She showered and dressed in an incredulous daze. Phillip was home.
He hadn’t told her many details, other than he’d been arrested and imprisoned. He’d just arrived at her parents’ house. The investigator had told him that she and her parents had paid for the investigation, and he’d gone directly there to thank them. They knew he’d lost the lease to his condo during his absence, and invited him to stay with them until he found a new place.
By the time Tess arrived, a small crowd of relatives and friends—both hers and his—had gathered at her parents’ small suburban house to welcome Phillip home. He met her at the door, and her feeling of unreality deepened.
“Tess.” With tears in his eyes, he caught her to him in a tight hug and kissed her. The intrusion of his wiry beard and mustache distracted her from the kiss itself. He’d always been clean-shaven. But then he whispered how much he’d missed her and that he loved her, which provoked more of her tears. She examined his face in tender concern, searching for signs of trauma. He looked tired, and thinner, and half his face was hidden beneath the thick, unkempt facial hair. But his eyes were smiling beneath the glint of team. He’d acquired a deep tan, his hair had grown long—almost to his shoulders—and had been bleached by the sun to a lighter shade of blond. His body felt more toned than she remembered.
His hug felt unfamiliar. She’d become used to a larger, more muscular build. But it wasn’t fair to compare Phillip to Cole. Phillip was her loyal, steadfast partner for life. Cole was her fantasy lover come true … a shooting star, too fiery to last…
Family and friends gathered around them in happy celebration. Everyone talked at once. Tess wondered if anyone had told him about her marriage. She assumed that her parents had. They’d obviously given him Cole’s phone number. He hadn’t asked about the man who had answered. She had to talk to him about it, of course. Alone.
But others were clamoring for his attention at the moment, demanding to know what had happened to him. She, too, wanted to know. Urging her along with an arm around her shoulders, Phillip led the group into her parents’ small living room, where he sat on the sofa, settled her beside him and explained what had happened.
“My note-taking started the trouble. Oh, and the photographs. The authorities confiscated my journal and camera, along with my passport and wallet. They charged me with spying and threw me in a prison. It was little more than a thatched hut, really.” He shook his head in grim recollection. “That first week was hell. I thought they were going to kill me. But then the jailer’s daughter took pity on me and helped me escape.”
“Escape?” Tess exclaimed. “You escaped?”
A chorus of excited questions urged him on. He described how he’d hidden from authorities in the forested mountains with a primitive community of island natives. He had no access to modern facilities or technology. As a fugitive from the law, without money or his passport, he couldn’t leave the island or communicate with the outside world. “What I wouldn’t have given for a cell phone. And a cup of cappuccino from Campus Coffeehouse.”
Everyone laughed, and he continued his narrative, which abounded with anthropological terms and observations. With growing enthusiasm, he described how the natives had helped hide him from the rulers whom they despised. He talked about the political unrest, and then the bizarre food, customs and beliefs of the people.
Tess gradually realized that the whole ordeal had been a supreme adventure. He’d mentioned a time or two that he planned to write a book.
“Then I heard about an American who was asking questions about me. I didn’t know how to contact him without tipping off the authorities, but I watched and waited. Last Friday, the American spread the word that the authorities were willing to release me into his custody. So I turned myself in. And … here I am!” He held out his arms in a pleased gesture. The group responded with wild applause. “Now, if I can only get those photos back. I’ll need them. They were incredible.”
He launched into a detailed description of the photos and their anthropological importance. More friends dropped in, and he retold his tale. Tess soon noticed how often he mentioned the name of the jailer’s daughter who had freed him. Kiki.
Kiki this, and Kiki that.
Interesting.
When he’d made himself hoarse with talking, friends filled him in on the happenings he’d missed around campus. His brother, a soccer player for the university, called out, “Hey, Phillip. Did you hear about Tess’s adventures while you were gone?”
Everyone fell awkwardly silent.
Phillip glanced at Tess, whose face warmed with annoying guilt. As if she’d been deliberately cheating on him. As if she hadn’t waited faithfully for thirteen months without hearing a word … while he played Indiana Jones. Probably with Kiki.
“Yes, I have heard.” His gaze dipped to the fortune in diamonds on her left hand. When he met her eyes, he looked somewhat bothered, but not as much as she’d expected. Then again, he’d never been too emotionally riled by anything she did. “Your mother told me. I understand you’re temporarily a married lady.”
“Just since Friday,” her mother assured him.
“And only on paper,” Kristen said from her seat beside Tess on the sofa.
Tess cringed. She and Cole had agreed to make the world think their marriage was legitimate in every way to avoid problems in court. Hearing her sister announce that the marriage was “only on paper” unnerved Tess. Then, too, it wasn’t exactly true. There was more to her relationship with Cole than paperwork.
Namely, sex. Wild, hot, passionate sex. And tenderness…
“Well, of course, it’s only on paper,” Phillip said. “And I fully understand why she’s doing it.” His expression warmed as he gazed at Tess. “She was trying to make money to keep the investigator on my trail.” He tightened his arm around her shoulders in a fervent hug. “You and your family came through for me, Tess. You brought me home. I’ll never forget that.”
She smiled at him. And felt another stirring of guilt. No matter how she rationalized it to herself, she hadn’t remained faithful. Maybe that was why she didn’t feel completely comfortable sitting here plastered to his side.
“So what were those native women like?” his brother piped up. “Did they run around topless? Did they worship you as a golden-haired god?”
Phillip laughed a little too heartily, evaded the questions with a joke and went on to talk about the marriage rituals in terms that only an anthropologist could appreciate.
The phone rang. Her mother answered, then handed it to Phillip. He greeted an old friend with warm enthusiasm, chatted a few minutes, then gave the phone to Tess. “Kathleen O’Brian. She’d like to talk to you.”
Kathleen O’Brian. The professor who had translated the curse from Tess’s bible. “Tess, I’ve been looking at these two versions of the curse,” she said. “The one you faxed to me, and the one Cole Westcott’s lawyer sent.” She hesitated. When she continued, she sounded distinctly uneasy. “I’ve realized that some of the phraseology is more modern than I’d first thought.”
“Modern? What do you mean?”
“Both versions of the curse were dated 1825, so I assumed that was correct. But a few of the phrases wouldn’t have been used before the early 1900’s.”
Tess frowned. “How can that be? The explanations written beside them clearly state that the curse was put on both families in 1825. The bibles themselves are dated even earlier.”
“With the false date written in, I’d say the curse is a hoax.”
“A hoax!”
“Someone found those two family bibles—maybe back in the early 1900’s—and wrote the curses in them to persuade people that the families had been cursed for a century. Why anyone would do that, I don’t know.”
“But how could someone from either family write in both bibles if they were kept in separate houses? The families have always been bitter enemies. It makes more sense that in 1825, an embittered McCrary daughter wrote the curses
in the bibles and sent one to each of the families—just as the explanations written beside the curses say.”
“Sorry, Tess. The wording doesn’t date back that far. It was a hoax. If you want more of an explanation, ask Cole Westcott.”
“Cole Westcott?” At the very mention of his name, a pang of longing assailed Tess. She gripped the phone harder. “Why would I ask him? What does he know about ancient Gaelic?”
A dead silence answered her. The professor then stuttered, “W-well, I mean, he might be able to think of some explanation. He might … um … know about the family history. Look, Tess, I’m on my way to class and really have to run. Sorry that I didn’t catch that dating problem earlier. Good luck.”
Tess hung up the phone and stared blankly through the crowd of friends around her, all merrily chatting with Phillip about his island experiences. Could the curse really have been a hoax? Perpetrated by whom? And why had the professor said to ask Cole for more of an explanation? She’d then acted as if she’d said more than she should have. She’d sounded almost guilty. Why?
Regardless of what Cole knew, the professor believed the curse to be a hoax. If that was true, Tess’s fear of the curse had been groundless.
As she pondered that realization, the door opened and her father limped in—a cane in his hand, a brace on his back, slippers on his feet and a bathrobe over his pajamas.
“Daddy,” Kristen cried, “what are you doing out of the hospital?”
“They weren’t supposed to release you until tomorrow,” his wife exclaimed.
“Don’t start in on me. I don’t need to be in any hospital.” He gazed past his anxious womenfolk to smile at Phillip. “About time you came home, son.”
Phillip shook Ian’s hand with profuse thanks for financing the investigation.
Ian didn’t stay to hear the explanation of his absence, though. “I’ll be in the den, on the phone. I’ve got business to settle. Important business.” With those cryptic words, he limped off into the small office he called his “den” and shut the door.
Tess wondered what business was so important that he’d rushed from his hospital bed without changing into his clothes or shoes. Unease trickled through her. Did it have to do with the lawsuits he’d sworn to file against Cole and Leo?
Her suspicious musing was interrupted by Phillip’s request that she come with him to retrieve his car from his brother’s fraternity house. The ride there gave her time alone with him to talk about her marriage. She didn’t tell him anything beyond basic facts—their prenuptial agreement, the five-month time span, the requirement that she live at Westcott Hall. Her mother had assured him that Tess had her own private suite. She didn’t disabuse him of that notion.
The topic started her insides to roiling again. She was no closer now to knowing what to do than she had been last night. How could she live with Cole now that Phillip had come back? The prospect of returning to Cole tonight loomed largely in her mind, resurrecting all the ethical concerns and creating emotional turmoil.
She certainly couldn’t sleep with him. Ever again. Not if she loved Phillip.
And she did. Didn’t she? The question echoed through her as she drove to her parents’ house and he followed in his own car. Had her feelings for Phillip changed?
By the time they reached the house, she wanted only to find a private place where she could be alone to think. But her father met her in the living room with a radiant smile. “I did it,” he announced. “I’ve just wrung a deal out of Westcott that would make your granddaddy proud.”
Everything in Tess went still. “What kind of deal, Daddy?”
He lowered himself and his back brace carefully into his favorite recliner, his smile beaming with triumph. “Westcott’s going to pay the medical and legal bills for Josh and me, and compensate us for pain and suffering. He’s having his no-good cousin write in his police report that our fight was a personal family matter, which should make the D.A. more open to dropping the charges. All I have to do is sign a waiver releasing Westcott and his cousin from legal responsibility. Josh will have to sign waivers, too. But the best part is—” he grinned at Tess and Phillip as if bestowing upon them a gift “—you don’t have to live with him anymore, Tessie.”
“What?” She nearly came off the sofa.
Her father motioned her back down with a gesture meant to calm, and Phillip put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder—an annoying habit he’d gotten into. “A little rough talk from me made Westcott realize that it’s against his best interests to tie up your time. We came up with a scheme, and it worked. I called his stepmother, Deirdre … the one who offered us more money than Westcott had if you’ll testify against him in court. She knows I hate him. She thinks I tried to kill him with my hunting rifle. Saw it on the news, I guess. Anyway, I told her that you refused to cooperate with us.”
“Of course I refused.”
“I know you won’t like this, Tessie, but I told her you wanted to stay married to him to get your hands on the full forty million. She didn’t have any trouble believing that. She was mad as hell, thinking she wouldn’t see a penny of that inheritance.”
Tess found herself biting her nails and forced her hands to her lap, where she brutally clenched them. “I don’t understand what any of that has to do with my agreement to stay with Cole.”
“Now that Deirdre and the others believe that their strategies won’t work, Westcott’s lawyer offered them a last-ditch chance to get something out of the deal. Five hundred thousand dollars each—if they sign an agreement today to waive their right to contest his inheritance.”
“And they agreed to that?” she asked incredulously.
“He said they did.”
She sat in stunned silence, struggling to grasp the abrupt change of plans. “But I still have to stay married to Cole and live with him to satisfy the terms of the will.”
“You will stay married to him, technically, for the full five months. But without his stepmothers looking to challenge him in court, nobody cares if you live at Westcott Hall or not. No one’s going to be looking for Loopholes. No one will challenge your marriage or his inheritance. When he inherits, his stepmothers get their money, Josh and I get our money, and you get two million dollars and McCrary Place
.” Her father drew two cigars out his robe pocket, tossed one to Phillip and lit one for himself. “Is that a sweet deal, or what?”
Tess’s hands, though firmly clasped, had begun to tremble. He’d ended it. Cole had ended their time together without saying a word to her about it. Abruptly she stood up and reached for her purse and car keys. “I need to talk to him,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “I’m going home to talk to him.”
“You’re going where?” repeated her father.
She halted near the door. Home. She’d said she was going home. “To Westcott Hall,” she amended, feeling thoroughly shaken. How could Cole have made such a serious decision without her?
“Don’t bother. He’s not there. Said something about business on the road. But he said you can call him on his cell phone if you have questions.”
“I have questions,” she whispered harshly. Without another glance at her father or Phillip who sat puffing on their cigars, she strode into the den, shut the door and keyed in Cole’s number on the telephone.
At the sound of his rich, deep voice, a rush of emotion forced her down into a chair. “Cole.” Nothing else squeezed past her tightened throat.
“Tess.”
She realized then, with that simple exchange, that she desperately wanted to see him. Be with him. “Are you crazy? Do you really think your stepmothers will forget about forty million dollars for a measly five hundred thousand? If I move out of Westcott Hall, they’ll persuade the court we’re not legitimately married.”
“They won’t take the matter to court.” He sounded calm and sure. “They believed your father when he told them that you’re staying in the marriage. They also know that he told you about their stra
tegy—hiring detectives to follow me. Paying women to trap me into compromising situations to prove infidelity.”
“My father never told me about that.”
“An acquaintance of Deirdre’s warned me. Henry called Lacey today and got her to admit they’d approached her with money to get me alone. I mentioned the scheme to your father. He admitted it was on their agenda. As far as Deirdre and her cohorts know, your father told you everything. If you, he and Lacey testify to those tactics, my stepmothers would come across as ruthless home wreckers. The court wouldn’t be sympathetic. Henry hurried matters along with talk about ‘conspiracy to defraud’ and bribery charges. Nonsense, but they listened. They’ll take the five hundred thousand and be happy.”
The effectiveness of his strategic dealings left her in awe. He really was a force to be reckoned with. In a matter of hours, he’d overcome every obstacle to his inheritance … and eliminated her role in his life. He obviously didn’t want her there. “So, then,” she whispered, feeling as if her heart was shattering, “you … don’t need me?”
Silence stretched between them.
“I need you to stay legally married to me for five months. If the media approaches you, tell them we’re doing fine. You can say I’m on the road a lot, which will be true.” He paused, then added slowly. “It would be best if you keep your relationship with Phillip … discreet.” Another pause. “And I … well, I’m not going to take any chances with … women … until this inheritance issue is settled.”
Astounding pain coursed through her. He really was leaving her. And when the five months were up, he’d go back to his many women.
“You can get your clothes from my house whenever you want. Tomorrow I’ll deposit a few hundred thousand into a bank account that I’ve set up for you. It should see you through until the bulk of my funds are available. Then I’ll transfer the rest of the two million to you, along with the deed to McCrary Place
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