Deception (4 page)

“How do you know I didn’t just book a room here?”

“Because Mia booked all the vacant rooms for privacy.” Dylan took another step forward and placed his hand on the butt of his gun. “Get lost.”

“Ooh, what are you going to do, shoot me for trespassing?”

Something in Dylan’s face must’ve given Peter the idea he just might. He spun around on his expensive shoes and called over his shoulder, “This isn’t over, Mia.”

She poked her head around Dylan’s impressive frame and heaved a sigh when she saw the last of Peter round the corner. “Thank you.”

Then she sucked in another breath and held it as she stared at Dylan’s straight back. What would he think about her marriage, especially once he knew the reason behind it?

He turned toward her, his blue eyes dark and unreadable, his expression slightly amused. “How’d you wind up married to a tool like that?”

She coughed, her hand covering her mouth and hiding her smile. Leave it to Dylan to distill the situation to its purest form. “You don’t want to know.”

“Sure I do, but tell me in your room. It’s getting chilly out here, and you don’t even have any shoes on.” He took her arm and his touch spread warmth throughout her body.

No wonder she could never fully commit to Peter, or any man. She’d always compared the men she’d dated to Dylan Reese, and they’d always come up short.

But Dylan had changed. Would the Dylan of her childhood have accepted the news of her marriage so calmly? She hadn’t noticed one drop of judgment in his face or his voice. Growing up as the Coral Cove police chief’s son, Dylan had held himself to a higher standard than everyone else.

Not that she could ever live up to it.

She picked her way over the rocky path to the rooms, and then Dylan curled an arm around her waist and swept her off her feet. “I hope you have several pairs of shoes in your room, or you’ll need to get tougher feet.”

With Dylan’s arms around her, gathered close to his body, Mia momentarily lost her capacity for speech…for rational thought. She dropped her head to his shoulder and breathed in his masculine scent, clean and outdoorsy.

Her eyelashes fluttered against his neck and he tightened his grip. Oh, Lord, she’d missed this man. But she’d returned to Coral Cove to take care of business, not to tempt a man she’d written off as too good for her.

Nothing had changed. Now in addition to her other faults, she’d added a divorce. That made her not only unworthy of the police chief but damaged goods.

She kicked her legs as they neared her room. “I thought you knew me better than that, Dylan Reese. Where would I be without at least ten pairs of shoes?”

“Do they all have sky-high heels like that last pair? Because you looked a little overdressed for Coral Cove.”

“Then it’s a good thing I lost them.” She twirled the key chain around her finger, but he still didn’t put her on her feet, even though they now stood on smooth cement.

He snatched the key from her hand and unlocked the door. Kicking it open, he carried her across the threshold.

“I don’t think Gladys is going to appreciate you kicking her doors.”

Releasing his hold on her, he grinned. “Gladys is a romantic. She’d appreciate the circumstances.”

Romance? He’d rescued her from a car about to tumble over the side of a cliff, stood up for her against Peter and literally swept her off her feet and carried her over a threshold. Yeah, that all added up to romance…or at least several selfless gestures.

“So spill.” He parked himself in an uncomfortable-looking chair, as if preparing for an interrogation. “How’d you end up married to Peter…?”

“Casellas.” She dropped to the bed, bouncing up and down for a few seconds, wondering how much she should tell him. “You know the story about how I showed up here in Coral Cove with a boyfriend, Raoul, whom my sister promptly stole from me.”

He crossed an ankle over his knee. “Yeah. I was here for about two minutes when you arrived. Marissa was engaged to Tyler Davis at the time—
Mayor
Tyler Davis now, who happens to be the biggest pain in my… Go on.”

“Well, after they ran off, I hightailed it out of here, and a lot of people figured I’d had my heart broken.”

“I didn’t figure that when I heard about it.”

“No?” A warm flush crept up her throat. Did Dylan realize nobody could break her heart because she’d kept it wrapped up in gauze for him?

“You’re not the running kind and you’re not the heartbroken kind. But keep going.”

She scooped in a breath and allowed her words to tumble out as she released it. “I left because I had to find someone else to marry.”

He raised one eyebrow. He didn’t even look shocked. “Because…?”

“Because marriage was one of the terms of my…our inheritance.”

He raised the other eyebrow. “Your grandparents stuck that in there?”

“Yes.”

“And this Raoul, he was your first victim?”

She reached back, grabbed a pillow and chucked it at him. “You make me sound like a black widow.”

“If you had to get married, why the hell didn’t you…find someone more appropriate?”

Her pulse quickened. Had he been about to say why hadn’t she asked
him?
She’d thought about it, but she hadn’t wanted to snare him that way. “That’s what I thought I did when I returned to New York and married my friend Peter.”

“Prenup?”

“Absolutely.”

“Is that what he’s trying to weasel out of right now?”

“Right again.”

He yawned and stretched his long legs in front of him. “Peter didn’t turn out to be much of a friend, did he?”

“He’s a photographer. He’d worked on a few of my fashion shows. I knew he wanted to set up his own shop and needed the capital, so I offered him a deal and he jumped at it. We’d dated a few times, but the marriage was in name only, and when I’d satisfied the terms of my grandparents’ will and it was time to call it quits, Peter got greedy.”

“Marissa had the same requirement?”

This time the flush spread from Mia’s neck and suffused her face. “I-it was kind of a competition.”

“Let me get this straight.” He hunched forward, gripping his knees. “You and Marissa were in a race to get married to get your hands on Columbella?”

“Sort of.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “It’s not like we were going to be cut off from our inheritance if we didn’t get married, it’s just that the first to marry got the house.”

He snorted and collapsed back in his chair. “Draconian. Is that why Marissa hooked up with that stick Tyler Davis?”

“Yep—the only reason. When I heard about their engagement, I rushed back here and, and…” She flopped back on the bed, allowing her hair to sweep across her hot face.

She heard a rustle and then the mattress dipped. Dylan’s low voice reverberated close to her ear. “Mia St. Regis, are you telling me you brought your boy toy Raoul to Coral Cove to tempt your sister away from marriage with Tyler Davis?”

“Umm, maybe.”

He hooked a finger around several strands of hair and pulled them aside like a curtain. “You’re unbelievable.”

She sat up, almost bumping her head against his chin. “I had to, Dylan. You knew Marissa. She had no feeling for the old place. If she’d have gotten her hands on it, she’d have auctioned off Columbella House to the highest bidder.”

“Instead of allowing it to fall into disrepair?”

Her face got even hotter and she dropped her chin to her chest. “I never meant for that to happen. It’s just that after everything—Marissa running off and disappearing and my hasty marriage to Peter—it turned out to be a hollow victory.”

“I could’ve told you that.”

“But you weren’t around then.” And if he had been? Would she have taken a chance and suggested marriage to her old friend? No. Dylan had too much honor for that.

She puffed out her cheeks and expelled a long sigh. “I don’t expect you to understand. You’d never do anything to compromise your standards.”

Dylan tensed and shifted away from her. “I’m not judging you, Mia. I know that house meant a lot to you at one time, and yes, Marissa would’ve sold it faster than she would’ve cheated on Tyler.”

She spread her hands. “Anyway, that’s my sordid tale. After Marissa ran off with Raoul, ending her engagement to Tyler, I rushed back to New York and made my proposal to Peter. He agreed, and the rest is history.”

“Except Peter is no longer happy with the deal he inked.”

“Exactly.”

“And your twin took off to live the good life with Raoul.”

Mia clamped her bottom lip between her teeth and stared out the hotel window into the darkness.

“Mia?” Dylan touched her hand and she jumped. “What’s wrong? Did Marissa find out you’d tricked her, and decided to hold a grudge?”

“I don’t know.” Her nose stung and she rubbed it with the back of her hand. “I haven’t heard from Marissa since she left.”

His dark brows snapped together. “She cut you out of her life completely? I know you two were never close, especially for twins, but that seems harsh.”

“Oh, she sent several postcards, but no phone calls, no emails.”

“Were the postcards nasty?”

“Not really. She never mentioned my scheme. I’ve tried searching for her online, and I hired a private investigator a few years ago. He took my money and came up empty. I’ve even tried to find Raoul, but it seems he went back to Brazil. I assumed Marissa went with him.”

“That’s strange. Marissa had a lot of faults, but holding grudges didn’t seem to be among them.”

Your sister is dead.

Could she open up to Dylan? When couldn’t she? In the old days, she’d been open with Dylan with just about everything except her true feelings for him.

She raked her hair back with her fingers. “It is strange, isn’t it? And what’s stranger… Did your sister ever tell you she’d found a diary belonging to Marissa a few months ago when she was in Coral Cove with her son?”

Two red spots colored Dylan’s cheekbones. “No. I wasn’t in touch with Devon at that time. I’m just glad Kieran Roarke had come back from the dead in time to help her and Michael.”

Mia tilted her head. Dylan and Devon had always been the close twins in town. “Well, she
did
find Marissa’s diary, but before she had a chance to read it or send it to me, it disappeared. And before that, Michelle Girard contacted me about a bracelet she found at Columbella. Michelle’s mother used to make them, and Marissa had one she rarely removed.”

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, her blood pumping now, she sat forward. “And finally, Kylie Grant, you know, Rosie the fortune-teller’s daughter, she sent me an email that said—”

She choked to a stop. This all sounded crazy. Only bad things had come out of her desire to own Columbella House, and now she was just projecting more guilt on to herself.

Dylan ran a strong, warm hand up her back. “What did the email say?”

“‘Your sister is dead.’”

“That’s a nice email to send someone, a crazy email.” He lightly clasped her neck and circled his thumb against her skin.

“That’s not all she wrote in the email. Kylie was here on a case. She works for the FBI and police departments sometimes to help find missing people. While she was—” she waved her hands in the air “—in some kind of trance or something, she felt that Marissa was dead.”

“And you believe that mumbo jumbo?”

“Not usually, but Kylie did find that girl who had gone missing from the Coral Cove Music Festival a few years ago.”

“That happened right before I got here, and Kylie didn’t exactly find the woman. The woman’s killer led Kylie to where he’d stashed the body with the intent of doing the same thing to her.”

“He’d stashed the body in the walls of Columbella House.” Mia shivered and clenched her teeth.

Dylan draped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her snug against his body. “I can have my buddy locate Marissa. He’s a P.I. In fact, he worked the case with Kylie. Matt Conner, do you remember him?”

She nodded, trying not to press her body against his solid frame and soak up all his warmth. She turned her head, dangerously close to finding his shoulder again, and her gaze collided with a wavy blue line from a tattoo peeking from the long sleeve of his shirt.

She traced the swirl with the tip of her finger and he winced as if in pain. “When did you get this?”

“A few years ago.”

She shoved his sleeve up to get a better view, but the cuff stuck on his forearm. She could see that the blue tail-end of the tattoo curled around his wrist, ending in an arrow pointing to his palm. “What is it?”

Pinching his sleeve between two fingers, he yanked it down. “Another time. It’s getting late. You’re probably going to be sore from the accident. Do you have some ibuprofen?”

“Plenty.”

His arm slid from her shoulder. “Then take it and get some rest. That guy Peter…your ex…husband, he’s not going to try anything, is he?”

“He’s harmless, just annoying.”

Dylan pushed up from the bed, and she jumped up next to him, putting her hand on his arm. “Thanks for everything today, Dylan. Just like old times, when you used to come to rescue me and Devon.”

The arm beneath her fingers tensed, and a storm passed across his blue eyes. “Just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

He bent over and kissed her on the forehead. Even that affectionate gesture left a scorching imprint of his lips on her skin.

At the door he turned. “You might want to book up all the vacant rooms in this motel so I don’t look like a liar.”

“Believe me, this isn’t Peter’s style. Just another empty threat on his part. He has plenty of those to spare.”

“Take care. I guess we’ll be seeing each other around town…as long as you’re here.”

“Maybe I can buy you dinner some night.”

“Looking forward to it.” He smacked the doorjamb and ambled away.

Mia snapped the door closed and leaned against it. Maybe she should’ve taken him up on his dinner offer tonight. That way she could’ve spent more time with him.

At least he hadn’t laughed about her suspicions about Marissa. That was Dylan—always willing to listen.

She pushed away from the door and strolled to the bathroom, her head in the clouds. She was not here to reconnect with Dylan Reese. She hadn’t even realized he’d be here. Devon hadn’t written much about her brother when she’d sent Mia that email about the diary.