After Caroline

by Kay Hooper

  “But you must have wondered why he suddenly began hating you,” she said.

  “I just thought—”

  “Thought what?”

  Griffin hesitated, then swore under his breath. “You said once that there had obviously been something between Caroline and me at some time in the past. You were right, in a way. There was something between us.”

  Joanna waited silently, hoping that she would at last be able to understand what effect that seductive and destructive woman had had on Griffin—and what baggage he carried now as a result of it.

  “I hadn’t been in Cliffside long,” he said slowly. “I had left Chicago because I was on the verge of burnout, sick to death of all the violent crime I saw day after day. The idea of being a small-town sheriff sounded like heaven, so when I heard about the job when I was in Portland, I didn’t hesitate to apply. My credentials suited the town council, and within a couple of weeks, I was moving into the cottage here.”

  He shrugged. “The first few weeks were almost like a vacation, at least after Chicago. Not one crime reported the whole time. It gave me a chance to catch my breath. I was settling in and getting to know the people here. Caroline was one of the town’s leading ladies. Oh, she was young, only married a couple of years, but she seemed to be involved in most everything around here. She seemed shy and a bit fragile, at least to me—and I guess I paid more attention to her than I should have.”

  “She fell in love with you,” Joanna murmured.

  Griffin nodded. “Took me completely by surprise when she blurted it out one day when we were alone together at my place. She was out walking, she said, and stopped by to ask me about something—I forget what. Anyway, when she said she loved me, I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t feel that way about her, not at all. To me, she was Scott’s wife and way out of my league—and she’d always seemed more child than woman to me.”

  All that sweet innocence cost you one, Caroline, Joanna couldn’t help but think.

  “I tried to let her down easily,” Griffin went on. “Told her I was to blame for her misunderstanding my feelings. Then I added a few asinine clichés, like she’d realize she had been mistaken, and that we could still be friends.”

  “How did she take it?”

  Griffin rubbed the back of his neck and looked rueful. “She cried buckets, and the next thing I knew, we were on the couch and I was holding her.”

  Tears. Jeez, Caroline, was there a trick you didn’t pull on him?

  “Nothing happened,” Griffin added a bit hastily, perhaps reading something in Joanna’s face. “But at some point I realized that she—wasn’t crying anymore. She took my hand and put it—never mind.”

  “Thank you,” Joanna said.

  He grinned at her. “All right, all right. But you did ask. Anyway, I managed to get her off my couch and out of the house. After that, things were a little strained between us for a while, but she never mentioned the subject again. And neither did I.” His amusement faded, and he added, “She always turned to me if she had some problem, though—and I guess Scott noticed.”

  “His Johnnie-on-the-spot remark?”

  “Yeah. In a way, I guess I got into the habit of making things easier for Caroline whenever I could. Little things, mostly, like getting her permits quickly if she wanted the kids at the school to have a parade, or helping convince the town council her ideas for the community theater were workable. That sort of thing.”

  “So when you realized Scott hated you…”

  “I just assumed he knew or suspected that Caroline had been in love with me, and that he resented the time we spent together. I knew it was completely innocent, though, and I made damned sure there were no more private meetings between us. And since I hardly saw Scott, how he felt about me wasn’t on my mind very often.”

  Joanna nodded. “I see. So you felt guilty for not meeting Caroline that last day mostly because you’d gotten in the habit of taking care of her.”

  “Was that bothering you?” Griffin asked her.

  “A little. Caroline had such a strong effect on the men in her life, even long after relationships ended, and I couldn’t help wondering…”

  “If I’d been in love with her.”

  “It crossed my mind,” Joanna confessed. “Even though you denied involvement, I couldn’t get past the feeling that there had been something between you. It seemed more than possible. And since the other men who’d cared about her couldn’t seem to let go … Well. A living rival is one thing—it’s hard to fight a ghost.” Especially one haunting you as well as the man you love.

  Griffin rose from his chair and came around the desk to pull her up into his arms. “I thought I’d made myself clear,” he said dryly, “but obviously not. Sweetheart, I’d never been in love with anyone until I met you. And I sure as hell didn’t fall for you because you faintly resemble Caroline—or anyone else. I’ve never met anyone with big golden eyes like yours, or that sweet, lazy voice, or the knack you have of pushing everything else out of my mind until all I can think of is you.”

  A bit dazed, Joanna said, “But … it’s barely been a week since we met.”

  “Does that matter?” he asked steadily.

  After a moment, she shook her head. “No. Griffin—”

  She was interrupted rudely by a sharp rap on the door and then the quick entrance into the office of one of the deputies, who was carrying a thick sheaf of papers.

  “Uh, sorry,” he said stolidly. “But you wanted the info on Butler as soon as it came in, Griff, and we just got a stack of stuff via fax from San Francisco.”

  “Casey,” Griffin said, “I can’t begin to tell you how rotten your timing is.”

  Joanna couldn’t help but laugh a little as she eased out of his embrace. “It’s all right, we can talk later,” she told him. “Listen, I have a few things to do, so why don’t I go back to the hotel and leave you with this stuff.”

  “It’s lunchtime,” Griffin protested, the look in his eyes indicating a hunger for something other than food.

  “Why don’t we have a late lunch,” she suggested. “You can pick me up at the hotel at two, okay?”

  Griffin’s gaze cut to Casey, who was still waiting imperturbably. “I guess it’ll have to be. But don’t forget where we left off.”

  “Not a chance,” she murmured.

  The familiar tension tightened around Joanna the moment she left Griffin’s office, and she had to marvel at his effect on her. It was literally the only thing that could push her ever present sense of urgency aside, and she felt a brief, craven desire to go back and wrap her arms around him because she didn’t know how much more of this anxious tension she could take.

  As much as I have to. That was part of it, too, this determination she’d felt since before leaving Atlanta, this compulsion to do something. It was wearing her down and frustrating her to no end, but it wouldn’t leave her alone.

  And maybe that was why her voice was a bit sharper than it should have been when she encountered Dylan again, this time on the sidewalk just a block down from the Sheriff’s Department.

  “Can I talk to you a minute?” she asked as she reached him. There was no one around them, and she didn’t want to miss the opportunity to talk to him without the danger of anyone overhearing them.

  “Sure, Joanna. What’s up?” His pleasant face wore a smile, but … were his eyes just a bit guarded?

  Joanna didn’t feel she had the time to be subtle, and besides, being direct had worked on Doc. So, bluntly, she said, “Did you have an affair with Caroline?”

  For an instant, his face went completely expressionless. But then he smiled faintly. “Asking out of idle curiosity, Joanna?”

  She shook her head slightly and repeated, “Did you have an affair with Caroline?”

  Dylan glanced down at the briefcase he carried as if he needed to avoid her steady gaze. His face had gone expressionless again, and when his eyes met hers again, they were filled with shadows. “The lady of t
he manor … condescended. Is that what you want to hear? All right, it’s true. I fell like a ton of bricks when I came here to work for Scott. She had grown up while I was away at college and working in San Francisco.”

  “Did she feel the same?”

  His mouth twisted bitterly. “Hell, no. She spent the better part of a year taunting me. Smiling and flirting whenever Scott wasn’t around—and keeping just out of reach. She nearly drove me crazy, damn her.”

  “But you did have an affair.” He sounded just like the others, Joanna thought, bitter and resentful—and obsessed.

  “If you could call it that.” He shrugged jerkily. “We met every day for a week and practically tore each other’s clothes off. Then—nothing. She told me it was over, and after that acted as if it had never happened.”

  Joanna wanted to look away from that hard, bright bitterness in his smile, but forced herself to ask quietly, “Where did you meet?”

  He laughed shortly. “In the backseat of my car. Can you beat that? I told her I could afford a room, but she insisted. So I’d drive someplace where we could park off the road and out of sight, and we’d climb in the backseat.”

  Yet another odd, uncomfortable place, Joanna thought, as if Caroline had punished herself even while seeking pleasure. “Was this recently, Dylan?”

  “No, it was years ago, just after I came back here. Now, do you mind telling me why in the hell it’s any of your business?” Dylan asked flatly.

  Joanna shook her head. “I’m just trying to put the pieces together, that’s all. I won’t tell anyone, Dylan, you can be sure of that. I just had to ask.” She hesitated, then said, “Did Caroline try to talk to you about something the week before she was killed? Something that was bothering her, I mean?”

  He frowned. “I hardly saw her that week. I must have gone up to Portland three different times and stayed overnight at least twice. Anyway, she’d gotten damn good at ignoring me, so why would she have wanted to talk to me about anything at all?”

  Maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe, by then, she’d learned not to seek help from a discarded lover. Maybe that was when she finally went to Griffin. “I was just wondering,” Joanna said. “Trying to find out if she was upset about something that last week.”

  “Caroline was never upset, I told you that. She was the lady of the manor—never lost her cool.”

  It sounded as if Dylan’s anger and bitterness had outlasted his obsession, but Joanna didn’t doubt he’d carry Caroline’s scars for a long, long time yet. All her men seemed to.

  Joanna smiled faintly. “Well, thanks for being so honest with me.”

  A bit dryly, he said, “Forgive me if I don’t say ‘You’re welcome.’” No happier with her than Doc had been, Dylan turned and walked away.

  With a sigh, Joanna also continued on her way, her thoughts very troubled. How many other men had Caroline used and discarded? Was Cain one of them? Had he been her last lover, despite his relationship with Holly?

  Dammit, Cain, where are you?

  All the way to Portland, Holly kept telling herself she was making an awful mistake. She should have taken Joanna’s advice and just waited all this out, been patient until Cain reappeared in Cliffside and settled things. But when she’d gone into town this morning, the talk had reached the point where people had openly asked her if Cain was about to be arrested for Amber Wade’s murder.

  She had talked to Griff when he had left The Inn this morning, and though his deepening relationship with Joanna obviously delighted him, he hadn’t been happy about Cain’s continued absence and wouldn’t be patient much longer even for the sake of friendship.

  Which was why, Holly told herself now, she had to go to Portland. If nobody had seen Cain around town, and his car was gone—which it was, she’d checked—then the most logical place for him to be was at his studio in the city. Nobody in Cliffside knew about the place except Holly, or, at least, knew where it was. Cain had always been a bit secretive about it. And since he had no phone there because he hated interruptions of any kind while he was working, Holly had no choice except to drive up there.

  She didn’t know what she was going to say to him. Even as she parked her car and went inside the big converted warehouse where Cain’s studio apartment occupied the top floor, she had no idea what was going to come out of her mouth if and when he let her in.

  In the lobby, she buzzed insistently, but it was several minutes before Cain’s irritated voice came through the intercom.

  “What?”

  “Cain, it’s Holly. Can I come up?”

  There was a brief silence, and then she heard the big freight elevator begin to lower toward the lobby. When it arrived, she opened the fencelike barriers and got in. The slow, loud journey up four floors felt interminable to her, and she still didn’t know what she was going to say to him.

  Cain was waiting for her and opened the outer barrier as she opened the inner one. He actually looked pleased to see her. “Hello, babe. What brings you here?”

  “Where the hell have you been?” she heard herself snap.

  Both Cain’s brows went up. “For the past couple of days? Here.”

  Appalled at herself, Holly heard that fishwife who apparently lived inside her snarl another question as she stalked past him and into the big open room that was filled with several easels, tables holding cans of brushes and tubes of paint and numerous jars and rags, a draped platform where models could pose, and various other trappings of an artist’s work. “Just vanishing with hardly a word to let me face the gossips of Cliffside alone?”

  “Oh, have I been tried and hanged?” he asked, bored indifference in his voice. “My being there would hardly change that, Holly. And why don’t you just ignore them? The talk will die down soon enough—”

  “No, it won’t,” she said, whirling to face him. “Don’t you get it, Cain? You lied to the sheriff about where you were Sunday night, and everyone in town knows that.”

  He frowned. “How did he find out I lied?”

  “Somebody saw your car leave around midnight. Where did you go? Did you come here?”

  Cain hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, I came here.”

  “Why? To work? What could be so damned important that you needed to slip out in the middle of the night to work on it? And why in God’s name did you lie to Griff about it?”

  “It was none of his business. Look, I didn’t kill that girl-”

  “Damn you, I know that! I just don’t understand all this lying, and why you’re hiding out up here when everything’s going to hell back home, and why you won’t talk to me—” She broke off abruptly as her gaze fell on one of the easels that was off to one side of Cain’s work area.

  It was the painting of Caroline, finished now. And beautiful.

  “Or maybe I do understand,” she murmured. “How amazingly you’ve captured her. I guess you did know her well, huh? Very well indeed. You were her lover, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Cain said.

  It was getting cloudy as Joanna walked back to the hotel, and the changing weather exactly matched her mood. She felt as uneasy as the dark clouds scudding across the sky, despite thinking that she might already have done something to help Regan.

  She still felt anxious about the little girl, very much so. She still had the nagging feeling that danger lurked somewhere about, and that it threatened Regan. But something had changed, and she couldn’t help but hope that the change would benefit Regan.

  Scott had changed. Or, at least, Joanna thought he had.

  And she had initiated that change, hadn’t she? If she hadn’t told Scott what they suspected, it was likely he would not have looked through Caroline’s things or recognized the possible importance of one small brass key. And if he had not done that, it was unlikely that the confrontation with Griffin would have taken place, not when the two men had been avoiding each other for so many years.

  So, perhaps Joanna had helped. Perhaps she had, indirectly, helped to give back her father
to Regan. Perhaps.

  She knew it wouldn’t be easy for Scott or Regan, this sudden change in their relationship. Regan still had a lot of anger toward her father, some of it about her mother’s death and some, no doubt, born in that small girl inexplicably pushed away from him years ago. But Joanna felt sure Scott would try to rebuild their relationship, because any man who had so adored his child once would want that feeling back again.

  She went into The Inn and up to her room, her thoughts turning to Griffin. She wasn’t afraid of Caroline’s ghost anymore, but she was still reluctant to put her own feelings into words, and she’d been a bit relieved that Casey had interrupted them. She somehow doubted that Griffin would like hearing “I love you, but Caroline’s still in my head.”

  Yet, that was what she’d have to tell him, at least until this was over. And even then, even assuming that the puzzle was completed and three murders were solved and Regan was utterly safe—even then, Joanna wasn’t certain that the urgent presence in her mind would leave her alone.

  She hadn’t thought about it until now, but the mere possibility that Caroline would haunt her forever was distinctly unnerving. Bad enough to be haunted by any presence, but…

  “Not you, Caroline,” she heard herself mutter a bit grimly. “Anybody but you.”

  Joanna sat on her bed and took a deep breath, pushing the moment of horrified panic out of her mind. That wouldn’t happen. It would not. There was going to be a happy ending to all this, one way or another. And when it was over, Joanna wouldn’t have anybody in her head except Griffin.

  Period.

  She sat there for a moment, thinking, trying to capture an elusive something in her mind that was nagging at her. Something she had seen? Something someone had told her? Damn, what is it? She got up and went to the dresser, picking up a brush to straighten her hair, then frowned as her gaze fell on her small travel jewelry case. Was that what was nagging at her?