All That Glitters

by Mary Brady

  She threw her head back against the cushion. She had been kissing the man she had known as her enemy, an enemy of the people at large, of her sister.

  The rising tide she almost hadn’t been able to control in her body when he kissed her flooded back into her mind and the feelings rushed through her.

  She wanted the Zachary Hale she had met in Maine.

  Think of pink elephants, she told herself harshly.

  Think of how cute Savanna’s girls are.

  Think of what else might need to be done in the old mansion...

  With Zachary Hale...

  And when they kissed, she wanted him to put his hands on her to fan the flame he had ignited.

  No. No. No.

  In the beginning, when Savanna had first come to her, she had kept an open mind about Zachary Hale, at least about his being solely responsible for the wrongdoing at Hale and Blankenstock. Her sister had been both horrified and embarrassed that she had invested so much in one place and that she had trusted so blindly. Addy knew she had to do something.

  Her sister’s woe had been her own incentive to stop dithering at the bottom of the reporting food chain. She had marched into her old editor’s office at the Times and told him what she planned to do.

  He was less than enthusiastic, especially since she had refused to disclose her source, but since she was writing the story on spec and paying her own way, he had nothing to lose by promising her a big payoff if she tried and succeeded. Try she had, even before the scandal sheets broke the speculation nationwide a couple weeks ago.

  She realized her fingertips were hammering on the top of her computer again and stopped and pressed them to her lips.

  Who had been seducing whom was a mystery never to be solved. The emotion she felt at the time had been real, as real as any kiss could be, but there was no way the rational part of her would have kissed him and wanted more.

  She pushed her palms down the front of her jeans and put her feet up on the ottoman. Zach had rebuffed her offer to help wash the dirt from some of the items they had rescued and she had no real option but to retreat with her things to the loft as there was nowhere else to stay.

  The rooms on the sheltered side of the old home were clearly not equipped to accommodate guests, but maintained in meticulous detailed historic splendor or sparseness, depending on the era the room represented.

  Her sister’s money.

  Savanna’s story had made Addy sit up and recognize the time for self-pity and indignation was over. It didn’t matter that she had been lied to. All she had lost was a great job and her great lifestyle—the point being “her lifestyle.” Savanna had lost her home, her retirement money and her children’s college funds as well as her once great job.

  And Addy had kissed the man responsible, for heaven’s sake, and would have given and taken anything in the moment. She got up and paced the length of the loft until she came to the king-size bed on the far side. The bed was covered with a dark duvet and had matching throw pillows that had been lined up against the headboard. It looked more like a show room than a bachelor’s bed.

  Of course, there was a woman involved. Sexist, but she thought he might not make up a bed so fussily. A cleaning woman perhaps.

  Or another woman...

  Standing at a side window watching the rain run in sheets down the glass, she felt her body begin to hum. His arms had tightened around her, and she had responded immediately. Need flooded through her. Zachary Hale had awoken something in her she did not know existed.

  A storm of another kind.

  How had she gotten so needy all of a sudden? Losing Wesley hadn’t been a great loss because the two of them never truly clicked. There hadn’t been a man in her life whose loss had been more than a casual disruption. Not even her father, wherever on Earth he was.

  Grumpy and hungry, she found a tiny bathroom and then a bag of apples. She ate two and her stomach stopped howling.

  Exhaustion suddenly tugged at her and she sagged down on the couch, put her head on the soft arm and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE AWOKE there was an eerie light coming in the windows. Addy tossed back the quilt covering her, sat up and looked around. Sometime while she slept Zach had covered her and then, hours later, morning had broken in a dull gray. The storm raged on, but it seemed less than it had in the darkness.

  A coffeepot hung on a swing arm in front of flames in the fireplace. The duvet had been flung aside and the sheet and blanket the bed lay crumpled. The loft was empty except for her.

  She carried a cup of coffee into the tiny bathroom. The shower stall looked sparse but inviting. Zach had told her there was an emergency water supply for the bathroom but only cold unless someone heated water and refilled the shower’s reservoir, whatever that entailed. She settled for washing her face and brushing her teeth with water from the plastic jug he had placed on the sink, she supposed for just such a thing.

  Her fleece warm-up suit was dry so she put it back on. When she was finished, she poured herself another cup of coffee and retrieved the bed linens from the breezeway. She folded the sheets and pillowcases, smoothing them as flat as she could on the dining-room table, the only surface big enough to press the old-fashioned cotton into submission. Then she poured herself another cup of the surprisingly good coffee and retired to the couch with her notebook. She tried going online, but even before her laptop powered up, she’d known the internet would be useless.

  She was truly cut off from the world with only Zachary Hale as a companion and she wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. Whether it was a story or a disaster.

  To warm up, she sketched in words, the sounds, smells and sights.

  Then she began to describe the man.

  Zachary Hale is a surprise and a mystery. The smooth operator, the socially adept, the impeccably kempt man who interacted with the world, who swindled (she scratched that out) who allegedly swindled several billion dollars, had another face. Where in Boston he ruled any room he entered with his beautiful presence and authoritative stance, in Maine he ruled because people trusted and liked him.

  She stretched her legs out and rested her feet on the puffy ottoman. For a moment she struggled with the feeling she had last night about being too familiar in Zachary Hale’s hideout. Today she barely tussled with calm acceptance.

  Relaxing, she settled back.

  An occasional wisp of smoke filtered into the shadowy room as the unrelenting wind outside wailed.

  She was Adriana Bonacorda and she could handle anything tossed, hurled or blown in her direction. She smiled smugly. She was even beginning to handle the consequences of the Afghanistan affair.

  It had taken her long enough. The humiliation had paralyzed her and the disappointment had her doubting she was ever any good.

  Her fingers flew across the keyboard producing line after line of shame and regret that had accumulated in her brain around the incident. How physically sick she was when the world called her a liar. How she would have preferred them to think she was just a fool, an honest, stupid fool.

  That’s what she was. Honest and maybe a fool, if wanting to help people made one a fool. But not stupid. She was not stupid.

  The door to the loft opened and Zach entered carrying yet another armload of wood and a bundle of something. He looked so good in his blue jeans and flannel, she almost forgot business suits were his norm.

  His gaze swept the room and stopped on her, lingering, assessing.

  A flush of heat stained her cheeks and made her recoil at the feeling of desire as it washed through her.

  His face, she could see as he approached, was as stormy as the hurricane going on outside. He dropped the wood onto the flagstone floor beside the bin, put two logs on the fire and then walked over to where she sat and stood at the foot of the ottoma
n. His storminess had abated. Replaced by a calm she knew to be practiced and slightly dishonest. She almost smiled at the knowledge. She was getting to know him.

  Feeling no fear, she looked up at him. The smooth, clean planes of his face contrasted with messy hair and the plaid flannel of his shirt. No one had a right to be that good-looking without an airbrush.

  Wait! Smooth planes. He had shaved.

  Zach took the handful of clothing he had brought in with him and dropped it on the broad arm of the chair and tossed a length of rope on top of the pile.

  “I could use your help repairing the tarp and rescuing a few of the heavy things.”

  She looked at the clothes and then at him. The family mansion and its treasures came first. “Of course. I’ll just be a minute.”

  She grabbed the clothing and stood. He didn’t back away as she thought he would. Across the short thirty inches of the ottoman, she was close enough to see the hue of his light brown eyes, the small golden lashes tucked among the long, dark ones, the fine crinkles of chronic concern at the corners of his mouth.

  Instead of leaning across and kissing away the lines, as was her first impulse, she spun and headed for the small bathroom to change into the work clothing.

  The kissing stuff could not happen again. She put the warm flannel shirt on and it hung to the middle of her thighs. She knotted it at the waist and when she slid the jeans on, she laughed. There was no doubt what the rope was for. The jeans were several sizes larger than her waist. She tied the rope around the baggy jeans, slid on a pair of just-right-sized old sneaks and headed back out.

  The mirror in the bathroom had shown her how dreadful she looked and all she could feel was relief. It did not matter what she looked like to Zachary Hale. It did not matter at all.

  He led the way and she grabbed one of the baseball caps from the wooden pegs beside the door as they exited. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she tugged the cap down and hoped it didn’t spring off from the force of her hair.

  Baseball cap was without a doubt her worst look. That should discourage any desire he might have to kiss her again.

  As they passed through the kitchen, she flipped the quilt still draped over the old red-and-white enameled tabletop and one on the chairs to allow it to dry faster.

  Hurrying after his fading footsteps, she joined him in the attic.

  “Oh, no.” She rushed over to the edge that had ripped lose and that he had tried to repair by himself. The wind made the tarp edge flap dangerously.

  “I’m afraid if I pull too hard, I’ll rip the side grommet out. I need you to push against the tarp while I try to string the ropes for a better network to hold the whole thing in place.”

  “Got it.” She stepped in and prepared to brace the tarp.

  “Be careful.” He hunkered down at the corner of the hole in the wall.

  “Yeah, I’m not falling again. I didn’t care much for it the first time.”

  He looked up at her and gave her a bit of a smile and turned away. How, she wondered, on Earth was this man Zachary Hale? There was no humility in that man with the business suit. There was no conceit in this man with the lumberjack shirt. He was willing to do what had to be done.

  Zach had almost won the battle when a blast ripped at the edge of the tarp and he lost hold of the rope. The loose tarp slapped against her and the end of the rope struck her on the cheek. Surprised, she stepped back and her foot dropped as the edge of the damaged floorboard sank under her weight.

  “Addy.” Zach leaped to his feet and grabbed for her, but she scrambled to safety on her own and snatched the flapping tarp from the air.

  When she held out the rope end to him, he paused for a moment and touched her face where the knotted loop had smacked her, then he let his fingers trail downward to her jaw line.

  She blinked as if struck again, but this time by the flash of wild desire that spun through her and he stepped away.

  Taking the rope he hunkered down to settle it around the new anchor he had screwed into place. This time everything worked as planned and they moved on to the four-poster bedroom to finish anchoring the lower end of the tarp.

  “Wait a minute.” He gently took hold of her arm. She spun slowly and looked up into his face. Concern spread out across his features and puzzled her.

  When he produced a flashlight from his pocket and shined it on her cheek she realized what he wanted.

  “I’m fine.” Her cheek stung, but there was nothing to be done for it right now.

  “There will still be ice in the freezer. You should go get some.”

  He held her arm and she could read the burn inside him.

  She froze, lest she throw herself into the arms of the enemy. Maybe he was a fine citizen of Bailey’s Cove. Maybe he was a fine keeper of the family trust, but he was the enemy of the people rich and poor who had been swindled by him.

  The swindler and the man were so at opposite ends of the spectrum in her mind by now, she had trouble convincing herself of anything with regard to him. What did she know was that in Afghanistan she had fallen for the tearful face of a young mother, and she had been “swindled” out of the truth and out of her life as a respected news reporter.

  She was a sucker then and she might be one now. She pulled away, but she wasn’t selfish. “You said there was more to do over here. I’ll help. There’ll be plenty of time for ice later.”

  “If you could help me with the bed.” He nodded toward the four-poster bed, which had gotten wet again in spite of being on the other side of the room. “I need to take it apart to get it out of this room but the mattress should go first.”

  If a raging bull of a man was all that was necessary to get these things moved, Hale would have done the work alone. He was big enough and strong enough but the antiques needed finesse and some of the things required two people.

  The soggy mattress, for instance.

  As they struggled down the steps, she watched him for signs of a cracking facade. Perhaps if she watched closely enough the Zachary Hale she thought she knew in the bigger world would get tired of being hidden behind the wall of humble and begin to show himself. Perhaps in impatience, he might even give up and retreat to the relative luxury of the warm fire. The insurance company would no doubt remediate all of this and put it back to as normal as possible.

  All she saw was a guy working hard to save what his family had collected over the centuries. A man whose every move was beginning to fascinate her and make her uneasy at the same time. When they returned to the four-poster room, they surveyed the bed for the best angle of attack.

  Dark wood, square legs and thick, spiraled posts.

  “Um, this bed is, um...ugly.”

  “It’s pirate’s booty.” His eyes seemed lit by more than the light of the dull day and the sparkle of the lantern.

  “Pirates stole beds?”

  “This one did. The bed was reportedly part of a shipment being sent to the new world that was lost at sea.”

  “How does anyone know?”

  “The bed was handcrafted in the late 1800s. Right up at the edge of the wooden canopy, where there is not supposed to be a mark, is the symbol of one of the workers. He apparently left his mark whenever he could get away with it.” When she craned to see, he put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in to point out the mark.

  He should not touch her. He didn’t know what he was doing could cause her to make a fool of herself.

  She nodded mutely and he continued. “A bed like this one was on the manifest of a ship that disappeared at sea. Then a bed like this showed up here in the early 1800s, less than a year after it was supposed to have disappeared forever in the briny depths.”

  He dropped his hand and she cleared her throat. “Romance, intrigue, pirates, but it’s still...”

  “The ugliest bed you�
�ve seen this side of the ocean?”

  “No, it’s... Well, it’s...”

  His laughter rumbled.

  “Historical,” he said as he reached around to tug down on the brim of her baseball cap.

  “Yes. That’s the word I was looking for. Historical.”

  “If you’d help me get this historical thing apart, we can put it where it won’t be harmed anymore.”

  They removed the overhead wooden canopy first and then took apart the posters and footboard. The sideboards and headboard were next. Luckily the old bed came apart mostly in pieces she could heft.

  With a bit of a struggle, they carried the last and heaviest piece, the headboard down the stairway to the now crowded dining room.

  “What next?” Addy asked, knowing what she wanted and wondered if he felt at least an inkling of what she did or if she had imagined it all.

  “We might be able to move that chunk of beam and get the other braided rug out from underneath.” He looked over where she was arranging some of the dark velvet curtains from the four-poster bed. “So what do you think? Are you feeling strong?”

  She held up her arms and flexed her biceps.

  “Impressive,” he said even though she knew he could not tell muscle from shirtsleeve in the overlarge work clothes she wore. “Thank you, Addy, for your help.”

  It seemed like the right thing to do whether she got story material from it or not.

  “You’re welcome. I can almost tell some of the family stories just by handling the things. The bed, for instance. There have to be many stories, big stories, involving a bed that a pirate stole.” He studied her and she added, “I wasn’t speaking news stories, but tales that should be told nonetheless.”

  “Too many secrets.”

  She gave a wolfish laugh. “All the better, my dear. I would guess the braided rug is made from articles of clothing collected from the family over the years.”

  “By a woman called Ma Kimball. Apparently nothing went to waste during her reign.”