by Carol Arens
He sat down beside Jess, kicked off his boots and crossed his feet on the hearth to let his socks warm. They talked about this and that while snow blew past the window and the wind screeched and moaned under the eaves.
Firelight cast the room in a warm amber glow. Logs snapped, flames hissed and danced, burning fresh sap. One log burned through, then crumbled to a blanket of coals.
Trace added another one. At some point he fell asleep. He couldn’t have guessed how long he dozed, but he woke to the sound of Lilleth singing softly in the kitchen and the scent of the bird roasting in the oven.
With the bottom of his socks toasty and his heart simmering in a pot of contentment, he kept his eyes closed to better listen to the voice that he had longed for over too many lonely years.
If he could choose a moment of his life to last forever, it might be this one. Outside, the storm raged like a banshee, but it also isolated this snug little house from the rest of the world. He had a sense of such peace that he doubted anything could intrude upon it.
“Mama...ba,” said a small voice at his knee. “Tee.”
He opened his eyes to see Mary staring up at him.
“Hello there, ladybug.” With pretty red ringlets framing her face, she did look the part. He lifted her into his lap. “Did you have as good a nap as I did?”
She laughed and poked her finger in his mouth. He kissed it.
And that was how the afternoon went. Playing with the children, while he listened to Lilleth sing in the kitchen. Smelling the food while it cooked, and grinning, although maybe he shouldn’t be, at the fact that this storm would probably keep him from returning home tonight.
Chapter Nine
Lilleth joined hands with Jess and Mary. Across the table from her, Clark did the same.
She closed her eyes and listened while he gave thanks for the food and the company, then asked for blessings upon distant family and friends.
“Amen,” she murmured, praying for a loved one not so distant at all.
While they ate, she gave silent thanks for three more things.
One was that no one had gagged on her biscuits. Clark had eaten two of them, and while that may have been due to the good manners of a guest, Jess had gobbled down three. After enduring all her practicing, her nephew might have politely set one aside after the first bite. Perhaps her culinary future held more surprises than she might have dreamed.
Another was that Clark Clarkly had been thrown into her life’s path, perhaps by fate or by the spirit of her late brother-in-law.
Clark was not a dashing dandy of a man. Not the kind to make a woman’s heart skip at the sight of him, and truly, she praised the heavens for it. Men like that, she had learned time and again, were not to be depended upon.
Clark was a good, upstanding librarian, a man that a woman could trust her heart to...and possibly even her secrets. Maybe Lilleth ought to consider telling him who she really was. Given what he was doing at Hanispree, he was in a position that he might be able to help her.
Then again, it had been said that silence was golden.
The last thing...and maybe she ought not to give thanks for something scandalous...was that the blizzard would prevent him from going home tonight.
She was very thankful for that, because even though Clark might not make most women swoon, he most certainly did it to her.
It made no sense. He made no sense. Men did not make her heart skip. More often than not they were cads who needed outwitting. Clark was as sincere and reliable as the printed word on a page.
Just here was where he made no sense. He was everything safe and yet...not. He was temptation and seduction sitting right across the dinner table from her.
Reliability didn’t make knees weak and breasts long for touching. Trustworthiness did not turn a high-principled woman into one who sat across the Thanksgiving table from a man and lusted after him.
Who was Clark Clarkly, really? Now and again a feeling of familiarity passed between them in a glance or a word. For that instant it seemed that they had known each other in another lifetime, which was silly, since she did not believe in other lifetimes.
Still, when he laughed, as he was doing now at something that Mary had gurgled, it sounded like an echo.
“What is it, Lilly?” Clark asked, arching his brows and shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger. “You look a thousand miles away.”
“Pie,” she answered, mentally drawing her attention back across those thousand miles. “It’s pumpkin, but I purchased it from the bakery. Would you like it now or later?”
“I’d like some now and later, if it’s no trouble.”
“Me, too, Ma! Some now and some later, just like Clark!”
“Some now, and bedtime later,” she declared, because that was what Bethany would say.
Jess took his time eating his pie, long enough for Mary to fall asleep in the crook of Clark’s arm.
It was well past Jess’s bedtime when he finally swallowed the last bite and patted his belly.
“Off to bed with you now, young man.”
“But, Ma, I never got to discuss with Clark what to name my cat.” Jess walked to the hearth and scooped up his feline.
“It might be that something will come to you while you sleep,” Clark suggested. He stood up and carried Mary to Lilleth.
“Could be.” Jess lugged his cat toward the blanket that partitioned off his room from the rest of the house. He lifted the flap. “We can discuss it at breakfast, then, since it’s snowing too hard for you to go home.”
Bless Jess for so innocently bringing up the subject that Lilleth didn’t know how to, without a dozen inappropriate visions filling her mind.
Her nephew disappeared behind the curtain. She watched it fall, and felt Clark’s hands brush hers, lingering a moment longer than would be required to pass Mary to her.
It wouldn’t be wise to look up at him this very instant and risk him seeing her expression. If she didn’t, though, she would not know what he was thinking.
She took a breath and glanced into his eyes.
“Please do stay,” she managed to say quite politely, given that his thoughts very clearly had taken the same imprudent path that hers had. “It’s far too dangerous to walk home.”
“I appreciate the offer,” he answered just as politely. “And I accept.”
She hugged Mary close, then followed Jess behind the curtain.
Well-mannered words had disguised what was truly going on between them. She wanted him to touch her in all the ways a man touched a woman...her heart and her body. He wanted to touch her, but she knew he wouldn’t.
A make-believe marriage stood between them. A man who didn’t even exist kept her from knowing Clark more intimately than she had ever known anyone.
She laid Mary down in the little bed that Clark had given her, and kissed her curly head.
Kneeling beside his bed, Jess whispered a prayer for his mother, then hopped under the quilt and tugged it to his chin. Lilleth kissed his forehead, then stroked the cat.
She parted the blanket doorway and stepped into the main room.
Clark sat in front of the fireplace with his back to her and his stocking-clad toes pointed at the flames.
One thing was certain. She could not share her body without first sharing her secret.
* * *
Trace knew that he was a villain. Everything about him was a living, breathing lie. To let his Lils, a vulnerable, abandoned woman with two precious children, get caught in the deception that was Clark was unforgivable.
He glanced sideways at her where she sat in a chair beside him, watching red-hot logs crumble into coals.
She seemed distracted.
Telling her who he was would be the right and honorable thi
ng to do. It would also betray his family. No one ever broke character in the middle of an assignment. Not for health, wealth or convenience...and most especially not because of wanting a woman.
So here he sat with a miracle beside him, nearly desperate for more than a kiss from her, and all the while he was being held hostage by Clark Clarkly. Not to mention her miserable husband who might even be dead.
The bedroom curtain rustled. Paws whispered across the floor. The cat, as orange as a pumpkin, brushed his chair then hopped onto the windowsill. He batted one paw at the snow blowing against it.
Beside Trace, Lilleth began to tap her foot.
He turned in his chair, set his feet on the floor and looked her in the eye.
“Is something wrong, Lilly?”
“Why would you ask?” She stood up, walked to the kitchen and a moment later returned, bringing him a slice of pie.
“You’re troubled. Tell me why.”
“Well, there’s all those hungry people shivering away their Thanksgiving at the mental hospital, while we sit here warm and full, for one thing.” She paced to the window and stared out, stroking the cat’s back in a distracted manner.
Those cold and hungry people bothered him, as well, but there was nothing to be done about it in a blizzard.
“I think it’s more than that. Are you worried about your husband?”
“Hardly.” She glanced at him and rolled her eyes.
A wave of relief swirled through his belly, further proof that Trace was a villain.
“Talk to me, Lilly. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Very well,” she said, her blue eyes crinkled in a frown. “I like you, Clark.”
“I like you, too.”
She shook her head. A lush mane of red curls shivered down her back.
“That’s the problem.” She opened her hands, palms up. “You can’t like me. You don’t even know who I am.”
“I know who you are.”
“You only think you do. The fact is...I’m not Lilly Gordon. I even hate the name Lilly.”
“What should I call you then?” Lils...and nothing else would do.
“Lilleth. Lilleth Preston.”
“Was that your maiden name?” he asked, pretending to be startled at her revelation.
“Not was, Clark. Is.” She wrung her hands in front of her. “I’ve never been married. Until lately I’ve spent my nights singing with a traveling show.”
“But the children?” Good Lord! What kind of horrors had she endured, raising Jess and Mary out of wedlock?
Lils tipped her chin up a notch. She took a breath and stared down at him where he sat like a sorrowful lump on his chair.
“Close your mouth, Clark. Unmarried women have children more often than you might imagine. But the truth is that Mary and Jess are not mine. They’re my sister’s children.”
He stood up slowly because the blood had suddenly drained from his head.
No detestable husband? She wasn’t a mother? The perfect little girl had grown up to be a liar?
“Why tell me now?” He was surprised that his brain and his tongue could work despite the shock.
“I’m in some trouble. I think you are the only one in a position to help me.”
This was where he ought to wrap himself up in righteous indignation and storm out of her house. She had lied to him, outright and bold. What else was there her about her that he didn’t know? She could be a criminal, or had she grown up to be like her mother, a woman of easy virtue?
“I’m so sorry, Clark.” She hurried away from the window and knelt in front his chair, looking up into his eyes. “I don’t suppose a man like you would know anything about being dishonest. But the children’s safety was at stake and in the beginning you were a stranger. Please forgive me.”
He wanted to crawl in a deep hole and cover himself with dirt. Forgive her? The only difference between them was that he was a worse liar than she was. She at least had the decency to finally admit the truth.
He did not.
If he blurted out now that she was his long-lost love, she would hate him. He wouldn’t blame her.
And if she hated him she would not allow him to help her out of whatever trouble she and the children were in.
Just as on the day he had knocked her over on the train platform, he was stuck being Clark Clarkly.
A tear glistened at the corner of her eye. Lils never gave in to weeping, so he let that tear tremble on her eyelash without wiping it away with his thumb.
“What is it? Ask me anything.”
It might take time away from his investigation, but family be hanged, he was going to help.
“I’m breaking someone out of the mental asylum. I need your help.”
He hadn’t expected that. To break an inmate out of the hospital wouldn’t postpone his investigation, it would ruin it. The place would be locked up so tight after that he’d never learn another dirty detail.
He’d be the first son to be dismissed from the family business. The rule not to become personally involved in a case was taken so seriously that it might have been the eleventh commandment. Already he’d crossed the line by taking care of the inmates.
He’d be exposed. He was stuck on a high wire with no way down.
“Who?” he asked, and sounded like an owl more than an intelligent human.
“My sister, Bethany.”
It was odd. The Bethany he remembered was as sound of mind as anyone.
The tear at the corner of Lilleth’s eye slipped down her cheek and broke his heart. He would do anything for her.
It meant continuing to live as Clarkly. But he knew this as well as he knew Clark would stumble when he stood up...Lilleth thought he was an honest man, and if she found out he wasn’t she would not accept his help.
Here it went, blast it. He sat down on the floor beside her.
“Tell me everything.”
“Bethany’s husband passed away six months ago and left her a fortune. His twin brother, Alden, figured the inheritance ought to have been his, so he locked my sister up.” Lilleth shook her head and pushed a wispy curl away from her cheek. “He believes that by controlling her children he can make her give him whatever he asks. Since he owns the place, there’s no one to tell him no.”
One more horror to be noted when Trace wrote his exposé. How many more victims were there like Bethany?
“Before you say yes...or no, Clark, you should know that I’m a criminal. Alden is the children’s guardian. I kidnapped them.”
He didn’t know what to do. He had to help Lilleth. Innocent children were in danger.
Still, he couldn’t sacrifice all the inmates in order to save one. The mental hospital was no more than a prison. It was his job to write about it, expose it and have it shut down.
For the first time in his life, Trace honestly did not know what to do. He felt half-sick at his options.
A log crumbled to coals in the hearth, sizzling and popping. The cat stood up on the windowsill and growled. It arched its back, a ridge of orange fur peaking along its spine.
Lilleth rose and hurried to the window. She snatched the cat to her chest and peered out at the blowing white.
Trace reached the window in two long strides, placing her firmly behind him.
Anything might spook a cat, most likely the crumbling log in the fireplace. But it could be a vile bug eater that spooked this one.
There was no longer any doubt that the man had been spying on Jess.
Just in case the fool was crazy enough to be skulking about in the storm, Trace yanked the heavy curtain over the window. He reached out and tugged at the lock on the front door to make certain it held fast.
Lilleth carried the cat back into the children’s bedroom. A moment later sh
e came out and went to the kitchen area, silently wiping the stove down with a damp rag.
“I saw a man in town,” Trace said, watching her hair sway with her scrubbing.
She dedicated her attention to a stubborn spot and attacked it. The fabric of her skirt shimmied over her hips.
“He was watching Jess,” he said.
She dropped the rag and turned to face him, her hands braced on the countertop behind her. “Jess noticed him.” Her expression was tense. “I believe he was leering at me through the window of the general store yesterday, too.”
“His name is Perryman. Alden’s spy, he has to be. He was following you in the woods the other night.” Trace would take care of the spy. That was one thing he knew he would do.
She moved away from the counter, crossed the room and stood before him.
“I’m trusting you to keep my secret, even if you can’t help me. Please say that you will.”
“You can trust me with your life, Lilleth.”
“I thought as much,” she murmured, and touched his wrist when he folded his arms across his chest. “I knew you would be a friend that very first day, when you took us in.”
“Anyone would have.” He needed to step back, not take her shoulders in his hands.
“No one else did. There’s something about you.” Her eyes held his. “I can’t explain it, and surely I sound like a ninny, but you make me feel like...like I’ve been waiting for you forever.”
Had she waited? He had no right to expect her to have. He had no right to ask.
“Have you been?”
“I don’t know.” Her brow crinkled. “What is it that people wait for, Clark? Not what men gave my mother, not what one gave me behind the—”
He crushed her mouth with a kiss, and half a second later all he cared about was the press of her plush breasts against his chest.
He whispered “Lilleth” in her ear, but Lils in his heart. He kissed her again, this time slowly savoring her and afraid that if he lifted his mouth she might reveal what that cad had given her.
“Well,” she murmured at last, when he found the courage to allow her a breath. “He didn’t give me that.”
