Taken Beyond Temptation

by Cara Summers

  Vivian blinked at her again. “Yes.”

  Ian looked to her. “I thought you said twice.”

  “I turned that offer down,” Jillian said.

  “And that was a smart move,” Vivian said, her face brightening. “You’re playing hard to get. And I think he’s willing to go even higher. I’ll know just what to say when I talk with him again.”

  “Say I’m not interested,” Jillian said.

  “Ms. Thorley,” Ian said. “What do you know about the Jenkinses?”

  “I know that the colonel and his son have established a fine reputation in the hotel field. I looked them up online while I was talking to the colonel on the phone.”

  “Do they own any property here on Belle Island?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “The colonel was born here, so I was wondering about family property,” Ian said. “You know a lot about the real estate around here. Do you know what happened to his family’s home?”

  “No. Why does that interest you?”

  “Ms. Brightman and I are curious about why the colonel and his son are so interested in the hotel. Did they mention purchasing any other property here on Belle Island?”

  “No. And I should talk to them about that ASAP. I was just so surprised and excited about their offer on the hotel.” She beamed another smile at them. “I’ll give them a ring straight away and let them know Ms. Brightman’s response to their offer.”

  “I’m not selling and I’m not negotiating,” Jillian said.

  “Of course not.” Vivian raised both hands. “I’ll convey that very clearly to Mr. Jenkins. And I’ll be in touch.”

  “She doesn’t believe me,” Jillian said as they watched Vivian negotiate her way up the street.

  “No. And I’m pretty sure she lied to us.”

  She turned to stare at him. “Why?”

  “I have a hunch she knows more about the family’s history than she’s telling us. When I visited her office yesterday as Jack Ryan, she knew the background of every single piece of real estate she tried to sell me. It’s odd that she doesn’t know anything about the property of a man who committed suicide on the island.”

  “But why would she lie?”

  “Good question.”

  The moment they entered the library, Emmy Lou Pritchard spotted them. Circling her desk, she crossed a honey-colored parquet floor to greet them. “Jillian and Mr. Ryan, welcome.”

  “Molly was right about that dress,” Jillian said. “It’s lovely on you.”

  Color tinged Emmy Lou’s cheeks. “Molly has a good eye. I wish I could afford to make her right more often. What can I do for you? I don’t suppose I could interest you in the fifty-cent tour?”

  “You definitely could, but first, I’d like to clear up one little point,” Ian said. “My name isn’t really Jack Ryan. But I think you already figured that out.”

  Emmy Lou’s eyes twinkled. “I’m a huge Tom Clancy fan, so I assumed you were using an alias. That’s what writers usually do, right?”

  Ian grinned at her. “That’s a very diplomatic way of putting it. But I’m not a writer, either.” He held out a hand. “I’m Ian MacFarland.”

  “Any relation to the Dane MacFarland who played such an important role in the capture of that swindler up at the hotel last month?”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Ah. And are you also here on a case, Mr. MacFarland?”

  “In a way.”

  “And you’ve gone undercover as a writer. I’ll keep your little secret.”

  “Appreciate it,” Ian said.

  “As far as the tour goes, what you see is pretty much what you get.”

  Jillian swept her gaze around the airy space. It reminded her more of a home library than a public one. The parquet floors were dotted with rugs. Potted plants filled tables and nestled in corners. A few people relaxed in the comfortable chairs and sofas that were grouped in both of the bay windows facing the street. Two others sat at a long conference table positioned along another wall. A triangle of desks in the center of the room marked off workspace for librarians, and three aisles broke the rows of bookcases that filled the rest of the room. Here and there, paintings hung on the walls. One of them drew her attention, and she moved closer.

  “Hattie Haworth.” She hadn’t needed the plaque to confirm her suspicion. She’d seen Hattie in that beveled mirror in the tower room. In the portrait, she had on a blue dress and the long red-gold curls were pulled back from her face. And she wore a necklace of finely twisted gold chain. “How did you get this?”

  “A donation,” Emmy Lou said. “She gave it to the library along with an endowment when she died.”

  “Endowment?”

  “It’s largely due to Hattie Haworth’s generosity that we’re able to keep operating. Money from her gift pays for taxes, the upkeep on the building, and there’s even some left over for the purchase of new books.”

  Jillian turned to face Emmy Lou. “I thought she was a recluse, that she didn’t play any part in the life of the village.”

  “She did pretty much keep to herself, but in the first year she lived here, she came into Belle Bay every so often. I was eight or nine then, and my friends and I used to keep track of the Hattie sightings. I remember seeing her here in the library once. She evidently had a soft spot in her heart for the place. Is Hattie the reason you came here today?”

  “No. We want to know anything you can tell us about Samuel Jenkins’s tragic death. I met with Colonel Jenkins and his son today, and it turns out they are related,” Jillian explained.

  “Such a sad story.” Emmy Lou led the way to one of the bay windows and gestured them into chairs. “Do you mind if I ask why you’re interested?”

  When Ian said nothing, Jillian figured he was going to let her decide how much to tell Emmy Lou. He’d been frank with her about who he was, and by evening, the whole village was going to know the Jenkinses were interested in buying the hotel. “During the meeting I had with Colonel Jenkins this morning, he informed me that he and his son want to buy Haworth House.”

  “Oh.” There was surprise in her tone. “I wouldn’t think the family would want to have anything to do with that place. That’s where Samuel Jenkins the first committed suicide. He ended his life by jumping off one of the cliffs on the property.”

  “Interesting,” Ian murmured. “Can you give us any more details?”

  Emmy Lou sat back in her chair. “I was ten at the time. That would have been in 1955. He was only thirty.”

  “So young,” Jillian said.

  “Yes. Although that’s not what struck me first at the time.”

  “What did strike you?”

  “The way the adults wouldn’t talk about it. The fact that he’d committed suicide spread like wildfire. He’d left a note. I’d never heard of anything like that happening before. And at ten it’s hard to conceive of someone ending their life. At school, it was all we could talk about. The Jenkinses were a fairly prominent family. They ran a successful hardware store in Belle Bay and owned a nice house in the village. I didn’t know Samuel Jenkins from the hardware store, but I’d seen him bring his son into the library now and then.”

  “What was your impression of him?” Ian asked.

  “I hadn’t formed one,” Emmy Lou said. “Maybe that’s why I had so many questions after he died. But whenever I asked one, my parents would tell me it was a horrible thing and not to bother my head about it. To put it out of my mind. That’s the way the teachers handled it, too. Nowadays they’d bring in counselors and encourage kids to ask away. As it was, the more the adults refused to talk about it, the more fascinating it became for me and my friends. Finally, I went to my grandmother. She was the librarian here before me, and I used to drop by after school to help out. Before long, I wore her down.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “First, she showed me how to look up the newspaper reports and get the facts. That’s what a g
ood librarian does, she said to me. So that’s what I did. Samuel Jenkins had been married to Margie Brenner for four years when he died. He left behind a wife who was twenty-one and a four-year-old son.”

  “So his wife was younger, and she was pregnant when they married,” Jillian said.

  “Yes. I was old enough to do the math. I still had questions, and my grandmother filled me in on what she knew. It was pretty widespread knowledge that Samuel wasn’t happy in his marriage. The Brenner family was poor. If Belle Bay had had train tracks, the Brenners would have lived on the wrong side. Samuel Jenkins married Margie when he’d learned she was pregnant. It was my grandmother’s opinion that she was a fortune hunter who’d set out to trap him—an opinion she believed was proven true when she sold everything within six months of Samuel’s death, took the money and got out of here.”

  “Did your grandmother have any other opinions?” Ian asked.

  Emmy Lou smiled. “Hundreds of them. You wouldn’t want to get her started on politics. But I imagine you’re asking what she thought of Samuel Jenkins. In her mind, he was a decent young man who’d done the right thing by Margie Brenner and he loved his son.”

  “And did she also believe that he gradually became unhappy enough to kill himself?” Jillian asked.

  “No, my grandmother didn’t think that at all. She believed the suicide didn’t make sense. An accident, she might have bought into. But the suicide note ruled that out. She thought Samuel was murdered.”

  “Why?” Ian asked. “Did she have anything to substantiate her opinion?”

  Emmy Lou smiled. “Nothing other than a gut feeling. The same gut feeling that told her the world was going to end when Harry Truman was elected president. She considered that opinion at least partially validated when he dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.”

  “Did she have any ideas about motive?” Ian asked.

  “No.” Emmy Lou shook her head. “All she had was that gut feeling.”

  “Did she convince you that Samuel was murdered?” Jillian interjected.

  “Enough to have me going over the newspaper accounts again. I didn’t find anything really. And there was always that suicide note.”

  “Do you know if it was in Samuel’s handwriting or typed?” Ian said.

  “It didn’t say in the newspaper account. But I did come up with my own theory. Remember I was ten and searching for answers. There are plenty of cliffs on this island, and I kept asking myself why he might go to the ones at Haworth House to throw himself off.”

  “It’s a good question. Did you come to any conclusion?” Jillian asked.

  Emmy Lou smiled. “I came up with a very romantic theory. I decided that Samuel Jenkins and Hattie Haworth were having an affair and that when she broke it off and rejected him, he couldn’t live any longer.”

  “She would have been older than he was,” Jillian pointed out.

  “Eight years older and very beautiful. We studied Romeo and Juliet in English class that year. I was into romantic tragedy.”

  Jillian glanced at the portrait. “Did your grandmother think they were having an affair?”

  “She never mentioned it. But she might have had some reservations about talking to me about an extramarital affair because of my age.”

  “You’ve been very helpful, Miss Emmy Lou,” Ian said. “You mentioned that your grandmother originally sent you to newspaper articles on the suicide. Do you still carry those records here in the library?”

  “We do. But those were the days before we got into electronic storage of any kind. If you’d like a look, I’ll have to take you downstairs where we still archive those old materials.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, IAN SAT across a stainless-steel table from Jillian in the basement of the library. In contrast to the homey warmth of the library’s main floor, the basement level with its stone walls and rows of stark iron shelving projected a dungeonlike atmosphere. Though some daylight filtered through the windows near the ceiling, it was a bare lightbulb that illuminated their workspace.

  Thanks to the library’s meticulous organization, they hadn’t had any trouble finding the box containing the Belle Island Weekly Examiner for 1955. Spread out in front of them were all the newspaper articles they’d been able to find on Samuel Jenkins’s suicide. Other than the exact wording of the note, they hadn’t come up with anything other than what Miss Emmy Lou had told them. Though only three issues referred directly to the incident, they’d extended their search six months after Samuel’s passing and found a brief article on Margie Brenner Jenkins’s departure from the island.

  He figured they’d tapped the well dry. But Jillian hadn’t given up. With a frown creasing her forehead, she was running her finger down a yellowed column of newsprint with the focus that a good hunting dog might use to pursue a fox.

  He’d spent some time on the phone. Nate had confirmed the suicide note had been handwritten. Since it was his grandfather who’d investigated the case, Nate vouched for the fact that the handwriting had been verified. The Kirbys were thorough.

  His next call had been to Cody Marsh, who expected to reach Belle Island the next morning. One of Cody’s associates was tracing what had happened to Margie and Sam the second once they’d left the island. Since then, Ian had passed the time watching Jillian.

  And wanting her.

  He was trying to figure what it was about her that pulled at him so. That was what he did, right—figure things out? Part of it was the special chemistry that they generated whenever they were close. It was basic, primitive and irresistible. All he had to do was think about her for his blood to hum. And sitting across the table from her for the past two hours was more than enough to have the heat simmering inside him just waiting to break into a full boil.

  But chemistry didn’t fully account for the quiet pleasure he got from simply looking at her. The fragility was always there—in the delicate curve of her cheek, in the feminine angle where her neck met her shoulder, in the narrowness of her wrists. On the surface she reminded him of a porcelain doll that might shatter if he touched her.

  But each time he did touch her, he found strength and fire—and that kindled a response in him no other woman ever had.

  Even above the smell of old newspapers and the faint mustiness that all basements shared, he could catch her scent. It reminded him of spring flowers. And he knew just how that scent would change when passion heated and dampened her skin.

  The room was quiet. Other than the distant hum of a lawn mower, the only sound marring the silence was Jillian’s breath going in and out. His mind detoured to how long it might take him to have the breath hitching in her throat and to hear his name on her lips. He wanted her to moan his name.

  Tonight, he promised himself. He’d invite her to his room, and they’d take their time making love with no fear of interruptions. He imagined untying the knot in her shirt, the one that had been making his fingers itch ever since she’d run down the stairway at Haworth House.

  He wanted, no, he needed to make love with her—as himself and not some stranger or writer. He wanted her to know his touch. His taste. To know he was the one filling her and urging her toward a climax.

  The temptation to make love to her now and not wait until tonight pulled at him stronger and stronger as the moments passed.

  Straightening, Jillian pressed her fingers against her eyes. “It’s all starting to blur.”

  With some effort, Ian forced his thoughts back to the matter at hand. They’d come to the library to find out more about the Jenkins. They hadn’t yet talked about what they’d read, and he wanted her insights. “What stands out in your mind?”

  “The note. I’m sure that Miss Emmy Lou’s grandmother was a smart woman, but it’s hard to get from that note to murder. Doubly hard now that Nate says it was in Samuel’s handwriting.”

  Ian reached for the paper that offered a copy of the suicide note. ““I’m sorry, but someone has to end it. Neither of us is happy. You’ll be provided for. Always, Sam.’�
�

  Jillian dropped her hands and folded them in front of her. “He left it for his wife to find in the morning, and then he went to the cliffs. The cliffs at Haworth House.”

  “You’re bothered by his choice of setting.”

  “Aren’t you?” She selected one of the newspapers and turned it so that it was facing him. “I recognize the area in the photo. It’s the section of the cliffs behind the gardens and the maze. I can take you there. He was right on the estate. It’s private land. Why would he go there to end it all?”

  “You’re favoring Miss Emmy Lou’s romanticized theory that Samuel was having an affair with the retired movie star.”

  She turned her hands over, palms up. “Go ahead. Laugh. But I do have one small piece of evidence that might point in that direction.”

  “The colonel’s sense of déjà vu this morning when he was in the library and then again when he saw the maze.”

  “Yes. It proves—”

  “It suggests. I think the colonel’s remembrance of being inside Haworth House and perhaps the maze is an avenue worth pursuing. But we only have his word for it.”

  “All right, but if it’s true that he spent time there as a child, so did someone else. Perhaps his father.”

  “Or his mother,” Ian countered. “We need to know more about Margie Brenner Jenkins. Cody has one of his assistants working on it.” He glanced at his watch. “And Cody himself ought to be here in the morning.”

  Jillian tapped her fingers on the table. “I’m wondering if Hattie could help us out here.”

  Ian’s brows shot up. “I didn’t know you could communicate with her.”

  Jillian made a face. “If you’re asking if she speaks to me, no. But when I talk to her, I get a sense that she’s listening. And she sort of helps out sometimes.”

  When he said nothing, she continued. “I had a little chat with her before I decided to push that parchment message under your door.”

  “She was in favor of it, I take it?”

  “Not in so many words. And she didn’t appear in the mirror the way she did when my sisters and I first drew our fantasies out of the box. It was more like she nudged me toward what I already knew I wanted to do.”