Claim the Crown

by Carla Neggers

  “He slept downstairs?” Jeremy asked.

  “Yes.” She smiled. “He’d come stomping up the stairs in his underwear, and he’d have a mop or a broom or something. He’d beat the living hell out of those poor bats. Eventually we got old enough so we could deal with them ourselves.”

  “I can’t imagine you killing a bat with a broom.”

  She picked a wood chip off the pilled afghan. “We tried killing them at first, but we were never very good at it—the stupid thing would fly in our faces and we’d get mad at each other and go into a panic about getting rabies. Then we figured out it was easier just to throw a blanket over the little bastard, gather it up and toss it and the blanket out the window.”

  Jeremy moved closer to her. “Did the bat suffocate?”

  “Never. In the morning, we’d go outside and just the blanket would be there—no bat. We’d never know how it got into the house, how it got out of the blanket, where it went. Lots of times it would come back the next night, and the next. Then it would just stop coming.”

  “I’ve never understood bats.”

  She looked at him. “Right now, Jeremy, I can feel the bats crawling on me. And all I’ve got is an empty blanket.”

  * * *

  After Ashley went to bed, Jeremy stayed up for a while. He tried locking the doors: there were locks, but no keys. And he’d promised Ashley and David he would tend the animals. They seemed irate about their late feeding; he did his best to appease the disgruntled creatures and not get various varieties of manure on his shoes.

  Ashley had refused to discuss the episode in the woods, and for the moment, she was in no condition to be badgered. In any case, Jeremy could draw his own conclusions.

  Bartholomew Wakefield had gotten the tiara and the choker.

  Jeremy wondered where the hell Mac was. Had the supposedly simple and amiable Barky disabled Mac as easily and cold-bloodedly as he had his niece and nephew?

  Confusion and exhaustion overwhelming him, Jeremy trudged up the steep stairs.

  He peered through an open door into the small slant-ceilinged room that faced north.

  Ashley lay atop the worn covers of the twin bed. A lock of dark hair had fallen over one cheek. He went to her. As she slept, the angles of her face seemed softer. He noticed how smooth her skin looked, how full her mouth was. She had found an old flannel nightgown with buttons missing and a tear in the armpit, and its raggedness only added to her mysterious allure. Her long legs were lean and well-muscled, the kind that evoked images of wild lovemaking.

  The ice he had wrapped into a dish towel had melted, soaking her pillow and the ends of her dark hair, and the towel was lying on the floor. Outside, the temperature was dropping. Jeremy lifted her by the hips and drew back the covers, holding her aloft. She twisted limply in his arms, sighing softly, asleep. Her nightgown was askew, revealing the curve of a pale breast. She smiled in her sleep. One eye opened halfway.

  “It’s me—Jeremy,” he whispered as he placed her back down.

  She flopped over onto her back. “Hullo.”

  “Feeling better?”

  She threw one arm over her head. Both eyes opened. Even in the dim light, they were bright “Much.”

  She rolled against the wall, then snuggled under the warm covers. She was on her stomach now, butt pushed out toward him.

  “Ashley?”

  A slender hand reached out and patted the narrow spot alongside her. “Sleep.”

  He leaned over and peered down at her eyes. They were open-—sort of. She smiled, not showing any teeth. Her eyes closed, and she gave a soft moan.

  Oh, what the hell, he thought, and peeled off his clothes and settled in next to her.

  16

  Her cheek was pressed up against a warm, hard, hairy chest. It seemed to go with a warm, hard, hairy body. How nice, she thought sleepily. I don’t think I ever want to wake up from this dream. If she did, the warmth of the body next to her would disappear. It was so real, so delicious. She oozed with longing.

  A large hand slipped inside her nightgown and gently stroked the warm flesh of her breasts. Her nipple hardened inside his palm.

  His palm?

  Whose palm?

  Suddenly her head hurt and she sat bolt upright. “Bastard! What the hell are you doing in my bed?”

  Jeremy gave her an unrepentant grin as his eyes roved over her. Her gown was open to her navel, her breasts soft and unconfined. His eyes flashed with amusement. “Just responding to your advances.”

  “I was asleep!”

  She tore out of bed and landed firmly. God, her head hurt! Then it all flooded back to her. David, Barky, Stevens. The jewels. She turned to Jeremy. He’d propped himself up on one elbow. He had good muscle definition in his shoulders. She demanded, “Would you care to explain your presence in my bed?”

  He shrugged. “I checked on you before I turned in. You invited me to stay.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Mystery heiress, dolphin rescuer and prude.” He laughed. “Your profile indicated you were particular about men. High standards—or cowardice?”

  “You doesn’t know a thing about my relationship with men, and neither do you. I don’t discuss such things with strangers.”

  He rolled out of bed, and she bit her lip. He was wearing only a pair of stretch bikini underpants. They were dark blue. Good muscle definition in his thighs, too. Lord, she muttered to herself.

  “You shouldn’t have standards when it comes to falling in love,” he told her matter-of-factly. “You should just do it.”

  “And risk getting burned?”

  He smiled at her. “And risk everything.”

  “I’m going to feed the animals. At least the crap they give me is real.”

  She grabbed some clothes and stalked out to the sounds of Jeremy Carruthers’s laughter.

  * * *

  Jeremy pulled his clothes back on and went downstairs, where the kitchen was chilly and quiet. It was just eight o’clock. He started a fire in the cook stove, not as deftly as the Wakefield twins, but it lit. It would be just five in San Diego. His father would still be asleep. But Ashley was up at the barn and Jeremy didn’t know when he’d get another opportunity to make the call—cretin that he was. He didn’t enjoy deceiving Ashley. But had she been forthright with him? Hardly.

  He dialed the La Jolla number of his parents’ house.

  Allan Carruthers answered, yawning. “Jeremy? Where the hell are you? What’s wrong—”

  “Everything’s fine; I’m in Massachusetts.”

  “Mac?”

  “I haven’t heard from him.”

  A short silence. “Neither have I.”

  Jeremy heard his mother waking up and demanding to know who was on the phone. Jeremy said, “I’m pressed for time. Dad, if Mac calls, tell him I blew it.”

  There was dread in Allan’s sharp intake of breath. “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t talk. This is getting complicated. Look—can you just give Mac the message?”

  “What about you?”

  “I need a few more days.”

  “Son.” Allan Carruthers hesitated. “Be careful.”

  Jeremy hung up.

  Behind him, the screen door banged.

  “Bastard,” Ashley said.

  He swung around. “Ashley, look, let me explain. I was going to tell you—”

  “You’ve been spying on me for Mac Stevens! You have your little network all set up, haven’t you? That’s why you came back from San Diego.” She clenched her fists and stiffened her spine against anything logical and reasonable he might have to say. “Bastard, bastard, bastard!”

  She snatched her handbag and slammed out the door. Stricken, Jeremy stood guiltily next to the old wall phone. Damn this entire stinking mess—and Ashley Wakefield along with it.

  The stinging words of his ex-wife came back to him. “One day, Jeremy Carruthers, you’re going to fall in love. You’re going to be the one thinking of some woman night an
d day. You’re not going to be able to get her out of your mind. You’ll do anything to make her want you. You’re going to be the one obsessed. And she’s going to tell you to take a hike.”

  But obsession wasn’t love, and he was neither obsessed nor in love with Ashley Wakefield. She was sanctimonious, rich and crazy.

  And he had thought about her all night.

  A car roared to a start.

  “What now?”

  He ran out to the driveway and jumped in front of the Jaguar, a foolhardy move, he thought, for one who had just duped a reckless and furious woman. She’d damn well run his ass over.

  But she stomped on the brake. Then she poked her head out the window. “Get the hell out of my way.”

  “Ashley, let’s talk.”

  “So you can tell me more lies? No, thanks. Now move.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Hospital.”

  Of course. David the wounded brother and sturdy ally was there. “There are no morning visiting hours.”

  “So they can throw me out. Move.”

  He stayed put. “You don’t tiptoe around when you’re pissed, do you?”

  “Move, goddammit!”

  She raced the engine. Not pressing his luck, he dived out of the way and watched her speed off. “Jer, you need an honest woman who’ll tell you to go to hell once in a while,” his friends had said too often.

  He picked himself up out of the dew-soaked grass and wondered if he should have just stayed there and slithered around for a while. If nothing else, Ashley deserved some time to cool off. Then he’d tell her everything, and hope she’d do the same.

  * * *

  David ached all over. “The pain will be intense, but the break will be clean.” Lunatic. If in his wildest imagination he had seen what was coming, he’d have bonked the old man on the head and carted him off to Northampton State Hospital.

  He’d go nuts hanging around a hospital room. He was a man of action, always had to be doing something. Back when they’d first found out about the trust, he’d tried to explain to Evan Parrington that he couldn’t just sit around and be rich; he had to act. Evan hadn’t understood: he’d suggested David start a business. But David had been talking about physical work. The thought of putting on a tie every day and watching the world go by from fifty stories up gave him the creeps. He had to be outside, swinging an ax, puttering around with his Rover, plowing the fields. He wanted dirt under his fingernails and calluses on his hands. That was just the way he was.

  And now he couldn’t even move.

  He was grateful for the company when Jeremy Carruthers walked into his private room. Despite Ashley’s warning, David couldn’t help but like the tough-minded Californian—and he didn’t have all the sparks getting in the way of his good judgment. Ash was drawn to Carruthers; David could see that.

  He and Jeremy exchanged pleasantries.

  “Has Ashley left yet?” Jeremy asked.

  “Well—”

  “David, she’s been here, hasn’t she?”

  Ashley had asked him to lie, but he couldn’t, not with the raw worry staring at him from the face of Jeremy Carruthers. “Uh-uh. She called about an hour ago.”

  Jeremy lunged forward. “Where is she?”

  “Asked me not to tell you.”

  “David, I don’t want to see her hurt.”

  “Hell.” David shifted painfully in the hospital bed. “Neither do I.”

  “Then tell me where she is. Look, I haven’t been entirely straight with you. Apparently—” He stopped himself, but only for a moment. “Apparently Mac Stevens did some intelligence work before he turned to private practice and all this business with your uncle and the jewels is tied in somehow. I know it sounds nuts, but—”

  “You mean Stevens is a spook?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “He hasn’t been in thirty years.”

  “Barky getting mixed up with jewel thieves is one thing—but spooks. Holy shit.”

  “David—Ashley, where is she?”

  David looked up sharply. “You falling for her?”

  Jeremy’s hard features seemed to soften. “I don’t know.”

  “Word of advice? Don’t get possessive. Ash gets claustrophobic real easy.”

  “I understand: so do I.”

  “She’s okay, Jeremy.”

  “But where is she? Boston, New York, the Cape—”

  “Tennessee,” David said impulsively.

  “What?”

  David reached over to his bedside table and poured himself a glass of water from a plastic pitcher. Hell, he felt weak. “She’s checking out Barky’s story of what he did between the time he left England and when we were born.”

  “She left for Tennessee without telling me?”

  “Figured she didn’t owe you anything. Ash isn’t perfect, Jeremy. She can be an asshole, too.”

  Jeremy looked troubled and uneasy. “David, you and Ashley have never looked into your uncle’s past?”

  “There was never any need.” David drank some of the water. Nothing tasted good. “Barky always said there was nothing in Tennessee for us. The farm where our parents lived is now under a reservoir, the people who knew them are gone, and there never were any relatives. It just didn’t seem worthwhile to start nosing around.”

  “What about their graves?”

  “We thought about it, but just have never gotten around to visiting them. I mean, they were just never that real to us, as people. I guess maybe we didn’t want them to be. Seeing their graves would have made them real. Maybe now—hell. Who knows?” David sighed. “We’re tired of reacting, Jeremy. It’s time to act. Ash has gone to Nashville to do some digging. I don’t know where it’ll lead us.”

  “Where will I find her?”

  David met those cool green eyes and saw the fear in them. No one had ever been afraid for Ashley before; David wasn’t sure how she’d take to it. “Ash is pretty good at taking care of herself, Jeremy.”

  He managed a smile, nodding. “You know her well, don’t you?”

  David lifted his shoulders in an awkward, painful shrug. “Hell, we’re twins. She’s all I’ve got.”

  “Then you have to understand I’m not being patronizing or paternalistic or overprotective—or anything else Ashley might think to call me.”

  “An asshole,” David suggested cheerfully.

  “Where can I find her?”

  David gave it up: Carruthers hadn’t had his head bashed in by the man who’d raised him. Maybe he could help. With a cast practically up to his ass, David sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to. “Try Belle Meade,” he said. “Woman by the name of Nelle Milligan.”

  Jeremy looked relieved. “Got it.”

  “And if you’re lying to me, Carruthers, and anything happens to my sister, there’s no place you can hide. No place. Understood?”

  Jeremy snatched a scrap of paper off the bedside table and jotted something down. He handed the paper to David. “Those are my father’s home and office numbers in San Diego. He has access to Mac. I’m the one in danger of making a mistake in judgment, David, not you.”

  Then Jeremy left.

  David glanced at the phone numbers. Frustration seized him, and he swung his arm and in one swipe heaved his water pitcher, glass and little box of tissues across the room. A nurse flew in. “Mr. Wakefield!”

  “Fetch me some crutches and get this needle out of me. I’m getting out of here.”

  “That’s out of the question. Please, just be patient.”

  But that wasn’t his style, and never had been.

  * * *

  With her hair tucked under the floppy yellow rain hat and wearing the shocking pink raincoat she hadn’t worn in years, Sarah Balaton didn’t look like herself at all. She dragged out old cosmetics and did up her face in blue-toned colors she no longer used, and she tried not to notice how her hands shook.

  The moment she stepped outside her apartment, although no one seemed to be about, she called on t
he techniques learned in drama classes she’d taken through college: You are not Sarah Balaton; you are someone else.

  She made up a secret identity for herself. She would be Mavin Hawthorne. Mavin didn’t walk with Sarah’s natural brisk gait. Mavin was more sultry, more seductive, and she carried her shoulders at a slight angle, hips thrust forward.

  Andrew Balaton’s man in the lobby glanced up and with only his eyes followed her out the door.

  Mavin, you’re terrific, Sarah thought, forcing herself not to leap up in jubilation. She climbed slowly into the cab she had waiting. Her coat rode up well above the knee. Sarah would have jerked it down, but Mavin let her leg linger in full view of whoever happened to be on the street. Then she pulled it into the cab and shut the door.

  “Intercontinental Airport,” she told the driver. She glanced back at her building: her bodyguard was running toward her. “Hurry!”

  The cab pulled away from the curb. Her father’s man—or whatever he was supposed to be—jumped into a white Cadillac.

  “There’s a man following me. Can you lose him?”

  The driver frowned into his rearview mirror. “How much?”

  “A hundred dollars above fare.”

  “You got it.”

  He hit ninety on I-45 North. The cab rattled and shook, and Sarah chewed her lip as she watched the Cadillac coast onto the infamous interstate, well behind them. Traffic was brutal. There was no way the cab could maintain such a high speed, and he slowed, weaving in and out of the perpetual bottleneck of cars. Sarah knew her destination was obvious; her only hope was timing. According to her calculations, she would just make the last call for the eleven o’clock flight to Atlanta. In Atlanta, she’d switch planes—and airlines—and hop a three-thirty flight to Boston.

  In Boston...she’d think about what she’d do there when she’d made it.

  The trip to the airport took just under forty-five minutes, and the Cadillac remained well behind them. The cab driver knew his way around the monstrous circular airport, the larger of Houston’s two, and dropped her off at the Continental terminal. It was another ruse: she was flying Eastern.