Kingdom by the Sea (Romantic Suspense)

by Jill Winters

  Almost boyishly he grinned down at her then. “It's a guy thing.”

  One long kiss later, they were hot and heavy again, she was clutching him, gripping his back, digging her fingers into his flesh, urging him on with soft panting breaths, and they were making love hungrily. “Just relax, sweetheart,” he had coaxed her at one point. Her last impressions as she drifted into a light sleep were of Michael tangled up with her, moonlight cutting across the room, the sensual smell of his skin, and the low, husky sound of his voice when he whispered her name.

  ***

  “Tell me something nobody knows about you.”

  “Wow...that's a lot to choose from.”

  “What do you mean?” Nicole asked curiously, tilting her head up to look at him. “Who knows you best anyway? Your brother?”

  Back to that fake brother he had invented. Women never forgot anything. For some reason it was annoying to him that he was perpetuating that lie.

  But he supposed a fake answer was just as good as any answer. The truth was, he was hard-pressed to think of any close friends he had right now that were not linked, at least in part, to his financial interests. “Yeah, I guess my brother,” he lied. “What about you? Those guys Cameron and Trevor?”

  “Um, probably my sisters.”

  “What's up with those guys, by the way?” Michael asked now, glancing down at her. He tried to keep the slight edge of jealousy out of his voice. It was unlike him to feel proprietary, yet suddenly he did. But what the hell? Nothing about this job had exactly been typical so far.

  For instance—he hadn't planned on this sexual detour with Nicole. Though he supposed once they had started spending time together, he hadn't ruled out the idea, either. When that moment came, he hadn't been able to help himself. There was no doubt that she was a sweet girl; he genuinely liked her.

  In fact, if it all worked out the way he intended, she wouldn't even know that he had taken something from the house, or that she'd been deceived. They would simply part ways and lose contact the way that men and women did, all the time. There was nothing so newsworthy about a fling fizzling out. Granted, this girl was hardly the fling type. Undoubtedly she would be hurt, thinking that he blew her off. But crushes and hurt feelings were not the worst things in the world.

  “What about Cameron and Trevor?” Nicole said now. Her eyes were searching and open. She was too damn open. Someone had to tell her about that, warn her about that.

  “Did you have something going with one of them at one time?” he asked.

  “It’s funny you ask. Cameron and I did date a few years ago. We're just friends now.”

  “You might be,” Michael pointed out. “But he's not.”

  “No really,” Nicole insisted. “I know, they say women and men can't be friends, but—”

  “They can't,” he interrupted. Then, despite himself, he grinned. “Look at us.”

  That inspired a blush. It was dark in the room, except for the moonlight filtering through the sheer curtains, yet Michael could see the flushed pinkness of Nicole's cheek.

  Again that uncomfortable feeling edged in, the one that made him want to forget this whole thing. He thought about Caleb's money. And then he thought about how it was all too late. Even if he wanted to leave with this job unfinished...well, Lucius wasn't just going to shrug his shoulders and go home. Someone was going to finish the job and if not Michael, then Lucius, or maybe worse than Lucius—that part he still didn't know.

  “You know, you could always sell this house, Nicole. You wouldn't have to work for awhile.”

  “True, but what am I supposed to do if I don't work? I'm twenty-seven. That's too young to live a life of quiet contemplation. You can only read so many books, and you can only philosophize so much while wearing a monocle and velvet robe...”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “You could travel,” he suggested, running his fingers across Nicole's spine. Her skin was so soft, it felt almost satiny.

  “But...why would I want to go anywhere now?” she said, blinking up at him.

  He hoped she wasn’t counting on him to be around. Guilt edged in again. His chest tightened. With a sigh, he tried to expel the feeling. This was dumb. Nicole was sweet, but sex shouldn't change anything. This was a gig, a job. The chemistry between them was just one of those things. Why was Michael stressing so much all of a sudden?

  If he stressed over anything, it should be the fact that he still didn't know the identity of Lucius's partner. Who was this Chatham resident? This person determined to possess the valuable “little girl in a blue dress”?

  There was no reason for Nicole to get hurt, he told himself again. Once he found the painting, he could lift it, broker with Lucius's partner, so that Lucius couldn't short change him, get Caleb his money back, and then be done with it. And everyone would be happy. Eventually. Well, hell—who was really happy, anyway?

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Nicole woke up with Michael's arm wrapped tightly around her; she could feel his face in her hair and his naked body spooning hers without a hint of space between them. She could hear a steady, low-pitched snore coming from him, and she smiled to herself. She hated to move because Michael had her in such a cocoon of an embrace; she didn't want to break the spell or to wake him up. But then she had an itch. It must have been a wisp of her hair that was skating across her face. She ignored it for a few minutes, until it just became too annoying and prickly, and so gingerly she crept her hand up within the wrap of Michael's arm.

  Of course, as she feared, Michael stirred beside her. His snore halted; he cleared his throat and shifted his body. Well...he was sort of awake anyway...and a certain issue was still nagging at her. “Hi,” she said. “I have a question.”

  “That's different,” he mumbled.

  “This one's embarrassing.” Before she lost her nerve, she asked, “Do you have a girlfriend at home?”

  “Shh.” He snuggled closer. “No, of course not.” After a pause: “And why is that embarrassing?”

  Relief swelled in her chest. “Because...if you did, I would be embarrassed right now.”

  “If I did, I should be embarrassed, not you.”

  Probing further, Nicole said, “So when was the last time you had a girlfriend?”

  “Hmm...a couple of years ago now.”

  “Was it serious?”

  “Nah, not really that serious.”

  “What about your last serious thing? I mean, have you ever been in love?”

  “I don't think so.” After a kiss, he drew back and said, “By the way, you know those 'Future is Wild' shows? With all the CGI animals?” Nicole nodded. “I love those. One time I watched a marathon of them on the Discovery channel for about eight hours straight. There is something no one knows about me.”

  Nicole started to speak but Michael swiftly cut her off. “No, no more questions. You have exceeded your limit for the middle of the night. Better luck next time.” Then he pulled her flush up against him, pressing his erection against her bottom, and sliding his warm hand down her stomach. “You're so warm,” he murmured into her hair.

  “So are you,” she said, because his naked body was like a furnace.

  “Warm all over,” he continued, “inside and out...” His hand moved lower. “Yep...it's like a fire down there...” he said, stroking her between her legs. Catching her breath, she sighed and shut her eyes. Soon the conversation drifted away.

  ***

  It was only later that she and Michael swapped ideas about “the treasure.”

  Nicole went first: she told Michael about the “FLOWERS” clue and how she'd realized it to be a reference to the hydrangea flowers that had been delivered to the house when she had first arrived. How her aunt had been the one to order the flowers—specifically three Annabelle hydrangeas—which seemed inevitably connected to “Annabel Lee,” the poem in the book that Nicole had come across in the library.

  Michael threw her for a loop by first gently brushing some errant strands of hair away fr
om her face, and then asking out of nowhere: “Does your aunt have a cellar?”

  “No...” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I was thinking. We've been trying to figure out where your aunt is trying to lead you and we never even considered the cellar. Maybe the treasure—you know, assuming there is one—is down there. But if she doesn't have a cellar, there goes that theory.”

  “No...but you know, it's funny you say that,” Nicole remarked, just remembering. “When Abel showed up he said something about Nina having a wine cellar—but she doesn't have one.” The words that followed seemed to form on their own. “That I know of anyway.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows to her. “What do you think? Think maybe Abel knew something you didn't? He was your aunt's boyfriend, after all.”

  “Oh my God, you're right! Maybe there is a cellar beneath the house and I just never knew. And maybe there's something in there—and Abel knew it and that's why he was so eager to get inside the house! Preferably without me here!” It was all conjecture but it made an eerie kind of sense. “Oh my God,” Nicole murmured, feeling her pulse kick up. “But if there is a cellar, it must not be accessible from inside the house. Maybe there's a trap door on the ground, somewhere around the house? Maybe covered by shrubs?”

  “Sure, maybe,” he agreed. “Although there could be an entrance from inside the house—but not one that's in plain sight.”

  “You think?” she said doubtfully.

  Michael shrugged. “It's possible. Let's look around. If not, we'll check outside.”

  Before they parted, she turned back to him. “By the way, 'Future is Wild' was a good start.”

  Several minutes of exploration passed. Thinking of Caleb's Pub, Michael looked for wall panels that were really doors, knobs or pulls that served as handles, anything like that, when suddenly Nicole called, “Come here! Check this out!” He tracked her voice to the kitchen pantry. It was a large walk-in space with mostly bare shelves. Nicole motioned him to the back corner. “I moved this out,” she said, motioning to a storage cart beside her. “It was shoved in this corner, but look! Behind it, is this handle, and...” She pushed it open.

  “Good job! What made you think of that?”

  Hands out, she shrugged. “Nothing, really. I was just looking all around. And it occurred to me that I didn't know if this big pantry was always a pantry, or had been originally part of another room. It's not like this is a hidden door, as much as an obscured one.”

  Michael led the way.

  With his pulse on edge, he braced himself for anything and nothing. After all, just because the place had a cellar, didn't mean the cellar held the answers—or more specifically, the painting. But still, it made more sense that at least there was one. Considering Nina Corday's house was a traditional home on a large property—why wouldn't there be a cellar?

  In near darkness, they walked down the hollow wooden steps. Since they couldn’t find a switch on the wall, they had only the light streaming in from the kitchen. “Here hold on to me,” he said. A violent chill seemed to shake Nicole; Michael felt her shiver fully behind him.

  “It's freezing down here! Which, if it is a wine cellar, I guess would be okay since Aunt Nina drank only white wine...we really need a flashlight.”

  “There must be a switch somewhere,” Michael maintained, even as the glow from the kitchen dwindled with each inch of descent.

  He knew that Nicole felt safe with him. As it should be—of course he wouldn’t hurt her. Generally speaking, he may be a total bastard in some ways, but he would still find a way to protect her in this.

  Finally, they landed on the cement floor and Michael sighed. “I can't see a goddamn thing.”

  “I should have brought a flashlight,” Nicole grumbled. “Let me go back up and find one.” She leaned against the wall to guide her and just like that she said, “Wait! I think I feel a switch!”

  Suddenly the basement was cast in a dim haze of light. “Nice work, babe,” Michael blurted with a smile, and she smiled back at him. She sidled up close to him again.

  And then she screamed.

  Chapter Forty

  “Holy shit,” Michael muttered, and then held an arm back to keep Nicole from coming closer. “It's a body.”

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, her head buried in Michael's shoulder. “It can't be...”

  Even to her own ears, her voice was a frantic kind of whisper, a scared kind of prayer. It couldn't be except that it was. The body of a man sprawled on the floor about twenty feet away. His face was bluish and distorted looking, and his eyes wide open as if he were staring at them with rapt attention. Despite the dim lighting, the distance between them and the man's frightening appearance, Nicole recognized him. Gripping onto Michael's shirt, she said, “I think that's Abel Kelling!”

  “Oh my God,” Michael said, his voice low, as if he didn't want to disturb the dead. And there could be little doubt this man was dead.

  Suddenly overwhelmed, Nicole swallowed down a lump of emotion. Seeing death like this, up so close, was devastating in a way—chilling, saddening. Especially someone whom she had seen so recently. When had Abel come back to the house? With Nicole being so diligent about security now, how had she missed it? How had the alarm system missed it?

  Unless there was another entrance? One from the outside—?

  “Abel? You're sure?” Michael hadn't met Abel, but Nicole had told him all about him, including how he had stood her up at the Squire.

  Glumly, she gulped and nodded. “Now I see why he never showed up for lunch.”

  “Stay here,” Michael ordered gently and walked toward the body. “Suffice it to say, he's dead…” he remarked and reluctantly prodded the lapels of the man’s coat. “No ID. Unless it's in his back pocket and I'm sure as hell not anxious to look.” Horrified, Nicole grimaced. Just the thought of turning over this lifeless body to rifle through pockets…

  She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to will her breathing to relax.

  “Jesus, he's really dead,” Michael muttered, coming back over. Even though his words were matter-of-fact, Nicole could tell that he was just as bewildered as she. Not that Michael was one to get rattled, but he was definitely stunned. Still, as she observed her own trembling hands, she envied his composure. “What the hell,” he said, pulling her close into his arms. “One day he's inviting you to lunch and now, here he is.”

  “In a sepulchre there by the sea,” she murmured.

  ***

  Some time later the police arrived. They came with the county medical examiner and eventually took the body away. Once the commotion had cleared, Detective Crier remained in the foyer, talking with Nicole and Michael. “So then you don't know how he died?” she asked Detective Crier.

  Crier shook his head, looking defeated. “M.E. says it's hard to say yet. There are no obvious signs, no blatant wounds. Could be natural causes, of course. At this point, there's no reason to assume otherwise. And of course, I'm sure the temperature down here considerably slowed down rigor mortis and everything after.”

  Crier's words were a macabre cluster of jargon that Nicole couldn't indulge; she didn't know anything about rigor mortis or the “everything after,” and even the thought sickened and scared her. “I still don't understand how Abel could be down there in the first place,” she said now. “Without me even knowing it? There must be an entrance from the outside somehow?”

  “Nope. We've checked the perimeter for root cellar doors and ground level windows. Nothing. Only way appears to be through the kitchen. Let me ask you, Miss, is there anything of value in the house?”

  She couldn't help but puff out a breath of incredulity. “Well, a lot of things—to an extent. I mean, Aunt Nina had lots of books, some antique furniture. Oh, and her jewelry.”

  “That's here in the house, too?”

  She nodded. “For now. It really belongs to my sisters...and also my mom and Beth.”

  Detective Crier scribbled briefly in his pad. With
a cursory tone, he asked, “Who's Beth?”

  “My aunt.”

  Quietly, Michael interjected, “Nina had two sisters, then? Your mom and Beth?”

  Initially, Nicole nodded without real comprehension. Then Michael's words sank in. Nicole wasn't the only one with two sisters, and neither was Ginger or Hazel. Aunt Nina herself had been part of a trio of sisters. Three sisters. Three sisters lighthouse? Three—

  “Welp, I suppose that's all I need,” Detective Crier said and abruptly flipped his pad closed. “Once we get the official report from the M.E., we'll know more and hopefully we'll find someone to make a positive identification.”

  “But I told you, it's Abel Kelling.”

  “I know, but you said you really didn't know him too well. It's just a formality, but since there's no wallet or ID... Anyway, like I said, it's probably a case of death by natural causes. The only strange part about it is not knowing the body was here.”

  “Or how he got here,” Nicole said again—not sure why Detective Crier wasn't more stymied himself, even though she'd pretty much belabored the point by now.

  “I'm thinking your aunt might have given him a key? The code to the alarm system? Seeing as how they were an item for a long time, as you said.” At first Nicole was going to concede the point, but then she recalled how Abel had shown up at Tinsdale, specifically asking her for the key. When she relayed this to Detective Crier, he looked decidedly confused. “When was this? How long did you say you've been in town?”

  “Two weeks or so,” she reiterated. “But the conversation I'm referring to was just this past week.”

  Even more confused—or maybe just disbelieving, she couldn't tell which—Crier tilted his head. “Miss Sheffield...I'm afraid not.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked a bit defensively.

  A chill frittered up her spine when he explained: “Because this body is over a month old.”