Haunting Rachel (29 page)

Nicholas shrugged and finished his drink in one swallow. “I tried, God knows. Tried not to crowd you, not to ask too much of you. But I knew it was only a matter of time. The other night … I knew everything had changed. After that, I couldn’t hide the way I felt from you. Couldn’t be casual anymore. What I felt wasn’t something you wanted. So …” He looked at her at last, his pale eyes wearing a hard sheen. “So I was expecting you.”

Mercy drew a shaky breath. “Well, as a matter of fact, that wasn’t what I came here to say.”

“No?”

“No. I came here to ask if—if I was right in believing that
you
wanted it to be over.”

He leaned his head back against the chair, heavy lids dropping to veil his eyes. “And now you know. The answer is no.” His voice was still cool and matter-of-fact.

Mercy wasn’t about to leave it there. “Then why do you keep pushing me away? Shutting me out?”

“Have I been doing that?”

“You know damned well you have.”

“If you’re talking about bank business—”

“This isn’t about the bank. This is about us. You know everything about me, don’t you, Nick? All my favorite things, the way I feel about politics and religion. Where I shop, and who my doctor is, and where I get my car fixed. You know where I come from, who I am.”

“So?”

“So I don’t have a clue who you are. I told you that the other night. And you let me see a little bit. And the next day you were miles away again. So far out of my reach I couldn’t even touch you. So I figured you just didn’t want me even that close ever again.”

“It isn’t a question of what I want.” For the first time, his voice roughened. “It’s a question of what I can survive.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t.” His smile was twisted. “Let’s put it this way. When it
is
over between us, I will survive losing you. I’ll even survive losing the pieces of myself you’ll take with you, the pieces you … own despite everything I’ve tried to do to keep myself intact. But I couldn’t survive much more than that.”

Mercy was having a difficult time believing this. Her heart was thudding and her hands were cold, and she was very, very afraid she might be hearing only what she wanted to hear. So she drew a deep breath and asked the one question that mattered to her.

“Do you love me, Nick?”

He closed his eyes, his face very still except for the muscle that moved suddenly in his jaw.

And the glass in his hand shattered under the force of his grip.

“My God, Nick—”

When she pried his fingers open, she found only one cut, and though it bled profusely, it didn’t seem dangerously deep. With her efficient nature kicking into gear, she wrapped his hand in a clean dish towel, then found gauze, bandages, and antiseptic in his medicine cabinet. Sitting on the edge of the hassock with his hand across her lap, she carefully cleaned the wound and bandaged his hand.

Through it all, Nicholas sat silent, his gaze fixed on her. He seemed to feel no pain, obediently flexing his fingers when she asked him to but not moving otherwise.

Mercy cleared up most of the broken glass by simply gathering it into the dish towel, which she laid aside on the bare coffee table with the bandages and antiseptic. She could feel his eyes on her, but hardly knew what to say to him. Finally, she found an ounce of lightness somewhere and said, “You didn’t have to slice your hand open to avoid the question, Nick. A simple no would have been enough.”

“Of course I love you, Mercy.” His voice was very quiet. “I’ve always loved you.”

She looked at him then, and felt her heart catch at the utter desolation in his face. “Nick—”

“I hadn’t planned to stay so long in Richmond, you know. Before you came to work for the bank, I was out of the country more often than in. But then you came. I took one look at you when Duncan introduced you as his new assistant, and I knew I’d be staying for good. Whether you ever wanted me or not, I couldn’t walk away from you.”

Mercy slipped to her knees between the hassock and the chair, her body leaning into his, almost between his thighs as she reached up to touch his face. “Nick …”

“I don’t want your pity, goddammit,” he said thickly. “Don’t do that to me.”

“It isn’t pity.” She slid her fingers into his hair and pulled his head toward her. “You stupid man. I love you.”

His breath rasped and his fingers bit into her waist for a moment. “Mercy, don’t say that unless—”

“Unless I mean it? Do you want me to show you my diary entry from nearly five years ago?
Started work at the bank today. I like my boss. But when I shook hands with his partner … God, it happened so fast. How can it happen so fast? How can I love a man I don’t even know?”
Her lips feathered across his cheek toward his mouth. “I love you, Nick.”

His arms went around her and held her with a strength just this side of painful, and his mouth slanted across hers wildly. For the first time, he held back nothing of himself or his need for her, and Mercy was almost crying when he gathered her up and carried her to his bed.

After the first surprised moment, Rachel moved back across the basement toward the stairs and her uncle. “I thought you’d gone out,” she said.

“I went off without my sketch pad, and Kathie wants a sketch,” he said more or less automatically.

“I don’t have it,” Rachel said lightly, assuming he referred to his date that night.

He frowned. “I know that. The basement door was open. I wondered who was down here. Are you looking for something, Rachel?”

“No. I wanted to see how much progress Darby had made.” She paused, then heard herself ask, “What are you looking for, Cam?”

“Me? I told you. Just came back to get my sketch pad.”

Rachel got to the bottom of the stairs and stood there, looking up at him gravely. “That isn’t what I meant. What are you looking for in the furniture, Cam?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cam turned and went back up the stairs.

Rachel followed. She found him in the living room, which was his favorite place in the house. He had poured himself a scotch, and was standing by the cold fireplace, gazing up at the painting of his brother that hung above it.

The painting was his own work.

“We didn’t like each other very much,” Cam said when she came in. “You knew that?”

“I knew you were very different.”

“That’s one way of putting it. Another is that we were encouraged to compete in a way that wasn’t healthy for either of us.”

“Brothers often are.”

“Yes.” His mouth twisted. “But our father—your grandfather—was a master of the game. He started when we were young, and he never let up. I was pushed into sports because Duncan excelled at them, and never mind that I wasn’t athletic. Duncan was tortured with art and music lessons despite the fact that he loathed them.”

Rachel came farther into the room and sat on the arm of a chair, watching him. “I had no idea. Dad never spoke of anything like that—and I never knew Grandfather.”

“No, he died not long after you were born.”

Rachel nodded, and waited.

“He was one of those people who thrive on conflict. Everything had to be a struggle, a battle of wills. He made our mother miserable, browbeat the servants, alienated the rest of the family. Life with him was … hard.

“Duncan and I were pushed all the time. And our father blew hot and cold with both of us, promising things he never delivered, threatening punishments. Full of praise one day and scathing criticism the next. It was like living in a mine field, never knowing when the next step would cost an arm or a leg, or some other piece of yourself.”

“It sounds horrible.”

“It was.” He leaned a shoulder against the mantel and gazed at her steadily. “And it only got worse as we grew up. We both had to fight for our identity, to struggle against his domination. Leaving home for college gave us our first taste of independence. First Duncan, then me. But we had to come back here because he commanded it. And neither of us was strong enough to win that battle.”

“Cam, why are you telling me this?” Rachel felt uncomfortable, keenly aware that she was learning things her own father had not chosen to tell her in his lifetime.

“So you’ll understand.”

“Understand what?”

Cameron hesitated, then drew a deep breath. “From the time we were old enough to understand, our father talked about how he meant to leave his fortune when he died. That was the carrot he held out in front of us, and the stick he beat us with. When one of us was in his good graces, he was promised the entire fortune, everything— the other was taunted that he’d be left out in the cold. It went on for years. And he even went so far as to have two different wills drawn up. One promised everything to Duncan, the other promised everything to me.”

“That isn’t how he left his estate,” Rachel said slowly.

Cameron’s smile was brief. “Oh, but it is.”

“You have Grant property. Real estate, stocks. They came from your father.”

“No. They came from Duncan.”

Rachel understood immediately. “Grandfather went with the will naming Dad—and Dad deeded you part of the estate.”

“Half. He said he’d be damned if he’d live under our father’s rule a moment longer, that those wishes and intentions meant nothing to him.” Cameron shrugged. “So I got half the money, which I at least had the sense to invest, and Duncan got the other half—and built it into a major fortune.”

“So Grandfather lost.”

“Did he? He made my brother and me virtual strangers, Rachel. Each of us reminded the other of our father and his torments. So, not long after our father died, I moved to the West Coast. In the nearly thirty years since, I’ve come home only for brief visits. Until last year, when Duncan invited me to stay here while my place was being renovated.”

“Did you two get any closer before he died?”

“No. But at least the old ghosts were quieter after so many years. There was a kind of peace between us. And I’m glad of that.”

Rachel nodded. “I’m not sure if I should thank you for telling me all this, but I’m glad you did.” She paused, then added, “I still don’t understand, though, what it is you’re looking for in the furniture.”

Readily now, Cameron said, “One of the things our father always said, one of his promised rewards, was a large piece of property overseas. An island, in fact. He swore he owned it, that he had the deed. But when he died, it was never found.”

“You’re looking for the deed to an island?”

“Rachel, my father was a devious old bastard, and he loved playing games. He told us once that he’d hidden the deed here in the house. That was when we were boys, and
Duncan and I both searched for it. We never found it. Maybe it never existed. But it occurred to me that it would have been just like him to hide something important in a piece of discarded furniture.”

“I see.”

Cameron smiled at her. “It probably isn’t here. Probably never existed. But, just once, I’d like to win one of my father’s games. The promise of that keeps me looking.”

“Thank you for telling me, Cam.”

“I’m just sorry I didn’t confide in you before.” He shrugged. “But you’ve been busy, with a lot on your mind. Naturally, if I do find the deed, you’ll be the first to know. I’d like to keep looking.”

“Of course.”

His expression lightened. “Thanks, Rachel. Now I think I’ll go get my sketch pad and then meet Kathie for dinner. I’ll probably see you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Cam.”

“Good night, honey.”

Rachel sat there on the arm of the chair for a long time after Cameron left. She heard him go upstairs, then come down again a couple of minutes later. Heard the front door close, and his car start up outside. Heard him drive away.

She wondered why he had lied to her.

There were holes in his story, several of them. For one thing, he’d had thirty years to search the house; why was it only now important to him to get his hands on a possibly nonexistent deed? Granted, furniture was just now being moved out of the house, but Cameron had to know already how thorough Darby was, and that a deed to an island would have been useless to Darby even if she was disposed to steal it—which she wasn’t.

No, the deed was probably nonexistent.

So what was Cameron really looking for?

•   •   •

“Do you really keep a diary?”

Mercy pushed herself up a bit so she could smile down at him. “It’s more of a journal. But, yes. I’ll show it to you if you like. It was the only place I could safely make a fool of myself over you.”

He toyed with a strand of her dark hair. “I never guessed. Never even imagined you could feel anything for me.”

“I couldn’t let you know. Mysterious, enigmatic Nick, who never seemed to give me a second look—until the night he offered me a ride and we ended up stark naked on the rug in front of my fireplace. Was that planned, by the way?”

Nicholas smiled slightly. “That, love, was the most incredibly lucky night of my life. I kissed you because I had to, figuring I’d get my face slapped. But when you responded …”

“You thought I might be agreeable to a nice, undemanding affair?”

“I thought it was the most I could hope for.”

Mercy shook her head. “And I thought it was the most you wanted from me. Just a warm body in your bed now and then. You were always so damned careful to make sure neither of us owed the other a thing.”

“I didn’t want you to feel any pressure.”

“And didn’t want to risk yourself?”

“That too.”

She leaned down and kissed him, but pushed herself away when he showed definite signs of losing interest in talk. “Wait a minute.”

“Why?”

“Because we aren’t finished talking.”

Nicholas looked at her warily. “No?”

“No. We have to reach an understanding here.”

“I thought we just had.”

She firmly pushed his hand away when it began roaming over her hip. “Nick, I’m serious. I walked a high wire for nearly a year trying to figure out what you wanted of me. So now I want you to tell me.”

He slid a hand into her hair and pulled her down so he could kiss her. Against her mouth, he said huskily, “I want you with me for the rest of my life. I want to go to sleep with you and wake up with you—and maybe even make babies with you.”