Ready & Willing (14 page)

It meant
nothing
, he told himself. There was no pit of ice in hell, because there was no hell. When he died, whatever made him alive would go wherever it went when people ceased to be alive. There was no punishment or reward in the afterlife. Nor was there any in this life. Life was what you made of it, and this life was all you had. As he turned his attention to the unremarkable apartment house on Everett again, he reminded himself that he’d made a very remarkable life for himself. An enviable life. A life that included everything he could possibly ever want.

For some reason, that made him think of Mrs. Magill again. He told himself he felt sorry for
Mr.
Magill. Any woman that shrewish and indomitable couldn’t be easy to live with. She’d been difficult enough just to converse with. Of course, he couldn’t help reminding himself, she did have other things to recommend her. Enormous blue eyes. Generous curves. A mouth that sent a man’s thoughts spiraling into mayhem.

He pushed the memory of Audrey Magill’s assets—and Audrey Magill’s everything else—to the back of his brain. Not only because she was a married woman, but because he would never see her again. Whatever was causing him to be cold, there was bound to be some physiological explanation for it. He need only make an appointment with his doctor to verify that. And he would. For the very next day.

Soul schmole,
he thought as he tipped the glass to his mouth and consumed what was left of its contents in one swallow. He had far more important things to think about right now. Which was why he would starting thinking about them right now. And he would stop thinking about Audrey Magill’s—
Mrs.
Magill’s, he reminded himself—enormous blue eyes and generous curves, and mouth that sent a man’s thoughts spiraling into mayhem . . .

 

AUDREY COULD SAFELY SAY THAT THE ABSOLUTE
last person she would have expected to darken her door—very nearly literally, since he practically filled it—was Nathaniel Summerfield. Though, judging by his expression when she opened her front door late Friday morning to find him there, she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. In addition to looking like he had no idea what he was doing here, however, he looked like he hadn’t slept for days. His espresso-colored eyes were smudged by faint purple crescents, dark stubble shadowed the lower half of his face like a Mack truck, and his black hair was rowdy and untamed, as if he’d driven restless fingers through it again and again and again. Instead of one of his faultless power suits and wing tips, he wore a pair of battered khaki trousers and a wrinkled white Oxford shirt, coupled with scruffy Top-Siders. And although the morning was on the warm side, he’d slung on a heavy brown cable-knit cardigan and was clutching it close to his body, as if he were cold.

Clearly he was not working today, which was, perhaps, the strangest realization of all. Mr. Darling of the Business Section These Days must have dozens of people lining up to see him, and Audrey would bet every last one of them had appointments.

“Mrs. Magill,” he said, foregoing, as he always did, any form of greeting. The big jerk. “Normally, I wouldn’t bother you at home this way, but since you operate your business out of your home—”

Ignoring, for now, the fact that he had gone to the trouble to find that out, Audrey interjected, “But my business isn’t open yet. The grand opening for Finery is exactly two weeks before Derby, which means tomorrow, which means you are indeed bothering me at home.” And since Cecilia was on her lunch hour, leaving Audrey here alone, that would make it look even more like he was bothering her at home. Even if she
was
, technically, at work.

But he didn’t seem to notice her interruption, as he’d dropped his gaze from her face while he was talking to her. Not that Audrey wasn’t used to that kind of thing from men, but Nathaniel hadn’t focused his attention on the two things men usually focused on when they spoke to her. Instead, he darted his gaze between her two hands, one of which—the one she had fisted on her hip—was gripping a fairly large, and very pink, ostrich feather. Which, okay, considering the placement on her hip might make it look as if she’d just sprouted tail feathers herself, so she supposed she could see why he might be staring. Except that it was definitely her hand—and not the feather—he was staring at. And although her other hand held nothing and was hanging listless at her side, he looked at it as if it held the Holy Grail.

As an experiment, she fisted that hand, too, on her jean-clad hip. Sure enough, his gaze followed. She lifted it higher, adjusting the collar of her chambray work shirt, which in no way needed adjusting. Again, his gaze followed her hand. So she moved it over the crown of her head and back to her ponytail, and when his gaze started to follow her hand again, she dipped her head to the side to meet his eyes and wiggled her fingers in greeting to get his attention.

That finally snapped him out of the strange stupor he’d fallen into, because he made a face and met her gaze levelly once again. But all he said was, “I’m sorry. Hello.” Then, as if he wanted to emphasize that he did indeed know who she was, he added, “Mrs. Magill.”

“Mr. Summerfield,” she said, deliberately not returning his hello, since, hey, he’d started it.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“Gee, I don’t know. I don’t recall you having an appointment.”

She regretted the sarcastic remark as soon as she made it. Because there was something in his eyes, and something in his tone, that actually looked and sounded . . . solicitous? Oh, surely not. A man like him wasn’t capable of the condition. But there was something there that hadn’t been there before, and it tempered the arrogance and crabbiness to the point where she felt almost amenable to him. And since, she reminded herself, she would be haunted by his great-great-however-many-greats grandfather until she helped him get his soul back, she relented. She said nothing, however, as she stepped backward and opened the front door farther, silently inviting him in.

He eagerly pushed past her to enter but halted almost immediately once he was inside, his gaze ricocheting around the room as if he were looking for something. Or maybe he was just put off by the uber-feminine décor and the scores of frilly hats scattered about. There were even more now than there had been a few days ago, since Audrey’s grand opening was tomorrow, and she’d invested in a huge weekend media blitz to promote Finery, so she was counting on—
oh, please, please, please
—scores of customers to show up over the next few days.

There were hats in every color imaginable, from small boaters decorated with nothing more than bright bits of ribbon and small silk flowers, to massive chapeaux piled high with roses, feathers, and lace. She could never tell what would be popular in any given year, and women’s choices in head apparel were as individual as the women themselves. So Audrey always made sure she had a wide variety of styles and colors available. She also had a room filled with . . . stuff . . . she could attach to hats for women who liked to design their own. Not just dozens of different types of ribbons, lace, feathers, and flowers, but novelty items, too, like birds, horses, jockey silks, mint julep cups, and any number of other bits of whimsy. There were a surprising number of women who thought that the more outrageous and fanciful a hat was, the better. And Audrey wasn’t going to be the one to try and dissuade them. Hat-watching was half the fun of Derby, as far as she was concerned. But she was reasonably certain that Nathaniel Summerfield hadn’t come here to pick out a hat.

That was made clear when he said, “I need to talk to you about . . .” He hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure how to refer to their previous encounters. Finally, he continued, “About the discussion we had the other day.”

Gee, had that been a discussion?
Audrey wondered. She’d always been under the impression that a discussion was a thing where two people took turns talking and listening, and where each considered what the other had to say, even if they didn’t necessarily agree with each other. She would have sworn that what she and Nathaniel had had the other day—and the two days before that, for that matter—was more like a . . . Hmm. What was the word she was looking for? That word that meant one person thought the other was a complete whack job and didn’t even try to hide his opinion that she should be locked in a closet with a sock stuffed in her mouth and no one to talk to but a couple of bunny slippers. Surely there
was
a word for that, if she could just think what it was . . .

Détente. That was it. It was French for “bunny slippers” or “sock mouth” or something. She couldn’t remember enough high school French—or political science—to recall exactly.

Anyway, she wouldn’t have called what she and Nathaniel had the other day a discussion.

“What about it?” she asked. “I think you made yourself pretty clear. Sorry I’m not in the position to do a PowerPoint presentation for you, but here’s the gist of it. You think that A: there’s no such thing as ghosts or souls. B: even if there was such a thing as souls, keeping yours is less important to you than, say, choosing the right soap-on-a-rope. C: you’d rather make reeking piles of filthy lucre than do something that would make the world a better place. And D: I’m a whack job.”

“Nut job,” he said.

Audrey gaped at him. “Excuse me?”

He took a few more steps into her home-soon-to-be-business, looking less uneasy now, but still not exactly comfortable. “I thought you were a nut job,” he told her.

She snapped her mouth shut and glared at him, even though what he said only confirmed what she’d already known. “Oh. Well. That’s so different. I don’t feel slighted at all.”

He spun around to look at her, and she was once again taken aback by how dark his eyes were. Almost black, really. Just like Silas’s. “The operative words here, Mrs. Magill,” he said, “are
thought
and
were.
You might notice they’re both in the past tense.”

He had stopped clutching his sweater to himself once he was inside, and now shoved his hands into his pockets. But where the gesture might have looked casual coming from another man, with Nathaniel Summerfield, it just looked . . . She sighed to herself. Despite the fact that he clearly was not himself—or, at least, not the
himself
she’d seen before—he still looked supremely confident, supremely unruffled, supremely . . . well, supreme.

As much as she disliked Nathaniel Summerfield, she couldn’t deny that she’d never met a man like him. He was like granite. Cold, rigid, and impenetrable, but also sleek, powerful, and beautiful. She couldn’t help but admire him, simply because he commanded admiration. As much as she would have liked to disdain him, she couldn’t. He was simply too daunting a figure for that.

“So you went to all the trouble to find me because you wanted to tell me you don’t think I’m a nut job anymore?” she asked. “Wow, thanks for letting me know. That was really keeping me up nights. I ought to sleep a lot better now.”

He ignored her sarcasm. Again. “I came because of what happened after you left the other day. Again. Then I saw an article about
you
in the business section this morning—”

Ah. Well, then. That explained that. He
hadn’t
gone to any trouble to find out anything more about her. On the up side, it looked like her media blitz was working, if someone who didn’t even care about hats knew about Finery.

“—and I thought,” he continued, “I thought . . .”

When he let his voice trail off without finishing, she couldn’t quite help finishing for him. “You thought it was your great-great-blah-blah-blah grandfather calling out to you from the grave? Or my attic? Whichever was closer?”

He frowned at her. “I thought maybe it would be a good idea to come and talk to you here.” He looked around the room again. “Where you say my great-great-whatever grandfather has been haunting you.”

If ever there was a cue for Silas to show up, Audrey thought, that was it. She waited a moment to see if he would, then bought herself a few more moments by moving slowly away from the front door and into the living room-cum-showroom, closer to where Nathaniel stood himself. But there was no sign of Silas.

Still holding the pink feather, she crossed her arms over her midsection and shrugged. “Well, he isn’t haunting me at the moment. Which frankly amazes me, because he’s asked a lot of questions about you, and I’d think he’d want to get a look at you. I told him how much the two of you resemble each other.”

She would have expected Nathaniel to make some comment—or at the very least make some face—but he only nodded almost imperceptibly.

Not sure why she offered, she asked, “Would you like to see his portrait?”

He looked surprised by the offer, but nodded again, this time more vigorously. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I would.”

Audrey was just as surprised by his response as he’d seemed by her question. Less than forty-eight hours ago, he couldn’t have cared less about any of this. Now, suddenly, he almost seemed like he was open to at least the idea, perhaps even the possibility.

“It’s at the top of the stairs,” she said, absently jutting the pink feather over her shoulder in that direction.

When she realized she was still holding it, she set it on a nearby chair and turned toward the stairway. After only a small hesitation, Nathaniel followed her. He kept his distance as he did so, however. Her foot was hitting the top step when she heard his initial footfall behind and below her. When she stood in the second-floor landing, she turned to watch his ascent and was surprised to find that his head was bowed—he was watching his feet instead of looking up at the portrait or at her, even though he didn’t strike her as the eyes-down type. Even when he crested the top step and came to a halt beside her, he didn’t look up at the portrait he’d claimed he wanted to see. Instead, he looked past Audrey, into the room behind her that still bore the remnants of her recent move. Namely, sparse furnishings, bare walls and floor, and a jumble of boxes.