Winter's Edge

by Anne Stuart

"It's probably for you," she added offhandedly. "The police have been trying to reach you since yesterday morning. I think they suspect you." Actually she didn't think any such thing; she just wanted to annoy him.

  He didn't give her the satisfaction of a response. Without a backward glance he went into his office, shutting the door quietly behind him. She would have felt better if he'd slammed it. She stared after him as she contemplated listening in on the extension, then dismissed the idea. For one thing, it was terribly dishonorable, for another, more important reason, she was afraid she'd get caught. She trudged back to her bedroom and did her own door slamming.

  When she returned downstairs she felt a bit braver. She was showered, dressed, armored against the world, against Patrick, against her own vulnerabilities. Ermy and Willy were still asleep—the twin snores coming from their rooms assured her. Patrick's office door was still shut tightly, and she went on into the kitchen for another cup of coffee and to work on the Sunday crossword puzzle, determinedly oblivious to the man just out of sight. Forever out of reach.

  A half hour passed, then an hour, before Patrick finally removed himself from his inner sanctum and came to stand before her. His belt came to about eye-level as she looked up from the table, and it was with great concentration that she kept her eyes above rather than below it.

  "Molly," he said, and his voice was gentler, "I want to talk with you."

  She wasn't going to like this, she thought suddenly. And once more she felt like running, from Patrick, who'd never loved her, from Winter's Edge. From her own, helpless longing.

  But running was no longer an option.

  "All right," she said, bracing herself.

  He pulled out a chair, apparently at a loss for words. He's going to say something about that night, she thought in relief. It's going to be all right.

  But she was wrong. "That was Lieutenant Ryker on the phone a while ago. You're right, there's no question of your leaving right now."

  She nodded, saying nothing, determined to hide the hurt in her eyes.

  "They've found out something else, Molly. They found out who the man was. The one in the car with you."

  She stared at him blankly. "I thought they knew who he was. A small-time crook named George Andrews."

  He winced. "That was one of his names. I can't believe it took them so damned long to come up with a real one, but then, he was always good at covering his tracks. He was born Gregory Anderson." He waited for a response, one she was unable to give.

  "Should this mean something to me?" she asked. "If you want it to then I'm afraid you'll have to explain the connection."

  "Gregory Anderson was your father."

  She took a deep, shaky breath, shocked. "Really? I thought you told me he was dead."

  "He is now," Patrick said sharply. "Don't you care at all?"

  She stared at him openly. "I don't remember him. How many times must I tell you before you get it through your head—I don't remember. I must have known he was my father. Otherwise why would I have been with him? But I don't remember anything about it." Her voice rose uncontrollably. "How many times must I say it? I don't remember, I don't remember, I don't remember!" She bit down on her lip to stop the hysteria that threatened to overwhelm her, and she turned away, unable to look at him any longer.

  "All right," he said after a long moment. "I suppose I have to believe you." His face was unreadable. "The question of the money was also explained. It was yours, withdrawn from your various accounts, all legal and proper." He gave her a cool look. "It's been redeposited, by the way."

  "But why?" she echoed, puzzled. "What did I want with that much money?"

  "You're the only one who can answer that, if you choose to."

  "Damn you, Patrick, I…"

  "All right, if you could," he amended.

  "You know what it sounds like to me?" she said after a long moment. "It sounds like blackmail money."

  "What could you have done to warrant blackmail that we didn't already know about?" His voice was cynical.

  She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. It would be useless to argue further. He'd believe what he wanted to believe.

  He rose, his tall body towering over her, and she shivered slightly, longing for all sorts of things, longing to simply lean her head against his hip. "Lieutenant Ryker said he'd keep in touch. He also found out how you were being poisoned."

  "So he believes me?" she said in a defeated voice. "Finally. How was it done?"

  "It was in the cranberry juice. No one but you touches the stuff, so whoever put it there knew you'd be the only one likely to drink it." His face was impassive. "I'll go get rid of it."

  "Why don't you have some yourself?" she muttered sweetly, low enough so he couldn't hear as he started out the door. He stopped and turned for a moment, and she thought perhaps he had heard her after all.

  But he hadn't. "About Friday night," he began, his voice huskier than usual.

  She froze, and she could feel her face draining of color. "Yes?" she said without looking at him, very busy with the newspaper.

  "I should have never come in your room. I shouldn't have lost my temper, and I certainly shouldn't have touched you, considering our situation. It won't happen again."

  He left the room before she could answer, and she stared unseeing at the crossword puzzle in front of her. The pencil point broke.

  "Oh, won't it?" she said to herself softly, determinedly. "We'll see about that."

  When Ermy and old friend Willy arrived downstairs, somewhere between noon and one, Molly was in the midst of luncheon preparation, and she turned a deaf ear on their requests for eggs and sausage.

  "It's lunch time," she said flatly. "And I'm not used to cooking. You'll have to make do with coffee and muffins until I'm finished, which should be in about an hour." She pushed a stray strand of hair off her sweating brow.

  "Now, Molly, dear, you don't know how to cook," Aunt Ermy said heavily. "If you'll simply let me take over I'm sure I'd do a much more competent job. And then Willy and I could have our breakfast. Surely you must realize that you're being unreasonable?"

  "Am I?" She looked at them coolly. "Well, this time you're going to have to humor me. I intend to cook all the meals that Mrs. Morse isn't here for." She smiled sweetly, turning back to her labors. There was a moment of annoyed silence, and then Aunt Ermy stomped into the dining room.

  What with clearing off their messy dishes, resetting the crumb-strewn table, and dashing back and forth between recipe book and stove, the lunch was more than an hour in coming, a fact which bothered her not one bit. When it was almost ready she started out the back door to look for Patrick, who'd disappeared somewhere in the vicinity of the barns.

  Molly saw her before she came up to him. Lisa Canning was dressed all in pale lilac, the pants fitting her perfect legs with nary a bulge or wrinkle, a scarf tied carelessly around her throat. Molly ducked behind some hay bales, then edged closer, eavesdropping shamelessly on their conversation. It was wrong. It was an invasion of privacy. It was irresistible.

  "Where were you yesterday?" she was asking in her low, attractive voice. "I waited and waited. I thought we had decided we were going to meet."

  Patrick's withdrawal was clear even before he spoke. "I had things to think about, Lisa," he answered shortly, with less sympathy than he usually seemed to direct toward her.

  "What things?" she demanded, pressing her lithe body closer to him until Molly wanted to scream. "I thought we'd made all the decisions that had to be made."

  "You made the decisions, Lisa," he answered. "I neither agreed nor disagreed."

  Lisa moved away then, and from Molly's vantage point she could see the anger in her beautiful eyes. "I never thought you'd be like this." Her voice was petulant. "I'm not used to being jilted, Pat. If that's what you're doing. Ever since that baby-faced little bitch of a wife came back you've been making excuses for not seeing me. It wasn't like that before she went away." She moved back to him, her
slender body swaying seductively. "Come on, Pat. You don't love her. You're just piqued that she'd have nothing to do with you, and you know it. She's a child, darling, and a spoiled one at that. Why don't you send her off to get a divorce and put an end to this charade? And then we'd have time to learn whether there might be something for us? Don't you think we deserve it?"

  He pulled away from her. "I suppose it would be too much to ask if you'd leave me alone?" he asked coolly.

  "Yes, it is! You can't do this to me, playing the devoted lover one minute, the model husband the next. I want to know where I stand in your life! Are you going to divorce her?"

  Molly held her breath, an impossible hope building inside her, but it was useless. "Yes, I'm going to divorce her," he said. "But it doesn't have a damned thing to do with you. Look, Lisa, it's been over a long time, and it wasn't much to begin with. We were both lonely, you and I, but we both know it was a mistake."

  She stared up at him. "That brings me to the second question, though it sounds like you already answered it. Are you going to ask me to marry you?"

  There was a long pause, and Molly almost felt sorry for her. "Lisa, I couldn't afford you, and well you know it." His voice was suddenly gentle.

  She laughed unhappily. "How very flattering of you, Pat. The truth of the matter is that you don't want to marry me. And I think, if you were really honest with yourself, you'd admit that you don't want to divorce that unfaithful wife of yours either. There's nothing you'd like better than to play love's young dream with her, regardless of the fact that she's ten years younger than you and she's cheated on you with every man she could lay her greedy little hands on."

  "She doesn't have anything to do with you and me, and I'm not about to discuss her with you."

  "But there is no you and me. There hasn't been really, since before you married her. And there never will be."

  "No," he said with great finality. "There never will be."

  She stared at him for a moment longer, then she reached up and ran her hand along Patrick's face with a longing gesture. "It's a shame, darling," she murmured. "It could have been marvelous." She sauntered out the door with more self-assurance than Molly knew she possessed, and she felt a moment's compassion for the woman.

  Without another word Patrick turned and started toward the door. Molly ducked back among the bales of hay, but she needn't have bothered. His mind was on other things, and, as she watched his closed face, she wondered what she had done to him, why things had gone so terribly wrong in that shadowy past, and she could have wept with frustration and nameless guilt.

  It took her a moment to compose herself. She couldn't very well spend the rest of the day out in the stable, and the conversation she had just overheard was having a belated effect on her. If he didn't want Lisa Canning, then there might, just possibly, be a chance. For the future. For them.

  She entered the kitchen close on Patrick's heels, unable to keep a little bounce out of her steps.

  "Oh, there you are," she said blandly. "Lunch should be ready. We're eating in the dining room for the time being." She gestured to the table littered with dirty bowls, cutting boards, and cookbooks.

  A brief smile lit his forbidding face. "You cooked it?"

  "I did, indeed. And very tasty it will be, if I haven't burned it looking for you." She pulled the cast iron skillet out of the oven and noted with satisfaction the golden crust.

  "I was in the barn," he said, looking at her curiously and not without suspicion.

  "Really?" she said ingenuously. "Well, that's where I should have looked, I suppose. Would you call the others?"

  Chapter Fifteen

  « ^ »

  "What the hell made you decide to wear that dress?" Patrick demanded explosively after a moment of dead silence.

  Molly stared down at the white eyelet dress, one of the few pieces of clothing left from her original wardrobe. "You told me I usually dress for dinner. I thought I would tonight. What's wrong with it?" she asked, touching the delicate material. "It's pretty."

  Uncle Willy snorted into his drink, and Patrick continued to glower, so it was up to Aunt Ermy to explain the situation.

  "That, my dear, was your wedding dress."

  It struck no chord of memory. She stared down at it, trying to force some faint glimmer of recognition, but it meant nothing to her. Just a pretty dress.

  "I would appreciate it if you'd change, Molly," Patrick said heavily after a moment, and there was pain in his dark blue eyes, a pain she recognized with an unholy pleasure. He couldn't be indifferent to her.

  "Yes, my dear. Something in black would be more suitable on today of all days," Aunt Ermy said.

  "Why today of all days?" she inquired innocently.

  "Because your poor father's death has just been made known to us," she snapped back. "Granted, no one had seen or heard from him for a decade—Patrick's father, rest his saintly soul, assumed poor little Molly was an orphan when he fetched her home here. You'd been staying with some distant cousins, but they no longer had any room for you, so Jared took you in. Such a kindly man, always taking in waifs."

  "Yes, wasn't he?" Molly said with a pointed look at Ermy's smug direction.

  Ermy, however, was oblivious. "I'm certain Jared would want proper attention paid to your father's death. After all, he was Jared's third cousin. Or something like that. A little more decorum and proper feeling wouldn't hurt you one bit, my girl. Go and change."

  Molly smiled sweetly. She knew what she looked like in the dress, and nothing was going to make her take it off. Nothing short of Patrick's strong, clever hands. "I don't think my father would mind," she said coolly. "Now, if you're all finished your drinks you might go into the dining room and I'll bring dinner in."

  "Don't you want a drink first, dear?" Uncle Willy spoke up suddenly from his seat in the corner, his voice surprisingly clear for someone in his usual state of inebriation. "Some of your cranberry juice? You've been working hard all day, I should think you'd deserve a break."

  Patrick's eyes met Molly's for a pregnant moment, then he let out a deep breath. "Molly's only drinking Diet Coke nowadays, Uncle Willy," he answered smoothly. "She's been putting on weight."

  She considered hitting him, then thought better of it. She glared at him, only to find the expression in his dark blue gaze to be curiously tender. And suddenly she felt sixteen again, in love with the man who always teased her unmercifully. The unbidden memory was like a sharp pain, one that vanished almost as swiftly as it came.

  She was in the midst of the tedious job of cleaning up after dinner when Patrick appeared in the doorway. Aunt Ermy and old friend Willy had retired with full stomachs to the living room without offering to help, and she'd somehow managed to use just about every pot and pan in the well-equipped kitchen. The place was a disaster area, and it took her a moment to realize she was no longer alone. She looked at him questioningly, up to her elbows in grease and soap.

  He put his strong, beautifully shaped hands on her waist and pulled her gently away from the sink. At his touch she stiffened, then willed herself to relax. She wondered idly whether he was going to kiss her, but after a moment he released her, and she had no choice but to step back.

  "You put the dishes in the dishwasher," he said quietly, "and I'll finish these."

  She stood motionless for a moment, watching him as he started to work. Then she began clearing the table, slowly, so as to savor every moment of this odd harmony between them. She would brush her body against his as she bent to load the dishwasher, and each time she did so she could feel the little quiver that ran through his body. At least, she thought with satisfaction, she was having the same effect on him that he was having on her.

  It was an odd, ritualistic sort of dance they did, their hands touching as they both reached for things at the same time, his body glancing against hers as he moved around the kitchen. The tension in the room built, slowly at first, and the air grew warmer, tighter, darker, until her hands were trembling w
ith pain and love and desire and hurt all rolled into one mass of emotions, the foremost of which was desire. She didn't want to think about what she felt for him. She wasn't ready to admit that she loved him completely and forever, the way a woman should love a man. She didn't know him well enough in this new life to make any such rash statement. But the more she edged away from such a commitment, the more she knew deep down that it was true. Had always been true, since the first moment she'd seen him, back in the forgotten past.

  Together they cleaned everything in that kitchen: the toaster, the stove top, the counters, the cupboard doors, the sink, the floor, anything to put off the moment when they had to face each other. And then it was spotless, and there was nothing left to do, no way they could postpone acknowledging each other's presence.

  They were standing close together, too close, and Molly finally looked up into his eyes, and what she saw there, beneath all the hostility and hurt she had dealt him over the past, was the man she had fallen in love with seven years ago when she was sixteen and he had just come back from his self-imposed exile. The look in his eyes was as hungry and yearning as the feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she wanted, needed him to touch her. To take her. The moment stretched and held.

  And then he broke it. "I'm going to work on accounts," he said abruptly, turning from her.

  She felt a slap of total despair and rejection. How could he ignore what was between them? "You do that," she said tonelessly. "I think I'll just go up to bed and read a bit. I'm very tired."

  "That sounds like a good idea," he said absently. "The weather report said we might have thunder-showers tonight. You'd better be prepared—maybe you should take one of Ermy's sleeping pills."

  "Why?"

  "You're terrified of thunder and lightning," he answered shortly. "I want you to promise me you'll take a sleeping pill. You need a good night's sleep."

  She stared at him, wondering about his insistence. Perhaps if she was knocked out then she wouldn't be a temptation to him. That was the last thing she had in mind.