No, it was best she leave. She would never be able to believe he wanted her for her sake alone if she were pregnant.
Besides, she had other plans, plans she had made right from the beginning.
Carefully, so as not to disturb him, she rose up on her elbow and softly kissed him. Then she slipped from the bed and went into the other room. She dressed quickly, and carrying her luggage, left the house by a back door.
The storm was moving out to sea. The time between the claps of thunder and bursts of lightning was longer now. And the rain had slackened.
But SwanSea remained as always: A sentry standing guard, protector of its own.
As the cab started away, Sharon turned in the seat to rub the condensation from the rear window. She wanted to get one last glimpse of the place where for a short time she had known such happiness.
What she saw didn’t surprise her.
Black clouds scudded over the chimney tops of the great house. Around it, trees bowed with the wind. No light shone from its windows.
SwanSea was fiercely angry.
Sharon was gone.
At first, when Conall awoke to find her missing from the bed, he assumed she had gotten up early and gone downstairs to breakfast or for a ride. But since she had never done either of those things without him, he soon began to look for her. And when he couldn't find her in any of the obvious places, he turned to the staff.
They had made champagne jelly for him from a rare and expensive vintage of wine, and they had divided M&M’s by color for him, but they couldn’t find Sharon for him.
She was gone.
Eight
Conall flung a file folder down on his desk and shot a killing look at his phone. He’d been back in Boston just over twenty-four hours, and during that time there hadn’t been too many minutes when his mind hadn’t been on Sharon and whether or not he should call her.
His emotions were in turmoil. He didn’t understand why she had left, but he especially didn’t understand how she could have bolted without telling him or even giving any indication of what she planned to do.
He had never laughed as much with anyone as he had with her. He had never known such ecstasy. He had enjoyed their quiet times together just as much as he had those times when they were being outrageous. And he would have bet everything he owned that she felt the same way.
He was hurt, and he was hurting.
Dammit, why hadn’t she called him since her return?
Granted, he hadn’t called her, but then he wasn’t the one who had stolen out of SwanSea in the dead of night.
His hand went to the phone, then jerked away.
He knew why he hadn’t called her. Pride. He had once heard his mother call pride the Achilles’ heel of the Deverell men. A lot she knew.
He snatched up the receiver and punched out the number he had memorized over the last hours. It rang once, twice, and then was picked up.
"Hello, Sharon—”
He heard four very irritating tones, then a woman’s voice. “We’re sorry you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number or try your call again. This is a recording.”
He slammed the receiver back in its cradle. Disconnected? What in the hell kind of game was Sharon playing? When he got hold of her, he was going to wring her lovely neck—
He tensed. What if she had been hurt? What if she were sick? Lord, what if she were in some kind of danger? He hadn’t seen or spoken to her since sometime after midnight two nights before. Anything could have happened to her.
His heart racing madly, he shot out of his chair and dashed for the door.
Boston traffic had never seemed worse, and by the time he arrived at the brownstone where she lived, his nerves felt like live electrical wires, arching and sparking high voltage.
He bounded up the stairs, ready to tear into her for worrying him so, for leaving him.
He pounded on the door with his fist. “Sharon? Come on, answer the door, dammit.”
A door downstairs opened and an old man appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Here now, what’s all the ruckus?”
Conall Ignored the man and beat on the door again.
The man took hold of the handrail and with labored steps climbed the stairs. “Young man,” he said when he reached Conall, “you're creating a helluva disturbance, plus you’re wasting your time. Do us all a favor and stop before I have to call the police.”
Conall rounded on him. “Do you know where Sharon Graham is?”
“No, but I do know she’s not in that apartment. She moved out.”
Conall went still. "That’s impossible. She’s been with me the last week or so and back here just a little over twenty-four hours. No one could move an entire apartment that quickly.”
The man rocked back on his heels. “It would have been hard, all right, for her to do it that way. Not saying she couldn’t have, you understand, but she didn’t. She had everything boxed and ready to go when she left town. Then while she was gone, some movers came in, packed it up in a truck, and took off.”
Conall’s mind closed down, refusing to accept what he was hearing. “Who has the key to this apartment? I want to see for myself.”
The man eyed Conall warily, but pulled a set of keys from his pockets. “I’m the landlord, and I’ll be glad to let you have a look, but you’ll have to promise not to do any damage.” At Conall’s terse nod, he inserted the key and opened the door for him.
“Will you be long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, just knock on my door on your way out so that I'll know you’ve left.”
Conall had half expected her to be there, as if this were all some weird joke she was playing on him and he hadn’t gotten the punch line. But he found, instead, an emptiness so complete it staggered him.
The waills, the windows, the floors, everything was bare. The apartment had been stripped. All her fragrance, all signs of her personality had vanished ... as if she had never even been in those rooms, much less lived there.
His footsteps echoed hollowly as he walked down the short hall. In the kitchen he opened and closed a few cabinets but found nothing. A phone sat on the counter beside a dog-eared Boston phone book. He knew the phone had been disconnected but picked it up anyway. The line was dead.
An awful desolation swamped him.
He walked back into the living room, remembering the first night he had come to the apartment. He had been bothered by its femininity and charm. Looking back, he could see now that she had created a nest, a soft retreat from a hard world, a place to be nurtured and to nurture.
She had wanted a baby and had never tried to pretend any differently. Without wrapping the matter in pretty paper, she had told him straight out she wanted to use him to get her pregnant.
He wasn’t sure from where her firm belief came that he could father a child for her. Perhaps because of the hell she’d gone through ten years before, her mind had wished so often that he was fertile, it had become true to her. Who knew what went on in another person’s mind? He obviously didn’t. Not hers, at any rate.
Maybe she had left because she had finally accepted he was unable to give her the child she wanted. Maybe, wherever she’d moved, she’d find someone who could make her pregnant and she’d finally have the happiness she deserved.
He closed his eyes as a wave of pain hit him. Let her go in peace, Conall, he told himself. She's had enough torment in her life. Let her go.
“Did she give the landlord a forwarding address?” Amarillo asked, scribbling in a small brown leather notebook.
Conall shook his head, his expression bleak.
“All right, but I’ll check back with him anyway.I want to see the apartment myself.”
“There’s nothing there.” Conall stared sightlessly at his desk. “It’s totally empty. She didn’t leave so much as a scrap of paper behind. But you should have seen it when s
he lived there. It was warm, sweet, very homey.”
Amarillo’s tawny-gold eyes narrowed on him. “Don’t worry about the forwarding address. I can check with the phone and utility companies. She will have given them an address where they can send the closing bills. Then there’s her bank. If she’s left town, she will sooner or later transfer her money to a bank near her new place of residence. In this society, there’s a hell of a lot of paperwork, and paper leaves a trail.”
Conall plucked a sleek gold ball-point pen from its black marble-based holder, studied it as if he weren’t sure why it was in his hand, then returned the pen to its sheath. “It’s hard for me to believe that she set these plans in motion before we even went to SwanSea. All that time we were together there, she knew she was going to do this.”
Amarillo studied the tip of one boot. “Are you sure you want me to find her?”
Conall blinked, his mental haze cleared, and the sandy-haired man sitting across from him came into sharp, clear focus. “I’m absolutely sure.”
“Think about it. Maybe it would be best to drop it.”
“I can’t.”
“Are you sure? What she’s done is stone cold calculating, not to mention devious as hell.”
“Or maybe it’s desperate. No, Rill, I want her found, and I want her found as soon as possible.” Amarillo expelled a long breath, then checked his notebook. “Okay, then. We’ll do it your way. Is there anything else you can think of that I should know? Names of friends? Clubs or organizations to which she might have belonged?”
“Did I tell you where she works?” He grimaced. “Worked, I mean.”
Amarillo nodded.
“Then, that’s all I know. Hell, I can’t even tell you if she owns a car or not.”
Amarillo closed his notebook, leaned back in the chair, and looked at his friend with a gaze that held an innate wisdom and a wealth of experience, not all of it good. “You know, don’t you, that you’re in love with her?”
"I know,” Conall said quietly. “I know.”
“You look like hell,” Amarillo said, dropping down into a chair in Conall’s den and grimly surveying the three-day growth of beard on his face. “Thanks.”
“Have you slept, or is that a foolish question? And how about food?”
“Forget food, forget sleep. How about Sharon? Have you found her?”
“The lady doesn’t want to be found, Conall. It’s as simple as that.”
“Are you trying to tell me you can't find her?”
The gold eyes glittered. “Ill never tell you that because I don’t give up. Ever. I will find her. But it’s going to take time, maybe a lot of time.” Conall wearily rubbed his face. “What have you learned?”
“To begin with, I can tell you with complete assurance that no one has left this city in the last week by plane, train, or bus with a ticket in the name of Sharon Graham. Her landlord told me that as long as she lived at the brownstone— which was four years, by the way—she didn’t own a car, and I can find no recent records that she’s bought one. That means she’s either still in Boston, or she flew out of here using another name.”
“She’s not here in Boston.” Conall’s tone was flat.
“How do you know?”
He shrugged. “It’s just a feeling. Boston seems so ... so empty.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you may be right. Oh, another thing. She’s withdrawn all her money from her bank, and let me tell you, it was quite a large sum.”
Conall frowned. “Withdrawn. In what form?”
“Cash. All in twenties. All untraceable. She carried it out in a large case over the strong objections of the bank officers.”
Conall shot up out of his chair. “Damn. What were they thinking of to let her walk out of there with all that money? That’s dangerous!”
“It was her money. They couldn’t stop her.”
“You say it was a lot of money?”
Amarillo nodded. “Her salary was quite good, and she lived modestly, obviously saving most of it. Plus, you said her mother had died last year. I’m sure there was an inheritance.”
"Yes,” he said, thinking of Jake’s note containing the promise he had made to Clarisse. Jake’s promise had played havoc with his grandson’s emotional life. Yet without that note, Sharon would never have come back to him.
“With the amount of money she was able to withdraw, she’ll be able to live quite well. You’ve nothing to worry about on that score. The problem is, cash dealings leave no record. That’s how she paid off the utility companies. Therefore, there’s no forwarding address.”
A look of pain creased Conall’s face, and Amarillo expelled a long breath. “Now, about the movers who loaded up her boxes and furniture while you were at SwanSea. Once again she was very careful. According to the landlord, they were young men and they drove a truck with no company name on it, no writing whatsoever. And I’ve checked with all the moving companies. Nothing.”
“Dammit, Rill, they can’t all be dead ends.”
“Everyone makes mistakes. It just may take a while for Sharon to make one. Be patient.”
Conall closed his eyes. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”
Watching him, Amarillo thought he did. Conall looked as a man must who was trying to function with his heart tom out.
Six weeks after Sharon disappeared from SwanSea, Conall received an express letter from San Francisco marked personal. His secretary brought it into him unopened.
He broke the seal and pulled a single sheet of paper from the envelope. It was a medical report from a doctor dated five days before. It stated that Sharon Clarisse Graham was approximately seven weeks pregnant.
The words blurred, the report slipped from his fingers.
Dear God in heaven, she’d been right all along.
He’d made her pregnant ten years ago. And now, once again, she carried his child, once again all alone.
He reached for his phone. “Find Amarillo and tell him I want to see him immediately."
An hour later, when Amarillo walked into the office, Conall was staring out the window, the medical report in his hand.
“What’s up?”
Conall swung his chair around and handed him the report.
Amarillo scanned the report. ‘This may be the break we’ve been waiting for.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. Do you think you can find out anything from the doctor?”
“I’m not sure if there’ll be that much to find out from him. This is only a test, Conall. She may have been in San Francisco just long enough to have this test taken, then moved on.” Distress crossed Conall’s face. “Don’t worry,” Amarillo said. “I will do everything in my power to find out something. But in the event I’m right and she’s moved on . . .”
“Yes?”
“Sharon left one thing behind when she left. A local phone book.”
“I know, I saw it, but—”
“People sometimes circle numbers in their phone books. Sometimes they even write numbers in it, especially emergency numbers. I took the phone book home with me. She wrote a doctor’s number on the inside cover; I assume it’s her family doctor. Now, pregnant women need prenatal care, and whoever gives it to them usually requests that their previous doctors send them their records, especially, I would imagine, if there’d been another pregnancy that had ended short of term. I think it will be worthwhile for me to monitor her doctor.”
“Monitor?”
Amarillo grinned. “Trade secrets.”
“Do whatever you have to do. In the meantime, I’m going to make a doctor’s appointment myself. ”
Four months later Conall stood on a sidewalk in a quiet neighborhood in San Diego, California, and gazed at a small bungalow across the street.
A stained glass hummingbird hung in the front window. A ceramic rabbit played among the geraniums in the flower bed.
At last, he had found her.
He crossed the street, walked up the sidewalk, and knocked. Several
nerve-racking minutes passed. A car drove by on the street behind him. He heard hedge clippers being run several houses down. Finally the door opened and Sharon appeared on the threshold.
As soon as she saw who it was, her eyes widened with panic.
The flat of his palm hit the door just in time to stop her from slamming it in his face. “I’ve come all the way across the country to see you,” he said quietly. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“No.”
With one quick glimpse he took in the shadows beneath her eyes and the paleness of her skin. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”
He gently pushed past her. Inside, he saw that she had duplicated her apartment in Boston, using the same furnishings and more important, the same loving care. He absorbed the familiar surroundings, then began to notice one or two new items. A porcelain calico cat had joined the English spaniel on the fireplace hearth. Another Hummel figurine had come to live among the stoneware children, this one a girl standing beside a baby buggy, her hands folded in prayer.
And lastly, there was a large box propped in a comer with a picture of a cradle on it.
She had created another nest.
Sharon self-consciously folded her arms over her swollen stomach, then realized that the slacks and oversize blouse she wore covered her well. And what did it matter anyway? "How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t easy. You have the complete admiration of Amarillo Smith, something that not many people can boast about."
“I’m sure it’s an honor.”
Her sarcasm briefly lifted his brows. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Would you please leave now?”
“No,” he said, and as if to emphasize his point, walked to the nearest chair and sat down.
The Promise Page 12