by Nora Roberts
called everybody I could think of. Nobody knew where you’d gone.”
Despite the heavy fumes of whiskey that hung around him, she knew his concern was sincere. Though she hugged him back, wanting that connection, her intention of telling him everything wavered. How much could a drunk be trusted?
“I’m on leave,” she reminded him. “I left you a note.”
“Yeah, and it didn’t tell me dick.” He drew back, studied her face, then patted her head with one of his big hands. “When the old man came to the Institute, I knew we were hip-deep. I got back here as soon as I could, but you were already gone.”
“They didn’t leave me any choice. Did he come down hard on you?”
“No more than expected.” He shrugged that off. Even with the whiskey hampering his instincts he could see something was different. “What’s going on, Miranda? What’d you do?”
“I went away for a few days.” She made the decision to keep what she knew to herself, with regret. “I ran into Ryan Boldari in New York.”
She turned away because she was a poor liar under the best of circumstances. And had never lied to Andrew. “He’s back in Maine now. He’s going to stay here for a few days.”
“Here?”
“Yes, I . . . We’re involved.”
“You’re— Oh.” He ran his tongue around his teeth and tried to think. “Okay. That was . . . quick.”
“Not really. We have a lot in common.” She didn’t want to dwell on that. “Has there been any progress in the investigation?”
“We hit a snag. We can’t find the documentation on the David.”
Though she’d been expecting this, her stomach jumped. She ran a nervous hand over her hair and prepared to continue the deception. “Can’t find it? It should be in the files.”
“I know where it should be, Miranda.” Irritated, he picked up the bottle and poured another drink. “It’s not there. It’s not anywhere in the Institute. I’ve looked everywhere.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Insurance company’s balking. If we don’t come up with it, we’re going to take the loss. You did the testing.”
“Yes,” she said carefully. “I did the testing. I authenticated the piece, and the documentation was properly filed. You know that, Andrew. You worked on it too.”
“Yeah, well, it’s gone now. The insurance company’s rejecting the claim until they have documents, our mother is threatening to come in and see why we’re so inept that we lose not only a fine piece of art but its paperwork, and Cook’s giving me the fucking fish eye.”
“I’m sorry I left you alone with this.” Sorrier now that she could see how he was handling it. “Andrew, please.” She walked over and took the glass out of his hand. “I can’t talk to you when you’re drunk.”
He only smiled, dimples popping into his cheeks. “I’m not drunk yet.”
“Yes, you are.” She’d been there herself recently enough to know the signs. “You need to get into a program.”
The dimples faded. Jesus Christ, was all he could think. Just what he needed. “What I need is a little cooperation and support.” Irked, he snatched the glass back and took a long gulp. “Maybe you’re sorry you left me alone with this, but that’s just what you did. And if I want a few drinks after a miserable day of dealing with the police, running the Institute, and tap dancing for our parents, it’s nobody’s fucking business.”
As she stared at him her chest tightened, squeezing her heart with the pressure. “I love you.” The words hurt, just a little, because she knew neither of them said them often enough. “I love you, Andrew, and you’re killing yourself in front of my eyes. That makes it my business.”
There were tears in her eyes and in her voice that played on his guilt and infuriated. “Fine, I’ll kill myself in private. Then it won’t be any of your goddamn business.” He grabbed the bottle and strode out.
He hated himself for it, for putting that disappointment and hurt in the eyes of the only person he’d ever been able to fully depend on. But goddamn it to hell and back, it was his life.
He slammed the door of his bedroom, didn’t notice the stench of stale whiskey from his binge the night before. He sat in a chair and drank straight from the bottle.
He was entitled to relax, wasn’t he? He got his work done, he did his job—for all the good it did him—so why did he have to get grief for having a couple of drinks?
Or a couple dozen, he thought with a snicker. Who was counting?
Maybe the blackouts worried him a little, those weird and empty pockets of time he couldn’t seem to account for. That was probably stress, and a good stiff drink was the best solution to stress.
You bet it was.
He told himself he missed his wife, though it was becoming more and more difficult to bring up a clear picture of her face, or to remember the exact pitch of her voice. Occasionally, when he was sober, he had a flash of truth. He didn’t love Elise any longer—and maybe had never loved her as much as he liked to think. So he drank to blot out that truth, and allowed himself to enjoy the sense of betrayal and misery.
He was beginning to see the value of drinking alone now that Annie had barred him from her place. Alone, you could drink until you couldn’t stand, and when you couldn’t stand you lay down and passed out. It got a man through the night.
A man had to get through the night, he thought, brooding at the bottle before tipping it back again.
It wasn’t that he had to drink. He was in control of it and could quit whenever he wanted. He didn’t want, that was all. Still, he’d stop, cold turkey, just to prove to Miranda, to Annie, to every damn body they were wrong about him.
People had always been wrong about him, he decided, stewing in resentment. Beginning with his parents. They’d never known who the hell he was, what he wanted, much less what the hell he needed.
So fuck them. Fuck all of them.
He’d quit drinking, all right. Tomorrow, he thought with another chuckle as he lifted the bottle.
He saw the lights cut across the room. Headlights, he decided after a long, wavering study where his mind blinked out and his mouth hung open. Company’s coming. Probably Boldari.
He took another long gulp and grinned to himself. Miranda had a boyfriend. He’d get some mileage out of that. It had been a long time since he’d been able to tease his sister over something as interesting as a man.
Might as well get started on it now, he decided. He got to his feet, snorting with laughter as the room revolved. Join the circus, see the world, he thought, and stumbled toward the door.
He’d just find out what old Ryan Boldari’s intentions were. Yes indeed. He had to show that slick New Yorker that little Miranda had herself a big brother looking out for her. He took another long chug from the bottle as he lurched down the hall, and grabbing the banister at the top of the steps, looked down.
There was his baby sister, right at the foot of the steps, in a hot liplock with New York. “Hey!” He called out, gesturing wildly with the bottle, then laughing when Miranda whirled around. “Whatcha doing with my sister, Mr. New York?”
“Hello, Andrew.”
“Hello, Andrew my ass. You sleeping with my sister, you bastard?”
“Not at the moment.” He kept his arm around Miranda’s rigid shoulders.
“Well, I wanna talk to you, buddy.” Andrew started down, made it halfway on his feet, and tumbled the rest. It was like watching a boulder fall down a cliff.
Miranda leaped forward, kneeling beside his sprawled body. There was blood on his face, which terrified her. “Oh God. Andrew.”
“I’m all right. I’m all right,” he muttered, shoving at her hands as they poked and probed for broken bones. “Just took a little spill’s all.”
“You could have broken your neck.”
“Steps are a tricky thing,” Ryan said mildly. He crouched beside Miranda, noting that the cut on Andrew’s forehead was shallow, and Miranda’s hands were shaking. “Why don’t we get you back up the
m, clean you up?”
“Shit.” Andrew brushed his fingers over his forehead, studied the smear of blood. “Look at that.”
“I’ll get the first-aid kit.”
Ryan glanced over at Miranda. She’d gone pale again, but her eyes were shuttered. “We’ll take care of it. Come on, Andrew. My brother tripped over a curb the night of his bachelor party and did more damage than this.” He was hauling Andrew to his feet as Miranda got to hers. But when she started to go up with them, Ryan shook his head at her.
“No women. This is a guy thing. Right, Andrew?”
“Damn right.” Boozily he made Ryan his best friend. “Women are the root of all evil.”
“God love them.”
“I had one for a while. She dumped me.”
“Who needs her?” Ryan steered Andrew to the left.
“That’s the spirit! I can’t see a fucking thing.”
“There’s blood dripping into your eye.”
“Thank Christ, thought I’d been struck blind. Know what, Ryan Boldari, pal?”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to be really sick now.”
“Oh yeah.” Ryan dragged him into the bathroom. “You are.”
What a family, Ryan thought as he held Andrew’s head and wondered vaguely if it was possible to throw up internal organs. If not, Andrew was giving it the old college try.
By the time it was over, Andrew was wrecked, white as death and trembling. It took three tries for Ryan to prop him on the toilet seat so he could deal with the cut on his face.
“Must’ve been the fall,” Andrew said weakly.
“You threw up the best part of a fifth,” Ryan said as he wiped blood and sweat away. “You embarrassed yourself and your sister, took a header that would have snapped several bones if they hadn’t been permeated with whiskey, you smell like a four o’clock bar and look worse. Sure, it was the fall.”
Andrew closed his eyes. He wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep until he died. “Maybe I had a couple too many. Wouldn’t have if Miranda hadn’t started on me.”
“Save the lame excuses. You’re a drunk.” Ruthlessly, Ryan swabbed antiseptic over the wound and felt no sympathy when Andrew sucked in his breath. “At least be man enough to take the responsibility for it.”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s a clever and original comeback. You shouldn’t need stitches, but you’re going to have a hell of a black eye to go with the war wound.” Satisfied, he pulled Andrew’s ruined shirt over his head.
“Hey.”
“You need a shower, pal. Trust me.”
“I just want to go to bed. For God’s sake, I just want to lie down. I think I’m dying.”
“Not yet, but you’re on your way.” Grimly, Ryan pulled him to his feet, bracing himself to hold the weight while he reached out and turned on the shower. He decided it was more trouble than it was worth to remove Andrew’s pants, so dragged him half dressed into the tub.
“Jesus. I’m going to be sick again.”
“Then aim for the drain,” Ryan suggested, and held him in place even when Andrew began to sob like a baby.
It took the best part of an hour to pour Andrew into bed. When he came downstairs Ryan noted that the shattered glass from the bottle had been swept up, and the splash of whiskey that had hit walls and floors on the fall had been scrubbed.
When he couldn’t find Miranda in the house, he grabbed a jacket and headed outside.
She was on the cliffs. He studied the silhouette she made there, alone, tall, slender, against the night sky, with her hair blowing free and her face turned to the sea.
Not just alone, he thought. Lonely. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone lonelier.
He climbed up to her, draped the jacket over her shoulders.
She’d managed to steady herself. Somehow the restless tossing of the sea could always calm her. “I’m terribly sorry you were dragged into that.”
Her voice was cool, he noted. Automatic defense. Her body was stiff, and still turned away from him. “I wasn’t dragged in. I was here.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, but she stepped away.
“That’s the second time you’ve had to deal with an embarrassingly drunk Jones.”
“One night’s foolishness is a long distance from what your brother’s doing to himself, Miranda.”
“However true that is, it doesn’t change the facts. We behaved badly, and you cleaned up the mess. I don’t know if I could have handled Andrew tonight by myself. But I would have preferred it.”
“That’s too bad.” Annoyed, he spun her around to face him. “Because I was here, and I’m going to be here for a while.”
“Until we find the bronzes.”
“That’s right. And if I’m not done with you by then . . .” He cupped her face, lowered his head and took her mouth in an angry and possessive kiss. “You’ll have to deal with it.”
“I don’t know how to deal with it.” Her voice rose over the crash of waves. “I’m not equipped for this, for you. Every relationship I’ve ever had has ended badly. I don’t know how to handle that kind of emotional tangle, no one in my family does, so they just untangle at the first possible opportunity.”
“You’ve never tangled with me before.” It was said with such blatant arrogance she might have laughed. Instead she turned away, stared at the steady circling beam from the lighthouse.
He would be the one to run when it was done, she thought. And this time, with him, she was desperately afraid she would suffer. It didn’t matter that she understood why he was there, what his primary purpose was. She would suffer when he left her.
“Everything that’s happened since I met you is foreign to me. I don’t function well without guidelines.”
“You’ve been winging it pretty well so far.”
“Two men are dead, Ryan. My reputation’s in ruins, my family is more divided than ever. I’ve broken the law, I’ve ignored ethics, and I’m having an affair with a criminal.”
“But you haven’t been bored, have you?”
She let out a weak laugh. “No. I don’t know what to do next.”
“I can help you with that.” He took her hand and began to walk. “Tomorrow’s soon enough to take the next steps. Soon enough to talk about what they should be.”
“I need to put everything in order.” She glanced back toward the house. “I should check on Andrew first, then organize.”
“Andrew’s asleep, and he’s not going to surface until tomorrow. Organizing takes a clear, focused mind. You’ve got too much on yours to be clear or focused.”
“Excuse me, but organization is my life. I can organize three different projects, outline a lecture, and teach a class at the same time.”
“You’re a frightening woman, Dr. Jones. Then let’s say I’m not clear or focused. And I’ve never been inside a lighthouse.” He studied it as they approached, enjoying the way its beam cut through the dark and lay shimmering on the surface of the sea. “How old is it?”
She let out a breath. If it was avoidance, so be it. “It was built in 1853. The structure is original, though my grandfather had the interior revamped in the forties with the idea of using it as his art studio. The fact is, according to my grandmother, he used it for illicit sexual affairs because it amused him to have them within sight of the house and in such an obviously phallic symbol.”
“Good old Grandpa.”
“He was only one of the insufferable emotionally stunted Joneses. His father—again according to my grandmother, who was the only one who would discuss such matters—flaunted his mistresses in public and conceived several illegitimate children he refused to acknowledge. My grandfather carried on that lofty tradition.”
“The Joneses of Jones Point are many.”
She waited for the insult to sink in, then shook her head. It was amusement she felt instead. “Yes, I suppose so. In any case, my great-grandmother chose to ignore his habits and spent most of the year in Europe, avengin
g herself by squandering as much of his money as was possible. Unfortunately, she chose to travel back to the States on a luxurious new ship. They called it the Titanic.”
“Really?” Ryan was close enough to see the rusted lock on the thick wooden door. “Cool.”
“Well, she and her children boarded a lifeboat and were rescued. But she caught pneumonia from the exposure in the North Atlantic, and died of it a few weeks later. Her husband mourned by taking up with an opera singer shortly thereafter. He was killed when the opera singer’s husband, being somewhat displeased with the arrangement, set the house where they were living in sin on fire.”
“I imagine he died happy.” Ryan took a Leatherman knife kit out of his pocket, chose his tool, and went to work on the lock.
“Don’t. I have a key in the house if you want to see the inside.”