by Anne Stuart
“You think she’s the only one we have to worry about?”
“Absolutely. You’ve done a hell of a job ingratiating yourself with George and Tessa, and Patsy doesn’t bother to look past the nose on her face. If she did, she wouldn’t care, as long as she’s taken care of in the style to which she’s become accustomed. Carolyn’s a danger because she has nothing to lose. And because she’s got an annoying puritanical streak that wouldn’t flinch at destroying everything for some stupid ethic.”
“A concept you’re not overly familiar with, Uncle Warren.”
“Don’t push me, boy. I’m not in the mood for games.”
“If Carolyn’s the quintessential MacDowell, how come she’s so burdened with defects like honor and decency?”
Warren glared at him. “You don’t have much cause to be self-righteous. You’re the one who came to me with this little scam.”
“And you’re the member of the family who jumped at it,” Alex reminded him coolly.
“So we’re both tough, ruthless human beings with a lousy sense of right and wrong. No one ever got rich worrying about ethics.”
“I didn’t think you had to worry about getting rich. You’re a MacDowell, aren’t you?”
“You know what they say—you can never be too rich or too thin. In this volatile market it’s only wise to guard your assets to the best of your ability.”
“Even if they’re not your assets,” Alex observed wryly.
“Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly developed a conscience? It’s a little late for that. Remember, this was your idea.”
“You already reminded me of that.” He looked at his uncle with a steady gaze. “And don’t worry about my conscience. I’ve got it well under control. As long as we get one thing straight.”
“You’re dictating to me, boy?”
“There’ll be no little accidents. Not to Carolyn, not to anyone. Is that understood? I’m a con man, not a killer.” He had to admire the utter smoothness of his statement. In fact, it was the truth. He was conning all of them, just not in the way they thought he was.
Warren shrugged. “I’ll just leave it up to you to keep Carolyn in line. Make sure she doesn’t start suspecting anything, or I might be forced to take a hand.”
“If you take a hand I’ll cut it off.”
Warren looked at him as if he’d suddenly grown two heads. “I thought you didn’t believe in violence? You sound positively savage! If I didn’t know better I’d be worried for my safety.”
Alex gave him a positively beatific smile, one displayed for the sole purpose of terrorizing Warren. “It never hurts to be afraid, Uncle Warren. Life is full of little surprises.”
Warren stared at him in blustery dismay. “It would take a lot to surprise an old warhorse like me. I doubt there’s anything you could say that would shock me.”
Alex drained his coffee cup and set it down in the saucer in utter silence. “You’d be surprised, Uncle Warren.”
Chapter Sixteen
ALEX SLAMMED THE door shut behind him, not caring if it woke his sleeping cousins from their beauty rest. He was edgy, frustrated, tormented by the sense that something was very wrong in the MacDowell house. Something even worse than an ancient attempt at murder.
He’d had more than one reason for avoiding his bedroom the last few days, but right now there was no place else to go. He couldn’t get rid of the memory of Carolyn, the stricken expression in her eyes when she saw the hypodermic needle and realized she’d nearly killed him, that she’d been wrong all along. The unmistakable fear that underlay the very real sexual desire he could feel emanating from her, when he held her hand against his scarred hip. The faint, sobbing noise she made when she came.
He spent his nights in that same bed, remembering laying her across it, tasting her. She was gone, and he could still feel her there, just out of reach.
He never thought he’d come back to his old life just to become prey to an adolescent sexual obsession. It served him right, he thought wryly. He’d always been a bit too Machiavellian for his own good. Now he was getting distracted when his goal was very clear.
He’d come back for one reason. To find out who tried to kill him, and why. So far he wasn’t much closer to that knowledge than he had been living in Italy.
At least two people knew the answer to that question. One was Carolyn Smith, but the secrets were locked deep inside her brain, where even she couldn’t unearth them. She had seen what happened that night, even if she’d blanked it out.
Just as he had. Of course, he had an excuse for not remembering. He’d had a head injury on top of the trauma of being shot, and injuries like that were tricky things. Whoever had tried to kill him was probably counting on that.
Unless the third witness, the murderer, was certain he’d been successful in the first place.
Warren was the logical culprit. He’d never, for one moment, questioned Sam Kinkaid’s identity, or worried that the real Alexander MacDowell would show up. He claimed it was simple common sense—no one would leave all that potential money unclaimed.
But Alex knew far too well just how simple it was to turn your back on millions of dollars. He’d done it once, and never regretted it. He had every intention of doing so again.
It wouldn’t do him any good to try to prove who he was, even if he decided that was a good idea. There were no dental records, and DNA testing would show absolutely nothing. He had been bought and sold in infancy—whoever had bred him had dismissed him years ago.
He could work some more on Carolyn. She was the only definite source of information—maybe he could get her drunk, get her mad, drug her, anything to jar her recalcitrant memory. Maybe he could convince her to try hypnosis, drug therapy, convince her that unless she dredged those memories from her brain they’d haunt her for the rest of her life. It wouldn’t take much pressure, and he knew it.
But he didn’t want to do it. He’d upset her life too much already, and she looked at him as if he were a cross between Ted Bundy and Brad Pitt. Surely he could find the answers without dragging her back into it.
Of course, it wasn’t entirely noble on his part. She was already making him crazy, invading his sleep, tormenting his waking hours, so that he was far more concerned about her than about an ancient murder attempt eighteen years ago. He was much better off keeping his distance from her, at least until he found out the truth about his past. He wasn’t at all sure what would happen next. Maybe he’d just disappear, back to Italy where no one could find him.
Or maybe he’d take Carolyn with him.
He still thought of Sally as his mother, no matter what laws she had to bend or break to get him. She was sleeping, her color an ashen gray, the oxygen tubes threaded into her patrician nose.
He sat by the bed, watching her as he had for so many hours since he’d returned. Trying to understand her.
“So?” The sound of her voice was so quiet he almost thought he’d imagined it. She opened her eyes then, turning to watch him with grim amusement.
“So what?” he responded lightly.
“Smart ass,” she muttered. “Are you waiting for me to die?”
“No.”
That startled her. “I thought that was why you came back. To say good-bye to your dear old mother, to ease her passing into the next world.”
“There’s that,” he agreed.
“But you had another reason for coming? Apart from the money, of course?”
He didn’t bother to argue with her. She trotted out his inheritance any time she felt threatened. She was obviously feeling threatened right then, and he didn’t want to make it worse. But he wasn’t going to let her go without answers.
“Where did I come from?”
To her credit, she didn’t even blink. “You mean you’ve reached the age of thirty-five
and no one’s explained to you about the birds and the bees? It serves you right for taking off before I could acquaint you with the facts of life.”
“I’ve known about sex since I was twelve years old, maybe younger.” He put his hand on her fine-boned, blue-veined one, and it was frail and birdlike beneath his. “I want to know where I came from. Who’d you buy me from?”
She let her eyes drift closed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alex, and I wish you wouldn’t try to confuse me. I tire very easily nowadays. Why don’t you let me get some rest and then you can explain your ridiculous—”
“John Kinkaid told me your baby was born dead, and you went out and returned with me in its place. I want to know where I came from. For that matter, I’d like to know whether I was legally adopted or not.”
“Kinkaid,” Sally muttered in a voice of deep loathing. “He should have died years ago.”
“He did.”
He’d managed to startle her, and this time she didn’t bother hiding it. “Then how did you find out?”
“He told me. I ended up at his place when I ran away, and he didn’t believe in fostering illusions. I’ve known for eighteen years that I’m not really your son.”
“You are, damn it!” she said in a raw voice that was little more than a whisper. “You’re the son of my heart and soul, even if you don’t happen to be the son of my body. And you know it, even if you’re in the mood to deny it.”
“I know it,” he agreed softly. He still had his hand on hers, and she turned hers palm upward, holding it. “I still want you to tell me how you found me.”
Her sigh was so faint he could barely hear it. “I would have thought you’d learned by now that everything has its price. Thirty-five years ago unwanted babies were surprisingly easy to come by.”
“So you just walked into an orphanage and picked me out?”
Sally’s smile held no humor whatsoever. “If only it were that simple. I’m a careful woman, and I plan for eventualities. I was over forty when I got pregnant, and that didn’t augur well for success. Even if the birth went well there was always the possibility that the baby would have Down syndrome, and I’d have to find a replacement.”
He should have been appalled. Part of him was. Part of him knew her too well to be surprised at her calm ruthlessness. “So how did you manage it?”
“I heard about a girl who was pregnant, due around the time I was. She was from a good family, and the father was equally well-bred. He’d died in a car crash, and she was trying to hide the pregnancy from her parents. I helped her.”
“In return for her child. What if your baby had survived?”
“Then I would have had the child put up for adoption, as the young lady wished.”
“The young lady,” Alex said softly. “My birth mother. Who was she?”
“It doesn’t matter—she’s dead now. Her family never even knew of your existence—they’re dead as well. It’s too late for touching family reunions.”
“How did she die?”
Sally’s eyes met his. “In childbirth.”
“So I killed her.”
“No, dearest,” Sally said in a low voice devoid of regret. “I’m afraid I did.”
CAROLYN MOVED away from the window, letting the curtain fall. Alex had slammed out of the house, and she had watched in silent surprise as the gravel spurted beneath the tires of his rusting Jeep as he tore down the driveway. Something must have set him off—he was an actor, a man in perfect control of his reactions. It had to have been something extraordinary to elicit such a reaction from him.
She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, wondering if she’d imagined the incident out in the field that morning. She’d never seen a bullet, she’d never even heard the sound of a gunshot. She hadn’t slept well in over a week, not since the prodigal son had returned to his happy home—it would be no wonder if she was beginning to get paranoid.
Maybe he realized that he didn’t have anything to fear from her. She wasn’t about to destroy Sally’s last few weeks on this earth. And afterward, she didn’t give a damn what happened to the money. If Warren wanted to commit felonies in order to get rapid access to it, then that was his business. She didn’t even care about the small legacy Sally had told her she’d arranged for her. She just wanted to be away from the MacDowells for the rest of her life.
She’d always thought of them as her family. A not very close-knit, not very loving family, but family nonetheless. The last week had shown her all too clearly how wrong she’d been.
Odd, that didn’t ignite the usual feelings of desolation and abandonment. Suddenly freedom loomed, in all its uncertainty, and while a small part of her was frightened by its vastness, she was past ready to go.
All she had to do was avoid being alone with the man pretending to be Alexander MacDowell.
Patsy had retired back to her room; Warren was sitting in the small library, going through the checkbook and looking both bored and impatient. Tessa and George were nowhere around, which left Sally.
The room was warm and dark, utterly still except for the sound of the various medical monitors. Carolyn stood in the door, watching her, trying desperately to distance herself from the old lady who had been her only mother, who was still the only family who cared about her.
And she was dying. In the last few days she’d seemed to shrink, draw in on herself. The first two days when she thought she had her son back, Sally had had more life and energy than Carolyn had seen in months. But she was paying for that burst of false health, moving further down that road toward death.
She was asleep, as she usually was, her pale, waxy face still in the shadows. The chair that usually resided by her bed had been pushed out of the way, as if someone had left in a rage and hadn’t cared what he trashed as he went. A wastebasket lay spilled on the floor, a glass lay broken and crushed on the carpet.
Sally opened her eyes. It took her a moment to focus on Carolyn, and the disappointment was clear.
“I’ll get someone to clean up this mess,” Carolyn said softly, turning to go.
“No!” Sally’s voice was nothing more than a raw hush. “Sit by me, Carolyn. I need to talk to you.”
The pale white tracks of dried tears were almost indistinguishable on Sally’s papery skin. But they were there, and Carolyn had never seen Sally MacDowell cry.
“Of course,” she said, pulling the chair back beside the bed. She put her hand on Sally’s trembling one. “Are you in a lot of pain? Should I try to find Mrs. Hathaway?”
Sally shook her head. “I don’t think morphine will help this time. I’m paying for my sins, Carolyn. It’s not that I don’t deserve to. But let me tell you—I’m not enjoying myself.”
“I can’t imagine your sins have been that great that you have to suffer for them,” Carolyn murmured.
“And I always thought your imagination was one of your strong points.” Sally managed a faint smile. “I’ve done more wicked, selfish things than you can even begin to guess. Don’t worry, I’m not about to make a deathbed confession. You don’t need to hear about it, and there are some things I’d rather take with me to the grave.”
“Maybe you’d feel better if you talked about it.”
“Maybe. And maybe I don’t deserve to feel better.” She sighed, seeming to shrink back into the pillows.
“Alex is upset with you.” It was a reasonable conclusion.
“As he should be.” Sally glanced over at Carolyn. “I’ve done only one thing in this life that I can be proud of, Carolyn, and I’m afraid I’ve come very close to destroying that as well.”
“You haven’t destroyed Alex.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I can’t take credit for the good things that Alex is, only the bad things. I’m more than responsible for that. No, the best thi
ng I’ve done in my life is be your mother. Even if I was never able to adopt you, at least I brought you up with love and security. The sort of things you wouldn’t have had . . .” Her voice trailed off, either from weariness, or the sudden knowledge that she’d said too much.
“You’ve been the best mother in the world to me,” Carolyn said softly.
“Hardly that. But I tried.” Sally sighed. “Stay with me, Carolyn. I’m afraid to be alone.”
Sally MacDowell had never been afraid of anything or anybody in her entire life. “Of course I’ll stay,” she promised. “I’ll be here as long as you want me.”
I KILLED YOUR mother, she’d said. The woman who’d raised him, spoiled him, loved him, betrayed him.
Alex slammed his foot down on the accelerator, oblivious to the tall pines that flew by. He hadn’t believed her. He’d even laughed at Sally’s flat confession, certain it was some kind of sick joke.
“Sure you did,” he’d said. “What did you do, hire a hit man just to cover up your tracks?”
And Sally had stared at him from bleak, sorrowful eyes. “My baby was premature, Alex. He died inside me, three weeks before he was due, and the doctors had to deliver him or I’d die. And I had to have a baby.
“It was easy enough if you had enough money. Easy enough to find the doctors to agree, easy enough to make that poor girl agree. They induced her, at my instructions. And when you still wouldn’t come, they did a cesarean on her to get you out, and she bled to death. There were complications, and they couldn’t stop the bleeding, and if she’d just been left to deliver on her own, when her body was ready, she would have been fine.”
“You can’t know that.” He couldn’t recognize his own voice.
“That’s what the doctor told me. Of course, he was wanting a larger payoff, so maybe he was exaggerating. It didn’t matter. In the end I was responsible. Playing God, trying to make everything go my way. They were buried together, you know. My baby and the woman who died giving birth to you. I used to wonder if she took care of my baby in heaven.” She sighed. “These damned drugs. I can’t keep my mouth shut once they start working. But I can’t bear the pain. Maybe I should, as payment for my sins.”