by Anne Stuart
There were no shades or curtains on the library windows, and the moon was bright and clear, reflecting off the melting snow, shining in Carolyn’s eyes no matter how much she shifted.
It was after four when she finally fell asleep, the deep chime of the grandfather clock still echoing in her head.
It was after six when she awoke in the dark, murky stillness of the room. Dazed with sleep, disoriented, she couldn’t remember where she was, and she blinked groggily, wanting nothing more than to settle back beneath the soft down comforter and forget all the things that lay ahead of her.
“Rise and shine, beautiful,” a low, seductive voice whispered in her ear. “It’s time to hit the road.”
She struck out, in sudden, inexplicable panic, connecting with solid bone and flesh. Alexander MacDowell was leaning over her, and he caught her arm as she tried to hit him.
“Calm down, angel,” he said. “I wasn’t about to climb in bed with you. I just thought you’d want to make an early start, since you’re hoping to do this in one day.”
She yanked her arm away from him, shivering in the early-morning stillness as she tried to regain her shattered equilibrium. “Today?” she said in a voice of horrified disbelief.
“Why put it off? You’ll just dread it all the more,” he said.
She didn’t deny it. “Go away,” she said sharply.
He didn’t move. “How long will it take you to get ready?”
She wanted to tell him till hell froze over, but she was neatly trapped. She’d promised Sally, and she never went back on her word. Sally asked very little of her—she should welcome the sacrifice.
“An hour,” she said.
“Well, don’t waste time primping on my account,” he said.
“Trust me, I won’t.”
He rose, and she almost wished he hadn’t. It was a disturbing sensation, lying in the soft, warm mattress with him leaning over her, staring down at her out of his enigmatic blue eyes.
His smile didn’t help matters. Cool and calculated, it played around his impossibly sensuous mouth and seemed to say that he saw right through her. “I brought you some coffee,” he said, nodding toward the table.
“I don’t drink coffee in the morning.”
“Constanza says you like it with milk and no sugar,” he continued, ignoring her blatant lie. “Seems to me you could do with a little added sweetener.”
“If you don’t leave now it’ll take that much longer,” she said coldly.
He let his eyes run over her body. There was nothing to see—most of her was beneath a fluffy duvet and the rest was covered by the flannel nightgown she usually reserved for the coldest parts of January. She could feel a slow heat envelope her skin beneath the layers anyway.
“I’ll wait for you in the kitchen. At least Constanza is glad to see me back.” He started toward the door, stopped, and then turned back. “Oh, I forgot something.” He tossed a small object onto the bed, and she knew by the rattle that it had to be her pill bottle. “You left your drugs scattered all over the kitchen. You have to watch that stuff—Aunt Patsy’s a druggie. She would have scarfed them down if she’d seen them.”
She didn’t bother denying it—her name was on the prescription bottle. “It’s for my headaches.”
“They’re tranquilizers, Carolyn,” he corrected her. “Mild ones, but tranquilizers nonetheless. And I intend to make sure you need them.”
With a wicked smile he was gone.
Chapter Six
HE WAS SO BUSY charming Constanza that he barely looked up when Carolyn entered the kitchen, setting her empty mug down on the granite countertop.
“It’s good to have Mr. Alex back,” Constanza said cheerfully.
“Hmmph.” She poured herself another cup of coffee, then deliberately took a tranquilizer from her pill bottle and tossed it down. Alex failed to look suitably impressed.
“I’m not sure Carolyn agrees with you, ’Stanza,” he said lazily.
Someone must have told him about Alex’s nickname for the woman who’d been half cook, half nanny to him growing up. It had been years since she’d heard it.
“She’s not happy you’re back?” Constanza said in shocked tones.
“She’s not certain it’s me.”
Constanza laughed. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Alex. How could she not know it’s you? How could she have any doubt? Mrs. MacDowell knows you—how could a mother not know her own son? Besides, you’re just the same.”
“God, I hope not,” he said devoutly. “I’m older and wiser.”
“Maybe,” Carolyn muttered.
Constanza shook her head. “You two were always bickering. I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re still at it. Now sit down and I’ll make you some eggs.”
“I’m not hungry, Constanza. I’d rather get on the road.”
“You’re never hungry,” Constanza scolded. “It’s an insult to my cooking, and I won’t have it. Sit down and eat, or I’ll tell Mrs. MacDowell on you, and you know how she worries.”
It was an empty threat, and both of them knew it. Neither of them would add to Sally’s cares, but Carolyn sat anyway, resisting the impulse to stick her tongue out at Alex. “Just some toast,” she muttered, sipping at her coffee.
“You’ll starve to death,” Constanza said. “What are you in such a hurry for, anyway?”
“I want to get back as quickly as I can.”
Constanza came and stood over Carolyn, her hands at her hips. “What nonsense is this? You need to get away from here—you’ve barely left the house in the last eight months. Mrs. MacDowell isn’t going to die in the next few days, and there are plenty of people to keep her busy. You take a few days and enjoy yourself. The sea air will do you good.”
Alex was watching this with great interest, and it took all Carolyn’s willpower to ignore him. “Maybe later,” she said.
“You mean after my mother’s dead?” Alex murmured. “How morbid of you.”
She’d had too little sleep and too much coffee. “I’ve been dealing with the fact of Sally’s upcoming death for more than a year now. Sorry if it’s a little rough for you, but you haven’t been around to get used to the idea.”
“Make up your mind, Carolyn. Either I’m a wicked imposter who shouldn’t be around in the first place, or I’m a rotten, ungrateful son who’s returned too late to do much good.”
“I’ve made up my mind.”
“So you have. And I don’t need to ask what the judgment is, do I?”
“Either way, you’re despicable.”
“Don’t you mean ‘dethpicable’?”
She dropped her coffee cup, staring at him in sudden shock. She had shared only one thing with the wild young terror that had been Alexander MacDowell—an unexpected love for Bugs Bunny and friends. “Dethpicable” had been their password, along with “no more buwwetts.” But Alex was dead. And Daffy Duck was making a comeback—anyone Alex’s age would have seen those old cartoons a thousand times. It was coincidence. It was logical.
It was nerve-wracking.
He rose before she could respond, and she made herself look at him. He was dressed in the same loose, casual clothes he’d worn before—faded jeans, cotton sweater—and he hadn’t bothered to shave that morning. Maybe he thought the faint stubble was attractive. Maybe he was right.
“Come on, princess. You’re the one who’s in such an all-fired hurry. If you’re hungry we’ll stop at McDonald’s on the way.”
She managed a graceful shudder. “MacDowells don’t eat at McDonald’s,” she said.
“But you’re not a MacDowell.”
There was no malice in the simple statement. It took all her enormous self-control not to let her reaction show on her face, not to reply with the obvious “neither are you.” She ignored him, ri
sing as well.
“I’ll just go and say good-bye to Sally.” She started toward the door, but he caught her arm, bringing her up short, and she had the sense not to pull away from him.
“She’s sleeping. She had a bad night. I already said good-bye for both of us.”
For a moment she didn’t move. There was nothing she could say, no way she could fight back. She simply nodded. “All right. I’ll just go and get my bag.”
“What do you need a bag for? I thought you were determined we wouldn’t be gone overnight?”
“Miss Carolyn is a very careful woman,” Constanza announced with a proud air. “She always likes to be prepared for everything.”
“Ah, but you can’t be,” he said softly. “Fate has a habit of playing dirty tricks.”
She looked at him for a measured moment, making certain he knew she considered him one of fate’s dirtiest tricks. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
CAROLYN SMITH amused him. He knew it was crass and coldhearted of him to find her pride and anger entertaining, but he had no illusions about his better nature. He’d lived a hard life, though he blamed no one but himself for it. It left him less than sympathetic toward foolish, worthless emotions. You took what you could get and made do with it.
Carolyn Smith would never get what she wanted. She’d never be a MacDowell, never belong to this family of smug hypocrites, and she ought to be glad of it. But she wasn’t. And all he had to do was wave that lack under her nose, and she responded like a laboratory rat.
Not that she was particularly ratlike. He’d stood over the makeshift bed in the library, looking down on her, and she ought to thank God he’d resisted his worst impulse and hadn’t gotten in bed with her.
God knows he’d wanted to. It would have been simple enough—he could have covered her body with his, and before she had time to scream he would have stopped her mouth.
She would have hit him. She would have kicked and struggled for approximately thirty seconds. And then she would have kissed him back.
It wasn’t any particular vanity on his part. Some women were attracted to him, some women despised him. Carolyn Smith just happened to fit in both of those categories.
He ought to leave her alone. She’d managed to carve a peaceful life for herself, and his appearance was already disruptive enough. Seducing her would only make things worse.
Then again, he didn’t particularly approve of her safe, peaceful life, and he was lazily egocentric enough to pass judgment. She was too young to immure herself away in a living tomb. Too young to devote herself to a family of dinosaurs that had no use for her, and obviously never had. What she desperately needed was some shaking up. And he was the man to do it.
She was standing outside the front door, waiting for him by his battered old Jeep. With her pale blond hair tucked in a tight little knot at the back of her neck, and the enveloping black raincoat pulled around her slender body, she was doing her best to look like a no-nonsense schoolteacher. She was failing miserably.
He considered holding the door for her, then decided against it. The Alex that she once knew wouldn’t have bothered to open the car door for his almost-cousin. The Alex he had become was far more interested in bank vaults and bedroom doors.
Constanza was right—she was a careful little soul. She unearthed the seatbelt and buckled herself in, keeping her leather purse held tightly in her lap as some sort of protection. He could have told her that nothing would keep her safe.
They drove in silence for the first twenty minutes—a hostile silence on her part, an amused one on his. It wasn’t until he came to the golden arches and put on his turn signal that she roused herself to speak.
“I don’t want anything,” she said. “It’s too early in the morning for grease.”
“It’s never too early for grease.” He pulled up to the drive-thru window. “Look at it this way—you’ll need energy to keep battling me. You can’t put up a good fight on an empty stomach.”
“Who says I want to fight with you?”
He looked at her. “Maybe I’m imagining the waves of hostility wafting toward me,” he said lightly.
“Go to hell.”
“On the other hand, maybe not.” He pulled forward, took the food, and dumped a bag in her lap. “Eat it.”
“You can’t make me.”
He laughed softly. “Yes,” he said, “I can.” She believed him.
He’d never seen anyone take so long to eat one Egg McMuffin and one Hash Brown. She picked at it, crumbling it into tiny pieces.
“You’re too skinny,” he observed, watching the road.
“If you think you’re going to win my heart with that kind of garbage you might as well save your breath,” she said tartly.
“What makes you think I’m trying to win your heart?”
“Bad choice of words. You’re trying to win me over like you’ve won over the rest of the MacDowells. You have most of them eating out of your hand, believing every word. And don’t tell me again that I’m not a MacDowell—I’m perfectly aware of that fact.”
“Then why do you still let it bother you? If I were you, I wouldn’t want to be one of them. You’d be much better off without them.”
“Were you? Assuming for a wild, crazy moment that you really are Alexander MacDowell, were you better off without them? Trying not to be one?”
He wasn’t going to answer her questions. Not when they cut close to the bone. “What do you think?”
She crumpled up the paper and remaining bits of food and shoved it in the bag. “I think you’re a cheat and a liar. A con artist, out to bilk a dying old lady out of her fortune.”
“If she’s dying, then she’s not going to need her fortune for much longer.”
“You doubt that she’s dying?”
“No. I can see she doesn’t have much time left. I can also see that having her long-lost son return to her is the best thing that can happen. She’s happy, Carolyn. You have a problem with that?”
“I have a problem with false happiness. With believing a lie.”
“She’s not going to live long enough to find out whether it’s a lie or not. She’s going to die knowing her beloved son has finally returned to her. She’s going to die surrounded by her loving family. What more can anyone ask? Do you want to deprive her of that? Do you want to take her son away, now that she’s finally found him again?”
Carolyn was silent for a moment. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said finally, and her voice was weary. “I didn’t have any choice in coming with you, but that doesn’t mean I have to argue for five hours down and five hours back.”
“We can talk about something else.”
“I don’t want to talk at all. I want to forget you even exist,” she said ruthlessly. She turned away from him, facing out the window.
“Don’t worry, Carolyn. As soon as Sally dies, I’ll be gone from your life, and it’ll all be over. You’ll never have to think about me again.”
She didn’t respond. Her profile was distant in the gray morning light, and he allowed himself the dubious pleasure of watching her as he watched the road. He had known plain women, beautiful women, kind women, and cruel ones. Carolyn Smith had perfect features—a narrow, straight nose, high cheekbones, a sweetly generous mouth, and wide-set, wonderful blue eyes. Her skin was flawless, her body long and nicely curved, though she could have used a few extra pounds. All in all, she should have been physically irresistible.
But she had a wall around her, a wall of barbed wire and ice, and no matter how lovely the creature behind that barrier, she was still out of reach. The warning signs were all around—no trespassing—and yet her cool beauty was perversely tempting. Most sensible men would keep clear of her.
He wasn’t a sensible man. He was a man who enjoyed a challenge. He w
as a man who knew far too much about Carolyn Smith, probably more than she did herself. He was a man who enjoyed danger. Otherwise, he’d be Sam Kinkaid on the other side of the ocean, basking in the Mediterranean sun in his house in Tuscany.
But here he was. And here she was, her arms folded tightly across her body, turned away from him, cold, silent, withdrawn. Here she was, at his mercy for at least the next twelve hours. He was looking forward to it.
THE FRONT SEAT of the Jeep felt as cramped and stuffy as a race car. Carolyn was doing her absolute best to ignore him, pretending to be asleep, staring out the window, answering his occasional comments with a discouraging “mm.” But try as she might, she couldn’t rid herself of the overwhelming sense of his presence, crowding her, pushing at her, physically overpowering her. He was there, beside her, all around her, intrusive, demanding, even when he didn’t say a word.
It was her own damned fault, and she knew it. At the advanced age of thirty-one she’d learned how to let go of distractions, rise above disappointments, inure herself to annoyances. And yet the con artist pretending to be Alexander MacDowell seemed impervious to all her defenses. He managed to get under her skin with his faint, mocking grin, his luminous blue eyes, his sexy, lazy slouch.
She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, trying to relieve the tension that had built up inside her. It was the fifth or sixth time she’d tried it, and it didn’t seem to be working. It only made her feel light-headed.
“Need more tranquilizers?” he drawled, pulling to a stop outside the ferry office. He’d found the Woods Hole dock without any trouble, and she knew a moment’s doubt. The way was well marked, and he was a thorough, well-versed man. He’d drive directly to the house on Water Street once they got on the island, too. She shouldn’t let his cleverness surprise her, or make her doubt what she knew was true.
“I’m fine,” she said in a tight little voice.
“You’re wrapped tighter than a watch spring. I’m surprised you’re not a little more resilient.”