Shadow Lover

by Anne Stuart

He’d remembered that innocent kiss. The first and last taste of innocence in his wicked, self-absorbed life. And he’d looked up at dear Uncle Warren and smiled, knowing he was going to have a chance to taste her again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  SOME THINGS WERE better left in the past. Alex had never spent a year in Vermont, so he had no idea when spring was supposed to come, but surely by now it was long overdue. He’d be a lot happier breaking into the library on a warm night than in the current frigid air.

  She hadn’t said a word when she walked past him in the kitchen—maybe she was just going to spend the rest of Sally’s life ignoring him. He’d put her through the wringer quite effectively, but he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t pushed her too far. He wanted her shaken, unwilling to fight back. He didn’t want her dangerous.

  It would be warm in Italy tonight. The stars would glitter down on his newly patched roof, and life would be peaceful. Once he had his questions answered.

  He’d already turned off the security system before he stepped out onto the flagstoned terrace that led to the library door. It was a simple enough matter to use his credit card and open the catch.

  He was ready to move fast, in case she screamed, but she just lay there on the sofa bed, watching him.

  He was right—there was a chair wedged in front of the hall door. She should have realized the outside door would be just as dangerous.

  “Mind if I turn on a light?” he asked in a conversational tone as he closed and locked the outer door. She wouldn’t be able to escape that quickly with the chair in her way. He could take his time.

  “Yes.” Her voice was flat, uncompromising.

  “You prefer to conduct this in the dark?”

  “Conduct what? I have a very loud scream.”

  “Most of the people in this house are deaf, either by choice or by age. And I can move fast, even in the dark. I can stop you before you even start.”

  “Why are you here?”

  He moved closer. He could see fairly well in the dark, and she looked pale, stubborn, angry. Which was good. He’d been half-afraid he’d find her crying.

  He wasn’t usually susceptible to crying women, but somehow he knew he wouldn’t be able to take Carolyn Smith’s tears lightly. Especially if he’d caused them.

  He’d caused her enough tears, years ago. He didn’t owe her any more. “Mind if I sit?” He figured studious politeness wouldn’t hurt.

  “Yes.”

  He sat anyway, on the end of the mattress, near her body beneath the fluffy duvet. She moved out of his way as if he were an errant rattlesnake, and he almost reached out and caught her ankle beneath the covers. He resisted the impulse. He was in trouble enough—he didn’t need to make it worse.

  They sat in the darkness, in uneasy silence, for endless minutes. He wanted her to break it, but she was even more stubborn than he was. As stubborn as Sally herself, he thought, with a trace of annoyed admiration. If he wanted to accomplish anything and get to bed, he was going to have to be the one to push things.

  “Don’t you want to ask me anything? Yell at me?”

  “Why should I bother? Yelling won’t help. And I’m afraid all my questions have already been answered.”

  It was better this way, he told himself. Better that she believed he was an imposter, a charlatan, a cheat. He told himself that, but he didn’t believe it.

  “All right,” he said lazily. “So I guess it’s my turn to ask the questions. What are you going to do about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About your newfound certainty that I’m an imposter? I don’t see you rushing in to warn Sally, but you may be waiting until morning. Or are you planning on going to the police?”

  “I was considering the lawyers.”

  “Not your best choice,” he murmured. “How do you know some of them aren’t in it with Warren and me? And you know how ruthless lawyers can be. There’s a lot of money at stake here. Warren MacDowell might not know any hit men, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the MacDowell family lawyers weren’t capable of digging someone up.”

  “Maybe they expect you to do the job.”

  He shook his head. “I’m a con artist, not a killer,” he said. “If a deal falls apart I disappear. I don’t try to force it.”

  “I don’t see you disappearing.”

  “I’m not sure this has fallen apart. What are you going to do, Carolyn?”

  She let out a tight breath of air. There was a slight catch in it, as if she’d been crying, but he knew she hadn’t. “I don’t know yet. That depends on a number of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what happened to the real Alexander MacDowell. Is he really dead?”

  He knew she wouldn’t see his wry smile in the darkness. “You tell me. You’re the only witness to that night on the Lighthouse Beach.”

  “No, I’m not. Whoever tried to kill him knows what happened.”

  “But who says he or she is still alive? Maybe it was some outraged parent who finally had had enough of Alex tomcatting around his daughter and decided to blow him away.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you think he’s dead?”

  She didn’t answer. “Why are you still here? If you had any sense you’d get the hell out of here.”

  “I told you, I’m not sure this deal has fallen apart. You really want Sally to wake up and find her long-lost son has disappeared once more? It would kill her.”

  “She’s dying anyway,” Carolyn said, her flat voice betraying no emotion.

  “Yeah, so she is. Maybe you’d just as soon hurry the process along. After all, you’re bound to inherit a tidy little sum of money, and you won’t have to deal with this family any longer. You must have gotten pretty damned tired of jumping every time they snapped their fingers.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “You mean Warren loves you like a niece?” he mocked her.

  “Warren doesn’t love anyone—you should know that. He’s obviously been your source of information about this family. He’s not big on sentiment, honor, or family feeling.”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “I haven’t stayed for Warren and the rest of the family.”

  “I assumed you stayed for the money,” he said.

  “If that’s all you can understand, then go right ahead and believe it.”

  He knew perfectly well it wasn’t true. He wished, for her sake, that it was. If she were a coldhearted gold digger, or even a normal young woman with a reasonable amount of self-esteem and greed, she’d be much better off than she was now, prey to the emotional forces of the MacDowells.

  “All right, you’re devoted to Sally,” he drawled. “You stayed with her out of love and gratitude, and you couldn’t care less about your inheritance. So where does that leave you? Are you going to say the words that will destroy her last few weeks? Or are you going to sit by and watch a con man make a fool of her?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t suppose Warren hired you for Sally’s sake,” she suggested. “To make her last few months easier?”

  “You really aren’t that naive, are you, darling?” he said lightly. “Haven’t you already told me that Warren doesn’t have a sentimental, honorable bone in his body? He wants his inheritance unencumbered.”

  “And what are you supposed to do? Sign over all that money and disappear again? Don’t you think that will be a little suspicious?”

  “Who’s going to question it?”

  She leaned back against the pillows, her face still. “I could.”

  “But you won’t.” He moved then, and she made no effort to evade him. Maybe she knew it was useless. He loomed over her in the darkness, putting his hands on her shoulders. Small shoulders, delicate bones, beneath his
strong hands.

  She sat motionless, staring up at him, and he couldn’t resist. He brushed his mouth against hers, lightly, just enough to tease. “You know what we can do about this little problem, Carolyn?” he whispered. “It’s perfectly simple, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Your inheritance isn’t that large—Warren showed me the will. You could do with a bit more to augment it. I’m sure I can arrange for Warren to shift some of Alexander’s inheritance to you. Wouldn’t that make life easier?”

  He kissed her again, increasing the pressure slightly, and her lips were soft and pliant beneath his. The smart thing to do would be to back away, leave her tempted, wanting.

  But the temptation was too much for him. With a faint groan he slanted his mouth across hers, pushing her mouth open with his, using his tongue.

  She kissed him back. She couldn’t help it, he could feel it in her mouth, in her hands as she reached for his shoulders, trying to push him away, and instead clung to him. She kissed him back, and it was almost more than he could bear.

  And then she shoved him away from her, hard. He made no attempt to hold on to her, too shaken by her mouth, her touch, her scent. Too shaken by his own need.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” she said in a rough voice. “You keep away from me. Don’t touch me again, don’t come anywhere near me. You can tell Warren that I still hate you from childhood, I don’t care. As long as you leave me alone and you don’t hurt Sally you can do anything you damned well please.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “The moment you put your hands on me I’ll call the police, and I don’t care if the truth sends Sally into cardiac arrest. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  He smiled wryly, hoping she couldn’t see it in the darkness. It would give away too much. “I’m trying to decide which is more important. The money Warren’s promised me, or fucking you.”

  “You’ve already had me,” she said bitterly. “Go for the money.”

  It would have been so simple to tell her the truth. It would have been hard to get her to listen, to believe it, but he could make her. There were too many things only they knew.

  But then, she thought he’d faked the scar, the allergy to shrimp. She might think everything was some kind of trick.

  He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted her to believe. What he wanted at all, apart from the truth of what happened that night. Once he had those answers, then the rest would follow. Then everything would make some strange kind of sense.

  He was no closer to finding out the truth than he had been on his roof in Tuscany. The only difference was that now he was enmeshed in this family he’d left so long ago. Physically, emotionally enmeshed.

  And with the child/woman he’d left so long ago. If he was going to find any kind of peace, he had to promise not to touch her.

  The notions of peace and not touching Carolyn Smith were polar opposites, but right then he wasn’t in any mood to figure it out. He was in the mood to pull the duvet back from her slender body and see if she still tasted as good as she had a few nights ago.

  He wasn’t going to. “I promise to keep my distance,” he said. “For now.”

  She didn’t look particularly gratified. “It’s your call. I know perfectly well I’m not irresistible, so you might as well concentrate on ingratiating yourself with the rest of the family. But then, you’ve been doing that, haven’t you? Once you disposed of me.”

  “I wouldn’t have called it disposing of you,” he said. “Are you going to tell me you didn’t like it?”

  “Get out.”

  He rose with a faint, deliberate swagger. “You want me to go outside or can I go through the house?”

  “Go back the way you came.”

  “You don’t want anyone to think we’ve been lovers?”

  She was ready to snap, and he knew it, but somehow he couldn’t stop from pushing.

  “We weren’t lovers,” she said in a tight voice.

  “Oh, yeah? What do you call the other night?”

  “A serious mistake.”

  “And you don’t make mistakes, do you, Carolyn? Perfect Carolyn, a paragon above reproach.”

  “I don’t repeat my mistakes,” she said.

  “You will.”

  “I warned you—”

  “And I promised. I won’t touch you, sweetheart. I won’t even breathe on you, much less kiss you the way you need to be kissed. I won’t carry you off to bed and screw you senseless. Until you ask me.”

  Her laugh was strained. “Why stop there? How about I beg you on bended knee? That’s about as likely.”

  “I’m not picky, Carolyn. All you have to do is ask.”

  If there’d been anything in reach she probably would have thrown it at him, but she had enough sense to realize a pillow fight wouldn’t have accomplished anything. She simply sat there in bed, motionless, as he slipped back out the terrace door.

  CAROLYN DRAGGED herself out of bed a little before six. The curtains on the library door were sheer, letting in the early-morning light, but even heavy drapes wouldn’t have helped. Once Alex left she’d risen and shoved a chair under the outside door as well, but she couldn’t convince herself she was safe from intruders. If the man pretending to be Alexander MacDowell wanted to get at her he could. He was relentless, and only his diffident promise and his admitted self-interest kept him at bay.

  She showered in the exercise room, then stared at herself in the mirror. If she’d looked like holy hell a few days ago, it was nothing compared to the reflection in the mirror this morning. Her skin was pale, almost porcelain, except for the purple smudges beneath her eyes. She looked drawn, delicate; her eyes bleak and despairing; and her pale mouth was set in a thin, worried line.

  Not the face to reassure a dying woman, she thought, reaching for her makeup. The results were far from miraculous, but at least the artificial pink in her cheeks looked only slightly feverish, and her worried mouth was a nice rose hue.

  The sun was coming up over the mountains at the edge of the fields that stretched beyond the house, and suddenly she wanted to be free of the place, the trapped air of impending death, the lies and betrayals that ran rampant through the perfectly decorated hallways. She grabbed the leather coat that someone had left hanging in the gym, shoved her feet in an old pair of mud boots, and headed out into the early-morning garden.

  It had been a frosty night, but the sun was warming the earth with greedy hunger, and Carolyn crossed the lawn, following the narrow path of crushed stone as she headed for the winter-stubbled fields. She reached the stone wall and paused, turning to look back at the house. The windows were blank reflections of the bright morning sun, staring back at her. They were all still asleep at this early hour, she assured herself. So why couldn’t she rid herself of the sense that someone was watching.

  She climbed over the stone fence, moving into the rough field, pulling the leather jacket around her. A stream lay just beyond this next stretch of field, and there was a fallen log she’d refused to let the gardening service remove. The stream would be swollen with melting snow, racing wildly, and she would sit on the log and breathe the cool morning air. And just maybe things wouldn’t seem so bleak.

  She never got as far as the river. She found the rabbit, lying in the stubble, sightless, staring, and she knelt down in sudden despair. There were wild animals all around—coyotes who hid in the woods and never showed themselves, but left carnage behind nonetheless. There were fisher-cats as well, and some even insisted that the catamount had returned to the forests of Vermont, though no one had yet sighted anything other than a suspicious pile of droppings.

  Whoever had killed this rabbit had done a thorough, savage job of it, and Carolyn rose, unaccountably depressed. She heard the faint whirring noise as somethi
ng flew past her head, and she batted at it absently. It was too early even for black flies, and whatever had flown past her was too small to be a bird.

  She was no longer in the mood to visit the stream. She turned, and something sped past her again, with a high-pitched buzzing noise, and suddenly she knew what it was.

  She threw herself down on the ground, sprawling onto the half-frozen earth, as another bullet raced past her and slammed into a tree. There was no sound of an explosion, but there was no other explanation. Someone was shooting at her.

  It had to be some stupid kind of mistake. Someone must be poaching, must have thought she was some kind of animal. But that was crazy—the early morning was clear and bright, and she looked like no one but herself.

  A hunter wouldn’t use a silencer. She lifted her head, squinting in the distance. The house was too far away, and all the windows and doors were closed. No one could be sitting in a window using her for target practice.

  They must be somewhere in the woods at the edge of the field. There were a dozen places to hide, and she couldn’t even guess where the bullets had come from. All she could do was lie facedown in the stubble of cropped grass and hope whoever was trying to kill her wouldn’t be brave enough to walk out into the field where he could get a clear shot at her.

  As far as she knew, there were no guns at the house. Sally had always abhorred hunting, posting her expansive acres, much to the dislike of the locals. Warren was far too fastidious to evince any desire to tramp through fields in search of game. Alex, on the other hand, had always shown a typical boyish fascination with firearms.

  But he wasn’t Alex, she reminded herself. He wasn’t anyone she knew—he was a cheat and a liar who had conquered her on every level. He could be a crack shot for all she knew. After all, he had the most to lose.

  But if he was a crack shot, then he hadn’t wanted to kill her. Maybe whoever it was simply wanted to scare her. A not so subtle warning, to keep out of the way and let Warren and his protégé do their thing.

  She couldn’t picture Warren at the other end of the gun. She couldn’t picture Warren capable of murder.