by Louise Clark
Christy smiled, but it was a bleak expression, not a happy one. On the surface she had a pretty good life. She was married to one of the wealthiest young men in the province of British Columbia, and they lived in a huge mansion on an exclusive, tree-lined crescent in an old, established part of Vancouver. Servants did the cooking and cleaning, and she didn't have to go to an office to toil at a boring nine-to-five clerical job. Best of all, her daughter was smart and healthy, blessedly free of the emotional burdens that warring parents could load onto their young.
That was the essence of the problem, though. Over the course of their ten-year marriage, she and Frank had evolved from passionate lovers, through a stage as parents who were lovers, to parents who were friends and allies in an important job.
They'd been content. Or she thought they had. She turned away from the staircase, chewing her lip. Ellen Jamieson, Frank's aunt and one of the trustees, had called that morning. She wanted to know why Frank had been talking to offshore investors about selling the mansion.
Ellen Jamieson wasn't Christy's favorite person, but she understood the anger and frustration she'd heard in the woman's voice and sympathized. The mansion was Ellen's family home too, even if she hadn't lived here for years.
Though Frank hadn't said anything about selling the mansion to her, Christy wondered if the information Ellen had obtained could be right. About a year and a half ago something happened to Frank. His social patterns changed. There were times when he seemed to be filled with energy and others when he was so lethargic Christy feared for his health. She began to hear rumors of a girlfriend, coupled with snide sideways looks or pitying condescending ones.
Though their marriage was melting down, their relationship with their daughter, together and separately, remained stable. Frank might go out every night, but he did it after Noelle was in bed. And if he came in at four in the morning and slept through breakfast, he always made a big fuss of her when she returned from school. Christy might be the responsible parent, but Frank was, without a doubt, the most beloved.
With a sigh, Christy checked her watch. Time to break up the party.
At the door to Noelle's room she paused, smiling at the scene. The room was pink, the bed canopied in white ruffles. Favorite stuffies, including a cinnamon-colored bear and a goofy-looking horse, had been settled at the footboard to make room for Frank. Noelle was sitting up, her legs crossed, her elbows on her knees, holding the thick hardcover with both hands. Frank lay beside her, resting against the walnut headboard, propped up by Noelle's pillows. In his lap was the family cat, a twenty-pound monster with the heavy stripes, bulky build, and blocky muscles of a tiger. When Stormy moved it was with the same kind of powerful grace as that big cat. Right now though, he was stretched on his back, purring noisily as Frank rubbed his belly while he read over Noelle's shoulder, correcting her pronunciation from time to time.
It was a beautiful scene, one that spoke of love, contentment, and security. Tears caught in Christy's throat. She wished she had some way of capturing this moment and freezing it so it would be there for them—for her—forever.
She must have made a sound, or perhaps Frank was still attuned to her, the way he had been when their marriage was a romance. He looked up. Feeling his attention drift away from her, Noelle looked up too. So did the cat. They all glared at her. "Lights out time," Christy said with an inward sigh.
"Aw, Mom. Just a bit longer. Please!"
"Sorry, sweetheart. It's bedtime."
"You heard your mother," Frank said. He shifted and the cat leapt from his lap. As Stormy stalked past Christy she could have sworn he hissed at her. She may have imagined it, but she doubted it. The cat was Frank's pal first, Noelle's second, then way below, on about the same level as field mice and birds, was Christy.
Noelle was a good sleeper. Once she'd accepted that she wasn't going to be able to coax another hour or two out of her parents, she settled in. She was almost asleep before Christy and Frank left her bedroom.
They made it to the top of the broad curve of the staircase before the argument started.
"God, you're such a nag," Frank said.
Christy didn't respond to the taunt. Instead she said, "Is it true you want to sell the mansion?" She headed down the stairs, looking forward, very aware of his presence beside her.
"Are you kidding? Why would I want to sell this place? It's my home."
"Money."
He snorted. "Get real, Chris. I'm loaded, remember? Money's not an issue."
They reached the bottom of the staircase. She turned to face him. "It is according to Aunt Ellen."
Frank's blue eyes narrowed. "What's she been saying now?"
"That you've been running through our income from the trust before the end of the quarter. To get around it, you've been borrowing against your inheritance." Christy's voice faltered. Frank's face was set in a hard, impassive mask, but fury blazed from the blue ice of his eyes. She swallowed hard. Ellen's call had been eating at her all day. Ellen had brought Frank up after his parents had been killed. That didn't mean there was any love between them, though. Frank loathed her. Now Christy wanted to hear Frank's side. She continued on, less angrily than before. "Ellen says the Trust won't honor your debts anymore, so you've decided to offload the mansion so you can squander the cash."
"My dear Aunt Ellen is so full of crap I'm surprised she doesn't explode," Frank said. Christy winced at his choice of words. Frank ignored her as he pulled a light jacket out of a cupboard cleverly hidden beneath and behind the stairs.
Christy crossed her arms as she watched him shrug on the jacket. Part of her wanted to reach out to him, to ask him to stay, to tell him they could work it out. To reassure him that she believed him, in him. Part of her knew it was a wasted effort. "So you're not talking to brokers about selling our home?"
He put his hands on her shoulders, then shook her lightly, gently. "Look, Chris, I know we don't have much of a marriage anymore, but do you think that I'd do that to you and Noelle?"
As she looked up at him, meeting his eyes, he cupped her cheek with his palm in a remembered caress from better times. When she searched his face the anger was gone. In its place were regret and the rueful honesty that had once captured her heart. "No. I don't agree with a lot of the things you are doing, Frank, but I believe you will always take care of Noelle and me."
"Damn straight," he said. He bent to drop a light, chaste kiss on her lips. One final, gentle caress and he was sauntering toward the front door.
Christy watched him with regret. They'd loved each other once, enough for Frank to defy his trustees and marry a professor's daughter from small-town Ontario. Enough for her to abandon her goals, quit university before graduation, and brave the bitterness of his guardians. Their love might have passed the first test, but it hadn't survived the everyday struggle of their lives together. "Frank."
He paused at the door, his hand on the latch, his brows raised in question. "Stay home tonight. Take that assistant's job at the company Gerry Fisher mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Go to bed before eleven so you can make an early start in the morning. Begin again."
His expression was incredulous. "Take a trainee job at my own company? Are you kidding?" Stormy the Cat appeared out of nowhere, twinning around his ankles. He bent to pick up the animal. Idly he rubbed behind the cat's ears. Stormy began to purr loudly. "Face it, Chris, I'm the Ice Cream King's tragic son, the face of Jamieson Ice Cream. Nothing more."
She made an inarticulate sound of denial in her throat.
He put the cat down on the marble floor. "I have," he said.
When Frank went out the door, the cat went with him. Christy followed them to the porch where she stood and watched as Frank slid into the two-seater Porsche convertible. As he revved the engine, the cat leapt onto the back of the car and dove into the narrow space between the seats and the small trunk.
Christy stepped forward, waving to catch Frank's attention to let him know that the cat was hitching a rid
e. Frank ignored her, or perhaps he didn't notice her. He gunned the engine and roared down the drive.
The last Christy saw of either of them was the red of the car's taillights as Frank checked for traffic, before turning onto the street and disappearing from view.
Chapter 5
Quinn Armstrong was waiting. He was lucky. It wasn't raining. He tipped his face to the mid-afternoon sunlight. There had been times when he'd staked out a quarry that he'd had to stand for hours in the cold, enduring a downpour that was closer to sleet than rain. Others when the sun had been so hot that he could feel his body dehydrate as sweat poured off him.
Today, though, the weather was gorgeous. The golden September afternoon made him remember why he loved the Pacific coast. He stretched in a leisurely way, enjoying the opportunity to sit on his own front porch, wearing a T-shirt and jean shorts, and still be at work. It wasn't often that he could combine a stakeout with a coffee and a relaxed reading of research materials on his intended quarry. He knew, though, that his subject—his newest neighbor, Christy Jamieson—couldn't get past him, so he was free to flip through the raft of notes and photocopies he'd gathered, looking for the kind of details that would make sense of often contradictory information.
Christy's arrival a week ago at the vacant unit two doors down had been a surprise, to say the least. A townhouse complex in suburban Burnaby was the last place he would have expected to find a woman rumored to demand the best in big quantities. That had made him wonder about a lot of the other information that swirled around Christy Jamieson. Was it fact or innuendo?
He considered what he knew of his new neighbor down the street. Her hair was brown with red highlights, cut in a sophisticated, layered style that shouted expensive. It framed a face that was pretty in a delicate, heart-shaped way and accented brown eyes that were deep-set and mysterious. Unless, he thought, she was annoyed.
He chuckled aloud at that. Christy Jamieson always seemed to be annoyed when she was around him, which wasn't surprising considering the way the media had hounded her after Frank Jamieson disappeared. Or the accusatory tone of the articles that appeared after the embezzlement from the Jamieson Trust was discovered. He had to admit that he liked watching her dark eyes flash with fury, animating her face.
He'd pegged her as a capable, intelligent woman whose lifestyle had been radically changed, leaving her a single mom with tremendous responsibilities. It wasn't surprising that she reacted with hostility at times.
Quinn was surprised at himself for the empathy he was feeling for Christy. Where did it come from? Since an assignment in Africa, when he'd stood in an encampment and stared at the slaughtered and defaced bodies of Dr. Tamara Ahern and her team, he hadn't allowed himself to feel anything for the subjects of his articles. So what was it about Christy Jamieson that made her different? Her looks? No doubt she was attractive, but he'd met good-looking women before and been unmoved. Was it her reputation as a gold digger and bimbo, a reputation that appeared to be undeserved? That was intriguing, but more of an intellectual puzzle than an emotional one. The vulnerability he sensed beneath the strength she showed the world? He visualized her. Could be. She had a wide, generous mouth, made to smile, but he'd only seen her use the expression on her pretty daughter.
He thought it would be nice to see her smile at him that way once in a while, not that he wanted her to like him, but because she had beautiful lips, full and sensual. There were moments when she'd pouted at him, thrusting out her lovely lower lip, that he'd wondered what it would be like to kiss her. He laughed silently at himself. Not a good idea. If he ever tried she'd probably give him a bite that would leave scars. He suspected, from the jut of her pretty, pointed little chin that she was blessed with a personality that was stubborn, to say the least, controlling at worst.
Some reports in the local press hinted that her desire for control had pushed the charming and very likable Frank Jamieson off the righteous path of good behavior into the decadent world of indulgence, drugs, and crime.
Were the reports right? Had Christy helped her husband steal from the trust? Had she used the sexual prowess promised in those dark eyes and full, pouty lips to tempt him into the darkness of drugs and deception?
The sound of kids' voices floated over from the nearby school. Quinn stood and stretched, then leaned against the beam that supported the roof over the porch and waited.
They walked down the street hand in hand, Christy Jamieson and her pretty little daughter. The bond between them was clear, though the pout on the girl's mouth indicated storms a-brewing. Quinn couldn't help but smile. He doubted Frank Jamieson's daughter was accustomed to life as one of the common horde.
He ambled down the shallow steps and perched on the planter in front of his house. Christy would have to pass him to get to her place. He was just letting her know he was there. He was waiting.
He could afford to wait.
"Hello," he said as she passed. "Lovely afternoon, isn't it?"
Christy cast him a sideways look as she nodded stiffly.
The little girl, Noelle, peered at him cautiously. She'd obviously been taught to be wary of strangers. He grinned at her. She drew back, startled, her expression horrified.
"How was school today?" he said to her in a conversational way.
"You don't have to speak to him, Noelle," Christy said. She shot Quinn a sharp look. "He's just a reporter."
"He also lives two doors down," Quinn drawled. "And is a card-carrying member of the local neighborhood watch." That wasn't precisely true, his father was the member, but he wanted to shake Christy out of her self-righteous attitude about reporters and let her know they weren't all bad. At least, he wasn't.
"Yeah, right," Christy said. "Come inside, Noelle, and tell me about your day."
"Have a nice afternoon," Quinn said. "I'll see you later."
For a moment Christy's footsteps faltered, then she continued on without acknowledging his remark. But Quinn was certain he'd hit his mark. He'd let her know that this time she couldn't shake him off the way she'd done before. She didn't live in her gated mansion with servants to cover for her. She lived in a townhouse now, with neighbors crowding close. She was accessible, and he was after her story. All she could control was how long she'd make him wait to get it.
* * *
"Martin Burford is a jerk."
"Which one is he, Noelle?"
"The boy with the yellow hair."
There were four boys with blond hair in Noelle's grade three class. As far as Christy could tell they all irritated her daughter to some extent. "What's he done now?"
"He took my brown pencil crayon and it's the only brown one I have!" Noelle's full lips were pulled down in a scowl. Christy turned her back to her daughter and grinned. She couldn't help it. As a newcomer to the school, all the kids in her class were showing interest in Noelle. The girls were asking her about her clothes, what books she liked, and where she lived. The boys were seeking her attention by wrestling in front of her, or 'borrowing' things from her as the unfortunate Martin had. All this did, of course, was annoy her, since Noelle wasn't in the least interested in the little boys in question.
"Then he scribbled on my picture and said I was supposed to be drawing a summer picture not a creepy old house for Halloween."
Christy's smile faltered and died. "Was it a Halloween picture?
"No!" Noelle said hotly. "The teacher told us to draw a picture that described our summer, so I did a picture of our house and Daddy leaving. It wasn't creepy. It was real. Martin Burford doesn't know what he's talking about. He's stupid!"
"No name calling, Noelle," Christy said as she considered how best to deal with the issue Noelle had just raised. Sitting down, she took Noelle in her arms.
Noelle sniffed. After a minute she crawled up into Christy's lap. "I miss Daddy."
"Me too, kiddo," Christy said, rocking back and forth.
"Why did he have to go?"
Christy sighed. "Not because of anything
you did, Noelle." She hugged her daughter more tightly. "It was Daddy doing something he needed to do. One of these days he'll come home and the first person he'll want to see is you."
Noelle raised her head. Her big, blue eyes were luminous with tears shed and unshed. She brushed her wet cheeks with the back of her hands. "Promise?"
Christy smoothed the hair away from her daughter's face. The unhappiness she saw there twisted inside her. "Promise," she said, though she knew the word was a lie. She would do anything to keep her daughter safe and happy.
Noelle sighed, cuddled close for a moment, then slipped back to her chair. "Mary Petrofsky is nice," she said in a conversational way. "We borrowed skipping ropes from the gym and played together at lunch."
"Great." Christy headed for the fridge to organize a snack for Noelle. The sudden switch from distraught daughter to socially adept Jamieson was disconcerting, but a relief. She didn't want to discuss Frank with Noelle until she knew why he hadn't contacted them when he returned to Vancouver.
His words to her on the night he disappeared kept coming back to her—his promise that he would always look after her and Noelle. She'd believed him then. Part of her still believed him, mainly because she knew how deeply he loved Noelle. How could he have done this to her? It didn't fit.
"She lives down the street, beside that man's house."
Christy pulled an apple from the fridge. With the water running as she washed the fruit, she said, "I didn't catch that, pumpkin. Who were you talking about?"
"The man who spoke to us when we came home. The friendly one."
Christy turned off the water with a snap. Quinn Armstrong, reporter. Oh, man, what was she going to say to Noelle? She didn't want her near any reporters, but this one was their neighbor. How did she handle it?
When Frank first disappeared, before he showed up in Mexico with his bimbo, the trustees and the police had believed he'd been kidnapped. Noelle had been ferried to and from school with an unobtrusive police escort. During recess and lunch she'd been forced to stay inside where she could be adequately monitored. Noelle knew about security and the dangers of strangers. And she had no reason to like reporters who had hounded the mansion and lain in wait for her at the school gates.