by Kathy
"Dan had a theory about that." For all the emotion in Riley's voice he might have been discussing the prospect of rain. "In the light of what has happened since, it makes perfectly good sense. Dan thought Joyce's death was probably not premeditated—they were arguing, George had been drinking—"
"God, yes—I was so stupid, I missed all the signs of George's alcoholism. Even the amethyst cuff links—that stone is an old, an ancient charm against drunkenness. A typical Dan Mignot touch, that gift—George was unaware of its meaning, I suppose. He was careful never to touch alcohol—"
"Except on his occasional weekend binges," Riley said. "Dan knew about them. He knew everything. He never confronted George, he said what a man did in his off-hours was his own business so long as it didn't interfere with his work."
Meg shivered again, and pulled her feet up under her, huddling to keep warm. The robe she wore was a sensational concoction of crimson silk and silver thread that molded itself to her body when she sat still and flowed gracefully when she moved. She had bought it that afternoon. I should have gone for a sensible wool bathrobe, she thought, hugging herself in an attempt to ward off the cold. This is harder than I thought—and the effect is certainly wasted on the Aztec idol. Can't he see. . . . "Go on," she said curtly.
"You're sure you—"
"Go on."
"What precipitated the final, fatal quarrel, Dan believed, was Joyce telling George she was leaving him. She had her suitcase packed—the remains of it were found in the motel room, if you remember. She also told him that she was going to blow the whistle on him and her sister. She had already told Simon—but he didn't believe her. So, to prove her case, she demanded he meet her at the motel that George and Elissa had been using. She must have followed them, and bribed the clerk to show her the registration card. She knew the name George had used. Photographs would identify him, and possibly Elissa as well.
"She threw all that at George, and he struck out. When he realized she was dead he had to think fast. He's good at improvising," Riley said. "The motel was only an hour's drive away. He put her in the car and took off. When Simon arrived he was waiting. He had all night to ... arrange the rest of it, and still get home before daybreak. The fire was necessary. Even if he'd tried to set up a murder-suicide, an autopsy might have shown Joyce died several hours before Simon."
"Makes sense," Meg mumbled. It didn't matter how tightly she curled herself; she was still freezing.
"Yeah. But as Dan admitted, once he'd calmed down, there was no chance of proving it, not after all this time. So he decided to break George down by playing on his nerves."
"The rings."
"Yeah. I thought it was kind of a crazy idea, but Dan was set on it; he insisted that if George was guilty he'd get the point—not only the implicit threat, but the reminder of the lost wedding ring."
Meg blew on her icy hands. "That wasn't the real reason. Dan would have done something like that even if he'd had absolute proof. He wanted George to sweat and suffer."
Riley looked at her uneasily. "Maybe so. After Dan died . . . well, it seemed like the least I could do was carry out his plan for him."
"I thought the rings were meant for me."
"Uh—yeah. That finally dawned on me, and I just about. . . . But I couldn't explain without telling you the whole thing, and I was beginning to realize that Dan's scheme had succeeded only too well. George had gotten the point, all right, and he started hitting back. Initially the attacks on you were designed to incriminate me, rather than harm you; he knew I was the one responsible for sending the rings. But how you could have supposed they were directed at you. . . . The packages were addressed to him, the hair ring had Simon's and Joyce's initials on it—"
"Not when I saw it. He'd filed them off. My hair is the same color as my father's, and Joyce had her mother's silver-gilt hair. He destroyed the first mailing envelope, and replaced the second one with a fake. That was another thing that gave him away—after the first ring arrived, he made a point of collecting the mail before I could get to it, even postponing a weekend trip until after the Saturday delivery. But you were the only one who could have made the rings. The first one might have come from Dan's collection, but to find one that contained hair the exact color of mine. . . ." She had to stop talking, her teeth had begun to chatter. She clamped her mouth shut.
"You're shivering," Riley said, "Can I get a blanket or something to—"
Meg swung her feet onto the floor and sat up. "I don't want a goddamn blanket! What's the matter with you? You are the most insensitive, cold-blooded, uncaring bastard I have ever met. I want someone to hold me. I want you to hold me. Maybe I should pour bourbon into you. You were a hell of a lot nicer when you were drunk!"
"Don't do that," Riley said. He sounded as if he were choking.
"Do what? Shiver? Talk? Crawl to you begging for affection like all your other women—"
"God damn it!" Riley erupted from the chair and crossed the room in a few long, stumbling strides. Meg had no time to react even if she had been wrongheaded enough to try to help him; he collapsed onto the couch, and onto her, with a thud that shook the whole room. He was clumsier than she had imagined. Even with her active cooperation it took his lips several unendurable seconds to find hers. That impact felt as monumental as the first, and it went on longer, like the aftershocks of an earthquake.
"You're not wearing anything under that dress," Riley muttered after a while. "I knew you weren't," he added accusingly. "Stop that. Stop it right now. We can't. . . . Not here. What would the butler think?"
"I fired him," Meg said, fighting the hands that tried to keep her fingers from the buttons of his shirt. "Anyway, I would have, if we had had one. . . . Oh, all right, if you're going to be such a cold fish, we can go upstairs."
"No." He ended the argument by wrapping both arms around her in a grip that was half embrace and half restraint. "I wasn't going to let this happen. Not till you'd had time to think. You can't be sure how you feel—"
"Watch it." At least she could move her head. Turning it, she kissed him on the side of the neck. "You're on the verge of making one of the most infuriating statements a man can make to a woman: 'You don't really mean it.' "
"I am not." Except for the warmth of his skin it was like kissing a piece of wood. Petrified wood. Meg's tongue traced a path to his earlobe. Riley jumped. "Cut it out. We haven't finished talking. I can't think when you. . . . Oh, shit."
The long, lingering gentleness of his mouth on hers was more dizzying than the first violent demand. When he let her go she lay in the circle of his arms, her eyes closed, feeling warm and relaxed for the first time in days. . . . No. In years.
"Now that you've got that out of your system," Riley began.
"I haven't. I won't. Ever."
"It wasn't bad," Riley said.
Meg's eyes popped open. "Riley, one of these days—"
"I hope so." His smile faded. "Meg, please lay off—if I kiss you one more time I won't stop. It isn't that easy."
"You aren't that easy," Meg murmured. "You told me that once. Surely you can't believe that this is nothing more than pity or guilt—"
"It's more complicated than that," Riley insisted. "You saved my life. I can only begin to imagine what you went through that day—I've heard some hints of it, from Mike and the others—it wasn't just a single impulsive gesture, like jumping in to save a dog that was being beaten, you had to use every ounce of intelligence and dogged determination you possessed to pull it off. I was barely conscious at the end but I'll never forget the look on your face when you fired that gun. It will come back to you, and you'll think, I did it because of him, he was the one who forced me—"
"I won't buy that one, Riley. You didn't force me to use the gun. If I hadn't had it with me, if I hadn't unconsciously depended on it, I wouldn't have been so careless. There were a number of precautions I could have taken—calling for help, making certain the doors were bolted from the inside—something as simple as set
ting off the burglar alarm. That would have taken only a few seconds, and the police would have responded immediately. Talk about saving your life—I came close to getting both of us killed, thanks to that damned gun. You saved mine, if it comes to that, the night the cottage burned. What were you doing there?"
"He sent me a note. Only it was supposed to be from you."
"Summoning you to a rendezvous?"
"You're shivering again," Riley said, holding her closer.
"No, I'm—I'm trying not to laugh. It's such a tired old cliche in romantic novels—"
"You wouldn't have been dumb enough to fall for it," Riley mumbled. "But we'd been interrupted that afternoon, just when I was starting to tell you—"
"Darling, it's all right. I don't blame you."
"I couldn't very well call and ask if you—"
"No, of course not."
"Then quit laughing."
"It wasn't very funny, was it? If you hadn't been there—"
"Not only was I there, I was early," Riley said reluctantly. "That was what frustrated his neat little scheme."
"He underestimated the ardor of a lover."
"Meg, if you don't stop that. . . ." Riley's voice deepened.
"You're right, of course. I couldn't wait—I had so much I wanted to tell you, ask you if you could possibly forgive me for acting like such a stupid ass. ... I was hiding in the trees when he carried you into the cottage. One of your shoes fell off on the porch. . . . The place went up like a bomb, he must have dumped gallons of gas around before he waylaid you. I didn't have a chance to grab him, I knew if I didn't get you out right away. . . . After I made sure you were okay I knew I'd better get the hell away from there. That was what he wanted, for someone to find me on the spot. I waited till I heard the fire engines before I left."
"That was his only mistake, though." Meg no longer felt like laughing. "He went straight to your apartment after the rest of us went to bed. He had duplicate keys to everything—"
"Except the store. You'd had those locks changed. I had a set of the new ones, though. He. . . ."
"Tell me," Meg insisted.
"When I came to, he'd searched me, taken my keys. In between working on me, he searched the apartment looking for the ring. I wouldn't—I didn't tell him where I'd put it. He was . . . pretty uptight. Time was running out, he had to get me out of the apartment and hidden before daybreak."
"Where were you before he took you to Mike's?"
"In the trunk of his car," Riley said briefly.
"But, my God—he was back at the house early that morning. Cliff was worried about him, he looked ill. . . . No wonder! And you were there, not a hundred feet from me. ..."
"I was there in body, but not in spirit," Riley said. "Between the liquor and—and the other stuff—and a dose of carbon monoxide from the exhaust, I didn't come to until he dragged me out and hauled me into Mike's basement. He poured some more booze into me and left me. When he came back, he had a van—must have rented it someplace. We spent part of the day just driving around, I think. It was dark when he went back to the store."
"He must have had a nerve-racking day," Meg said vindictively. "He had to keep showing up at the house from time to time, and he must have talked with Candy—heard her lies about your burned hands. I hope he did sweat. Damn him!"
"I can't say I'm wasting a lot of sympathy on him," Riley agreed. "When I think of how scared you must have been—I should have told you about the rings. I underestimated the bastard. How he could have turned them around, made you think. . . ."
"Where did you get the hair, Riley? Did you rape one of my locks while I wasn't looking?"
"Uh—no."
"That's right, you couldn't have. You must have finished the ring before I. ... Riley, you devil—don't tell me you got it from a horse's tail?"
She twisted around to see his face, and burst out laughing at his stricken expression. "Oh, Riley—you didn't."
"No, not a horse. It was—well, hell. It was that dog of Mike's. Are you laughing? How can you laugh? It isn't funny!"
"Yes, it is. I have to laugh when I can, it's the only thing that keeps me sane. That and . . . Riley, you do love me, don't you? I know you do. Stop being such a bullheaded selfish pig and admit it. Can you say the words? Say them, Riley. Please."
"Of course I do."
"Say them."
"I love you."
"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?"
"But that's irrelevant," Riley insisted. "How could I help loving you? That doesn't mean—"
"We don't have a butler."
"Yes, but—"
"We won't live with Gran. We can stay in the apartment until we find a house."
"Yes, but ... I mean, no. But—"
"I love you, Riley."
"I don't know," Riley said gloomily.
"Come upstairs and I'll prove it."
He captured her hands and held them. "I wanted you to have time to think. It isn't . . . believe it or not, what's holding me back is not my damned male pride. We could form a pretty good partnership, and I don't just mean the store. I have to be sure. . . . Oh, hell, I'm not much good with words. But you are like Dan in some ways—the best ways—you're stubborn, you hate to admit you could be wrong. And you've invested so much in me—"
"I plan to invest a lot more. You've got it backwards, Riley." She let her hands rest quietly in his; the physical need that blazed between them was, just now, less important than honesty and mutual trust. That could not be attained in a moment or an hour, but they could make a beginning. "If I were moved by stubbornness and a desire to have my own way, I'd be running as fast I could. Don't you realize that this was Dan's idea? He set us up. He set me up. You're the man he would have chosen for me if he could have arranged my marriage in the good old-fashioned way. The store is my dowry, in case you had to be bribed to take me."
Riley's jaw dropped. "You're kidding. Dan wouldn't—"
"Oh yes, he would. He did. And it worked, as his schemes always did unless some malevolent force intervened. He's still. . . ." She stopped, biting her lip. It would be some time before she could admit to herself, much less to Riley, that she had felt Dan's invisible presence pulling the strings that guided her actions. Mary's innocent reports from the Other Side could be dismissed as coincidence, but that last dreadful day when inspiration had seemed to come from some source outside her mind. . . . No, she certainly didn't want to put that idea into Riley's head; it would inhibit any man's ardor to visualize a guardian spirit hovering over the nuptial couch like a celestial Peeping Tom. Dan in a white nightgown flapping his wings and grinning with smug approval. . . .
"What are you laughing at now?" Riley asked.
"Nothing. Riley, there aren't any guarantees—except for refrigerators. Why not take a chance and—"
"Okay."
"I mean, after all, we have a fairly good foundation in our. . . . What?"
"I said okay. I may be stubborn, but I'm not stupid." His hands brushed the hair away from her cheeks and tilted her head back, and his face was open and unguarded, as she had seen it once before—but warmer, softer, infinitely more loving. "I'm so crazy about you it scares me. I want you so much—"
"Come on, then."
"Woman, you have no shame." Smiling, he let her pull him to his feet. "Your room or mine?"
"Mine, I. ... Oh, damn it, Riley, how did you know?"
"That you'd moved my things here, without so much as the courtesy of asking me? I figured it was the sort of thing you'd do."
They climbed the stairs together. Riley's arm was around her shoulder, in an unashamed demand for support; he was moving quickly enough now so that his limp was perceptible.
"After all," he continued, "you're the senior partner. You run the show. Mignot and Riley, you said—"
"I've decided to change the name."
He lifted his arm. "I didn't mean to lean on you. You're out of breath."
"That's not why I'm out of breath."
&
nbsp; "Oh. What do you mean, you're changing the name? Don't play total woman with me, Meg, it isn't necessary. Riley and Mignot—"
"No. Riley and Venturi."
They had stopped in front of the door to her room, but when she reached for the knob he caught her hand and made her turn to face him. "Wrong again. Venturi and Riley."