Читать книгу All That Glitters - Mary Brady - Страница 12
ОглавлениеAS IF ADDY hadn’t spoken, Hale walked away and brought one bowl of soup from the microwave and placed it on a plate she had set on the table. Then he returned to the microwave for the other. She was sure he was going to put the second bowl back in the refrigerator or even pour it down the drain or, better, over her head.
He did none of the above.
He placed the second bowl on the other plate and looked over at her with a look that said, “Sit.”
She scrambled to do so—for the story, of course, and because she was really, truly, so very desperately hungry.
He sat after she did. Either there were old-school manners in this man, or perhaps, this was her last supper and he wanted to be in a position to run her down if she tried to escape. At least she wouldn’t die hungry, she thought as she instinctively slid back on the heavy wood-and-leather chair.
Hands in her lap, ’cause she had some manners, too, she sat and waited for his lead. “Behave like them and they may treat you as one of them” had been the advice of one of her instructors in college and—sometimes the magic worked. It had when she donned the clothing and the persona of an Afghani peasant woman—or it had worked for a while.
He put his napkin on his lap. She did the same.
After he took his first taste of the soup, she sipped a bit of hers. It was delicious and soon she had to slow herself down, so she floated a few small oyster crackers on top of her soup. As she savored the next mouthful it occurred to her that she was concentrating too much on the food, the conversation being nonexistent.
She snapped her gaze to Hale’s face.
He seemed to be ignoring her or if she left her ego out, he was thinking about something that troubled him. So should he be. He should be thinking about all the people’s lives that he’d ruined, all the heartache he’d caused, all the money he had gained and was going to lose.
Then why did he look so damned mouth-watering? She swiped her lips with her napkin. His sun-highlighted hair, thick, short on the sides and not too long on the top, almost always perfectly styled and trimmed often. Today it had been finger-combed, in an endearingly youthful way. He looked vulnerable without his facade.
If he wasn’t so morally corrupt and she wasn’t so desperate to get at the truth, he might even look...enticing.
She yanked her brain away from that vein of perilous thinking and scrambled for a question to ask.
She needed something affable. Be his friend. Be someone he wanted to talk to, a houseguest with whom he’d at least speak politely. If swindlers spoke politely when they didn’t have to speak at all.
“The home.” She nodded in the direction where the big old house sat connected to the garage via the breezeway. “The antiques in the home are lovely. Tell me about some of the history over there. If you wouldn’t mind.” She added the last part with a warm smile.
The narrow-eyed look he gave her said he knew exactly what she was doing and why, but he cleared his throat and after a moment of silence said, “The home was built in the early 1800s by the man who originally established the town.”
“The Bailey of Bailey’s Cove.”
“Liam Bailey. He built the house for the woman he loved.” Hale’s words sounded as if he read them from a brochure, but at least he wasn’t declining to speak with her.
“How many generations ago did this ancestor of yours live?”
“The builder lived in the early 1800s, about eight generations back, but he isn’t my ancestor.”
She tipped her head and raised an eyebrow. “You live in his ancestral home and are the keeper of the family history. What do his descendents say?”
“No one knew until recently that he had descendents.”
“Missing descendents sounds interesting.” Juicy, better than gold in most people’s lives. She almost added, “Tell me about it,” but one could only use that phrase twice at best before an interviewee started feeling strip-mined.
He didn’t reply and Addy feared she might have worn out her welcome already.
The wind blew outside and a branch or something clattered against the roof. The raging storm had kept every other journalist away from this story and she had no intention of blowing it now.
She started to speak, but so did he.
“Go on. I’d love to hear all about it,” she said first and then she sat up straight and rested her spoon on the plate beside her soup bowl.
“In the early 1800s Patrick McClure came to the newly formed United States to avoid the English taxes. Immigration didn’t help his wife, Fanny McClure, as she died in childbirth, leaving McClure with two children under a year old and the need for a new wife. My direct ascendant was Fanny’s firstborn son.”
He continued to speak in the staccato voice of a museum docent or tour guide, someone who had delivered the information over and over, but he was speaking so she kept quiet.
“McClure had four children with his second wife, one a dark-haired stepson now proven to be the child of Liam Bailey for which the town was named. The three others were most likely McClures. They all had flaming red hair as he did. The dark-haired son has two descendants in the town. Daniel MacCarey, an anthropologist from the university and married to the owner of a restaurant here. The other, Heather Loch, who runs the town’s museum in the original church.”
“The church is a museum?”
He nodded as she lifted her spoon for more soup.
“What does Heather Loch look like?”
“Sixties, a mass of gray hair. You can’t miss her.” His lips curved gently, and the emotion she read into the smile said, fondly.
He glanced at her still smiling and she almost coughed up pea soup. Wow. Nice smile when he wasn’t being all businesslike. Electric. As quickly as her mind fired up with thoughts of Zachary Hale the real man, not monster, the smile changed to a frown. Had he seen the flicker of interest on her face?
Had she really felt it? What were they talking about? Oh, yeah, the church and the gray-haired woman. “I saw her when I drove into town. I thought she was an apparition standing in the doorway of the old church.”
“She’s guarding the museum from the storm.”
“Against a hurricane. How could they let her stay there? It’s too close to water.”
“Without a doubt, more than one person tried to talk her into leaving. Police Chief Montcalm most likely sent a squad car for her.”
“And she told them the church has stood two hundred years and it would stand another two hundred.” Addy might interview that woman, for color if nothing else.
“Something like that.”
He looked directly at her when he spoke. Almost as if seeing her for the first time. His eyes gleamed a soft golden brown, matching his hair. Oh, he was a package.
This was not the evil billionaire she’d expected. Could it be the beard?
She dismissed the notion. Zachary Hale was sly, slick and treacherously dangerous. He had created false accounting records and a trail of phony investment reports, then he put his name on them and sent them off to the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, as proof of his extraordinary ability to make fortunes for people.
She cleared her throat. “About the McClures. Do you know much about them?”
“Patrick McClure seemed to be in the right place at the right time and in the right circumstances.”
“The woman needed a husband.”
“And McClure, Irish immigrant or not, needed a wife. The situation was urgent or the second richest man in town would not have chosen such a bridegroom for his daughter.”
“So the first Mr. McClure came by his fortune in the new world through this woman in need?”
“Colleen Fletcher McClure insisted her father set the two of them up in the home her lover had built. And when her father died, insisted the town’s name be changed from South Harbor to Bailey’s Cove.”
The more he spoke, the more his voice became animated. Addy found herself leaning in, captivated.
She pushed away from the table, took the dishes to wash them in the sink.
“Has your family always lived in Bailey’s Cove?” If she sneaked in a question close to his personal life, he might not notice. If this one worked, she’d sneak one in about his life in Boston.
When he came to stand beside where she busied herself drying the lid to her bowl, she became a picture of innocence.
He turned and with one hand on the edge of the sink, he leaned in toward her almost as if he’d kiss her. His light brown eyes with golden flecks stared clearly into hers.
He leaned in closer and Addy sucked in a breath.
“I know what you’re doing and I’m going to ask you nicely to stop. Once.”
Then he straightened and strode away to the fire and sat on the sofa near where his phone and computer rested on the wooden coffee table.
He’s not who you think he is? The voice in her head insisted.
* * *
ZACH’S GRANDFATHER HAD told him his good nature would get him into trouble one day. And that day had come, in spades, four weeks ago, and now it just seemed to keep coming in the form of a reporter he wanted to toss out on her ear. He would, too, when it was safe, or at least he’d drop her off at the dry-goods store that doubled for a bus station.
His phone no longer had a signal, so he opened his tablet to check for communication from Morrison and Morrison.
The Wi-Fi wouldn’t connect either.
When he left Boston, he had planned on hunkering down to think. Hadn’t planned on Adriana Bonacorda. Admirable in her willingness to persist.
A flicker in the shadows told him the uninvited guest was loitering nearby.
He powered down his computer and slid it into his briefcase.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” she said as she tried to push her bushel of blond curls behind her ear. “I wanted to see if you were willing to sit down and speak with me some more.”
He pressed back against the cushion and studied her. She wore slim black jeans that were showing their age and a pale pink tank top under a faded black one. The tail of her sweater didn’t bother to come to her waist, but the rolled collar hugged the back of her neck in a sensuous manner and dropped to her midriff, accentuating her full breasts. She wore a sloppy old pair of wool socks on her feet as her once red moccasins now sat in the breezeway most likely curling up toe to heel as the leather dried and contracted.
The way her hair frizzed out around her head in a halo of blond almost made him smile. With her wide-set deep blue eyes and her generous mouth she carried the look off well. Her small chin jutted perfectly at the end of sharp jawbones and the color on her high pink cheekbones evened out the proportions of her features. Gave them a kind of perfection.
She looked to be in her late twenties, about a hundred and twenty pounds, and she might be a natural blonde, rare, but not unheard of.
“I won’t talk about anything south of the Maine border.”
The lines of her mouth tightened, but she dipped her chin once and invited herself to sit on the sofa with him but nearer the fire.
“What kinds of things do you do when you’re here in Bailey’s Cove?” she said, asking, he thought, as open a question as possible.
He could list a few, but nothing she could use to build a story against him. He wondered when this reporter had last been interested in the truth.
The wind whistled and roared as he sat and tried to decide what to tell her, how best to lead her away from anything involving Hale and Blankenstock.
“This is a quiet town, struggling,” he said softly.
“I’m afraid I didn’t get to see much of Bailey’s Cove.”
He imagined her clinging to the wheel of her car, trying not to panic beyond the ability to function. Blue eyes glued to the centerline. Butt nearly lifted from the seat in anticipation. He wondered just how crazy she was.
Locking her in a closet might be best for both of them.
She lifted one eyebrow at him. “I was too busy chasing you.”
He relaxed into press mode. She wanted to play casual, to get inside his armor with lightness and charm. Good for her. She wouldn’t be any good at her job if she didn’t pull out all her weapons.
She would find his armor had hardened recently. He was ready for whatever she had.
Liam Bailey. He’d throw her the pirate. Nothing she couldn’t get at the local museum, hell she’d get a well-embellished version at the local bar.
