Haunting Rachel

by Kay Hooper

  “How?”

  “Nick can probably help us.”

  “And what do we tell him?”

  “Rachel, he knows about the explosion. He knows about yesterday. It won’t surprise him to hear we’re going through Duncan’s papers looking for an answer.” He paused. “You said you didn’t suspect Nick. If he isn’t a suspect, then maybe he can help us.”

  “All right.”

  “Why don’t I go and talk to him? After what happened yesterday, you could probably use a quiet day. Stay in, maybe work on the floor plan of your new boutique. Forget the rest of this for a while.”

  While you do what, Adam? Talk to Nick? Or something else?

  Rachel looked down at the notebook, hating her own suspicions.

  Adam got up and came around the desk. He took her uninjured hand and pulled her gently to her feet, then reached for her other hand as well. Looking at the elastic bandage wrapping her wrist and hand, he said, “Until we know absolutely that you’re safe, you shouldn’t be out alone. You’ve already been hurt enough. If something else happened to you, I don’t think I could stand it.”

  She wanted to believe that. He was looking at her, that intensity unshuttered, explicit hunger in his eyes, and Rachel found it hard to breathe suddenly. “Adam—”

  “Oh, I know. You don’t quite trust me, do you, Rachel, in spite of saying you do. So much is happening right now, and I’m still a stranger. A stranger who looks like a dead man.” There was a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “Jesus, Rachel.”

  “What do you want me to say? That it doesn’t matter? I wish I could, Adam. I really wish I could. But I can’t. Not yet. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you think that helps?”

  “I think I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Not now.”

  Adam stared down at her for a moment, then swore beneath his breath. “I’m not Thomas Sheridan, Rachel.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you? Maybe what you need is proof.”

  Rachel opened her mouth to ask him what he was talking about, but before she could make a sound, she had her answer.

  His head bent, and his mouth touched hers. Softly, gently, as if he feared to damage something unspeakably fragile. His mouth was warm and hard, and disturbingly unfamiliar.

  She let her eyes drift closed, mesmerized by the butterfly sensations of his lips caressing hers. The heat came slowly, welling up from some core she hardly recognized, rising inside her, swelling until it filled all the places in her that had been cold and dark and empty. She felt a tremor ripple through her body.

  He felt it too.

  In a moment, she was gathered against him, surrounded by powerful arms, held in an inescapable embrace. Yet still his kiss remained feather light and tentative, his mouth toying gently with hers. Until finally Rachel heard a wordless plea escape her, and her arms slid up around his neck.

  His arms tightened around her, and his mouth slanted across hers, finally taking what she offered him.

  It shook Rachel as she’d never been shaken before. When she had last felt real desire, it had been the tremulous, yearning passion of a girl for the man she trusted implicitly, the man she had known virtually all her life. Safe in Tom’s arms, she had felt no uncertainty, no fear, no anticipation of pain or loss.

  In Tom’s arms, she had been totally, completely innocent.

  Ten years later, grief and loss and pain had taught Rachel there was no safety in loving or being loved. And maybe that sharper awareness of how fleeting and uncertain life could be opened the floodgates containing a passion she had not known herself capable of feeling.

  Maybe it was that.

  Or maybe it was Adam.

  The only thing she knew for certain was that it had nothing to do with Thomas Sheridan.

  Adam kissed her in a way she understood not from experience but only because comprehension sprang from primitive instinct. And she responded with the same all-consuming hunger, the same need to possess, to mark as her own the man who belonged to her.

  And it was she who cried out in disappointment when he wrenched his mouth from hers.

  “Rachel …” His forehead pressed against hers, and his ragged breathing was warm on her face. “Christ, Rachel—”

  “Don’t stop,” she murmured, touching his face with shaking fingers when he drew back just a little and stared down at her.

  “I have to.” His voice harshened. “I won’t win like this, Rachel. I won’t take you away from Thomas simply because I can carry you off to my bed—and he can’t.”

  Her hands fell away from him. “You think—”

  “I think this is a decision you have to make, and not in the heat of desire. I want you. But I have to be sure it’s me you want. You have to be sure. Or it’ll destroy both of us.”

  Adam released her and stepped back. His face was still, his eyes once more shuttered. “I’ll go and talk to Nick.”

  He left her there, staring after him.

  THIRTEEN

  fter Adam left, it was a long time before Rachel could get her thoughts organized. And, even then, they didn’t make much sense. She felt shaky, and wasn’t sure if it was aftereffects of yesterday’s brush with death or what had just happened.

  A brush with … something else.

  Too restless to just sit, needing desperately to be busy, Rachel locked up her father’s desk and left the study. Lunchtime was still more than an hour away, and she wasn’t sure what she intended to do, but when she reached the foyer, she encountered Darby.

  “Hi. I was just looking for you.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Well, I was going through that lovely little mahogany secretary—the one that you said used to be in one of the upstairs bedrooms? And I found something I thought you should see.”

  “I thought you were going to just box up whatever you found when you cleaned out drawers.”

  “Oh, I am. That’s what I’ve been doing, in fact. But since this has your name on it—literally—I thought I’d better give it to you.”

  “What?”

  Darby pulled a small blue envelope from her clipboard and handed it to Rachel. “I suppose there’s no telling how long it was in that drawer—”

  “At least … ten years.”

  “Ten years? How do you know that?”

  “Because this is Tom’s handwriting.” She stared at the envelope, at her name scrawled in Tom’s sprawling hand, hardly surprised that she remembered his writing so vividly.

  “Tom? Tom Sheridan?” Darby looked concerned. “Jeez, maybe I should have just dropped it in the box with the rest of the stuff. I had no idea it’d bring back bad memories, Rachel, I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s all right.” Rachel smiled at her friend. “Good memories, not bad ones. Tom used to leave me little notes and presents hidden in the house. I always suspected I’d never found them all, but he’d never confirm that when I teased him to tell me.”

  Darby hesitated, then asked, “Are you going to read it? Should I go away and leave you alone?”

  Alone with my dead lover. Rachel wasn’t surprised that Darby would expect her to be upset; what surprised her was that all she felt was a slightly wistful sadness that hardly hurt at all.

  “Of course I’m going to read it. And, no, there’s no reason why you should go away and leave me alone.” Rachel opened the envelope and withdrew a folded sheet of blue notepaper, which contained only a few words sprawling over the page.

  Look in your jewelry box, Rachel.

  She showed it to Darby, smiling. “He must have left me a present there. I seem to remember finding one or two over the years.”

  “Romantic.” Darby was smiling as well.

  “Yes, he was. Or maybe just playful. I never was quite sure.”

  Darby chuckled. “Well, I’ll keep an eye out for more of his notes to you. And whatever else he may have left for you.”

  Rachel put the note back into the envelope and slid both into her pocket. “That wou
ld be a good idea. In the meantime—could you use some help? I’m not in the mood to do nothing today.”

  “Sure, if you feel up to it. Do you? With all the bruises you collected yesterday—”

  “Moving around a little will do me good. Besides, if I go ahead and start cleaning out drawers, you can get finished faster.”

  “In that case, you’re on. We have more stuff from the basement parked out in the hallway near the kitchen, if you’re interested. I had just started to go through the drawers, when I found the note.”

  Rachel was interested, and a few minutes later was sitting on a borrowed dining room chair while she emptied the drawers of a tallboy. Darby left her to it, retreating once more to the basement to continue her tagging.

  Rachel didn’t really know what had prompted her to help Darby, when she had resisted doing so before. Maybe it had been Tom’s letter, with the implicit promise of more hidden in the house. More from him—and perhaps from others. Not that Rachel believed the answer to why someone apparently wanted her dead was hidden in some drawer last closed years ago. But given her father’s secrecy about the private loans, it was possible that useful information could be found.

  Then again, maybe she just wanted her hands and thoughts occupied.

  By the time Fiona announced lunch, Rachel had filled one cardboard box with a variety of trash from drawer liners to old church bulletins, used greeting cards and crumpled stationery, and had another half-filled with yellowed linens and yards of unused material. And that was only from the tallboy.

  She went upstairs to wash her dusty hands before the meal, pausing to run a brush through her hair and then pausing again as she came back through her bedroom. The rose on her nightstand looked as fresh as it had that morning. As it did every morning.

  She wondered what Adam would make of that. She didn’t know what to make of it, and every time she considered it, her mind shied away. It’s as if someone places a fresh rose in the vase while I sleep, so fresh there’s still dew on the petals….

  “I’m losing my mind,” Rachel murmured, and it seemed as good an explanation as any.

  She sighed and pulled Tom’s note from her pocket. A note from a long-dead lover. A rose that wouldn’t wilt. Definitely the stuff of madness.

  She carried the note to the little desk near the window and opened the top drawer to place it inside. Then she stopped, aware of a niggling unease. There was something not quite right here, she thought. Something that was … something that shouldn’t be …

  She opened the drawer farther and looked at the neat stack of stationery and envelopes, the small notecards. Small blue notecards. Slowly, she compared Tom’s note to what lay in the drawer. The stationery was the same. There was nothing wrong with that. Except for one thing. This was stationery she had brought with her from New York.

  Ten years ago, there had been none like it in the house.

  Look in your jewelry box, Rachel.

  Rachel found herself crossing the room to her dresser without thought, but when she stood before the closed leather jewelry box, she went still. Absurd. It was, of course, absurd to think she’d find anything inside. She’d had the box open only yesterday, after all. There was nothing unexpected in there, certainly nothing Tom could have left for her. Not ten years ago.

  Not even yesterday.

  Drawing a breath, she reached out and opened the box. There was nothing new in the top tray. Her familiar jewelry, nothing more, the everyday things she often wore. She lifted that tray out and set it aside. In the second compartment was also her jewelry, pieces less often worn. A few gold chains, some simple earrings, and—

  A delicate gold identification bracelet that had not— surely had not—been there the day before.

  Rachel lifted it out slowly. Her name was etched in script on the front. On the back, also in flowing letters, was another inscription.

  To my beautiful Rachel

  Happy, Happy Birthday

  All my love, Tom

  August 16, 1988

  A birthday present. Except that her birthday had fallen three months after Tom’s plane had disappeared. And this was a gift she had never received.

  Until now.

  Ghosts.

  She turned quickly, the bracelet clutched in her hand, and stared around the room. It looked just the same as always. Pretty and neat—and empty of anyone except her.

  “Tom?” she whispered.

  She listened, her senses straining, but there was nothing to hear.

  Of course there was nothing to hear.

  Rachel returned the bracelet to the jewelry box and replaced the top tray, telling herself that this, too, could be explained. Tom could have brought stationery from outside the house, the similarity to what she owned now mere coincidence. She had been so in shock and numbed by grief after Tom’s death that she could have missed a gift already left for her to find. Could have overlooked it in the bottom tray. Of course she could have.

  But for ten years?

  Maybe she really was losing her mind.

  For the rest of the day, Rachel pretended that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. She went back to going through the furniture that Darby and her men had brought up from the basement, and it was nearly four that afternoon when Fiona summoned her to the study, where Graham waited for her.

  “Rachel, are you all right? Why the hell didn’t you call me?”

  For just a moment, she wondered how on earth he had found out, but then she realized what he must be referring to. Leaving the study door open behind her, she came into the room and perched on the arm of a chair near her father’s desk. “I’m sorry, Graham. I was so shaken up, I just didn’t think about it. How did you hear?”

  He thrust a folded newspaper toward her. “This.”

  It was a brief article on an inside page and below the fold. A couple was injured slightly when a car came up onto the sidewalk and nearly struck them. The driver fled the scene of the crime. Her name and Adam’s, but virtually nothing else.

  Rachel shook her head and handed the paper back to him. “Well, at least they didn’t make a big deal about it.”

  “Is that a bandage on your hand?”

  “It’s just a sprained wrist, Graham. I’m fine. A bit sore today, but I’ll recover. Thanks to Adam.”

  Graham took a couple of steps away and turned to face her, leaning back against her father’s desk. “It’s always thanks to him, isn’t it, Rachel?”

  “I would have been killed if he hadn’t been there.”

  “Yeah? Maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all if he hadn’t been there.”

  “You’re still convinced he’s the one who’s trying to hurt me? Just your suspicions, Graham? Or something more?”

  He drew a breath. “Rachel, there’s something fishy about this.”

  “I know you think so.”

  “All this started when he came to Richmond. And he’s always there, Johnny on the spot, ready to be your hero. These accidents always just miss you.”

  “Would you rather they didn’t?” she snapped, her own doubts and worries suddenly raw on the surface.

  “That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it. Rachel … a man comes to you. He’s ready—he says—to repay a huge loan your father gave him—he says. He looks amazingly like the fiancé you lost ten years ago. And he keeps playing hero and saving you from death, in the best melodramatic tradition.”

  “Thanks a lot,” she said dryly.

  “You know what I mean. It’s a con, Rachel. He’s after your money.”

  “Graham, for God’s sake, you found the information yourself. He has a company doing well out in California.”

  “That doesn’t mean it couldn’t do better with more money to spread around.”

  She shook her head. “You’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think so, Rachel.”

  She didn’t know why she didn’t tell him about the notebooks and journal they’d found. Maybe because she wanted to keep her father’s s
ecret. Or maybe because she didn’t want to defend Adam to Graham.

  “I trust Adam,” she said instead, the declaration slow and firm and hiding her doubts.

  “Do you? Then ask him why he’s been out of the country more often than in during the last five years. Ask him if he can run that company of his by remote control, because he sure as hell hasn’t spent much time there.”

  “You’re still checking his background? Graham—”

  “I won’t apologize for it, Rachel. Your father would turn in his grave if I didn’t do my best to look out for you. And I’m telling you, there’s something strange about a man who takes regular trips to places they warn the tourists to stay away from.”

  “I believe he has placed himself in dangerous situations since his release from prison….”

  She crossed her arms and stared at him. “Graham, I know you have my best interests at heart. And I appreciate your concern, I really do. But I am almost thirty years old, and I can manage my own life. Whatever is between Adam and me is between us. Stay out of it, please.”

  His mouth hardened. “I see.”

  “I wish I believed you did.”

  “Oh, no, I see well enough. I see more than you do. Tell him to dye his hair black, Rachel, and then see how you feel about him.”

  “I am not mistaking my feelings because he looks like Tom.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No. Maybe I did at first, but not anymore. Tom’s dead.” Even if he is still giving me presents … “And Adam is alive. And I know the difference.”

  “Rachel—”

  She drew a deep breath to steady her voice. “If that’s all you came to say, Graham, then I wish you’d go. I am really sorry you and I don’t agree about Adam, but you have to realize that nothing you could say would change my feelings for him.”

  Slowly, Graham said, “Yes. I see that.”

  Without another word, he turned and left the room.

  Rachel was dimly aware of the angry sounds of his powerful Corvette roaring away from the house, but she didn’t really listen. Graham’s anger barely touched her.

  “Nothing you could say would change my feelings for him,” she whispered in realization.