by JoAnn Ross
She peered closely at the cardboard tags. Dash turned on the overhead dome light.
“Thanks.” She selected one small brass key. “This is for the gate, these two operate the house alarm, and the others are for various doors and dead bolts.”
The key worked. The gate opened, automatically closing behind them. A glowing full moon cut through the mist, bathing the house in a soft silver light. Eschewing the Victorian architecture of Port Vancouver, the original owner had erected a lasting tribute to his New England roots. Approaching the vast New England clapboard house with its wide wraparound porch was like time-traveling back to the days when men sailed the seas on tall-masted whaling ships, when handsome carriages with finely dressed ladies and gentlemen traversed the country lanes.
The house had been stained a light bluish gray, making it appear as if the wood had been faded by weather and time. A total of seven tall brick chimneys rose from the roof to merge with the tall clusters of Douglas firs surrounding it. Having met Darcy when the older man was living in a one-room beach bungalow, Dash was astounded by its size.
“How many rooms does this place have, anyway?” he asked as he drove up the winding stone driveway and stopped in front of the sprawling house.
“Tons,” Claren said. “I’ve never counted them. I do remember the realtor telling Uncle Darcy that there were separate bedrooms for each of the children, and their nannies, along with a requisite number of guest rooms for visitors from Seattle. In those days it was quite a trip.”
Dash had been hoping for something a little less sprawling. Searching every nook and cranny in this place could take a very long time. When Dash viewed the state-of-the-art security system Darcy had installed, he felt his heart sink.
He’d been hoping, against all appearances, that Darcy O’Neill was the innocent painter-cum-treasure-hunter he’d allegedly been. Unfortunately things were looking worse by the minute. The only question now was whether Darcy’s niece was on the level.
Dash had made the mistake of trusting a female before, a television anchorwoman with incredible dark eyes that he’d bedded in Moscow. Unfortunately the woman had been using him, as he himself had used so many others over the years. It certainly hadn’t been his first close call, but it had taught him an important lesson. He still carried the scar to remind him that sometimes it was the most beautiful, innocent-looking woman who could turn out to be the most deadly.
Claren located the keys to both the door and the alarm, allowing them to enter the house. The spectacular two-story entry hall was adorned with gleaming hardwood floors and was flanked by curving dual staircases. The finials on the staircases and the high ceiling moldings had been hand carved from Honduran mahogany.
“The bedrooms are all upstairs,” she said. “On this floor there’s a solarium garden room, several powder rooms, a dining room, the formal parlor and various smaller sitting rooms, a music room, a ballroom, a library and a remodeled, modern kitchen. Oh, and a media room.”
“I thought Darcy hated television.” Dash was beginning to wonder if he’d known anything about Darcy O’Neill. Dash had thought he’d experienced wealth. But he’d never, in his wildest fantasies, imagined such baronial splendor.
“Oh, he does. But he loves watching videotapes of his various expeditions.”
Noting once again that she’d referred to her uncle in the present tense, Dash followed Claren down the hall into the kitchen. “Fortunately I never got around to having the electricity turned off,” she said as she began putting the groceries into the vast refrigerator.
From the way Darcy had talked about his niece, Dash knew that Claren was definitely not a slacker. Nor was she one to procrastinate. Although her uncle had been extremely vocal about his disapproval of her chosen career, he’d admitted that she was brilliant at her job. And Dash knew that running a hotel, especially a five-diamond one like a Whitfield Palace Hotel, required the same attention to detail employed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in planning an invasion.
“Perhaps you didn’t get around to it because deep down you had no real intention of selling the house.”
She leaned against the black glass of the refrigerator door, popped a berry into her mouth and considered his suggestion. “You know,” she said, “as much as I hate to give you any credit for sensitivity, after that outrageous display in the 7-Eleven, I do believe you may be right.”
“You sound surprised. Don’t you think I can be sensitive to a woman’s feelings when the occasion calls for it?”
Claren gave him a long look. “Honestly,” she admitted finally, “I still haven’t decided what I think of you.”
“Yes, you have,” Dash corrected, coming to stand in front of her. When his fingers brushed against her neck, Claren felt both strength and tenderness in the intimate gesture. “What you haven’t decided is what you’re going to do about the way you feel.”
He was incredibly arrogant. But so, so right. She was drawn to him, frighteningly so. But she also still harbored enough common sense to realize that an affair with this man, no matter how brief, would leave her changed in ways she could not even begin to predict.
“You’re a tough man to figure,” she said.
“Not that tough. I’m simply a realist, Irish.”
Claren smiled at that. “I don’t think there’s a single simple thing about you.” She dragged her hands through her hair. “However, this is no time to dwell on it. I’ve had a very long and very strange day, and if you don’t mind, I’m going to go to bed.”
Brushing past him, she left the kitchen, using the back servant’s stairs to reach the second-floor bedrooms, all too aware of Dash following close behind her.
“You can have the Cascade Room,” she said, gesturing toward a door on the left side of the hall. “It has a mountain view. Unless you’d rather have a view of the strait.”
“Mountains are fine. Where are you going to sleep?”
“I thought I’d take the Snoqualmie Room,” she said. “It’s across the hall.”
No connecting door. Dash told himself it was all for the best. “Not exactly how you thought you’d be spending your wedding night, is it, Irish?”
She tried a smile that failed miserably. “No,” she admitted, “it most definitely isn’t. But, as Scarlett said, tomorrow is another day.”
Dash found himself admiring the way she had of rallying against adversity. Darcy had said Claren had spunk. Once again Darcy was right.
“If we were living back in Scarlett’s day, I would have called Byrd out for you,” he said. “It would have been a duty I think I’d have enjoyed. Immensely.”
“A duel.” Claren’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm. “What a marvelous idea. But why would it be your duty? After all, we’ve only just met.”
“Did Byrd hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Then it would be my duty. As a man, and your protector.”
She arched a russet brow. “Protector?”
“Darcy’s dead. Someone has to take care of you.”
Claren noticed he was no longer talking in the past tense. “I appreciate that, Dash,” she said softly. “But I think I’d prefer to take care of myself. In fact,” she considered brightly, “it is too bad we’re living in civilized times because the more I think about it, the more I believe I would have enjoyed having a duel over my honor. But I would have wanted to be the one meeting Elliott on the green at dawn.”
“Pistols or swords?”
“Pistols.” Claren smiled. “They’re swifter. And undoubtedly tidier.”
The funny thing was, Dash considered later as he lay in the oversize bed and contemplated the plaster swirls on the ceiling, if times were different, Claren probably would have insisted on calling Byrd out for whatever sin he’d committed against her.
The idea, as outrageous as it was, made him smile.
* * *
THE SOFT CREAK of the door across the hall woke Dash instantly. Always a light sleeper, he was even more so when he was
working. On more than one occasion, including that near-fatal mistake in Moscow, his life had depended on his ability to become immediately alert.
Claren jumped when he flung open the door. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, staring at the deadly-looking pistol in his hand. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Watching her gather the edges of the emerald-green silk robe together, Dash knew he’d blown it. He slowly lowered the Browning automatic to his side. She was staring at the pistol as if she’d never seen a gun before.
“What kind of a handyman wakes up waving a gun?”
“I wasn’t waving it.”
“No,” she agreed, “you weren’t. You were pointing it. Directly at me.”
“I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.”
His casual tone concerning such an uncasual situation grated on her nerves. “You’ve no idea how relieved I am to hear that,” she said dryly. “But that still doesn’t explain what you were doing in my house,” she pointed out, “with a gun.” She glared down at the steel pistol in his hand. “I don’t like guns. They’re dangerous. And ugly.”
“Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. As for dangerous, crossing the street can be dangerous. You never know when you might get run over by a bus.”
Irritation steamrolled over her earlier fear. “Why do I have the feeling that more people are killed by guns every year than run over by buses?” She folded her arms across her chest and gave him a long challenging look.
Dash shrugged. “Perhaps,” he acknowledged reluctantly. “But that’s because most people don’t know how to handle them properly.”
“And you do.” It was not a question. From the moment she’d seen it in his hand, Claren had known that this was a man accustomed to the violence that came with such a deadly-looking weapon.
“Yes. I do.”
Only three short words. But they spoke volumes. A long, drawn-out silence settled over them. Claren was the first to break it.
“I’m going downstairs to make some coffee,” she said with an aplomb she was a long, long way from feeling. “I’m always a zombie until I get my morning jolt of caffeine.”
“I don’t know,” Dash drawled, relieved when she seemed willing to drop the subject of the damn gun. “I think you look great. Kind of cute and tousled.”
Was he actually arrogant enough to think that one not very original compliment would make her forget that only minutes ago she’d had the horrid steel barrel of a gun pointed her way?
She pulled the sash on her robe tighter. “It’s not going to work, MacKenzie.”
“What’s not going to work?”
“Trying to throw me off the track by telling me I look cute. And tousled.” She practically bit the words off. “Why don’t you take your shower,” she suggested. “By then the coffee should be ready, and over breakfast you can tell me why you feel the need to sleep with a gun.”
Turning her back on him, she went down the hall, the silk of the robe swishing seductively, outlining the firm lines of her legs.
Dash stood under the pelting hot water, trying out stories and rejecting them. This wasn’t some airhead bimbo; Claren O’Neill Wainwright was an intelligent, perceptive woman. Rubbing himself dry with a fragrant blue bath towel, he knew that she’d see through an out-and-out lie.
But as Dash yanked on his jeans, he also acknowledged that he couldn’t tell her the truth. Not without undermining months of undercover work and possibly endangering lives.
The thing to do, Dash had decided by the time he reached the kitchen, was to tell Claren enough to allay her suspicions without blowing the entire operation—an operation that included agents from four continents and ten different governments—sky-high.
He was relieved when there was no outward sign of her earlier anger. She greeted him with a smile and placed a mug of hot, steaming coffee, a bowl of fresh berries and a perfectly toasted English muffin in front of him.
“This looks great,” he said enthusiastically.
“I’m so glad you approve,” she said with saccharine sweetness, “since I spent at least three minutes slaving over a hot toaster oven.”
He took a drink of coffee and was surprised to find it as strong and black as he liked it. Too many women brewed coffee with the wimpy strength of herbal tea. “It’s the thought that counts.”
“Speaking of thoughts,” she said, eyeing him over the rim of her own mug, “I believe it’s time I told you about Elliott.”
That, Dash considered, was an excellent idea. If she spent the morning ragging on her former fiancé, perhaps she’d forget about the gun. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
She smiled. “Oh, but I do. Because, as you’ll soon see, there’s a moral to my little tale of woe. One I believe you should understand before this goes any further.”
“Before what goes any further?”
“Our relationship.”
Dash had always considered relationship to be one of those talk-show female words. Lord knows, his wife had constantly harped about all the things that were wrong with theirs. “I didn’t realize we had a relationship.”
Liar, Claren thought. “I met Elliott when I first arrived in Seattle. In a way, he was my lifeline. I also considered him a paragon of virtue. So much so that I spent twelve years trying to fit myself into his extreme narrow mold.”
“Must have been tough,” Dash mumbled around a mouth of muffin.
“It was. But I thought I was in love.” Claren had been thinking about it all night. “I now realize that it was simply a crush that I never outgrew.”
“And that’s why you called off the wedding?”
“No.”
“So what happened? Did you catch him in the arms of a stripper the night before the big day?”
Dash couldn’t remember his own bachelor party. But the following day his best man—Julia’s brother—had assured him that he’d enjoyed himself immensely.
“Close.” Claren felt her temper beginning to flare all over again. She took a drink of coffee, popped a plump juicy blackberry into her mouth and struggled for calm. “Although I don’t want to sound immodest, our wedding was the social event of the season. Needless to say, several society reporters were in attendance.”
Dash remembered that. All too well. “That figures.”
“Yes.” Her smile was tight and failed to reach her eyes. “Well, one reporter in particular, an annoying young man from the Seattle Observer—a tacky little tabloid shopper specializing in sensationalism—asked me what I thought of the lawsuit filed that morning against my husband-to-be.”
“Someone was suing Byrd?” Dash asked, irritated that St. John’s army of investigators hadn’t uncovered a potential lawsuit. “For what?”
Emerald sparks flared in her eyes. “Actually it was a paternity suit.”
It was all Dash could do not to spit his coffee across the table. “You’re joking.”
“I didn’t find it a joking matter. Neither did Elliott, naturally.”
“Naturally,” Dash agreed. “I take it he denied it.”
“Oh, yes. He was adamant that the child couldn’t possibly be his.”
“He wouldn’t be the first guy to deny fooling around,” Dash pointed out.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she countered. “Elliott didn’t deny sleeping with the woman. He did, however, deny fathering her child.”
“And you didn’t believe him. So you called the wedding off.”
“But I did believe him. Because he had absolute proof that although he had gone to bed with the woman, on numerous occasions, it turns out, he couldn’t possibly be the child’s father.”
“A blood test?”
“Something more conclusive than that. The fact of the matter was that Elliott had had a vasectomy.”
There was more to this. Something he still couldn’t get a handle on. “That would do it,” Dash agreed. “I take it he hadn’t let the woman in on his little snip job.”
“Actually,” Claren
said, her voice turning tight and coldly furious, “he hadn’t let any of the women in his life know about his surgery.”
Dash lifted a black brow. “Are you saying—”
“Elliott knew I wanted children—I talked about it all the time—and he purposely chose to deceive me. That’s why I didn’t go through with the marriage,” she said. “And that is also when I realized that the man I’d thought I’d fallen in love with was nothing but a self-indulgent, egocentric fake. A fake and a liar.
“So now you know why I spent my wedding night alone,” she said, looking Dash straight in the eye. “And you also know that the one thing I cannot—will not—put up with is someone lying to me. So,” she said, giving him a smile he didn’t quite trust, “why don’t you tell me exactly why you’re carrying that horrid-looking gun around?”
“It’s a long story.”
She put her elbows on the table, linked her fingers together and rested her chin on her joined hands. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Realizing that he’d pushed himself into a very tight corner, Dash proceeded to try to extricate himself. “Did Darcy tell you what ship he was looking for?”
“The Maria Theresa,” she said promptly. “She was a Spanish galleon that reportedly foundered in a hurricane in 1724. Other reports have her looted, then sunk by pirates. Known by treasure seekers as a ‘ghost galleon,’ she’s been rumored to lie in several different places, from off Puerto Rico in the Atlantic, to Cuba, Vera Cruz and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. One report has her sunk off the northeast coast of South America.”
So Darcy did share his passion with his niece in detail. Dash found that idea both interesting and unsettling. The more he got to know her, the more Dash wanted to believe that St. John was wrong about this woman’s being involved in such a heinous crime.
“Do you know what she was supposedly carrying?”
“Quicksilver, which was needed by the Spanish to amalgamate gold and silver from New World ore,” Claren answered. “Along with wine, gunpowder, personal effects of crew and passengers—many of whom were wealthy Cuban plantation owners—and several exquisite gifts from the governor of Nueva Isabela, which is now Santo Domingo, to Louis, the new king of Spain. Even if the ship had arrived back in Lisbon safely, Louis would have been dead, and his father, Philip V, would have returned to the throne, but I suppose it all would have just stayed in the family. Especially since there were also gifts meant for other members of the Bourbon family.