A Christmas to Die For (14 page)

She knelt by the platform. The others, seeming infected by her enthusiasm, gathered around to take the delicate figures or the stones and moss Rachel had brought in to add realism to the scene. In a few moments everyone was happily involved. Tyler even enlisted the two men to create a miniature mountain, and she thought she caught a serious discussion about how one might add a running stream.

She stood back a little, watching the scene take shape, handing out a figure where needed. Funny, how sharp the memory had been when she'd seen the angel with the chipped wing. She hadn't thought of that in years.

Maybe it had been so strong because it involved her father. Funny. You'd have expected the oldest daughter to be Daddy's girl, but instead it had been her. The whole time they'd lived here, everyone had known that Andrea was Grandfather's little helper and she was Daddy's girl.

Was it because Andrea was less guided by sentiment? A little more clear-sighted about their parents? The thought made her uncomfortable, and she tried to push it away.

"Rachel?"

She blinked, realizing that one of the guests must have said her name several times. "Yes? Peggy," she added, pleased to have pulled the woman's name from her memory banks.

"Will you show me how to put these Roman soldiers together? It looks as if the shield should hook on, but I don't quite see…"

"Let me." Tyler took it from the woman. She looked up at him, obviously flattered at his attention. "I think we can figure this out together, can't we?"

The woman fluttered after him in an instant, kneeling at the base of the tree next to him.

Rachel pinned a smile to her face. She couldn't let her private worries distract her from her duty to her guests. But Tyler—

Tyler had been watchful. Sensitive. Seeming to know what she was feeling, quick and subtle about helping out.

Even as she thought that, she caught him taking a clay donkey from Grams and handing her a star to be nestled in the branches instead, so that she didn't attempt to get down on the floor.

The simple gesture gripped her heart. Without warning, the thought came. This was a man she could love.

No. She couldn't. Because whether he wanted to or not, Tyler threatened everything that was important to her.

Rachel clearly didn't intend to let him talk to her grandmother tonight. The other guests had lingered long after the Nativity scene was finished. As it happened, one of the women was an accomplished pianist, and she'd entertained them with Christmas music while a fire roared in the fireplace and tree lights shone softly on the
putz
.

It was lovely. He'd had to admit that—admit, too, that he'd enjoyed watching the firelight play on Rachel's expressive face.

Too expressive. She probably didn't realize how clearly her protectiveness toward her grandmother came through. Once the last of the guests had wound down, she'd put her arm around the elderly woman's waist and urged her toward the stairs with a defiant look at him.

Well, much as he needed to talk to Katherine Unger, he had to agree with Rachel on this one. She had looked tired, and it was late. Tomorrow would have to do.

He put the book he'd been leafing through back on the shelf and headed for the stairs. As he did, the door into the private wing of the house opened. It wasn't Rachel who came through—it was her grandmother.

"Mrs. Unger." He stopped, foot on the bottom step. "I thought you'd already gone to bed."

"That's what my granddaughter thinks, too." She stepped into the hall, the dog padding softly behind her, and closed the door. "I think it's time we had a talk about whatever it is you and Rachel have been trying to keep from me all day."

"I'm not sure—"

She took his arm and steered him back down the hall toward the kitchen. "My granddaughter is too protective. Now, don't you start, too. Whatever it is won't be improved by making me wait and wonder about it until morning."

A low light had been left on in the kitchen, shining down on the sturdy wooden table that had undoubtedly served generations of the family, and a Black Forest clock ticked steadily on the mantelpiece. Mrs. Unger sat at the table and gestured him to the chair next to her.

"Now. Tell me." She folded thin, aristocratic hands in a gesture that was probably her way of armoring herself against bad news. "You and Rachel learned something today that upset her. What was it?"

He hesitated. "I don't think Rachel is going to like my talking with you alone."

"I'll deal with Rachel." She waited.

"All right." Actually, this might bother her less than it did Rachel. "I was in the small cemetery at the farm today. The one where my grandfather is buried. Rachel saw the date he died. I think you know why that upset her."

Her face tightened slightly at the implied challenge, but she nodded. "It reminded Rachel of when her father left."

"That's what she said." He frowned, trying to find the right way to ask questions that were certainly prying into her family's affairs. "She didn't remember the sequence of events exactly. Maybe she didn't even know, at the time."

"But you knew I would." She said the words he'd omitted, shaking her head as if she didn't want to remember. "That was a difficult time. Rachel's father had been around for nearly a month—long for him. The quarrels were starting up. We knew it was only a question of time until he left. The fact that it happened shortly after your grandfather's death doesn't mean they were related."

"Perhaps not. But you must know I won't be satisfied unless I get some answers."

She inclined her head, conceding the point. "You have that right, I suppose." A faint, wry smile flickered. "Oddly enough, I've waited for years for Rachel to ask the questions. Why did her father leave? Why did their mother take them away? She never has."

That was strange. He'd think the questions would burn in her. "I don't want to hurt her. Or you. But I need the truth."

"The truth always costs something. Probably pain." She held up her hand to stop his protest. "I'm not refusing to tell you. I'm just pointing out that you can't always protect people." She sighed, her fingers tightening against each other. "Maybe that was my mistake. Trying to protect everyone."

Yes, he could see that. She was someone who would always try to protect her family. Rachel was exactly the same. As much as it might annoy him at times, he had to admire it, too.

"We only had the one child, you know." Her voice was soft. "Perhaps things would have been different if we'd had more. As it was, Lily was the apple of her father's eye—spirited, willful and headstrong. My husband liked those qualities in her, until she met Donald Hampton."

"He didn't approve." He'd only had Rachel's child's eye view of her father, but he hadn't been too impressed.

"No. Oh, Hampton was charming. Good-looking, polite. It was easy to see why she fell in love with him. But Frederick didn't think there was much character behind the charm."

His mind flickered to his own father. Maybe not long on charm, but he'd been a sound man and a good father. Odd, to be sitting in this quiet room with this elderly woman, pulled willy-nilly into a bond with her.

She sighed, the sound a soft counterpoint to the ticking of the clock. "Frederick would have stopped the marriage if he could have, but she was determined. And afterward there were the babies—" Her face bloomed with love. "He adored those girls. Hampton was just as unreliable as my husband predicted, but Frederick managed to keep his opinions to himself, for the most part. And we were happy when they moved in here. Then it didn't matter when Hampton took off, supposedly in search of some wonderful deal. We could take care of the children."

It seemed to him that their mother should have done that, but apparently she hadn't, from what Rachel said, been especially gifted as a mother.

"They were living here when my grandfather was attacked." Maybe best to move things along.

"Yes. As I said, Hampton had been back for about a month, supposedly trying to find a decent job around here, although Frederick always said he would run at the sight of one. Still, he was here, and Rachel adored him."

He'd seen that, in her eyes, when she spoke of him. "Maybe that's why she's never asked. She wants to hold on to her image of him."

She nodded. "We thought he'd be here until Rachel's birthday, at least."

"How long after the attack on my grandfather did he leave?" That was the important point to him.

"Two days." Her face tightened until the skin seemed molded against the bone. "We woke up to find him gone. He left a note, telling Lily he'd heard of some wonderful job opportunity out west. He left, never even saying goodbye to the girls. I don't think they ever heard from him again."

The timing was certainly suspicious. "I understand your daughter left soon after that."

"There was a terrible quarrel between them—my daughter and my husband. Frederick was rash enough to say what he thought of her husband, never imagining she'd carry out her threat to leave." She shook her head, the grief she'd probably carried since that day seeming to weigh her down. "I tried to reason with them, but they were both too stubborn to listen. There was a time when I thought I'd never get my granddaughters back again."

"But you have," he said quickly. "They never stopped loving you." Love. Connections. They went together, didn't they? Binding people together for good or ill. Like it or not, his family and hers were bound, too.

"I do." She looked at him then, and he saw the pleading in her lined face. "I have Rachel, and through her Andrea came back, too. But Rachel is the vulnerable one. She always has been. Family is everything to her."

What could he say to that? She didn't seem to expect anything. She just leaned across the table, putting her hand over his.

"Please," she said. "Please don't do anything that will take family away from Rachel. Please."

R
achel charged up the stairs the next morning, fueled by a mix of rage and betrayal. Tyler had gone too far this time.

Imagine the nerve—he'd sat there at breakfast calmly eating her cream-cheese-filled French toast, listening to the other guests talk about their planned day in Bethlehem, and he hadn't shown her by word or look that he had talked to Grams last night.

Some latent, fair part of her mind suggested that he could hardly have brought up something so personal in the presence of strangers, but she slapped it down. She wasn't rational about this. She was furious.

She paused on the landing, catching her breath, calming her nerves. Her sensitivity where her father was concerned was probably getting in the way of her judgment, but she couldn't seem to help it.

If only Andrea were here. She knew her big sister well enough to know that if she called Andrea's cell phone and told her what was going on, she and Cal would be on their way home immediately. But that wasn't fair—not to Andrea, who deserved to have her honeymoon in peace, and not to herself. It was time she stopped depending on her big sister.

She went quickly up the rest of the flight, running her hand along the carved railing. The square, spacious upstairs hall looked odd with the bedroom doors closed. All of their guests had gone out for the day. Except Tyler.

She swung on her heel toward his door just as it opened.

"Rachel." His face changed at the sight of her.

Small wonder. She probably looked like an avenging fury. She certainly felt like one.

"We have to talk." She said the words with control, but her nails were biting into her palms.

He nodded, opening the door wide. "I know. Do you want to come in?"

Instinct told her not to have this conversation in the privacy of the bedroom. "Out here is fine. Everyone's left. We won't be overheard." No matter what she had to say to him.

"Right." He stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him, and just stood, waiting for her to say what she would.

All the insults she'd been practicing in her head seemed to fly away at the sight of his grave face. She could only find one thing to say.

"How could you? How could you talk to my grandmother without me?" Saying the words seemed to give her momentum. "You must have known how tired she was and how much that was bound to upset her. I can't believe you'd do that."

It was true, she realized. At some level, she couldn't believe that the Tyler she'd grown to know and care for would go behind her back that way.

"If you've talked with your grandmother, you know I didn't go to her," he said calmly. "She came to me."

"Yes. I know. I also know that you could have made some excuse. You could have waited until today at least. Why was it so important that you had to talk about it last night? Grams—" To her horror, she felt tears welling in her eyes. She blinked them back.

But he saw. He took a step toward her, closing the gap between them, his face gentling.

"Don't, Rachel. Please. I don't want to hurt you. I didn't want to hurt her. But your grandmother is one smart lady. She knew we were hiding something from her, and she wasn't going to rest until she knew what it was."

She drew in a breath, trying to ease the tension in her throat. "She is smart. And stubborn."

His fingers closed over hers for a brief moment. "Like her granddaughter."

Another breath, another effort to gain control of the situation that seemed to be slipping rapidly away from her. Or maybe there had never been anything she could do about this, but it had taken her this long to realize it.

"Grams told me what she'd told you. About my father leaving, the fight between my grandfather and mother." She shook her head slightly, not liking the pictures that had taken up residence there. "She's convinced that his leaving didn't have anything to do with what happened to your grandfather." She forced herself to meet his eyes. "So am I. Maybe he was just as charming as I remember and just as weak as my grandparents thought, but he wasn't a man who'd turn to violence."

"I hope you're right, Rachel." His fingers brushed hers again in mute sympathy. "I hope you're right about him."