Before he could think how to respond, she changed the subject.
“I slept half the way here,” she said, “so why don’t you go to bed first while I stand guard?”
“But I didn’t start my day out being attacked. You go ahead.”
“Really. I’m not tired.” She went to dig something out of the carry-on-sized black suitcase she had brought. “I’ll just prop myself up in bed with these pillows and relax for a while.”
He peeked at the garish black-and-red cover of the book she’d pulled out. “With a murder mystery?”
She smiled at him. “Occupational hazard. I had a job shelving books in Iowa, and one of the librarians got me totally hooked on this series.”
He was a little self-conscious as he turned in, fresh from the shower and wearing a dark T-shirt over boxers, but true to her word, Hope was sitting in the soft, yellow light of her bedside lamp with her shapely, jean-clad legs crossed at the ankles. Engrossed as she was in her reading, he could have probably come out naked without eliciting any response—a thought he found more irritating than he would ever admit.
But maybe not, he realized, as he caught her peeking over the book’s cover. Caught in the act, she swiftly returned her gaze to her mystery, but he couldn’t help but notice that it was a long, long time before she turned another page.
Good, he thought, rolling over onto his side, happy to imagine he wasn’t the only one suffering from distraction. Because the more he thought of her, so lovely in the soft light and so close at hand, the less he focused on his meeting with Marnie Sayers come morning.
Eventually, he must have drifted off, for the next time he looked at the glowing numbers of the LED clock on his nightstand, it was after 5:00 a.m. Sitting up abruptly, he was about to demand to know why she hadn’t awakened him sometime around two-thirty as he’d asked her to. But the head behind the book propped on her chest had nodded, and her eyes had fallen closed.
At some point while he slept, she must have showered, for she smelled of some softly floral shampoo and wore a pair of cotton pajamas in a fuzzy, turquoise-and-white print. Everything else about her position looked uncomfortable, from the way she’d kicked off the covers to the awkward angle of her neck, which had slid down off the pillow.
Getting up from his bed, he crept to her bedside, then removed the book from her hands and tucked in the bookmark. He dropped the hardcover next to the revolver on the nightstand, then moved to pull the blanket over her before abruptly stopping...and sucking in and holding a sharp breath.
For in moving her book, he’d exposed the soft swell of her generous breasts beneath the thin material—the first time he’d seen them unbound. His hands tingled, burning with the need to undo those tiny pearled buttons down her front, to expose every bit of her completely.
Instantly hard, he looked away, reminding himself that he wasn’t the kind of man to take advantage of a sleeping woman, that even if she was interested, he couldn’t afford the distraction. Still, he ached to touch her, to bury his nose in sweetly scented hair and taste the fullness of her lips.
She murmured something, maybe the word cold, and hugged herself, inadvertently pushing her breasts higher. Gritting his teeth against temptation, he pulled the blankets to the level of her shoulders, but couldn’t stop himself from bestowing a soft kiss in the center of her forehead, next to the butterfly bandage she still wore.
She reached out and caught his hand in hers, her eyes sliding open. They were blue this morning, he saw, blue as the bottom of the crispest autumn sky.
“Some guard I turned out to be,” she said, her voice soft and sleepy. “Sorry. It’s just—my eyes were burning. So I took out my contacts and then closed my eyes a moment.”
“No harm done,” he said, his mouth dry as one of the Chinook winds that sometimes came down from the mountains. “Unless the mastermind’s hiding under the bed or in the closet.”
“Mmm,” she said, pulling him closer. “Could you— Would it be too weird to ask if you could hold me, just hold me for a little while?”
He groaned and said, “You don’t know what you’re asking, Hope. But if I come close enough, you’re sure to find out.”
“Oh,” she said, her drooping eyelids flaring. A troubled expression rippled across her beautiful, bruised face, and she pushed herself up on her elbows and confessed, “I, ah— Last night, I was having so much trouble concentrating on my book. I kept finding myself watching you while you were sleeping. Watching you and wishing there were some way things could be different. Some way we could run away from here and leave our problems all behind.”
“I’m pretty sure those problems would follow us,” he told her gently. “Even if they didn’t literally, the guilt would be sure to eat us both ali—”
“My pregnancy was all wrong,” she startled him by blurting. “I only thought I— My delay cost those little kids their parents, cost that couple their lives, and what good did it do anyone?”
“You miscarried?” he guessed.
Beads of moisture trembled on her lashes, falling only when she shook her head. “A week later, I felt sharp pain, pain like nothing I’d ever felt in my life. I tried to pretend everything was all right, that it was only a stomach bug I’d picked up. But Renzo finally noticed how pale and quiet I was and insisted on taking me to the E.R. Just in time, it turned out. My fallopian tube had ruptured, and I was bleeding inside. Bleeding to death, if it weren’t for the surgery.”
“Oh, Hope. I’m sorry.”
“The doctor called it an ectopic pregnancy. The egg had implanted in the wrong spot—it never stood a chance. And I’d put off calling the authorities for nothing, nothing but a fantasy.”
He let her admission sink in, let the reddening of eyes and the bobbing of her throat speak to her misery. “So that was your big secret, huh? That you loved your husband and the idea of having a family of your own too deeply to take what you heard at face value. Well, I hate to break it to you, Hope, but it’s no sin, what you did. Yes, it did turn out to be a tragic mistake, but the blame’s all on your ex and his cronies.”
“Then you don’t—”
“I don’t blame you. I won’t judge you. The question is...will there ever come a time when you stop judging yourself?”
Chapter 12
“I don’t know what I can say that I haven’t already told you and your friend on the phone,” Marnie Sayers said as she lit a new cigarette off of the old one, then stubbed out the latter in a nearly overflowing ashtray in the booth where she sat across from Dylan. A thin woman with a short mix of sandy-gray hair, she was twitchy, with darting brown eyes that followed the waitresses bustling about the pleasantly homey and old-fashioned little diner once owned by his mother.
He imagined he could feel her presence here, in the well-polished surfaces and the small vases of brightly colored flowers that graced every table, the handwritten “specials” chalkboard that boasted about today’s Denver omelet and a hearty harvest stew made with venison and root vegetables. But Marnie herself couldn’t be more different than the warm and welcoming woman he remembered. From the moment they’d arrived, she’d acted so nervous that Hope had quickly whispered that she was going to walk to the pharmacy next door to pick up a few things. Since their earlier talk had ended so abruptly, Dylan wondered if she’d volunteered more out of eagerness to escape his presence than to be helpful, or if it was safe to let her out of his sight.
But she had her gun and they had passed a peaceful night, so he told himself it would be okay, then returned his attention to the questions that had haunted him.
“I’m just trying to fill in a few gaps,” he told Marnie, trying to sound as casual as possible. “Trying to find out a little more about my mother.”
Smoke streamed from her nostrils, and she sucked in another drag. “I’m sure Faye was a good mother to you,” she said thoughtfully. “She always loved kids, to a fault.”
“What do you mean, to a fault?”
Marnie shrugg
ed, gaze dancing away. “Just an expression, that’s all. Making conversation. ’Cause it’s not really a fault, is it, loving children, wanting some of your own? That’s what makes the world go ’round, after all, right?”
“It’s no fault,” he said, waving away smoke from his eyes to better see her reaction, “unless it turns into an obsession.”
He glanced toward the front windows, which overlooked the sunlit mountains, thinking of how much Hope’s desire for a child of her own had cost her. And how much more, still, it might, if she refused to see the sense of staying as far as possible from her ex-husband’s trial.
Worry gnawing at him, he wished she would hurry with her shopping and get back to have some coffee, as she’d promised.
“I wouldn’t call Faye obsessed, exactly,” Marnie told him, a tic playing at the corner of her mouth. “It’s just...a person couldn’t help but worry about that Desiree Beal’s baby.”
They both looked over when the door jingled, but it wasn’t Hope, only a couple of older men coming in to be seated.
“Getting a little crowded,” Marnie said. “This won’t take much longer, will it?” She fumbled an attempt to relight her cigarette.
“Here, let me.” Dylan took the lighter from her shaking hand and produced a flame on his first try. Though what she’d said had him tensing with anticipation, he kept his voice and movements slow and steady, as if she were a skittish horse that might be frightened into bolting. “There you go.”
Setting the lighter back down on the table between them, he asked, “Did you mean that you were worried about what happened to Desiree’s baby after she was killed out in the parking lot?” Shot during a robbery, the police report of the time had concluded, since the diner’s cash pouch had been taken. Not for the first time, Dylan prayed that it was true.
“It was tragic, what-all happened to that young woman,” she said, her bony fingers fiddling with the various sweetener packets in their holder. “And far be it from me to bad-mouth the dead....”
“But,” he supplied, looking at her expectantly.
Twin streamers of cigarette smoke rose from her nostrils before the words exploded from her. “You’ve never seen a less maternal woman in your life. No instinct at all for mothering. He might’ve been a stranger’s child, for all the connection she had with that poor, sweet little babe. A real piece of work, that one.”
His heartbeat picked up steam. “Is that when my moth—when Faye started to suspect that Desiree wasn’t what she claimed?”
Marnie pursed her lips, her brown eyes darting toward the antique cash register’s merry jingle. “I’ve said too much already. No sense dredging up old—”
“This is a great location you have here,” he said, abruptly shifting his approach. “Seems to do a good business.”
Marnie smiled, pride warming her thin face and smoothing out a little of the nervousness. “This place is a local landmark. We have regulars who’ve been coming here for over thirty-five years, generations of ’em.”
“Makes me wonder why my mother’d give it up so abruptly, the way you said. She must’ve put a lot of time and effort into it.”
“Superstition, that’s all,” Marnie said without a moment’s hesitation. “After Desiree was killed, Faye couldn’t be shed of the place fast enough. Sold it to me for a song.”
“Because she thought it was bad luck?” Dylan perked up, remembering how foolish his mother had always found the head cook, Agnes, with her crazy kitchen superstitions. A practical woman to her bones, his mother wasn’t the sort to make a fire-sale offer, either—unless she’d had something to hide.
Ignoring the growing column of ash on her current smoke, Marnie fastened her gaze to the tabletop, but not before Dylan noted her sudden pallor.
“You know why she was really in such a hurry to leave town,” he asked, “don’t you?”
“I never really knew, exactly,” she shot back, her voice so loud that several customers at nearby tables looked their way. Scowling to ward off the attention, Marnie dropped her voice to a whisper. “Guessed, maybe, that’s all.”
Dylan didn’t buy it, but he decided to play along. “Guessed what, exactly. I need you to tell me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And I need you to leave now. I have a business to run.”
“A business you all but stole,” he accused, certain she knew something, “as the price of keeping quiet about Desiree’s murder. And what really happened to her baby.”
She slapped the table hard enough that the column of ash spilled to its surface. “It wasn’t like that at all! Faye came to me with the offer. Buying this place wasn’t my idea!”
“Maybe I should have my lawyers look into whether a sale under those circumstances was really legal. Bet I could tie you up for years in lawsuits, long enough to put you out of business.”
“But you can’t. I’ve sunk more than thirty years into this place. Never took a sick day, or a vacation, either,” she blurted, her face a mask of horror. “I’ve revamped the menu, borrowed to add on, completely remodeled after a kitchen fire ten years back. You can’t take it from me.”
He hated being the kind of man who would threaten a woman her age, but he reminded himself that there were more important things at stake here than her feelings. “I could talk to the D.A. Ask him what the average sentence around here is for someone charged as an accessory to murder and kidnapping.”
“I never helped her! Never!”
“Then tell me every detail. Do it, and I swear to you, I’ll never trouble you again.”
Marnie glared at him through damp eyes, shaking with rage, and Dylan reminded himself that she was far from innocent. That if his suspicions were correct, she had profited immensely from the pain of others.
After a tense silence, she asked, “How do I know you won’t be back, or that you won’t send others?”
“You’ll have to take me at my word as Faye Frick’s—Faye Donner’s—son. She raised me to believe a man’s no real man unless he keeps his word, and I give you mine that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure it’s the last time you’ll have to talk about it.”
She considered for several moments before asking, “What about the police? Will you be sharing what you learn with them?”
“If I have to share anything, I won’t name the source. Even if it means going to jail myself to keep the secret.” He put out his hand, offering to shake hers.
Ignoring it, she scowled and puffed her cigarette before relenting. “Fine,” she said. “Faye was suspicious about Desiree, who took advantage of her offers to babysit, then would disappear for hours—sometimes days. When she did come back, she never asked how the baby had been, and she didn’t seem to know even the most basic things about how to care for him. But that night, the night Desiree was killed, Faye came out of the kitchen and overheard her on the diner phone. Overheard her threatening to tell everyone the details of ‘this so-called kidnapping’ if she wasn’t paid off.”
“So was it blackmail she was after or a ransom?”
Marnie shrugged. “Faye was so upset when she told me, I didn’t ask too many questions. I suspected but—I knew that whatever she’d done, that innocent child was better off.”
“Faye killed her, didn’t she?” It sickened him to have to ask, but he had to know, no matter what. “She shot Desiree and tried to make it look like robbery.”
Instead of answering, Marnie sucked on her cigarette, the look in her eyes as hard as flint.
“What happened to him, Marnie?” Dylan pressed. “What happened to that baby? Did my mother take him with her?”
“You’d have to ask the police,” she said, waving away smoke. “Most likely, they returned him to his rightful family.”
“Or maybe your old boss took him, took him for her own.”
Marnie’s thin chin thrust a challenge toward him. “If it’s true, who’s to say that poor kid wasn’t better off? If it was really a ‘supposed kidnapping’ and not a real one, who’s to sa
y his real family deserved him?”
He let the words sink in, then slowly shook his head. “You knew, then. Knew it and kept it to yourself all this time that my mother murdered—”
“It was self-defense, not murder!” The harsh whisper was as heated as steam escaping a teakettle. “When Faye confronted her, Desiree went for a gun in her purse. Your mother grabbed it, and they struggled. It was only by the grace of God that when it went off, the muzzle was pointing in the right direction.”
“And you’ve known all along that I’m not Faye Frick’s—Faye Donner’s—natural child, didn’t you?” he accused. “You kept it hushed up all these years for no better reason than to keep hold of a restaurant my mother sold you under duress.”
He didn’t accuse her a second time of blackmailing his mother into selling in the first place, but the suspicion hung between them in a haze of hostility and smoke and in the angry defensiveness in Marnie’s dark-eyed silence.
“So she wasn’t pregnant when she left here, and my birth date’s just as big a lie as all the rest,” he said.
A fleeting look of sympathy passed over her thin face as she stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette. Crossing her thin arms over her chest, she said, “You want to believe in what your mother told you, you go right on and believe it. But I promised to tell you what I know about it. And I do know—I found Faye back in the kitchen, crying her eyes out the day her doctor told her that there’d be no babies for her. Big as her heart was, she was a barren woman, barren as the moon.”
* * *
After picking up a few snacks for the road and deflecting the clerk’s stares with a story about a recent skiing accident, Hope took a seat on the bench just outside the pharmacy. She knew Dylan would be watching for her, but she figured she had a little time before he began to worry.
Pulling his cell phone from her pocket, she stared down at the screen. Temptation prickled in her fingertips—or was it conscience, not temptation, urging her to make the phone call?
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