Читать книгу Copper Lake Secrets - Marilyn Pappano - Страница 9

“Does it matter?” Jones asked, aware his lazy tone gave no hint of the tension thrumming through him. She didn’t appear to recognize either him or his name, didn’t appear to realize she’d asked him that question once before, the first time they’d met. Had he been so forgettable? Considering that he and Glen had saved her life, he’d think not … but she was, after all, a Howard.

Or was she just damn good at pretending? At lying?

He’d thought he’d lucked out when he returned to the farm this morning to a job offer that would give him virtually unlimited access to the Howard property, but having Clarice Howard show up, too … If there were a casino nearby, he’d head straight there to place all sorts of bets because today he was definitely hot.

He’d looked for her on the internet and had found several Clarice Howards, just not the right one. He’d asked the gossipy waitress at the restaurant next to the motel about her, but the woman hadn’t recognized the name, didn’t know anything about a Howard granddaughter. She’d had nothing but good, though, to say about the grandson, Mark, who lived in Copper Lake.

Mark, who, along with Reece, was the last person Jones had seen with his brother. Mark, who had threatened both Glen and Jones.

“I take it you don’t live around here,” he remarked.

“No.” That seemed all she wanted to say, but after a moment, she went on. “I live in New Orleans.”

“The Big Easy.”

“Once upon a time.” Another moment, then a gesture toward his truck. “You’re from Kentucky?”

“I live there.” He was from a small place in South Carolina, just a few miles across the Georgia state line. He’d been back only once in fifteen years. His father had begun the conversation with “Are you back to stay?” and ended it a few seconds later with a terse “Then you should go.” He’d followed up with closing the door in Jones’s face.

Big Dan was not a forgiving man.

“What brings you to Georgia?” he asked.

Reece didn’t shift uncomfortably in the wrought-iron chair, but he had the impression she wanted to. “A visit to my grandmother.”

“She was surprised to see you. You don’t come often?”

“It’s been a while.”

Then her gaze met his. Soft brown eyes. He liked all kinds of women, but brown-eyed blondes were a particular weakness. Not this one, though. Not one who, his gut told him, was somehow involved in Glen’s disappearance.

“What made you think Grandmother was surprised?”

“I’m good at reading people.” Truth was, he’d heard Miss Willa gasp the instant she’d gotten a good look at Reece. Lord, she looks like her daddy, the old woman had murmured. I never thought …

She’d ever see her again? The resemblance to her father couldn’t have been that surprising. She looked the same as she had fifteen years ago, just older. She still wore her hair short and sleek; she still had that honey-gold skin; she still had an air about her of … fragility, he decided. She was five foot seven, give or take an inch, and slender but not unappealingly so. She didn’t look like a waif in need of protection, but everything else about Reece Howard said she was.

But appearances, he well knew, were often deceiving.

Deliberately he changed the subject. “Do you know much about the old gardens?”

Despite the change, the stiffness in her shoulders didn’t ease a bit. Would she be against the project? Was she envisioning her inheritance being frittered away on flowers and fountains? “No, Grandmother’s right. I didn’t learn the family history the way a proper Howard should.”

History could be overrated. He knew his own family history for generations, but that still didn’t make them want any contact with him. They didn’t feel any less betrayed; he didn’t feel any less rejected.

“I’ve seen photos from as early as the 1870s,” he went on, his gaze settling on the fountain beside them. Built of marble and brick, with a statue in the middle, it was silent, dirty, the water stagnant in the bottom. “They were incredible. Fountains, pools, terraces.

Wildflowers, herb gardens, roses … They covered this entire area—” he waved one hand in a circle “—and extended into the woods for the shade gardens. Fair Winds once had more varieties of azaleas and crape myrtles than any other garden in the country.”

“And you’re going to replant all that.” Her tone was neutral, no resistance but no enthusiasm, either.

“Probably not all, but as much as we can. We have the original plans, photographs, detailed records from the head gardeners. We can make it look very much like it used to.”

“What happened to the gardens?”

He shrugged. “Apparently, your grandfather had everything removed. The pools were filled in, the statues taken away, the terraces leveled. Miss Willa didn’t say why, and I didn’t ask.”

Reece muttered something, but all he caught was mean and old. She’d missed the funeral, Miss Willa had said. Grandfather or not, apparently Reece wasn’t missing Arthur Howard.

Shadow fell over them, and the wind swirled with a chill absent a few seconds earlier. A few brown leaves rattled against the base of the fountain, then grew still as the air did.

As Reece did. She sat motionless, goose bumps raised all the way down her arms. He considered offering an explanation—a cloud over the sun, though there were no clouds in the sky; a gust of mechanically-cooled air from an open window or door, though he could see none of those, either—but judging by the look on her face, she didn’t need an explanation. She knew better than him the truth behind the odd moment.

Here there really were ghosties.

Did she know what he’d come to find out? Was one of them Glen’s?

Before he could say anything else, the door to the house opened and Miss Willa hustled out, her arms filled with ancient brown accordion folders and books. He rose to carry them for her, but she brushed him off and set them on the table. “These are all the records I could lay my hands on at the moment. Clarice may be able to find more in her grandfather’s boxes while she’s here.”

A look of distaste flashed across Reece’s face—at the use of her given name or the thought of digging through her grandfather’s files?

“Here’s the code to the gate—” Miss Willa slapped a piece of paper on top of the stack, then offered a key “—and the key to the cottage.”

Surprise replaced distaste in Reece’s expression, and witnessing that took Jones a moment longer to hear the words than he should have. Frowning, he looked at Miss Willa. “What cottage?”

“That one.” She pointed across the road. “There’s no place in town worth staying at for more than a night or two besides The Jasmine, and I certainly don’t intend to subsidize The Jasmine when you can stay here and keep your attention on your work.”

He generally liked staying at or near the job site. On long-term jobs, he often moved into a small trailer, which beat a motel any day. But he didn’t particularly appreciate being told where he would stay, or the assumption that he needed to be told to stay focused on his job. He was a responsible man, and while Miss Willa might well be accustomed to giving orders, he wasn’t accustomed to following them, except in the narrow scope of the job.

But he wasn’t stupid enough to argue, not when her high-handedness fit right in with his needs.

“I appreciate the invitation.” His sarcasm sailed right past Miss Willa’s ears, but earned a faint smile from Reece. “I should warn you, my dog travels with me.”

“Keep him quiet, keep him away from my house and clean up after him, and we’ll be fine.” Miss Willa shifted her gaze then to Reece. “Lois is fixing dinner. We’ll talk when that’s over.” With a nod for emphasis, she returned to the house.

The action surprised Jones. Miss Willa hadn’t seen her only granddaughter in years, and yet she casually dismissed her?

But wasn’t that what his own father had done with him? Hell, Big Dan hadn’t just dismissed him; he’d sent him away. Though Jones had betrayed Big Dan. Did Miss Willa think the same of Reece? And was there more to it than Reece missing the old man’s funeral?

Reece wasn’t surprised. Idly she opened one of the books on the table, an oversize title with musty yellow pages and decades-old plates of the most impressive gardens of the post–Civil War South. Jones had a copy in his office back in Louisville. “Grandmother doesn’t like to discuss unpleasant matters at the dinner table,” she said by way of explanation.

“What could be unpleasant about her granddaughter coming for a visit?”

“A long-neglected visit. I haven’t been here since …” Her attention shifted from the book to the house, her gaze taking in the three stories of whiteboard siding and dark green trim, the windows staring back like so many unblinking eyes. “Since I was thirteen,” she finished, the words of little more substance than a sigh.

The summer he and Glen had been there. Why? What had happened to keep her away all that time? A falling-out between her mother and grandparents? A petty argument that had grown to fill the years?

Or something more?

With a slight tremble in her fingers, she closed the book and smiled, but it lacked depth. “Fair Winds isn’t my favorite place in the world. It’s …”

He let a heartbeat pass for effect. Another. Then he softly supplied the word. “Haunted?”

She startled. Her gaze jerked to him and her arms folded across her middle as if to contain the shiver rippling through her. “You believe in ghosts, Mr. Jones?”

“I told you, it’s just Jones. No Mister. Why wouldn’t a house like this have ghosts? It’s nearly two hundred years old. Dozens of people have lived and celebrated and suffered and died here. Some of those spirits are bound to remain.”

“You’ve encountered such spirits before?”

“I have, and lived to tell the tale.”

He grinned, but the gesture didn’t relax her at all. Instead, a brooding darkness settled around her. “Wait until you’ve met Grandfather, if he’s still here. He might change that.”

Jones tucked the security code into his hip pocket, picked up the books and papers, then twirled the lone key on its ring around his finger. “He can’t scare me too much,” he said mildly as he started across the patio to the road. “After all, he is dead.”

Dead, but not forgotten, and still possessing the ability to frighten.

At least, he could still frighten Reece.

She watched until Jones had disappeared inside the cottage, wishing she could have claimed it for herself before Grandmother offered it to him. It was a miniature replica of the house, with a huge difference: it was memory-free and nightmare-free. Reserved for visitors, it had been off-limits to her and Mark that summer. At the moment it seemed the only safe place on all of Fair Winds.

But Jones had it, so she was going to be stuck in the house where Grandfather had lived.

And expected to go through his boxes, too. A shudder tightened her muscles as she recalled the one time she’d gone into his study. Only in the house a few days, she’d still been learning her way around, and Mark had told her that heavy dark door that was always closed led into a sunroom filled with beautiful flowers.

There’d been nothing sunny or beautiful about the room. Dark drapes pulled shut, dark paneling, the thick, heavy smell of cigars and age, and Grandfather, glowering at her as if she’d committed an unpardonable sin. He’d yelled at her to get out, and she’d scurried away, slamming the door, to find Mark laughing at the bottom of the stairs. Grandmother had chastened her, and Valerie had, too, and she’d felt so lost and lonely and wanted her dad more than ever.

Oh, God, she wasn’t sure she could do this, not even to find out what had happened those three months. Over the course of her lifetime, they added up to what? One percent of her time on this earth? Nothing. Inconsequential.

Except the months did have consequences: the nightmares, the fear, the distrust.

She breathed deeply. Across the drive, Jones came out of the cottage, climbed into his truck and drove away. She felt his leaving all the way to her bones. Aside from Lois, who must be Grandmother’s current housekeeper, there was no one left on the property but her and Grandmother.

Not a thought to inspire confidence in a drama princess.

Another deep breath got her across the patio and into the door. Dimness replaced bright sun; coolness replaced heat. Instead of pine, the lemon tang of wood polish drifted on the air, along with the aroma of baking pastry. A voice humming an old gospel tune came from the kitchen, ahead and to the right. Lois, Reece was sure. She’d never heard Grandmother hum or sing, had rarely seen her smile and couldn’t recall ever hearing her laugh.

No wonder Daddy had left the first chance he got.

She ventured farther along the hallway that bisected the house north to south. A glance through the first set of double doors showed the table in the formal dining room, set for two. Opposite was Grandmother’s study, a small room with airy lace curtains, a white marble fireplace and delicate-appearing furniture that looked hardly a year of its century-plus age.

The rooms were small, the ceilings high, the furnishings mostly unchanged. A broad hallway, easily as wide as the rooms themselves, cut through in the middle from east to west. The stairs rose from this hall, and portraits of early Howards—and, in one case, an early Howard’s prized horse—lined the walls. None of Grandfather, Reece noted with relief. His memory was enough to haunt her. She didn’t need portraits, too.

The salon was empty, the door to Grandfather’s office closed. Presumably Grandmother was upstairs. Readying a room for her? Gathering items Jones might need in the cottage? Or getting ready for the noon meal? After all, Howard women dressed for meals.

Reece paused outside the study door. The house was oppressive. So many rules, so little laughter. Her father had loved to laugh. Elliott Howard hadn’t taken anything too seriously. He must have felt so stifled within these walls.

She was about to go upstairs, left hand on the banister, right foot on the first tread, when a creak came from the study behind her. Another followed it, then more: the slow, steady sounds eerily similar to a person pacing. Her fingers tightened around the railing until her knuckles turned white, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go, to turn around and walk across the faded Persian rug to the door.

It was probably Grandmother, looking for more papers for Jones, having thought better of the idea of trusting the search to her. If she’d wanted company, she would have left the door open; she would have—

“Well, don’t just stand there. Either come up or get out of the way.”

So much for the theory of Grandmother. The old woman was standing on the stair landing, hair brushed, makeup freshened, a string of pearls added to the diamonds she always wore.

Reece glanced over her shoulder at the study door. The room was silent now. Just her imagination running wild. It always had, according to Grandmother. That girl lives in a fantasy world, she’d often complained to Valerie. Thinks she sees ghosts everywhere.

Heard them. Reece had never seen a ghost. She’d simply heard them, and felt them.

She loosened her grip on the banister and backed away as Grandmother descended the stairs.

“Dinner is served promptly at 12:30. Supper is at 6:30. If you miss the meal, you fend for yourself—and clean up after yourself.” With an arch look, Grandmother passed her and headed for the dining room.

Reece followed her and took a seat at the polished mahogany table as a woman about her mother’s age began serving the meal. There was iced tea in crystal goblets that predated the War, salad and rolls served on delicate plates her great-great-and-so-on grandfather had brought from France when he was still a sea captain in the early 1800s, roasted chicken and vegetables, and pie. Much more than the po’boy or muffuletta she usually had for lunch back home.

The conversation was sporadic, nothing more interesting than general comments about the weather or the food. It was ridiculous, really, to chitchat about nothing when they hadn’t seen each other in so long, but Reece was no more eager to have a serious conversation than Grandmother was willing to break her dinnertime rules.

It would have been nice, though, to have been greeted with a little more pleasure—a hug, a kiss, an I’m happy to see you. Valerie didn’t have much patience with her, but even she managed that much every time they met.

Finally, the meal was over and Grandmother, taking her tea along, led the way into her study. It was the brightest, airiest room in the house, but it was stifling in its own way. The furniture was uncomfortable, and Grandmother didn’t relax her rules there. A settee that didn’t invite sitting, spine properly straight, chin up, ankles crossed and Grandmother with her own rigid posture didn’t invite confidences or intimacy.

Grandmother had apparently exhausted her store of chitchat and went straight to the point. “All these years, all those invitations you turned down or ignored, and suddenly you show up without so much as a call. What changed your mind?”

She could claim tender feelings, but Grandmother wouldn’t believe her. Reece had always tried to love her; weren’t grandmothers supposed to be important in a girl’s life? But loving someone who constantly criticized and lectured and admonished … Fearing Grandfather had been easy. Feeling anything for Grandmother hadn’t.

Reece gave a simple, truthful answer. “Curiosity.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

How many times had she heard that? And Mark, always out of the adults’ earshot, creeping up beside her, his mouth near her ear. Meow.

“You look well,” Reece said evenly.

“I am well. Your grandfather, however, is dead. Your mother came for his service. Your aunt Lorna came, and Mark and his family were there. Several hundred people were there, in fact, but not his one and only granddaughter.”

The desire to squirm rippled through Reece, but she controlled it. Howard women met every situation with poise and confidence. “I couldn’t come.”

“You mean you wouldn’t.”

“It’s not as if we were close.”

“And whose fault is that?”

His. He never said a nice word to me. He yelled at me. He scared me. He threatened—

Reece stiffened. Threatened? She didn’t recall Grandfather ever actually threatening her, not with tattling or spanking or anything. Was that part of what she couldn’t remember? Part of why she couldn’t remember?

“It was my fault,” Reece said. She would take all the blame Grandmother could dish out if it helped her get a few answers. “That summer I lived here, I was frightened of him. He wasn’t exactly warm and cuddly.”

To her surprise, Grandmother nodded. “No, he wasn’t. But he was a good man.”

Maybe in the overall scheme of things. Reece couldn’t deny that Mark had adored him. Maybe Grandfather hadn’t known how to relate to girls. Maybe he’d never forgiven his older son for leaving and transferred that resentment to her. Maybe asking him to deal with his son’s death and a grieving thirteen-year-old girl at the same time was too much. She did look an awful lot like her father.

“That summer,” she hesitantly began.

“What about it?”

What happened? Why do I still have nightmares? Why can’t I remember? The questions seemed so reasonable to her, but she’d lived with them for fifteen years. Would they sound half so reasonable to Grandmother, who hadn’t been much better at dealing with a grieving thirteen-year-old than her husband?

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that summer lately,” Reece said, watching Grandmother closely for any reaction.

She showed none. “It was a difficult time for everyone. Losing your father that way … Your uncle Cecil passed four years ago. A mother’s not supposed to outlive both her children.”

The last words were heavy, as if she felt every one of her seventy-eight years, and sparked both sympathy and regret in Reece. She couldn’t imagine losing a child … or having a loving grandmother. If things had been different, if Daddy hadn’t moved to Colorado, if Reece had had a chance to know both her grandparents before Daddy’s death, would that summer have had such an impact on her?

But Daddy had had issues of his own with Grandfather, so their visits had been few. They’d been practically strangers when she and Valerie had come to stay.

And there was no wishing for a new past. It was done, and all that was left was living with the consequences.

“I’m sorry about Cecil,” Reece said, meaning it even though she hadn’t met the man more than twice that she could recall.

Grandmother’s unusual sentimentality evaporated. “He ate too much, drank too much and considered riding around a golf course in a cart exercise. It was no great shock that his heart gave out on him. His doctor had been warning him for years about his blood pressure and cholesterol, but he wouldn’t listen. He thought he would live forever.” Her sharp gaze fixed on Reece. “How long are you planning to stay?”

“I don’t know. A few days.” No longer than she had to. “If that’s all right with you,” she added belatedly.

“Of course it’s all right. Fair Winds has always been known for its hospitality. I already told your cousin Mark that you’re here, so he’ll be by to say hello.”

Reece swallowed hard. “He lives around here?” That was one thing she hadn’t considered. Much as she wanted answers, she wasn’t sure she wanted to face her childhood enemy to get them.

“In town. He moved here after college. He and Macy—she’s from a good Charleston family—they have one daughter and another on the way. He runs the family business and checks in on me every day.”

Reece smiled weakly. “Wonderful.”

Grandfather’s dead. I’m not thirteen. I can handle this.

If she repeated it often enough, maybe she would start to believe it.

Jones stopped at the grocery store to get the five major food groups—milk, cereal, bread, eggs and chips—before going to the motel to pick up his clothes and Mick. When he let himself into the room, the dog was stretched out on the bed, the pillow under his head, the blanket snuggled around him. He lifted his head, stretched, then rolled onto his back for a scratch, and Jones obliged him, grumbling all the time.

“You are the laziest animal I’ve ever seen. You eat and sleep all day, then snore all night. You’ve got it made.”

Mick just looked at him, supreme satisfaction in his big brown eyes.

“We’ll be bunking in a new place for a while. There will be room for you to run as long as you stay out of Miss Willa’s way. She doesn’t strike me as a dog-friendly person.” Jones considered it a moment. “She’s not a particularly people-friendly person, either. But we’ve dealt with worse.”

And there was the consolation prize of her granddaughter, whose own eyes were as brown as Mick’s but way less happy and a damn sight less trusting. He didn’t think it was just him, either. She didn’t seem the type to warm up to anyone quickly, if at all.

That was okay. Pretty as she was, all Jones wanted from her was information. She was still a Howard, still a part of Glen’s disappearance, and he was still the kid who’d been taught wariness and distrust of country people—anyone outside of his people, regardless of where they lived—from birth.

But she was awfully pretty, and she did have that vulnerable-damsel thing going on that neither he nor Glen had ever been able to resist.

But he would resist now.

After loading his bags and Mick into the truck, Jones slid behind the wheel and left the motel, turning west on Carolina Avenue. Catching a red light at the first intersection, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel until, beside him, Mick whined. Jones glanced at the dog, an admonishment on his tongue, then forgot it as his gaze settled on a man in the parking lot twenty-five feet away.

He was about Jones’s age, an inch or two taller, maybe thirty pounds heavier, and he wore a light gray suit so obviously well made that even Mick would recognize its quality. He was talking to a young woman, a briefcase in one hand, keys in the other, and he stood next to a Jaguar. He was fifteen years older, a whole lot softer and a hell of a lot better dressed, but Jones would have recognized him anywhere.

A horn sounded, and Jones’s gaze flicked to the traffic light, now green, then back at Mark Howard. The sound drew his attention, and he looked at Jones, their gazes connecting for an instant before Howard dismissed him and turned back to his conversation.

Hands tight on the wheel, Jones eased the gas pedal down, resisting the urge to turn the corner, pull into the lot, grab Howard by the lapels of his custom-tailored suit and demand the truth about Glen. There would be a time and a place to talk to the man, but this was neither.

By the time he’d turned north on River Road, a bit of the tension had seeped out. He liked Copper Lake. It was the quintessential small Southern town, war memorials in the square and the parks, beautifully restored antebellum homes. The people were friendly and happy to answer questions. No one had treated him with suspicion … though so far he hadn’t asked any questions that sounded suspicious. He hadn’t brought up the subject of Glen’s disappearance or the discovery of his belongings or his gut instinct that the Howard family was responsible. If he started asking that sort of question, they were likely to close ranks and protect their own.

Mick sat straighter in the seat when Jones turned off the highway onto Howard property. Shutting off the AC, Jones rolled the windows down, and the mutt immediately stuck his head out to sniff the air. When they drove through the gate, though, Mick drew it back in, let out a long, low whine and moved to the floorboard to curl up.

“Baby,” Jones accused, but Mick just laid his head on his paws. The dog knew the place was unsettled. Reece knew it. How the hell could Miss Willa not know, or if she did, how could she continue to live there?

The road continued past the cottage, leading to the other buildings. Jones drove past the small house, then pulled onto ground covered with a heavy layer of pine needles. The spot would block the view of his truck from any casual visitors to the house—maybe not a bad thing once Miss Willa’s grandson and others found out she was planning to spend a ton of money on their grand project.

“Come on, buddy, let’s get settled.” Jones climbed out and stood back, but Mick didn’t stir. “Mick. Out.”

The dog gave a great sigh, but didn’t move.

“C’mon, Mick, out of the truck now.” He stared at the dog, and the dog stared back.

He’d never had a battle of wills with an animal that he hadn’t won, and today wasn’t going to be the first. He snapped his fingers, an unspoken command that Mick always responded to, but the mutt just whined once and hunkered in lower.

“I guess we know who’s the boss in this family.”

Jones started. He’d been so intent on the dog that he hadn’t even heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel, and apparently neither had Mick. He reacted now, though, stepping onto the seat, sniffing the air that brought a faint hint of perfume and smiling, damn it, as he jumped from the truck and landed at Reece’s feet.

She offered her hand for Mick to sniff, then crouched in front of him, scratching between his ears. “You’re a big boy, aren’t you? And a pretty one. I don’t blame you for wanting to stay in the truck. I don’t much like this place, either. But we do what we gotta do, don’t we, sweetie?”

Jones watched her slender fingers work around Mick’s ears, rubbing just the way the dog liked. Hell, Jones liked a pretty woman rubbing him the same way, and Reece certainly was pretty crouched there, her khaki shorts hugging her butt, her white shirt shifting as her muscles did. For the first time since she’d climbed out of her car a few hours ago, she looked almost relaxed, and he doubted he’d ever seen her look that trusting.

Did she ever offer that much trust to a human being? To a man?

“He’s usually not that stubborn,” Jones remarked, leaning against the truck while Mick offered a toothy smile. It was almost as if the mutt was gloating: I’ve got her attention and you don’t.

“Animals are sensitive.”

“You have dogs?”

“Three. All throwaways. Like me.” The last two words must have slipped out, because her gaze darted to him, guarded and a bit anxious, and a flush colored her cheeks. He knew from Glen that she’d had abandonment issues that summer. Her father hadn’t chosen to die in that accident, but the end result was the same: he was gone. And her mother had preferred Europe with her friends over taking care of her daughter.

Jones could sort of relate, except from the other side of the matter: he was the one who’d done the abandoning. Had it cost Reece’s mother as much as it had him? Did she share even a fraction of his regret?

“Mick was dumped near a job site. When he got tired of waiting for his owners to come back, he decided to live with me.”

“Lucky you. After I fed the first stray outside the store where I work, he brought two more with him the next day. They’ve been living with me ever since.”

“Too bad you couldn’t bring them with you.” Traveling with dogs could be a hassle, but their company was worth it.

“Dogs in Grandmother’s house? And not even purebreds?” She scoffed as she stood.

Reaching into the bed of the truck, he took out his suitcase and laptop, then started for the porch. To his surprise, the rustle of plastic told him she’d taken out the grocery sacks and was following.

Mick jumped onto the low porch while Jones and Reece went to the steps in the center. He propped open the screen door, unlocked the door, then stood back so she and the dog could enter first.

The door opened directly into the living room, with the kitchen a few feet to the right. To maximize space, there was no hallway, just a door off the living room that went into a bedroom. He guessed the bathroom could only be reached from that room.

“I always wanted to see this place.” Reece set the grocery bags on the kitchen counter and automatically began unpacking them.

He laid his own bags against the wall. “You lived here and never came inside?”

The refrigerator, a recent model, closed with a thud after she put the milk and eggs inside. “Did I say I lived here?”

The undercurrent of wariness to her voice stirred its own undercurrents in Jones. He, who’d always been cautious of what he said to country people, never should have made such a stupid slip. “I just assumed you grew up around here.”

She considered the words a moment as she crumpled the plastic grocery bags together, then shrugged. “I stayed here for a few months when I was thirteen. My cousin Mark was here, too, that summer. This cottage was off-limits to us. Grandmother said it was for guests, not hooligans who ran wild.”

He forced a grin. “Hooligans? She actually called you hooligans?”

Her own smile was half-formed. “She did. Grandmother had—has—very exacting standards that we often failed to meet.”

Jones didn’t know about Mark, but apparently Reece was still something of a failure in Miss Willa’s opinion. The old woman certainly didn’t approve of Reece’s long absence or missing her grandfather’s funeral. That was the sort of thing that got a person disinherited by a prideful woman like Willadene Howard.

Was that why Reece had come now, because her grandfather was dead and her grandmother was nearing eighty? Did she want to get back in Miss Willa’s good graces before she passed and left everything to cousin Mark?

Or maybe she’d heard about Glen’s stuff being found. Maybe she wanted to make sure there was no suspicion, no effort to find out what happened to the boy who’d saved her life and, apparently, lost his own as a consequence.

Jones watched her wander through the living room, giving Mick on the sofa an affectionate pat as she passed, and hoped neither suspicion proved to be true. Maybe she had come to realize over the years that family was important. Maybe she regretted not making peace with old Arthur before his death and didn’t want similar regrets when Miss Willa was gone.

God knew Jones had regrets about his family. He liked his life. He loved his job. But if he could do it all over again, he couldn’t say he would make the same choices. There was a lot he hated about his family’s way of life, but … he’d missed so much. He hadn’t gotten to stand up at his brothers’ and sisters’ weddings. He had nieces and nephews he’d never met. Birthdays and holidays and anniversaries, celebrations and funerals, good times and bad …

Reece broke the silence. “The furniture looks like it’s been here since the cottage was built.”

“It probably has. There’s a fortune in Chinese antiques in this room alone.” He opened the drapes, letting in the afternoon light, before sitting on an unpadded imperial rector’s chair. “The Howard who originally settled here was a sea captain. There’s a maritime phrase, Fair winds and following seas. A wish for good weather. That’s where the name comes from.”

Head tilted to one side, she sat beside Mick, resting her hand on his back. “I didn’t know that. I told you, I didn’t learn the family history.”

“He acquired treasures from all over the world. I’m sure Miss Willa’s given you the rundown of some things in the house.”

“Some. I was always terrified, using lamps and dishes and furniture that were irreplaceable. Being afraid made me feel clumsy and insignificant.”

There it was again—that hurt. Vulnerability. She’d grown up. She’d gone from cute and awkward to beautiful, from a child to a capable woman, but it didn’t seem as if time had done a thing to change that part of her.

Seem. Which meant it wasn’t automatically true. She could be a world-class manipulator. After all, she still hadn’t acknowledged that they’d met before. She hadn’t asked the obvious question: How is your brother? After all, she’d spent a lot more time with Glen that summer than with Jones.

Leaning back in the chair, he rested his ankle on the other knee. “Those months you stayed here … this must have been a great place to run wild. All the woods, the creek, the river … you and Mark must have had some fun times.”

“Not particularly.”

“You didn’t get along?”

A jerky shrug. “He was a fourteen-year-old boy. I was his thirteen-year-old girl cousin. I think we were genetically predisposed to not get along.”

“So what did a thirteen-year-old girl do for fun out here alone?”

Her expression shifted, darkness seeping into her eyes, caution into her voice. “I read a lot. Spent as much time away from the house as I could.”

The reading part was true; she’d been lying in a patch of sunlight near the creek reading the first time he and Glen had seen her, and she’d always brought books along every other time.

“Didn’t you have someone to play with? A neighbor’s kids?”

The caution intensified before she answered on a soft exhalation. “No.”

Realizing he was holding his own breath, Jones forced it out and did his best to ignore the disappointment inside him. Okay. So she was a liar. It wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t even a real disappointment. She was a Howard, and Howards were part of that segment of rich, powerful people who felt money raised them above everyone else. They weren’t bound by the rules that applied to everyone else. They were, as Miss Willa made clear at every turn, better.

Truthfully, though … he was disappointed.