Beautifully Forgotten (13 page)

It didn’t hurt and she thought she must have just nicked it, but with one look she knew she was wrong. It was deep, almost to the bone, and she reacted by cursing like a sailor.

“Fuck!”

Lucien appeared in the threshold of the kitchen. “I don’t know the type of place you are used to working, but here we don’t use that kind of . . .”

And then he saw the blood dripping down her arm.

“What the fuck did you do?” he roared as he reached for a towel to wrap her hand in.

She was feeling stupid enough already and his bellowing, regardless of cause, set her off. “I was attacked by a vampire. What the hell does it look like happened? I was cutting up my apple and the knife slipped.” Some of the anger gave way to fear, and she added more softly, “I think it went to the bone. I may need stitches.”

“If you can see the bone, then you definitely need stitches.” He reached for his phone as he started to guide her to the sofa in his office.

Despite her best efforts, her next words came out as more of a plea: “I don’t want to go to the hospital.” She knew stitches meant the hospital, but her fear of them was illogical and crippling.

Darcy felt Lucien tense at her words. “Okay. I’ll call a friend, but I want you to sit. You look like a ghost.”

She took two steps and felt her legs giving out from under her. “I’m going to . . .” But the rest of the sentence was cut short by blackness.

When she came to, she was lying on the sofa in Lucien’s office with her hand wrapped in a white bandage. Humiliation burned through her that she had not only nearly cut her finger off and fainted, but that she had succumbed to a fear she had spent a long time learning how to control.

“Sleeping Beauty awakes.” He was trying to be funny, but Darcy heard the odd note in his words. She tried to sit up and he moved quickly to her side to help.

“What happened?”

He stared at her so intensely—like he thought she was going to disappear or something. And then he said, “You fainted.”

When she felt out of control, she fell back on what she knew: humor. “With grace though, right?”

“You went down like a sack of bricks. You’re lucky I’m as fast as I am or you’d have a concussion to go along with the severed hand.”

“It was a paper cut.”

“Right, a paper cut that required six stitches.”

“Who stitched me up?”

“A friend. He usually works on dead animals, but he made an exception for you.”

“Not funny.”

He sobered. “It wasn’t funny at all. Seeing you as pale as a ghost and then having you faint on me. Jesus, that scared the shit out of me. Never do that again or I’ll dock your pay.”

“I can see now why you won the humanitarian award.”

Some emotion passed through his expression, but Darcy couldn’t make out what it was. He said, “Perhaps you should take the rest of the day off.”

She moved to stand and Lucien’s strong hands wrapped around her upper arms to steady her. He added, “Maybe I should take you home.”

“No!” The idea of bringing him into her sanctuary would be her hell. She hadn’t meant to bark out that answer, however, and saw by the way Lucien was clenching his jaw that he had taken offense.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that I’ve been a big enough pain in the ass for one day. I’ll catch a cab, but thank you”—she looked down at her hand, seeking the strength to finish the apology she was choking on, then lifted her eyes to his to find his focus on her—“for not taking me to the hospital. My fear of them is ridiculous, but very real.”

Lucien stood on the curb a long time after the cab disappeared from sight, thinking about Darcy. He thought about her comment regarding his award. He couldn’t shake his suspicion about her motives, particularly having discovered she had been keeping tabs on him over the years. She’d walked away from him and never looked back, so what changed? Was she just curious or was she really after something? Not to mention he knew the kind of woman Darcy’s mother was. Yet hadn’t Darcy voluntarily gone back with that woman instead of coming away with him? Why? He had tried not to put too much thought into what had happened between them, because he had just wanted to forget her. But was it possible that there was more to the story?

He spent the rest of the day trying not to think of Darcy and failing miserably. The sound of his phone was a welcome distraction.

“Hey, it’s Josh.” Ember’s uncle happened to be a damn fine private investigator. “Is this a bad time?” he asked.

“No, not at all.”

“Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you, but work has been keeping me really busy. You called?”

“I did. Have you found any dirt on the Carmichaels?”

“Nothing that throws up any flags, but I did learn that Dane has a serious drug problem.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, pretty hard stuff too. It’s entirely likely that he wasn’t even in his right state of mind when he attacked Ember. Doesn’t change the fact that he needs help, but it’s a very revealing tidbit.”

“Agreed.”

“His family is an interesting lot. His grandfather, the judge, rules that family with an iron fist. So why he hasn’t made Dane stop, I’ve no idea. But I’m guessing now that you’ve upped the stakes with the ethics committee, he may be forced to do something.”

Lucien almost snorted at that. Josh continued, “Dane’s father, the senator, is too busy running his campaign to bother with Dane since he has true competition for his seat for the first time in twelve years.”

An uneasy feeling moved through Lucien before he said, “Charles Michaels.”

“Exactly. From what I’ve been able to uncover, the judge, DA, and senator are all clean.”

“And Dane? Has anyone besides Ember come forward to report him?”

“No, but I did uncover something interesting about Sabrina Douglas. Dane wasn’t the first man she claimed had raped her.”

Sabrina was a woman who had worked for Lucien and was someone who Dane had allegedly raped. She couldn’t handle what Dane had done and escaped it by killing herself. This news about her completely took Lucien by surprise. “What?”

“Yeah, she filed against two other guys. One in her hometown of Oklahoma City and another here in Manhattan a few months before she met Dane.”

“Wait, Sabrina was from Iowa.”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“What the hell?” Lucien stood and started to pace around his office. “Why would she lie about that, of all things?”

“Because she was a guest of their state mental facility for several years.”

“Jesus, so it’s entirely likely that Dane didn’t rape her.”

“Afraid so. Doesn’t change what he tried with Ember, but as far as Sabrina Douglas is concerned, I’m guessing that of the two, Dane wasn’t the unstable one. There was one other thing that I found odd. The way the senator’s wife, Dane’s mother, left seems suspect.”

“Meaning?”

“I didn’t want to probe too much and raise anyone’s suspicions, but I did talk with the woman at the salon Belinda Carmichael always frequented, her yoga instructor, and some other people on the outskirts of her social circle. They were all completely surprised by her leaving. According to them, she was very happily married.”

Lucien stopped pacing. “That is interesting and even more so after my conversation with the judge a few weeks ago. I hinted that I knew of the skeletons in his closet. It was a total bluff, but he reacted like a guilty man.”

“That
is
interesting. So maybe the daughter-in-law learned a dirty little secret and he made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”

“Paid her off to leave? Seems thin, don’t you think? Particularly since she’s never tried to contact her family,” Lucien said.

“True, unless what she learned was reason enough to stay away. The cold murder case in the news—Elizabeth Spano—that’s Belinda’s sister.”

“Really? Well that is interesting. Have you located Belinda?”

“It wasn’t easy. Someone did a really good job of covering their trail.”

“But you’re better.”

Josh sounded almost cocky in reply. “She’s living in Maryland with her other sister. You want me to contact her and find out what made her leave?”

“Do you think she’ll talk?” Lucien asked.

“I can be very persuasive.”

Lucien laughed. “I bet. Let me know what you find out.”

“Sure thing.”

“There’s something else, but this needs to be handled with great care.”

“Okay.”

“I would like you to look into a Darcy MacBride. Namely what she’s been up to for the past fourteen years.”

“Sure. Who is she?”

How did Lucien answer that? He tried to be as vague as possible. “We lived at the same orphanage and now she’s working for me.”

“Ah, an ex. You sure you want me digging into her past? If there’s something you want to know, shouldn’t you just ask her?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Well, son, it’ll get even more complicated if she learns that you’re invading her privacy.”

Lucien knew he was right, but his need to fill in all the missing pieces so he could make sense of what had happened between them was just too strong. “I know, but could you do it anyway?”

It was the only time that Josh didn’t jump on an assignment, but he was a professional and so after a few minutes he said, “I’ll get right on it.”

“Thanks.”

Lucien felt guilty about what he was doing, but not guilty enough to not do it. Besides,
she
was the one at fault. He had a right to know what had happened.

Dane hated coming to the estate. He was out of blow, though, and knew where there was a stash. The irony behind the lectures on family and appearances and how Dane was a lowlife was that one of his family members, probably his uncle, snorted lines just the same as him.

He moved across the floor, hoping like hell that his grandfather wasn’t home.

The shout, when it came, was unexpected. Not to mention, not his grandfather’s. So who was in his office? He moved closer to peek through the crack in the door and caught part of the conversation.

“. . . not worth the price I’ve paid. You’d think you had a golden pussy. I’m done, but if you want to continue, you’ll learn firsthand the convenience of a rich and well-connected family.”

Dane’s gasp was audible, loud enough for his dad to turn in his direction. He didn’t stick around to have a father-son chat. He walked out the door without even bothering to get what he’d come for. The man on the phone looked like his dad, but he sure as hell didn’t act like him. And what did the voice on the phone have on him?

He always wondered why his mother, a seemingly loving parent and wife, up and left one day, never to return. He hadn’t been much more than a baby, but he had heard the story of her betrayal from his grandfather more times than he could count. He always believed she met with foul play, particularly given his grandfather used the past tense when he spoke of her.

He never thought too hard on it. In truth, he was scared. He didn’t put anything past his family. But maybe her leaving was no mystery. The man who the public knew as a charming ladies’ man seemed something quite different behind closed doors.

Dane returned home and was still unnerved by his father’s behavior from earlier. He called Lena since she was always a good distraction, and she came over. As he prepared them a drink, he heard a knock at the door followed quickly by Lena calling, “I’ll get it.” As she moved to the door and pulled it open, Dane could tell that whoever was on the other side of it put Lena on edge.