She struggled to sit up, wishing that she didn’t so easily turn to lobster red. Leif’s hand trailed down her back as she sat, and she stared at him with blue fire sizzling in her eyes, forgetting for that moment that she had determined to be sweet. He was laughing—as were Tiger, Sam, and Jamie, who were just outside the open driver’s door of the Jaguar.
“Better brush your hair before we go in,” Leif warned her, but subtle humor was in his eyes.
“Glad to have you with us again, Tracy!” Tiger said. “Guess we’d better get on in and help Liz and Blake hold down a table!”
Jamie winked at her and followed Tiger and Sam.
Tracy started to swear beneath her breath, and Leif burst into laughter. “Careful, luv, your claws are showing.” He reached down to the floor where her hat had fallen, then to her temple, where her hair still fell in disarray. There was something about his gaze, something about his touch that held her still.
“He’s a brat,” she muttered.
“Jamie? Not really; he’s not a bad kid at all. There— tug down that brim of yours and we’re all set.”
Tracy pulled her hat low. Leif came around and opened her door and took her hand when she stepped out of the car. She started to pull it away. His grip tightened and she noted that he was watching the others as they came to the restaurant door. She bit her lip and went rigid, but ceased her useless fight for the retrieval of her hand.
“Leif, I give up. I’m not sure which, but you’re planning on hanging either my mother, my stepfather, or my grandfather. Why the charade for Tiger and Sam?”
He glanced her way, pausing to open the door for her. “I’m not ready to hang anyone.”
“You’re convinced that one of them is guilty—or something.”
“All of them are guilty—of something.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I haven’t vindicated anyone. Does that help?”
She laughed suddenly. “Leif, what are you planning— an Agatha Christie finale? We’ll all gather in the grand salon and recreate the crime?”
He smiled at her, his eyes light and silver, and a mystery.
“Hercule Poirot, at your service, ma’am.”
“Oh, Lord, save us,” Tracy murmured, and she went on through the door. He moved his hand to the small of her back to guide her, and she felt a trickle of exciting warmth that frightened and appalled her. She still cared for him, she knew. Still found it terribly easy to fall under his spell.
It was a small family-run Italian restaurant, very dark and quiet. They had a table in a little alcove, and apparently Leif was a valued customer, because homemade wine came their way, and an aromatic collection of pastas and delicacies. They’d really only intended to stop for a snack, but the food was delicious and they lingered a long while over the various courses, coffee, and dessert.
Tracy was quite impressed with Blake’s table manners. For a six-year-old, the little boy was extremely patient in the company of adults. Was I ever good? Tracy wondered, and she knew that she hadn’t been. She hadn’t been that much older than Blake when she had become a terror, rebellious and confused.
Once again, she found herself between Blake and Leif with Liz on the other side of the little boy. She was careful to talk to him during the meal, so he wouldn’t feel left out. But being there, she began to wonder just what she had missed out on in her determination to stay apart from what was—in a strange way—her heritage. They were all so very close and easy together. Jamie was close to Leif, close to Blake, close to Liz, and even to Tiger and Sam. Like family.
She might have felt the same. If only her father had recognized her that night! But then, maybe she couldn’t blame Jesse. She would never have left that night from Leif’s if she hadn’t still been seventeen and legally bound to her mother and stepfather.
One of them might have killed Dad, she reminded herself, but with little conviction. Surely not Leif! Nor Tiger, nor Sam! Twenty-five years of their lives they had given to one another! Much more than many a marriage.
Then who? Cold chills crept over her. Not her mother or her grandfather, and certainly not her stepfather.
Jamie’s mother did it, she decided. And immediately she admitted that her decision was based on the fact that she had never really liked Carol—because Carol had never really liked her.
“Lauren,” she murmured, unaware that she had spoken aloud.
Her father’s last wife. A sophisticated beauty with very little real interest in music. Tracy didn’t think that Lauren would have lasted long with her father had Jesse not died. She had never understood that Jesse’s need was not for an audience, but for the music itself.
An elbow suddenly slammed against her rib. She looked up, startled, to find Leif staring at her.
“No, I don’t think that Lauren is coming in until tomorrow,” he was saying, as if she had asked a question.
“Tracy—your folks will be there today, though, huh?” Tiger asked her from across the table.
“They—will?” That same damned elbow slammed against her again. “They will. Yes, they will!” she stated more firmly.
Sam said something to Tiger about the green lasagna; Tracy slammed her elbow against Leif’s ribs and was rewarded by a sharp gasp and a groan. He leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Claws, my darling! Retract those claws!”
“You slammed into me!” she whispered back. “Twice!”
“Those were love taps!”
“Love taps my—”
“Your what, my love?”
“Oh, stuff some garlic bread into your mouth, will you please?”
Smiling elusively, he moved away. Tracy noted that Sam was watching them with a bemused expression. He caught her gaze and returned it innocently, crunching into a massive olive.
Leif paid the check and they left. Tracy was amazed to see that it was getting dark. There was still some daylight; it was one of those strange times when the sun could still be seen in the west, while the moon rose in the east.
The others piled into their respective cars; Tracy paused at the passenger’s door to the Jag while Leif held still for a moment, his key in the lock, but his eyes on the sky.
Then he stared across the top of the car to Tracy. He smiled at her sardonically. She wasn’t sure if he was rueful, or if he mocked her, or if maybe his driving emotions were not a bit of each.
“Liar’s moon, Tracy,” he said softly.
She frowned, feeling that rare warmth sweep through her again. That whisper, that soft, low, guttural whisper. It always touched her so that it took an absurdly long time for her to register the meaning of his words.
“Liar’s moon,” he repeated. “Remember?”
And, of course, she remembered. That shadowed sliver of a moon, haunting and glowing, giving and taking, when they had been together before. Gentle light, tender light, light to hide a host of sins.
She started to shiver.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said curtly. “Can we go?”
His lashes lowered and raised. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Tracy. Are you still lying to me?”
“Me!” she gasped out. “So I’m the one you’re trying to hang? You’re crazy!”
He shook his head impatiently. “I’m not trying to hang you either, Tracy. I just want the truth, and one of you has it.”
“What truth! You won’t even tell me what the hell you’re talking about. You keep talking in riddles and you’re making me insane!”
His key turned in the lock at last. “Get in the car, Tracy. You’ve got to face your own dragons soon.”
“My dragons?”
“Your mother, my love.”
“Quit that!”
“Quit what?”
“My mother isn’t a dragon—and I’m not ‘your love’ and I never was and never will be.”
Leif laughed, revving the car as she stepped into it at last. “She’s very beautiful—but a beautiful dragon. And your g
randfather—definitely. And as to the other—yes, you were, my little delinquent, once upon a time, my love. Such a fool is man!”
“Turn the tape back on,” she told him.
“Want to take another nap? Your mom will just love it if we arrive at the house as we did at the restaurant.”
“You’re cruel!” Tracy accused him. “You never let it rest! My God, aren’t you ever going to forgive me?”
He shook his head, but she couldn’t read his thoughts —his eyes were on the road.
“Forgive you—I was never really angry with you. You were terribly young and terribly hurt—all you wanted was your father’s attention. It was myself I had a hard time forgiving.”
She didn’t have a chance to reply to him; he reached forward and turned up the tape player.
Night seemed to fall in a single curtain, and they drove on in silence. Tracy didn’t close her eyes again; she sat stiff and straight, feeling a coldness settle over her as they came closer to the scene of her personal disaster.
They turned off the highway. The Jag choked and roared and moved smoothly into gear.
Leif’s arm came around her; she started, but his fingers moved firmly over her nape, easing away the rigid tension there.
“Afraid to go back, Tracy?” he asked her softly.
“You can never go back,” she replied.
He was silent for a second. “But you can try,” he murmured quietly.
His hand moved back to the wheel. It was dark, but by the green glowing light from the dashboard she could see his fingers, clearly defined in their tight grip around the wheel. Long, tanned, and very strong. Sure when he drove, when he played, when he touched a woman.
They turned again, down a long, curving driveway, through an acre of foliage, elms and oaks and chestnuts. Then the house rose before them, a restored colonial with massive white pillars, a beautiful, gleaming hardwood porch. Another tug tore at her heart; she had loved the house. It had every modern convenience; it was planned to be comfortable, planned for a family, for children to play, for people to live.
Leif parked the Jag in front of the porch. The front door swung open and Tracy tensed again. She hadn’t really believed that Audrey would come, no matter what Leif had said. But her mother was there. Ted was at her side, although Tracy didn’t see any sign of her grandfather.
Audrey and Ted started down the steps as Leif crawled out of the car and came around to open Tracy’s door. Tracy had to remind herself that she was twenty-five— that she had torn away six years ago and lived on her own, that Audrey could do nothing to her, that the horrible scene could not be repeated.
“What a—lovely—smile,” Leif murmured, close to her ear.
Lovely—plastic. Audrey Blare was a beautiful woman. Exquisite, really. She was small like Tracy, extremely well shaped, like a perfect little Dresden doll. Her eyes were enormous and a true emerald, her softly cut hair was a lightly frosted auburn that highlighted the striking color of her eyes. Her face was delicate and oval and unlined and she might have been Tracy’s sister rather than her parent.
But marring her beauty was—her smile. It was plastic and so strained that it gave her a drawn and weary appearance that belied all the youth about her.
“You are cruel!” Tracy swore in a furious whisper. This couldn’t be any easier for Audrey than it was for her.
“Tracy!” Audrey called.
“Mum, how are you?”
Determined to somehow change the horrible restraint of the occasion, Tracy gave her mother a tremendous hug and a huge smile. Then she hurried past her to where her stepfather waited silently on the step.
“Ted, it’s so good to see you.”
Ted Blare, a handsome man of medium height and build with steady dark eyes and a lopsided, easy smile, hugged her back—but stared at her reproachfully when they parted.
“Tracy… I wish that you might have given us some hint. This—this has been quite a shock for your mother.”
“Oh, well, mother has endured a number of shocks,” Tracy said nervously. What exactly had Leif told them? And for God’s sake, why wasn’t she stopping this charade now?
She lowered her eyes, frantically telling herself that it was because she was going to prove Leif wrong. He was going to have to look to a source other than her family to find the criminal who wanted her father dead.
“Audrey, Ted.”
To Tracy’s surprise, Leif shook hands with the two of them easily. By their actions, she suspected that her mother—and maybe Ted, too—had seen Leif a number of times that she did not know about.
“Thanks for coming,” Leif was saying, and she almost jumped out of her skin when she felt his hand rest at the small of her back, casually, easily. “I thought that it might be nice for Tracy and Jamie if we all remembered Jesse this way.”
Audrey murmured something, but Tracy barely heard her. She realized that the other cars had driven up, that the porch and the steps were suddenly filled with kisses and hugs and greetings.
Only Jamie hung back a little; Jamie and Blake.
Tracy shook off Leif’s hand to reach for her brother’s hand and draw him forward to introduce him to Audrey and Ted. She realized then that Jamie was shy; almost painfully shy. But Audrey suddenly decided to shake off the rigidity of the evening, too, and pulled Jamie from his shell with her inestimable charm.
“Oh, and Blake! Mom, Ted, this is Blake Johnston, Leif’s son.”
She thought that the two of them stood like pokers for a minute, but then she laughed, remembering that her mother had never been brilliant with small children—she didn’t like people until they were old enough to drive.
“Hey, Mom—you’ve got a two-year-old. Blake is all of six—you can deal with that.”
“Hello, Blake,” Audrey said. Tracy thought she still seemed ridiculously stiff. But then, they were in a horribly awkward situation. She was a guest in a house where she had once charged in to drag her seventeen-year-old away.
“How is the baby?” Leif asked Audrey.
“Oh, Anthony is just fine.”
“Big and beautiful,” Ted said with enthusiasm. “I waited a long, long time for him, but he’s a wonderful boy!”
It was Ted’s natural and pleasant pride that seemed to make the atmosphere bearable again. They all entered the house. Leif asked them if their room was okay, if they had been taken care of properly.
“Oh, the room is wonderful, Leif. You know that this is an absolutely marvelous house, and Katie is the most competent household manager I’ve ever met. I’ve envied you her for years.”
“We spent the day out by the pool, getting tan,” Ted added.
Tiger passed them by at the door, with Sam on his heels. Tracy swallowed sharply as she saw that they had rushed up to hug the woman standing there, Katie Carnie, Leif’s housekeeper.
She had forgotten about Katie.
For a moment she stumbled, but Leif’s arm swept around her waist, leading her forward. Her turn came; tall, gray-haired Katie, with sky-blue eyes and the sweetest smile in Christendom, didn’t blink or hesitate.
“Tracy, luv!” she said only, giving her a little hug. “ ’Tis so lovely to have the house full. Blake—where’s that young man of mine now. There you are! Leif, the bar’s all set up in the back—snacks are on the trays for thems that are hungry!”
“Thanks, Katie. Ask Havis and the boys to get all the bags when they get a chance, will you?”
Tracy didn’t realize that she had held her breath until she gasped a large quantity of air into her lungs and discovered that she was dizzy. She couldn’t go through with this; she couldn’t go any further. Everyone else was chatting—talking about their lives. She couldn’t talk; she couldn’t be easy. Not now—not now that she had seen Katie. Katie had been wonderful the time that Tracy had lived with Leif And as long as she lived, Tracy would never forget the sight of her huge blue and horrified eyes when her grandfather had hauled her out, screaming and kicking, in nothing but a blan
ket.
“Your grandfather is out by the pool Tracy,” Audrey told her suddenly. “You worry him terribly, dear, you know. Go tell him hello.”
To her amazement, Tracy found herself turning to Leif for support. Then she wanted to kick herself, because he smiled sardonically. He offered her a hand, though, and walked her through the living room and family room to the French doors that led out to tiled patio and pool.
But at those doors, he pushed her forward.
“What are you doing? You’re not coming—”
“Oh, no. Meet your dragons alone, my love!” he told her cryptically.
“I should tell my ‘dragon’ the truth!” she snapped to him, only to discover that he was no longer behind her.
She stepped out into the night. Colored lights fell over the pool, misting it in tranquil beauty. Far to the opposite side of the large kidney-shaped structure sat Arthur Kingsley, billionaire.
Tracy hesitated, then firmly stepped around the pool.
He was just sixty-six, still a giant of a man, broad shouldered, with snow-white hair, a hawk-nosed face. He saw Tracy coming, but didn’t say a word—nor did he rise from his lawn chair.
“Hello, Grandfather.”
His gaze swept over her disapprovingly. “I’m shocked, Tracy. I can’t believe you’re with Leif Johnston again.”
Tracy sat on the chair next to him and leaned over to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Love you, Grandpa,” she murmured, and it hurt a little inside to see him close his eyes and cherish her touch no matter how gruff he looked on the outside.
She sat back. “I can’t believe that you came,” she said softly.
“I only came,” he told her sternly, “to warn you that I would cut you entirely out of my will and leave every blessed cent that I have to your baby brother if you don’t cease this foolish alliance immediately.”
Tracy lowered her head and smiled. “Grandpa, I don’t care where you choose to leave your money. I think that you should frivolously spend it all—it’s yours.”
“Humph!” he muttered. “I mean it, Tracy.”
“So do I. I can support myself nicely, thanks.”
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