by Susan Conley
“Well, I see your name here, Mr. Cunningham. I don’t mean to inconvenience you, but we must verify your wife’s identification.”
“It’s no inconvenience. She’ll be back in a moment.”
A couple from outside stepped into the revolving doors. The man clasped a suitcase in each hand, the woman followed with a shoulder bag.
“Ah, look there now, they’ve arrived,” Calum said. “Our good friends can clear up this wee misunderstanding — Ian, Morag!” Calum walked toward the couple emerging from the door. “How was the drive?” he called as he approached.
The grey–haired man looked up at Calum then glanced back over his shoulder. Yes, I’m speaking to you, Calum thought sharply and smiled tight.
The man’s response was tentative, “Uh, we came by train.”
“Did you now? Very civilized, I hear.”
He had increased his pace to a near charge. The man took a step back. Calum grasped the man’s hand, shook it once and said, “Welcome to the ideal destination for lovers.” He slipped into the door pocket and revolved out.
With a picture in his head of Deidrie picking up the phone to alert the authorities, he quickly scanned the driveway then ran toward the street they had parked on. No sign of Beth. Where the hell was she?
Chapter 16
Newton Stands Corrected
Beth left the hotel, each nerve a tremor from head to toe. She’d acted like frozen vegetables back there. She couldn’t have been more obvious unless she’d had “guilty” in little red lights flashing from her forehead. Thankfully Calum didn’t suffer brain freeze.
She expected him to come charging out of the hotel any minute and glanced back at the front doors. The car keys were in her pocket. As she reached in to grab them a hand clasped her arm.
She turned. “Matthew. What are you doing here?” The scowl on his face was alarming.
“You weren’t expecting me? Sorry to spoil your fun, Beth. I heard all about it from the concierge of the hotel — quite an illicit performance with your lover last night in the lobby. You couldn’t wait, Beth, not even to get to the hotel room?”
“Oh no.” A crude picture flashed in her mind. She’d never behaved with such passionate abandon in her entire life; it just figured she’d get caught. How should she explain? They weren’t broken up in his mind.
Matthew’s lips pulled back off his teeth like an angry dog’s. “What happened to your strict adherence to no sex without a commitment? It never occurred to me that it was you not committed. What kind of logic do you live by?”
“I didn’t have sex, Matthew. Let me go and I’ll explain.” His grip tightened as he pushed her down the driveway in front of him.
“Explain?” He snarled through his teeth. “I don’t think your behaviour requires an explanation. It’s straightforward enough. I’ve filled in the gaps, so I don’t need to hear the sordid details of your love affair.”
“I’m not having an affair. I kissed him, that’s it. But the fact remains he did save me from Bruce. I’m rather concerned with that event at the moment.”
His eyes turned black. “You know what, Beth? I’m concerned too. We’re going to have a talk about that backpack.”
They reached the road. His grip was like a bear trap.
“You need to let me go.” She forced the demand up over her trembling vocal cords. A woman was murdered in her home during a robbery. “You may be angry, but we have to put that aside for now. The police think I’m a jewel thief, for God’s sake, and now one of the Meals on the Move clients has been murdered. Did you know about that?”
His smile was an ice–cold shiver over her bones. “Yes, I did. Such a shame, love. Maybe we can make a deal.”
“A deal? What are you talking about?” Why would she need to make a deal? “Actually, I don’t need your help. I’ll get my own lawyer.”
He spoke through a clenched smile. “That’s the last thing you’ll do. I’ll not allow you to interfere with my plans. The ground is broken for my hospice, so you’re going to tell me where that money is. No games. No blackmail. Tell me the truth, and I’ll keep you out of jail.”
Blackmail? She and Calum had been right about there being something else in the backpack, something more important than $40,000. Her mind raced. “Let go of my arm, and we can sort this out.” If Matthew didn’t let go, his fingerprints would soon imprint her lower epidermis.
“Let go of my arm now!”
“Beth!” She turned and saw Calum run from the hotel to the street as the grate of a door sliding open sounded. Matthew pushed her off her feet. Unable to stop herself, she fell into the back of a navy–coloured van. Her wrist twisted under her. She skidded across the seat scraping her arm on a seat belt, trying to catch her balance. Matthew shut the door and jumped into the front seat. The vehicle accelerated.
If Matthew’s character shift hadn’t been enough to unnerve Beth, what happened next did it no contest. That event would stay forever planted in her brain in capital letters under “terribly traumatizing.”
The terror came on like a sudden storm with a wind that howled through her head. Not the kind of wind that pushed a person about like in a gale. On the contrary — this was a sucking sort of wind of such high velocity. Beth became a rag doll.
Where had her bones gone?
The upholstered seat whooshed out from under her. Turbulence knocked every molecule about with a force far worse than any ride at Disney World.
She had no time to scream, or perhaps she had and wasn’t able to hear herself.
Every colour of the rainbow flashed by and then smeared together in a downward spiral taking her along. She wasn’t in a bad Monet reproduction, and she wasn’t in the back seat of that van any longer.
Where was she going?
How was she going?
Moments later, she felt the sensation of substance returning to her bones. Her legs firmed like rapid set plaster. The world wobbled out of its whirlwind and she was suddenly standing on solid ground.
What the freaking hell was that?
Calum’s eyes were startled saucers before her — spinning ones — or perhaps that was still her. She felt his grip firm on her shoulders. They both stood on the street where her car was parked.
“What in the name of everything holy happened to you?” Calum demanded.
Nothing in Beth’s twenty–five years of experience, besides the few science fiction movies she’d seen and a couple of bad dreams, could help her answer that question.
“It must have been Finn,” he said. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”
Beth’s feet stayed planted. “What’s a Finn? Calum? We are not just carrying on. I need to know what happened to me. People don’t get sucked out of cars. They don’t whirl through space. They don’t — ”
“Beth, we need to leave now. I can manage Matthew, but I’ve no wish to fend off the police, and they are sure to be coming for us.”
Oh no. Had it really slipped her mind that she was a wanted jewel thief and/or murderer? She tried not to scream out loud at the thought. The screaming in her head was loud enough. “Yes, we need to get away.” She still had the keys in her pocket. Pressing unlock, she threw the fob to Calum. “You drive.”
They raced into her car.
“Go, Calum. Go!”
He fumbled with the gearshift; hit the gas too hard, braked, then eased off.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Woman, don’t harass me, I’ll get it.” Calum looked like a kid with a new toy. They narrowly missed a parked Jeep as he turned the corner.
“You drive like you’ve never driven before.”
“I did not say I had.”
How could that be? “Stop the car.”
“The hell I will, bloody narrow streets. You’re hands
are trembling, Beth. You can’t drive. Don’t worry yourself, I will master this.”
“Stop the car, Calum! Before you kill somebody.”
They came to a screeching stop. She pried her hands from the dashboard.
How much worse could this possibly get? “Switch places,” she ordered, lifting up so he could slide under her. “Hurry up.”
They switched. Beth hit the gas.
“Turn right again,” he grumbled when they reached the stop sign. “We will make way out of the city.”
Calum might not be able to drive a car — and what was with that? — but he could navigate. Wits combined, they finally gained enough distance that she felt it safe to pull over at a gas station.
Beth slumped forward to rest her forehead on the steering wheel.
She felt Calum’s hand rest on her shoulder. “Did he hurt you, lass?”
Drawing her head from the wheel, she caught the look on his face — pure misery. “Matthew? The man who wanted to share my life, who just threatened to turn me in to the police if I don’t cough up the money from that backpack. No, not really, nothing more than a crushed spirit and a twisted wrist.”
His hand slid down her arm to bring her wrist to his lips. He kissed it, and then frowned. “It’s my fault. You were under my protection, and I failed you.”
She shifted to face him. “That’s very gallant of you, Calum. I’m not so fragile, apparently. I can be vacuumed up no worse for wear. What happened to me?”
He shook his head. “I can only guess. It might have been Finn. The shirt thief. I told you about him, remember?”
“No, I never let that one settle in my memory.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t let this one either.”
“Fat chance.” She didn’t believe in fairies, and while she’d never been to Scotland, as far as she knew the laws of physics were universal. “Calum, tell me again. Where exactly are you from?”
“I will try to explain it to your satisfaction, but this isn’t the place. Beth, I am sorry for it … for Matthew.”
She blew out a deflating breath. “I don’t know what he was more enraged about, the money or you?”
“Me?”
“He thinks I’m having an affair. The concierge at the hotel didn’t leave out any details from our lustful display last night.”
“I see, and he’s not man enough to seek revenge of me, but instead attacks the woman he claims to love.”
She could easily picture Calum dueling for her honour, but Matthew? No. “He acted insane — jealously crazed. I’ve never seen him like that.”
“There was somebody with him, but I couldn’t see through the windows.”
“I saw who it was. I recognized the shaved head before that great gust of wind sucked me to your side.”
“And I’ll thank God for that. Was it Popeye?”
She nearly laughed, but felt too dazed for humour. He said it like poop-eye. “Yes, the man driving was Bruce, and by the look of him, you did break his nose. Now we know they are in this together. I just can’t see them as drug dealers. Do you think this has anything to do with the Meals on the Move robberies?”
“Yes, I do. But we’re going to talk later. I’m uneasy here.”
Uneasy was an understatement, and yes, they had a few things to talk about. Matthew could never discover she’d given that money to Janine Miller. Janine’s safety was vital. She turned the car off. “First, I’m going to run into that shop over there and see if they have a Toronto paper. I need to read that article.”
“No, you stay here.” Calum opened his door. “Lock the car. Don’t move. I’ll go.”
Calum got out of the car. He had to cross the street to get to the store. As he stood waiting for traffic to clear, he felt that eerie wind lift his hair. Perfect timing. Finn materialized beside him.
“It wasn’t God and you’re welcome,” Finn said.
“I figured. It was good of you to shift her out of there, yet somehow, Finn, it leaves me thinking you’ve an underhanded motive.”
“Moi? I spend my days granting humans desire after desire, and you think me self–serving?”
The traffic cleared and Calum crossed the street. Finn appeared on the other side.
“By the way, thanks for the reappearing shirt. You love to see me squirm, Finn?”
“Yes, and knowing that, warrior, knowing you’ve completed your first task, do you still wish to play my game, or have you decided to remain celibate?”
Bloody hell, he wished he didn’t need the immortal. Calum opened the door to the shop, and then crossed to the magazines and newspapers. Finn popped in on the top shelf, his long legs dangling over Better Homes and Gardens’ spring issue.
“Do you wish to know your second task?”
His sigh fluttered the papers he leaned over. Foremost he wanted Beth safe, but he couldn’t deny wanting her in his bed just as fervently. A new realization sprang to light. Finn had rescued Beth and returned her to his side. As long as he kept Finn amused, the elf would keep her safe.
He scanned the selection of newspapers. “Fine then, what is it?”
“You’re in this then? Ready to play?”
“Yes.” A kid beside him backed away. Ah right, nobody else could see Finn.
Finn appeared on his feet by Calum’s side. “Good. Come with me then.”
With the newspaper gripped in one hand, he followed Finn over to the next aisle where shelves stacked with bottles, soap, and cotton puffs sat across from cat and dog food.
“You’re going to need this.” A bottle teetered over the edge of the shelf in front of him. Calum snatched it up before it hit the ground, glancing quickly along the aisle for customers.
He read the bottle: ‘Simple Pleasures Almond Blossom Bubble Bath.’ “Is this a jest? I’ll never get that woman into the bath with me. We didn’t end on a romantic note last night, which I’m sure you’re aware since you’ve mastered being in two places at once. It’s been a bloody hell of a day, and it’s only nine in the morning.”
“You don’t get to take a bath with Bethia, all sudsy and slippery and naked together.” Finn frowned. “Not yet, warrior. Don’t forget, the chase is just as entertaining as the conquest. She gets the bath. You will be her attendant. Wash her lovingly — her back, her arms, her feet — no further, no kiss this time and that I do stipulate. And, Calum, do a thorough job. I want you to rouse what she’s kept latent. Leave her breathless and aching for you.”
He cleared his throat and stopped short of rolling his eyes. “As decadent as that sounds, she will not welcome me anywhere near her bath. The woman’s shown no skin. She’s gotten herself into the most bashful human body I’ve yet to know.”
A lady pushing a stroller came down the aisle, but quickly retreated from the demented man talking to the bubble bath. He blew his breath out in a huff.
“That’s a shame because you would have but one task undone, and then …” Finn’s lips curled in a devilish smile.
“Fine, I’ll do it, but I don’t need your help. Don’t take my shirt or my pants or anything else.” What was he thinking? He shouldn’t give the immortal ideas. “Finn, just leave me to it, and I’ll do my best.”
“You always do. That’s what I love about you humans, you work so hard. If there was another Calum roaming about, the world would be a better place.”
Finn vanished. A bottle of body scrub with coconut oil tipped off the shelf just before the body cream fell. Calum caught them on top of the newspaper. He stood frozen for a moment, eyes darting, until he felt the breeze of Finn’s departure.
He could use a bubble bath right about now.
Calum walked back to the car. Where should they go? Which direction would effectively evade both the police and the crazed criminal halfwits, and let’s not forget best in
duce the desire for a bubble bath?
“It took you long enough,” Beth said as he got in. “Oh muffins, good work.”
Calum tossed her a morning glory.
“I called that real estate office to talk to Chantal Desjardins. She’s still out of the office, so I left a message that I was interested in selling my home here and relocating to Ashbury.”
“I thought your phone didn’t work.”
With a quick tilt of her head, she indicated a booth stuck in full view of the road. “I used that phone. It was only a minute and I kept my back to the road. It was driving me crazy sitting here doing nothing and why should I hide? I’m not guilty of any crime.” She snatched up the newspaper.
“Can I not leave your side for a moment without you risking your neck?”
She responded with a roll of her eyes over the top of the newspaper.
“It doesn’t matter that you’re innocent — ”
He watched her stop breathing as she read the article. With eyes wide, she told him what she’d read. “A woman from the meal program, Mrs. Cobbs, died a few months ago in her bed. There was no mention of foul play at the time, but the police are now revisiting the case.”
“Surely you’re not being accused of murder?”
“No, not murder, just jewel theft. I never thought I’d say that — just jewel theft. A sapphire necklace that belonged to Mrs. Miller, also from Meals on the Move, was found in my house. Cripes! How could that be?”
“Popeye was in your house.” He suffered little doubt now that Matthew was the one who had entrapped Beth, but one necklace wouldn’t warrant a life sentence.
Beth reached for the ignition. “Why steal a necklace and put it in my house? How does that help Matthew build his hospice? And what does he want from the backpack? Nothing makes sense. I have to go to the police and straighten this out before I am accused of murder.”
The fine hairs rose on the back of his neck. “No police, not yet. Not until we learn more. As far as I’m concerned, the police pose as great a threat as do the halfwits. I’ve a need to talk to the real estate agent myself and till then, I’d like nothing more than to hide you away safe in the hills if only there was such a croft …”