Persuasion (30 page)

Her gift told her the gold wasn’t what was buried at Colesworth Place. And logic said that any spirits strong enough to fling Obadiah on his ass could do a whole lot worse to the archaeologists and to Cassie and her family.

Obadiah’s threat aside, when it came down to it, she had no choice.

“What kind of food do you want us to bring?” she asked.

“Bread,” Obadiah said without a flicker of emotion. “Two whole loaves in the morning and again at night. Apart from that, I’m not picky about what you bring, so long as it isn’t peanut butter. I never did learn to like peanut butter.”

Barrie felt like nothing was going to surprise her anymore. She nodded without looking at Eight, but she didn’t need to see Eight to feel the waves of fury emanating from him.

Eight didn’t start arguing with Barrie immediately. The fight brewed between them in silence while they descended the path toward the Colesworth dock. She darted a glance at him, then bit her lip and concentrated on keeping her footing. They both came to a startled stop when something large rustled and thrashed on the hillside to their right.

“What’s that?” Barrie scanned the overgrown mixture of wisteria and kudzu that blanketed the hillside.

“A deer maybe. Or a gator.”

Whatever it had been, the sound wasn’t repeated. They resumed walking, and the grim set of Eight’s features reminded Barrie of something he’d once said about Cassie needing to be defused before she exploded.

“You’re the one who wanted to go see Obadiah in the first
place,” she said when they reached the river. “I didn’t want to go, so you don’t get to be mad at me.”

Eight stepped onto the surviving section of the Colesworth dock. Holding Barrie’s elbow, he moved cautiously to where the
Away
tapped lightly against the pilings in the current. For once, the river was deserted. There were no other boats in sight.

He unwound the rope and held it taut, gesturing for her to jump into the boat. “What promise was Obadiah talking about?” he asked. “What threat?”

“Your gift.” Barrie wished as hard as she could that they were already across the river and her head wasn’t pounding. “If I help him, then he’ll help you. Or not.”

Either her attempt at evasion worked, or Eight let it pass. “I’d trust an alligator to guard a poodle before I’d trust that man with my gift,” he said.

“All the more reason to keep an eye on him, don’t you think? Still, he could have made you trust him. He’s done it to me before. The fact that he isn’t messing with either of our heads right now should tell us something.”

As she said it, though, Barrie wondered if it was Eight’s gift that had somehow kept Obadiah from manipulating Eight’s mind the way he had played with hers. The Beaufort gift had probably been the reason Obadiah hadn’t wanted Eight involved in the first place, and when Eight had said he
couldn’t read Obadiah, Obadiah had seemed relieved.

The problem—one of many problems—was that Barrie didn’t understand how Eight’s mind and his gift intertwined. She didn’t even understand her own gift well enough for that, which was one more reason why she had to be careful about the possible side effects of Obadiah’s threat.

Eight cast off as Barrie put on her life vest. “There’s a catch somewhere. If all Obadiah wanted was food, he could order up a pizza.”

Barrie snorted and settled onto the seat. “Think that through a minute. It’ll come to you.”

“He’s manipulating you. Some sort of smoke-and-mirrors enticement to lure you back in. Now that you’ve agreed to this, he’ll ask you for something else. The question is, what’s he ultimately after? It’s strange not knowing what he wants.” Eight pulled the cord on the outboard motor perhaps a little more forcefully than was strictly required. “It’s like I’m partially blind. I hate the gift, but being without it is disorienting. I might miss it a little.”

“You can’t read him at all?” Barrie raised her voice above the motor’s rumble, and lifted her face to the heavy air stirred up as the boat got under way.

The wind teased Eight’s hair and made him look younger. More vulnerable. “All I feel is a tar pit of wants with everything dark and bubbling, and every now and then a shape
approaches the surface. I get a hint, and then it submerges again. I’ll tell you this much, removing the curse is only part of what he wants—and he doesn’t want me to know what he’s really after.”

“Not everyone is comfortable laying themselves open for examination,” Barrie said mildly. “Not that his motives change anything. We don’t have a choice. Sending Cassie back to jail isn’t an option, and the last thing we want is anyone even mentioning ghosts. If the archaeologists are going to dig, we can’t leave them vulnerable. You didn’t see the way Obadiah was blown backward last night—”

“You didn’t give me a chance to see it.”

Barrie blinked at him and blew out a long, slow breath. Her voice was small, swallowed by the sound of the motor, not even really intended for his ears. “Are you ever going to let that go?”

He surprised her by answering at all. “Maybe. Eventually. If you want it bad enough,” he said with a halfhearted
almost
smile. Then he closed his eyes. “Oh hell, Bear. I lied earlier. Or I was fooling myself. I wouldn’t miss this gift. I’d give anything—
anything
—to be rid of it. Wouldn’t you rather have a normal life?”

Bending over the side of the
Away
, Barrie averted her face, trailing her fingers in the water, torn about too many things. The river spilled through her hand, and she knew the moment
she had crossed the midpoint, not only because her headache was gone, but because the current of energy that connected her to Watson’s Landing instantly returned.

She wasn’t used to having to explain herself. She’d only ever had Mark, and the two of them hadn’t been like separate people when it came to decisions or secrets or even thoughts. They had spent so many years being on the same side against Lula that Barrie couldn’t remember a single time that she had wanted something other than what Mark had wanted, or vice versa.

Obadiah had as much as said she had to choose between her gift and Eight. How could she?

The boat bumped against the Watson dock, and she took off her life vest and tossed it aside. “You don’t have to come to the door with me,” she said as he started to tie the boat off. “I’ll be all right.”

His face blank, Eight straightened slowly. “We’re supposed to work on the restaurant today, remember?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to retort that Pru and Mary didn’t need any help. The restaurant was the only thing that seemed to be going right. Everywhere Barrie turned, something needed to be fixed, and whether that was because it had all been brewing before she got there, or because she had somehow stirred it up, it felt as though most of it was her responsibility.

After crossing the garden in near silence, she and Eight climbed to the top of the steps, crossed the porch, and reached for the doorknob simultaneously.

Inside the kitchen, the table looked like a flower shop the day before a wedding, strewn with bows and flowers and silver ribbons being crafted into an assortment of experimental centerpiece arrangements. Pru and Mary had been laughing when the door opened, but their smiles slipped into almost comically identical expressions of suspicion on seeing Eight and Barrie.

“Well?” Mary said. “What’d the Colesworth girl do this time?”

Pru scrutinized Barrie almost frantically, as if checking for wounds or blood. “You look upset, sugar. Everything all right?”

“Of course.” Barrie shot Eight a silent plea for help. “The archaeologists have already found a hidden room using some kind of ground-penetrating radar. It was fascinating,” she said too brightly.

“Fascinating,” Eight echoed unconvincingly. He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I can’t wait to see what they find.”

“What do you mean ‘see’?” Pru stopped in the act of lacing a strand of ribbon through a basket of white hydrangeas and roses. Her hands went still, and the last pink-cheeked traces of
laughter faded from her face. “You said you were going over for one quick look.”

Barrie took two tall glasses from the kitchen cupboard. “But now that they’ve found something—”

“I don’t care if they’ve found three-toed aliens from outer space, you aren’t going back there. I’m counting on you and Eight both to help with the furniture when the appraiser and the movers come, and then there’s the horses arriving tomorrow. The feed and the shavings for the bedding will be here in the morning, not to mention that the tack and grooming supplies I ordered should show up. All that will need to be put away.”

“Going to Cassie’s won’t interfere,” Barrie said, hoping the
yunwi
would help with all that, too. She went to the refrigerator to pull out a pitcher of lemonade. “We’ll just run over to the dig a couple of times and see what they’re up to. There’s a whole crew working over there, so you won’t need to worry.”

Pru set the flowers on the table and sat back in her chair. “I suppose you and Eight are going to do what you want to do anyway, so I might as well save my breath. In some ways, you’re too much like your mother.”

Barrie whipped around from the refrigerator to protest, but Pru held up two fingers in a
Hold on
gesture. “You didn’t know Lula like I did. . . .” She flushed and dropped her hand. “Oh, sugar. That came out wrong. I meant you didn’t know Lula back when she was your age.”

Barrie didn’t know why that hit her so hard, but it did. Her stomach twisted as she felt all over again, as if for the very first time, that her mother was gone—truly gone—and she had never really known her at all. She hated that the curse and the gifts, and Emmett and the Colesworths, had taken so much away from all of them.

Eight watched her, then took the lemonade and poured her a glass. “You know,” he said, turning to Pru, “it would be a shame to waste these centerpieces. We should do a trial run of the restaurant. We could use Dad and Kate and Daphne as guinea pigs.”

“Daphne’s goin’ to be helpin’ me serve,” Mary said. “But that’s not a bad idea. It’ll be different from settin’ up in the tearoom, and if you two want to help cook . . . It’d be a chance to take pictures for the website and the advertising. Then we wouldn’t have to wait an extra week.”

Pru gave Mary a brief, keen appraisal. “We’d have to do it tomorrow night, since we have to deal with the appraisers and the movers. Can we make that work? Or is it too soon?”

“We can manage,” Mary said.

“That’s settled, then. In which case . . .” Pru turned to Eight and Barrie. “Would you two go by the hardware store for me? I talked to Darrel about the submergible lights you wanted. If we’re going to take photos, we’ll want to have that set up for effect.”

The last thing Barrie wanted was to be alone with Eight anymore.

“It shouldn’t take you long,” Pru said.

Eight poured himself a glass of lemonade and drank it with his back to the room and his shoulders stiff. Then he went to retrieve the keys to the Mercedes and stood jingling them while Barrie put the pitcher back in the refrigerator. Glancing at him worriedly, Barrie wondered if he’d read her—if he was hurt. Of course he was hurt.

She really needed to figure out how to keep her wants to herself. She also needed to learn to drive a car so he wouldn’t have to cart her around like a five-year-old. And a boat would be nice. Probably she needed to learn to swim, too, and she definitely needed some friends of her own, because how pathetic was it that the only person who was available to teach her any of those things was Eight?
He
was the reason she needed to learn them in the first place, so she
wouldn’t need him for every last stupid little thing.

“Damn, I think I need a twelve-step program. Or a shrink,” she muttered.

“Tell Darrel you’ve come for the fairy globes, and don’t forget to get some fishing net and sinkers to keep them from floating away,” Pru called after her as Barrie followed Eight through the swinging door into the corridor.

Not wanting to argue with Eight when they got in the car, Barrie concentrated on thinking how happy Pru and Mary had looked working on the flowers. “That was a good idea about doing the trial run,” she said. “For Mary’s sake, maybe we can open next week, if we can book some customers.”