Читать книгу Scarlet Vows - Dani Sinclair - Страница 12

Eerie stillness blanketed the morning air over Moriah’s Landing. The troubled town brooded beneath the sweltering heat, expectantly waiting.

Her customers all served for the moment, Brianna Dudley pushed at the damp tendril of hair clinging to her forehead and wiped her hands on her apron. Even in the air-conditioned diner it was too hot. A sense of something about to happen crawled over her skin.

Brie stepped outside, moving across the newly attached deck at the back of the Beachway Diner.

Waves lapped steadily at the public beach stretched out below. She checked the deserted tables around her automatically before looking toward the undefined horizon. Definitely too hot for this early in the morning. A scan of the horizon failed to reveal any gathering clouds. She’d hoped that might account for the unease whispering over her nerve endings. Storms always made her tense.

A lazy gull swooped over the restless cove in search of food. He swept past the lighthouse before soaring toward the cliffs and the old stone castle that perched there.

Truly eerie and somber, the forbidding stone fortress would have done justice to the cover of a gothic novel. Clinging precariously to the edge of a jagged cliff, the Bluffs even came equipped with a dark, brooding scientist. Rumor had it Dr. David Bryson was a cold-blooded murderer, horribly disfigured in the explosion that had taken his fiancée’s life.

Brie didn’t know David all that well, but his fiancée, Tasha Pierce, had been one of her best friends, and she truly believed he’d loved Tasha. David was seldom seen in town, but it didn’t seem to occur to people that rather than being a recluse, perhaps he worked all day. And if he shunned bright lights, Brie understood. He had been scarred when his boat exploded in a wild ball of flame.

People here, especially the fishermen, tended toward the superstitious. The older ones loved to spin a good yarn and David Bryson was a terrific target, especially now that Moriah’s Landing was bent on capitalizing on the wickedness that haunted their past. Salem held the historical reputation, but the founders of Moriah’s Landing had joined the fanaticism of the time, punishing helpless men and women for the art of witchcraft.

Whatever secrets the castle on the cliffs held or didn’t hold, it overlooked the cove in sinister silence. No one denied that dark forces seemed to emanate from those old stone walls.

Brie turned away from the sight. Shortly, she would be too busy to worry about castles, witches, the weather or anything else. The annual shooting tournament at the firing range was tomorrow. The event would kick off the weeklong Fourth of July festivities. Since the town was celebrating its three-hundred-and-fiftieth year, they were going all out, trying to surpass the spectacular Memorial Day weekend blast. The scheduled activities had raised the town spirits high. Moriah’s Landing and the surrounding areas were filling with visitors and summer vacationers who thought flocking to the Massachusetts coast would provide some relief from the heat wave sweeping the country. Ha! Not even a puff of wind stirred the terrible humidity.

Brie planned to go over to the firing range before work tomorrow. With luck she could catch her mother’s doctor, Sheffield Thornton, while her mother wasn’t around. She wanted a flat answer to the question gnawing a hole in her soul.

Inside, the air conditioner continued its desperate struggle against Mother Nature. Brie inhaled the chilled air gratefully. Yvette Castor raised a summoning hand from her solitary seat in a booth near the window. Her many-ringed fingers waggled, the multitude of bracelets clanging merrily as she motioned for her check.

“Anything else, Yvette? More coffee?”

“No, thanks. I have to get over to my shop. Cassandra has the day off and I’m doing an early-morning reading for one of my regulars.”

The floor-length broom skirt was cinched at her waist by several lengths of silver and gold chains. Like the bangles adorning her arms and neck, they jingled noisily each time she moved. Yvette had become a part of the local color in more ways than one. Today’s bold purple peasant blouse clashed cheerfully with most of the colors in her skirt. Yvette wasn’t a pretty woman, with that square jaw and those sharply defined features, but she was arresting. Her untamable mass of frizzy dark brown curls tumbled wildly down her back, nearly to her waist. Yet there was a down-to-earth quality about Yvette that Brie liked and respected.

Running Madam Fleury’s fortune-telling stand across the street from the diner suited Yvette. At times there was an almost mystical quality about the woman. Brie couldn’t imagine her doing anything else.

“How is your mother today, Brianna?”

The reminder of her mother’s drawn features this morning made Brie grimace. “The heat’s getting to her.”

More than the heat, and both women knew it. There was no way Brie could pretend any longer that the cancerous tumor hadn’t returned. After the last attempt to remove it, Dr. Thornton warned if the tumor began to grow again, it would only be a matter of time.

Brie swallowed hard against the knot at the back of her throat. Her hand quivered as she handed Yvette her check. Their fingers collided. A warm tingle spread like waves of invisible energy right up Brie’s arm from that point of contact. For a timeless second, everything seemed to stop. Yvette seemed to gaze straight inside her soul.

Brie yanked her hand back. Yvette grasped the check before it could flutter to the tabletop. Her gaze never wavered.

“Do not worry,” Yvette said quietly. “Closure is at hand.”

A stab of genuine fear made Brie inhale sharply.

“No! I’m sorry, Brianna. I phrased my words poorly. I didn’t mean your mother.” She offered an apologetic smile. “I should have said ‘Your prince is coming.”’

Brie didn’t know whether to laugh or scold Yvette for the moment of intense fear her words had caused. Relief won. Yet something in that mesmerizing gaze made it hard to doubt her quietly spoken words. Brie forced her fingers to ease their death grip on her pad. She tossed her hair back, giving her head a negative shake.

“Now, what on earth would I want with a prince?” she demanded. “I already have enough people to serve.” Brie indicated the diner at large, beginning to fill with the usual morning crowd. “And I’d better get back to work before I get fired.”

“Brianna.”

A warning prickle scaled its way down her spine. Unable to leave, but not wanting to hear any more talk about princes, or discuss her mother’s illness, Brianna tried to force her legs to take the necessary steps away from the table. She couldn’t.

“Things happen for a reason, you know,” Yvette said softly. “You must learn to trust your heart once more.”

For a moment, his features were right there in her mind, as vivid and alive as the man himself. Brie could almost see the way the sun placed golden highlights in his hair. She could almost smell the scent of the ridiculously expensive aftershave he wore. And without even closing her eyes, she felt the power of his body as he drew her into the embrace she had craved for what seemed like eternity.

“No!”

Brie lowered her voice quickly. No one spared her a glance. She tried for a smile but was only partially successful. “Forget it, Yvette. I made the mistake of trusting my heart once before. It didn’t work out.”

Yvette gazed right through her pretense. “Was it really a mistake?”

Jolted, Brie mustered a glare. Everyone knew Brie’s young daughter, Nicole, was the joy of her life. While definitely an unplanned pregnancy, her daughter’s birth was a gift. Nicole was growing into a miniature version of both Brie and her mother. The three of them could have been clones, down to the unfortunate bright red hair, pale skin and light freckles sprinkled liberally across cheeks and noses.

Everything except their eyes.

While Brie and her mother’s eyes sparkled a clear, bewitching green, Nicole’s were a startlingly vivid, brilliant blue shade. Piercing. Expressive eyes. Old eyes, her mother had once mused. Brie didn’t know about that, but she did know that her daughter’s eyes were a constant, uncomfortable reminder of the incredibly sexy man who had fathered her.

“So maybe it wasn’t a total mistake,” she conceded, not wanting to think about Andrew Pierce. But her foolish, stupid heart gave its usual lurch at the memories she had never learned to suppress. “But falling in love is a mistake I won’t ever make again.”

“Perhaps that was not a mistake, either, just mistimed.”

Brie suppressed a bitter laugh. “Oh it was mistimed, all right. Take it from me, Yvette, I learned one important fact the summer Nicole was conceived. Princes have a disturbing habit of turning into frogs.”

She tore her gaze from the sympathy and understanding in Yvette’s sad expression, acutely grateful for the gruff, burly biker who indicated he and his companion were ready to place their order.

“I’ll be right with you, Rider,” she called out. To Yvette she added lightly, “Thanks just the same, but I’ll pass on any more princes. I don’t have time for fairy tales anymore.”

Or the Pierce family—Andrew Pierce in particular.

“Fairy tales can come true,” Yvette said softly.

“Ha! Mine would need a fairy godmother with the cure for cancer. If you meet any, feel free to send them my way. Have a good day, Yvette.”

Brie moved briskly to where the two scruffy-looking bikers waited with stoic patience.

Andrew Pierce was undoubtedly some woman’s idea of a prince, she thought, but not hers. Not anymore.

WITH HER SCREAM reverberating in his ears, he watched in detachment as her delicate features twisted in comprehension and horror.

“Ursula.”

He said her name sharply, reaching for her. She scuttled away with surprising speed. How unfortunate. She was going to make him do this the hard way. The bloodied gloves made getting a good grip on her all but impossible. Terror gave her a strength she wouldn’t normally have.

He peeled the gloves from his hands. They dropped to the floor with a wet plopping sound.

“Ursula, stop this.”

“My God! My God!”

Fists pressed against parted lips, her eyes wide, dark pools of horror. Her gaze seemed mesmerized by the still figure on the table, bathed in the bright surgical lights. He had peeled back the skull to reveal the all important brain.

“You killed her!”

“Calm down.”

The hand pressing against her mouth trembled violently. “You killed her!”

She backed into a lab table deep in the shadows of the room. Objects clattered in protest. A pair of test tubes fell together with a jarring crash. He took a step closer. Frantically, her hand swept the table in search of a weapon.

She really was quite beautiful, he decided in detachment. Beautiful, sensual—immoral. Yet even in her panic there was a delicate grace about her.

“This is unfortunate. You shouldn’t have come in here,” he told her regretfully.

A test tube hurled toward his face. He turned his head and the empty vial bounced off his shoulder, falling harmlessly to the floor. She twisted, turning to run. His lips curved. Grotesque shadows danced about the lab, thrown by those bright lights over the exam table where the nude body lay still as marble.

“You’re being foolish, my dear. There’s nowhere for you to run, you know.”

Her panicked breathing made harsh, raspy sounds as she scrambled around a bank of storage cases, nearly falling. He’d planned to confront her later, after he’d finished his work. What had made her decide to come in here now? Not that it mattered. The results would have been the same either way.

His footfalls were the only other sound in the room as he stalked her, cutting off each avenue of escape. She was lost. Confused by the darkness. When she fled between a tall storage cabinet and the untidy stack of large pine boxes, he had her. She’d chosen a dead end in the maze of disorganized equipment.

“Stay away from me! Don’t come near me!”

“Poor Ursula.”

“Let me go!”

“You know I can’t do that. Not now. It’s too bad, really. I’d hoped this would work out much differently.”

She screamed, the shrill sound hurting his ears. Even in the darkness he could see that her eyes were so wide with fear they dominated her small face. His pity was cold comfort for both of them.

“Poor, traitorous Ursula. You really shouldn’t have come in here,” he said sadly, pinning her flailing arms in a grip she had no chance of breaking. “You’ve left me no choice. None at all.”