Shadow Lover (23 page)
And then she shoved him away from her, hard. He made no attempt to hold on to her, too shaken by her mouth, her touch, her scent. Too shaken by
his own
need.
"I'll make you a deal," she said in a rough, strangled voice. "You keep away from me. Don't touch me again, don't come anywhere near me. You can tell
Warren
that I still hate you from childhood, I don't care. As long as you leave
me
alone and you don't hurt Sally you can do anything you damned well please."
"What's the catch?"
"The moment you put your hands on me I'll call the police, and I don't care if the truth sends Sally into cardiac arrest. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"And?"
He smiled wryly, hoping she couldn't see it in the darkness. It would give away too much. "I'm trying to decide which is more important. The money
Warren
's promised me, or fucking you."
"You've already had me," she said bitterly. "Go for the money."
It would have been so simple to tell her the truth. It would have been hard to get her to listen, to believe it, but he could make her. There were too many things only they knew.
But then, she thought he'd faked the scar, the allergy to shrimp. She might think everything was some kind of trick.
He wasn't quite sure what he wanted her to believe. What he wanted at all, apart from the truth of what happened that night. Once he had those answers, then the rest would follow. Then everything would make some strange kind of sense.
He was no closer to finding out the truth than he had been on his roof in
And with the child/woman he'd left so long ago. If he was going to find any kind of peace, he had to promise not to touch her.
The notions of peace and not touching Carolyn Smith were polar opposites, but right then he wasn't in any mood to figure it out. He was in the mood to pull the duvet back from her slender body and see if she still tasted as good as she had a few nights ago.
He wasn't going to. "I promise to keep my distance," he said. "For now."
She didn't look particularly gratified. "It's your call. I know perfectly well I'm not irresistible, so you might as well concentrate on ingratiating yourself with the rest of the family. But then, you've been doing that, haven't you? Once you disposed of me."
"I wouldn't have called it disposing of you," he said. "Are you going to tell me you didn't like it?"
"Get out."
He rose with a faint, deliberate swagger. "You want me to go outside or can I go through the house?"
"Go back the way you came."
"You don't want anyone to think we've been lovers?"
She was ready to snap, and he knew it, but somehow he couldn't stop from pushing.
"We weren't lovers," she said in a tight voice.
"Oh, yeah? What do you call the other night?"
"A serious mistake."
"And you don't make mistakes, do you, Carolyn? Perfect Carolyn, a paragon above reproach."
"I don't repeat my mistakes," she said.
"You will."
"I warned you—"
"And I promised. I won't touch you, sweetheart. I won't even breathe on
you,
much less kiss you the way you need to be kissed. I won't carry you off to bed and screw you senseless. Until you ask me."
Her laugh was strained. "Why stop there? How about I beg you on bended knee? That's about as likely."
"I'm not picky, Carolyn. All you have to do is ask."
If there'd been anything in reach she probably would have thrown it at him, but she had enough sense to realize a pillow fight wouldn't have accomplished anything. She simply sat there in bed, motionless, as he slipped back out the terrace door.
* * *
Carolyn dragged herself out of bed a little before six. The curtains on the library door were sheer, letting in the early-morning light, but even heavy drapes wouldn't have helped. Once Alex left she'd risen and shoved a chair under the outside door as well, but she couldn't convince herself she was safe from intruders. If the man pretending to be Alexander
MacDowell
wanted to get at her he could. He was relentless, and only his diffident promise and his admitted self-interest kept him at bay.
She showered in the exercise room,
then
stared at herself in the mirror. If she'd looked like holy hell a few days ago, it was nothing compared to the reflection in the mirror this morning. Her skin was pale, almost porcelain, except for the purple smudges beneath her eyes. Her skin looked drawn, delicate; her eyes bleak and despairing; and her pale mouth
was
drawn in a thin, worried line.
Not the face to reassure a dying woman, she thought, reaching for her makeup. The results were far from miraculous, but at least the artificial pink in her cheeks looked only slightly feverish, and her worried mouth was a nice rose hue.
The sun was coming up over the mountains at the edge of the fields that stretched beyond the house, and suddenly she wanted to be free of the house, the trapped air of impending death, the lies and betrayals that ran rampant through the perfectly decorated hallways. She grabbed the leather coat that someone had left hanging in the gym, shoved her feet in an old pair of mud boots and headed out into the early-morning garden.
It had been a frosty night, but the sun was warming the earth with greedy hunger, and Carolyn crossed the lawn, following the narrow path of crushed stone as she headed for the winter-
stubbled
fields. She reached the stone wall and paused, turning to look back at the house. The windows were blank reflections of the bright morning sun, staring back at her. They were all still asleep at this early hour, she assured herself. Knowing that someone was watching.
She climbed over the stone fence, moving into the rough field, pulling the leather jacket around her. A stream lay just beyond this next stretch of field, and there was a fallen log she'd refused to let the gardening service remove. The stream would be swollen with melting snow, racing wildly, and she would sit on the log and breathe the cool morning air. And just maybe things wouldn't seem so bleak.
She never got as far as the river. She found the rabbit, lying in the stubble, sightless, staring, and she knelt down in sudden despair. There were wild animals all around—coyotes
who
hid in the woods and never showed themselves, but left carnage behind nonetheless. There were fisher cats as well, and some even insisted that the catamount had returned to the forests of
Whoever had killed this rabbit had done a thorough, savage job of it, and Carolyn rose, unaccountably depressed. She heard the faint whirring noise, as something flew past her head, and she batted at it absently. It was too early even for black flies, and whatever had flown past her was too small to be a bird.
She was no longer in the mood to visit the stream. She turned, and something sped past her again, with a high-pitched buzzing noise, and suddenly she knew what it was.
She threw herself down on the ground, sprawling onto the half frozen earth, as another bullet raced past her and slammed into a tree. There was no sound of an explosion, but there was no other explanation. Someone was shooting at her.
It had to be some stupid kind of mistake. Someone must be poaching, must have thought she was some kind of animal. But that was crazy—the early morning was clear and bright, and she looked like no one but herself.
A hunter wouldn't use a silencer. She lifted her head, squinting in the distance. The house was too far away, and all the windows and doors were closed. No one could be sitting in a window using her for target practice.
They must be somewhere in the woods at the edge of the field. There were a dozen places to hide, and she couldn't even guess where the bullets had come from. All she could do was lie facedown in the stubble of cropped grass and hope whoever was trying to kill her wouldn't be brave enough to walk out into the field where he could get a clear shot at her.
As far as she knew there were no guns at the house. Sally had always abhorred hunting, posting her expansive acres, much to the dislike of the locals.
Warren
was far too fastidious to evince any desire to tramp through fields in search of game. Alex, on the other hand, had always shown a typical boyish fascination with firearms.
But he wasn't Alex, she reminded herself. He wasn't anyone she knew—he was a cheat and a liar who had conquered her on every level. He could be a crack shot for all she knew. After all, he had the most to lose.
But if he was a crack shot then he hadn't wanted to kill her. Maybe whoever it was simply wanted to scare her. A not so subtle warning, to keep out of the way and let
Warren
and his protégé do their thing.
She couldn't picture
Warren
at the other end of the gun. She couldn't picture
Warren
capable of murder.
She wasn't so sure of the man pretending to be Alex.
Would he cross the fields and put the barrel of that gun at the back of her neck and fire? She didn't want to die without knowing who wanted her dead. It had to be Alex—he had the most to lose.
So why couldn't she believe it?
The ground beneath her was hard and cold, the chill seeping into her bones. The sun overhead was bright, beating down on her, warming her, and she lay, half-shivering, half-sweating, waiting to die. The sense of déjà vu swept over her, and she was suddenly thirteen years old again, huddled in the cold on
She lost track of time. She may have even fallen asleep—it was impossible to know. The sun moved higher overhead, and in the distance she thought she could hear voices, and she knew she couldn't wait any longer.
She tried to pull herself to her feet, but her legs collapsed beneath her, and she fell back onto the earth, half-expecting a bullet to slam into her head. No terrifying whirr, no unseen evil spinning past her. She tried again, and in the distance she could see the house, the shades pulled up,
people
moving behind the windows.
No one would shoot her now, in view of witnesses. All she had to do was walk back to the house, slowly, carefully, and she'd be safe.
Until whoever had tried to kill
her
decided to try again.
Chapter 15
P
atsy sat in splendid isolation at the head of the table, completely dressed, sipping pale coffee with her usual elegance. It was quite possibly the first time Carolyn had ever seen Sally's younger sister awake before
in the morning, and it was the one time she would have much preferred to avoid her.
"What happened to you?" Patsy sounded more fastidious than concerned. "You look as if you had a wrestling match with an alligator." She even sounded less fuzzy than usual, but then, she hadn't been up long enough to get a start on the day's drinking.
"I went out for an early-morning walk and I tripped." Until the words came out Carolyn had no idea that she planned to lie. If she had any sense at all she would have called the police, had them search the woods.
Except that she knew, instinctively, that they would find nothing. They wouldn't think she was lying, of course, but they'd have very strong doubts. And they would tell Sally, who wasn't strong enough to deal with this.
"What an extraordinary thing to do," Patsy said.
"Trip?"
"No, go for a walk." She shuddered expressively. "Communing with nature is greatly overrated, as you doubtless agree. Do you want coffee first or would you like to go change out of those clothes?"
Patsy's preference was more than clear from her expression, but Carolyn was feeling contrary. "Coffee, please," she said, taking a seat nearby and vaguely wishing she had had a close encounter with cow manure to make Patsy's morning complete.
Patsy wrinkled her nose but poured, passing her the cup with a perfectly manicured hand that showed not one trace of a tremor. "Suit yourself, dear."
"You're up awfully early today," Carolyn said in a casual tone.
"I couldn't sleep. Every now and then I wake up at the crack of dawn, absolutely unable to go back to sleep. I've learned the only thing I can do is get up and pretend it's the middle of the night and I'm simply behaving like a mad, decadent being." She yawned extravagantly.
"Is anyone else awake?" Carolyn tried to sound casual, and Patsy was too concerned with some vague inner working of her mind to notice the loaded question.
"I think I saw Alex wandering around somewhere," she said airily. "He looked dressed for outdoors. I'm surprised you didn't run into him during your little walk."
