House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) (7 page)

“If he does, he’d better teach the kid to fight.”

“Gram says the only good thing about this stupid name business is that by the time they get past Zebediah and have to start over with Aaron and Billy Bob, we’ll all be dead and gone.”

Paul thought about his own middle name—Antoine. Did that perhaps signify the start of a new dynasty?

“Uncle Conrad was sweet as pie so long as he got exactly what he wanted when he wanted it. The only person he could never bully was my aunt Maribelle.
Nobody
could bully her.”

Paul wanted to tell Ann about the news photo he’d seen, but couldn’t think of a safe way to introduce the subject.

“Gram says he and Aunt Maribelle had the fanciest wedding since the depression began. Twelve bridesmaids and people arriving from as far away as St. Louis. Then they went to Hawaii for their honeymoon. Back in those days you had to take a ship from San Francisco. So romantic. Gram says by the time they got back they were so bored with each other she thought they’d get a divorce.”

“But they didn’t.”

“Nope. Aunt Maribelle was pregnant with the next Delaney, and once they both got back to doing some real work, they got along fine. Too much togetherness will kill any relationship.” She glanced away quickly.

Paul had an idea she wasn’t talking about her great-aunt and uncle. Ann’s last name was Corrigan—another reason he hadn’t twigged to her relationship to Buddy.
There was apparently no husband in the picture, so she must either be divorced or widowed. She wore no wedding ring—no jewelry of any kind. Of course that could be because the chemicals she worked with would damage her jewelry.

“I assume Conrad ran the farms.”

“By that time it was agribusiness—another word for a hell of a lot of land, crops and money.”

“What kind of work did your aunt Maribelle do?”

“She made a career out of driving everybody nuts.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Aunt Maribelle not only had an opinion about everything, she expected that opinion to take precedence over anybody else’s. One time my mother bought a sofa—a big expenditure on a policeman’s salary. Aunt Maribelle took one look at it and said the color was only appropriate if we expected the dog to throw up on it nightly. I thought Gram would kill her.”

She stood and began picking up the dishes. He rose to help, but she pushed him down again. “Nope. It’s a one-person kitchen with a dishwasher. Want some decaf?”

“No, thanks.” He really should get up, thank her for dinner and leave. “Do the Delaneys always give the oldest son the first name of Paul?”

“Actually, since the first Paul, the one that built the house, there’s only been one son per generation, and he’s always Paul the-next-letter-of-the-alphabet.” She placed the dishes into the dishwasher, then leaned on the counter. “Suppose they’d called them the way the English did? Adam the Inheritor, Barrett the Forecloser, Conrad the Roarer…”

“What would my…Trey’s father be known as?”

She thought a moment. “David the Artist? David the Drunk? Not quite right. I think he’d be David the Sad.”

Paul caught his breath. So maybe his father hadn’t quite gotten away with what he’d done. Maybe he had had a conscience. If so, it apparently hadn’t stung him hard enough to make him confess.

Ann began to knead her left shoulder. Despite his resolution, he’d taken advantage of her. She had worked long and hard today even if he hadn’t. He didn’t want to leave the comfort of this room, the pleasure of her company. When he wasn’t forcing himself to probe for facts, he found he was enjoying himself in a way he hadn’t since long before the accident.

In the end, she solved his problem. “Go home,” she said, but with a smile. “You’re tired, I’m tired, and we both need to get to bed.”

“You’re right,” he said, and stood. She followed him to the back door and flicked a switch that turned on a light above the outside landing. “Wait a minute. You’ll need a flashlight or you’ll break your neck on the garbage cans.”

He stood with one hand on the doorknob. “The dinner was wonderful. Good night.” He started to leave, then turned back to her. “Will I screw up the employer-employee relationship if I kiss you?”

Her eyes widened. “Uh—”

“Damned if I care.” He slid his good arm around her waist and pulled her toward him.

She came readily into his arms, dropped the flashlight onto the floor with a clatter they both ignored and wrapped her arms around him.

God, she felt so soft. Her mouth, still sweet from the wine, opened to him. He pressed her hips against him, knew that he was already too aroused for a single kiss and didn’t let her go.

She shoved him away. “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

“I think it’s a great idea.”

“Go home. Please. Just go home.” She turned away.

He caught Dante’s curious eye, but the big dog made no move toward him.

“All right.” He wrapped his fingers gently around her ponytail. “I still think it’s a great idea. Thanks again for dinner. I owe you one.”

He shut the door quietly behind him.

Halfway down the stairs to the alley he stopped. A great idea? It had been a great kiss, but a lousy idea. Hadn’t he been telling himself that over and over again? Somehow whenever Ann was close to him, all his good intentions evaporated, and pure animal lust—or something—took over.

A
NN HEARD
his footsteps on the stairs. She wrapped her arms around herself. “No, no, no. This will not happen. He’s everything I do not want in a man ever again. You hear that, Dante? No more good-looking, sweet-talking, mystery men. No more risky relationships. No more getting myself in over my head because of my heart, not to mention other parts of my body.” She turned to the kitchen and began to polish the slate countertops viciously. “It’s been so damn long since I went to bed with anybody, Dante. I thought maybe I was past all the sex stuff. Hah! He even asked if he could kiss me. Is that a ploy or what?” She scrubbed and dried the frying pan and hung it back on the pot rack.

Then she picked up the telephone and dialed a New York number.

“Hey, Marti, it’s me.”

“Good evening, Ann. If I sound cool, it’s because I
am. I have not had so much as an e-mail from you for a month. Where are you? Still in Buffalo?”

“Sorry,” Ann said softly. “I’m back home doing the Delaney job I told you about. I truly have been busy. And I haven’t had one interesting thing to say. Boring, boring, boring.”

“So now you do have something to say?”

“I need some advice. Who else would I call except my dearest girlfriend?”

“Oh, God, can it. I would like to make you grovel some more, but I’d prefer to hear about the advice thing. Advice graciously given 24/7. What have you done now?”

“Kissed a client.”

“God forbid. Twenty lashes. Wait a minute. This calls for a glass of wine and a cigarette.”

“Marti! I thought you’d quit.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m down to six a day. This will be the seventh, but what the hey, it’s a special occasion. So what’s wrong with kissing a client?”

“He is gorgeous, well-off, smart and funny, and he’s restoring my favorite house in the world.”

“So that’s bad? What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s gorgeous, well-off, smart and funny, and he’s restoring my favorite house in the world.”

“This does not compute.”

“Damn right it doesn’t. I keep asking myself why, why, why? What’s his agenda?”

“Why does he have to have an agenda?”

“Because men do, as you very well know.”

“I know that the agenda of most of the men I meet is simply to get into my knickers,” Marti responded. “Then to get out of my knickers and walk away. Do you think that’s your client’s agenda?”

“His ex-fiancée was a flight attendant, for God’s sake!
Somebody asked one of those big rock stars—I can’t remember which one—why he only dated beautiful women. Know what he said? ‘Because I can.’ Trust me, this guy can, too. I’m not about to be a stopgap because Rossiter is a small town with a limited pool of available flight attendants and models. I’m available, he’s horny and too lazy to go cruising for somebody better.”

“Who said there was anybody better?”

“Want a list? Starting with Travis?”

“Your ex-husband never believed there was anybody
better.
He just wanted
more
women, not better ones. You were the one who wanted the divorce.”

“He wanted me as a meal ticket while he pursued his career. The point is, I never figured it out. I thought we were totally in sync, saw the world the same way, saw our whole lives together the same way, were there for each other. It took me forever to get it through my head we weren’t.”

“Yeah. You were there, and he was in somebody else’s bed.”

“It hurt, dammit, Marti! Every time I caught him in another affair and bought into his promises that it would be the last time, a little bit more of my self-esteem vanished, along with a little bit more of my love for him. Finally there wasn’t much left of either. I’m just starting to feel that I’m not such a loser, but I’m not ready to put my ego to another test. Certainly not against flight attendants and models.”

“So, if he’s Mr. Wrong, who’s Mr. Right?” Marti coughed. “That’s it. I quit smoking completely as of right this minute. Better I should breathe.”

“Good thinking. Mr. Right is some nice, middle-aged farmer or an accountant or somebody safe with a nine-to-
five job, decent prospects and the desire to settle down and raise a family.”

“With a wife like you who spends nine months of the year restoring stuff all over the country?”

“I’d cut back on my job for a husband and babies, but I want somebody who would be there for
me
for a change. Somebody who was content with me and only me.”

“This guy isn’t?”

“How could he be? Except as an interim measure? I don’t want to find out I’m being used again.”

“When was the last time you went to bed with somebody?”

“You don’t even want to know.”

“That long? Okay, here’s the deal. You don’t have to be head over heels in love with a guy to have great sex with him. If it gets that far and you want to try it, then try it. If it’s great, then enjoy it without getting emotionally involved.”

“Oh, sure, like that’s going to happen.”

“If it’s lousy, kiss him goodbye and go find your farmer. Lust in the dust. God, I love it.”

“Marti, I wish I’d never called you.”

“Other than taking another job out of town and dropping this one, I don’t have any other suggestions. Unless, of course, you want to fall in love and take your chances.”

“No way! For once in my life, I intend to listen to my head and not my heart.” Ann hit the counter with the flat of her hand. “Ow, that hurt.”

“An affair isn’t so bad,” Marti said. “I prefer affairs. They leave me more closet space.”

“I don’t think I can do affairs.”

“Big surprise. I would never have guessed. Then start hunting for your farmer or your accountant and drop your— What did he retire from?”

“He was a transport pilot. He’s going to be a crop duster down here.”

“A pilot?” Marti groaned. “You can definitely pick ’em. Good luck, sweetie, and keep me posted. By the way, have you heard from Travis lately?”

“What makes you think I might have?”

“He called and tried to find out where you were working.”

“Did you tell him?” Ann yelled into the phone so loudly that Dante jumped up in alarm.

“Of course not.”

“Well, somehow he got my number in Buffalo and called me. Would you believe he wanted me to send him some money so he could get the brakes fixed on his car? ‘You can’t live in Los Angeles without a car, babe.’”

“I can just hear him. You sent it, didn’t you, you idiot.”

“Yes, all right. I sent it, but it’s supposed to be a loan, not a gift.”

“You should have told him to get it from whatever woman he’s sleeping with at the moment.”

“Marti, it’s only money. That’s the one thing I’ve got enough of at the moment.”

“Well, did the bells still ring when you heard his voice?”

“I didn’t even
recognize
his voice. I used to think I couldn’t live if I weren’t married to him. Now I just wish he could get a decent job.”

“I wish he’d get boiled in oil.”

“At least I’ve got a grip on reality finally. I don’t want to lose it.”

“Good luck with your gorgeous guy. Better check him out before you fall too far and too hard.”

They talked for twenty minutes longer, but only in gen
eralities. Finally Ann hung up, flung herself down on her bed, laid her head on Dante’s dark flank and decided to stop worrying about the state of her heart. She’d concentrate, instead, on her libido. At least that she could control.

As she slipped into sleep, she thought,
I wonder what we’ll find when we open Uncle David’s studio?

“O
NLY A MAN
would have bought a house without looking into this old place,” Ann said. She peered at the padlock on the old summerhouse in Paul’s backyard, then offered him the bolt cutters. Behind them, Dante was investigating some newly turned earth that was probably a molehill.

Paul reached for the cutters, then dropped his arm. This was one of the things he most despised about his injury. “Better get one of the workmen. I doubt if I can put enough pressure on them.”

“It’s okay. I can do it.” She slipped the hasp of the lock into the jaws of the cutter, gave a couple of grunts and bore down. Paul stood by helplessly.

“There,” she said as the hasp gave a satisfying snap. “Want to do the honors?”

But he was in no mood to accept her salve to his ego. “You broke it, you get to take it off.”

She slipped the padlock off the hasp. “First time anybody’s been in here since Uncle David died, I guess. He always kept it locked when he wasn’t working and sometimes when he was. Gram said Maribelle pocketed his key to the padlock at the funeral home when they brought his body in. Watch out for snakes.”

“Snakes?”

“Sure. Bound to be holes in the floor and cabinets. Toasty place for a snake to spend the winter. They haven’t
warmed up enough yet to run away from you. At least you should open the door. It’s your building.”

Suddenly Paul felt nauseated. He did not want to touch that knob. “You do it.”

“Okay.” No hesitation there. Ann was unlikely to hesitate. And if there were ghosts or snakes, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather have with him when he encountered them. The door creaked on its hinges like a bad melodrama and scraped along the floorboards as it opened. “Shove, for Pete’s sake,” she said. “It’s stuck.”

Paul braced himself against the door and pushed. It squealed, but gave. A breath of stale air slipped past him.

Ann found the light switch beside the door and flipped it on. Nothing happened. “Not surprising the light’s blown after all these years.” She picked up her flashlight from the doorstep and shone the beam around the space. A single bulb hung down on a black cord above their heads.

“Yuck. Watch out for black widows and brown recluse spiders. Talk about spiderwebs! Dracula’s castle had nothing on this.” She used the light to brush away the cobwebs in front of them.

Paul heard the scuttling. Mice.

Dante let out a healthy bark.

“Hush, you can’t get to them, Dante,” Ann said, then turned to Paul. “If you’d had a lick of sense, you’d have had Daddy break that padlock, then fumigate and bait this place when he did the rest of the house.”

“I didn’t think of it, and he didn’t mention it.”

“Men.”

Overhead he heard a rhythmic scratching sound. At some point the room might have had a ceiling, but it had been removed so that the rafters were exposed. A large skylight not visible from outside covered nearly the entire
north slope of the roof. It was so dirty that it let in almost no light, but through the gloom, Paul could see the long fingers of branches scrabbling against it like talons.

“Go away, snake!” Ann said, and stamped her feet.

Paul caught his breath.

“Just a precaution,” she said. “But don’t open any cabinets casually. Look, I’m going back to the house for a broom, some cleaning cloths and a couple of work lamps. You want to stay here or come with me?”

“I’ll stay.”

“Back in a minute.”

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw several ghostly shapes. Walking carefully in case the floorboards were rotten, he inched toward a tall, sheet-covered rectangle. An easel. With a canvas on it. He pulled out his handkerchief, wrapped it around his hand and lifted the edge of the sheet, then flipped it back so that it landed on the floor.

The dust storm made him cough and started his eyes watering. “I should have waited for Ann,” he said, then looked up at the canvas.

White. A big canvas with an initial coat of white sizing. His father had not began even to sketch out the picture he planned to paint.

Paul felt a stir of disappointment. A second, smaller easel sat at right angles to the first. He covered his mouth and nose with his other hand and flicked off that sheet, as well. Another blank canvas. Had his father used this room, his painting, simply as a ruse to have a private place to get stinking drunk and sleep off his stupor in privacy? Across the far wall lay another sheet on what must be a sofa of some sort. It looked like a corpse laid out for burial.

“Hey.”

Paul started as Ann came in. He took the lamps from her.

“There’s a plug in that overhead light fixture,” she said. “Can you reach it?”

He stretched up and plugged the heavy orange cord into the plug on top of the naked bulb, then waited while Ann flipped the switch on the lamp.

“Great,” she said. “Now all we have to do is to find someplace to hang it. I brought a new bulb.” She reached up and hooked the light over the top of the door.

He unscrewed the broken bulb, taking care not to break it. He could see that it was rusted, but he managed to ease it out, then insert the fresh bulb. Miraculously the fixture still worked. The light chased the shadows to the far side of the room. “He was a painter. Even with the light that should be coming through that skylight, he had to have needed more light than this.”

Ann pointed the flashlight toward the roof beams. “There’s a couple of fluorescent lights up there. Unless they’ve gotten wet, they might still work. Now, how do you turn them on?”

She began to amble around the room. He watched her. There was no reason she should feel anything about this room. To Ann it was simply an interesting curiosity to be explored.

“Here we go,” she said, and flicked a switch on the side of one of the waist-high cabinets that were built against three of the walls. Three of the fluorescents flickered, then lit. For the first time Paul could take a good look at the room.

He saw evidence that it had once done duty as a kitchen. In the corner by the door was a heavy double sink with old-fashioned brass faucets. Farther along the eastern wall a break in the cabinets indicated a stove must
have stood there. An aged and possibly deadly portable electric heater now occupied the space. The stove pipe that would have vented the stove outside had been left attached to the wall with only a cap at the lower end to keep any vermin out.

Ann walked over to the couch and tossed back the sheet that covered it.

“Wow,” she said, and coughed, “Look at this.”

It was a Victorian recamier elaborately carved to resemble a swan. The back of the recamier was a lifted wing, the couch itself nestled where the swan’s body would have been. Since his father’s death it had obviously become not only a home but a source of building materials for the mice that had moved in when the place was padlocked.

“Real horsehair,” Ann said, “or what remains of it. Ever sit on horsehair? It’s slick as glass and not nearly as comfortable.” A couple of aged pillows and a filthy patchwork quilt were laid neatly on the end of the sofa. The down from the pillows lay around the floor by the sofa like snow. He thought he could see holes in the patchwork. “This is wonderful. You’ll have to have it reupholstered after I restore it—you do want it in the house, don’t you?”

He wasn’t sure he did, but she seemed so eager he didn’t have the heart to disappoint her. “Of course. If you make it decent again.”

“I know just where to put it.” She began to wander again. “Wonder where he kept his liquor?” She spotted the two white canvases. “Maybe he didn’t even try to paint, just came out here to get sozzled.”

On one of the counters sat a dusty portable record player with a few records in their sleeves beside it. Ann picked one up and blew a cloud of dust off it. “Edith
Piaf. Great singer, but she could drive even a
happy
man to suicide.”

Paul watched her move around the room. Let her do the exploring. He found he didn’t want to touch this stuff. It gave him the creeps to see the sad remnants of his father’s life. How could a man who had done that perceptive sketch of Buddy sink so far into alcoholism and despair that he simply sized canvases on which he couldn’t lay down even a single stroke?

“You said Maribelle wouldn’t let anyone in here after he died?” he asked.

“She must have come in at least once. I doubt that Uncle David draped that couch or those canvases as an ordinary thing. That must have been done after he was dead. Maribelle always said he had left strict instructions with her that this place was not to be disturbed if something happened to him.” She shrugged. “But according to my grandmother, Aunt Maribelle would say anything if it got her what she wanted. I can’t see her simply tossing sheets on stuff and walking out without at least peeking into the cupboards, can you? I sure couldn’t.”

“I don’t think I could, either. But she was grief-stricken, remember. She’d lost her husband…”

“Then she saw her son die.”

He gaped at her. “She saw it?”

“She was riding right behind him. She was a whip.”

“And that is?”

“A whipper-in. There are usually two or three on every hunt. They’re in charge of keeping the hounds in order. She was one of the first to reach him.”

“She must have been—what?—in her sixties at the time?”

“So?”

He remembered that picture of mother and son in hunt
ing gear. He’d assumed it had been taken years before his father’s accident. “She was still riding horses over fences?”

“I certainly expect to be riding over fences when I’m ninety.”

Paul shook his head. “I keep thinking of her as a Southern lady wearing white gloves and a hat.” Despite the picture, he still thought of her that way. A formidable lady, maybe, but still a lady.

“Hah. I don’t think she put on a hat except for church on Sunday. Your views of little old Southern ladies are about three generations out of date. Aunt Maribelle drove tractors and cotton pickers and exercised horses and drove her pickup truck like a maniac almost up to the day she died. Now, if you want a little old Southern lady, Aunt Addy played the part to a T, but in her way she was stronger and tougher than Maribelle.”

“How so?”

“Can’t have been easy being the poor relation living with your rich sister and teaching piano lessons out of the music room. Addy must have bitten her tongue so often it’s a miracle she still had one.”

As she talked, Ann had been wandering around the room with her broom brushing cobwebs off countertops and ceiling beams. She wasn’t following any particular pattern or showing any urgency. Now she stopped in front of the cabinet beside the sink and hunkered down.

“Watch it,” he said. “Snakes, remember?”

“No self-respecting snake would stick around with all the noise we’ve been making,” Ann said. “At least I hope not.” She pulled a pair of heavy work gloves out of the waistband of her jeans, slipped them on and gingerly opened one of the cabinet doors.

She picked up her flashlight and pointed it inside.
“Aha! The stash.” She reached in, pulled out a liquor bottle and blew a cloud of dust off it. “Uncle David did himself proud, I’ll say that for him. Napoleon brandy—very old, very fine.” She set the bottle on the counter and pulled out another. “Jack Daniel’s Black Label. Tons of it. His drink of choice.” She pulled out a heavy crystal glass. It was filthy, but obviously fine.

Ann set it on the counter. “Okay. Now assuming you were a painter and were actually painting, what would you need?”

“Paints, brushes, palettes, turpentine, charcoal pencils canvas, paper—I’m no artist.”

“Good start. He was always fastidious, but my grandmother said that was just because he was always drunk. He had that squeaky-clean look that so many real alcoholics get. He always smelled of aftershave and peppermint.”

Ann began opening the rest of the cupboards and reciting her inventory. He knew he should help, but he simply could not bear to touch the things that his father must have touched, possibly might have loved.

“Here we go—the oil paint in the tubes is still squishy. Pencils, sketch pads…”

“Anything on them?”

“Blank.” She held out a block of sketch paper to him, then set it on top of the counter. “Blank, blank, blank. Poor guy. Looks as if his muse abandoned him.”

“Probably chased off by Bacchus.”

She looked up at him. “That bothers you, doesn’t it? The whole alcohol thing, I mean.”

“Yes, it bothers me.” He hoped his tone would cut off any discussion. “Alcohol has never been my drug of choice.”

“What is?” She looked up at him curiously.

“Flying.”

“Oh.” She gave a small nod and moved to the next cabinet. In twenty minutes all the tools of an artist were spread on the tops of the cabinets.

“He must have done some work sometime,” Paul said. “More than the quick caricatures, I mean. If he never sold or showed anything, he had to have done something with his finished canvases.”

“Maybe he destroyed them. More likely, Aunt Maribelle destroyed everything she found distasteful. His paintings might have been as wicked as his caricatures.”

“Would she destroy his things?”

Ann chewed on her bottom lip. “I can’t see it, personally. In Aunt Maribelle’s eyes, Uncle David could do no wrong. She must have thought his work was genius. That was all of him that was left. Why would she destroy it?”

“So maybe he didn’t want anybody to see what he was working on.” He moved around the room. “Why hide anything? The place was padlocked. He had the only key.”

Ann laughed. “You can bet Maribelle had a duplicate key long before she snatched up the one he had with him when he died. Maybe she didn’t use it very often, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she snuck in here to check up on him when he wasn’t around. Besides, what if he passed out in here or the place caught fire after he’d locked himself in? I certainly would want to be able to get in fast if my son were drinking and playing with turpentine in a room with an open wall heater.”

“Maybe there wasn’t anything to destroy.”

“I don’t believe that,” Ann said. “Gram says he always had little bits of paint under his fingernails even after he scrubbed himself raw.” She peered around the room. “Either Maribelle took everything with her when she
closed the place up, in which case it should have been among her things after she died, or Uncle David took the stuff somewhere else, which I doubt, or he hid it.”