Mystery Heiress

by Suzanne Carey

  Jess shook her head. “Smooth sailing so far.”

  “Stephen tells me the two of you haven’t had any time to yourselves since Annie came home from the hospital. Do you think you might consider leaving her with a baby-sitter some evening, if I could recommend a trustworthy one?”

  Jess got a warm feeling inside. Desperate to be alone with her, Stephen had approached Lindsay for help. “I’ve been thinking along the same lines,” she acknowledged. “Both wanting to do what you’re suggesting, and fearing it. If anything should happen…”

  Lindsay patted her hand. “Your ambivalence is perfectly understandable,” she said. “But Annie can manage without you for a few hours. Mrs. Larsen, who sits for Chelsea and Carter during the week, is often available in the evenings and on weekends. She’s sixty-five years old. The grandmother of three. And an utter peach. Plus, Frank and I are just down the road for backup, in case of emergency. If Stephen asks you out again, I think you should accept.”

  Stephen didn’t let any grass grow under his feet. Advised by Lindsay that Jess hadn’t turned down the baby-sitter idea, he phoned Mrs. Larsen and, assured of her availability, invited Jess to his house for dinner that very evening.

  Aware that it would be dinner and lovemaking, she quickly accepted. She’d been aching for him, too. Besides, she longed to see his house. Mute glimpses of the private man and the past he never talked about might be available to her there.

  He called for her around 7:00 p.m., after Annie had eaten her supper and settled down to have a pile of storybooks read to her by Mrs. Larsen on the living room couch. The air between them was electric with promise as she gave him a chaste hello kiss and stepped back to let Annie have a moment of his attention before they hurried out the door.

  Due back at midnight, they’d have just five hours together. Jess wanted to make the most of them. She could feel Stephen’s corresponding urgency in the possessive way his fingers gripped her waist through the lapis wool of her jacket as he helped her into his Mercedes.

  “I hope you like plain old American steak and baked potatoes,” he said in a low voice as he started up the engine. “Though it’s fairly nippy out tonight, it won’t be too cold to grill on the deck for quite a while yet.”

  Before long, the leaves would start changing color, metamorphosing from their one-note samba of summer green to a complex symphony of russet, gold and burgundy. In Minneapolis, Jess had heard, the snow flew early.

  Though lacking any spoken assurances from him, she was ready to trust that they’d still be together when that moment came. “Steak sounds wonderful,” she replied, snuggling against him.

  His house was just five minutes away via the road that followed the lake’s meandering shore. Dark and shuttered-looking when he’d driven her past it the night they came to inspect the cottage, his angular contemporary frame house glowed with light as they pulled into the drive.

  Flashing her a grin that telegraphed both pleasure and possessiveness, Stephen raised the garage door with his electronic opener. A moment later, they were parking inside and he was ushering her up the quarry-tile steps that led to the kitchen. She noted a copper range hood, cherrywood cupboards and slate countertops—a Finnish table and chairs arranged before a two-way red-brick fireplace. A bottle of Bardolino and two tulip-shaped glasses stood in readiness. Aside from an automatic drip coffeepot, a set of steel canisters, a toaster and a microwave oven, the countertops were bare. Apparently his ex-wife had walked away with most of the kitchen gadgets and cookbooks.

  “Would you like some wine?” he asked. “Or a tour first?”

  Jess smiled. “The tour, then the wine, if that would suit. I can’t deny I’ve been curious.”

  Like the kitchen, his living room was fairly Spartan, though the black leather sofa and love seat that faced the other side of the fireplace appeared quite comfortable. Their vertical blinds drawn back, a broad sweep of windows offered a panoramic view of tall oaks and the scattered lights that had begun to twinkle like stars on the opposite shore of the lake. She liked the jewel-toned Oriental rugs that softened the plank-style wooden floors, and the handful of carefully chosen contemporary paintings.

  In her opinion, the low bookcase filled with art books and the rack of compact discs that waited beside the stereo were a step in the right direction. Yet the room lacked the softer, cozier touches an afghan might provide, or a jumble of throw pillows. It doesn’t look as if a child has ever lived in this house, she thought. Or even spent much time here as a visitor.

  Her surprise was that much greater, then, when she glanced into one of his guest bedrooms during their tour, to find herself gazing at child-size oak furniture and an extensive, boy-oriented collection of toys and books and pint-size sporting equipment. None of the things looked new. A rag-doll clown with a dirty face appeared to have been particularly loved. Yet the room was excessively tidy, as if no child had played or slept there for years.

  “Whose room is this?” she asked, turning a puzzled face to him. “I thought you didn’t have any children. Yet here’s this absolutely perfect room for a little boy….”

  He was gazing at the room’s contents as if he’d temporarily forgotten about their existence and regretted showing them to her. “I don’t,” he told her. “Have any children, that is.”

  “Then… I don’t understand.”

  “My, er, nephew stays over from time to time,” he muttered. To talk about David to her would inject the pain of his loss into their relationship. And he didn’t want it there—yet. Besides, talking to her about a dead son when her daughter was so sick would hardly be kind.

  Stephen hadn’t mentioned having a nephew. Or family of any sort. There’s a lot I don’t know about him, she thought, deciding not to belabor the point. The fact that he’d furnish a room in his house with all these things for a nephew who only visits occasionally says a lot about his loneliness and his desire to be a parent. She wondered if his marriage had failed because his ex-wife hadn’t wanted to give him a baby.

  He seemed to relax a little as he showed her the master bedroom, which contained a leather chair, a matching hassock and a skinny, modern-looking reading lamp, as well as several smaller Oriental rugs and a suite of Danish teak furniture. By the time they’d returned to the kitchen and he was carrying the steaks out to the deck to grill them, most of the tension appeared to have eased from his shoulders. Instead of a man with secrets he refused to share and a hidden wound he didn’t want to talk about, he was once again just Stephen, the tall, blond doctor she’d met at the zoo and learned to love.

  It was chilly enough on the deck in the sunset’s afterglow to bring a tingle of color to Jess’s cheeks. But the cold didn’t bother her that much. Nestled in the curve of Stephen’s arm as he turned the steaks and pointed out various landmarks on the lake’s opposite shore, she felt as warm as buttered toast. Whatever has hurt him in the past, he’ll tell me about it eventually, she reassured herself. I can’t expect him to divulge the secrets of his heart on a preset time schedule.

  They ate off brown-and-black Arabia of Finland pottery at the Scandinavian-style table, in front of a crackling fire. In addition to the steak, he produced potatoes roasted amid the coals and a fresh-tasting salad made with tomatoes, onions, bits of Greek feta cheese and black olives. The rolls were French, from a local bakery. As they ate and sipped their wine by the fire’s glow, they talked of Annie, the Todds, Jacob Fortune’s tangled affairs—anything and everything but the impending lovemaking that was uppermost in both their thoughts.

  Jess’s latent arousal deepened when, after she refused dessert and offered to help with the dishes, Stephen responded with a husky “I’ll wash them in the morning,” and tugged her to her feet.

  “What’ll we do, then?” she asked breathlessly, imprisoned in his embrace.

  The heritage of the Norwegian and English ancestors he’d told her about, his blue eyes took on their smoky look. “How about something we’ve been prevented from doing since Annie cam
e home from the hospital?” he suggested.

  She’d come to see his house and snatch a glimpse of the private man who lived there, and to make love to him most of all. “That suits me, Stephen,” she whispered.

  The moon was full, flooding his bedroom with its milky brilliance. They wouldn’t need to switch on a lamp. Everything they yearned to see, touch and worship with eager hands and mouths would be clearly visible—her small but perfect breasts and softly parted lips, the glaze of lust in his eyes, his long, lean torso, culminating in the generous male attributes she ached to stroke and caress.

  Throbbing with arousal, they couldn’t get enough of looking at each other as they undid zippers and buttons. Moments later, the clothing that had separated them lay in a discarded heap on the floor as they lost themselves in each other’s embrace.

  “Jess… Jess…are you really here with me at last?” Stephen said wonderingly as he ran his hands down the creamy length of her back and grasped her buttocks, the better to position her against him. “You can’t have any idea how much I’ve needed you….”

  “Oh, can’t I?”

  So delicate and patrician-seeming, with her slender frame, naturally refined demeanor and upper-crust British accent, Jess was, for Stephen, that paragon among women, both an exquisite primrose to be gently plucked and a brazen temptress when they were in the throes of lovemaking. During their week of forbearance, her wild but oh-so-sweet behavior in front of the fire at her borrowed cottage had haunted his every waking moment. “Tell me,” he demanded.

  “Not a night has passed that I haven’t dreamed of you sneaking in my bedroom window to claim me,” she whispered.

  The mental image of surprising Jess and pretending to overpower her as she lay rosy and warm from sleep beneath her coverlet was almost more than Stephen could take. Refusing for the moment to consider that fate could tear them apart if Annie’s treatment didn’t go well, he assumed protection and tugged her down on the bed so that they were face-to-face, with her on top, her shapely legs straddling him.

  “I wish I’d known what you were thinking,” he answered, lovingly caressing her nipples as he sought against her. “I’d have gone over the electric fence to get to you, sweetheart, if that’s what it took.”

  During the course of the next two weeks, their “dinner dates” continued unabated, enriching both them and the benevolent Mrs. Larsen, who looked after Annie as if she were her very own granddaughter. Adrift in a romantic haze, Stephen was finishing up his office hours one afternoon in the professional building adjacent to the hospital when his secretary passed him a note. His ex-wife, Brenda, wanted a word with him.

  I wonder what’s on her mind, he thought apprehensively. “Ask her to hold, if she can,” he instructed. “I’ll be with her in just a moment.”

  Incredibly, for the second time in a row, the news from Brenda was good. “I just called to thank you for the advice you gave me the evening Tom and I had drinks with you at Gustino’s,” she informed him on an upbeat note.

  Unable to recall giving her anything of the sort, Stephen said as much.

  “How like you to forget!” she laughed good-naturedly. “I’ll be happy to refresh your memory. When I told you Tom had asked me to marry him and confessed how afraid I was to let myself love again, let alone have another baby, you told me to ‘go for it.’ Well, we’re getting married next week. And I’ll share a little secret…I’m already pregnant!”

  The news causing his head to swim with possible consequences for his own life, Stephen offered his heartfelt congratulations. As he left his office a short time later, he had to admit that Brenda seemed truly happy for the first time since David’s diagnosis. Meanwhile, happiness had been sneaking up on him, as well. Could he afford not to make a corresponding commitment?

  Instead of heading home to change into casual clothes for dinner with Jess and Annie at the Fortunes’ guest cottage, he pointed the Mercedes toward a jewelry store where he’d bought himself a new watch a few months earlier. By sheer happenstance, he was able to find a parking place a few doors away and enter the shop before it closed for the evening.

  The owner, a man he knew slightly, happened to be behind the counter himself. “Looking for something special, Dr. Hunter?” he said with a smile.

  An attack of cold feet didn’t stop Stephen from asking to see the diamond engagement rings. “Something simple, with a decent-size stone, like that pear-shaped solitaire you have displayed on a velvet cushion,” he elaborated, wondering if he’d lost his mind even to consider purchasing one.

  According to the jeweler, the two-and-a-half-carat diamond set in platinum that he’d pointed out was one of the best-quality stones the small but exclusive shop had to offer. Though it was also one of the most expensive, Stephen could easily afford it, thanks to his income as one of the Twin Cities’ top medical specialists. The question was whether he’d healed sufficiently from David’s death to risk buying it for Jess and take on the risky emotional commitment that would entail. Loving her meant loving Annie, too, something he already did, to an extent that tore at his heart. What would happen if he couldn’t save her? In addition to the profound personal grief and sense of failure he’d feel, would his relationship with Jess blow up in his face?

  The shop owner was waiting politely for him to indicate his interest in the ring or ask to see something else. “No doubt you’ve guessed I’m marriage-minded,” he acknowledged with some embarrassment. “Unfortunately, I haven’t asked the lady yet. If I were to buy her this ring and she didn’t like it, or no engagement actually took place, could I, uh, bring it back for a refund?”

  An indulgent smile hinting he’d been asked that particular question a thousand times, the shop owner attempted to soothe Stephen’s fears. The ring was fully returnable. “However, I think I should warn you, Dr. Hunter,” he said with a twinkle. “Rings of this quality seldom come back to the store once they’re purchased.”

  The ring was still in Stephen’s possession on Sunday afternoon, when he, Jess and Annie reported to the Todds’ lakefront home for a cookout. Though the weather was mild, the first hints of early fall color had begun to enliven the trees’ canopy of green. Sunlight crosshatched the lake with diamonds.

  Like the Viking Jess insisted he was, Stephen had called for her and Annie in his graceful Butterfly sailboat. Her downy blond head protected from the breeze by a tam that pulled down over her ears and a child-size flotation vest securely buckled about her too-slender frame, Annie watched him maneuver the little craft with obvious fascination.

  “Will you teach me how to sail when I get well, Dr. Steve?” she said at last. “Pretty please, with sugar on top?”

  She’d picked up the American expression from Lindsay’s youngsters, he guessed. “I’ll be happy to,” he answered, giving her a fond smile as he tacked, preparatory to heading for the Todds’ dock. “In fact, if it’s okay with Mummy, you can help steer us toward Chelsea’s backyard.”

  With Jess’s permission, Annie eagerly changed places to sit in the crook of Stephen’s elbow and place her much smaller hands next to his on the tiller. How right they look together, Jess thought, noting the way his blond hair ruffled in the breeze and reflecting on the similarity in their coloring. She could be his daughter, instead of Ronald’s. I wonder if, this time next year, the three of us will be healthy, happy, and still together.

  Perhaps as an antidote to her uncertainty about where they stood with the man she loved and her constant worry over the outcome of Annie’s illness, Jess teased Stephen about “maneuvering the craft into the slot” as they approached the Todds’ dock. So innocent-sounding to the unsuspecting ear, the double entendre delighted him. What a delicate English rose she is, he thought. And what a bawdy, satisfying lover she can be! I don’t want to lose her—or the precious little girl who’s filling the empty spot David left in my heart at such a rapid pace.

  Frank Todd and his son, Carter, were waiting on the dock to welcome them. “They’re here!” Frank sho
uted at Lindsay and Chelsea, who could be seen waving from the kitchen window.

  They’d eat in about an hour, Frank informed them. First, the adults would talk and enjoy the fine weather, while the children ran off some of their excess energy.

  At least that was the plan. With both host and hostess on call at the hospital, it didn’t work out that way. They’d just settled down in Adirondack chairs facing the water when Lindsay’s cellular phone rang. She was needed in the Minn-Gen emergency room.

  “Here’s hoping I won’t be gone too long,” she said, getting to her feet. “If I’m not back in an hour, start grilling without me. The side dishes are covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Lindsay returned within forty-five minutes. “False alarm,” she murmured, sliding into the empty chair beside her husband and slipping a hand into his.

  So hesitant, yet clearly indicative of a strong need for his backup and support, the gesture caused him to give her a searching look. “What’s up, babe?” he asked in his deep, gentle voice.

  The glance she gave Jess prompted the latter to hold her breath. A moment later, she knew the reason.

  “While I was at the hospital, I ran into one of the techs from hematology,” Lindsay said. “The latest batch of blood tests was available. We’ve found a match for Annie. It’s Chelsea.”

  Ten

  “Oh, Lin…”

  Her heart a bottomless well of joy and relief, Jess could imagine only too well how Lindsay felt. As much as the brown-haired pediatrician wanted to save Annie, she couldn’t help but feel some reluctance over the prospect of causing her own sweet daughter the slightest discomfort.

  Frank probably felt the same way.

  No one spoke for a moment, as he and Lindsay looked at each other and then at Annie, Chelsea and Carter, who were playing in blissful ignorance of adult fears and the existence of fatal blood disorders. A study in restraint, though his emotions were deeply affected, too, Stephen lightly massaged Jess’s shoulder.