Haunting Rachel (15 page)

Very pleasant. And completely ruthless.

It made goose bumps rise on Mercy’s bare arms. She hadn’t heard the beginning of the conversation, but came into his office in time to hear that much. It was enough to disturb her.

She shut the door behind herself and crossed the room to sit down in his visitor’s chair, pretending to thumb through the papers she carried rather than listen in on the conversation.

“I told you that last week,” Nicholas said. “No. No, I don’t see any reason to do that. I imagine the problem will resolve itself fairly quickly.”

He paused. His gaze was fixed on Mercy. She could feel it.

“I can come up with ten million.”

She looked up in surprise, and felt herself flush when he smiled at her sardonically.

“No, I don’t need Rachel’s shares to do that. I’ve told you. I have the authority. Yeah. Yeah, you do that. See you there.” He hung up.

“But you don’t have the authority,” Mercy protested. “An investment that size needs Rachel’s approval. In fact, it needs the approval of the board.”

Nicholas smiled. “Love, do you intend working for me as my assistant?”

“You know I don’t.”

“Has Rachel hired you to manage her interests?” “The subject hasn’t come up. I’m not even sure she means to keep her shares.”

Softly, he said, “Then don’t concern yourself with whatever decisions I make in running the bank.”

He had never warned her off quite so bluntly before, and coming now, this warning served only to make her more worried. He was up to something. She could sense it. She just didn’t know what was going on.

“I don’t mean to meddle in your business, Nick.”

“I know you don’t, love.”

“It’s just—ten million dollars is a hell of a lot of money. Even for a bank this size.”

“I know what I’m doing, Mercy.”

His record with the bank bore that out, so all she could do was nod. “I know.”

He smiled, then nodded toward the papers forgotten in her grasp. “Are those for me?”

She got up and handed them to him across the desk. “Some things you need to look over and sign—”

Nicholas grasped her wrist. It was a warm, strong, inescapable hold. “Sure you don’t want to work for me?” he murmured seductively. “Be right at the seat of power? Know all my secrets?”

She leaned her free hand on the desk. “I have a feeling I’ll never live long enough to know all your secrets, Nick.”

His eyes gleamed at her. “But it’s something to strive for, surely.”

“Oh, it’s at the top of my list.”

He let out one of those short barks of laughter so characteristic of him, and released her wrist. “Could you pander to my ego at least once, love?”

“I have a sneaking suspicion your ego is remarkably healthy as it is,” she said, still leaning on the desk.

“Perhaps.” He glanced down at the papers he held. “Do you need these right away? I need to go out for a while.”

“They can wait until tomorrow. I didn’t see an appointment on your calendar.” She kept her voice casual.

“A last-minute arrangement.” He got up and came around the desk, and when she turned to face him, he lifted a hand to lay alongside her neck. He bent his head and kissed her, taking his time about it and totally ignoring the unlocked door.

Then again, she thought hazily, maybe he had a sixth sense about such things. They’d never been interrupted— and he had provoked greater intimacies than this in the past.

When he finally drew back far enough to speak, he murmured huskily, “Trust me, Mercy. I really do know what I’m doing.”

It took her a moment to remember what they’d been discussing. “I do. Of course I do.”

“Do you?” His fingers caressed her throat. “Then why are you so worried?”

“Because— How do you know I’m worried?”

“I know.”

Well,
that
was certainly unnerving. Up until then she’d thought she had a great poker face.

This time his laugh was a deep rumble. He kissed her again, then released her and stepped back. “Mind the store for a couple of hours, will you, love?”

“Of course.”

But he was no sooner out the door than Mercy made an impulsive decision. With a hurried order to Leigh to mind the store, she grabbed her purse and dashed out before the office manager could do more than sputter in surprise.

Mercy wasn’t at all sure she could follow him without his knowledge, but she intended to give it a damn good try. He had asked for her trust, and she had said it was
given—but Mercy had lied. He seemed to her more secretive than ever these days, and she didn’t like it. There had been too many cryptic telephone conversations, too many evasions, too many enigmatic gazes and inexplicable silences.

Her best friend had survived two so-called accidents, a fact Nick seemed almost totally disinterested in, even though he stood to gain by her death. And soon after the second one, he had told somebody on the phone that they had “fucked up.”

Damned straight, Mercy was worried.

She had no idea if the man she loved was a man she could trust.

Fiona brought them lunch on trays since they didn’t want to stop going through Duncan’s private papers. But by two o’clock Adam firmly called a halt.

“My eyes are beginning to cross, and that’s the third time you’ve rubbed yours,” he told Rachel. “We need a break.”

“Maybe you’re right.” She rubbed the back of her neck instead, finding it a bit stiff. They had moved from her father’s desk to the leather sofa and big, square coffee table. Adam sat on the sofa, while Rachel had ended up sitting on the floor on the other side of the table with a big pillow to lean on.

Not because she wanted to avoid sitting beside him, but because … because they’d needed the entire coffee table on which to spread out papers, and it was easier to work from both sides.

That was all.

Adam got up and came around to offer her his hands.
“Come on. Why don’t we go outside and take a walk or something.”

She took his hands and allowed him to pull her up, wincing as her left leg protested the sudden change in position.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, no. Just a slight cramp in my leg. It’s easing off.” She released his hands and stepped away, unnerved by his closeness. At such moments she was always aware of that leashed power in him, that hidden strength. It bothered her in some way she could hardly put a name to.

Realizing suddenly that she had been silent just a moment too long, she said casually, “If there’s no furniture barring the way, I’ll show you through a bit more of the house on our way to the back. We have a kind of informal garden, and it’s a pleasant place to walk.”

“Sounds good to me.”

They closed the study door when they left, and Rachel locked it, sliding the key into the front pocket of her jeans.

“Have you been keeping the room locked?”

“No, just the desk. But with all those papers spread out, locking the door seems best for now.”

“A sensible precaution.”

They encountered a barricade in the hallway outside the formal dining room. And encountered her uncle Cameron, who was not happy.

Since he’d already met Adam, he simply acknowledged his presence with a nod, launching immediately into complaint. “Rachel, Darby says she found three rolltop desks in the basement, and she won’t let me go through the contents.”

Soothingly, Rachel said, “That’s because I asked her just to box up the contents for now, Cam. We can go
through all that later. Anything that’s been down there for decades can wait a while longer.”

He seemed satisfied, but said, “We don’t want her throwing away something important thinking it’s trash.” Not as distinguished-looking as his older brother had been, Cameron carried the added burden of cupidlike features, which tended to make him look pouty even when he wasn’t.

“She won’t do that, Cam. She’s boxing up the contents of everything she finds, no matter what. Don’t worry. Darby knows what she’s doing.”

A crash from the basement caused her uncle to wince in horror and bolt.

“I hope,” Rachel murmured.

Adam grinned at her. “Want to go see what ended up in splinters, or shall we go on to the garden?”

“I’m tired of sorting furniture and old boxes.” She shrugged. “Let Darby handle it. And Uncle Cam.”

“He does seem worried,” Adam noted as Rachel let go of his arm so she could pick her way through the furniture barricade.

“He hates the idea of non-Grants having a say in the disposal of family things. Not the family tradition, you see. But I don’t see any reason to keep most of the stuff in storage, and Darby is the fairest, most trustworthy antiques dealer I know.”

“Why’s he so worried about the contents?”

“Because a few days ago Darby found a diamond cocktail ring tucked away in a little drawer of an old dresser. Thirties design. I’m almost afraid to have it appraised.”

Adam whistled. “So every piece is a potential treasure chest?”

“Well, to Uncle Cam. He always did love poking into corners, so this really does seem like a treasure hunt.”

They emerged at last from the forest of furniture, and Adam casually took Rachel’s hand. “Which way now?”

“We’ll go through the sunroom,” she decided, trying not to be so conscious of that warm, strong hand surrounding hers. “Fiona’s already working on dinner in the kitchen, so if we go that way, she’ll burn something.”

“She has her own methods of letting her displeasure be known?”

“Definitely. This way.”

The sunroom, a bright and plant-filled space that doubled as a breakfast room, opened onto a tile veranda. Steps led down to a lawn, from which a path paved only with stepping stones wandered off into a lush landscape of bright flowering shrubs and spring greenery.

Large trees towered to either side of the garden area, offering a sense of being closed off from the world outside. The air was mild, and heavily scented from all the flowers.

“Nice,” Adam commented as they began strolling along the path.

“Most of the homes in this neighborhood have more formal gardens than we do. But this was designed two hundred years ago, and so far everybody’s kept it casual. I mean to as well.”

“I like it.” They strolled for a few minutes in silence, and then Adam said abruptly, “Tell me about Thomas Sheridan.”

Startled, Rachel stopped on the path and stared up at him. “Thomas? Why?”

“I’d just like to know.”

“You said Dad talked about him.”

“He did. But he wasn’t in love with Sheridan. You were.”

Rachel pulled to free her hand. “I don’t want to—” “Rachel.” His free hand lifted and touched her cheek,
making her go still. “I said I wouldn’t push, and I won’t. But I … I need to hear you talk about him.”

“Why?”

“Because he was so important to you. Because I look like him, and I need to know
that you
know I’m not him.”

She turned and continued walking slowly. But she pulled her hand gently from his, breaking the connection and making them both conscious of the loss. “All right. What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you feel comfortable telling me.”

“I loved him from the time I was ten years old. Is that what you want to hear?”

Adam’s voice remained steady. “If it’s the truth.”

“It is.” She drew a breath. “He was out of high school when I started—there were ten years between us—but I wore his ring for four years, and never dated anyone else. We got engaged when I turned eighteen, but Tom insisted I go to college for at least a year before we married.

“So I did. But I lived at home, and we saw each other every weekend.” She paused. “I didn’t like his job.”

“He was a pilot, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. He flew cargo planes for a company based here in Richmond. It wasn’t usually dangerous work. He said.” “You didn’t believe that?”

Rachel shrugged, and her voice was a bit tense. “I had a romantic imagination. So I imagined things. Once or twice I got the feeling there had been close calls, just from something he’d said. But he’d only laugh and tell me not to worry. I did, of course. Worry. I gave him the locket on his twenty-ninth birthday.”

“The locket?”

Rachel nodded. “A small gold locket. I had our initials engraved on the outside, and a St. Christopher put inside. To protect him. He had my picture put inside as well.”
She paused. “Neither one protected him very well. His plane vanished just a few months later.”

They walked in silence a few minutes, and then Adam said quietly, “Did you bury your heart with him, Rachel?”

“I thought I had.”

They stopped, and when she turned to face him his hand reached up to touch her cheek again. This time it lingered. “Did you?”

There was a long silence so intense that even the sounds of the garden seemed to have stilled. Then Rachel took a jerky step away from him, that instinctive retreat making her words unnecessary. But she said them anyway. “I don’t know. I just don’t know, Adam.”

A little flatly, he said, “And I look so much like him.”

“It isn’t something that’s going to go away,” she reminded him. “You look like Thomas. But Thomas is dead. And I know that.”

“But you haven’t said good-bye to him, have you, Rachel?”

He didn’t wait for a reply, but reached for her hand, tucked it into the crook of his arm, and began walking along the path once more. For several minutes, they walked in silence.

“Adam?”

“Yes?”

“For a long, long time, I never really believed he was gone. For … for years I woke up from dreams about him. He was always trying to tell me something, and I could never quite hear him. I finally realized he was trying to say good-bye. And one day the dreams just stopped.”

Adam looked down at her, his face without expression. Then he said, “It’s all right, Rachel. I understand.”

“Do you?” She shook her head a little. “I’m not so sure I do.”

Adam didn’t respond to that. But a moment later, as they rounded a bend in the path, he stopped suddenly. “What’s that?”

She gave him a curious look. “There’s a path through the woods to the river. That gate is the way out of the garden.”

Adam stared at tall black wrought-iron gates, at the winding path beyond. His voice sounded strange even to him when he said, “I didn’t know it was here.”