by Anne Stuart
“What was her name?” Alex didn’t bother to soften the cold anger in his voice. “Where was she buried?”
Sally had turned to look at him, her eyes glazed and drugged. “Dear boy, I had her buried in a pauper’s grave under a phony name. I don’t even remember which one.”
And he’d gotten up and left her, knocking things over as he went.
Funny, he thought bitterly, he hadn’t realized what a sentimental streak he still possessed. He’d always had the notion, in the back of his mind, that he’d find the woman who’d given birth to him. She had to be younger than Sally—chances are she was in her mid-fifties at the most. Sally was dying, and he hadn’t wanted to cause her pain. He figured he could trace the woman who’d borne him after she died.
But there was no middle-aged woman waiting to welcome him. She’d died, died at the hands of a ruthless woman and incompetent doctors. Died giving birth to him, whether it was his fault or not.
He was twenty miles away from the MacDowell house before he pulled off the side of the road and turned off the motor. His hands were shaking, he noticed absently. He didn’t ever remember his hands shaking before.
He should have stayed in Tuscany instead of returning to dig up a past better left buried. Sally would have given up on him long ago; his murderer had probably never given him a second thought.
There were some questions better left unanswered. But he’d come after those answers anyway, and now he was paying the price.
The best thing he could do was to keep driving. He didn’t want their damned money, and had no intention of claiming it. He wanted to see the expression on Warren’s face when he found out that he’d been duped by the real Alex the whole time, but apart from that, he had nothing left to accomplish. Whoever had tried to kill him had probably had very good reasons. Maybe it was the retired sportscaster whose car he had stolen that summer night eighteen years ago. Maybe it was a serial killer.
He didn’t think so. Some member of his loving family had shot him in the back and dragged or thrown him into the ocean to drown. And for some reason, he no longer gave a damn. Some mysteries were better left unsolved.
If he went back he’d have to make his peace with Sally, and he wasn’t ready to even look at her. If he went back he’d have to come to terms with Carolyn Smith, another mystery. If he went back . . .
He’d spent most of his life running. Running away from home, from responsibility, from family, from commitment. He was a loner, happier that way. He had acquaintances, he had a few close friends, but he always prided himself on needing no one.
But he was afraid he was going to start needing someone. Not just anyone. Carolyn.
He was too young to be going through a midlife crisis. Maybe it was simply a reaction to the idea of losing his mother. Losing two mothers in short order, he thought grimly. It was no wonder he was screwed up.
He couldn’t stay a spoiled kid forever. Maybe it wasn’t midlife, maybe it was simply the long-delayed inevitability of growing up. He couldn’t run away. He could leave, but he had to make his peace with them before he left.
He had to face Sally and forgive her. No matter what she’d done, she was his mother, despite legalities or honor or blood ties.
And he had to face Carolyn Smith, or she’d haunt him the way she had for the last eighteen years. She was a woman, a quiet, bewitching, complicated woman, but only human. He’d never needed or wanted anyone in his life before. He wasn’t going to start with a piece of his past.
He’d leave them both, but he’d say good-bye first.
And then he’d be free.
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON when he drove back up the deceptively narrow drive to the MacDowell house. A light rain had begun to fall; the silver-gray bark on the maples had a faint blush to them. Spring was finally coming to the frozen reaches of Vermont. But Alexander MacDowell was tired of waiting.
He could hear voices in the living room, and the clink of glasses. It was early for cocktail hour, but Patsy was always one to start drinking as soon as she had the chance. He should go in, pour himself a stiff single-malt scotch and be pleasant. There were things that couldn’t be changed.
Instead, he took a sharp right to Sally’s suite of rooms. She was sleeping, her color even worse in the filtered afternoon light, and he stood at the end of her hospital bed, watching her, searching for anger, searching for forgiveness.
She was his mother. It was that simple, that basic. No matter what she had done, no matter who she was. Whether she regretted her selfish sins or not, she had always loved him to the best of her ability. And he loved her—he could accept that now. Just as he could accept it was time to let her go.
She wasn’t alone in the room. He hadn’t even noticed Carolyn in the shadows, curled up in the overstuffed chair, sound asleep. In the shifting shadows she looked ethereal and delicately beautiful. Odd that she had no idea how lovely she was. It seemed as if she’d done her best to negate any effect her beauty might have on people. It was simply a fact about her, like her blonde hair or the smattering of freckles across her elegant nose.
The room was still and silent, only the quiet whirr of the machines filling the air, a soothing white noise that blotted out the world. He took the chair at the end of the bed, folding his long limbs into it, and watched the two women who were so powerful in his life.
It was strange, almost dreamlike, as he let his gaze travel back and forth between the two of them, their faces blending, one old, one young, one aged and dying, one practically flawless. The elegant nose, the wide-set eyes, the same generous mouth. One old, one young. The same face. The same patrician, MacDowell face on both women.
He was too stunned to move, to react. How could he have missed it before? How could anyone have failed to see the powerful family resemblance? Once noticed, there was no way it could be ignored, and yet Carolyn had no idea, of that he was absolutely certain. She went through life as an outsider, one who was with the MacDowells on sufferance. She had no notion that she had more right to be here than he did.
But where did she come from? Sally would have been in her late forties when Carolyn was born—there was no way she could have been her mother. Tessa was only a few months older than Carolyn, which left Patsy out.
There were a few distant relatives, of course, but in truth the MacDowell lineage had proven surprisingly weak in the last few generations, and except for Patsy’s brood, seemed likely to die out.
Which brought him to Warren. When he was a snotty teenager he used to wonder whether Warren was gay, and whether the elegant, well-bred women he occasionally dated were simply a smokescreen. It had seemed incomprehensible that a man could find other things more interesting than sex and passion.
But quite obviously sex and passion had ruled his life for at least a short time thirty years ago, or Carolyn Smith wouldn’t exist.
He could be wrong. Warren had never evinced the slightest bit of paternal interest in Carolyn—he seemed to view her as a cross between an intrusion and a convenience, nothing more. When he’d briefed him on how to impersonate Alexander MacDowell, he’d dismissed Carolyn as a minor family retainer, of no possible interest or importance. As a matter of fact, if his memory served him properly, Warren even complained about the small trust fund Sally had set aside for her, saying it was totally unnecessary.
Maybe Warren wasn’t Carolyn’s father at all. But Alex wasn’t putting any money on that possibility. Warren was the least paternal, least sentimental creature he’d ever met. He was willing to dupe his older sister on her deathbed in order to get his hands on more of her money. He probably wouldn’t think twice about abandoning a daughter.
It was one too many shocks reeling through his mind, and Alex rose abruptly, silently, unwilling to face either woman with their secrets in his soul. He needed that drink after all, even if he had to
face Aunt Patsy and Uncle Warren to get it. He needed to get royally loaded, as drunk as he hadn’t been in more years than he could remember.
“HOW’S YOUR MOTHER, dear boy?” Warren greeted him affably, the picture of expansive bonhomie.
“Dying,” Alex said shortly, pouring himself a tall glass of straight scotch.
Warren winced. “We know that, Alex.”
“Then why ask?” Alex took his drink and moved over to the French doors, turning his back on his loving family.
“In this family we believe in polite conversation, darling,” Tessa purred, coming up behind him. She smelled of Poison, a remarkably apt perfume that had always turned his stomach, and she slid her hand up his arm.
“I’ve been on my own for too long,” he said, taking a stiff drink of the whiskey. “My values have shifted.”
“Values?” Patsy echoed with a slightly high-pitched laugh. “What are those?” She turned her overbright eyes toward her son. “Fix me another drink, would you, Georgie?”
“Don’t call me Georgie,” George snapped, his eyes pale and watchful.
“We’re all getting a bit testy,” Tessa murmured in Alex’s ear. “Why don’t you and I go someplace where we can be alone?”
He turned to look at her with an assessing gaze. “Is that a come-on, Tessa?”
She smiled a catlike smile. “Are you feeling queasy because we’re cousins? Part of your ‘values’? Don’t worry about it, darling. Marriage between first cousins is perfectly legal in this state.”
“I’m not planning to marry you, Tessa,” he drawled.
“Actually I had other things in mind as well,” she purred.
He considered it. For a long, lazy moment he looked down into her pampered, perfect face, down her elegant model’s body, and wondered whether he could fuck Carolyn out of his system by screwing her first cousin.
He didn’t think so.
He could see the resemblance between the two of them, of course, when he’d never noticed it before. They had the same long, elegant body, though Tessa was sporting a heroin-chic skinniness that was hardly conducive to lust. The same bone structure, though Tessa’s mouth was thinner despite her collagen-puffed lips, less generous; and her eyes held an opaque glitter unlike Carolyn’s eyes, which reflected her healthy, clear emotions.
No, he didn’t want her. He didn’t want any of them, or their money, or their lies. He wanted the truth, and then he wanted to get the hell out of there and never look back.
And he could only hope Carolyn would manage to escape as well.
He put his hand over Tessa’s thin one and carefully removed it from his arm. “Thanks, but no thanks, Tessa,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for recreational sex.”
“Then what are you in the mood for?”
“Getting drunk.”
“That never solved anything, Alex,” Warren intoned. “I know you’re grieving the imminent loss of your mother, and feeling tremendous guilt over the long separation between the two of you, but I assure you—”
“Go to hell, Uncle Waldo.”
Warren’s carefully groomed, artificially tanned face paled in sudden shock. “I’d forgotten you used to call me that,” he said in a strangled voice. “I hadn’t thought of that in over twenty years.”
It had been a stupid, rebellious move on Alex’s part, and he should have known better. “It suits you,” he said. He grabbed the bottle of Glenlivet and another glass from the tray and headed for the door. “If you’ll all excuse me, I think I’ll join my cousin in a deathwatch.”
“Your cousin? Which one do you mean?” George demanded. Patsy was sitting in the corner, humming to herself, glassy-eyed and vague, and Warren was still staring at him in horrified shock.
“Carolyn,” Alex answered. “Dear, sweet, loyal Cousin Carolyn.”
“She’s not our cousin, Alex,” Tessa said sharply.
“Isn’t she?” He glanced at Warren, who looked as if he was ready to vomit. “Maybe you’re in for a few surprises.”
Carolyn stirred sleepily when he walked in, opening her eyes to watch him in surprise as he poured her a drink and set it down on the medicine-littered table beside her.
“I figured you’d need this,” he said, retaking his seat at the foot of the bed.
She made no move to touch the glass. “I don’t think Aunt Sally needs you in here drinking yourself into a stupor,” she whispered.
“Aunt Sally wants him here, drunk or sober,” came a voice from the bed.
It almost sounded like a voice beyond the grave. Sally didn’t open her eyes, didn’t move, but she reached out her hand for him.
“Then I’ll leave . . .” Carolyn started for the door, but Alex stopped her before Sally’s voice could.
“I need you both,” Sally said. She opened her eyes then, and the effort to focus on them seemed to take all her strength.
He wasn’t about to release Carolyn so that she could run away. He had no guarantee that her love for Sally would overpower her feelings about him, and he was taking no chances. He led her back to her chair and pushed her down lightly, then put the drink in her hand.
“We’re both here, Mom.” He hadn’t called her that since he’d been a little boy, eschewing it as far too sentimental. Sally’s eyes filled with sudden tears.
“Are you my best boy?” she whispered, an old litany from his earliest memory, a last attempt at asking forgiveness.
“Always,” he replied, leaning over and kissing her cool, papery cheek, granting it.
And he retook his seat at the end of the bed and poured himself another drink.
He’d learned years ago that he had a real problem in holding his liquor. The problem was, he had an almost endless capacity for it and he never passed out. At three in the morning, with Sally stabilized, he left the room and went in search of a cup of coffee and a shower. At five in the morning he went for a walk in the icy mist. At six in the morning he found Carolyn in the hallway, her narrow shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
He looked past her into the sickroom. Sally lay propped against the pillows, almost smaller than she had been before. He moved quickly to the bed, but Sally looked up at him with calm determination. “Take care of her, Alex,” she whispered.
“I don’t think she wants me to.”
“She wants you. Take her away and let me get some sleep. Please.” There was a faint, almost beguiling smile on her face, one he knew too well. He knew what she planned, he knew how she wanted it, and he wasn’t going to be the one to stop her.
He kissed her good-bye, very gently, and she smiled up at him. “You take care of her,” she said again. “Promise me.”
“I will.”
He closed the door behind him with silent deliberation. Carolyn looked up, startled, her face streaked with tears, but he didn’t waste any time. He simply pulled her into his arms, pressed her face against his shoulder, and held her.
She fought him, so he kissed her. She punched at him, and he simply scooped her up in his arms.
He didn’t know where to take her. Carrying her upstairs was too melodramatic; besides, she was likely to scream the house down. There were no beds downstairs except for Sally’s, and he doubted if anyone had made up the folding sofa in the library. It didn’t matter. He carried her in there, dumped her in an overstuffed chair and proceeded to jam chairs under the various doorways.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The words were barely audible, muffled in tears and outrage, and he ignored them as he pulled out the sofa. The bottom sheet was still on the mattress, but he had no idea where the pillows and the covers were. He didn’t need them.
He came over to her, and she’d already risen from the chair, prepared for battle. He was calm, predatory as he reached up and began to unbutton her shirt. She slapped at his h
ands in a vain attempt at stopping him, but he simply ripped the pale silk shirt open.
“I thought you weren’t going to touch me until I asked you?” she said in a furious whisper.
“Ask me.” He pushed the shirt from her shoulders, then reached for the waistband of her jeans.
“Go to hell,” she said, and kicked him in the shins.
He caught her face in his hands, holding it still, tilting her mouth up to his. “Ask me,” he said again, his mouth hovering inches from hers.
She stopped struggling. Her face was wet with tears, she looked lost and broken and so damned sweet.
“For what?” she whispered.
“For anything you want.”
“What about the truth?”
“I don’t know if you really want it,” he said.
He expected her to deny it, to explode in a rage. She surprised him, as she often did. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there are things I don’t want to know.” She closed her eyes, and her eyelashes were wet with tears. “Kiss me.”
He was too startled to move. “What?”
“You said any damned thing I want,” she said in a small, tight voice. “I want you to kiss me. I want you to lie in that bed with me and make me forget everything. Forget what a liar you really are, forget that Sally’s dying, forget that someone tried to kill me. I want to see if you’re good enough to distract me.”
He slid his hands down to the lacy white bra covering her small, perfect breasts. “I’m good enough,” he said in a low voice.
“Prove it,” she said. “Do it.”
He looked down at her, at her face full of anguish and need. If he were a good man, a decent man, he would simply lie on the bed and hold her. But he’d never been a good man, his sense of honor was nil, and he needed to lose himself in the sweetness of her body just as much as she needed it.