The Trouble with Magic (Loveswept) (3 page)

Bristling, she turned to him. Amber sparks of anger flashed in her eyes and did strange things to the rhythm of his heart. Reflex snapped her head up straighter on her neck and proud indignation stretched out her spine to a new height. It was a stance that inspired admiration.

“I wouldn’t count my hotels until the neon sign goes up, Mr. Dunsmore,” she said, hoping the fear and dread she was feeling wasn’t evident in her voice. “I have every intention of persuading you to leave Jovette Island unmolested.”

“Unmolested, Ms. Wheaton? Have you thought that I might be the one to save this place from ruin?”

“Does it look ruined to you, Mr. Dunsmore?”

“Not yet. But if you can’t pay the taxes and you’re behind on the mortgage payments, how do you plan to keep up the maintenance?”

“I’ve told you before,” she said, shifting her weight uncomfortably, loath to discuss her finances with a stranger. “I can pay the taxes, catch up on the mortgage payments, and maintain this place, but I need time. Just a little time.”

“Planning to win the lottery?”

“Where the money comes from isn’t your concern. All I want from you is an open mind while you hear me out and your promise to stall the sale of the island for the next two or three months.”

He took in a deep breath and contemplated her with many misgivings. Damn, what if she was planning to rob a bank for the money she needed? She’d end up in prison again. Somehow the idea disturbed him deeply.

“Okay. Give it your best shot,” he said, sober and to his own amazement, sincere. “Convince me that I don’t want this place.”

With dogged steps he followed her up the stairs, resigned to the next couple of hours of whining and complaining. The roof would leak like a sieve, the support beams would have wood rot, and she’d be sure to mention the wall mice that scurried about at night. It was going to be a long afternoon.

“All the wainscoting is original, of course. My father was one of those men who couldn’t sit still and relax for more than ten minutes, so he’d come here and fiddle,” she said, topping the stairs. “He hung the wallpaper in the foyer and in this hallway about four years ago. I think he must have redecorated every room in this house at least twice since he and my mother married.”

“And in keeping with his standing as an amateur historian, he’s kept his renovations as authentic as possible,” he concluded, running his hand over the pink-and-silver-striped paper above the dark polished wainscoting.

She smiled, pleased with his astuteness. He was very discerning about many things, she noticed. Would he be as intuitive and insightful as a lover? she wondered absently.

A lover? But her scheme wasn’t designed to go that far. ...

He followed her around the curve of the banister that looked down into the foyer.

“This was my parents’ room,” she said, opening a door at the end of a large semicircle.

That’s when it started. She led him from room to room meticulously pointing out amenities, throwing dustcovers off priceless antiques, itemizing verifiable details of the house that had been maintained in perfect working order, where modern conveniences had been installed and why.

“My great-grandfather had very poor eyesight, and no matter how high they turned the gaslights, he’d keep bumping into things and tripping,” she informed him. “We never did have a cable run out from the mainland, so there’s no telephone. But there is a small generator for the electricity. It was replaced about ten years ago, I guess. I’d have to check for sure, but it still runs like a top. Starts right up, every spring.”

The second floor consisted of a small sitting room connected to the master suite—“... my mother’s mother suffered with bouts of ‘melancholia’—though I suspect it was more in line with PMS as she wasn’t ever committed or anything, and it is a rather nice term for it, don’t you think? Anyway, she spent hours at that window, staring out at the river, and my mother would have to come here to see her ...”—and bathrooms—“... Benny Goodman slipped on some wet tiles in here once, threw his back out, and had to spend the rest of his visit in bed. ...”—and a variety of bedrooms—“... when the Roosevelts came for the weekend, they always asked for this room. He liked to keep an eye on our neighbors to the north.”

“And which is your room?” he asked with an immoderate and irrational curiosity he couldn’t begin to explain, even to himself.

“There,” she said with a nod. “On the end.” Following him, she added, “Before it was mine, it was my mother’s. Before that it was her father’s. And before him, his father’s.”

He opened the door to a large southeast room with a huge bay windowseat. Unlike some of the other rooms with their heavy, dark Victorian colors, Harriet’s room was done in light, airy colors with a profusion of lacy ruffles and thick soft pillows. It was also the only room he’d seen so far that looked lived-in. There were open books and papers on the desk, while dolls, fans, floppy hats, pictures, and other personal articles were set about. And there was a distinct feminine fragrance, unlike the scent of dust and old wax that permeated the other rooms.

A few brazen steps took him into the room where he scanned book titles and photographs, picked up a music box, examined it, and set it back down, then ran a hand along the elegant white ruffle of the canopy over her bed.

“You don’t seem the frilly type,” he said casually.

A smile tugged at her lips. She glanced about, seeing the familiar surroundings through his eyes, and then chuckled.

“I’m afraid I was a grave disappointment as a girl, for both my parents,” she said with only pleasure in her voice. “My mother always hoped I’d carry on the Jovette tradition of being a social butterfly, but I took after the Wheatons and was introverted and bookish. And my dad always saw me as a sweet, shrinking, prissy little indoor thing instead of a nature girl who liked to fish and sail and get filthy in the gardens.”

“And their disappointment amuses you,” he concluded, fascinated by the faraway look in her eyes and the lopsided smile on her lips.

“No. Of course not,” she said, startled. She stood by the door, waiting to close it, hoping that his inspection of her private space was over. “It wasn’t like that. It was never a point of contention between us. All they truly ever wanted for me was to be happy and to be ... whoever I was meant to be.”

“And who were you meant to be, Harriet Wheaton?” he asked, walking toward her, stopping directly in front of her, standing close enough for her to see flecks of gold in his green eyes and to fill her head with the spicy scent of his after-shave.

He watched her eyes grow large and unblinking as she stared at him. She swallowed nervously, and he felt a rush of excitement. His gaze lowered to her barely parted lips, then to the erratic jumping of the pulse point at the base of her neck, then back to her mouth. His muscles tensed. An unexpected anticipation of pleasure rattled his bones.

She gave a slight shrug. Her throat felt dry and tight when she uttered, “I guess I was meant to be Harriet Wheaton.”

“And who is Harriet Wheaton?” he asked. Could she possibly taste as sweet as she looked? he added silently.

Her brows rose, and she shrugged again in a fashion that was clearly her own.

“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you, Mr. Dunsmore. It’s better if you find out for yourself.”

Was that a dare he saw in her eyes? A challenge? The notion came and went so fast, he couldn’t say for sure.

“Okay,” he said, wanting to believe that he’d seen the gauntlet go down. “But I should warn you, I’m extremely thorough in all my ventures. It’s one of my few virtues.”

She grinned at him, unconcerned.

“What?” he asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion when he saw her teeth clamp down on her bottom lip to keep her thoughts from escaping.

“It’s nothing really,” she said, attempting to close the door, forcing him onto the walkway above the foyer. “It’s just that I had a feeling that if I kept at it long enough, I’d discover that you had at least one virtue.”

“Very cute,” he said, finding it impossible not to return her teasing grin. “But hardly the best way to win my support.”

“Am I convincing you then?” Her expression was hopeful—and singularly appealing.

He took a deep breath. She smelled like wind and sunshine.

“Let’s finish the tour,” he said. He could see that she hadn’t taken his answer as a flat-out no, which was what it should have been, he thought, not wanting to lead her on and for some tangled reason, not wanting to be too blunt or too brutal with her either.

But she wasn’t convincing him not to take over her island. On the contrary, she was making it look like a better deal than he’d hoped for.

They were making their way back along the wide walkway to the center of the semicircle of doors when a childhood memory dropped from out of nowhere and hit him hard in the chest, like a anvil.

There were halls in the house he’d grown up in. Long empty halls like the one he was in now. And doors. Locked doors. He blinked, and he was a small boy, awakening from a nightmare, crying and frightened. He slips from his bed, afraid of the dark, more afraid of being alone. His bedroom door opens to more darkness, deeper and darker than what is behind him. The hallway is cold. He knows that if he were quieter, if he never made any noise at all, that his mother’s room would be closer to his, instead of down the hall. He walks softly. He’s not a very good boy. Mommy will be upset if he wakes her up. But if he’s alone, the scary things in his room will get him. It’s a very long hall, a forever hall—and there might be something following him. He walks faster. His heart races. Mommy’s door! ... is locked. He turns to face the darkness. He blinks again.

A shuddering breath escaped him. Where the hell had that come from? he wondered, shaken, cramming his memories back into a crusty old box and mentally sitting on the lid.

Harriet was ahead of him. His eyes darted about, settling on the door to her parents’ room and shifting back to the door of her room at the opposite end of the semicircle. He felt a tightness in his chest and an irresistible compulsion in his heart.

“Harriet?”

“Yes?” She stopped to look at him. He’d used her given name. The tone of his voice lowered as it rumbled over the
r
’s. She liked it.

“Were you a noisy kid?”

“Ah ... no. I was quiet and a little shy,” she said, and then for no good reason she knew, added, “I didn’t make friends easily. I spent a lot of time alone, or with my parents. Why?”

The tightness in his chest increased and his heart sank.

“I thought maybe that was why your room was so far from your parents’,” he said, feeling self-conscious and hot in the face.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said with a laugh, ignorant to his discomfort. “I forgot to show you. It’s one of the best things about the house, certainly one of the most fun.” She stepped around him and walked briskly back toward her bedroom. “It was an addition to the house, but you can’t really see it unless you know it’s there.”

“What?”

“Come on, I’ll show you. You’ll love it.”

He shook his head. The Wheaton woman wasn’t following the program at all. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn she was trying to get rid of the place instead of trying to save it from the auction block. What sort of game was she playing?

“My great-grandfather was a colicky baby,” she was saying as she entered her room.

“Is this the same one who had poor eyesight and banged into things?”

“Yes, but that was much later, of course, when he was old.” She stopped at what appeared to be a closet door. “Anyway, originally, the sitting room was a nursery. But it wasn’t very big, and when my great-grandfather’s tummy started to hurt, there wasn’t much room to walk him around in. His nanny would sometimes take him to the third floor and walk him, but he was very loud and so the nanny and sometimes his mother used to walk back and forth around the walkway with him, and when they had guests, they kept everyone awake all night. Sooo, when he learned he was about to be a father again, my great-great-grandfather had this built into the house.” She opened the door and stepped inside.

“They closed in this part of the open foyer all the way to the main floor. There are closets down there, but up here, it’s a hall leading from the master suite to the new nursery, which is now my room. And these,”—she banged on the wall with her fist—“are so well insulated, you could shoot a rocket off in here and no one in the house would hear it, unless you left the doors open.” There was a soft laugh. “Which is why I stayed in the nursery for so long.”

He stopped his inspection of the paneled walls and the thick soft carpeting on the floor to look at her. “Run that by me again?”

“I was afraid of the dark, you see,” she admitted, feeling unreasonably foolish. She hadn’t seen any boogie-boys in the dark for quite some time, and childhood fears were nothing to be ashamed of, but still ... “My parents would leave my door open, turn on this hall light and leave their door open, in case I got scared. That way they could hear me, I could hear them, and we didn’t disturb anyone.” She tossed her black braid over her shoulder and pushed her glasses closer to her face in one continuous motion. “I was afraid of the dark for a long time and when no more children came along, the nursery just stayed mine.”

“What about sex?” he asked.

Sex? “I’m sorry?” she said. Sex?

“What about sex?”

“Well, what about it?” she asked, a bit frazzled. Sex was good. Sex was delightful. What else did he want to know about it?

“What did your parents do about sex, with you roaming around all night?”

Her features went blank. “I don’t know,” she said, reflecting on the past. “When I was young, I suppose they simply stopped whatever they were doing and let me crawl into bed with them. Later, we knocked before entering one another’s room. It was the polite thing to do. Considerate. I never caught them at it, and I never really gave it much thought,” she said, looking at him as if she considered
his
thoughts to be off track.

They were, of course. He shouldn’t have asked her about it. He should have left it all in the past where it belonged. Still, there was a child in him somewhere that envied her the hall light and open doors.