House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) (17 page)

The forward force of Mrs. Adler’s Percheron knocked Paul back in his seat. This time he didn’t begrudge Mrs. Adler’s hell-for-leather driving technique. At the foot of the hill hounds were milling about baying at nothing in particular, and riders were off their horses.

Paul vaulted out of the cart before it came to a full stop. He raced toward Ann, his unfamiliar riding boots slipping and sliding on the wet grass.

He saw Trey and several riders bending over Ann’s prostrate form on the other side of the jump. He shoved through the crush of riders and climbed over the fence, hopped across the ditch and knelt beside her. He grabbed her gloved hand. “Ann, my God, Ann.” Out of the corner of his eye he caught the unflappable Belgian chomping grass. There was no stirrup hanging from the right side of his saddle. Paul looked around. Just behind him he spied the stirrup and the leather that should have held it on the saddle.

Ann opened her eyes, took a deep breath and said, “There. I thought I’d never breathe again.” She started to sit up, but Trey held her down. “No, you don’t.”

“I’m fine, Trey. I just got the wind knocked out of me. What the hell happened?”

“I’m going to kill somebody over this,” Trey said grimly. He held Ann’s other hand. “You must have broken a stirrup leather. That’s not supposed to happen in my barn.”

“Well, for Pete’s sake.” She smiled up at Paul. “Okay, we’re even.”

“Not even halfway,” he said grimly. “We need to get a cervical collar on you. Can you feel everything?”

She rolled her eyes. “I never lost consciousness, just my breath. I never hit my head—the hard hat took the
brunt of the fall. I fell flat. My dignity and I are equally bruised, but that’s the extent of the damage.” She pulled herself to a sitting position. “Now, can somebody catch my horse and lend me a stirrup leather?”

Paul reached behind him and pulled the broken half of the leather free of the stirrup. While everyone concentrated on Ann, he stuffed both parts of the leather under his sweater. “You’re not going to keep riding, are you?”

“First rule of riding, always get back on the horse.” She touched his cheek. “Don’t worry. I’m just going to ride back to the barn with you and Mrs. Adler if she’ll take you.”

“Of course I will, dear,” Mrs. Adler said from her perch. “This is quite enough excitement for one day.”

No one had an extra stirrup leather, so Ann and her horse ambled back to the barn with her legs dangling at his sides. The horse wasn’t even breathing hard.

Paul noticed that the grooms had made themselves scarce. So he pulled off the saddle himself, let the big animal into an empty stall, hung saddle and bridle on the closest rack and found Ann leaning against Mrs. Adler’s cart.

“You mind taking me home now? I’m starting to stiffen up.”

He thanked Mrs. Adler, patted her horse and helped Ann to his car. For the second time he realized he’d never be able to carry her. Not even across a threshold.

He was halfway to her home before he realized the implications of that.

After he put Ann under a hot shower and rubbed liniment all over her body, already beginning to turn interesting shades of puce, he sat down to wait until she fell asleep.

As soon as he heard her regular breathing, he walked
into the workroom, turned on the big lights over the worktable and took the two halves of the stirrup leather from under his sweater.

It was only a fluke that Ann had been riding the Belgian. If Paul had broken a stirrup leather unexpectedly even at a walk, he’d have fallen off. Unlike Ann, he probably would have been hurt.

He might have reinjured his right arm. Falling off the right side of the horse, he would instinctively have reached to break his fall with his right arm. He winced at the prospect of the pain and damage that might have caused.

The reason for the breakage in the leather was easy to spot once he looked for it. Someone with a very sharp knife had scored the underside of the leather without cutting through to the top. Anyone saddling the horse wouldn’t have seen it unless they examined the leather carefully.

His father had broken his neck jumping over a fence on a hunt.

Coincidence?

When the phone rang, he grabbed it on the first ring and heard Mrs. Jenkins’s voice. “Is Ann all right?”

He turned his back and cupped the phone so as not to wake Ann. “She’s bruised and she’s going to be stiff, but I think she’s okay.”

“Good. The idea that she could go first field when she hasn’t been on a horse since opening hunt. I swear, sometimes I don’t know what she’s thinking. Is she asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Stay with her, will you? I’ll head Buddy off so he doesn’t come barging in and wake her up. We’ll bring over supper for both of you. Say, about six?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I realize that. Don’t forget Dante needs his walkies.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He hung up and looked at Dante, who sat by the back door expectantly. He found the dog’s leash, checked Ann’s breathing once again and slipped out the door with Dante. As he was crossing the street toward the little park, a squad car slid to a stop in front of him.

Buddy stuck his head out the driver’s-side window. “How’s my daughter?”

Paul repeated what he’d told Ann’s mother. Buddy nodded and drove off without a word. The way information passed around this town, he wondered whether Buddy knew he and Ann had been sleeping together.

For a moment he considered that Buddy might have been the one to set up the plane and the riding accident. He had no way of knowing he’d be putting his own daughter in danger.

He dismissed the idea at once. If Buddy had a problem with him, he’d haul Paul into the backyard and deck him.

Ann was still asleep when Paul went back inside with Dante. The dog padded over and carefully climbed onto the bed to snuggle against Ann protectively.

When Ann awoke and started to get up, she groaned. He went to help her, but she pushed him away. “Got to do it myself. Oh, boy.”

“Can I recommend a course of treatment?”

“And that would be what, Doctor?”

“Doctor dear, to you.”

“Okay, Doctor dear.”

“Twenty minutes of ice, twenty minutes of heat. Alternate on the sorest spots. Then another hot shower, another round of liniment, and you let me give you a massage.”

“Sounds lovely, except I don’t have either a heating pad or an ice pack.”

Not for the first time, Paul realized how limited Rossiter was for anything more exotic than eggs and butter. “I’ll be back soon,” he said. “Oh, your mother’s bringing dinner here for both of us. Is that okay?”

“Sure.” She hobbled to the overstuffed easy chair and gently lowered herself into it.

He stopped by his room long enough to change from his borrowed boots and riding britches to jeans and sneakers, then he broke speed limits to town and back. During the entire drive he cursed whoever had cut that leather.

P
AUL SHARED
the soup, sandwiches and brownies that Nancy Jenkins had brought with Ann and her parents, then settled Ann in her big armchair with both heating pad and ice pack.

“Don’t forget,” he said, “twenty minutes hot, twenty minutes cold. It’s what got me through years of baseball.”

“Thanks, Doctor.” She looked over his shoulder to where her parents were cleaning up the kitchen and rolled her eyes. “Send them home. Say I want to go to bed.”

“Would I be telling the truth?”

She whispered, “Are you some kind of sex maniac?”

“I’ll be happy just to hold you and kiss your booboos.” He grinned down at her as she slapped at him.

“Well, baby,” Nancy Jenkins said, “you’re in good hands. Buddy and I are out of here. I don’t suppose I’ll see you at church tomorrow.”

“I don’t suppose. Thanks for coming.”

Paul saw her parents out and took Dante for a walk. He was growing fond of the big mutt.

Ann was still in her chair when he returned. “I think I’m going to sleep right here,” she said. “It’s better when I’m not flat on my back.”

“I’ll remember that,” Paul said.

Her eyes opened wide. “Listen to you.”

“Just trying to cheer you up.”

“Well, don’t. I want to feel pitiful, at least for tonight.
You know, the first thing I thought while I was flying through the air was that all these people were watching me make a fool of myself.”

“You had help.”

“Liege didn’t do anything…” She stared at him, then said quietly, “That’s not what you meant, is it?”

Paul hadn’t planned to tell her about the cut leather and certainly not about the sabotaged plane. But, dammit, if someone was trying to maim or kill him, she might inadvertently walk into another setup meant for him without getting off so lightly. Earlier he’d hidden the stirrup leather in Addy’s button box. Now he went into the workroom, moved the buttons he’d carefully laid on top and brought both pieces of leather back to put into Ann’s lap.

“So?”

“Look at the underside.”

She turned both pieces over. She caught her breath. “Do I see what I think I see?” She sounded very small and frightened.

“If you see that someone slashed halfway through the leather so that it would break under pressure, then yes, you do.”

“It was on the right side, wasn’t it? A rider mounting from the left wouldn’t put any pressure on that stirrup until he was getting set to take the first jump. If it’s a practical joke, it’s a dangerous one.”

“I don’t think it was a joke.”

Her eyes grew round. “I wasn’t supposed to be riding Liege. I was supposed to be on Saga.”

“Right.”

“You think it was aimed at you? Paul, we may not accept incomers as natives until the second generation, but we don’t try to assassinate outsiders simply because they move to town.”

“That’s not all.” He told her about the sabotage to the oil seal on his Cessna. “Expensive to repair and dangerous—although we were close enough to the field that we weren’t in real danger. Hack called me yesterday to say he’d found a puncture in the oil seal on the Stearman, too. It hasn’t been flown recently. There was no engine damage, but I fly low and slow with a full load of fertilizer. With a punctured oil seal, I wouldn’t have had time to react to an engine failure.”

“Hand me the phone. We’ve got to tell Daddy.”

He put his hand over the telephone. “Tell Daddy what? Somebody doesn’t like me? We can’t truly prove the incidents were sabotage and not some kid’s idea of a prank gone wrong.”

“Both incidents? I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences.”

“I don’t, but juries do.”

“Whoever it is could try again.”

“I’m on guard now. I don’t think he’s trying to hurt anybody but me, but you’ll be safer if you keep your distance from me, at least in public. In private is another matter.”

“Don’t joke.”

“I’m not joking. I can look after myself, Ann, but not if I’m worrying about you. Be careful.”

“I promise.” She shivered. “It’s time for the heating pad. Do you mind if I come over there to the couch and let you take its place?”

“My pleasure.” He helped her up and settled her against him on the couch with her quilt over them both.

“Um. You’ve got more heated area than a heating pad,” she said drowsily.

“Parts of me are considerably hotter, too.”

After a few minutes she asked, “What are you going
to do about the…pranks, jokes, attacks, whatever they are?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Maybe you should go on a vacation someplace until the house is finished.”

“You want me to?”

She tilted her face so that she could kiss the underside of his jaw. “I want you here. But I’d prefer you alive.”

H
E FINALLY EASED
Ann into bed about midnight and lay down beside her without undressing. Dante came over, licked the hand he’d trailed over the side of the bed, then lay down on the floor with a sigh.

Paul planned to lie awake and work out the identity of his attacker, but the day had been too long and he was too comfortable lying by Ann’s side. He fell asleep. He didn’t hear Ann get up. The aroma of good coffee finally forced his eyes open.

“Good morning, lazybones.”

He groaned. He was certain his belt had left a permanent crease in his waistline.

“I will kiss a man with whiskers, but I draw the line at unbrushed teeth.”

He opened his eyes. “I expected you to be too sore to move.”

“Your therapy must have worked. I’m hardly sore at all.”

“You passed your aches on to me,” he said. “Give me that coffee this instant, woman.”

He borrowed a new razor and toothbrush from Ann and took a long shower. He suspected his aches came from his wild carriage ride with Mrs. Adler. He dressed, but padded back to Ann’s kitchen barefoot. “Thanks for the new toothbrush. Now you can kiss me.”

The kiss turned long and passionate. He pulled her tightly to him, at which point she yelped and drew away. “I’m still a
little
sore,” she said.

“Feel up to driving into the city for breakfast?”

“The café’s not open, so either we eat dry cereal or we go hunting for bacon and eggs. I’m game.”

“I have to stop by the house to change clothes.” He turned back to her. “Speaking of toothbrushes, the craziest thing happened the other day. My toothbrush disappeared. It was there in the morning and not there in the afternoon.”

“One of the workmen probably used it to clean grout or something and didn’t want to admit it.”

“Hmm.”

“Dante, stay. You’ve had your breakfast.”

During the brief moments before sleep overcame Paul the previous night, one name had come into his mind. Karen Bingham Delaney Lowrance. Had she guessed his identity? Was she behind these…accidents?

Paul had always assumed that his father had killed Michelle on his own. The more he learned about his father, however, the less likely it seemed that he was a murderer. He seemed too weak, too feckless. But he could have had help.

Karen seemed quite capable of committing multiple ax murders if she felt they were necessary. Getting rid of one young Frenchwoman who threatened her and her family wouldn’t have required more than a moment’s consideration.

Could Michelle have met Karen instead of Paul? Karen had been charm itself when he’d interviewed her, yet she might be trying to kill him. His unsophisticated and romantic young mother would have been easy prey. Espe
cially if Karen had offered her consolation, sympathy, even assistance.

Had he spent his whole life blaming his father for a murder he did not commit?

He spent a comfortable, lazy Sunday with Ann. He missed sharing the Sunday
Times,
but the local newspaper wasn’t bad. They put Dante into the back seat of Paul’s car and drove down back country roads and lanes for a couple of hours while Ann showed him some of the sights. She directed him to LaGrange, where several pilots had restored a number of elegant houses much older than his. Paul couldn’t remember ever feeling as content. They drove all the way down to the Mississippi River, which was in flood and therefore considerably mightier than it would be in the summer.

Finally they picked up a couple of steaks to grill on Ann’s back stoop.

And that night they made wonderful love.

They had agreed that if Paul left before six-thirty in the morning, when the café opened, he could make it home without arousing suspicion, then meet Ann for breakfast at seven-thirty as though they had not seen one another since yesterday.

It might have worked, except that a Rossiter squad car driven by a cop Paul did not know saw him cross the square and waved as he drove by.

Busted. No doubt Buddy would be informed before he got to the job site to check on the progress of his crews.

Paul didn’t care about his own reputation. He did worry about Ann’s, however.

Maybe the entire town had banded together to get rid of him before he became the second man to ruin Ann’s life. No. That was absurd.

After breakfast, as he and Ann strolled back to the
house, he looked up at the shining front facade and said, “I had no idea it could possibly turn out this well.”

“We’re not nearly finished. And you’ll have to get rugs, window treatments, real live furniture—”

“Window treatments, at least. When I sell it…”

Ann stopped dead. “When you
sell
it? You plan to sell it?” She looked horrified.

“I mean if…if I sell it,” he stammered.

“You said when.”

“People do sell houses, Ann.”

“You’re doing this on speculation? To make big bucks off your investment, then move on to the next old house?”

“Look, let’s talk inside. Out here on the sidewalk is too public.”

“Suits me if everybody hears. If I ever owned a house like this, I’d
never
sell it. Not for a billion dollars. My God, I’ve put my heart and soul into this restoration and so have my father’s crews. We’ve opened our houses to you, not to mention our beds—”

“Ann—”

“Because we thought you were going to be here in Rossiter, a part of the town.”

“Ann, calm down. We’re fighting over a word, a single word.”

“So you’re not planning to move?”

What could he say? “Not anytime soon, but things change. That doesn’t mean my feelings for you or Rossiter will change. Dammit, I love you!”

A grizzled carpenter just climbing out of his truck grinned and said, “Good for you,” and walked into the house.

“Oh, glory,” Ann said. “That’ll be all over the county by noon.
What
did you say?”

“I said I’m in love with you. I don’t know what that means, and I definitely did not intend for it to happen, but it did.”

“Oh.”

“So let’s just play it as it lies, all right?”

“What if I love you back?”

Paul closed his eyes. “I thought I had everything figured out. Now I don’t know anything. Whatever happens, remember that at this time and forever, I do love you. You got that?”

“Right.” Her eyes were curious.

“Now, I have to go dust my last two crops and you have to go do…whatever it is you have to do.”

“Okay.”

“I am now going to kiss you in full view of the entire town of Rossiter.” He pulled her to him and did precisely that. Then he trotted around to the back of the house, climbed into his car and drove off at a pace that would have earned him a traffic citation if Buddy had been watching.

A
NN SUSPECTED
her father’s guys were snickering at her behind her back, but nobody had the nerve to mention Paul’s kiss. She decided to play it safe and eat lunch at home rather than risk going to the café.

After eating her tuna sandwich, she curled up on the couch with Dante beside her.

Paul’s kiss should have left her with a pure champagne high.

Instead her elation was tempered by unease. She’d learned to trust that instinct—first in her work, then eventually in her life. She could look at a painting and sense a hand, an expression, even occasionally an entirely different painting, invisible beneath layers of varnish. She’d
be willing to give long odds that something was concealed beneath Paul’s surface.

She scratched Dante’s head. He edged closer.

“I’m being silly and oversensitive,” she told him. “Travis conned me so often that I can’t trust any man.”

Dante moaned.

As a cop, Buddy knew about identity theft. Before he’d signed the contract he’d checked Paul’s identity and credit rating. He was precisely who he said he was. He wasn’t lying when he said he’d never been married, and he wasn’t supporting any children.

“Maybe he’s the sort of guy who has to have an adoring female at all times and considers me the best choice of a limited lot. Does he fall in and out of love as easily as Travis did? Will he convince me to give him my love, my trust, then walk away the minute my job is finished?”

In a town like Rossiter, everyone would know. She’d already suffered enough sorrowful glances when she’d divorced Travis. She couldn’t endure any more pity.

But Paul seemed serious. He must know that if he dumped her, Rossiter would line up on her side.

Lord, what a prospect!

She shoved Dante off her lap.

“I need a project for the afternoon that does not involve dental picks. If Aunt Addy’s journal hasn’t been sold or destroyed—if it’s still in the house somewhere—I am darn well going to find it.”

Presenting Paul with Addy’s journal would serve as the perfect apology.