Birthright (49 page)

“That's agreeable.” Callie nodded.

“I also want to speak with the authorities about the possibility of having a police officer join the team. Undercover.”

“Come on, Leo.”

“Those are the terms.” Leo got to his feet. “Agreed?”

They agreed, and called the rest of the team in for a kitchen-table meeting. Callie passed out beer while Leo started things off with a booster speech.

“But the police wouldn't tell us anything.” Jittery, Frannie looked at face after face, never lighting on one for more than a finger snap. “They just asked a lot of questions. Like one of us made Rosie sick on purpose.”

“We think somebody did.” At Callie's statement, there was absolute silence. “We put a lot of people out of work,” she continued. “And some of those people are pretty steamed about it. They don't understand what we're doing here. More, they don't give a shit. Somebody set a fire in Lana Campbell's office. Why?” She waited a beat and, as Frannie had, watched faces. “Because she's the Preservation Society's lawyer and largely responsible for us being here. Somebody torched Digger's trailer, blew the hell out of some of our equipment, some of our records.”

“Bill's dead,” Bob said quietly.

“Maybe it was an accident, maybe it wasn't.” Jake studied his beer and was aware of every movement, every breath around him. “Could be one of the people we've pissed off hurt him, hurt him more than they meant to. But that upped the odds. And it added to the disturb-the-graves-and-face-the-curse deal laymen like to spook each other with. Bad shit happens, they can start gossiping that the project's cursed.”

“Maybe it is.” Dory pressed her lips together. “I know how that sounds, but bad shit
is
happening. It keeps happening. Now Rosie . . .”

“Spirits don't dump barbiturates in jugs of iced tea.” Callie folded her arms. “People do. And that means we're going to have to keep the dig clear of all outsiders. No more tours, no more outdoor classrooms, no more visitors past the fence line. We stick together. We take care of each other, watch out for each other. That's what teams do.”

“We've got important work to do,” Jake stated. “We're
going to show these local assholes we won't be run off. The project depends on every one of us. So . . .”

Jake stretched a hand out over the table.

Callie laid hers on his. One by one, others put their hands out until everyone was connected.

Callie skimmed faces once more. And knew she held hands with a murderer.

T
he call from the front desk announcing the delivery of a package from Lana Campbell interrupted Doug as he was plotting out his approach. He didn't know why Lana would send him a package, or why the hell a bellman couldn't bring it up, but he pulled on a pair of shoes, grabbed his room key and went down to retrieve it.

And there she was. Absolutely perfect, every gorgeous hair in place. He knew he was grinning like an idiot as he strode across the small lobby, lifted Lana right off her feet and caught that pretty mouth with his.

“Some package.” He set her down, but he didn't let go.

“I hoped you'd like it.”

“Where's Ty?”

She lifted her hands to his cheeks, and now she kissed him. “You say exactly the right things at the right times. He's spending a couple of days with his grandparents in Baltimore. He's over the moon about it. Why don't we go up to your room? I've got a lot to tell you.”

“Sure.” He looked down at her feet where she'd set her briefcase, a wheeled carry-on, her laptop case. She was
carrying a purse the size of Idaho. “All this? How long were you planning to stay?”

“Now that's not the right thing to say.” She sailed past him, pressed the Up button on the elevator.

“How about if I say I'm really glad to see you?”

“Better.”

He hauled her bags inside, pushed the button for his floor. “But I also wonder what you're doing here.”

“Acceptable. First, I wanted Ty tucked away right now, and I felt Digger would do more good with Callie and Jake than with me. I also felt I might be able to give you a hand. You deserve a sidekick.”

“I'd say I got top of the line, sidekick wise.”

“Bet your ass.” She stepped out with him on his floor and walked down the hall beside him. “I could only clear my calendar for a couple of days. But I thought I'd be more useful here than there. So I'm here.”

“So, it wasn't because you were pining away for me and your life wasn't worth living if you had to spend another moment away from me?”

“Well, that factored in, of course.” She stepped into the room, glanced around. It had two full-sized beds—one still unmade—a small desk, a single chair and one stingy window. “You do live spare.”

“If I'd known you were coming, I'd've gotten something . . . else.”

“This is fine.” She set her purse down on the second bed. “I need to tell you what happened yesterday.”

“Is telling me right now going to change anything?”

“No. But you need to—”

“Then first things first.” He drew the jacket she wore off her shoulders. “Nice material,” he said, and tossed it on the bed beside her purse. “You know one of the first things I noticed about you, Lana?”

“No. What?” She stood very still while he unbuttoned her blouse.

“Soft. Your looks, your skin, your hair. Your clothes.” He slid the blouse away. “A man's just got to get his hands
on all that soft.” He trailed a fingertip down the center of her body to the hook of her slacks.

“Maybe you should put the Do Not Disturb sign out.”

“I did.” He lowered his mouth, nibbled on hers as the fluid material pooled at her feet.

She tugged his shirt up, over his head. “You're a clear-thinking, careful man. That's one of the first things I noticed about you. I find that kind of thing very attractive.” Her breath caught when he swept her up into his arms. “And there's that, too.”

“We're practical, straightforward people.”

“Mostly,” she managed when he laid her on the bed.

He covered her body with his. “Nice fit.”

She let herself go, let the anxiety and excitement of the past hours melt away. He smelled of his shower, the hotel soap. She found even that arousing. To be here, so far from home in this anonymous room on sheets where he'd slept without her.

She could hear the drone of a vacuum cleaner being run in the corridor outside. And the slam of a door as someone went on their way.

She could hear her own heart beat in her throat as his lips nuzzled there.

The long, loving stroke of his hands over her warmed her skin. Her blood, her bones. So she sighed his name when his lips came back to hers. And yielded everything.

He'd dreamed of her in the night, and he rarely dreamed. He'd wished for her, and he rarely wished. All that, it seemed, had changed since she'd slipped into his life. What he'd once stopped himself from wanting was now everything he wanted.

A home, a family. A woman who would be there. It was all worth the risk if she was the woman.

He pressed his lips to her heart and knew if he could win that, he could do anything.

She moved under him, a shuddering, restless move as he sampled her with his tongue. Now the need to excite her, to hear her breath thicken and catch, to feel that heart he wanted so much to hold thunder, rose up in him.

Not so patient now, not so easy. As her breath went choppy, he dragged her up so they were kneeling on the bed, struggling to strip away the rest of their clothes.

When she bowed back, an offering, his mouth raced over her.

This is what she wanted now. Speed and need. A wild, wet ride. The thrill sprinted through her, turning her body into a quaking mass that craved more. She reared up, clamping her legs around him, curling over him to fix her teeth on his shoulder.

When he filled her, body and heart, she spoke his name. Just his name.

S
pent, sated, he held on to her. The temptation was great to simply snuggle down on the bed, drag the covers over their heads and shut out everything else.

“I want time with you, Lana. Time that's not part of anything else.”

“Normal time.” She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “We've hardly had any of that. What would it be like, do you think?”

“Quiet.”

She laughed. “Well, there's not a lot of that in my house.”

“Yes, there is. There's a nice sense of quiet with a kid running around.”

“Dogs barking, phones ringing. I'm an organized soul, Doug, but there are a lot of compartments in my life. A lot to handle.”

“And because you make it look easy, I shouldn't think it is. I've never thought it was.” He drew back. “I admire what you've done with your life, and Ty's. How you've done it.”

“There you go, saying the right thing again.” She eased away, rising to unzip her bag.

He noted that the short, thin robe was neatly folded and right on top. It made him smile. “Were you born tidy?”

“I'm afraid so.” She belted the robe, then sat on the side
of the opposite bed. “And practical. Which is why when I'd prefer to snuggle up on that bed with you for the next hour or so, I'm going to spoil the mood. Something happened yesterday.”

She told him about Rosie, watched his relaxed expression chill, then heat. Though he rose, yanked on his jeans, paced, he didn't interrupt with comments or questions until she was finished.

“Did you talk to Callie today?”

“Yes, before I left, and when I got to the airport here. She's fine, Doug, if a little irritated with me for interrupting her work with the second call.”

“This can't be put down to accident or impulse, or even a vicious kind of distraction. This was premeditated, with her as the specific target.”

“She knows that, just as she knows whoever laced the tea was one of her own team. She won't be careless. Right now, we have to leave it to her to handle that end. We'll handle this one.”

“I've got a list of Spencers—the secretary's last name. As far as we know. I got them out of the phone book, and I've been running Internet searches. I'm down to six who might work. The others have lived here too long to fit. I was working out how best to approach them when the desk called me downstairs.”

“We could use the telemarketing angle, do phone surveys and try to eliminate a few more.”

“Are you now or have you ever been a part of an organization that markets infants?”

She was opening her briefcase now, taking out a pad. “I was thinking more along the lines of targeting the woman of the house—do you now or have you ever worked outside the home? In what field and so on.”

“It'll take time. And you have to figure a lot of people just hang up on phone solicitations and surveys.”

“Yes. I'd be one of them.” She doodled absently on the pad. She could read him now, and nodded. “And yes, there's something to be said for the more direct approach.
Just go knock on doors and ask if we're speaking to Marcus Carlyle's former secretary.”

“That was my plan. Tell you what, since I've got a sidekick, we can play both angles. I'll knock on doors, you stay here and play annoying telemarketer.”

“So you can keep me safely locked up in a hotel room? I don't think so. We go together, Douglas.
Side
being the operative part of sidekick.”

“Just stop and think for a minute.” He followed her as she went into the bathroom, worked the shower controls until she was satisfied with the temperature. “We don't know what we're dealing with. You've already had your office destroyed, been scared enough to send Ty away. Think about him if something happens to you.”

She slipped out of the robe, hung it neatly on the hook behind the door, then stepped under the spray. “You're trying to scare me, and that's the right button to push.”

“Good.”

“But I can't and won't live that way. It took me two months after Steve was killed to work up the courage to go into a goddamn convenience store, in broad daylight. But I did it because you can't constantly be afraid of what might happen. If you do, you lose control of what
is
happening, and all the joy and pain it holds for you.”

“Damn.” He pulled off his jeans, stepped into the shower behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist. “You don't leave me any room to argue.”

She patted his hand, then stepped out before her hair got wet. “I'm a professional.”

“The list is out there on the desk. There's a city map with it. We might as well plot out the most convenient route.”

“I'll start that.” She dried off, put the robe back on.

But when he came out to join her, she wasn't working on anything. Instead she stood by the desk holding a little Boston Red Sox ball cap in her hands. “You got this for Tyler.”

“Yeah, I thought he'd get a kick out of it. When my
grandfather used to travel, he'd always bring me a ball cap or a toy. Some little thing.”

He picked up his shirt again, uneasy with the way she simply stood, running the bill of the cap through her fingers. “I didn't get it for him to score points with him, or you. Well, not entirely.”

“Not entirely.”

A ripple of irritation crossed his face. “Having been a small boy once, I know the value of a ball cap. I saw it at the airport and picked it up. When I was paying for it, the point angle occurred to me.”

“He asked when you'd be back.”

“Yeah?”

It was the instant delight in Doug's voice that struck her first. Instant, natural and true. Her heart tripped. “Yes, he did. And he'll love this. Points or not, it was very sweet of you to think of it.”

“I didn't forget you either.”

“Didn't you?”

“Nope.” He opened a drawer. “I didn't leave it out because I wasn't sure what the maid might make of it.”

Lana stared as he pulled out a can of Boston baked beans. When he dropped it into her hand, grinned at her, her heart not only tripped, it fell with a splat.

“That just tears it. I'm done in by a can of beans.” She pressed it against her heart and began to weep.

“Oh Jesus, Lana, don't cry. It was a joke.”

“You sneaky son of a bitch. This was not going to happen to me.” She waved him away, opened her purse and pulled out a pack of travel tissues. “I knew I was in trouble when you stepped off the elevator. You got off, and when I saw you, my heart . . .”

She tapped the silly can of beans against her breast. “My heart leaped. I haven't felt that jolt since Steve. I never expected to feel it again. I thought, I hoped, that one day I'd find someone I could love. Someone I was comfortable with, who I could live with. But if I didn't, that was all right. Because I'd had something so extraordinary
already. I never believed I'd feel anything this strong again. Not for anyone. No, don't say anything. Don't.”

She had to sit, steady herself. “I didn't want to feel like this again. Not like this. Because when you do, there's so much to lose. It would've been so much easier, so much easier if I could have loved you a little. If I could've been content and have known you'd be good to Ty. Good for him. That would've been enough.”

“Somebody told me that you can't live your life worrying about what could happen, or you miss what's happening.”