Scandal in Copper Lake (21 page)

“Yeah. It was white and had pink ribbons.” Anamaria had set it beside the notebooks that morning and had seemed a little distracted while touching it when he’d returned with coffee and doughnuts. He’d put it down to missing her mother, thinking about when
she’d
worn that bonnet and that Charlotte would have been next to wear it.

DeLong frowned. “You think someone who’d write
whore
on the floor would steal a baby bonnet?”

“I think he’d take something that obviously means a lot to the woman he’d written
whore
about.”

“I’ll tell the detective,” she said with a shrug.

“Don’t knock yourself out,” he muttered. He carried the bags out to his car, then took the chest from DeLong and handed it to Anamaria. “Did you put that bonnet away when we left this morning?”

She shook her head. “I took the notebooks, but I left it on the table. Why?”

“Apparently, your vandal took it,” Tommy replied.

She slid out of the seat, rising to her full height, her chin lifted. Robbie was glad to see the shock receding and anger taking its place. “He tore up my porch, called me a whore and stole an old baby bonnet?”

“Maybe the message wasn’t for you.” Robbie leaned against the car at her side. “We’ve been asking questions about your mother’s lovers and about the baby’s father. Maybe one of them left the message in reference to her.” Only a few hours ago, Lydia had barely caught herself before calling Glory a whore, and everyone agreed that she had adored Glory. An angry ex-lover, maybe a spurned ex-lover, would likely call her that and more.

While no one in town besides Tommy, who’d probably guessed, knew that Anamaria was sleeping with Robbie.

And an ex-lover who thought that Charlotte might have been his daughter might have, for reasons good or bad, taken the bonnet.

“You guys go on, get out of here,” Tommy said. “Just let me know where to reach you.”

“We’ll be at the condo,” Robbie said.
Man up, my ass.

“You wanna leave me your keys, Anamaria? I’ll get the tires taken care of and call Russ about the rest of it.”

That was something Robbie should have thought about and would have eventually, he wanted to protest as she pulled her key ring from her purse. He just had more important things—like
her
—on his mind.

After thanking Tommy, she didn’t speak again until they were several blocks away. “I can stay at a motel.”

“Nah. You never know who’s been sleeping in those beds.”

She cut him a sidelong look. “And who’s been sleeping in your bed?”

“Just me. I don’t usually take women home with me.”

“Why not?”

“Why should I? Their places are just as convenient.”

“With the added bonuses that you can leave whenever you want and your space remains your space. They don’t get the chance to bring stuff over and conveniently leave it behind.” She glanced at him again. “I’ve got
stuff,
but when I leave, I promise, I won’t leave any of it behind.”

The promise wasn’t as reassuring as it should have been. Once they walked in the door, his space was going to be their space. Even when there wasn’t a single piece of clothing, a shoe or so much as a fingerprint to indicate she’d ever been there, he would know. And he would miss her.

He typed in the code for the electronic gate, then turned
into the drive that ran along the rear of his building. His garage was on the end, neater than any other place in his life because that was where he worked on the Vette.

As the door lumbered down behind them, Anamaria looked at the tools that hung on Peg-Boards and filled chests along the walls. “You’ve got enough tools here for a well-stocked garage. Do you actually know how to use them?”

He gave her a wounded look before heaving her bags from the trunk. “I rebuilt this car from the frame up. When I bought her, she was a rusted heap sitting beside an old barn in southern Georgia. I did everything myself except the paint job. Where do you think I got these calluses and scars?”

“I apologize. And I’m impressed.”

“My brothers and I practically grew up at Charlie’s Custom Rods, out on Carolina Avenue. We’ve been tearing down and restoring old cars since we were kids.” He grinned. “If you want to replace that bland car of yours with something deserving of a beautiful woman, I can find you the body and show you how to do it.”

Cradling the wooden chest in her arms, she followed him to the door leading into the utility room, where he typed in the code on the alarm keypad. “I like that bland car of mine. Besides, that sounds like a time-consuming project. One of us would have a long commute.”

“Or one of us could move to Copper Lake.” He stiffened the instant he heard his own words. It wasn’t the first time he’d, as Lydia put it, let his mouth get ahead of his brain. If he could take back the suggestion, he would…. At least, he thought he would. He wasn’t sure.

In an effort to lessen the impact of the words, he shrugged carelessly. “The tools are here. When it comes to restoring old beauties, tools rule.”

With nothing more than a barely-there murmur, she fol
lowed him through the laundry room and kitchen, past the dining and living rooms and upstairs. There were two bedrooms up there, the second not even half the size of the first. Russ had built the condos and had adapted this floor plan for Robbie. Sleepover guests would be few and far between, and Robbie had preferred the extra space for the master bedroom.

Without considering whether Anamaria might like the pretense of her own room, he carried her bags into his room. It was at the front of the house and faced the river, a wide lazy ramble at this point. The windows let in tons of light and a lot of afternoon heat, but he was rarely there then, so he kept the drapes open for the view.

Anamaria set the chest on a side table, walked to one of the oversize windows and stood, eyes closed, breathing steadily. The sunlight gleamed on her skin, giving it a burnished hue, and it softened the tension lines on her face. The goddess was back.

He set the bags down at the end of the bed, then silently moved up behind her. She didn’t startle but tilted her head to one side so he could leave a line of kisses along her throat. “I believe you said something earlier about wild, wicked lovemaking.”

A satisfied smile curved her mouth. “Yes. Your mother and Mr. Grey—”

Gently he nipped her lower lip, silencing her. “No mothers in this room, please. Just you and me.”

“All right.” Her movements slow and lazy, she twined her arms around his neck, then kissed him, her mouth hot and greedy, tasting of hunger and need and desire. She finished the kiss with her own gentle nip, then lifted her head, her gaze slumberous, her coastal accent more pronounced. “Tell me what you want, Robbie Calloway.”

He looked into her eyes, the color of rich chocolate, set off so well by her mocha skin, and answered simply, “You.”

One brow arched delicately. “For how long?”

“As long as we have.” A day, a week, a month, a lifetime. However long, he wanted it.

She chuckled. “You sound like Mama Odette. ‘We want what we want, we take what we’re given, we have as long as we have.’” The humor faded, and her voice turned husky as she took his hand and pulled him to the bed. “Come to bed with me, Robbie. Take what I’m giving. For as long as we have.”

It wouldn’t be enough, he thought as she drew him down to the mattress with her, as she kissed him again, as their hands worked away their clothes. No matter how long they had, no matter how much she gave, no matter how much he gave back, it would never be enough.

Not until she gave her heart. Not until he found his courage.

Anamaria awakened alone in bed, the sun a purple glow on the western horizon. She wasn’t the sort to awaken disoriented. Though the bedroom was dark, she knew immediately where she was. She could sense Robbie all around her.

Light filtered in from the hallway, showing her bags at the foot of the bed. Rising, she opened the larger of the two and dressed in a pair of soft cotton shorts and a ribbed tank, both in athletic gray. After a stop in a luxurious marble bathroom, she padded downstairs and through to the kitchen.

Robbie, dressed in faded khaki shorts and a Copper Lake High School baseball shirt, was removing foam dishes from a large paper bag, releasing incredible aromas into the air. “Lucky for us, Ellie delivers, because I don’t cook and I don’t keep enough food in the house for someone else to cook, unless canned spaghetti counts.”

“Spaghetti ceases to be food once it’s canned.”

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, sweetheart.”

“I don’t have to eat dirt to know it doesn’t taste the same
as Auntie Lueena’s chocolate silk pie.” Circling the island, she found glasses in the cabinet, filled them with ice and took two bottles of pop from the refrigerator. By the time she’d poured, he’d transferred the food to heavy pottery plates: grilled chicken breasts with roasted onions and peppers, mashed sweet potatoes and spiced green beans.

They ate at the antique oak dining table, a good-size square that seated four in ladderback chairs. She’d noticed other antiques in the house—the barrister’s bookcases in the living room, the demilune table in the hallway, the desk in the sitting area of his bedroom and a very old primitive table in the upstairs hall. She didn’t get vibes from furniture about the lives it had witnessed, but if she had that talent, that table would surely give her the willies.

After giving her time to make a dent in her food, Robbie spoke quietly. “Tommy called and said the guy from Charlie’s Tires—he also owns Charlie’s Customs Rods—will get your new tires on tomorrow. There’s a two-inch gash in each one, probably from the same knife used to slash the screens. Russ fixed the door and replaced the lock, but he can’t get a crew over to resand the floor and fix the light and the screens until Monday.”

She took another bite of green beans, just to prove that the news hadn’t ruined her appetite, then smiled politely. “Your brother’s a nice guy. He must think a lot of Tommy, to answer his calls so quickly.”

“He does, and he thinks very little of people who harass other people just because they can.” Robbie hesitated, then asked, “Do you have any…feelings about this? Who did it? Why? What he wanted?”

She’d been thinking about what they would do when they first got home—the same thing they’d done here—and had been in a daze of arousal and desire. Robbie’s curse when he’d seen the two flat tires had snatched her out of it. She’d sensed
nothing major as they walked around the car, just a faint shimmer of anger.

The rage had come from the open door, radiating from the profanity scrawled down the hallway. The instant she’d seen it, her vision had gone dark and she’d swayed unsteadily. Robbie had hustled her right back off the porch and to the car to wait for the police.

“There wasn’t any hatred,” she said, locking gazes with him. “Just rage. Betrayal. Abandonment. I don’t know who these feelings were directed at. You were probably right that it’s not me. I don’t tend to stir up those kinds of passions in men. It could have been meant for Glory, or someone whose life changed because of her.”

“Maybe one of her ex-lovers who thought the dirty little secret of their affair had died with her, then you show up, asking questions, and he’s realized that nothing’s ever quite so secret after all.”

She nodded. “Or Charlotte’s father, whose dirty little secret might have worn diapers. And bonnets.” She turned sideways in the chair and brought her knees close to her chest to watch him while he finished eating. “You know, I automatically assumed that Charlotte’s father didn’t want her any more than my father wanted me.”

“Reasonable assumption. I’ve worked a lot of child-support cases, getting DNA and money from men who denied paternity even after the proof came in.”

“But Glory’s luck was different. Two of the three daddies wanted their daughters right from the start. Jass’s father wanted to marry Mama—he wanted to have a real family. Maybe Charlotte’s father wanted that, too. Maybe he envisioned this happily-ever-after family. Maybe he loved her and thought she loved him. But she refused him.”

Robbie carried their plates to the sink, then returned with
a plate of dipped chocolates. She picked one and bit into it, her teeth sinking into creamy cheesecake. She groaned softly.

“That would explain the betrayal and abandonment. And taking the bonnet. I mean, your average vandal stealing a bonnet is just plain weird.” He rolled his eyes. “The average vandal I’ve represented wouldn’t even know what it was.”

“He could have given Mama the bonnet in the first place. I thought it was one she’d used for the rest of us, but it was in pristine condition, and babies don’t leave much pristine. According to Mama Odette, I had the habit of chewing the ribbons off everything I owned. And it was a very good quality bonnet. Our family doesn’t splurge on baby clothes.”

“Okay,” Robbie said after downing a chocolate-covered cherry cake in two bites. “Where’s the notebook? We missed something when we went through it before.”

“It’s in my bag.” She’d laid it at the end of the island before taking the chest upstairs. “What did we miss?”

“Timing.” He jumped up from the chair, brought her bag to her, then disappeared through a door under the stairs before returning with a legal pad and ink pen. “Glory was due February 21. That means she would have gotten pregnant—” he counted backward mentally “—in June. In the pages I looked at this morning, she was keeping a pretty good record of her meetings with everyone, boyfriends and gentlemen. So let’s see who’s listed for June.”

Anamaria flipped through the notebook. Glory had started each month on a fresh page, writing the name across the top in colored ink and underlining it twice for emphasis. It seemed an expectant statement; what month with its name written in purple capital letters and bold lines underneath it could fail to be a great month? But June’s ink had faded, and there seemed nothing memorable about the entries there.

It had been a busy month, and often still was. The parents
and grandparents of kids graduating from high school and college wanted to know what the future held for them; the brides and grooms marrying over the summer wanted confirmation they were making the right choice; and people whose jobs brought relocation offers sought encouragement that the new place could be home as much as the old one was.