Shadow Lover

by Anne Stuart

  “But you saw me die. Did you see who killed me?” She was silent, and the smartest thing to do would have been to let it be, wait until she was ready to talk. But he wasn’t feeling very smart, or very patient. “Did you?”

  “No.” She was fussing with her seat belt, her elegant hands nervous. “I’m still not sure what was memory and what was a nightmare.”

  “I thought your therapist helped you figure that out.”

  “She helped me let go of it. There was no way I could solve it, so the only thing I could do was put it away from me.”

  “And now I’ve brought it all back. No wonder you hate me.”

  She turned to look at him, and there was unmistakable surprise in her blue eyes. Eyes you could drown in, he thought absently. Light and dark, calm and stormy, all at the same time. “I don’t hate you,” she said. “I just wish you’d never come here.”

  They were coming up to the narrow turn onto the MacDowell’s long, unpaved driveway. It was an unprepossessing entrance to the multimillion-dollar compound, low key on purpose. One could barely notice the state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. He yanked the wheel, started down the narrow, two-mile drive, and then pulled to a stop, turning off the car and swiveling in the seat to look at her.

  She looked nervous, as well she should. “The snow’s gone,” she said, obviously trying to distract him.

  “You want to tell me again that you don’t hate me? I don’t believe you, Carolyn. Why don’t you unburden yourself and tell me what you really think of me?”

  She rallied. “I’d think that would be obvious. I think the real Alexander MacDowell has been dead for the past eighteen years, and you’re a very good, very smart imposter who’s here to bilk Sally out of her money.”

  “And who’s working with me? If I’m a phony I must have a partner in crime—I couldn’t know so much about the family without inside help. Who is it—one of the servants? Maybe a business associate?”

  “One of the family. You know too many intimate details. If I had to guess I’d say it was Warren. Patsy is too ditzy, her older children are too self-absorbed and stupid to carry something like this off, and Grace doesn’t care about the money. Warren’s got the brains and the nerve and the ruthlessness—though I can’t figure out why he’d bother. The money will come to him and the others anyway—Sally’s not going to change her will.”

  She was too smart and too damned observant. Warren wouldn’t have given anything away, and neither had he. “Sounds to me like you’re still caught up in a fantasy,” he murmured.

  “Alexander MacDowell is dead!” she said sharply. “I saw him die!”

  “And never bothered to tell anyone? Not the police, not Aunt Sally, as she was mourning her lost child? You didn’t even want to drop a clue that her wait was going to be in vain?” She couldn’t come up with an answer. “Guilt,” he said again. “You know, that’s a lousy thing to have running your life for eighteen years. I’ll tell you what—I forgive you.”

  “You what?”

  “Forgive you,” he said grandly. “For watching me die, and doing nothing to save me. Hey, you were a kid, and you probably didn’t even believe what you were seeing. It’s not your fault. Your therapist was right—let go of it.”

  She didn’t look gratified. “You’re an imposter,” she said again. “And I’m not going to sit around and do nothing while you rob a dying old lady.”

  “Then prove it.”

  For a moment she looked startled, as if the idea had never occurred to her. “Why should I bother?” she said after a moment.

  “Because it’s driving you crazy,” he said lazily, leaning back in the driver’s seat. “I’ll make a bargain with you. You prove I’m not the real Alexander MacDowell and I’ll disappear. Without a whimper, without stealing the family silver. I’ll just go away, and your safe little life will be yours once more.”

  “No!” she protested. “You can’t do that! If the man she thinks is her long-lost son disappears again without a word it would kill her.”

  “Carolyn, she’s dying,” he said with great patience and no emotion whatsoever. “Make up your mind. Do you want to expose me as a fake or not?”

  “I do. I just don’t know if that’s best for Sally.”

  “I can tell you the answer to that. She needs to believe her son has come back from the dead so she can die peacefully. I wouldn’t think you’d want to deprive her of that, would you?”

  There was confusion and real dislike in her clear blue eyes. He didn’t blame her—he was giving her a hell of a hard choice. But he wasn’t feeling particularly merciful that morning.

  “You really are a bastard, aren’t you?” she said bitterly.

  “One more thing I have in common with the Alexander MacDowell you once knew and loved,” he said lightly. “Why don’t you busy yourself trying to find out who I really am, and who exactly it is who’s been feeding me information? Once you have proof you can keep that knowledge to yourself as long as I don’t harm Sally. Once she dies, which you and I both know won’t be long, then you can trot out your evidence and I’ll disappear in disgrace before they can throw me into jail.”

  “Very convenient. What do you have to gain from that?”

  “A comfortable berth for the next few weeks or however long it takes. The personal satisfaction of knowing I’m making an old woman’s dying days happy.”

  She snorted in disbelief. “And what about your accomplice? Will you let him face the police?”

  “I don’t think you’ll call in the police, Carolyn. I think you just want to see me gone again. Don’t you? So you don’t have to deal with your guilt anymore, so no one takes your place with Sally, so no one threatens all that money you’ve worked so hard for all your life.”

  She looked at him with deceptive calm. “I lied,” she said. “I do hate you.”

  “Sure you do, angel,” he said easily. “And you can ease your guilty conscience by ferreting out the truth about me. Go for it.”

  She stared at him. “You’re on,” she said after a long moment. “I’ll find proof you aren’t the real Alexander MacDowell, and then I’ll decide what to do with it. Maybe I’ll just torture you a little.”

  “Kinky,” he murmured. “Just be careful of one thing.” She didn’t look particularly interested in his advice, but he didn’t care. “It might not be too smart to look into what happened to your childhood friend. After all, if he really was murdered, there’s a good chance the killer is someone you know. Someone who was there at the house that night. If he or she finds out you saw them on the beach, you might be putting yourself in danger.”

  Her face paled in the bright light of midday. Clearly she hadn’t considered that little notion, and he wondered if she was going to end up with a bullet in her back.

  Whoever had shot the obnoxious teenage Alexander MacDowell and tossed him into the ocean had had eighteen years to get over his murderous tendencies. No other MacDowell had died an untimely death, or disappeared without a trace, or even suffered an unexpected accident. They were all safe and sound.

  With Carolyn nosing about, that safety was likely to be threatened. And he was a selfish bastard to see her off on that particular tack.

  “It’s very sweet of you to be concerned,” she said cynically. “I know perfectly well why you want me to find out what happened to the real Alexander.”

  “And why is that?”

  “If I find out who killed him, you’ll have someone to blackmail. You may not get Sally’s money, but if someone in the family committed murder there’ll be lots of cash available.”

  He looked at her with mock admiration. “I hadn’t even thought of that. You do have a high opinion of me, don’t you? And it doesn’t bother you if I bleed money from someone else in your family?”

  “Not in the slightest. Whoever kille
d Alexander deserves to suffer,” she said flatly.

  “I didn’t know you particularly cared about him. He sounds like a spoiled brat and an absolute pain in the butt.”

  “He was.”

  “Then why do you care?” She kept her face averted, but he already knew the answer. “You were in love with him, weren’t you?”

  “I was thirteen years old!” she shot back. “Hardly of an age to recognize true love. And he was a brat who tormented and teased me. He had no time for me at all.”

  “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t have had a hell of a crush on him.”

  “Girls outgrow crushes quite easily.”

  “Not when they see the object of those adolescent infatuations murdered,” he said blithely. “Too bad Alex never knew you had such a passion for him. I’m sure he would have enjoyed fulfilling your youthful fantasies.”

  “Who says he didn’t know?” Her voice was icy cold. “You know, you don’t seem to have any trouble talking about him in the third person,” she said. “Are you admitting you’re a phony? I can’t prove it, at least not yet. Why don’t you at least admit it.”

  “I’m not admitting anything, sweetheart,” he said lightly. “That’s for you to find out.”

  “And if I do?”

  “I told you, I’ll slip away quietly. With nothing more than a good-bye kiss.”

  And he watched with interest as the color left her face.

  Chapter Ten

  IN THE END, IT was really a very simple thing to do. So simple, in fact, that there was no way Carolyn could resist the opportunity. She told herself so as she pushed back any faint trickles of guilt.

  The kitchen was deserted—Constanza had paused in the midst of her dinner preparations to serve tea to Aunt Sally and her son. It wasn’t as if the others were deliberately excluded—Warren despised tea, Patsy was having her beauty rest, and her children had gone off in search of spring skiing. It was more subtle than that. Sally wanted time with her long-lost son, and Carolyn was too generous to intrude. But not too generous to resent it.

  The filling for the seafood crepes sat covered, nestled in a bowl of cracked ice. The huge shrimp sat separately, far away from the filling, as if even proximity would contaminate it and endanger Alex.

  It was a simple matter to shred one of the large, shelled shrimp into tiny pieces, to mix it in with the crab and sole filling so that no one would even see it.

  And such a tiny portion would probably do absolutely nothing to even the most sensitive of allergies. If Alex even bothered to eat any of the crepes, his portion would be so microscopic that it would end up being no test at all. She had absolutely no reason to feel guilty, she reminded herself as she passed Constanza on the way out. After all, the imposter had challenged her to find proof. Sally might have ruled out DNA testing, but this was far simpler and more direct.

  He ate three of the shrimp-tainted crepes. Carolyn sat across from him, toying with her food, watching, half-listening as Warren and Sally argued about politics and Alex flirted with the slightly boozed-up Aunt Patsy. For some reason she didn’t have much appetite.

  “You’re not in a very talkative mood tonight, are you, Caro?” Warren said suddenly, fixing his pale eyes on her.

  She almost knocked over her wineglass, catching it just in time. “I guess I’m tired from the trip.”

  “Alex said you slept the entire way back,” Sally said, staring at her. “Maybe you’re coming down with something.”

  “Don’t breathe on me!” Patsy said with a slurred shriek. “I can’t afford to get sick. I hate illness of any sort. And don’t let George know, whatever you do! He’s got a pathological fear of infection.”

  “George is as healthy as a horse,” Warren said with a snort.

  “That doesn’t mean he won’t worry. I see too little of him as it is—he’s always busy with his friends and his little club to spare time for his mother. I don’t want him running back to New York because he’s afraid he’ll catch a sniffle.”

  “What kind of club?” Alex asked.

  “Oh, heavens, I don’t pay any attention,” Patsy said with an airy wave of her hand. “He belongs to several, and they’re all terribly expensive. Health clubs, nature-watching clubs, that sort of thing.”

  “George never struck me as the naturalist type,” Alex said.

  Patsy cast him a look of intense dislike. “You have no idea just how many interests a man like George has.”

  “No,” he said, and there was a faintly edgy tone in his voice, “I don’t.”

  “None of this matters, because I’m not sick,” Carolyn said with barely controlled exasperation.

  “How can you be certain? You’re usually capable of decent conversation,” Warren said with a faint whine. “Oh, do go to bed, Carolyn, and drink lots of orange juice. We can’t afford to have you sick right now.”

  “No, Caro,” Patsy chimed in. “You know how we all count on you during this sad time.”

  “I’m not dead yet,” Sally announced in a wry voice. “And considering Alex is back, I don’t consider it a sad time at all. I intend to go out with a flourish.”

  “Don’t!” Carolyn said, pushing back from the table. “I don’t want to hear about it!”

  “I’m dying, Carolyn dear,” Sally said quietly. “It’s an inescapable fact.”

  “Let her be,” Alex said unexpectedly. “She’s had a rough couple of days.”

  “Not because of you, I hope?” Sally suddenly sounded quite stern. “I love you dearly and I’m overjoyed that you’ve come home, but I won’t have you tormenting Carolyn the way you used to.”

  “The way I used to?” he echoed, all phony innocence.

  “You may think I didn’t know what was going on, but I did. You loved to tease Carolyn when she was younger. You must have made her life a living hell at times.”

  “Then why didn’t you stop me?” Alex’s voice was even, the question eminently reasonable. It sat in the room like a boulder.

  Sally looked startled. “I . . . er . . . I tried. There was no controlling you at that age. You were such a devil, so headstrong! We tried everything, didn’t we, Warren?”

  “You were a hellion, all right,” Warren said. “Besides, kids always pick on their little sisters.”

  “Carolyn wasn’t my sister,” he said softly, “because you never bothered to adopt her.”

  She jerked her head up to look at him. It was almost as if he were angry with them for not protecting her. Absurd, since he was supposedly the villain in the piece.

  “Either way, I survived,” she said, pushing back from the table. “And I’m sure you all have better things to discuss than my childhood, which was just fine, thank you very much. If no one minds, I’m going to bed.”

  “I told you she was coming down with something!” Sally said. “Sleep well, Carolyn, and don’t worry about me. I’ve got Mrs. Hathaway and Alex to see to my well-being.”

  Carolyn summoned up a smile. “I’ll be fine in the morning.” She started toward Aunt Sally to give her a kiss good-night, when Warren’s arm shot out to stop her.

  “Don’t you think you’d better keep your distance until we make certain you don’t have something contagious?” he said sternly.

  “Very wise idea,” Aunt Patsy said, reaching for her wineglass.

  Alex said nothing. But then, he didn’t need to. He was just sitting there, peacefully digesting the shrimp he should have been allergic to.

  Proof, she told herself as she paced around the library, trying to settle down enough so that she could sleep. It was enough proof for her, but she doubted it would hold up with anyone else. After all, it was only her word that she’d put a piece of shrimp in the crepes.

  And for that matter, there’d been so little shrimp maybe it missed him entirely. It had been a
stupid idea from the start, a random chance that she hadn’t been able to resist.

  It wasn’t until she’d turned off the light that a sudden, unpleasant thought hit her. What if she’d been wrong and the shrimp had hit him later on, when he was alone in his room? What if he’d suddenly keeled over, passed out? What if he was alone and dying because of her?

  “Ridiculous,” she said out loud, into the darkened room. But the worry, once taken hold, wouldn’t leave her, and by the time an hour passed she knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep until she made absolutely certain the imposter was fine.

  She threw back the covers and pulled on a pair of jeans under her t-shirt. Besides, she didn’t necessarily mind rubbing his face in the fact that he’d proven remarkably resilient to something that was purported to make him violently ill.

  The house was dark and quiet. George and Tessa hadn’t returned from their skiing yet, but Sally and her siblings had already retired. The stairs made no noise whatsoever as Carolyn climbed them, and by the time she reached the bedroom at the far end of the hall—the bedroom where she had once slept—she was feeling almost giddy with triumph.

  She knocked on the door, quietly enough, then waited. There was no sound from the other side, but the light came from underneath. She knocked again, calling out his stolen name. Still no answer.

  She started to turn away when she heard a thump on the other side of the door. The clicking noise as he fiddled with the lock. Maybe he wasn’t alone in there, she thought suddenly. Maybe it was Tessa who’d brought him into this, and maybe she was in there with him, in his bed . . .

  The door opened partway, shielding her view. He stood there in the shadows, looming over her, shirtless, almost threatening. “What do you want, Carolyn?” he demanded in a rough, slurred whisper.

  For a moment she couldn’t move. “Are you alone?”

  He laughed, but it was a raw sound. “Yeah, I’m alone. Who did you think I was entertaining?”

  “Your partner in crime?” she said.

  “Fuck you.” He started to close the door in her face, when she reached out and stopped him, amazing herself.