by Cara Summers
“I agree.” Ian turned to Nate. “Just because they’ve been satisfied with scare tactics so far doesn’t mean that will last.” He glanced back to Nate. “I’ve already got an ex-CIA friend of mine, Cody Marsh, doing some research on this. He’s out in Seattle right now, but I’m going to ask him to come here ASAP and help us out.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Nate said. “I don’t have anyone I can send up here full-time.”
Ian shifted his attention back to Jillian. “While you were in the kitchen, I filled Nate in on the Jenkinses’ visit. I want to go into the village and start digging into the colonel’s history on the island. I’d like you to come with me.”
She opened her mouth, but he stopped her with a raised hand. “For a couple of reasons. First, they gave you an offer on the hotel, so they may be motivated to scare you away. I think getting that information is a priority. And working as a team will be faster and safer. Until we get this sorted out, I don’t think you should be alone.”
“Agreed.” Nate and Avery voiced their vote in unison.
Jillian lifted her chin. “I’m not alone here at the hotel.”
“True. Avery will think he has to keep an eye on you. His priority should be the safety of the guests.”
He was right. About everything. Even the professional tone he was using was…for the best. She was talking to Ian MacFarland now, not Jack Ryan—writer and stranger. And she could be professional, too. She wasn’t at all sure that she hadn’t been going to agree to work with him on finding information on the Jenkinses even before he’d held up his hand.
“Fine.” She rose and crossed past him to the door of the suite. “I’ll meet you in the lobby in half an hour. We can talk on the drive into the village.”
AS SHE FLEW DOWN THE STAIRS in the lobby, Ian had to chalk punctuality up as one more thing he admired about Jillian Brightman. The outfit was another. The rainbow-colored skirt flared out at midcalf, and his eyes were drawn to the grape-colored shirt she’d knotted just above her waist. There was an inch of skin visible, and he knew exactly how that skin would warm beneath his hands. Heat churned in his center.
He shifted his gaze to her hair. She’d pulled the curls back into a ponytail, fastened it in place with a ribbon and long hoops dangled at her ears. The overall effect had him thinking of a butterfly.
Until she met his eyes. Then his thoughts went dark, and he took a step toward her before he could stop himself. Perhaps in another day or so, he’d get used to her effect on him. Get used to her. He had to. In the meantime, he had to keep his mind focused on his current job.
He still hadn’t decided what to do about the situation between the two of them. He had a hunch she was way ahead of him on that one. And he was pretty sure that she would pull back. That was the wise move for both of them.
She had every right to be angry with him. Hell, he was angry with himself. He’d been careless in the maze. And Work Boots could have dropped something much more lethal than tear gas. That fact had been eating at his insides ever since he’d gotten her out of the hedges.
It made sense for both of them to pull back, to put the period to what had happened between Jillian Brightman and Jack Ryan. It was clearly the safer option. Until they’d solved the more urgent problem of who was behind the sabotage incidents.
She crossed directly to him and beamed him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She was in pull-back mode, all right.
“I’m all set. And I know just where we should start.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I want to go to the library and talk to Miss Emmy Lou Pritchard.”
“Done. I had my car brought around.”
For a moment, a frown flickered across her face. “I did the same.”
“Yeah. But the deal is I’m not leaving you alone so going in separate cars isn’t an option. And I’ve seen you drive. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough excitement for today.”
He saw an instant of hesitation, but then she said, “Okay. I admit I didn’t make the best first impression.”
“With your driving,” he qualified. “Other than that you’ve done fine.” He led the way down the steps of the hotel and opened the passenger door of his waiting car. “You held up pretty well while we got out of that maze.”
“Thanks. You did very well getting us out of there.”
“Thanks.” Though he couldn’t have said why, the politeness was beginning to annoy him. He circled the SUV and climbed in.
They drove in silence almost to the end of the driveway.
“I checked your Web site—MacFarland Investigations. Did you design it?”
“Yes.”
“I designed mine, too, but it’s not nearly as good. Maybe you could give me some tips.”
“I could do that.” In a minute she was going to start talking about the weather. And all the while her scent was wrapping around him, triggering memories of what had happened between them before the tear gas had interrupted. And what he’d felt, what she’d felt—could feel again. And more. He knew there was more.
One glance at her told him that she did, too. Oh, her voice was cool and polite, but her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles were white. His annoyance eased a little.
“You used to work as an analyst for the CIA. Very impressive. Why did you leave?”
“My brother Dane invited me to join him.”
“And you left? Just like that?”
The tone of her voice had him glancing at her again. She’d sounded just like his boss when he’d handed in his resignation. “Dane offered the partnership in his company as an option. He didn’t want to put too much pressure on me. But I was getting bored sitting behind a computer, and my brother and I had a lot of time to make up for.”
“Right.” She put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid question. Naomi did tell me how you and Dane were separated when you were children and hadn’t seen each other for years. But I wasn’t thinking… Of course you would go with him.”
The coolness had vanished from her tone and the understanding he heard was something no one else had given him. “My boss was more than a little annoyed, and my colleagues thought I was nuts.”
“Dane is your family. And it’s working out, isn’t it? Naomi says you make a good team.”
“Until now. He’s not going to be happy that I took this job without filling him in.”
“Naomi, either. She has a huge big-sister complex. If she knew what was happening here, she’d be on the next flight home. We really have to get to the bottom…”
Her voice trailed off as they reached the curve where she’d very nearly killed both of them the day before. As he slowed the car, her gaze swept the road and she clasped her hands together tightly in her lap. She saw the tire tracks where her car had whipped into the skid and the sharp drop off to the side of the pavement.
But it wasn’t fear that flashed through her. It was the memory of the river of heat she’d felt when Ian had first touched her arm and when he’d backed her into the side of her car and his leg had pressed between hers.
Weakened, she leaned her head back against the seat.
“Jillian.”
She heard concern in his voice as he pulled the car off the road.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry.” She turned to face him. “I thought I could do this. I’m good at it usually.”
“Good at what?”
“Moving on. I decided I would follow your lead and be professional just as if…nothing had ever happened between us.”
Ian studied her for a moment. “You think that’s what I want.”
“Yes. You spelled it out in Avery’s suite. And it makes perfect sense for us to work together. It’s safer and more efficient. I’m fine with that. Our focus has to be on finding out what’s going on here as quickly as possible. I understand why you’d prefer it this way.”
“Do you want things to be just professional, Jill
ian?”
“I— Yes.” She unclasped her hands, and, glancing down, began to make little pleats in her skirt.
“And what happened between us in your room last night and in the maze?”
She looked at him again. “It never should have happened. And it was all my fault.”
He made a movement to reach for her hand, but she raised hers to stop him.
“Let me finish. I slipped a note beneath your door. I all but begged you to play a part in my stranger fantasy. And I thought I would just go on without explaining myself. In fact, that was my plan.”
“The ostrich syndrome. Ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen and it will go away,” he said. “Exactly.”
“I’ve had occasion to use the technique myself. But you don’t have to explain.”
“Yes, I do. You’re the brother of the man my sister is in love with. You deserve to know why I acted the way I did. It’s not my usual style.”
He waited this time. He may have spent most of his career behind a computer, but he’d learned enough about interrogation techniques to know that silence was often more effective than a direct question.
In the brief pause, she raised her hands and dropped them. “It’s not that I completely understand all of it myself.” She looked at him, met his eyes. “I’ll start by telling you that I have a tendency to be impulsive. Sometimes I rush into things. But I’ve never done anything like what I’ve done with you. Part of the problem was I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. Even now. We’re only a matter of yards away from where I nearly killed both of us. And all I can think of is what it felt like when you first touched me. What it will feel like when you touch me again.”
It wasn’t just heat churning inside him. There were feelings, and he had to exert all his control to stay still. “I can understand that much because I feel the same way.”
“Oh.”
He must have made some kind of movement because she raised both hands. “I need to finish this. The desire may have been mutual.”
“Not may. It was.”
She drew in a breath and let it out. “But there was something else—something that made me more prone to act on it.”
“You don’t have to explain. As soon as I got your note, I did some research. I wanted to make sure I understood your message. Being swept away by a stranger is a very popular sexual fantasy. Number one on some Web sites.”
With what sounded like a groan, Jillian closed her eyes, pressed her fingers to them. “And you must have concluded that I see a man I like and I whip out my number one fantasy, scribble it down on an old piece of parchment and slip it under his door. Way to go, Jillian!”
He took her hands then. When she tried to pull away, he held on to them. “I didn’t think that at all. I have a healthy enough ego that I actually thought you’d only sent it to me.”
“I did.”
“Good.”
What she saw in his eyes had something inside her loosening. “You’re a kind man, Mr. MacFarland.”
He tightened his grip on her hands briefly. “No. I’m an honest one. To borrow Nate’s favorite phrase, I had no trouble building a theory that you slipped that message under my door because you wanted me to follow through on my rain check. What puzzled me a bit was the parchment and the calligraphy.”
She drew in another breath and let it out. “That’s the other part of the story. And it has to do with what Naomi and Reese and I found in Hattie Haworth’s secret room. Inside we discovered a hatbox filled with sexual fantasies.”
Ian’s brows shot up. “Dane told me about the secret room but not about the hatbox. Fill me in.”
Jillian did just that, detailing everything—her initial discovery of the box on the day she first visited the tower, the day she and her sisters had each selected envelopes, right up to when she’d gone up to the tower room for her third try the night before.
Ian listened, not saying a word until she’d finished. Then he smiled at her. “Well, this opens up a whole Pandora’s box of questions.”
“What questions?”
“Aren’t you curious about what Hattie used that box for?”
Jillian nodded. “I’m dying to know. My sisters and I speculated that she might have been running a house of ill repute up here. You should have seen her boudoir before the rehab.”
“That’s what Nate would call a theory. But it’s not the only possibility. My friend Cody is going to love this. He’s done some paranormal investigations. There’s also the question of why she hid it and why she let you discover it.”
“You believe in Hattie, then?”
“My brother sure does. Your sister claims Hattie tried to save his life. I figure I owe Hattie more than skepticism. Who else knows about the fantasy box?”
“My sisters, Avery and your brother. I have to assume Naomi told him everything since the fantasy she drew had to do with making love with a priest.”
“Really.” His smile widened. “I imagine that put Dane in a very difficult position. I guess I can be happy you didn’t draw that one. And you haven’t told anyone else?”
Jillian narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t expect you to be so accepting of this—and so amused. I thought you’d be angry.”
“First, I’m not so much amused as intrigued. And why would I be angry?”
She pulled her hands from his. “Because I used you to fulfill some fantasy I pulled out of a hatbox.”
In a move so quick she couldn’t prevent it, he framed her face with his hands and kissed her. Not long, not hard. But just that brief pressure of his mouth on hers had everything inside her yearning. Helpless, she gripped his shoulders, dug her fingers in to hold him there.
“Just for the record.” He brushed his lips over hers again. “You can use me for purposes of fantasy fulfillment anytime you want.”
Then he turned and pulled the car out on the road.
Jillian frowned at him. “We can’t do the fantasy thing anymore.”
“There’s a good argument to be made on either side of that one.”
Her frown deepened. “We need to get to the bottom of who’s trying to scare my sisters and me away from Haworth House.”
“Agreed. That does have to be on the front burner, so to speak. But what’s going on between us isn’t going to go away. We could try leaving it on the back burner until we get this cleared up.”
“That’s a good plan,” Jillian said and wondered why the lie didn’t have her nose growing. It was the logical approach, the sensible one.
“Sure is.” After negotiating the next turn, he shot her a look that had her toes curling. “But it may not stay on the back burner. In which case, we may have to multitask.”
12
A MIX OF SUN AND SHADE dappled the front steps of the library. The building itself, a two-story structure of gray stone, might have passed for a fortress if its facade hadn’t been lightened by the stained-glass bay windows.
As she and Ian approached the steps, Jillian reviewed in her mind what they wanted to learn about the first Samuel Jenkins. The short answer to that question was a lot. And they were banking on discovering what they wanted to know here at the library. He’d taken his life in 1955. Even if she hadn’t watched her fair share of TV crime shows, she’d know that the passage of fifty-five years made Samuel Jenkins’s death a very cold case. Pausing on the third step, she said, “You’re going to ask the questions, right?”
“I figure we’ll each ask some. We’re a team, right?”
“Sure.” His response warmed her and at the same time, it made her a little nervous.
“FYI—I don’t have a lot of experience with the team thing,” she said. “Except for when I’m with my sisters.”
“Same here. I was always a loner before I started working with Dane.” He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll figure it out as we go.”
“Ms. Brightman. Mr. Ryan. Yoo-hoo, wait up.”
They turned to see Vivian Thorley hurrying toward them. Perfe
ct was the word that came to Jillian’s mind every time she ran into Vivian. In her plum-colored suit and matching shoes, the woman looked as if she was ready to pose for the cover of a fashion magazine. Jillian had never quite been able to pinpoint her age. Avery had asked around and the best guess was that the local real estate agent was in her early seventies. But the woman looked at least a decade younger. Jillian noted she had an admirable knack for negotiating cracked sidewalks in three-inch heels, an ability that even further belied her age.
“She’s the real estate agent who sold us Haworth House,” Jillian said to Ian in a low tone.
“She thought she might sell me something, too.”
“You’ve met her?”
“Jack Ryan did. It’s a long story.”
Reaching them, Vivian beamed a smile at Ian. “Mr. Ryan, nice to see you again.”
“Likewise.”
The agent turned to Jillian. “I was just picking up the phone to call you when I saw you drive past the office and park on the corner. I’m surprised to see you in town.” She glanced behind them. “Especially here at the library. I’d heard there was some trouble up at Haworth House.”
“Everything’s fine at the hotel,” Jillian assured her. “I’m helping Mr. Ryan with some research he’s doing. He’s writing a book about Haworth House, you know.”
“Yes, the town’s been buzzing about that also.”
“You said you were about to call me. Is there a problem with the deal on my store?” Jillian asked.
“Oh, no.” Vivian waved a hand. “That transaction is closed. It’s about Haworth House. I received a call from Colonel Jenkins about an hour ago, and he’s asked me to draw up a purchase offer on your hotel. I didn’t even know you were thinking of selling.”
“I’m not.”
Vivian frowned. “But he said—”
“Colonel Jenkins is wrong.”
Vivian blinked. “Don’t you want to know what he’s offering? It’s very generous.”
“I’ll bet he’s offered three times what I’ve put into the place.”