by Sylvie Kurtz
Tears welled in her eyes, tightened her chest. Rasping breath scratched her throat. Anger rumbled through her limbs, creating explosive tension. “You want to see?” she asked between clenched teeth, tilting up her chin, breathing hard. “Then take a good look.”
She turned and let the moonlight illuminate the red ridges and dark splotches that sculpted her skin into a grotesque mask fit for a horror movie.
He was looking at her strangely—not with revulsion, as she’d expected, but almost as if what he saw fascinated him. She wanted to escape, to fly across the courtyard to the safety of her quarters, but the intensity of his gaze transfixed her. She would not cry. She’d already cried too many tears for her sorry state.
Slanting forward, he gently touched his lips to hers over the horse’s head, lingered there for a moment, then leaned back.
The gentleness of the whisper-touch took her breath away, had her blood coursing madly through her veins, heat spreading like dreaded fire from head to toe. She touched two fingers to her lips, wanting to hold the sensation in until she could examine it.
“What was that for?” The bite to her tone came from confusion. What did he want from her? One minute he was badgering her; the next he was playing hero. Now he was acting as if her scars didn’t matter. She didn’t like the gnawing confusion, the spin of yearning. Not one bit.
“The way you ride,” he said, a slight hitch cracking his voice, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
She sucked in a quick breath when she realized with a start that, out there in the moonlight, he’d caught her bared soul when she’d let Eclipse dance through the pecan trees.
Most people who were subjected to the sight of her face treated her like a monster or pretended too hard not to see the obvious, silently counting the seconds until they could leave. They never got past the surface appearance. But in Tyler’s eyes she could see indifference to the scarred skin. It was as if he truly didn’t see the jagged landscape of her face and, instead, saw something else. With a fist she kneaded the bruise on her heart. He’s a reporter. It’s part of the game.
Swallowing hard, she turned away. She’d known him for only a few days, and yet it seemed much longer. She wanted him to leave. She needed him to stay. “You need a doctor.”
“No, I’m fine. I just need some ibuprofen.”
“Let’s go,” she said, pivoting. Why were her hands shaking? Why was her stomach pitching? Why couldn’t she make sense of Tyler Blackwell?
He’d been willing to take a bullet for her. No one had ever done that. Where was the harm in helping him? Wouldn’t that simply disprove his conspiracy theory? Why was she fighting this so hard? She started to lead Eclipse toward the stables. “I’ll get some ice and ibuprofen for your ribs, then we can start.”
“Start what?”
In chess it was always better to play an offensive game than a defensive one. She’d let her fears make her forget that simplest of strategies. Tyler wasn’t her soul mate—that was fantasy talking. But he was here because he was driven to find the right order of things. That was what had made him good at his job and also what had broken him. And now he needed to find his feet again. So did she. “Looking for the truth.”
SHE WAS A CREATURE of habit and played while others slept. With the Andersons stargazing, the situation was even better than planned. No need to play more than a pawn with this move. The true measure of power, he was learning, was letting others do as much of the dirty work for you as possible.
The whole town was already in a flap about the witch. Just today at the Parker Peach, he’d heard the old preacher plant the seed of fear that, with just the right chemistry, could lead to an old-fashioned witch hunt. His errand tonight would give the rumors a nudge and send protective parents in a tizzy.
Now all he had to do was convince Tyler Blackwell to stick around for a while. He needed someone who would understand betrayal to record the rise of the righteous and the fall of the corrupt. According to his boss, Blackwell made the perfect candidate. Someone had cheated him out of his due, too.
Ray stopped the truck just out of sight of the castle and took out his high-powered binoculars. One clue. Would Blackwell understand it? Ray slipped on latex gloves, then took the bag from the seat beside him.
“WHERE DO WE START?” she asked him.
The ibuprofen was finally kicking in and the ice pack over his ribs had just about numbed his side. Tyler sat at an old pine board table in the castle kitchen that had once been a scullery. A cup of coffee steamed before him. Melissa sat across from him, shawl once again in place, nursing her own cup of coffee. She’d dimmed the lights so that the table, chairs and cabinets glowed a mellow warmth, and the stone walls and empty hearth recessed in shadows. A plate of brownies staked the boundary between them. Her stiff body, her green eyes peeking over the edge of her shawl, both declared Keep Out louder than any billboard.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her. Hadn’t expected that simplest of contact to stir something inside him so deeply. The distress in her eyes, the fear and anguish so bright and raw, had unfurled a wave of sympathy in him. He’d needed to let her know he wouldn’t hurt her and had sensed on a gut level that words would mean nothing.
After watching the magic she’d wrought in the moonlight, he could never think of her as ugly. She wouldn’t believe that, either. He knew, too, that his dead heart had nothing to offer someone with such a beautiful soul and regretted adding to her suffering; regretted, too, the chink the connection had caused in his own protective armor. Passion distorted. He’d learned that the hard way. And to get through this assignment, he had to concentrate on facts to keep his vision clear.
“First,” he said, wincing as an ice cube shifted in the makeshift pack he held over his ribs, “we make a list.”
She retrieved a pad of paper and a pen from a desk tucked in an alcove and returned to the table. “A list of what?”
“Let’s start with what we know.”
“Okay.” She poised the pen over the pad. “What do we know?”
“We know that Freddy received a warning about your welfare.” He waggled a finger at the pad, wishing he could pace. Action made thinking easier. “Write down ‘Freddy Gold.’ Under that put ‘newspaper article about mason and chess piece.’”
“Or made up a warning,” she mumbled as she wrote.
Even upside down, her script was bold and artistic. He frowned at her right hand, at the long fingers, the short nails. A working hand. He noted the hint of green paint at the edge of the nail of her index finger and wondered at the subject of her current painting. His frown deepened and he forced his attention back to the facts. “What reason would he have to lie?”
She shrugged. “You know him. You tell me.”
“His wife is going through a difficult pregnancy. Trust me, he doesn’t have the time or the energy to make up a false story.”
She quickly doused the hint of surprise. “Not even to give a down-and-out-reporter friend another chance to repair his career?”
A flicker of pain zagged through her eyes. He realized then that both she and Freddy were burdened by their past and neither quite knew how to change the situation. They needed each other, and maybe this assignment would end with a reconciliation, if nothing else. “He cares about you. And the fact you won’t talk to him hurts him.”
She shook her head and waved away his comment. “It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late.” Something he needed to remember himself. And for that second chance he needed to concentrate on facts.
He gestured toward the pad of paper. “Turn to another page. Write down ‘Melissa Carnes.’ Under that write ‘trust fund.’ Are there restrictions to the trust fund?”
“Control of the fund reverts to me on my thirtieth birthday. When Tia marries, there’s a sum set aside for her to put toward a home of her own. The castle belongs to me and the mansion belongs to Sable.”
“Okay, write Tia’s name on another page and the amount she
’ll get.” He consulted the chart in his head and went on to the next player. “What’s Sable’s story?”
“What do you mean?”
“How come your father didn’t leave any of his fortune to his wife?”
Melissa sneered. “My father married Sable knowing that money was her first love. He was also ashamed of his horror at my face.”
“You don’t need the veil, you know,” Tyler said, angry with himself for wanting her comfortable enough around him to forget to wear her shield against the world.
A quick hitch of breath betrayed her anxiety. She bent over the paper and her voice hardened. “He wanted to be sure I’d be taken care of. He also knew I had a good head on my shoulders and wouldn’t squander all he’d worked so hard to earn.”
“Like father, like daughter.”
“No.” She looked up, and the blazing green of her eyes ignited a degree of frustration he couldn’t explain. “I don’t care about business, and I don’t care if I ever add another dollar to his fortune.”
“How did he earn his fortune?” Facts, Blackwell. Stick to the facts.
She shot him an annoyed glance. “I thought you did your homework.”
“I want to hear your take on it.”
She sighed heavily as if the task was a chore, but he sensed she wanted to examine every angle, too.
“He started out as an engineer,” she said. “A school project earned him his first job. Then he discovered he was better at nurturing the ideas of others into products than coming up with his own projects. So that’s what he did. He provided the space and the leadership to nurture ideas and bring them to market—everything from consumer products to medical instruments to industrial machinery. The rest, as they say, is history. Carnes Design became synonymous with solving problems.”
And William Carnes’s name was written all over local and business history. It was too bad he couldn’t have used his legendary people skills with his own daughter.
“Who has access to the castle?” Tyler asked.
She stared at him accusingly for a moment, then bent again toward the pad of paper. “Sable, Tia, Grace, Cedrick and Deanna. And I trust all of them.”
“Cedrick?”
“Grace’s son. He’s away at college right now.”
“Are you sure?”
She aimed her pen at him. “Don’t even go there. Cedrick was practically raised here. He’s a hard worker and wouldn’t even think of harming anyone, let alone me. Besides, I’m paying for his education. Why would he want to hurt me before it’s all paid for?” As Tyler opened his mouth, she put a hand up to stop him. “No, it’s not charity. He earned it with years of shoveling manure.”
Her gaze was as fierce as a tigress’s protecting a cub. “What’s he studying?”
“Veterinary medicine at Texas A & M in College Station.” Genuine pride beamed in her voice.
Passion blurred facts. Why was he having such a hard time remembering that? This time he couldn’t make that mistake. “Write him down, anyway.”
Her gaze was sharp and lethal, but she nevertheless wrote down Cedrick’s name.
“Tell me about Grace.”
She hesitated, stuttering the end of the pen against the table. “Leave Grace out of this.”
He shrugged. “I can always do a background search. It’ll save us time if you just answer my questions.”
“Grace is the most loyal person I know.”
“I’m not questioning her loyalty. I just want to know how she fits in the puzzle.”
“She fits like a stone in the wall. She’s as much part of Thornwylde as I am.”
The ice pack—now more water than ice—gurgled when he leaned forward. “What brought her here?”
She sighed testily. “She killed her husband.”
He raised an eyebrow. Grace’s height and bulk were impressive, and he had no problem believing she could easily squash most men who got in her way. But since he’d arrived, he hadn’t seen anything but gentleness from her—even when her employer had ordered her to feed a prisoner gruel.
“Her husband was a minister who preached peace to his congregation and wreaked chaos in his home. Grace took his abuse until he turned his hand to their son. Cedrick still limps from the horrible shattering of his leg that day. And Grace was in the hospital for months recovering from the beating he gave her before he finally had the decency to die. She spent seven years in jail for her crime. When she got out, no one would hire her.”
“So you did.”
Her forehead knitted as she underlined Grace’s name. “I got the better end of the bargain.”
The witch and the outcast. That bred loyalty. Had Grace sent Freddy the warning, knowing he would help, while seeking to preserve her status in the household? He made a mental note to speak with Grace in the morning. “What about the mason from the newspaper article?”
“Grace hired him and supervised him. I don’t deal with outside workers.” She looked up at him, slanting him a cutting glare. “And they’d rather have it that way.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure. He was repairing the southwest tower and all seemed to go well. Then one morning he fell off the scaffolding and broke his leg. The EMTs had a hard time calming him down. He kept mumbling something about the devil being inside the castle walls and saying the place was cursed. He refused to come back, and Grace hasn’t found anyone willing to finish the job.”
Finally a hint of something concrete. “Was there anything in the wall that would warrant that kind of reaction?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of. All I could see were signs of aging. Mold.”
“I’ll check it out in the morning.”
She snorted. “Make sure you call the paramedics before you do, so they’re there to catch you.”
He almost smiled at her show of spirit. “I’ll take that under advisement.” As he took the pad from her, their fingers grazed. The tiniest spark flashed from knuckle to knuckle, making him frown at the speed it traveled from finger to gut. Flipping through the pages, he cleared his throat. “Where were we? Right, Deanna.”
“You’re determined to discredit everyone who’s close to me, aren’t you?” Temper warbled through her voice as she snagged the pad of paper out of his hand.
Sensing the checked slap, he grudgingly admired her restraint. He was, after all, forcing her to look with new eyes at the few people she depended on for her survival. The results were bound to give a picture she might not like. “Facts are cold, Melissa. They have no emotions. I’m just trying to put them down on paper so we can look at them objectively.”
“It feels as if you’re trying to tear my world apart.”
She looked so forlorn that he wanted to hold her in his arms and reassure her. Objectivity, he reminded himself. That was the only way to get through this without failing. He rose, dropping the melted ice pack on the table.
“Do you need more?” she asked, pointing at the bag.
“No.” He shuffled to the coffeemaker and refilled his cup. “Who do you know who plays chess?”
“I do. Dee’s father.”
Coffee splashed on the counter. “J.R. Randall?”
She nodded.
Here’s where the interview could get tricky. “He comes here?”
“No, we play through e-mail.”
“What’s your relationship with him?” Ignoring the mule kick of pain with each step, he walked to stand beside her and poured coffee into her cup, watching for signs of deceit.
“He’s like a father to me. When Dee told him about my interest in art, he did everything he could to encourage me.” Unlike her own family, who it seemed hadn’t even noticed. “He bought some of my pieces and displayed them in his offices. He arranged for my first showing.”
“And for the charity auction last year.” If she was lying, she was doing a damned good job of it.
She dismissed his comment with a shrug. “He’s a very civic-minded person. He sponsors a lo
t of charities in the area.”
“What do you know about his business?” Tyler returned the pot to the coffeemaker. Was Randall using her without her knowledge?
“Nothing.”
Drinking from his mug, he leaned his backside against the counter. “Do you own stock in his company?”
“I own a lot of stock in a lot of companies.”
“Including his?”
She swiveled in her chair to meet his gaze head-on. “Including his. What difference does it make? Randall Industries is a good bet. Ask any stock analyst.”
He didn’t answer, but added a mental note to go over the facts he’d gathered on Randall Industries last summer and see if he could connect with some of his old sources.
“Who else in my entourage do you want to disparage? The horses, perhaps?”
Her tone was light, with a touch of royal uppitiness, but he sensed the deeper dread that he would indeed tear her world apart with his questions. “Let’s call it a night. I need to go to Fort Worth tomorrow. Check on some sources.”
She crushed the pen in her fist. “Can’t you do that from here?”
“Even with all of today’s technology, some things need face-to-face.” She slept during the day and would be safe enough until he returned. He’d put Grace on alert just in case. “You’ll let me back in?”
“You started this, not me.”
Temper again. Here was a woman used to getting her way in spite of the restrictions her lifestyle entailed. He had to hammer back the thought of taking her along, opening the world for her. He wasn’t a knight—just a guy stumbling back to life. And as she’d said, she was no weak princess imprisoned in a tower. If she wanted the world, it was right there for her to take.
“And I’ll see it through to the end, Melissa. I promised Freddy, and now I’m promising you.”
She gave a careless shrug, but it didn’t fool him. She had too much to lose.
“When are you leaving?”