Wade walked around the table and stopped by Meg’s chair. “Will you come with me?” he asked.
She shot him a questioning look, but he just nodded toward the door. “I guess so.”
They went into the dining room where Wade stopped and surveyed the progress Meg had made that morning. “Wow, look at all this stuff. Who would have thought that Mrs. Ashford had all these interests.”
Meg frowned. “I know she wasn’t thinking clearly when she ordered some of these things, but you’re right. She had a wide range of tastes I never knew about, even if they aren’t exactly typical of a woman her age.”
“So what are you going to do with all this?”
Meg hesitated a moment and then realized she might as well tell Wade about the auction. “I guess you should know. I’m an auctioneer, and this morning at Shady Grove Aunt Amelia asked me to dispose of everything in the house at a public sale. It could get a little hectic around here for a while.”
Far from distressed at the idea of a large crowd wandering over the grounds, Wade seemed almost glad. At least relieved. “That’s a great idea. I was wondering what I was going to do with all of Mrs. Ashford’s…” He paused as if aware that any further comment related to his claim on the property would only irritate Meg. Then he pointed to the entrance to the parlor. “I guess we should go on upstairs.”
They went into the foyer where the wide staircase led to the upper floors. Wade followed Meg up, but took her elbow to prevent her from veering toward the bedroom with the broken screen. “Wait a minute. There’s something on the third floor I want to see. Do you mind?”
“You want to go to the attic? No, I guess I don’t mind, but there’s nothing up there but a small storage room and some old junk. At least that’s all that was there the last time I looked.”
Wade set down the equipment to fix the window and led the way to a door at the end of the upstairs hall. “How long ago was that?” he asked.
“Oh, gee…” Meg had to think. “I don’t remember being in the attic in the last fifteen years. Maybe longer.” She recalled what Jenny had said a few minutes before and decided that the attic really could give someone the creeps. “But if you want to go…”
He was already halfway up the steps, so Meg followed behind him wondering what in the world he was looking for. And wondering why she’d agreed to go to the dark attic alone with him in the first place.
WADE NOTICED two things about the narrow third-floor staircase that he hadn’t seen the only other time he’d been to the attic. One was the musty smell. He doubted that the door to the stairs had been opened very often in the last couple of decades. The other was that the stairway had once been quite elegant. The walls had been papered with a flocked covering whose golden scroll design had mutated to a dingy brown. Every few feet, ornate electric candle sconces, now pitted and dull, suggested that the passage had been lit with a subtle flickering glow—an odd extravagance for a little-used entry to a small attic room.
At the top of the stairs Wade turned the glass knob which wiggled in its setting just as he remembered it from his quick inspection a few weeks ago. As before, he had to use his shoulder to loosen the warped door from the frame.
“I wonder when someone was last up here,” Meg said when she could see into the room.
“It was probably me when I was thinking about making an offer on the house,” Wade answered.
“Then why do you want to come back today?”
“I didn’t look around much that time,” he said. “Today I’m following a hunch, or more accurately, a clue.” He stepped inside the small room and, guided by sunlight from one dormer window and the grimy panes in the turret, he searched for a lamp.
Meg crossed the threshold and stood with her arms wrapped around her waist as if she were making a tight circle of her body to avoid contact with the dusty cast-offs surrounding her. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, picking up a small table lamp from the floor. “But I think I’ll know it when I see it.”
He plugged the cord into an outlet by the door and turned the switch. The lamp crackled menacingly for a second and then maintained a steady, weak light. And a furry creature with four legs jumped from a dresser by the window, scurried across the sill and darted out a hole in the glass to the second-floor roof.
Meg gulped back a squeal. Wade rushed to the window to get a look. “It’s only a squirrel,” he said, watching the little animal run across the gutters. He brushed acorns and assorted nuts from the top of the chest onto the floor. “He’s obviously found a good place for a pantry up here.” Seeing Meg’s expression, Wade added, “I’ll cover that little hole later.”
“All I can think about now is that one squirrel probably isn’t the only nonhuman who’s taken up residence here.”
Wade dusted his hands and examined the open rafters which were veiled with cobwebs. “That’s a good bet. I imagine this room could use a thorough fumigation.”
Her gaze followed his and she shivered. “Okay. Which one of us wants to pay for that?”
He smiled. “It’s one of the joys of home ownership, even if that ownership is still in question. But I have a few bucks left from the loan, so I’ll call someone to come out.”
“Thanks.” She took a couple of steps into the room. “I suppose I’ll have to sell everything up here when I have the auction.”
“Makes sense.”
She ran a finger over the top of an old parlor table which wobbled on spindly legs. Leaving an imprint in the layers of dust, she added, “I don’t look forward to getting these items downstairs for the sale.”
“The auction’s going to be a big job.”
“Tell me about it. And I have to get it done in as short a time as possible and get back to Orlando, assuming I can leave Aunt Amelia.” She lifted the lid on a dome-top trunk that contained musty clothes. “So, if you’re done investigating up here, I’d better get back to work.”
“Actually I haven’t even started.” He went to a corner of the room and began searching along the wall.
“If you’ll give me a hint, I can look, too,” Meg said.
“A painting. I’m looking for a large painting,” he said as his inspection was blocked by a bed standing on end and covered by an old blanket.
Meg rifled through a stack of frames against another wall. “What does the painting look like?”
And then he saw it. Hovering above his head but just below the rafter where the bed stood was a nude cherub with wings on its back and a bunch of grapes in one chubby hand. Wade slid the mattress out of the way and followed the lines of the painting downward. It was a scene of pastoral debauchery. Trees heavy with flowering limbs hung over a meadow populated with buxom, naked women and half-clothed suitors vying for their attention with gifts of wine and cheese and fat loaves of bread. A trio of the mischievous cherubs, obviously male, fluttered overhead, their bright gazes focused on the passion about to explode on the leafy carpet of grass.
Examining the painting from various angles, Wade said, “Ah… Meg, maybe you ought to take a look at this.”
“Oh, you found the painting?” After resting the frames against the wall again, she came up beside him and stared at the mural. Her breath hitched and then sputtered, almost as if she were stifling a burst of laughter. “Oh, my God,” she finally said, “how did that get here?”
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Amazing? It’s bizarre…it’s indescribable…” She angled her head to the side. “It’s disturbing.”
Wade rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Some would call it art,” he said, pretending to appreciate the work’s inner beauty.
“Surely my Uncle Stewie didn’t buy that painting. And my sweet Aunt Amelia never knew that it was up here!”
“I’ll bet she did,” he said. “Just this morning I found someone else in town who knows of its existence.”
She slapped at his arm. “You didn’t! Who?”
&
nbsp; “An old farmer on the outskirts of town. He almost dared me to come up here and look for it.”
Meg blinked hard, took another peek at the mural, and finally settled a stern gaze on Wade. “Why is it here? And more importantly, we have to get rid of it.”
Acting on a hunch, Wade began tapping the surface of the painting. “I think you’ve asked a vital question, Meg,” he said. “Why is this here?”
“What are you doing?”
It was just as he’d thought. There was a lot more to the Ashford House attic than just a small storage room. Why hadn’t he suspected this possibility before now? From the home’s exterior, it was obvious that the third floor should have been a much larger area than indicated by this simple space. “Before we get rid of it,” he said, “I think we should look behind it, at what this mural might be hiding.”
Wade took out his pocket knife, opened the blade and inserted it into a narrow crack where the panel met the wall. Then he wiggled the knife back and forth, up and down the painting until finally the huge mural loosened. Flecks of old paint and rotted wood rained down on them as the panel gave way. Meg spit wood chips from her mouth and fluffed dust motes out of her hair. But she stepped right up next to Wade and lent her support until together they had freed the panel and tugged it from the wall. They laid it facedown on the floor and looked into a space more than twice the size of the storage room.
Wade took Meg’s hand and stepped inside. “Will you look at this?”
The only light came from a second window which Wade realized now was visible from the outside of the house. When he’d first looked in the attic, he’d never wondered about the existence of that other dormer.
“What is all this stuff?” Meg asked.
It was hard to tell what the hulking objects were. One huge table stood against a wall while several smaller ones in half-moon shapes were scattered about the room. An assortment of stools and padded chairs and other oddly fashioned pieces sat haphazardly in no particular order.
A pall of dust hung over everything, shrouding each piece in a thick layer of what looked like smoke-gray powder. Cobwebs, some nearly reaching the floor, drifted from ancient chandeliers. As Meg and Wade walked farther into the room, old floorboards creaked, causing vibrations like tiny earthquakes. The elaborate crystals above their heads tried to tinkle like they once had but the sound was muffled by the intricate weaves of countless spiders.
And then, as Wade’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, it all made sense. The mysterious objects took form and shape. Old Stewie Ashford hadn’t run a simple shell game out of his twelve-room mansion. He’d once operated a fully equipped casino with craps and blackjack tables, a roulette wheel and slot machines. And a racy painting as the primary decoration.
Wade swiped at dust coating the craps table and uncovered chip trays still loaded with booty. Of course the chips weren’t worth anything now, their value being in direct relation to Stewie’s ability to bankroll his gaming enterprise. From the looks of the objects in this room, Wade suspected that the operation had been abandoned hastily, perhaps when the authority to govern such activities had switched to law enforcers who refused to look the other way.
Wade refrained from further exploration of the room when he realized that Meg was gripping his arm with both hands as if they’d stepped into quicksand instead of Stewie Ashford’s questionable history.
“Good grief,” she said. “Is this room what I think it is?” He disengaged his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders, offering the support he sensed she needed.
She swallowed with an audible gulp. “If this were a Dickens novel, I’d say the title should be Miss Havisham goes to Las Vegas.”
Wade laughed at the reference to a book he’d been forced to read in the ninth grade. The image of Miss Havisham came back to him, and he could definitely picture the abandoned bride’s wedding cake sitting in the middle of all this decay.
“I think we may have just found out how your entrepreneur uncle made some of his money,” Wade said. Unfortunately it wasn’t the only alarming discovery Wade had just made. With Meg Hamilton pressed against his body, shivering ever so slightly, he’d discovered that it felt awfully good to have a woman in his arms again. So, he asked a question which he could just as logically have directed at himself. “Are you okay?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOMEWHERE IN THE back of her mind, Meg knew Wade had just asked her a question, but her body was overwhelmed by long-buried sensations, and she couldn’t remember what it was. She turned in his arms, stared into warm chocolate eyes and murmured, “Did you say something?”
“I just asked…” He paused as if he, too, couldn’t remember.
Responding to the subtle pressure of his fingers flexing against her arm, she leaned naturally into him, welcoming the comfort of a strong hand. She was trembling, not so much from shock anymore as from a galloping case of nerves. She hadn’t been this close to a man since David left, since long before actually. And she didn’t know what to do. Or how to act. Or, even worse, how to feel.
His face lowered even closer. Her heart thundered when she felt his breath caress her cheek, when she heard his voice rumble across the small space that separated her lips from his.
“I asked if you were okay,” he said.
She blinked several times. “I…I don’t know. I didn’t expect to see anything like that painting. I never knew about this room or that my uncle…” She stopped rambling when she realized he wasn’t listening. His focus was on her mouth, but he didn’t seem to hear the words coming out of it. Wade Murdock was milliseconds away from kissing her, and she hadn’t done a thing to let him know he shouldn’t. And worse, she was absolutely terrified. “You’re not going to…?” She stopped herself from saying the words because speaking them out loud might cause it to happen.
“To what? Kiss you?”
Good heavens. He knew that she knew. She nodded.
“Frankly, I was thinking about it. It seems like a good idea.”
She shook her head in a succession of frantic little motions. “Well, don’t think about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you hardly know me. And because this house…it stands between us like this giant…thing!”
He glanced down at the juncture where their bodies met, his gaze fanning a sudden warmth where her breasts brushed against his chest. “Meg, I’ve been hearing about you for weeks. I’ve been looking at your pictures. Sorry, but I do know you well enough. And I don’t see anything standing between us right now except for too damn much thinking.” With his free hand he brushed away a wispy filament that had fallen from the ceiling onto her hair. “And maybe a bit of Stewart Ashford’s illegal dust.” He cupped her chin and tipped her face to his.
She raised her hand to his shirtfront, intending to push him away. But her traitorous fist bunched around flannel and she held on.
He lowered his mouth. “I don’t see that any of those things should keep us from doing this.”
She closed her eyes to savor the brush of his lips, like a breeze on a petal, the first promise of a kiss.
“Dad! Where are you?”
Meg jumped back, out of Wade’s reach. “Oh, my God.”
He leaned against the wall and covered his eyes with the back of his hand. “Up here, Jen. We got sidetracked.”
Did we ever! When the backs of her knees hit the seat of a chair, Meg melted into it. Dust rose around her, and she waved her hand briskly in front of her face, an effort to cool feverish skin as much as to disperse the air.
“You’re in the attic?” Jenny called.
“Yeah. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Footsteps sounded on the staircase. “Never mind. I’m coming up. I want to see the attic.”
Meg stood and went through the door to the storage room. “Do you think Jenny should see this?” she asked Wade, pointing to the mural.
Wade followed her out. “Since it’s sitting here with all the subtlety of a whale in a
bathtub, I don’t see how we can hide it.” Wade’s mouth tilted into a sort of scowl. “Unfortunately, I’ve become aware lately that my daughter already knows about the subject matter.”
Meg figured Jen had probably seen worse, considering some music videos today. But she hurried through the doorway and quickly descended the stairs to where Jenny stood with a perplexed look on her face.
“What’s going on up there?” the girl asked.
“Nothing,” Meg answered.
“That’s not the way I saw it,” Wade growled from behind her.
“I was just showing your father…” Meg shot him a look over her shoulder. “…where a squirrel had gotten in the attic through a broken window.”
Jenny drooped against the faded gold wallpaper. “Oh, great. Now he’s got to fix that, too?”
“No, no,” Meg assured her. “You two go on to the park. It can wait.”
Once in the second-floor hallway, Wade retrieved his toolbox and roll of screen. “I’ll just take care of the job in the bedroom before we go.”
Meg waved him toward the stairs. “Don’t be silly. You can do it some other time. The tape I put on the screen last night worked quite well.”
“Are you sure?” He gave her a half smile that defied interpretation and added, “You probably don’t know this about me, but I hate to start something and then leave it unfinished.”
Heat rose to her cheeks. “Some things are best left unfinished.”
He studied her features for a moment and then said, “Okay. We’ll let it go for now.”
She stood at the top of the stairs and watched them go down to the foyer. When they’d disappeared through the house, Meg sat on the top step and leaned against the banister post. She released a breath and thought, What is wrong with you, Meg? It’s not as if you don’t already have enough problems in your life—and certainly enough with this man!
Still she couldn’t erase the memory of that almost kiss. She put a fingertip to her mouth and lightly rubbed her lip in a fruitless attempt to recreate the featherlike feeling of Wade’s mouth on hers. What would it have become? Would it have been a kiss to remember? It didn’t help to wonder, because Meg had to think of it as no more than a shooting star—something to be experienced once and then tucked into the farthest corner of her mind.
Your House or Mine? Page 8