Stone Kissed (2 page)

“One of the volunteer firefighters found him lying on the lawn behind the house. The burns on the left side of his upper body resulted from him pushing through the fire to force open the kitchen door.”

Delia raised her hand to her mouth, and the doctor patted her shoulder kindly. “Would you like to spend a couple of minutes with him?”

No
. She nodded and perched on the edge of the visitor’s chair.

“You’re fine right there, but please don’t touch him or adjust his bed in any way, Miss Forrest,” Dr. Bustamante said as he backed out the door.

Delia examined her father’s face, tamping down her horror, pity and fear. She forced herself to remain objective, to catalogue the damage to her father’s features as if he were one of the statues she’d been hired to restore.

Rarely had she looked her fill of him. She’d always assessed him from behind furniture or from a banister high above, catching glimpses in passing. Although she made the obligatory holiday visits, they had a tacit agreement to avoid each other. She’d had years’ worth of practice not speaking to him.

According to the movies, she should whisper words of comfort to him. She should feel the loss, the fear, the sadness, a good daughter would feel when faced with her father’s mortality.

But she wasn’t a good daughter. He’d told her so often enough. She was impulsive, irresponsible and, if he were to be believed, delusional. Right now she was also numb.

So why was she crying?

She was tired. That had to be it. She looked at the body immobilized in the hospital bed and, when it didn’t move, didn’t scowl at or berate her, her stomach calmed by degrees. Slowly she took in the room. She’d never been in this one, but it was familiar nevertheless. County General hadn’t redecorated since Delia had sat with her mother in the hospice wing a dozen years ago.

“Miss Forrest.” Dr. Bustamante was back, his gray brows furrowed with concern.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“When you get a moment, could you stop in at the business office?”

***

It was 4:45, according to the clock in the car. Four forty-five. Fours and fives. Just numbers. She dealt with numbers every day.

The numbers on the hospital clerk’s desk were familiar—the cost of her father’s care during this day was roughly equal to what her business had grossed for the past three months. The clerk was kind to Delia, explaining that, barring complications, this first day was more expensive because triage and emergency treatments were pricey. But still—three months equaled one day, equaled twelve thousand little green slips neither she, nor her father, possessed. Even with the pitiful excuse for a tax refund she had coming, Delia didn’t know how she would pay for her father’s care. Did he have insurance? She had no idea.

The lawyer would know. Mr. Baldridge would hand her a copy of some policy from a dusty old file cabinet and everything would be fine. She pushed up out of the car, climbed the narrow staircase of the historic Main Street storefront that housed the law offices of Baldridge and Sons. But when she opened the attorney’s lobby door, Delia froze.

The old oak chair was surely too frail to hold the man sitting in the lobby. He was massive and magnificent, more so than any glossy photo spread could possibly convey—dark hair like liquid chocolate curled below his collar, and he was as tall seated as she was standing. The articles in the coffee-table arts magazines didn’t capture Grant Wolverton’s innate power, how he took over and absorbed the space he filled. His silver-blue eyes swept down her body and up again, and he met her open-mouthed stare with his own cool gaze.

Delia gripped the frame of the door for support. Was he even really here?

The sunlight sliced through the patches of stained glass in the western window and graced him with a delicate corona. She clenched her fist, fighting the urge to reach out and stroke his whiskey-brown hair. She wanted to run her fingers down the planes of his cheek, explore the powerful expanse of his jaw. For the past eleven years Delia had touched those planes, stroked those lines before on countless classical statues. She’d slid her fingertips out of her gloves to commit the one sin she’d never been able to resist. She’d touched bare stone and fantasized about him.

But Wolverton wouldn’t feel like smooth marble. His skin would be warm, pliant to the pressure of her fingertip, rough across the chin and jaw where the late afternoon shadow of his beard fought to grow. His full lips would be firm against her own, but unlike stone, they would give, inviting her to melt and mold to them, to him.

As she gaped at him, he raised an eyebrow. Heat rose in her belly and melted her thighs. Her face flushed, and she cursed whatever Irish ancestor had made her pale and quick to redden.

He gave no hint he remembered the mousy little girl she’d been, back when he’d been kind to her on one of the best and worst days of her life. At fourteen she’d imagined him an angel, but he was more so now. Not a soft golden one—this Grant was strictly Old Testament, and his likeness guarded the dead in medieval churchyards throughout Europe. Even though his tailored gray suit was the height of civilized fashion, it was a lie.

This man wasn’t civilized. He was the embodied wrath of God.

She didn’t want him to remember. On the day she’d met him, she’d made the mistake of calling attention to herself. Delia had spent her life since cultivating safe anonymity. Weird girls did better to hide in the shadows, to listen and learn from the darkness. If she were smart, she would break this awful, dangerous eye contact.

The office door across from her opened and Delia wrenched her gaze to the wispy, skeletal figure who poked his head into the room.

“What is he doing here?” she asked.

Mr. Baldridge beamed. “Miss Forrest, I have some things to discuss with you first, but I think you’ll be pleased to know Mr. Wolverton has a plan to help you out.”

Delia’s fingers crumpled the edges of a $1.2 million cashier’s check. She was gripping it too tightly. With the slightest effort, she could rip the fragile paper into tiny, tiny shreds. Her face burned under Grant Wolverton’s supercilious stare. He looked at her as if she were a street-corner bag lady babbling to herself.

She’d been closeted with Mr. Baldridge in the too-small conference room with its too-large table for an hour and six minutes when Wolverton finally opened the door behind her, interrupting Mr. Baldridge mid-sentence. She’d been expecting him, and she was ready. Her finger clamped the edge of the table, and she successfully kept from turning to look at him.

“Mr. Wolverton, would you mind…?” Mr. Bainbridge trailed off. He looked at her with watery, helpless eyes, and she understood with a sudden thrill that she could kick Grant Wolverton out. He had no right to be there, and Mr. Baldridge had yet to explain his so-called “help.” She could send him away and pretend they hadn’t met again under these circumstances. When all the paperwork was finished and her father was well, Delia could safely resume her fantasy of him walking up to her in one of his warehouses, complimenting her work and asking her to dinner.

But she’d been sitting at this table for an hour and seven minutes now, and Mr. Baldridge had pulled out no dusty insurance policies, had conjured no new magic numbers to fill the holes in the zeros on the hospital clerk’s desk.

So Delia shook her head at Baldridge. She tapped the papers in front of her, and the two of them continued their dance as if Wolverton were not in the room. Baldridge slid pieces of paper covered with legalese at Delia, while dark words like
boilerplate, signatory
and
policy lapsed
poured like little black beetles out of the facile hole formed by his ever-moving mouth. She watched him talk, nodded when he nodded, cocked her head when he did, but her mind was full of Wolverton, who had settled in behind her.

Delia forced herself to focus, mouthing her way through the thicket of tiny print, signing each new paper once she had a basic grasp of its contents. She now held power of attorney over her father and would make decisions about his medical care, his personal effects, and what to do with the body if he died. The other papers, the ones involving Steward House itself, however, she did not sign, looking instead to Mr. Baldridge for further clarification. He pursed his lips as if he were disappointed in her, but he brightened again when Grant leaned forward, his arm brushing her shoulder and the spicy pine scent of him enveloping her. Delia closed her eyes because she couldn’t help herself. When she wrenched them open again, she saw the check.

“My secretary is a notary,” Mr. Baldridge blurted into the growing silence. “We can complete this transaction right now.” He reached across the desk to pat Delia’s hand. Her fingers curled inward and he pulled away, but his fingers skittered across the table to slide the pen toward her once again.

Grant had helped her once. She remembered it, in spite of the hazy white scream rising inside her skull. He’d helped her once. Mr. Baldridge said he was here to help.

“I’m offering to purchase the house from you, Miss Forrest, and the contents of your father’s shop from him at the value of the property before the fire. If you would like to order an independent appraisal, I understand, but I can assure you my valuation of your assets is more than generous.”

Grant’s voice, when he spoke, was warm, deep, and it resonated in her belly—but his words were cold. She allowed herself to turn and look up at him. He gazed down on her from his impossible height, his face blank and his hands behind his back. He was a monolith in a suit.

What had happened to the fiery defender of her girlhood memory? She’d spent so many hours weaving fantasies of Grant Wolverton. This gorgeous creature standing over her was even more handsome than her dream man, but he lacked his kindness, his chivalry. She searched his eyes for a glimpse of the youth he’d been.

“You used to have a heart, Wolverton.” She lifted three fingertips to her mouth, then pulled her hand away. “This is Father’s business—his whole life. This is my home. You can’t reduce generations of history, of
lives,
to a cashier’s check.”

“Miss Forrest, history will not pay your father’s medical bills, or rebuild Steward House. Endorse it.”

Mr. Baldridge’s head bobbled and he slid the pen toward her a third time.

Delia released the fragile slip of paper and pressed her palms onto the desk. Wolverton was correct. Father’s bills were climbing by the minute. Steward House would require tens of thousands of dollars to be habitable. She had a beater Civic, an apartment full of tools and a double-rent clause if she broke the lease. She had a loyal client list, but there weren’t enough hours in the decade to pay these bills.

And she had a cashier’s check in hand worth twice her father’s and her assets combined. Beyond the check lay a stack of documents proving her father’s—and her—neglect.

Steward House was hers, and had been her since her mother died. At the time, no one had told her that. And when she reached her majority, she and her father had already established the habit of saying to each other the absolute minimal necessary. It had been easier to drive away from his bitterness, to drive away from their neighbors’ mistrustful stares, to hide herself in the anonymity of the city full of fountains and cemeteries and friezes over downtown doors—even if it meant driving away from the home of her heart.

Obviously Grant Wolverton had employed his vast research team the moment someone in his network of spies had notified him of the fire. Hell, for all she knew, he might have arranged it himself. Someone had arranged the fire. Someone—
her father?
—had burned Steward House.

“How did you know?” Delia’s arms were shaking now, and she placed her hands in her lap so one could grasp the other. She hugged her elbows into her sides, shrinking back into the huge chair. “Mr. Wolverton, how did you know about the fire?”

“As I explained to Chief Benson on the site this morning—” Delia started. He’d been to the house. She hadn’t even seen it yet, but he’d discussed the fire already with the chief. “—it was in my interest to know.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “It’s in your interest to deposit the check, Delia.”

“But why? You have at least three other homes. Why do you want mine?”

He took his time settling into the chair to her left, his knees brushing hers as he slid his long legs under the table. She inhaled at the contact and her face flushed again.

“Steward House is a prime example of a small Georgian. The bones are good, the damage isn’t too extensive. It will make a good investment.”

“Investment? She isn’t an investment. She’s a home.”

Wolverton leaned back, his silver-blue eyes gentle and full of pity. “Not without a lot of work, Delia.” His voice was soothing, as it had been a decade earlier. Just like that, he transformed into the Grant Wolverton of her memory.

But she couldn’t trust his sympathy. He wanted to take Steward House.

She bit her lip to stop the damned tears. “Can’t this wait until the investigation is over?”

“I’m certain your father will receive clemency in light of his injuries.”

“Pardon me?”

“The truth is usually the simplest explanation, Miss Forrest.”

She felt the sweat bead up on her forehead. “How dare you?”

“Really, Wolverton,” Mr. Baldridge protested, his voice high and feeble.

“I’m sorry, Miss Forrest. I’m tired,” he said ruefully. “I should have kept my thoughts to myself. But you still need the money. And I want the house.”

And there it was. He was faking his contrition, she was sure of it—trying to manipulate her with fear and guilt. But about his motives he told the truth.

One point two million, same as cash,
her father would say about the check on the desk.

Delia could take her piece of it, a
little
piece of it, and she could start over. If she signed the check, she could go. She could cash it this afternoon and put half—no, three-quarters—of the money in a trust fund for her father’s care and never look back. With her share she could buy a cottage by the Irish Sea, feed the gulls and chat with the ancient faces carved into cliff caves. She could buy a used houseboat on the Rhine and float up and down, visiting the Madonnas in the riverside shrines and day-tripping to meet every great statue in Europe.

She could become a cemetery groundskeeper in Metairie, Louisiana, or in Paris at Père LaChaise. With their weeping women, flaring angels and drama-queen death masks, she’d live her own private, never-ending party—voices chattering, gossiping about who was fighting over inheritances or making love in the grass behind the graves. No one in Ireland or Paris or Louisiana would know she was the granddaughter of a witch. No one would call her crazy for talking to statues. Deluded or not, if she lived by herself far, far away, Delia could be happy.

In time, she would forget Steward House. She would forget the welcome she sensed from the stones and the strength she gained from the land even when her father and she sat in silence across the dining table from each other.

Father needed Wolverton’s money. They both needed Wolverton’s money.

Her shaking hand picked up the pen, and Mr. Baldridge exhaled. Flipping the top document to its blank backside, Delia scribbled down the number on Wolverton’s check and wrote the figure from the hospital clerk’s desk underneath. She stroked deliberately through the zeros, peeled away ones and twos carefully, as if she were cleaning bird shit from stone. She chiseled in the final number and tapped the tip of the pen in small dots on the page beside it. Finally, Delia exhaled and laid the pen down.

A year and a half, then, two if she were even more frugal than usual. If her father continued as he was now, the huge check would bleed away in a matter of months. It would buy her freedom, but only for a little while.

Grant leaned back in his chair wearing a faint, forbearing smile.

The knot of anxiety in her stomach tightened into anger. Handing the check to her was an act of—what? Confidence? Arrogance? Temptation? All three. She could sit here all evening, and he would wait for her. He would wait, because whether it took ten minutes or ten days of handholding and chastising, of promises and threats, he thought she had no choice but to deposit his check.

The Grant she remembered, the lanky young man with an easy smile, had been the handholding kind. He’d held her hand when he asked her name. Her palm tingled at the memory.

But this man? This cold-hearted guardian of heaven, this stone-faced guide to hell? Him she did not know and would not trust.

She knew, however, who she could trust. When she’d had worries, when she felt trapped, Delia had one place to go to get clear direction and the unvarnished truth.

“This can wait.” She pushed the paper back.

“Miss Forrest,” Wolverton began.

To both their surprise, Mr. Baldridge raised a trembling hand. “She’s had a rough day, Wolverton.” His voice quavered, but he was resolute. “A few more hours won’t make a big difference.”

As she rose from the chair, her legs wobbled and Wolverton grasped her bare elbow. She froze at the shock of the touch, jerking her gaze to his face. His eyes darkened to storm-cloud gray and his jaw firmed to granite. He opened his hand oh-so-slowly, so she might step out the door. As much as she ached to get away from the stifling little office, however, she had to force her feet to walk away from him, from the energy and heat that had traveled from her elbow to her face, breasts and belly.

So it was like that? It had never been like that.

“I’ll schedule closing for tomorrow, then?” Mr. Baldridge asked.

“Yes,” Wolverton replied.

Delia backed into the lobby and yanked the door shut.

***

Generations of Stewards, their neighbors, their lovers and their enemies were buried up a slope on the west side of town. Delia was the only person in the cemetery in the cool dusk of late March. Nevertheless, even though it was dark, the cemetery was full of chatter. She stopped to stroke the bleating lamb atop the grave of baby Heywood Bolger, who died when a fever torched the town in 1923. The cherub’s face carved into the Fullilove’s double headstone called her name, and she dried her lips with the back of her hand before squatting to kiss him. Wending her way up the hill, Delia opened the gate to her family’s plot, a small village in the cemetery, complete with a raised tomb, two obelisks and a few dozen headstones.

The centerpiece of the plot was the mausoleum, which was a reproduction of Steward House itself. Two false chimneys framed either end and Palladian arches etched into the exterior at regular intervals bore the names and life dates of those within. Greek columns, miniatures of those at the House’s entrance, flanked the wrought iron gate into the crypt. To the right of the entrance presided Grandmère. She was an imported French granite
pleurant,
a statue of a weeping woman with her face and torso covered by a long veil. The silver-gray marble statue stood a head taller than Delia. Algernon Steward, town founder, had had her installed in the early 1890s when Delia’s four-time great-grandmother Marie-Therèse died.

There was room in the mausoleum for Delia someday, if she chose it. Not every Steward woman did—many of them rested alongside their husbands in the cemetery, since the honor of burial in the mausoleum was reserved for the women of the line.
Only for the Witches
read the copy in the old historical society tour brochure, although it wasn’t exactly true. All daughters of Steward House might rest in the mausoleum, whether they exhibited powers or not. Delia’s mother, who had been as average as tuna casserole and Virginia Slims, had chosen to be interred inside.

How had her father felt, knowing her mother and he wouldn’t be together? Delia had never dared ask. She seldom asked him how he felt about anything, because he might tell her.

The raised tomb of Annabel and Isobel Steward Beckler stood inside the gate of the plot on the slope below the mausoleum. Great-Great Uncle Archibald had commissioned the statues that knelt upon the top of the raised tomb of his beloved twin daughters. Their hair in braids, dressed in identical gowns and pinafores, the girls’ eyes were locked for all eternity on the stone Bible between their knees. The water and wind of a hundred years had faded the flat script until it was indistinguishable in the moss-mottled stone, but Delia had done the rubbing once, reading them the Twenty-third Psalm.