by Dani Wade
Tate completely bypassed her, focusing all of his attention on Mr. Hobbins, the company’s owner. Only the best for Sabatini House. Despite the need to help rising up in her, watching both the men was amusing in its own way.
Mr. Hobbins was obviously used to dealing with Murdoch. He glanced back and forth between Tate and her with a bemused expression, then looked behind Tate for good measure, as though Murdoch might be hiding there. He quickly recovered and offered Tate a “Good afternoon.”
For his part, Tate exuded control and authority. But he didn’t indulge in small talk. In fact, he didn’t reach out to shake the man’s hand, either. He launched into an explanation of the current issues that needed addressing. Mr. Hobbins’s expression quickly transformed from polite to all business. They discussed what would need to be done, and Tate waved away the offer of an estimate. “Just do it right, whatever that costs. And quickly. We’ve got some more rain coming in later this week. We don’t need new damage.”
They walked away, Tate passing along instructions about reinspecting the entire roof. He never looked her way, increasing the keep away vibes, but Mr. Hobbins threw her a perplexed look before walking out the doorway. A whole wealth of confusion and curiosity resided in that glance, but he didn’t say anything.
“Yeah, you and me both, buddy,” she murmured, conscious of her own confusion and uncertainty. Which seemed to grow with every encounter she had with Tate. Close or not.
Tate’s refusal to let her help only increased her curiosity about the third floor. Unfortunately, that was the one area where her impulse control had always been weak. She was smart enough to stay in the kitchen until he had finished barking orders and retired to his office. Now the sound of the ocean waves was punctuated by the pounding of hammers and grating of saws. Only when she deemed it clear did she grab the handle of her suitcase and drag it up the back stairs.
Chagrined at how out of breath the task made her, Willow paused just inside the door to her bedroom for a bit of a rest. The bedroom was not so temporary now, thank goodness. Hopefully Mr. Hobbins would at least raise the room’s safety standards by that night. Tate would want to avoid a repeat of this morning just as much as she did.
Next time she might not be able to brush it off as well.
The bed frame had been moved and a ladder set up beneath the hole in the ceiling. A stack of tools and stuff lay nearby. She hefted her suitcase to the dresser top so it wouldn’t be in the way. She took out the clothes on hangers, which she’d packed on top, and put them in the closet.
On her way back to her suitcase, voices from the upper floor caught her attention. It was just the workers talking, but it was a reminder of where she wished she was instead of down here unpacking. After a paranoid glance behind her, Willow inched under the damaged ceiling until she could see into the room above.
Her view was limited, but the first thing to catch her eye was an antique rolltop desk. The dull wood left the impression of years’ worth of dust coating it and the slatted chair pulled up close. A couple of boxes occupied the space in front of it, blocking access. Slowly Willow rotated to the right, as if moving too fast might give away her intent.
That was when she caught sight of the trunks, which brought a smile to her face. They weren’t new plastic and metal pieces. Oh no. These were the real deal, genuine antiques. Leather and handmade nails, if she was seeing correctly from this far away. That was exactly what she had hoped for...exactly where she needed to look.
If she could just find some paperwork proving how the Kingstons had been involved in the tragic historic event that ended with her family being driven from town, her heart would be satisfied. Her discovery wouldn’t be for public consumption, but would serve as validation for the Harden sisters, who were all that was left of their family. If what her great-grandmother suspected was true, their mother’s insistence that their family was innocent of the crime would be justified...at least to them.
Her frustration at not being able to go right up burned in her, but greed wasn’t very ladylike. The trunks looked like they’d been sitting in the same spot for decades. A few more days wouldn’t hurt anything. But if she could find what she was looking for, it would clear her family name. Not that anyone would care but her and her sisters.
Still, it was the principle of the thing.
“Ma’am?”
Willow quickly controlled her instinctive need to either yelp or jump or both. After a deep breath, she turned to the workman who had appeared in the doorway. “Yes?”
“We’re about to start cutting the ruined parts out of this here ceiling. I need to get this stuff covered.”
“Of course. Let me help you.”
He protested, but she kept right on working. At least he couldn’t order her to stop like Tate. Between the two of them they quickly tarped the remaining furniture and the antique rug. He did insist on moving her open suitcase into the walk-in closet for her, then left her to continue unpacking with a closed door to keep the construction dust out.
She pulled out a couple of changes of clothes. The rest could wait until her bedroom was complete. But the ticking clock in her head told her to hurry. The new mattress should be delivered within an hour, and she needed to be back downstairs to unlock the gates.
Grabbing a couple of T-shirts, she walked to some empty shelves. She’d gone only a few feet when she heard a light thud on the carpeted floor. Bending over to get a better look in the dim light of the closet, she quickly straightened back up in shock. An unreasonable fear kept her still for long moments. Logically she knew she was being ridiculous. Still her heart thudded hard in her ears.
Finally she forced herself to bend over and pick the object up from the floor. A ring, to be exact. One she recognized all too well. It had been in her family for generations. Blessed, her auntie called it. Given by a pirate who’d turned respectable to the most desirable woman in all of Savannah. The founding couple of their familial line.
A ring said to bring the woman who wore it true abiding love. So why the heck would anyone think Willow would need it at Sabatini House and pack it in her suitcase when she wasn’t looking?
Five
“So...” Willow paused for dramatic effect. “Whose brilliant idea was this?”
She slid the antique emerald ring onto the dining room table at her family’s weekly Sunday dinner. Each person sitting around the table received a moment of intense study, except Rosie, who, at only nine months old, couldn’t have been involved.
When her older sister, Jasmine, pressed her lips together as if suppressing a smile, Willow had her culprit. “This isn’t funny,” she complained, wincing at the slight whine in her protest.
Jasmine’s fiancé, Royce, had to add his two cents’ worth. “We just want to see you as happy as we are,” he teased.
“Since when are you buying into this pirate legend business?”
He hugged Jasmine to him. “Why not? I’ve got the proof right here. After all, your sister wore that ring almost the entire time she worked on planning the masquerade event for me.”
“Well, the last thing I need to do is romance my boss,” Willow said. Their youngest sister, Ivy, scoffed before pushing back from the table and crossing to the stove. Her back was stiff, giving her a closed-off look.
“You okay, Ivy?” Willow asked.
Her sister didn’t respond, which worried Willow. She had always been close with Ivy, even more so since Jasmine had adopted Rosie. Their oldest sister had taken on a huge responsibility and gone through a lot of changes in the last year. Willow and Ivy had turned to each other as confidantes rather than add to their sister’s stress.
As she watched Ivy, it occurred to Willow that it had been a couple of weeks since she’d had a good talk with her younger sister. First she’d been preparing for her new job, and then living at Sabatini House had cut back on the time they spent together. She should
see if she could have her sister out there. Maybe seeing the awesome house would distract her from whatever was bothering her or give her a chance to open up about it.
Of course, it might take a miracle to talk Tate into letting her have a stranger in the house. She’d better hold off on that conversation for a while.
She turned back to Jasmine and Royce. “He definitely has his own ideas about how things should be done,” Willow said. “Where I can go and what I can do. I mean, I realize this is his home, but I’m beginning to think Tate is überparanoid.”
Except he didn’t give off a paranoid vibe. So she couldn’t quite grasp what the issue is. “And being in control is the be-all, end-all for him.”
Jasmine cast an arch glance at her fiancé. “Well, men tend to be that way.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re wrong,” Royce said, “for all the good it does us.” His smile was amused instead of defensive, though.
Jasmine and Royce had clashed about how things should be done from the moment he’d hired her to coordinate a charity event for him. As Willow watched them now, she was amazed. For two people who had often butted heads, their love for each other and Jasmine’s adopted daughter, Rosie, was palpable.
Of course, they’d overcome a lot to get that way.
“It’s just...” Willow struggled to put her feelings about her new job, and her new boss, into words. Though not all her feelings—the last thing she wanted to discuss with Royce was the disturbing amount of lust that colored her every interaction with Tate. “I don’t understand. Why is he so defensive? What’s he hiding in all those rooms? And what does he do with himself all day? I mean, I know he’s a writer. Is he writing all day? About what?” The frustrating lack of answers left her antsy.
Ivy turned away from the stove, where she was putting the finishing touches on the marinara sauce, to ask, “What do you mean?” Her earlier stiffness seemed to be gone.
“Well, after we did the house tour, he went upstairs and I didn’t see him again. He just silently appeared almost the minute dinner was on the table.”
Ivy snickered. “I can see that driving you crazy.”
Meanie. “I just want to know!”
He had to have been locked up in his office all afternoon. She’d never heard him moving around and hadn’t seen him the few times she’d gone up to check on the workman in her bedroom. He’d never been in the workout room when she’d gone into the basement to wash the dirty bedclothes. “What was he doing with himself for so many hours on end?”
“Why do you care?” Royce asked. Then he glanced around as the other women laughed. “What?”
“Willow is notoriously curious,” Jasmine explained. “So the more Tate Kingston tries to hide things from her, the more she’s gonna want to dig.”
“I can’t help it,” Willow protested. “He’s just so secretive and closemouthed and...”
“Sexy?” Ivy teased.
“Yes.” Willow sighed, lured into the answer by her sister’s lighter expression. Then Willow shook her head. “No, no, he’s not.”
Auntie threw in her two cents’ worth while she supervised Rosie in her high chair. “Methinks she protests too much...”
“Auntie!” Willow’s cursed pale complexion flushed hotly. “He’s frustrating, that’s what he is.”
“Because he wants to keep his privacy?” Royce asked.
Willow could tell this whole conversation had him confused. Trying to explain it to him when she felt she couldn’t be completely open was confusing for Willow, too. The sisters and Auntie had long been on their own and weren’t used to male input yet.
Auntie wasn’t really their aunt at all. She’d been their mother’s nanny when she was little and their grandmother’s best friend. Auntie and the Harden sisters had all lived together in this house since their parents had died in a car accident. Until Jasmine had fallen in love with Royce. Then she and Rosie had moved out.
Since the sisters had come to live with Auntie, they’d never had a man in the house. Not a boyfriend or lover or spouse had lived there. It had just been the girls.
Royce’s presence changed things. Though Jasmine and Rosie had moved into his penthouse in historic Savannah, they were here as often as not.
Ivy grinned at Willow as she carried the pot of sauce to the table and set it on a trivet. “You know that secrecy means he has some kind of tragic past,” she said.
“You are so melodramatic,” Willow scoffed, but deep down...
Ivy took her chair with a knowing look. “But I’m right.”
Jasmine gasped, theatrically laying her hands over her heart. “I bet if you wore the ring you could get him to fall in love with you,” she teased. “Then you would know all his secrets.”
Ivy groaned. The out-of-character response caused Willow to cast her a worried glance. “What’s the matter, Ivy? I thought you were a believer in the family ring?”
Jasmine piped up. “I definitely am.”
“Oh, hush,” Ivy said, and left the room.
“What’s the matter with her?” Royce asked, though her disappearance didn’t stop him from digging into dinner.
Jasmine smiled, but her expression was a little sad around the edges. “She’s a little testy at the moment. The legend of the ring starts with a pirate who found it and used it to win over his true love. She was an upper-class woman who never would have been within his reach before that. But he married her and started our family line.”
Royce nodded. “What does that have to do with Ivy? You wore the ring the whole time we were working together, right?”
“Yes, sir.” The furrow between Jasmine’s brows deepened. “But Ivy wore it the night of the masquerade.”
They all fell quiet for a moment. Something had happened between Ivy and her boss on the night of the masquerade ball that Jasmine had planned as a charity fund-raiser for Royce and his company. Only Jasmine and Willow knew that her boss had taken Ivy to his bed. The next morning, he had left to deal with a problem at one of his manufacturing plants. That was three weeks ago. Bless her heart.
“I think I’ll hold off on wearing the ring,” Willow said, turning it over and over in her hand. The lighting caused the teardrop-shaped emerald-and-gold filigree to glitter and spark. Almost to herself she mused, “I’ve gotten myself in enough trouble already.”
“How so?” Jasmine asked.
The last thing Willow wanted to talk about was ending up in Tate’s bed or waking up to him wrapped around her body like a real lover. Or what a hard time she was having forgetting those heated moments before he’d woken.
So she chose a safer topic. “My whole purpose in going to Sabatini House didn’t have anything to do with Tate. If he keeps everything locked down, I’ll have wasted my whole summer on a wild-goose chase.”
Not that the memory of Tate’s body against hers could ever be considered a waste.
“What are you talking about?” Jasmine asked.
Willow caught Auntie’s gaze. “I read the journal.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jasmine and Royce exchange a glance. She figured she better explain before the questions started.
“Auntie gave me our great-grandmother’s journal.”
“I found it in the attic, in the same trunk as the ring,” Auntie interjected.
Willow had spent many a rainy afternoon prowling through the old trunks in their attic with Auntie. It was how she’d come by her love of antiques and mysteries.
“While I was reading the journal, I came across some speculation from great-grandmother about who was really responsible for the tragedy that eventually drove them out of town.”
Royce jumped in. “This is about the sabotage of the rival company’s ship, right?”
Willow nodded. “The accusation was that our great-grandfather, a direct descendent of a pirate, sunk the biggest
ship of a rival by setting it on fire to give his own shipping company an advantage. That family’s eldest son and heir was on the ship the night it caught fire and died.”
“Great-Grandfather vehemently denied any involvement,” Jasmine added, “but no one believed him. The rival family threatened first his business, then his wife and child. He felt he had no choice but to skip town.”
Willow drew in a deep breath before saying, “But Great-Grandmother knew there were other shipping companies that would have been happy to get a lead over that same rival. Possibly even the Kingstons.”
The others stared at her with wide eyes. Even Rosie seemed to focus in on her, as if sensing something wasn’t right in her world.
“Oh, Willow,” Jasmine finally breathed. “Please be careful.”
Willow shrugged off her concern. “It’s just a piece of history now. At least, to most people. But it’s our history. I, for one, would like to know the truth.”
“I don’t know about this,” Royce said.
“I do,” Willow said. “Our family history means a lot to me. And that truth just might be hiding in a trunk on Sabatini House’s third floor. I want to find it.”
The question remained, was she willing to defy Tate Kingston to find her answers?
* * *
Willow set his plate in front of him on the table in silence. She didn’t offer any pleasantries with the food. Of course, he didn’t, either.
Tate had gone out of his way to get this situation back to strictly business. It didn’t help him forget the feel of Willow’s body against his, but at least a professional attitude kept him from reaching for her whenever she walked by him.
He kept all answers precise and as short as possible. Small talk wasn’t an issue...he wasn’t good at that anyway. And he certainly never addressed anything personal. She probably thought he hated her—and that was best for everyone.