Shadow Lover

by Anne Stuart

  She stared at him in profound distaste. “Whatever Alex’s other flaws,” she said, “he was never crass.”

  He laughed, a light, mocking sound that grated on her nerves. “You’ve been around Sally too long. You’ve got that arctic edge down perfectly. Did you have to practice or did you just absorb it by osmosis?” He obviously didn’t expect her to answer. He swung his feet down onto the floor and reached for the coffeepot, filling his delicate flowered cup and ladling in an indecent amount of sugar. The real Alex had always had a weakness for sweets. “I’ve lived a crass life for the last eighteen years. You’ll have to forgive me if my social skills are a bit rusty.”

  “I’m sure you have,” she said stonily. “But you aren’t Alexander MacDowell.”

  “It must be nice to be so sure of yourself.” He poured cream in as well, turning the coffee a pale beige. He glanced up at her, and she expected to see a flare of anger in his eyes. Instead, he smiled at her. “Are you going to be the hardest one to convince? My mother, Constanza, and Ruben welcomed me with open arms. Of course, they wanted me back.”

  “Unlike me.”

  He glanced at her. “Why don’t you want me back?”

  “I don’t want an imposter worming his way into the family and defrauding them of money.”

  “And if I’m the real Alex?”

  “I don’t want Sally’s heart broken. She doesn’t have much time left, and I want it to be peaceful. She’d learned to live without her son. She mourned him, and then got on with her life.”

  “Peace is a highly overrated commodity,” he murmured. “I think Sally would prefer a few weeks of joy to a few months of fading away.”

  “It’s not your place to decide,” she said fiercely.

  “It isn’t yours, either.”

  Stalemate. She looked across the table at him, making no effort to disguise her dislike. “I assume you have proof,” she said.

  “Assume anything you want,” he said airily.

  “Warren and Patsy aren’t going to accept you at face value. They’re going to want answers, physical proof. There are fingerprints, dental records—”

  “Alex MacDowell never had his fingerprints taken, even when he was caught with a bag of pot when he was fourteen. His family was too powerful. And there may be dental records, for all I know, but since I never had a filling before I was twenty-three, I don’t think they’ll tell you much.”

  “You’ve researched this very carefully,” she said, not bothering to keep the bitterness from her voice.

  “Look at it this way—at the absolute worst I’m making an old woman very happy, and there’s more than enough money in this damned family to go around. They won’t miss my share.”

  “Are you admitting you aren’t Alex MacDowell?”

  He rose, graceful, as the young Alex would have been, and moved around the table. She didn’t flinch, didn’t back away from him. She merely wrapped her hands tightly around the delicate cup and sat there, looking at him.

  He put his hands on the linen tablecloth in front of her, leaning over her. Too close. She found she was holding her breath, unwilling to breathe in the same air he did.

  “Why are you afraid of me, Carolyn?”

  He was too close. She could see the streaks of gold in his brown hair, the streaks of green in his blue eyes. He was so close she could smell the coffee on his breath, the melted snow, the faint scent of shampoo. She looked at him, and for a moment she thought of Alex, long, long ago.

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “Are you afraid I’ll take your place again? That Sally will love me more than you? That you’ll be on the outside again, looking in?”

  She let go of the cup, knowing that in another moment she would have crushed the fragile bone china in her delicate hands. She sat back, away from him, and she made her mouth curve in the cool, unemotional smile she’d perfected long ago.

  “I’m not worried about a thing,” she said, “except for Sally’s well-being.”

  “You weren’t so saintly when you were a little girl,” he said. “I remember you were always whining, always trying to follow me. When did you get in the running to become the next Mother Teresa?”

  “Back off.” She couldn’t help it; the words came out, tight and angry.

  It was what he wanted. His smile widened, and she wanted to hit him. She put her hands in her lap, keeping her back straight, as he moved away from her. “They’ve trained you well, Carolyn,” he murmured. “They did what they could never do with me.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “They made you one of them. They sucked the life and soul from you.” He shook his head. “Too bad I didn’t take you with me when I ran.”

  “You’ve forgotten some of the details you should have memorized. I was thirteen years old at the time.”

  “So you were,” he said softly. “That didn’t mean you didn’t know how to kiss.”

  She could feel the color drain from her face. There was no way he could know. No way anyone could know. “What . . . what are you talking about?”

  He headed for the arched doorway. “I think I’ll check on my mother. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” She rose, standing at the table, holding on to the surface so he wouldn’t see she was trembling.

  “No, I didn’t.” He smiled sweetly. “Better call Warren and Patsy and have them get up here. Maybe they’ll do a better job of unmasking the imposter.”

  He was gone before she could say another word.

  Chapter Two

  “WHAT THE HELL is going on here?” Warren MacDowell stormed into the small, perfectly decorated library and proceeded to loom over Carolyn.

  She closed the leather-covered checkbook with deceptive calm. Warren’s stuffy, bombastic temperament always had the ability to shake her composure, but she’d learned to disguise it years ago. Warren was the kind of man who thrived on other people’s weaknesses, and Carolyn had enough sense not to exhibit hers any more than necessary.

  “I tried to call you,” she said, looking up at him. “But you’d already left.”

  “Sally called me in the middle of the goddamned night,” he snapped, even more bad-tempered than usual, “with some ridiculous story about Alexander returning from the dead. Where is he?”

  “I haven’t seen him since this morning. I’ve been working in here.”

  “He would have to pick a blizzard to come home. It took me forever to drive up here. So what do you think?”

  Warren was not a man who usually asked for anyone’s opinion, particularly hers. “What do I think about what?”

  “Don’t be obtuse! What do you think about the prodigal son? Is it really him?”

  “Who else could it be?” she said carefully.

  “A con man. We all assumed Alex was dead, had been for years. There’s a lot of money involved—it would be worth someone’s while to try and pull this off. Have you asked him any questions? Asked for proof?”

  “I didn’t think it was my place. Aunt Sally believes him, and she’s happier than she’s been in years. I’m not about to tell her that he’s a phony.”

  “But you think he is,” Warren said shrewdly. Carolyn looked up at him. Warren was a good-looking man in his late sixties, but then, all the MacDowells had been blessed with abundant physical charm as well as money. A perennial bachelor, he cared more about his appearance and his possessions than anything else, and his gray suit was undoubtedly Armani. He was a little too old for it, but he still looked elegant and untouchable.

  He had never been one to encourage intimacy, and she was in no mood to confide her doubts. “I don’t know,” she said. Lying.

  Warren shook his head. “I’ll have to see the boy. Ask him a few pointed questions—”
<
br />   “He’s not a boy anymore.”

  Warren shrugged his dapper, narrow shoulders. “Who is? Where will I find the black sheep?”

  “Probably by Sally’s bedside. That’s where he was headed after breakfast.”

  “How cozy. Sally’s a smart woman. She’ll see through an imposter easily enough. It shouldn’t take much to uncover the truth.”

  “No,” Carolyn said, “it shouldn’t.” But for some reason she didn’t think it was going to be that simple.

  “Well?” Warren said, growing impatient. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

  The day was getting stranger and stranger. Warren usually treated her as a cross between a poor relation and an upper servant, which, in fact, described her position in the MacDowell family fairly well. He’d never sought her opinion or her company in the past, he’d simply accepted her presence.

  She rose. “If you want me to.”

  “You knew Alex as well as anyone. You grew up with him, in a manner of speaking. I want to see if you can put a dent in his story.”

  It wasn’t an enticing thought. The man with Aunt Sally was a liar and a fraud, but Carolyn was in no particular mood to be the bearer of bad tidings. It was up to someone else to unmask him, not her. The most important thing was to protect Aunt Sally now that her failing health made her unable to protect herself. The truth, and the money, were only secondary issues.

  But Warren was standing by the door, practically fuming with impatience, and now wasn’t the time to finally stand up to him. That time was coming, with Aunt Sally’s impending death. But it wasn’t here yet.

  Sally’s room was bathed in gentle shadows. This time Carolyn didn’t jump to any macabre conclusions as she saw her dozing peacefully in the hospital bed that had been moved in several months ago. This time she didn’t miss the figure stretched out on the green velvet Victorian fainting couch, reading peacefully.

  Warren cleared his throat with awesome majesty, and Aunt Sally jerked into wakefulness. The man pretending to be Alex didn’t move, simply raised his head to look at them with sublime indifference.

  “Warren.” If Aunt Sally sounded more resigned than enthusiastic, it was only to be expected. She had tolerant affection for her younger brother, but not much more. “Your nephew has returned.”

  “So it seems,” Warren said in a deliberately lukewarm voice. But then, he was never a man to show enthusiasm. “Welcome back, Alex.”

  “Uncle Warren.” Was there a trace of malicious humor in his eyes as he looked at the older man? Of course, the real Alex had always viewed his stuffy uncle with amused disdain.

  “Why don’t we go into the living room so we don’t disturb Sally? As you can imagine, there are a great many questions I want answered—” Warren said smoothly.

  “No!” Aunt Sally’s voice was surprisingly strong.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Sally,” Warren protested. “I just want to ask the boy a few questions. Arrange for a few medical tests. Just a formality, of course, but it’s only reasonable to be cautious. After all, it’s been eighteen years, and while I will admit there’s a surface resemblance, we should have some form of proof. Papers, answers—”

  “No,” Sally said again, more calmly. “I won’t have you cross-examining him. Do you think I don’t know my own son? It could have been fifty years, and I’d still recognize him, with my heart if not with my eyes.”

  “Your eyes aren’t any good,” Warren interrupted tactlessly. “And I doubt your lawyers are going to find this acceptable without some form of proof.”

  “Fuck the lawyers,” Alex said in a calm voice.

  After a shocked moment, Sally laughed. “Yes, Warren,” she said, a little short of breath. “You heard what my son said. Fuck the lawyers.”

  “Sally!” Warren protested, clearly shocked, but Sally ignored him.

  “Come over here, Carolyn,” she commanded with her usual high-handed charm. “I haven’t seen much of you today.”

  “I thought you might want some time alone with Alex.” She didn’t even hesitate—she was proud of herself—that she could swallow the lie so easily.

  Her reward was Aunt Sally’s bright smile. “We’ll have dinner tonight, the four of us. I’m feeling quite wonderfully strong right now, ready to take on the world. Why don’t you take Alex to his room and make sure he gets settled? He hasn’t had more than a moment to himself since he arrived last night.”

  She’d already anticipated it, but she stalled. “What room shall I put him in?”

  “Don’t be silly, Carolyn. His old room. It’s been waiting for him all these years.” She turned her head to the imposter. “I had it redecorated when the house was enlarged, but I think you’ll still like it. If you want anything changed, just let Carolyn know and she’ll see to it.”

  She could feel his eyes on her, an unpleasant sensation. “What does Carolyn do nowadays? Besides see to any changes?” His mother wouldn’t hear the faint mockery in his voice. Carolyn couldn’t miss it. And couldn’t stop from bristling.

  “She takes good care of me,” Sally said. “She’s been wonderful, Alex. She insisted on quitting her job to take care of me when the cancer came back this time. I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter.”

  His eyelids drooped over his mesmerizing eyes. “I can imagine,” he said. She knew what he was thinking, even without him saying anything. He thought she’d come back for the money. Left her apartment in Boston, her career as a school social worker and come back to nurse a dying old lady during her final days. A very rich dying old lady.

  After all, that was why he’d appeared, wasn’t it? And it was a waste of time to insist she had nothing to gain but some sort of peace of mind.

  “You’re very noble,” he said. And for some reason Carolyn suddenly remembered the real Alex, his voice laden with sexual innuendo.

  There was nothing sexual going on here, she reminded herself belatedly. Just a con man, out to bilk an old lady out of her fortune, and the only thing that stood between them was her loving family. But the MacDowells had never seemed particularly loving, though even now Warren was surveying the interloper with surprising acceptance.

  “Go along, then, and get settled,” Warren said expansively. “We’ll talk later. I’m sure Carolyn will take most excellent care of you.” He hesitated. “Good to see you back, my boy.”

  Sally reached up her gnarled hand and patted Warren’s approvingly.

  “It’s good to be back,” Alexander MacDowell said. And Carolyn didn’t miss the faint undertone of mockery in his low, husky voice.

  She could feel his eyes on her back as she led the way up the wide center staircase. Thank God she’d already managed to strip her borrowed room of all her clothes and belongings. If the imposter knew she’d been sleeping there it would be one more weapon he could use.

  She went in ahead of him, giving it a last-minute check to make sure no trace of her temporary occupation had remained. Alex paused inside the door, surveying it critically. “She wasn’t expecting me back,” he said.

  Carolyn paused in the center of the room, watching him. “Alex disappeared more than eighteen years ago, and in all that time there’s never been any word, any hint that he was even still alive. Aunt Sally is a realistic woman—she accepted the obvious years ago.”

  That faint, unfamiliar smile twisted his mouth. “And aren’t you happy for her?” he asked softly.

  She kept her mouth shut, ignoring the unmistakable taunt. “The bed’s new, and everything’s very comfortable—”

  “Who used the room while I was gone?”

  “No one important,” she said, glad she was able to be completely honest. “Just an occasional guest.”

  “Why is it filled with chintz and flowers? It doesn’t look like Aunt Patsy’s style. Too much bare wood. Patsy likes things plush an
d padded.”

  She tried not to show how startled she was. He’d done his homework, that much was certain—he had the pampered Patsy MacDowell down to a tee. “If it’s too feminine I can go out and buy some hunting prints,” she said in a slightly caustic voice. “Dead animals ought to macho it up a bit.”

  “Was this your room?”

  This time she couldn’t hide her reaction. Of course he was well versed—a con man would have to be. He’d need to be observant as well, and she’d probably given it away with the unavoidable tightening of her mouth.

  “I was living in Boston until Sally got sicker,” she said, offering no real answer.

  She owed the real Alexander MacDowell absolutely nothing—she owed his impersonator even less. Constanza had helped wipe out any trace of her presence, and she was back in the small room on the first floor where she’d spent most of her life. “There’s a new bathroom off to the left that you should find more than adequate,” she said briskly. “I’ll have Ruben bring up your suitcases—”

  “I can handle it.”

  He was standing between her and the door, and she had no choice but to look at him dead on.

  He could have been Alex. He had the same clear, almost luminous blue eyes, faintly slanted so they had almost a Slavic look, and his sulky, pretty teenaged face could have matured into the starkly elegant bone structure, the high cheekbones and lush, sensual mouth. He could have been Alex, except for one thing.

  Alex was dead.

  He moved, and she breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief. She didn’t want to pass too close to him as she made her exit.

  But he didn’t move out of the way. He moved closer, coming right up to her. She stood her ground, because she’d learned long ago never to show fear, but this time it was an effort. He was tall. Tall enough to make her feel just slightly threatened. Alex hadn’t been that tall, and Alex had been seventeen when he disappeared. He would have reached his full height by then, wouldn’t he?