you know that it’s still not time.

  Not so subtle. And I’ve got to tell him—no matter what you do to me. It—it just isn’t right not to tell him. Not anymore.

  Lift not the veil, Maggie. It’s not yet time.

  I have to! Didn’t you hear me? I can’t live with me, knowing I’m lying to him.

  You’ve always lied to him... and to yourself. That’s the real trouble here, Maggie. Not MacGregor. You.

  She clenched her jaw. I am going to tell him. That’s my final word.

  I’m warning you, don’t do it. You don’t understand the damage you’ll do.

  I understand the damage I’m doing now.

  Please, Maggie.

  Please? The hairs on her nape stood on end. Tony, what damage are you talking about?

  No answer.

  Tony?

  Still no answer.

  She asked again and again, but Tony refused to respond.

  MacGregor clasped her hand then lifted her onto the boat. Maggie took her seat and watched him load the gear. Should she be happy for the reprieve? Or upset?

  Feeling a fair share of both, her temples started pounding, and by the time they reached the Inn she had a wall-banger of a headache, complete with an upset stomach.

  MacGregor led her into the kitchen. “Why don’t you go on up and lay down. I’ll come up and massage your head.”

  “Yeah, I will.” She walked straight through to the gallery, swearing her head was splitting wide open.

  T.J. watched her climb the stairs and step from sight, his heart twisting inside his chest. Something was seriously troubling her. Why didn’t she turn to him with it as she had with so many other troubles? Had he let her down? Failed her in some way?

  “Tyler!” Miss Hattie exclaimed, the half-done canvas in her hands. “You painted!”

  A smile tugged at his lips. “What do you think?”

  “An amazing likeness I’d say.” She looked up at him, tears shimmering in her eyes. “It’s beautiful. My, my. You’ve captured Maggie’s spirit, dear.”

  “It’s a surprise for her.”

  “I see.” Miss Hattie’s eyes twinkled. “Well, she’ll be thrilled. It’s probably your best work ever, Tyler.”

  “I hope so.” He looked down at the in-progress painting. “I’m planning to give it to her on our wedding day.”

  Miss Hattie gasped, looking delighted. “Your wedding day! Oh, Tyler, that’s—”

  “A surprise, too,” he interrupted, looking sheepish. “Maggie doesn’t know she’s marrying me yet.”

  “Ah, I see.” Miss Hattie’s smile grew secretive and she let her gaze slide to the ceiling for a scant second, then put the canvas down and squeezed T.J.’s hands. “I’m so very, very pleased.”

  A bubble of pleasure burst in his stomach. “It feels good. Working again, loving Maggie. I never thought I’d feel—”

  “I know, dear.” She gave the back of his hand a gentle pat. “I’m so glad you were wrong.”

  He caught her up in a gentle hug and pecked a kiss, to the angel’s soft cheek. “I’m kind of happy about it myself.”

  “As well you should be. A gift, be it love or talent, is a terrible thing to squander.”

  “It is.” He sighed deeply. “Ah, Miss Hattie, it’s amazing. Maggie, my work. A man could want for little more.”

  “True. And high time you see it, too, if you don’t mind this old woman saying so.” She giggled. “Now, put me down, you rapscallion. I’m far too old to be cavorting in my kitchen with the likes of you.”

  He eased her to the floor, grinning. “You’ll never get old, Miss Hattie.”

  Still holding her smile, she looked around. “Where is Maggie?”

  “Gone to bed with a killer headache.”

  “Poor dear. Too much tension, I suppose.”

  “Too much something. Tension. Worrying. Choose your adjective.” He grimaced. “I’m on my way up to give her a massage. Maybe it’ll help her relax.”

  The phone rang.

  Miss Hattie paused, glanced at the ceiling for a split second, and her smile faded. “Would-you get that for me, dear?”

  T.J. frowned. Miss Hattie stood closer to the phone than he did. “Sure.” Why hadn’t Miss Hattie met his eyes?

  He walked over then lifted the receiver. “Seascape Inn.”

  “Hello there,” a woman said in a bubbly voice. “May I speak to Maggie Wright?”

  The only calls Maggie ever made were to her mother. Had to be her—and his big opportunity to gain a little insight. Best be sure first, though. “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “This is her mother, Elizabeth Wright.”

  Ah. Good. “Maggie has gone to bed with a headache, Mrs. Wright. Should I disturb her?”

  “No. No, please don’t do that. I just wanted to talk with her about something.”

  “Is it urgent, or anything I can help you with?”

  “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. It is about a man I’ve met at my ceramics class. He’s asked for a date. Can you imagine? At my age? And I’m not quite sure what to—oh. Oh, my. It’s just occurred to me that I don’t know who I’m speaking to. Isn’t that awful?”

  T.J. grinned, leaned against the wall and crossed his feet at his ankles. “No, ma’am, I don’t think so. I think it’s wonderful—about the date. You should accept and have fun—so long as the man minds his manners.”

  She giggled like a school girl. “And if he doesn’t?”

  T.J. smiled into the phone. He liked her. “Well, that depends. If you don’t like his mischief, let me know and I’ll come down and box his ears.”

  “Gallant. I always admired that in a man. But what if I do like his mischief?”

  “Well, then be careful and have a good time.”

  “You’re wicked, young man. I like that, too.”

  Her laugh
ter had T.J. smiling again. “Thank you.”

  “And now that you’ve resolved my dating dilemma, tell me who you are.”

  “MacGregor—a friend of Maggie’s.” He could have disclosed his intention to be her son-in-law, but that should come from Maggie—once she knew and accepted it. That could take a little while.

  “Did you say MacGregor?” Elizabeth Wright sounded pleased.

  “Yes, ma’am, I did.”

  “Oh, I’m so delighted to finally be talking with you, T.J.”

  Maggie evidently had more than mentioned him. That had him smiling. “Thank you.” Wait. Elizabeth Wright had called him T.J. He’d not told her anything other than MacGregor, and Maggie never called him T.J.

  “I’d hoped we’d meet long ago, but Carolyn explained how demanding your schedule was just then, and that you had no free time.”

  “Carolyn?” A shiver of shock splintered through him. She had to mean Maggie, of course. She had to.

  “Yes.” Her voice grew uncertain. “You are Tyler James the artist, aren’t you?”

  “I am.” She hadn’t made a mistake. T.J. stared at a small scuff mark on the floor. “How do you know Carolyn, Mrs. Wright?”

  “Why, she was my niece.”

  “Your niece?” T.J. glared at the ceiling. Maggie was Carolyn’s cousin? Her cousin, and she hadn’t told him? He’d nearly driven himself crazy wondering if her secret was something godawful like her being married, being a nun—now that was a joke—and, and all the while, she—

  Birds of a feather...

  Not his conscience. Tony. Had to be Tony. Shut up, Tony. Would you just shut up?

  Truth is truth. And you trusted her. Remember now why the name Sam Grayson sounded so familiar to you?

  Carolyn. Grayson had called Carolyn’s apartment one night and T.J. had answered the phone.

  You trusted her, and you trusted Maggie. Some guys never learn...

  T.J. had trusted them both. Carolyn’s betrayal had stung his ego more than hurt him, though her death was another matter entirely. But Maggie’s betrayal devastated. And, obviously, trusting her had been but one of many mistakes he’d made where she was concerned. He’d believed in her, damn it. He’d believed.

  But those days were over now.

  Now, he just had to decide if he should love her or kill her.

  Or just forget her.

  Chapter 16

  Something creaked.

  The noise awakened Maggie and she stirred under the blue coverlet, reluctant to drag herself from that netherworld between waking and sleep where her conscience could just nag at her. House noises. Settling boards reacting to weather and temperature changes. Nothing more. Sea Haven Village, not New Orleans. No crime here.

  She breathed in the smell of the sea and frowned, then forced herself beyond twilight. “Tony?” She sniffed. Flowers from the dresser’s vase. Potpourri from Miss Millie’s Seashore Secrets sachet, and man. The sea and man. It couldn’t be Tony. Tony didn’t carry a scent, only the wind and the whisper. And the warnings.

  But she wasn’t alone.

  Someone was sitting in the wing-back chair beside her bed. She sensed it and snapped her eyes open, clutching at the coverlet. “MacGregor?” Frog-throated, she frowned at him, not sure if she should be relieved or afraid.

  “How’s the headache?” His expression was more grim than a death mask.

  “It’s gone.” She shoved her sleep-tossed hair away from her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  Fully dressed in the jeans and royal blue shirt he’d been wearing earlier, he leaned toward her, his feet spread and flat on the floor, his hands clasped together at his knees. “I’m debating, Maggie.”

  “Debating. In the middle of the night? In my room?” She rolled onto her side and turned on the little tulip lamp atop the table beside the bed. When light spilled over his face and she saw the tethered fury burning in his eyes, she wished she’d left the light off. He’d looked grim in the moonlight, but soft yellow light didn’t soften his hard expression. He clearly felt enraged.

  Ignoring her questions, he enlightened her. “I’m debating on whether I should crawl into bed with you or walk out the door and never speak to you again.”

  “What?” Some choices. Her heart slid up from her chest to her throat. What prompted this?

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Does Tony come to you here?”

  She grunted and sat straight up. “Are you asking me if I’m sleeping with a ghost, MacGregor?” She gritted her teeth and jerked at the coverlet. “Do you realize how absurd that sounds?”

  “What around here isn’t absurd?” Void of emotion, his look leveled, and chilled her to the core.

  He had a point. “No.” She let him hear her resentment in her voice. “Tony doesn’t do that. I can’t believe you’d even for a second think I’d do that, or that he would. He loves Miss Hattie, MacGregor. Have you forgotten that?”

  “Okay.” He let out a sigh that worried her because of the frustration she sensed in it. What had gotten into him? “Okay, Maggie.”

  She pestered the sheets, rubbing a bunched bit of the top one between her fingers. “Why are you considering never speaking to me again?” Had he learned why she was here? Her connection to Carolyn? Had he somehow learned the truth?

  Maggie forced herself to stop this conjecture. How could he have? No, her guilty conscience was hard at work here. Nothing more.

  He stared at her for a long moment. The anger in his eyes shifted to resignation. “You know I didn’t want to care about you, Maggie. I suspect you know the reason, too.”

  “Because you didn’t want me hurt?”

  “I didn’t want you dead.”

  “Like your mother and Carolyn.”

  “Yes.” He leaned back in the chair, locked his huge hands on its padded arms. “I’ve told you about my relationship with Carolyn. We wanted different things. She wasn’t the woman I thought she was, Maggie, and I don’t think I was the man she thought I was, either. She wanted Tyler James, the glamorous façade. She had this fairytale image of marriage to a world-respected artist. But when she found out that Tyler James was only a part of me, that there was another, larger part that was just a man, well it caused some serious rifts between us.”

  Maggie bet it did. Carolyn wouldn’t be interested in the real MacGregor. The man had flaws whereas the image was perfect. She loved perfection. Demanded it from everyone and everything.

  Oh God. He’d told Maggie the truth from the start. Carolyn hadn’t loved him!

  “I knew we’d never be happy together, so I broke our engagement. Carolyn was devastated—not at losing me, but at losing the fairy-tale image she’d created of herself as my wife. She swore I’d be sorry. Boy, did that prove prophetic.” He stood up and walked around behind the wingback chair, then propped his elbows on the back of it. “She stole the painting that night, Maggie.”

  “MacGregor,” Maggie said, not knowing why. The pain in him was so strong, much stronger than the pain she’d felt when sitting at the turret window with her nose pressed to the glass, watching him try and fail to cross the boundary line.

  Torment flooded his eyes then turned the look in them sleety and hard. “What I haven’t told you before is that a few days after Carolyn’s funeral, a man named Jason Carruthers called me at home.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “Neither had I.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He offered me the same deal for the painting of Seascape Inn that he and Carolyn had agreed on.”

  “She intended to sell it?” Maggie slung back the covers and swung her legs to the floor. Impossible. It couldn’t be. Carolyn had felt that same lure Maggie had felt on looking at the painting. That’s why she’d been obsessed with it—hadn’t it?

  Tony said he’d brought Maggie here. Summoned her. Maybe he hadn’t summoned Carolyn. Or maybe she hadn’t recognized the summons for what it had been.

  “She more than intended to sel
l it, Maggie. She’d done it. Carruthers called me from Seascape. Carolyn and he were to meet here to deliver the painting.”

  “He’d already paid her?”

  MacGregor nodded. “According to Carruthers, yes. And when Carolyn didn’t show, he figured he’d been stiffed. So he checked to see what was happening with her and found out about the accident and her death. That’s when he called me.”

  “Where’s the money? Carolyn didn’t have it, Tyler. Her account didn’t have in it the kind of money one of your paintings brings.”

  “He stopped payment and got it back.”

  “Oh.” This was a lot to take in. She’d really sold the painting? Good grief.

  The light played shadows across MacGregor’s chin and shirtfront. “People at Lakeview Gallery warned me Carolyn was a user, but I didn’t want to believe them. We had a lot in common.”

  “You’d both lost your parents.”

  “Yes.” He looked down at the chair seat. “Yes.”

  “If it helps, Tyler, I’m sure that, in her way, Carolyn did love you.”

  He looked up at her and the hardness in his eyes melted. “She didn’t love me Maggie. Carolyn was distant, untouchable. It was part of her appeal. There was a tragic quality about her that made me want to protect her. I mistook that feeling for love. But I never, never, deluded myself into believing that she loved me. I think losing her parents so young made her too fearful to ever risk loving anyone else.”

  “And yet you intended to marry her.”

  “It’s hard to explain, especially in retrospect and with distance. But, living it, I thought she needed me. My parents had died and, right or wrong, I felt so guilty about that. I came here and regained my gift, Maggie, but I never recovered my peace. Carolyn, with that tragic air, well it gave me a mission. A chance to make up for my parents’ deaths. I had a purpose, you know?”

  “Saving Carolyn.”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “But you discovered her tragedy was a façade to cover her manipulations.”

  He nodded. “That’s when I broke the engagement.”

  “Tyler, you were willing to settle for so little.”

  “I didn’t think I deserved more. But she did. And she needed more than I could give her. I’m not perfect, Maggie. I’m a man. Just flesh and blood and flaws. She needed the fairy-tale image, and I couldn’t give it to her.”