OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2

by Sheedy, EC

  She was. Sitting quietly at the kitchen table, she glanced up at him when he came in. “Good morning,” she said and gave him a bare-bones smile. She was dressed in beige slacks and a dark brown sweater; a blue cell phone rested on the newspapers scattered in front of her. She was either planning on making a call or waiting for one.

  He jerked his chin toward the coffee mug she held choked between her hands. “You want a refill?”

  She glanced at the mug as if seeing it for the first time.”Yes, thanks.”

  Gus walked over and filled her cup. The woman was obviously tense. When her cell phone rang, she picked it up with such haste she bumped her coffee mug, and some of the dark brew slopped onto the table. She winced at Gus, said “hello” into the phone, and after another quick glance at him, turned away.

  Leaving her to her call, he went to look out the window above the sink.

  The backyard trees drooped tiredly, sodden with last night’s rain, and the grass—mostly weeds—looked like swamp moss. The cedar hedge separating Mayday from St. Ivan’s sorely needed a shave and a haircut, and a couple of rundown sheds, one of them with its side falling in, fought a losing battle with the blackberry bushes crawling halfway over their roofs. But the sun had come out and the yard steamed under its slight heat.

  For the first time, he noticed the lumpy old sandbox in the back corner and the rusted swing beside it. A few feet from the sandbox a long abandoned garden lay choked by weeds and thistle.

  He sipped his coffee, thought about Keeley playing there as a kid, imagined her mop of copper hair under a summer sun. Like a small bonfire. Like the woman herself. He let his gaze travel over the big grassy yard. Without the weeds and the bumps and hollows that had come with the years, it must have been damn fine in its day. A good safe place for a kid.

  April always wanted a swing. He’d even tried to build one for her once, in the alley behind the last dump they’d lived in, but the rope he’d found in the dumpster was rotten, and there’d been no place to string it anyway, so she’d had to settle for a skipping rope. It broke, too, but it lasted for three days, and she’d spent them skipping her little-girl heart out in that miserable alley.

  “I told you. I’ll be there, Duke.”

  The voice, irritated, rose behind him, and caught his attention. He turned. When Christiana glanced up to see him watching her, she reddened. “Noon. Yes, darling. I know. I said I’ll be there, and I will. See you then.” She clicked off.

  “My manager,” she said—a little too quickly—then set the phone back on the table.

  Gus sipped some coffee. “Judging by that ‘darling,’ a little more than a manager, I’d say.”

  When it looked as though she was going to deny it, he raised a brow.

  She cleared her throat. “You’re right.”

  “Does he know what you’re doing here?”

  She shook her head. “No. And he wouldn’t like it.”

  Keeley burst into the kitchen, her brow furrowed, holding a piece of paper in her hand. “Look at this. I found it in one of Mary’s miscellaneous boxes, marked nineteen seventy-eight, but the back of it says nineteen eighty.”

  From what Gus had seen so far, all of Mary’s boxes were miscellaneous, and all of them were a mess of paperwork and memories that laid waste to any concept of organization. The efficient, leave-no-string-untied Cassie could easily make Mayday’s paperwork her life’s work.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She held out a photo. “Me. And someone else.”

  She came to stand beside him, and they both rested their hips against the counter edge. He held out his hand, and she put the picture in it. It was colored, faded a bit, but clear enough.

  She pointed to the woman in the picture. “That’s my mother. And that”—she pointed to one of the two babies her mother was holding up to the camera— “is me.”

  Gus, his attention derailed by the brush of Keeley’s bare arm against his, forced his concentration on the photograph. Damn! That shot of distraction, what it meant, pissed him off. If there was ever a lousy time to be attracted to a woman, Hammond, this is it. Especially one like Farrell. Be like robbing a goddamn church.

  Holding the babies was a pretty, dark-haired woman, but to him both babies looked the same. Christiana came to stand with them.

  “How do you know it’s you?” he asked.

  “It says it’s me”—Keeley turned the picture over— “on the back. Right here. See?” She pointed and read, “’Left, Keeley Aileen, two months. Right, Baby C.’” She glanced toward Christiana. “Maybe baby C is you.”

  Christiana took the picture. “God, it is me.” She sounded stunned, put a hand to her mouth.

  “Those babies”—he gestured at the picture—“look like matched bookends. How can you be sure?”

  Christiana seemed unable to take her eyes from the picture. “Because of this.” She swept her long blond hair back from her left temple to expose a pale birthmark. Gus had to strain to see it. “I had it lightened in my early twenties, but look”—she dropped her hair and pointed to baby C in the photo—“it’s plain as day.”

  Keeley frowned again, then headed for the door. “I just thought of something. I’ll be right back.” She came back into the room carrying a red and gold photo album the size of a generational Bible. She set it on the table and flipped through its heavy black pages.

  The album was in good condition, and all the photos were held securely in place by gilt corner grips. Keeley turned the pages steadily until she reached the middle, stopped abruptly. “Odd,” she said. “There are no pictures missing from that time. Which means the picture I found was never in here, and I certainly don’t remember ever seeing it before.”

  “I’m not following you,” Gus said.

  “Mary might have been the scourge of filing systems everywhere, but she was meticulous about her photographs. She took pictures of everyone who ever came to Mayday—especially the mothers and babies. When I was a kid, I remember going through the albums with her, and she’d tell me everyone’s name, when they were here, and what, if anything, she knew about their lives at the time. A lot of the women kept in contact with her for years after leaving Mayday.” Keeley again nodded at the picture, which Christiana was still studying intently, and added, “I wonder why she didn’t put this one in the album.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t resist keeping the photo, probably because you’re in it, Keeley, but because I’m in it, too, she was afraid to.” Christiana handed the photo back to Keeley.

  “Because she couldn’t talk about you,” Gus said. “Or your mother.”

  Christiana nodded. “And if one part of her story is true, Keeley, it makes the other part a strong possibility.”

  Keeley straightened her shoulders. “You mean her killing your father.”

  It wasn’t phrased as a question and Christiana didn’t answer her. Her expression grim, she said, “Look, I have to get back to Seattle. My manager’s waiting for me, and I’ve got two interviews lined up for this afternoon.” A newspaper lay open on the table in front of her; she pulled it forward and scribbled her name and number on it. “This is my cell number.” She wrote down another number, then looked at Keeley directly. “I know this is hard for you, and I know how you feel about Mary, but, please, please, call me when you find out more. I need to know. I have to know.”

  Keeley dropped the hand holding the picture to her side. “I’m not sure I will find anything more. If Mary deliberately misfiled the picture, why would she keep any other records?”

  Gus figured he knew damn well why Weaver had kept records. If she hadn’t held on to her proof, she’d have had nothing to hold over Dinah. This thing was making more sense by the second. There was a better than even chance Christiana was Dinah’s daughter. But until he knew for sure, he’d keep his mouth shut.

  “She kept the picture, remember, she just misfiled it,” Christiana said.

  “Mary misfiled most things out of plain bad habit. The ide
a of her doing it on purpose is really scary.” Keeley knotted her hands on the table. He sensed she was hedging, that the enormity of Christiana’s revelation was only now settling into some corner of her mind.

  “Just keep looking. There has to be something.” Christiana placed her hand over Keeley’s. “I need to know who my mother is—and exactly what happened here.”

  Keeley glanced at Gus, and he knew she was thinking about Dinah; then she turned to face Christiana. “I know this is awful for you, but I won’t promise anything, because I can’t believe—”

  Christiana shook her head, compressed her lips. “You don’t have to believe anything. Not yet, at least. But not knowing what happened to my father won’t do either of us any good.”

  Gus watched the two women, fascinated. They’d known each other for less than twenty-four hours, yet they talked to each other as if it had been years. His mind shifted gears. Down. To Dinah Marsden—self-absorbed, self-protective Dinah. Damn.

  With a half dozen words, she could clear this mess up. Chances of his getting her to say those words were slim to none, but it sure as hell wouldn’t hurt to try.

  Fifteen minutes later Keeley stood beside Gus on the porch and watched Christiana Fordham drive out of Mayday’s rutted driveway. Keeley’s heart was a ball of thorns in her chest, her eyes thick with the pressure of tears.

  Gus took a step toward her and lifted her face to his with a knuckle. “What’s this?” He wiped the moisture from her cheek with his thumb.

  She brushed his hand away, frustrated with herself, her growing penchant for tears. “Nothing. It’s just sad. And confusing. Christiana’s story, Mary … Mayday House. It’s a bit overwhelming, I guess. Not exactly what I expected when I came home.”

  “What did you expect?”

  She walked over to the creaky porch swing and sat down, bracing her hands on the edge to keep it from swinging. “Quiet. Peace.” Absolution. She brushed at her traitorous weepy eyes. “A place to get my bearings.” She paused. “Do something good and decent with my life.”

  “Your life getting any more ‘good and decent’ doesn’t seem possible.”

  Her eyes shot to his—so dark, and fixed on her as if she were a puzzle with a piece missing. “Is that how you see me, Gus? All virtue and righteousness, like some do-gooder frontier church lady?” The image irritated her, because it was so terribly far from the truth.

  He rested his hip on the rail and crossed his arms. “The description ‘good woman’ seems to fit. Convent, nursing, missions, all that.”

  “What about the marriage? You left that out.”

  “What about it?”

  “I broke my vows to marry Marc. Solemn vows. I didn’t keep my word to—”

  “God?”

  His Name sounded odd coming from him. “Yes. To God.”

  “You made a contract. Contracts are negotiable. Things change.”

  “If it were only that simple.” She shook her head.

  He stayed quiet for a moment, then said, “You think your husband—stepping on that land mine—was some kind of punishment, don’t you?”

  Keeley, uncertain how to answer, pressed a hand on her heart, tried to still it—and tried to understand why she was talking to a man like Gus about Marc, her broken vows, when she hadn’t knelt in a confessional for years. Because she couldn’t sit still any longer, she stood and walked to the railing Gus had propped himself against.

  When she didn’t say anything, he said, “It wasn’t, you know.” He stopped. “You didn’t plant the mine, some conscienceless asshole with his own axe to grind did, and he didn’t give a damn who stepped on it—a wandering animal, an innocent kid … a doctor. All he wanted to do was kill someone. Anyone. It wasn’t punishment. It was bad luck. Chaos. Life’s good at that.”

  “Part of me knows what you’re saying is true, but another part—”

  “Feels guilty as hell?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  He ran a finger across her cheek, then turned her face to his. “I’ll bet you’re good at the guilt thing.”

  Too personal, Keeley, you’re getting far too personal. “Expert, I’m afraid,” she said, lightening her tone and trying unsuccessfully to dredge up a smile. “But I’m working on downgrading my standing. It’s why I came home.” She looked up at him, determined to change the subject; instead, she couldn’t stop her gaze from sliding to his angular jaw, his mouth, straight, relaxed, seductive. His clean-shaven skin was darkly clear, his scar accented by the sunlight now drifting onto the wide front porch. Inhaling, she took in the scent of him. Indescribable.

  Her heart pounding, she moistened her lips and dropped her gaze to what she mistakenly thought was safer territory, the soft white cotton shirt covering his broad chest, cotton that pulled tight over hard muscles when he drew in a deep breath.

  This was crazy!

  CHAPTER 12

  Keeley raised her eyes—certain they looked startled and wild—and met his. His calm gaze focused on her, intense and probing. He slowly dropped it to her mouth.

  “I think I’m about to acquire some guilt of my own,” he murmured and, bending his dark head, he brushed his lips over hers. More whisper than kiss, achingly soft.

  Before their mouths met, there was the chatter of birds, the rustle of leaves, now only silence.

  Before … the flutter of a morning breeze, cool on her face, now only warmth.

  Before … the light of morning, bright on pearl gray clouds, now only hot, swirling darkness.

  Her breath a silk storm in her lungs, she ran her hands up and along the taut muscles of his arms, grasped his shoulders. His mouth was so light on hers it was dreamlike, surreal, yet every one of her senses shifted to white-hot and knife-sharp.

  He pulled back, held her shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “Should I apologize?”

  Keeley blinked, allowing reality and the edge of truth to cut through the sexual glitter in her head. “No,” she said, stepping back. “But maybe I should.”

  He cocked his head, waited.

  “For acting like an overwhelmed, under-brained woman.” She added, “I don’t usually talk so much about private things. I suppose it made me seem needy.”

  “Which would make my kiss what? An act of kindness?” He let out a disbelieving gust of breath and shook his head.

  “Not exactly, but—”

  “Farrell, you’re the least needy woman I’ve ever met.” He came near to smiling, but quickly displaced it with a darker, unreadable look. “And kissing you had more to do with my need than yours. I’ve wanted to … touch you since the first day I stepped into your kitchen.”

  Keeley wasn’t sure she heard right and was too confused, both by his actions and hers, to pursue this uneasy conversation. Besides, she wasn’t sure how she felt about the discomfort his admission obviously caused him.

  “I think I’ll go back to the boxes,” she said, deciding retreat was her best option. “See if I can find anything else about Christiana.” She’d think about what had happened between her and Gus later, when she could make sense of it. It certainly didn’t make sense to stand here, with Gus Hammond looking as cool as the autumn morning that embraced them, while she couldn’t put two rational thoughts together.

  He watched her calmly, but his serious eyes told her he sensed her unease. “I’m going into town, but I won’t be long. When I get back, I’ll help with the records.” He paused. “Keep the doors locked while I’m gone.” He went in the house, retrieved his jacket, and came out scribbling on a piece of paper. “My cell number.” He handed the paper to her. “The door,” he repeated, his tone stern. “Lock it.”

  “It’s a gorgeous morning in small-town America, Gus. I think we’re safe enough.”

  “Humor me,” he said, without a trace of humor in his tone.

  “Okay, okay.” She lifted her hands in surrender. “And after the doors are locked, I’ll pull up the drawbridge.” When her lame attempt at a joke fell flat, and he said nothing, she turned
to go back into the house.

  “Keeley?”

  She looked back, met his solemn face, eyes now holding a touch of awe.

  “There’s something you should know.” He hesitated, but his gaze didn’t waver from hers. “I haven’t wanted to kiss a woman that much since I was seventeen.”

  He obviously didn’t expect an answer because he started down the stairs, shrugging into his jacket as he went.

  Keeley waited until he got in his car and reversed out of the driveway, then touched her mouth and let out a long breath. If he had waited for an answer, and she’d given him an honest one, it would have surprised him as much as it surprised her.

  That on some deeply complex and unnerving level, she was exceedingly glad she was that woman.

  Gus didn’t intend to go far or be gone long, but he needed to calm down. Think. Make some calls.

  Hell, he was acting like a randy teenager. When his breath eased in his lungs, and he figured there was a chance his brain had backtracked from lust to logic, he pulled into a roadside park. He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

  Jesus, the woman should have slugged him.

  He’d told her what he was—exactly what Hagan Marsden had said, a male whore, a man who’d made a living looking good and bedding women. He hadn’t planned it that way, but that’s how it turned out. No way around it, and no way to justify it. He’d taken what life offered him and Josh, and he’d learned to live with it—but it left him with no right to mess with Keeley Farrell.

  He’d never admit it to her—or anyone else—but she was too goddamned good for him.

  Even if she had felt like heaven in his arms.