She was warm. Deliciously warm. Warm and safe. Anne didn't want to wake up, didn't want to open her eyes, didn't want to leave the cocoon of soft mattress and hard muscle. She sighed and turned, snuggling closer to the source of the warmth and felt an arm shift and reshape its hold on her.
An arm? Hard muscle?
Anne blinked open her eyes to dim, early morning light. Good grief. How had she gotten to David's room? To David's bed?
He looked down at her and let his bad-boy grin peek out. "You walked again last night, Annie."
"Oh, boy." She tried to turn her face away, not wanting him to see the embarrassment in hers, not wanting to see ridicule or rejection or even stoic acceptance in his.
"I heard a noise about three o'clock, looked up, and there you were in the doorway."
"Oh, boy," she repeated.
Her gown had ridden up. Her leg brushed against his leg. His bare leg. In turning, she had placed her hand against his chest. His bare chest.
"I thought you might have heard something, but when I spoke to you, you didn't answer. You did look down the hall once, but then you came in here, lifted the covers and crawled in as though you'd been doing it all your life."
"I'm sorry," she muttered, easing her leg away from his and trying to lift her hand.
He caught her hand and held it still above his heart. "I'm not. I knew last night that if you were going to walk in your sleep, I'd rather have you coming to me than going to . . . to him."
She felt his life pulsing beneath her touch. Life. Vibrant, vital life. His pulse grew stronger as she stared up into his eyes, seeing none of those things she'd been afraid of seeing. It was the strangest thing, but she had the feeling his heart beat just for her, that it beat in unison with hers. That it always had. That it always would. And that at this moment, he knew it, too.
"Annie, what's happening to us?"
A glib response wouldn't do here. He knew about physical attraction; so did she. And while, yes, her body was responding to his nearness as his was unmistakably responding to hers, his voice carried too much wonder, too much frustration, and too much confusion to be asking about something so obvious.
He raised his hand to her cheek and trailed his fingers to her throat. There, her pulse leapt beneath his touch.
"It took me a while to sort out what I was feeling when I saw you kneeling at his feet Friday night—even longer to admit it to myself. I was jealous. Jealous of a man who's been dead seven hundred years, give or take a century or two. Jealous, when I've no more than kissed you. Jealous, when there's not a hope in hell we can ever mesh our lives and our homes and our careers.
"So when you came to my door last night, when you came to my bed, why did it seem no different than when you went to him?"
There was no answer, glib or otherwise, for that. She could only stare into his eyes, letting him see her own wonder, frustration, and confusion. And need.
"Annie. Oh, God, Annie." He hauled her against him and found her mouth with his. "I don't want this," he muttered when he dragged his mouth from hers. "We don't need this. Not now. There's too much— too much . . ."
"I know," she said. But her hands were as greedy as his; her mouth as needy. Her body as feverish. "I know."
Later, she would wonder how she could have been so rash, how she could have responded to David with no more than a thought that she thrust to the back of her mind about birth control or protection of any kind. But at that moment, all she could do was respond, as though she had been responding to him all her life, as though she had been responding to him the seven hundred years, give or take a century or two, that he had just mentioned, as though his touch and their sharing was as vital to her—to each of them, to both of them—as the blood that thundered through his heart and hers.
"Believe me," she murmured against his throat. "I know."
When Anne awoke again, she was alone. The covers were tucked neatly up around her, and her red flannel nightgown lay across the foot of the narrow bed. A slight breeze, more chill than cool, came through the partially opened window. As did light. Enough light to tell her it was past time to get this day started.
Later, dressed and more or less put together for their outing that morning, she went in search of David. She smelled coffee and bacon before she reached the stairwell. She hesitated a moment with her hand on the newel post. The warrior lay in the other direction. Should she check on him first?
And do what, Annie? Ask him if he wants breakfast, too? Her hand clenched on the post as in her mind she heard David's voice, clearly mocking. Or was it her own? She shook her head and squared her shoulders and marched herself down the hall.
Wayne and Margaret had already arrived to keep vigil for the day. Wayne rose from his chair in a quaint, faintly courtly gesture when she entered the room.
David turned from his position at the stove and let his eyes give her a warmer welcome than his almost casual, "Good morning. Coffee's ready. One egg or two?"
"Good morning." Was she blushing? Good lord, she didn't blush. She couldn't let herself, because if she did all her freckles stood up and begged for attention. Maybe not. Margaret was looking at her, but it was a speculative look, not a knowing one.
And just how was she supposed to greet David, anyway?
Just like nothing had happened. Just like he greeted her. That decided, she headed toward the coffeepot. "Only one egg, please."
He grinned at her. Turned as they were, no one else could see that grin. And no one else could see the way he searched her features, as if making sure she was all right, or the wicked wink he sent her way even though he didn't seem at all assured that she was. "Coming right up. I found some juice in your freezer. Hope you don't mind that I made myself at home."
Wayne and Margaret already had full cups of coffee, still steaming, so Anne realized they must have arrived only a few minutes ago, probably while she was in the shower. She smiled at them and walked to the table. Wayne held a chair for her and only sat down after she did. "I could get used to treatment like this," Anne said.
David turned back to the stove and cracked an egg on the edge of the skillet. "You look like you could use a lot of it, too."
Margaret chuckled. "It does no good to fight it, Anne," she said. "So you might as well enjoy being cosseted. After yesterday, you certainly deserve it."
After yesterday. For a moment the room spun around her. She had forgotten. How had she forgotten? "Did anybody—Is he—How is he?"
Margaret reached over and laid her hand on Anne's, stilling her. "Blake came by our place this morning before he went off duty." she said. "The boy is still in critical condition, but it looks like he's going to make it."
Anne slumped in her chair. "Thank God."
Wayne shook his head. "The way Blake tells it, it's thank God, and you two."
"No. All we did was give rudimentary first aid, the kind anybody can give. The kind those people at the scene were already giving."
Wayne just stared at her. "Rudimentary first aid? Is that what you call taking that boy's fear away? Giving him hope?" He shot a glance at David. "Promising him an autographed baseball?"
"Here. Eat." David put a plate in front of her. The flatware was already on the table, as were butter and blackberry jelly.
He draped a hand on her shoulder for a moment before dragging out his own chair and sinking onto it. He waited until she had finished her egg and bacon and spread butter and jelly onto a toasted English muffin.
"We don't have to do this today, you know," he said. "We can wait. You can rest."
She carefully set the muffin back on her plate. There was cosseting, and then there was babying. "I'm fine."
"I know you think you are, but you've had a series of—You had a pretty rough day yesterday—"
"Wait until when?" she asked. "It isn't that far, but if we don't go today, it will be Wednesday, or maybe even Saturday before I can take the time to make the trip."
They went. Anne telephoned first, to make sure that Marian Hansom was really a patient in one of the nursing homes in Texarkana. She found her registered in the third one she called.
David drove. "Are you upset with me?" he asked when they were deep in the mountains.
Upset with him? What was he talking about? "No, of course not. Why should I be?"
"Maybe because . . . because I took advantage of you when you were especially vulnerable. Maybe because you regret what happened between us."
She turned her head to look at him. Good lord, he was serious. "You didn't take advantage of me," she told him. "I knew what I was doing, and I wanted to do it. Whatever gave you the idea I regretted anything that we shared?"
He reached across the chasm of the console separating them and lifted her hand in his. "We should have driven your truck. There's a lot to be said for good old-fashioned bench seats."
Anne returned the pressure of his hand, and when he placed hers on his thigh so he could grip the steering wheel, she laughed softly and left her hand where he had placed it.
"That's more like it," he told her. She peered at him and then down at her hand.
"That too," David said with a chuckle, "but what I was talking about was your laugh. I've missed it."
"David, it's only been—"
"I've missed it," he repeated.
Anne knew that she had seen Marian Hansom before. Her childhood memories included one of an old, querulous woman in a hospital bed, but where she couldn't remember. Probably Ellie Hansom's house. Surely her mother had taken her there. She certainly remembered hearing about her. Even if she hadn't heard much, the conversations in the past few days would have filled in any number of gaps.
That had to be why the slender white-haired woman in the wheelchair was such a surprise. Anyone who had acted as ugly as Marian reportedly had, ought to be ugly, not regally beautiful.
The staff at the small, private facility must have told Marian someone had inquired about her, because she was expecting them. She wore a simple silk shirt and skirt. Her hair, thinner now than it would have been in her prime, gleamed like silver in soft finger waves, and her makeup also echoed a restrained version of the style that had been popular in Marian's youth. A delicate lace shawl draped across her shoulders, and a lightweight, woven coverlet lay across the arm of the chair, waiting should she become chilled.
Crazy Aunt Marian looked every bit the regal matriarch granting an audience. "You wanted to see me?"
David stood a half-step behind Anne and waited for her to speak.
"Yes," Anne said, "I'm Anne Locke. My grandmother was Ellie Hansom's cousin Rebecca."
Marian cocked her head back and studied Anne's face and hair. "Did the Briggs family manage to insinuate itself into the Hansom family after all? But no, I forgot. You're Katherine's bastard."
Anne felt the blow physically. David gripped her arm, holding her steady.
"Bastard." It was as though Marian tasted the word once again before spitting it out. "That's what they called my Joseph, you know. You're also the one who bought the house. I don't suppose you're here out of family loyalty or love, so perhaps we'd better go somewhere private. You. Yes you, young man. You may push my chair."
David hesitated, but he stepped to the back of Marian's chair. A single glance at her over Marian's head told Anne just where he'd like to push that chair, but he kept his voice calm. "Where?"
Marian directed them to a small, plant-filled room. "No one ever comes in here. There's no television. But shut the door. No one knows my business unless I tell them."
She wheeled herself across the quarry tile floor to a grouping of chairs and waited for them to join her. "You will forgive me if I don't offer refreshments." She nodded toward the rattan chairs. "Well, sit. I don't relish holding this or any other discussion while I have to look up at anyone."
Anne took the chair closest to Marian; David, the other.
"Well, what is it? Why did you drive all the way down here?"
Anne glanced around the room. The plants surrounding the casual, tasteful grouping of furniture were lush and well cared for; the spotless tile floor glowed; the many windows surrounding them gleamed. Anne had visited many nursing homes since starting medical school; this was probably the most luxurious she had ever seen. It was also, undoubtedly, the most expensive.
"This is a lovely facility," she said.
Marian's eyes glittered and she let a small, satisfied smile crease her carefully made-up face. "My grandson takes quite good care of me."
Now that was an understatement. And could Joe really have the kind of money a facility like this charged? "He must love you very much."
Marian's smile faded. "What do you want?"
Anne leaned forward. "I want to know what you know about the man in the hidden room."
Marian sucked in a sharp breath as she drew back. She was quiet for so long Anne began to be alarmed, but just as she reached for the woman's arm, Marian laughed. Harshly. Violently. And Crazy Marian peeked out from behind the regal façade.
"You found him. You found him and you don't know what to do with him. Watch out, Anne Locke. Only I have the key. Only I have the right to him. And look what they did to me."
"Is he why Joe has been trying to buy the house from me? Why he's been sneaking around the outside of the house in the dark? Why yesterday he actually broke into the house?"
"He mustn't. He mustn't."
"Miss Hansom," David said. "It isn't a matter of what Joe must or must not do. He's done it. Did you send him?"
"You didn't tell him? You weren't fool enough to tell anybody?"
Anne sighed. "No. We didn't tell Joe. But why shouldn't we? You obviously have."
Now Marian smiled again. "But not where he is. Don't you see? I promised Joe a fortune, but only I know where it is."
Now Joe's actions toward his grandmother made more sense. Anne hated that she felt easier attributing him with greed rather than familial love, but that hat fit the man she had come to know a lot better.
"Joe mustn't know. The cats won't like that. They're very protective of him, you know. Even with me. Even with me.
"I loved him." Marian tilted her head to one side. In the shade of a leafy palm she looked almost young. "A long time ago, I loved him. And then he took that bitch to mate instead of me. We ruled the heart of this country from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. But we could have ruled the world. Together we would have ruled the world. I got even with him, though, and with her. She thought she was so smart with her herbs and her potions, but my source knew more than simply how to heal. He knew how to take life slowly, steadily. I would have killed her, too, but by then I couldn't get close enough. The cats wouldn't let me. The curse wouldn't let me. But they wouldn't stop me from killing those around her. They couldn't stop me from letting her die.
"And now he's mine. Forever and ever mine.
"All I wanted was the box. I took the things Lucy and that Briggs boy had stolen back to the room, and I picked up the box. I was going to take it with me while I drove to the country. It seemed fitting, you know, that I get rid of her picture, too. The picture should have been mine. And the box should have been mine. It will be mine once he realizes that I only did what I had to do. Once he tells the cats to leave me alone.
"They kill anyone who bothers him. You do know that, don't you?"
Anne nodded. Crazy as a bessie bug? Katherine didn't know the half of it.
"Is that what happened to Lucy Hansom and Walter Briggs?" David asked. "You said they had stolen some things from him."
Marian looked up at him. A shadow crossed her face, but she smiled. "You want to know what happened to them?" she asked shrewdly.
"I watched Walter build the wall. Ellie thought she was so smart to close off the room. She thought I wouldn't be able to get to him. I've come across lifetimes to reach him; why should one wall stop me?
"And it wouldn't have stopped that greedy daughter of hers either. I overheard Lucy and Walter planning to take him away before they closed the wall—take him away and not say anything to Ellie or to me, just let us think he was still back there.
"Didn't they realize I would know? Didn't they realize I couldn't let them do that?"
"What happened to them?" David asked.
Marian pulled back in her chair. "Why, the curse got them. I told everyone that. But they wouldn't listen to me."
David leaned forward. "You actually saw the cats kill Walter Briggs and Lucy Hansom? Where? And why didn't you go for help at the time?"
Marian dragged her head from side to side, slowly, deliberately. "Oh, no you don't. I know what you're trying to do, but I won't let you.
"I was in the hospital for weeks, you know. And Ellie went with me. She didn't want to, but her pride wouldn't let her go off and leave me alone, even if it meant missing the wedding. And she stayed with me. Weeks and weeks and weeks. When we came back to her house, there was no sign of them. She knew they were dead. She just didn't want to believe it. But she got even with me. She sent my Joseph away. She said she couldn't take care of him and me, too. And she made me watch as she finished the wall and locked the closet and left me so close to him and unable even to see him.
"Oh, yes. She got even."
She heard David's sigh. Somewhere in Marian's story ran a thread of truth, but where?
"Got even for what?" David asked. "Why did she keep you in her house when obviously there was no love between the two of you, Miss Hansom?"
"It's Mrs. Hansom," Marian said coldly. "And she kept me because she couldn't bear the thought of the scandal or the shame it would bring to Lucy and to her if anyone knew that I'd married Ralph before he ever met her, that he only married her because of her family's money, and that he promised me he'd leave as soon as he had acquired enough of the mineral interests, enough of the land, and later, enough of the artifacts that so enchanted him. But he didn't. No. The curse got him too. But if he's listened to me . . ."
Anne sat bolt upright in her chair. All sorts of rumors had been whispered in the family, but never this. "You're saying that Ralph and Ellie weren't legally married?"
Marian smiled. "Is bigamy legal?"
"And this is what you held over her to stay in her house, with the man everyone thought was her husband?"
"No, no, dear. Blackmail is only good if it's used properly. It's what I held over Ralph. Ellie didn't know. Then."
David dropped his hand on Anne's shoulder, calming her, as he took over the questions. "But she obviously found out. How?"
"How? While building that damned wall she searched my room. My room. And she found my marriage license. She was stunned, but not surprised. She burned it. In my large crystal ashtray that had been empty for months because she refused to buy me cigarettes. She burned it and then she bought paint for the house. Purple. 'A fitting color for a brothel,' she said. 'Isn't that what they call a place where whores live?'
"I almost died when she got sick. Joseph was dead. My sweet Joseph that she turned against me died working on the dam for that lake. It wouldn't have happened if Ellie had let him stay. I would have seen that he got to college, he didn't have to work like a slave for wages. But he was dead. And no one came to see me but his son, Joe. I'd talk to him; I always knew how much I could tell him and how much I couldn't. He's more like me than his father ever was, but that's all right. I understand that. I know how to use that."
Anne swallowed her distaste. "So he keeps you here in exchange for the promise of a fortune later."
Marian nodded, and her eyes glittered.
"After you die?"
Again, Marian nodded.
"Tell me," Anne asked. "If everyone who tries to claim this treasure dies, just how is Joe going to collect?"
"Now dear, why on earth will I ever have to worry about that?"
Anne stood. She'd been in this woman's presence too long. David reached for her hand but Anne stepped away from him. She glanced at him and knew he had more questions to ask, but she didn't care how much more Marian could or might tell them; she'd heard more than she wanted to hear. She had to leave. She didn't want him staying with this vicious old woman either, but he would. She knew he would. Just as she knew she wouldn't argue with him in front of Marian Hansom. She gave him a brief, tight smile and walked from the room, but in her heart she was running as fast as she could, as far away from Marian Hansom as possible.
David joined Anne a few minutes later at the Blazer. Without speaking, he took her in his arms and just held her.
"I'm going to paint the house," she said against his jacket.
He rubbed his hand over her back but remained silent.
"The first few days that are warm enough and clear enough, I'm going to have a crew up there. I thought she was just eccentric. I could live with that. But my God, what she must have gone through. Poor Aunt Ellie."
"You have to know that woman is capable of making up any story she wants to serve any purpose she might have."
"You think she was lying about being married to Ralph?"
"Annie, all she had to do to prove it was to write for a duplicate marriage license. And if she couldn't do it, she could have told Joe where to write and had him do it."
"Do you think she did? Tell Joe?"
"I don't know. Would it be better for him politically to have an unmarried ancestor, or a bigamous one?"
"Poor Joe," she said, "what a quandary."
"That's better." David said, easing his hand to the nape of her neck and massaging the tension knotted there.
She sighed and relaxed into his touch before she opened her eyes to find him looking down at her with a gentleness she had felt so often coming from him. Felt, but not recognized. Needed, but not returned. "You're so good for me," she whispered.
"I try to be, Annie. I try."
"What are we going to do?"
And he knew without asking what she meant. Out of all of the problems facing them, he zeroed in on the one that should have been the easiest to solve. But wasn't. What are we going to do about us? What were they going to do about the attraction between them when his vacation was over, when he had to leave, and she couldn't. "I don't know, Annie."
"Kiss me?" She couldn't believe she'd said it. Kiss me. Here. In the parking lot in front of anyone who happened to look. But she had. And meant it. And wanted it regardless of who might be watching.
"And take away the taste of our visit with Marian?"
Was that why? As she looked into his eyes she knew that was a part of it. But only a part. "Yes," she said, knowing she had to be honest with him. She felt his arms tense around her, saw his eyes begin to take on a hardness alien to the David he had shown her, and knew she couldn't leave him with less than the complete answer. "Yes," she repeated. "That, too."
There was no question that night where either of them would sleep. While Anne readied for bed, David made one last sweep of the yard and the locks on the windows and doors. Then they went up the stairs together, to the room at the end of the front hall where she had begun the night before. It was cold, and Anne shivered in her long robe and flannel nightgown. David opened one window just a crack; Anne switched on the electric blanket she had brought upstairs, shed her robe, and crawled between frigid sheets.
David gave her one of his lethal grins as he scooted in beside her. "You don't really think you're going to need that blanket, do you?"
Anne swallowed once and looked at him. No. He didn't really feel any humor; he was only trying to distract her from the path her thoughts had taken. And why? Unless his thoughts had gone there, too.
And why now had her thoughts chosen that path? She'd known from the beginning his time here was limited. Why, tonight, had that taken on such sinister overtones? But it had. When he moved closer to her, she raised her hands to his face. "You're going to leave me, aren't you? As soon as your time is finished here, you'll go back to Dallas, back to your life."
He pulled her close and bent his head to rub his cheek against her hair. "I don't know what I'm going to do, Annie, and that's the God's truth." His arms tightened fractionally. "Blake offered me a job."
Was that the answer? The answer to what? What was wrong with her tonight that made her see everything so fatalistically?
"Could you be happy as a county cop? Could you really live in a small town with all of its limitations and none of the city's advantages and not go stark raving crazy?"
"I don't know. What do you want me to say, Annie? That I love you? I don't know that, either. I only know that I've never felt this way about another woman. If I hadn't met you I probably wouldn't even have considered Blake's offer. If I hadn't met you I probably would already be back in Dallas, cursing my leave, prowling through all the alleys of my life trying to find out what I was going to do with the rest of it."
"Sshh," she whispered, stopping his flow of words with gentle fingers across his lips. Did she want him to say he loved her? Or would that cause more problems? "I only wanted you to know I understand. I—I wanted you to know that I . . . I don't expect more. I wanted you to know that I can't leave."
There. She'd said it. She'd warned him not to care too much. So why did it feel as though that wasn't what needed to be said? Why did she feel as though what she wanted was to beg him never to leave her again?
"I know, Annie," he said. "If I ever had any doubts about that, I lost the last one yesterday."
Well, damn it, she was crying, and her tears felt like ice on her cheeks. Why was she crying? She'd had to reassure him that she wasn't asking for forever, hadn't she? Because forever wasn't for them. Their meeting was a fluke, an accident, something that never should have happened, wasn't it?
Now he lifted his fingers to her face and traced her tears.
"Ah, damn it, Annie. We'll get through this. We'll find a home for your skeleton and scrape that damned purple paint off your house. You'll be happy here because this is where you need to be. And if you don't want to practice medicine, if you want to make jewelry, that's okay too. You're strong, sweetheart, strong enough to know yourself. Strong enough to do what's right for you."
She sniffed once and felt a sob bubble out. He was so good for her. So good to her.
"And if I want to be with you?"
With gentle pressure beneath her chin, he lifted her face toward his. "I'm here, Annie. With you. Is that what you want?"
She felt the soft brush of his breath against her forehead. Carefully, cautiously, she lifted her hand to his chest and felt his heart beating beneath her palm. For her. With her.
"Yes," she whispered. "That is exactly what I want."