She’d known her theory would perk him up. “I don’t deal much in bones.”
“I’m fading,” he said. “Nurses had me up today. God, I’m so weak. I thought you’d be better off in Night’s Landing. Out of the fray. Now, I don’t know. Nate…make sure he knows you’re tougher than you look.”
“There’s still time for him to fly back to New York tonight.”
“Dream on. Hang in there, okay?”
“You, too.”
The kitchen seemed quiet and still after she hung up. She cut the prune cake in two chunks and wrapped half, carefully placing it in the freezer in anticipation of Rob’s return home, then headed out through the back door. She was restless, her head spinning.
She found herself on the narrow trail to the Poe house. It wound along the river, on the edge of the woods of cedar trees, limestone pits and small caves, a route she’d taken hundreds of times since she was a child.
Within five steps, Nate fell in behind her.
Sarah almost smiled. “I knew I wouldn’t get far without you.”
“Rob’s right. You are tougher than you look.”
His words registered, and she whipped around at him, furious. “You eavesdropped on my conversation with my brother?”
“Picked up the extension on the porch. Piece of cake.”
“
Damn
it, don’t I have any privacy?”
“Not when the same guy who shot me could be after you.”
“No one’s after me,” she said, picking up her pace, pushing aside low tree branches on the damp path. The river oozed below her on her left. The path would take her higher, onto impressive limestone bluffs.
“I didn’t listen to the entire conversation. That help?”
“Not particularly.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“
I’m
going for a walk.”
And without any warning—without even breathing—he caught one arm around her waist and drew her to him.
She gulped in a breath. “What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking about kissing you. I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of days now.”
“You’ve only known me a couple of days.”
“Plenty long enough to think about kissing you.”
His mouth found hers, and she didn’t resist, didn’t even consider it—she shut her eyes and felt the softness of his lips, the coolness of the breeze against her bare arms. She remembered his injured arm and grabbed the other one instead, holding him tightly as his mouth opened to hers, his arm dropping lower, drawing her more firmly against him. He was all hard muscle and bone, not an easy man, not the sort she’d ever imagined herself wanting to kiss. Well, wanting to, maybe. He was sexy, the kind of sexy she’d been taught to resist. Didn’t
need
to be taught to resist.
Only when he set her down did she realize he’d lifted her off her feet.
She cleared her throat and ran her fingers through her hair. “Well. I guess that excuses you for eavesdropping.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“We should head back. You have time to make an evening flight—”
“I checked out the upstairs while you were frosting the prune cake. I think I’ll take the blue room.” He motioned up the path with one hand. “Lead the way.”
“I had a feeling I wasn’t getting rid of you tonight. We used to get bats in the blue room.”
He grinned at her. “I’m not afraid of bats.”
“You’ve got flour on your jacket.” She brushed at the spot with her fingertips. “That would never do for a marshal, would it? Against all your dress codes, I imagine. Did I hurt your arm?”
His eyes went very dark, smoldering dark. “Sarah…”
She caught her breath. “Yes. I should lead the way.”
The Poe home was an 1868 brick Greek Revival set on three acres of yard and gardens high on a bluff above the Cumberland River. Nate remembered seeing pictures of it when Wes Poe was campaigning for the White House. On the walk over, along the river, Sarah had explained that the house was a state and national historic site, not only because of her pal the president, but because of its own unique history and near pristine condition.
“It represents almost a hundred and fifty years of middle Tennessee history,” she said. “Leola and Violet Poe made very few improvements in it over the years. There’s still no central heat and only cold running water.”
“President Poe’s a wealthy man—”
“It wasn’t about money. Leola and Violet didn’t embrace change.”
Nate followed her onto a stone path that led through the overgrown grass to the porch. “I like my hot water.”
“They had hot water. They just had to boil it.”
“Wes Poe didn’t have a typical baby boomer upbringing, did he?”
“He was born during the war, so technically he’s not a boomer, but, no, the Poe sisters weren’t exactly Ward and June Cleaver.”
Sarah trotted up the steps onto the porch, more at ease than Nate had seen her since he’d arrived in Night’s Landing. It wasn’t just being on familiar turf—it was having told someone else about the letter, calling the bluff of the asshole who’d written it. He joined her on the porch, feeling as if he’d just stepped back in time.
“When I was growing up,” she went on, “I’d sneak up here every chance I got and sit out on the porch and listen to Leola and Violet tell stories. When I was in high school, I started videotaping them.”
“Did you include some of the footage in your documentary?”
She nodded. “They’re incredible, so natural and real. Every story is priceless, whether it’s something ordinary like picking blackberries and going to church suppers, or something melodramatic, like hiding in the cellar during a tornado, or finding my grandfather dead. They were elderly by the time I was a teenager, but they had such vivid memories. Their stories helped me get to know them as children and teenagers themselves, as young women.” She gazed out at the knee-high grass and weeds popping up through the rosebush. “I miss them.”
Nate knew she was seeing more than an empty historic house. “I imagine people will be most interested in what the Poe sisters have to say about the president.”
“I’m not his biographer. I don’t focus on him. His is a fascinating and unique story, but it’s not the only one.” She straightened her spine and seemed to make an effort to return herself to the present. “I’ve been working on one aspect of the Poe house or another since high school. But I’m done with it now.”
“What’s next?”
“I’m supposed to be taking a break and figuring that out.”
“What happens to this place?”
“It’ll open to the public at some point. There’s still a lot to be sorted out. Parking, visitors’ center, rest rooms. Who does what. The trust, the state, the federal government.”
“Wes Poe didn’t want it?”
She shook her head. “He thinks Leola and Violet would have approved of its fate in their own way. Imagine. They opened their door one morning and found him right here on this porch.”
“In an apple basket,” Nate said, remembering their conversation from the other night in New York over beer and her half-eaten quesadilla. He leaned against the porch rail, still feeling their kiss, the eagerness of her mouth on his. But she was off in Poe land, the house a living and breathing entity to her. “Think one of the sisters had him and just didn’t want to admit it?”
“It’s possible, but very unlikely. They were both well into their forties when they found him.”
Conroy Fontaine rounded a mass of red roses. “And our Dr. Dunnemore no doubt knows more than she’ll ever tell,” he said pleasantly. “I should practice my eavesdropping skills and see what I can learn.”
Sarah’s laugh struck Nate as polite more than heartfelt. “I had a professor who often said that one can tell a good paper as much by what’s not in it as what is. I imagine I know more about this land and the people who’ve lived on it than anyone in their right mind would ever want to know. But, everything I have, I’ve turned over to the Poe House Trust.”
Fontaine leaned on the rickety rail of the porch steps. “I’ve heard you picked through the Poe family dump.”
“The word is excavated.”
He grinned at her. “Find any old diaries?”
“You are hopeless, Mr. Fontaine,” she said in an exaggerated Scarlett O’Hara accent.
Fontaine looked at Nate, then motioned vaguely up the river. “My fishing camp’s just up the road. It has a tricky gas stove. I almost blew myself up just now trying to light the pilot and decided to take a walk to calm my nerves. I heard you two out here.”
Sarah sat on the top step. “What were you planning to cook?” she asked.
“Your prune cake got me hankering for real southern food. I was going to try my hand at fried apricot pies.”
“Fried apricot pies—oh, Conroy! I adore fried pies.”
She was into the southern thing. Nate watched her cheeks go from dead-pale to rosy. Next time, he thought, amused, instead of kissing her, he’d bring up southern food. But he understood—it was a distraction.
Conroy was having fun, too. “I like them still warm, sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar—”
“They’re not easy to make. I tend to burn them.”
“If I bring you fried apricot pies for breakfast, will you get me an interview with your friend the president?”
“You are incorrigible, Mr. Fontaine.” She was good-natured about his relentless, open push for her to trade on her friendship with John Wesley Poe—it seemed to be a conversation they’d had before. “It used to be that not many people even knew we were friends. Now—well, that’s changed, hasn’t it?”
“People knew,” Conroy said, suddenly serious. “They just have such enormous respect for your family that they didn’t want to intrude. Even nosy reporters like me.” But his seriousness didn’t last. “Deputy Winter, you work for the president, don’t you? Technically. The Marshals Service is part of the Department of Justice. Your boss is the director, his boss is the attorney general—and
his
boss is the president. There.
You
could introduce me.”
Nate didn’t respond. He’d never met any of the presidents in office during his years as a deputy, and he didn’t joke about them.
“Ah. I see I stepped over the line. Well, I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, least of all me.” Fontaine patted his stomach. “I think I’ll go wrestle with my stove and try my fried pies again. I’ll bring some by if they come out.”
“I hope you will,” Sarah said.
After he was gone, she leaned into Nate and whispered, “I know where there’s a key.”
Great. He was going to get a tour. “What about the alarm system?”
“I have the code. If I told Conroy, he’d want a personal tour. At this point I think most of what he has on President Poe is off the Internet, although I understand he’s interviewed most of the neighbors, even ones who moved in long after Wes left.”
“Your family?”
“He’s tried. My parents don’t give interviews about President Poe.”
“What about Rob?”
“He doesn’t, either. Nor do I. We made that decision a long time ago, before Wes went into politics. He had an unusual background, and we all adored Leola and Violet—we knew sooner or later someone would take an interest in his story.”
“I think your buddy Conroy has the hots for you.”
She blushed. “Not everyone thinks that way.”
Fontaine did. Nate didn’t know yet about the property manager.
The house was cool and elegant, furnished in a mix of country and Victorian antiques, as if the two maiden sisters had just stepped out. Not much dust. Sarah explained that it was cleaned and the yard mowed on a regular, if not totally adequate, basis.
On a marble mantel, there were pictures of Leola and Violet Poe, two ordinary-looking women who’d raised a president, and of John Wesley Poe as a little boy, a teenager, a college graduate—and as the governor of Tennessee.
“They never wanted him to leave Night’s Landing, but they were proud of him,” Sarah said. “They and my grandmother died within two years of each other when I was in college. You passed the little church cemetery where they’re buried.”
Nate wandered with her through the drawing room and the library, the kitchen, the butler’s pantry, and upstairs to the bedrooms. “Did the family have money?” he asked.
“When they built this house, they did. It didn’t last. Leola and Violet weren’t ashamed of it. They had a small inheritance, but they both worked in a local bank for years. They were very pragmatic when it came to money.” She caught herself. “I’m sorry. I’m boring you.”
“Not yet. You’re passionate about your work. I can see that.”
“This house, Leola and Violet—” She glanced around the small room, not seeing what was there now, Nate thought, but what had been there. “It really is hard to believe I’m done with all this.”
“Did you interview your father?”
“Definitely. He’s between the Poe sisters and Wes in age. People have even speculated that he could be Wes’s father, but—” She shook her head. “He’s one in a long, long line of possibilities. There’s just no evidence. It could have been anyone.”
“There’s DNA these days.”
She smiled slightly. “Yes, there is. Shall we go, or do you want to hear more? I hope it’s been a distraction, at least.”
“I could do worse for distractions.” And better, he thought, noting the curve of her hip. “My uncle would have me wallpapering my sister Carine’s old room.”
“Wallpapering could be therapeutic.”
“You haven’t seen Gus’s taste in wallpaper.”
She headed across the lawn and back onto the path along the river, warning him about mosquitoes, chiggers and ticks, telling him how the river was higher now, because of the dams, than it had been when the Poes had built the house after the Civil War.
No more pleasant, exaggerated southern accent. No more charm and laughter and relaxed talk.
Something about him had gotten under her skin. Nate had no idea what.
Finally she spun around at him on the narrow path, her face flushed with exertion and emotion. “Has it occurred to you that the letter from New York has nothing to do with me and everything to do with you? That it’s a ruse—the shooter or whoever sent it saw me in New York and decided to throw you off the scent.”
“I’m not on the scent. I’m one of the victims.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? You’re not here just out of a noble concern for my safety, or to put Rob’s mind at ease. You’re here because you think Joe Collins and his team are on the wrong track.”