Shadow Lover (8 page)
"I haven't seen Alex this morning," Carolyn said, omitting the fact that she had done her best to avoid him since his appearance in
"It seems like hours ago, darling," Patsy said with a delicate yawn. "Dear George drove me up—he's always been the best son. But even so, the whole thing is too exhausting, don't you know? Find Alex for me, will you, and tell him his devoted Aunt Patsy is positively dying to see him again. Not to mention his cousin George. The two of them were the same
age,
and dearest friends when they were children."
"They're still the same age, and they could never stand each other," Carolyn pointed out. Patsy ignored her, always ready to revise family history to suit
herself
.
Things had gone from bad to worse. Patsy and Warren were bad enough—George Clarendon, better known through youth as George the Pig, was the final straw. An elegant, beautiful, sneering young man, he always seemed to be watching everyone, making a mental list of their failings.
"I think Alex is off with
Warren
again. The two of them seem to have hit it off," she said coolly.
Patsy stared at her. "How astonishing!" she murmured. "I wouldn't have thought Alex and Warren were the type to cozy up. Of course, eighteen years have passed. People change."
"Yes."
"Still," Patsy continued, "I find that very interesting indeed. If
Warren
accepts him completely then I don't suppose I have any reason to doubt that it's the real Alex. After all,
Warren
is far more observant and distrusting than I am—he's always telling me so. I suppose I should take his word for it that he's the real thing."
Carolyn said absolutely nothing, a fact that wasn't wasted on Patsy. "Sally believes it's him, doesn't she?"
"Absolutely."
"And what about you, dear
Caro
?"
Carolyn hated being called
Caro
, and she suspected Patsy knew it. She managed a cool smile. "I have a suspicious nature."
Patsy shrugged. "I suppose I'll have to make up my own mind." She glanced out the window. It was a gray, chilly day, and the recent snowfall still lingered on the flat brown landscape. "Not the best time of year for a family reunion. Tessa and Grace are arriving today as well, but at least I talked Grace out of bringing her obnoxious offspring. Children give me the hives."
Carolyn hadn't realized things could still get dramatically worse than they already were, but the imminent arrival of the rest of Patsy's grown children was the final blow. "I'll talk to
Constanza
," she said, whirling around, desperate to escape and go kick something.
"No need, dear," Patsy said with a languid wave of her hand. "I've already warned her. Though I gather you've been sleeping in the room Tessa usually uses. You don't mind vacating, do you? She is so particular about her surroundings, and if she has to share, she'd much rather share with Grace. You can understand that, can't you?" She smiled sweetly.
"I don't mind," Carolyn said numbly.
"It's a good thing Sally had this place renovated a few years back, or you'd be stuck in the servants' quarters with Ruben and
Constanza
. Not that there's anything wrong with that—Sally spoils them dreadfully. But then, she's always been a soft touch." She gave Carolyn a gracious smile.
It took Carolyn a moment to realize that her fingers were tingling. Her hands were clenched so tightly she'd cut off all feeling in them. She forced herself to relax, to meet Patsy's pampered smile with one of her own. She'd known Patsy all her life, and she knew just what
was pure malice
and what was simply the byproduct of determined self-interest.
"I'll go move my things," she said. "When do Tessa and Grace arrive?"
"Oh, at some point," Patsy said airily. "Find Alex, will you?"
"Of course," she said, lying through her teeth. The last person in the world she was ready to face was the phony Alex
MacDowell
. Though running up against George the Pig was a close second.
Naturally Alex was waiting in the hallway, just outside her room.
"You look ready to kill someone," he said lazily. He was leaning against the wall, watching her, his eyes hooded, his expression unreadable. He was wearing faded jeans that fit his lanky frame, a thick cotton sweater, and running shoes.
She paused, looking at him with a critical eye. "You don't dress like a
MacDowell
," she said abruptly.
"That doesn't even wound me, much less kill me," he said. "And just how does a
MacDowell
dress?"
"Didn't your research tell you that?"
He made a clucking noise with his tongue. "Harsh, Carolyn. Why do you refuse to trust me?"
"You figure it out." She pushed past him, into her room, slamming the door behind her. He caught it, moving inside and closing it very quietly behind him. Closing them both in.
She ignored him, yanking open a drawer and pulling out her neatly folded clothes. He stood there watching her. "Is this what a
MacDowell
wears?" he asked curiously, leaning forward to pick up her neatly ironed khaki slacks. "Looks pretty boring and
yuppified
to me."
"Hardly yuppies," Carolyn said dryly. "The
MacDowells
aren't upwardly mobile—they're already at the top of the social structure. If you want to know how to dress you can watch your cousin George."
"He's coming?" Alex made a disgusted noise. "Is he still a little pig?"
"No," she said. "He's here already, looking for a touching reunion. If you'll excuse me, I have to vacate this room for his sisters and I don't have time for small talk."
"They're kicking you out, too? You can always come back and sleep with me."
It was the final straw in a series of long, horrible days. Without thinking she reached out and slapped him, the sound loud and shocking in the stillness of the room.
He didn't flinch. Didn't move. His blue-green eyes hardened for a moment, and then his wickedly sensual mouth curved in a smile. "A mistake, dear Carolyn," he murmured.
"On your part or mine?" She was horrified at herself but not about to show it. She'd never hit another human being in her life, and yet there he stood, the imprint of her hand red against his golden skin.
"Let's call it a draw. I'll keep my lascivious thoughts to myself, and you'll keep your hands to yourself." He looked charmingly repentant, and so much like the real Alex when he was trying to worm his way back into someone's good graces that a fist closed around her heart.
He held out a hand. He had strong, beautiful hands, worker's hands, with long, elegant fingers. She couldn't remember Alex's hands at all. "Truce?" he said, charming. Lying.
She looked at his hand pointedly. "Over my dead body."
She expected rage from him. Contempt and fury. Instead his smile widened, into one of knowing smugness that was still
infuratingly
attractive. "Ah, Carolyn," he murmured. "You are going to be such fun to convince."
And then he was gone, closing the door softly behind him.
Chapter 5
T
he third of the elder
MacDowell
siblings, Patsy, was a piece of cake, Alex thought smugly, surveying her across the dinner table. She didn't care whether he was the real Alex or not, as long as he didn't tax her concentration. She was on something—he'd kicked around the world for too long not to recognize even the subtle symptoms, but Patsy was in a pleasant enough fog, aided by a suitably impressive Cabernet.
Her three children were another matter. George the Pig was looking at him as if he were a wild-eyed terrorist out to bomb everyone into oblivion. Tessa was tossing her auburn mane of hair every chance she got, glaring at him out of her magnificent, smoldering eyes, and doing everything she could to remind him that she was a) a highly paid and much sought-after fashion model and b) she didn't believe him for a moment.
She was getting a little long in the tooth for high fashion, Alex thought cynically. She had to be near thirty, though she looked a decade younger, fighting the encroachments of age with the dedication of her mother. The little sneer that pursed her collagen-enhanced lips was going to leave nasty little wrinkles if she didn't watch it.
Grace, the youngest of the cousins, would have been six when Alex
left,
and there was no way he would have remembered her. She seemed a cut above her self-absorbed siblings. He might even go so far as to say she was pleasant, except that she barely spoke to him, though when she did she was civil enough. She spent the entire time talking in a corner with Carolyn, while the other cousins concentrated on Alex and ignored Carolyn completely.
As did Sally. She hadn't felt up to sitting at the table, but she held court in her bedroom, and Ruben had wheeled her hospital bed to the French doors that opened onto the formal dining room so that she could be a part of it all. He could feel her eyes watching him, and he wondered what she was thinking. Whether deep in her heart she really believed he was Alexander
MacDowell
.
It didn't matter—she wasn't about to protest. Or call for proof, or DNA testing, or any of the like, of that much he was absolutely certain. She'd made up her mind that he was her son, and nothing would make her change it.
"Carolyn?" Her soft voice, weak from pain, nevertheless carried down to the end of the table, where Carolyn sat with Grace.
There was immediate, dutiful silence in the room. Carolyn rose, and as usual he had to admire her grace, even in the boring gray cocktail dress she'd worn down to dinner. Without effort she made Tessa seem overblown and obvious, and anyone with taste wouldn't look twice at the famous beauty.
But Carolyn wasn't interested in clothes, adornment, or his opinion, he thought wryly, watching her out of hooded eyes. As he'd watched her all night long, now that she was no longer capable of avoiding him so assiduously.
"Are you tired, Aunt Sally?" she asked solicitously. "I'll have Ruben bring you back to bed—"
"Don't fuss over me, child!" Sally's faint smile took most of the sting out of the reprimand. "I'm just fine. I'm perfectly capable of knowing when I'm tired or not. I have a favor to ask you, darling. If it's not too much of an imposition."
Alex kept his expression bland. He suspected Carolyn would have slashed her wrists for Sally, but they obviously preferred to keep up the polite fiction. He couldn't figure out what Sally had ever done to deserve such devotion, but Carolyn was obviously loyal to a fault.
"Anything," Carolyn said rashly.
"Alex and I were talking," Sally said, and Carolyn's eyes narrowed, though she kept herself from glancing toward him. "He wondered where that childhood portrait
is?
You
remember,
the one I had done when he was twelve?"
"You got rid of it," she said flatly.
"Don't be absurd, Carolyn,"
Warren
protested. "That was a
Wicklander
portrait—they're worth their weight in gold. She wouldn't have thrown it out."
"I didn't mean that. I meant that she was so upset she couldn't bear to look at it anymore," Carolyn said, and this time she did toss an angry glare in Alex's direction. Not that it was particularly rational. She should be angry at the real Alex
MacDowell
for running away, not the man she knew was his imposter.
"Where is it, Carolyn? Is it in storage?" George demanded, sounding, if possible, even more pompous than his elderly uncle. George had been born with an old soul, sour and disapproving, a fact that was at odds with his strikingly handsome appearance. As a child he'd been a sneak and a tattletale. As an adult he simply passed judgment on all around him.
"It's in the Edgartown house," she said reluctantly.
"That's what I thought. I want it back," Sally said.
"I'll make arrangements to have it shipped—"
"No! I don't want to wait, and besides, as
Warren
pointed out, it's a
Wicklander
. It's too valuable to be entrusted to any commercial company, and besides, I don't want strangers rummaging around my house. The Vineyard house is a family treasure—we don't want to endanger it."
Did she know what was coming? Alex thought lazily. She looked wary, but trusting. "What do you want me to do about it, Aunt Sally?"
Sally gave her the smile that had charmed men, women, and children for all of her seventy-eight years. "I knew I could count on you, darling. I want you to drive down there and get it."
"Of course I will," she said warmly.
"Alex prefers to use his own car, even though I told him the Rover would be better—"
"Alex?" Her voice was a strangled shriek of horror. He gave in to temptation and gave her a beatific smile.
"I told Mother I wanted to see the Edgartown house again, and that I'd be happy to drive you. That way you won't have to drive all that way alone."
"I like driving alone," she said sharply.
