Rachel continued onward and upward, eager to feast on his arresting face, only to find him silently watching her. She hoisted her sheet higher and lifted her chin.
He waggled two fingers at her, not even able to lift his hand off the bed. “Come here, so I can wipe that look off your face,” he said hoarsely.
“You can’t even wipe your own face.”
“Come back to bed, Rachel, before you fall down.”
She noticed the watch on his arm then. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, trying to lift his arm but failing. “You got a hot date to get to?”
She made the mistake of leaning over to look at his watch. He suddenly bolted upright and dragged her down beside him. “That’s better,” he said, tucking her firmly against his side.
“You faker. You’re not dead.”
“I am now. That finished me,” he muttered, flopping an arm over her so she couldn’t escape. “Go to sleep, Rachel. It can’t be noon yet.”
Noon…noon…she needed to do something at noon.
“Willow!” she cried, sitting up. “She’s going to call!” She turned and pushed at his arm still holding her. “If I’m not home, she’ll come here, and God save us then!”
He threw his flopping arm over his face with a pitiful groan. “Mickey will have to save us. God’s busy watching my boat.” He moved that arm up to his forehead and gazed at her curiously. “Are you afraid of your sister?” His eyes widened. “Should I be afraid of your sister?”
Rachel nodded. “She can be a terror when she’s mad.”
“And she’ll be mad…why? You’re a big girl, Rachel. You can spend the night at a guy’s house if you want.”
“Not this house. And not with you.”
With another groan and what seemed like a rather heroic effort, he sat up, scrubbed his face with his hands, twisted his shoulders as if trying to get the kinks out, then softly cursed.
Rachel gathered up the ends of her sheet and turned and hobbled to the door. She stopped, leaned past the doorjamb, and peeked down the hall in both directions. “Ah, where do you suppose everyone is?”
“If they’re smart, they’re not in this wing,” he said, coming up behind her, totally naked, completely shameless.
Rachel scooted across the hall, tripping into the tapestry room when Mickey rushed in ahead of her. Kee stepped on her trailing sheet, bringing her to an abrupt halt.
“I am capable of getting dressed without helpers,” she snapped, tugging the sheet free and going in search of her clothes.
She could see her blouse crumpled against a table, her pants—in a fireman’s heap, ready for her to step into—on the floor by the wall, and her bra was a good six feet past her blouse. She could only see one sock beside both sneakers, and couldn’t find her panties anywhere.
“Mickey has something for you,” Kee said.
She turned and looked at Kee first, heat instantly flushing her cheeks. He was standing in the middle of the room, still shamelessly naked, holding his pants.
She looked for Mickey then and found him sitting by the door, his tail kicking up a cloud of dust and her panties dangling from his mouth.
She limped over to the wolf, and after a brief tug of war got her panties back, along with a bit of canine slobber. She pulled the sheet up over her shoulders, faced away from Kee, and awkwardly slipped into them.
She picked up her bra next, turning again and slipping it on under the sheet. Mickey brought her blouse over, and Rachel wiped away a bit of drool and then slipped it on and finally let the sheet fall to the floor.
Kee finally had his pants on and was just reaching for his shirt when a small thud sounded by the wall.
Mickey had her pants in his mouth—and sitting on the floor in front of him was that damned emerald necklace.
Rachel stared at the necklace, unable to move.
Kee had no such problem. He walked over, patted Mickey on the head, picked up the necklace, and silently turned to Rachel.
Rachel grabbed her pants from the wolf and put them on. She gave up on her lost sock and sat down in a chair and put on her sneakers, tucking the one sock in her pocket as she stood.
Her hand came out with the remaining emerald earring. She walked over to Kee, dropped it in his palm beside the necklace, then continued over to the wall she’d come through last night. She twisted a piece of molding, and the panel popped open.
“Whenever you come to a panel in the tunnels, just push on the edge and it’ll open,” she told Kee, watching Mickey disappear through the wall. “The best way to find them is from the tunnel side. From the room side, most open with either a twist of the molding or a push on something nearby.”
She finally turned and faced him. “As you explore the passageways, you’ll find some fairly fresh footprints. Most lead from the cliffs below up to this room. I found prints of both a man and a woman. The small sneaker prints are mine.”
She waited, but Kee had nothing to say, so she continued. “Obviously others know about the tunnels, and have been coming and going for quite some time now. I suggest you padlock the gate down by the cliffs. Or dynamite it shut,” she added, heading for the hallway.
Kee stepped in front of her, still holding the emeralds. “Do you really expect to just walk out of here without explaining these?” he asked, holding them toward her.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I expect to do.”
“Dammit, Rachel. They were locked in the vault. In safe number sixteen.” He stepped closer, shoved the emeralds in his pocket, then took hold of her shoulders.
“But now the set in number sixteen is worth over one million dollars.”
She smiled up at him. “Congratulations. Your inheritance is growing by leaps and bounds.”
He shook her, his face darkening around his narrowed sea-blue eyes. “They were stolen from an estate in France almost seventeen years ago. I want to know where you got them.”
“But I don’t ‘got’ them. You do.”
He shook her again, a bit more roughly, then suddenly stopped, let her go, and stepped back. He ran a hand through his tousled hair, eyeing her speculatively, then let out a sigh so harsh that her own mess of curls actually moved.
“It’s grand larceny, Rachel,” he said softly.
“I am not a thief.”
“Where did you get them?”
Rachel sighed. “You can ask me a thousand times, and my last answer will be the same as the first one. I can’t tell you, Kee. I have no idea who stole them originally, nor do I care.”
“Just tell me where you got them.”
“No. Final answer. End of discussion. So either let me leave or take me to the police station and press charges.” She lifted her chin. “Although I can’t think what those charges would be, since the stolen emeralds are sitting in your vault.”
He took her chin in his hand and leaned his face into hers. “This isn’t a game, Rachel. And walking out of Sub Rosa won’t make your problem go away. Whomever it is you’re protecting isn’t worth the trouble I’m going to cause you. Instead of fighting me, let me help you.”
Rachel said nothing.
Kee tightened his fingers on her chin. “I know you had nothing to do with stealing the originals. You would have been—what?—fourteen at the time? But if those footprints belong to the people who did, shutting me out could be dangerous.”
“I’m not shutting you out, I’m shutting myself out. I’m done, Kee. I’m going home and getting on with my life.”
“I’m part of your life now,” he said softly.
Rachel’s eyes widened. “Because of last night?”
He nodded.
She reached up and took hold of his chin in an exact parody of his hold on hers and squeezed. “Last night was remarkable. In fact, it was the best night of my life. But it was not a commitment of any kind, for either of us.”
He stepped out of her grasp and slipped his sweatshirt over his head, then stood staring at her for sever
al seconds, not saying anything. He suddenly bowed at the waist and swept his hand toward the door in dismissal.
Rachel didn’t wait for him to change his mind and quickly headed for the hallway.
“Rachel,” he said, just as she reached the door.
She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“If you turn up pregnant, we’re both committed.”
Kee emerged from the tunnel into early afternoon sunshine, moving out of the way so Jason could also step through the iron gate. They joined Duncan and Luke, who were already standing on the cliff, Duncan facing Sub Rosa and Luke scanning the rocks below.
“I can’t see how anyone could land a boat here,” Duncan said, turning to Kee. “They had to have come in on foot.”
“Maybe there’s a lower tunnel that reaches the tide. It’ll take weeks to explore all these passageways,” Jason said, shaking his head. “It’s quite an elaborate system.”
Kee stared at the pine-studded bluff the mansion stood on. “But the tunnels do have a certain methodology. They seem to be laid out with one major artery and several side tunnels leading to various points in the house.”
“These look like skid marks,” Luke said, hunched down about ten feet away, examining the ground. “Here,” he added, pointing to the base of a young pine tree. “Someone fell right here.”
Kee walked over to Luke and saw where the moss had been scraped off the granite in several places, rosebushes were broken, and patches of sea grass had been pulled up by the roots.
He walked farther down the cliff, following the skid marks as they continued right up to the edge. He leaned forward and silently stared down at the churning water a good thirty feet below, and his insides suddenly turned cold.
Rachel had fallen.
She had nearly slid off the cliff in her flight from the library that first night. Dammit, she could have drowned—assuming the fall wouldn’t have killed her first.
Kee turned hard eyes on Duncan, who had come to stand beside him. The look on Duncan’s face said he understood the markings as well as he did.
“Rachel Foster needs a keeper,” Kee said. “And starting now, she’s got six. I want her watched around the clock. If that suicidal woman so much as chips a fingernail, I want to know about it.”
He turned to include Luke and Jason. “The plan has changed. I thought we were coming here to search for a dead man’s stash of stolen goods, but the footprints we found in the tunnels just turned this little treasure hunt into a man hunt.”
“It’s not safe for Mikaela,” Duncan interjected, still staring over the cliff, then looking at Kee.
Kee nodded agreement, then gave Duncan a perverse grin. “Then you radio Ahab and tell him not to dock.”
Duncan held up his hands and snorted. “Not me. That lunatic’s liable to turn his cannons on us. And Mikaela will be reloading for him.” He shook his head. “She’ll swim to shore if she has to. She misses us.”
“It’s more likely the other way around,” Kee muttered.
Hell, they all missed their little angel.
“She could stay with Rachel,” Jason suggested. “Since we’ll be watching her anyway, we’ll just keep an eye on both of them.”
Kee raised a brow at Jason. “That’s assuming Rachel won’t bring her back to us in a burlap sack. Mikaela doesn’t have a very good track record when it comes to dealing with women.”
Duncan waved that away. “That’s because the women you’ve been bringing around are like Joan. Rachel’s different.” He hesitated, giving Kee a speculative look. “It might be good for both of them,” he said softly. “Mikaela’s getting to the point where she needs some feminine input.”
“And Rachel?” Kee asked.
Duncan’s grin was more diabolical than genial. “Rachel might as well get to know our little girl.” He hesitated only a heartbeat, then said, “After last night.”
Kee’s eyes narrowed in warning. “And what happened last night?” he asked softly.
Duncan shrugged. “Ya turned up missing till noon. And as it happens, so did Rachel. Ya said she needs a keeper. Why not see if ya might keep her a bit longer than the others?”
Kee’s heart stopped for the briefest of seconds, then started thumping with the force of a sledgehammer. He glanced at Jason and Luke, only to find them smiling like simpletons, nodding agreement with Duncan.
“My love life is not open to majority rule,” he snapped, turning to glare at Duncan. “And have you forgotten that Rachel Foster is in this mess all the way up to her lying little neck?”
Duncan waved that away as well. “Bah. She’s obviously protecting someone.”
“Not another man,” Jason said.
“What makes you so sure of that?” Kee asked.
“How do you think Mickey got into your bedroom this morning?” Jason asked in answer.
Kee’s growl of warning for his men to butt out of his love life would have done the wolf proud. He turned on his heel and headed back into the tunnel.
“Maybe it’s her sister,” Duncan said as they walked single-file up the tunnel. “Willow, isn’t it? She’s a lawyer or something. Maybe Rachel’s protecting her.”
Kee stopped and turned his flashlight on Duncan. “According to Rachel, her sister is more than capable of taking care of herself,” Kee told him. “I agree, she’s protecting someone, and our first order of business is to find out who.”
“You want me to secure the end of the tunnel so we don’t get any more visitors?” Jason asked.
Kee aimed his flashlight back toward the entrance to the tunnel and shook his head. “No. Rig some sort of warning device instead that will let us know when our visitors arrive.”
Jason rubbed his hands together. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got something that will work. How about a pager system for our belts? That way it’ll be silent.”
Kee nodded. “Get Matthew to help you. And try and cover our own tracks in the tunnels. No need to warn them we’ve been here.”
“What about Mikaela?” Duncan asked. “Are ya going to let the Six-to-One Odds dock?”
Kee thought about that, torn between wanting to protect his daughter and wanting her with him. He blew out a frustrated breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re still two days out. She can dock, and I’ll ask Rachel if she wants a little company for a few days.” He looked at Duncan for agreement. “But if things get dicey, both Rachel and Mikaela are getting packed aboard the Six-to-One Odds and shipped out to sea.”
“And if Rachel doesn’t want to go?” Duncan asked.
Kee smiled. “It might take two or three of us, and a length of rope, but I think we can get her on board.”
Duncan made the sign of the cross over his chest. “Ahab’s going to slit our throats in our sleep,” he muttered, walking deeper into the tunnel, Jason and Luke following him.
Kee stood where he was and broke into a cold sweat. Mikaela and Rachel together—now, there was a scary thought.
Rachel had stayed in the shower until every last drop of hot water was gone, using nearly a whole bottle of conditioner trying to get the snarls out of her hair. Then she’d spent twenty minutes looking for her lobster boat barrette, only to realize she’d lost it the night Kee had found her in his library.
He’d taken her moose barrette last night, too. The guy was amassing quite a collection of her hair clips.
Now she was flopped on the sofa of her living room, staring at the empty space over the fireplace where the picture of the castle used to hang and trying to assess her situation.
It didn’t look good. By showing Kee the tunnels, she’d lost any hope of finding Thadd’s room and her dad’s blueprints for the smuggling boats. Kee also knew that she’d been in his vault and had exchanged the fake emeralds with the real ones.
What had possessed Frank Foster and Thaddeus Lakeman to give her mother a set of stolen emeralds? Hadn’t they been afraid someone would recognize them?
Rachel snorted. In Puff
in Harbor? Heck, her mother could have worn the crown jewels of England and nobody would have realized. The most prestigious place Marian had worn the emeralds was to a fund-raising supper in Ellsworth for the local hospital. Which only proved that the safest place to hide something was in plain sight.
Rachel looked at the grandfather clock in the corner. Three o’clock, and Willow still hadn’t called. And Rachel had forgotten her appointment with Dr. Sprague. Betty Potter had left three messages on the answering machine.
She had to get her life back under control. And that meant she had to stop thinking about sexy blue eyes, a night of lovemaking that had left her insides in more knots than her hair, and this damnable urge to run back to Sub Rosa and do it again.
It wasn’t just lust, she was finally beginning to realize, or even the satisfaction of ending a long sexual drought. Keenan Oakes intrigued her. What she saw is what she got. No pretense. No trying to charm her socks off. But especially no asking permission to kiss her.
She liked that. A lot.
For the first time in her life, Rachel felt she could simply be herself with a man. Comfortable. Safe. She didn’t have to put on an act for fear of scaring the guy away.
She doubted anything scared Keenan Oakes.
The man could actually handle her passionate nature. Heck, he had handled it—over and over and over last night.
And afterward, in the tapestry room, when he’d found the fake emeralds, he had simply let her walk away. He hadn’t pushed for answers, or gotten angry at her for not telling him where she got them, or resorted to threats.
Oh, she knew it wasn’t the end of it, by any means. But Kee seemed to respect her enough to let her pick the time for the truth.
Which she would—eventually.
A car drove into the yard, but Rachel didn’t move from her spot on the couch, recognizing Willow’s always-in-a-hurry arrival. She smiled, not the least bit surprised. Willow hadn’t called at noon because she’d decided to come home and lecture Rachel in person.
The screen door slammed, and Willow came storming in, shouting Rachel’s name as she strode through the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway of the living room, her beautiful hazel eyes on fire, and waved a paper in the air.
The Seductive Impostor Page 15