He hung up.
How long she stood there, staring down at the offending machine, she couldn’t have guessed. The tape whirred on for a few seconds, and then disconnected, and a red light flashed at her. That woke her up, and she reached for the erase button, because Diana must never hear that message. Her fingers hovered over the unfamiliar buttons, and she depressed one to erase just as the man spoke.
“A Jaguar. Are you the guilty party?”
The man spoke quietly, gently, as if he did not want to frighten her, but the effect on her already stretched nerves was inevitable. She jerked around, one hand sweeping her keys to the floor, the other hand going instinctively to her throat.
He didn’t look threatening, certainly, standing there in the hall doorway. He looked like any nice, quiet man with graying brown hair, a conservative suit, and a hand that still bore the imprint of a recently removed wedding ring, and he didn’t have an ax on him. He didn’t leer, he didn’t look dangerous – but, nonetheless, she was a woman confronted by a strange man in a deserted and isolated house where her father had been murdered, and she reacted accordingly.
“Stay where you are.” Thank heavens for Cat Courtney’s cool under pressure; Laura St. Bride certainly needed her now. “Don’t you move one step closer.”
Too bad her voice squeaked on that last word.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he assured her, and held up his hands to show that he was harmless. “It’s all right, I promise you.”
Her heart was pumping blood wildly below her throat. “How did you get in here?” And, when he forgot and shifted from the door, she said sharply, “Stand right there! I don’t know who you are, and until I do, you stay put.”
God, what could she use as a weapon? Was the metronome close enough?
“Okay.” He leaned back against the door jamb, and then she felt foolish. Whoever he was, he did look harmless, and she could see perfectly well that he had a key in his hand. He probably had more right to be here than she did.
She saw, too, that he had recognized her.
“Relax, Miss Courtney,” he said, after an agonizing moment of silence during which she realized that he blocked the only exit. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She could think of nothing to say but a futile “Don’t call me that, please. That’s not my name.”
He looked surprised. “Whatever you like. I’m just pleased to meet you.” He held out his hand. “Kevin Stone. I’ve been a fan for a long time.”
Now she felt more than foolish. “You’ve got a key. How did you get it?”
Did she imagine it, or did he hesitate there, just for a second, before his hand dropped? “The owner gave it to me. I’m her lawyer.”
“Oh.” Worse than foolish, downright humiliated. Diana’s attorney, so he probably knew Richard, and wouldn’t he have an interesting story to tell? She hadn’t a hope now that Richard wouldn’t find out who had spied on him, unless Kevin Stone forgot what he had overheard.
Vain hope, indeed. “I take it,” he said, fighting off an amused smile with little success, “that you’ve been out to Ashmore Park? What did you do to put our good friend Richard in such an uproar?”
If she had learned one thing from Cam during their marriage, it was the fine art of brazening it out when you got caught. She took her time answering, first relaxing the fine tension between them by leaning back against Dominic’s desk and scuffing her shoe against her keys. She pitched her voice to a low, confiding tone and looked him straight in the eye.
“I spied on him.”
“Really?” He didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “And why, may I ask? Richard wouldn’t let you in? Or is something wrong with the doorbell?”
“No, with my courage.” She straightened up. “Let’s not play games, Mr. Stone—”
“Kevin, please.”
“If you’re Diana’s lawyer, you know who I am.”
He straightened up too, and she did not resist or order him back when he entered the room. He kept his distance still, walking around the other side of the room, leaning casually against the shelves on the far wall. His manner, respectful, almost diffident, encouraged her to relax. She knew from experience that he was assessing her against some mental checklist – could ordinary Laura Abbott in her Old Navy jeans really be Cat Courtney, she of mist and mystery? – but he kept his conclusions off his face.
“I believe,” he said, “that you’re the runaway. Or one of them, I keep forgetting there were two of you—”
“Laura.”
“The mezzo soprano.” He smiled. “Francie was the lyric soprano.” Unusual knowledge for a lawyer to have about his client’s family. “So is this a homecoming? Or are you just passing through?”
“I – I don’t know.” Her uneasiness returned. She stooped to pick up her keys, buying time, keeping her eyes on him, but her hand shook, and they crashed to the floor again. Oh, dear heavens, what more could she do to disgrace herself in front of this man who knew Diana and Richard and probably Lucy too?
“Laura.” She opened her eyes, and he was down there beside her, opening her hand and placing the keys in her palm. “It’s all right, you know,” his voice, deep, low. “You’ve got a right to be nervous.”
He drew her to her feet, steadied her, before he reached around her to open a desk drawer. She stiffened at his unexpected closeness, and wondered, too, at his familiarity in this house. Who was he, that he so matter-of-factly pulled out Dominic’s strong box and removed a key? Diana’s lawyer? Or a thief with a ready story and the confidence that she had no more business here than he did?
Just my luck. I come back and get attacked by an intruder.
But he had a key to the house.
“Who are you?” she asked, before she lost her nerve. “And what are you doing here?”
He looked amused. “I’m getting the safe deposit box key for Diana.” He nodded towards the telephone. “Do you want to call her? She’ll verify my right to be here.”
She bit her lip. She could imagine the call: Diana in shock, she herself unable to contain her emotion…. No, she wanted to see the surprise of her return in Diana’s eyes.
If she could still keep it a surprise, after blowing it at Ashmore Park and running into Kevin Stone.
“Will you—” Damn it, her voice squeaked again. “Will you tell her about seeing me here?”
He glanced over at her wryly. “I was just wondering that myself,” he said. “I should. She’s my client, and I just caught someone breaking and entering on her property, except—” He gestured towards her keys. “You’re not the usual intruder. Tell me, Laura. What do you think I should do?”
She sagged against the desk in relief. “Forget you saw me.”
He shook his head. “Sorry,” and her heart sank.
“Please,” she said, “please,” and she forced herself to touch his arm. “Don’t – don’t tell her. I’ve spent a lot of time – I’ve given up a lot to come here. Let me contact my sisters in my own time, my own way, please. It’s better that I do it, truly it is.”
She sensed his intensity as he listened to her, and the frisson of unease returned.
“You won’t leave without calling them?” he said. “Or will you say anything to get rid of me?”
She lifted her head sharply. “No! I want to see them. Except—” She looked at him. A lawyer. “Do you know my sister Lucy? Or maybe she goes by Lucia now.”
In some strange fashion, the mention of Lucy tipped the balance of power in her favor. She sensed that the question left him nonplussed, uncertain how to answer.
She pressed him before she lost her advantage. “I can’t find a listing for her. She was going to be a lawyer—”
He said slowly, “She is. In fact, I’m supposed to call her later. Are you going to contact her at home?”
“Wherever I can reach her, Mr. Stone.”
“I’ll give you her number.” He pulled out a business card and a pen and wrote something on the back, an
d during the few seconds it took him to write the number, he seemed to come to some conclusion. He held the card out, but when she reached for it, he held it just out of her grasp.
“Oh, no, you don’t, Cat Courtney. I’ve promised you silence and collusion against my client’s better interest. I want a couple of things in return.”
“What?” she asked warily.
He held the pen out to her.
She laughed then, in relief. For the first time in her life, she laughed in Dominic Abbott’s music room, and the phantom of that sad little girl at the piano slipped away. “I can do better than that,” she said, and she took her CD from Dominic’s collection and signed an extravagant autograph. Kevin promised never to read any of the liner notes.
“What’s the second?” she asked, at her car door.
“Dinner some evening,” he said, and held up his hand at the instant response in her eyes. “Please, consider it before you say no.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m recently widowed.”
He nodded at her left hand. “That doesn’t look like a wedding ring.”
She glanced down, startled at his perception. “It isn’t. I’m not ready to date.”
In the face of that, he visibly retreated. A tactician, then – but why? Surely he’d been turned down before, and surely he didn’t expect to meet Cat Courtney in a deserted house and have her fall into his arms. She’d been approached over the years by charming men desiring her time and attention, but those men had wanted Cat Courtney. Not so with Kevin Stone. This man’s interest lay, not in Cat Courtney, but in the depths of Laura Abbott.
He said, “Think about it. I won’t alert the media. Believe me, if Cat Courtney will have dinner with me, I’m not about to share her with anyone.” He smiled, the gray of his eyes not quite masking that curious intensity. “You’ve got my card – or will you let me call you?”
All those years of Cam protecting her, and she had never appreciated any of it until this moment. She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Something moved behind Kevin Stone’s eyes then, some hard emotion she couldn’t read. Laura sank against the warm metal of her car door, anxious to escape the uncomfortable weight of this man’s eyes upon her, wishing she’d listened to Mark’s lectures and laid Laura Abbott to rest and never come back to Virginia in her lifetime.
“You know, Laura,” his voice had a new edge, “I want to get to know you better. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the future—”
She found courage then, irritated with his shadowed words and ungrounded certainty. “I doubt it, Mr. Stone. If you don’t mind—”
“We’ll see each other.” And then he paused, hooking her with that flat assurance; she wanted to turn away from him before he said another word, but he’d baited her well.
She waited, fatally curious.
He saw that, damn him, and smiled.
“You see,” Kevin Stone said, “I’m going to marry your sister.”
Of all the things he could have said, she did not expect that. She found herself gaping at him, trying to imagine the blunt, straightforward Lucy she remembered with this intense man and his damn-your-eyes stare. Either Lucy had changed all out of proportion, or she had lost her mind.
“Lucy? You’re going to marry Lucy?”
She had startled him again. “Lucy? Good God, no!” He reached past her, as she stood there, stunned, and opened her car door for her. “A Jaguar for a Cat! No, Laura Abbott,” and she scarcely noticed that she obeyed the sweep of his hand and climbed into her car, “I’m going to marry Diana.”
And he walked away.
As an exit line, it was superb. Seconds before, she had wanted nothing so much as to flee the subtle menace of his presence; now she stared after him, fighting down the urge to run after him, grab his arm, demand an explanation for words that, on their face, made no sense at all.
Marry Diana? Didn’t Diana already have a husband?
But – a husband who did not know what sort of car his wife drove.
She inserted her key into the ignition and noticed that her fingers trembled.
He’s crazy, Laura told herself, finding a small comfort in the ritual of fastening her seat belt, checking the mirror, shifting into reverse. A little off. Like that reporter who kept trying to get into the suite in Rome. He didn’t hurt you. He didn’t threaten you. He just wanted to have dinner with you.
It’s Diana he wants.
And Diana, after all, was scarcely defenseless. She had family, she had a husband, and she could always fire a lawyer who overstepped his bounds.
Or, if he really pushed her, she could always cut his throat.
Kevin Stone had parked behind her, blocking her escape. He politely backed out to make way for her and waited, as if – oh, no – he planned to follow her.
She wondered sickly if he might seek her out at her hotel, but common sense asserted itself. She hadn’t told him where she was staying; he probably assumed that she’d found a hotel here on the Peninsula. He would never look for her in the glittering anonymity of Virginia Beach.
She could lose him easily on the bridge-tunnel, if she kept her head and remembered that, after all, she wasn’t Laura Abbott anymore. She was Cat Courtney, supremely sure and self-confident, and one slightly crazy man wasn’t going to get the best of her.
She made it a game, to calm herself down. He followed her for a couple of miles down the country road, and remained on her trail until she reached Jamestown. It didn’t do any good to call him every name she could think of, he certainly couldn’t hear her… but it made her feel better, more in control, while she waited for the chance to lose him.
When the opportunity came, it was straight out of the security lectures Cam had made her attend. She waited at a green light, counted off the seconds after it turned yellow, and then floored the accelerator and shot across the intersection as the light turned red.
She heard Cam, or was it Mark? What’s wrong with you? You’ve got the phone. Use it!
But the police…. She bit her lip and winced. Police… reports, unwelcome attention—
And Mark finding out. Mark saying the night before she left, This is a very bad idea, Laura.
She played it safe at the interstate, just in case he had found her again. She headed away from Virginia Beach, away from the hotel she’d registered in under – oh, no! – Laura Rose St. Bride. Away from Ashmore Park, where Kevin Stone might well expect her to run.
So Laura Rose St. Bride ran west in search of a place to hide.
Williamsburg made a splendid sanctuary and provided a certain ironic closure, Laura acknowledged, as she locked the car in the parking lot and fell into step behind a group of French tourists heading for the old city.
Fourteen years ago, in the bright heat of a June afternoon, she and Francie had left their father’s house and vanished into Williamsburg forever. A waitress at one of the restaurants later recalled the two look-alikes for the police, the last time anyone in Virginia ever saw the younger Abbott girls together. After that lunch, they had separated, Francie boarding a tourist bus bound back to Washington, Laura driving to Richmond and catching a bus to Chicago. Weeks later, reading the papers in the Palo Alto branch library, they had been astonished to learn that the police had found their car, completely stripped, in Baltimore.
Some anonymous soul, more faceless than Laura and Francie Abbott that day, had helped himself to their beloved car.
“Stripped?” Francie had cried, as if that minor tragedy overshadowed all else. “Honestly! The nerve of some people!”
Williamsburg beckoned now, a sanctuary of peace and charming quiet, where Richard Ashmore did not issue cool, clipped words to a wife whose life he apparently did not share, where Kevin Stone did not menace her with unsettling emotions and bizarre statements.
Off his rocker, she repeated to herself like a talisman. I’ll tell Lucy, when I see her. Or even Richard. They’ll know what to do.
The serenity of
the old city touched her, soothed away the last vestiges of the distasteful encounter at her father’s house. Laura lost herself in the masses of travelers, wandering around, stopping for tea at a tavern, browsing for antique lace to trim a shirt for Meg. No one looked twice at the woman in jeans and cotton blouse; no one nudged a companion and remarked that Cat Courtney was there in the next aisle, examining a handmade quilt.
Kevin Stone certainly never found her there.
By five, the tourists had thinned out, and the weariness in her muscles told Laura to head back. She gathered up her packages, boarded the bus back to the tourist center, and followed a crowd out to the parking lot, grateful again, as she had been fourteen years before, for her invisibility.
Then she saw her fatal mistake, as she inserted her keys into the Jaguar trunk.
She drew her breath in, as the truth sank its teeth into her.
The keys, the damned keys! She saw herself dropping them at his feet, saw Kevin Stone picking them up and putting them in her hand. The keys, and the attached hotel key card for anyone to see.
And, thrown carelessly on the passenger seat of her car, the hotel brochure.
She might as well have issued an invitation.
~•~
When Karen first started work as administrative assistant to the senior partner at Ashmore & McIntire, Architects and Designers, she figured that there had to be some catch to her new boss. No one could be that easy on the eyes and not harbor some grave personal flaw. A total lack of organization, an awesome temper, an unreasonable libido – sooner or later, Richard Ashmore would drop those perfect manners and show the true man underneath. It was a matter of time.
She was still waiting. He wasn’t a perfect boss; he worked long hours and expected her to work them too, but he always followed an all-nighter with a paid day off. He offset the precision he brought to his architectural practice by the regularity with which he mislaid his Blackberry. He had never lost his temper with her, but she had heard him lay with devastating sharpness into the wife he had forgotten to divorce. She was attractive, but he had never made a pass at her; presumably, his libido was being cared for by the sporadic soft-spoken woman who called the office.
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 10
