Novels 03 After Twilight, page 20
“But I can’t trust your promises, Braedon.”
Something flickered across his face and then was gone. Pain. Remorse. And something else that Kacy couldn’t put a name to. Wasn’t certain she wanted to. “Kacy, we need to talk.”
Hurt battled with need. He’d saved her. He’d betrayed her trust. One feeling clashed against the other and she sighed, realizing she simply didn’t have the energy to fight with him.
“We do.” She sat back down on the sofa, drawing the afghan tightly around her.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Someone told me today that the best place to start was the beginning.”
Braedon nodded and sat in the chair facing her, studying his hands. “I’ve worked really hard for what I have. For my reputation as well as my money.” He rubbed his chin, still not looking at her. “Until recently, my reputation was the most important thing in the world to me.”
She wanted to ask him what he meant by that. There was so much between them. But now wasn’t the right time. She needed to concentrate on the subject at hand. “And the discovery of the forgeries threatened that reputation.”
He looked up, the vulnerability in his eyes making her want to cry. “The police thought I did it. That I sabotaged my own business.”
“But you didn’t.” She said it softly.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, neither did I.”
He sighed, rubbing his eyes, elbows propped on the arms of the chair. “I know that.”
“Now.”
“Now.” He looked up at her, his eyes tortured.
“You didn’t tell me who you were.” The sentence hung in the air, embodying everything that stood between them.
“No. I didn’t. And believe me, if I could take it back, I would. But I can’t.”
“That’s true, but you can try to explain to me why you felt the need to lie to me.” She watched him, trying to control her battling emotions.
He blew out a breath. “I thought Alex was involved. He was the only one besides me who could have pulled it off. He had access to everything in the gallery. He knew when paintings were due in and when they were being delivered after they sold. With the right connections, he could have made it work.”
“And I was his wife.” She squared her shoulders, meeting his gaze, her own steady.
He nodded. “An obvious connection. You were conceivably the closest person to him. And when you couple that with the fact that you disappeared without a trace …”
“I’d say that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, Braedon. I mean, you are sitting here.”
A ghost of a smile traced its way across his face. “Well, it wasn’t easy to find you, believe me.” He shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “And there was the money.”
“Money?”
“Alex’s share of the forgeries.” Braedon looked miserable, but held her gaze, his eyes steady, his meaning crystal clear.
“You thought I had Alex’s money?”
“It seemed logical. I mean, you had the wherewithal to disappear. And then there’s all this.” He gestured to the antiques filling the room.
“But I explained—”
“I know. And I wanted to believe you. In fact, on some level I did believe you.” He looked down at his hands, studying them as if they held the answers to all the secrets of the world.
She shivered with the memory of those hands on her body. Maybe they did hold all the answers. His words wounded her, but not as much as she’d thought they would. Her icy façade slipped a little, emotion rushing through the chink. Maybe it would be all right. Lord knew, she wanted it to be all right.
There was logic in his train of thought and she had a feeling she knew where he was going next. “Then you saw the Monet.”
He shrugged. “What was I supposed to think? I mean, I came here expecting to prove you guilty, and there was the proof right in front of me.”
“But you said you believe I’m innocent.”
“I do. You were so honest about everything, even admitting that the painting was your copy. It didn’t make sense. But you have to understand, Kacy, part of me desperately needed you to be guilty.”
She frowned, confused by his words.
He stood up and began pacing in front of the fire. “You were a paradox. On the one hand you were the last link with Alex. My last hope for finding out what really happened.”
“And the other side of the paradox?”
He stopped, turning to face her, his heart in his eyes. “You were the most wonderful woman I’d ever met. Honest, endearing, beautiful …” He stopped, their gazes colliding, and Kacy suddenly found it hard to breathe.
“And a forger.” She sank back against the sofa, trying to put physical distance between them.
“No. I didn’t believe that. I knew you were innocent, but things had gotten complicated and I just never found the right time. Hell, this sounds lame even to me.” His eyes pleaded with hers. “I tried to tell you this morning, remember, but Baucomo interrupted. And then when I got back—”
“I wouldn’t listen.”
“Well, you had good reason.” He knelt beside her, taking her hand in both of his. She shivered at the contact, his warmth shooting up her arm, kindling a fire deep inside her. “Kacy, I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m not sure that you ever had me, Braedon.” She spoke instinctively, regretting it before the sentence was completed. She wasn’t sure she could survive losing him and so she’d opted for self-preservation.
The pain reflected on his face hurt her. “I see.”
“Braedon, I just need a little time.” She squeezed his hand. “I haven’t had much luck with men and I don’t trust my own decisions. I want things to be good between us. But I need to know that I can trust you.”
He released her and moved to stand. She reached out and stopped him, laying a hand on his cheek, reaching inside herself for courage. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Braedon, and it scares the hell out of me. I don’t know what to believe. So much is happening. You—us.” She stroked his cheek, feeling his body tremble at her touch, her words. She lost herself in the strength of his gaze. “I’m afraid. There’s a dead ringer of my husband out there somewhere trying to drive me around the bend. Or worse. And I don’t even know why. My dog was p-poisoned, there was a dead man in my house, and last n-night …”
He covered her hand with his. “We found something very special, Kacy.”
“I believed that. But then today you took it away from me with your lies.”
“I’m just asking you to give me a chance.”
She met his gaze, searching for any hint of insincerity, but there was only regret. With a sigh, she made up her mind. There were shadows to fight and she didn’t want to be alone. She wanted to trust him. She wanted to take the chance— needed to take the chance. “No more lies?”
He smiled, recognizing the answer in her eyes. “No more lies.”
She tipped back her head, waiting for his kiss.
Chapter 20
“SO WHAT DID you find out?” Kacy asked, looking up as he walked into the kitchen. She was holding a teacup so tightly that her knuckles were white.
“Not a damn thing.” He sat down next to her at the table.
“Nothing?”
He blew out a breath, shaking his head. “Matt hasn’t turned up anything new. He’s going to turn up the heat, but until he can find something more, we’re on our own.”
She carefully put the cup back into the saucer, concentrating on the action as though the world depended on it. It broke his heart to see her like this. He damned Max Madison to hell and back again. Not that it did any good.
“What about the Garda?” She lifted her head, her troubled gaze meeting his.
“There’s nothing they can do. We haven’t got anything to pin on him.”
“But I saw him at the fort. He left me there.”
“There weren’t any witnesses, Kacy. Even if it is illegal, it would be your word against his. Not to mention the fact that at the moment we don’t even have a him.”
“But we know he’s here. Somewhere. I can feel it.” She rubbed her arms with her hands, shivering.
“I called the hotel, too.”
Hope flashed in her eyes. “And?”
He hated to douse the light in her eyes, but he had no choice. “Nothing. There’s no Max Madison registered at the hotel. And, at least according to the front desk, no one answering to his description.”
She shook her head. “But they have to protect their guests, don’t they? They have no reason to tell us the truth.”
“Well, I’m not a man without influence. Although I don’t think the guy on the phone knew me from Adam’s off ox.”
The ghost of a smile chased across her face. “Adam’s off ox?”
“Something my mother used to say.” He shrugged, answering her smile with a grin. If nothing else, at least they were working together again. “Look, let’s go over what we know. Maybe between the two of us we can come up with something.”
“Seems worth a try.” She stood up and crossed to the sink. “I’m going to make a sandwich. Do you want one?”
“Sure.” He watched her movements as she pulled out bread and sliced some cheese. Even in the simple act of cutting cheddar, she managed to look irresistible. “Okay, so what have we got?”
“Well, from my end, there’s the car, and Mac’s poisoning, and the dead man. Plus the two sightings of Max.” She laid a plate on the table in front of him.
“And the little fact that he left you out on that ledge to die.”
She sucked in a deep breath, her eyes meeting his. “Well, I didn’t die. And if I have my way about it, I’m not going to. Max or no Max.”
“I certainly second that.”
She picked her plate up off the counter and turned to face him, her eyes narrowed in thought. “You know, now that I think about it, there have been other times when I thought someone was watching me.”
“You mean the way he was today?”
She nodded, sitting at the table, her plate in front of her. “Yeah. At the fort, actually. A couple of times when I was there with Mac, I thought I heard something. At the time I wrote it off as my imagination. But now …” She stopped, her mind obviously puzzling over something. “What about the wall at the fort? The footprint. Could that have been Max, too?”
Braedon swallowed a bite of sandwich, his brain churning. “It could be. Or it could all be totally unrelated. We don’t have a shred of evidence that Max is even here.”
She fixed him with an indignant stare. “Are you saying I didn’t see him?”
He raised a hand in peace. “No. Not at all. I’m just saying we don’t have anything to prove he’s really here. Nothing to tie him to anything that’s happened.”
“There’s the body. Did you tell the Garda about this Anson person?”
“Yeah, I did. And they’re going to look into it. But things move slowly in the country. And it could be a while before they know anything.”
“Can your friend Matt help to speed things up?”
“I think so. Hell, I hope so.”
“Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. Maybe instead of concentrating on where Max is, we should be concentrating on why he’s here.”
“What do you mean?” He finished off the last of his sandwich, surprised at how hungry he’d been.
“I mean that Max is obviously here for a reason. If we can figure out what that reason is, then maybe we can figure out what’s going on.” She paused, chewing on her bottom lip. “And how to stop it.”
“All right. So we’re assuming that this has something to do with the forgeries, right?”
“Yes. It seems to make sense. And, despite your comments earlier, I think we can assume that Max isn’t trying to kill me.”
“Kacy,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know if I’d go that far.”
She held up a hand to stop him. “Hang on a minute. If you think about it, he hasn’t really done anything to hurt me.”
“What the hell are you talking about? He left you stranded on a ledge in the middle of a rainstorm. That’s not exactly a gesture of goodwill.” He stopped, realizing that he was yelling at her.
She smiled slowly. “I know. But he didn’t push me, did he? And if you separate that instance from the others, then what you have is a search. Even the police thought it was a robbery.”
“All right, I’ll accept that. Although I still think there’s more to it. Hell, Kacy, he destroyed the Monet. If that wasn’t a malicious act, I don’t know what is.”
“Look, I’m not trying to make excuses for the man. I just want to get to the bottom of this. Besides, it wasn’t Max who tore the house apart. It was Anson.”
“Or we think it was Anson.” Frustration reared its ugly head again. All they had were dead ends.
“The bottom line here is that Max seems to think that I have something he wants.”
“But what?”
“I don’t know. Nothing of Alex’s. I sold everything of value and threw the rest out. I didn’t want any memories.”
“You kept his picture.”
“I know. I tried to explain it before. I feel responsible for his death.”
“Even after everything he did to you?”
“No one deserves to die like that, Braedon.”
He thought about Anson’s death. Her words then had been almost the same. Kacy was a compassionate woman. More so than he was. He wanted nothing more than to bring Alex back to life simply to have the privilege of killing him again.
“Besides, at the time, I wanted him back. I still believed that I could make it work.”
“And now?”
She smiled slowly, sending shivers of need down his spine. “Now I know better.”
He shook his head, focusing on the issue at hand. “Didn’t Alex ever share anything with you? Anything that would give us a clue about what Max might be looking for?”
She shook her head, pain flickering across her face. “No. There’s nothing. Alex never told me anything.”
“And you didn’t ask.”
“If I asked a question, he lied to me or found a way to throw it back into my face. I know I should have done something more. But I didn’t.”
“I didn’t mean to bring it up again.” He lifted his hands in testament and then dropped them again uselessly. “I just hoped there was something … anything.”
“There’s nothing. Honestly. I barely saw Alex after we were married. And when I did, talking was the last thing on his mind.” She shivered at the memory.
“He hurt you.”
Her eyes met his, telegraphing an answer he didn’t want to hear. “I still have nightmares about it.”
“That’s why you’re afraid of the dark.”
She nodded.
“Oh, God, Kacy.” He half rose from his chair, wanting to pull her into his arms, to make it all right, but she shook her head, holding him off with just a look.
“We covered this ground before, Braedon, and I don’t want to relive it. There are things we can see with hindsight that we can’t see when we’re in the middle of the storm. The important point here is that I survived.”
There was something in her voice. A new note. Somehow in everything that had happened, Kacy had grown stronger. “And now you have to let it go.”
“I don’t know about that. Things have a way of resurfacing when you least expect them to.” She pushed her uneaten sandwich away, suddenly deflating.
Damn Alex Madison and his brother.
“We’re going in circles here. We need more information. And until we get it I doubt we’ll uncover anything.”
“Is your friend going to call back?”
He nodded, reaching across the table to take her hands. “As soon as he finds something. Listen, why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll stay here and keep watch.”
“You think he’s coming back.” Panic flashed across her face, but as quickly as it appeared it was gone. She was obviously determined to put on a brave front.
“I think it’s possible. But I’ll be here, Kacy. I’ll watch over you.”
And by God, he was going to do whatever he could to keep Max Madison from hurting her. She’d been through enough. And he’d be damned before he’d let anyone else hurt her.
“But, Braedon—” She looked up at him, her green eyes flashing with emotion. “—who’ll take care of you?”
Braedon leaned back in his chair, watching her sleep. Her hair was splayed across the pillow, a silky curtain slipping across her cheek. One strand had separated from the others and lay across her mouth, lifting and falling with each breath she took.
He resisted the urge to crawl into bed next to her, to wake her with kisses. It was too soon. Besides, after everything he’d done, the invitation had to come from her.
The house was quiet. Mac slept at the foot of the chair, his nose resting by Braedon’s toe. It was a domestic scene.
Tranquil.
Deceiving.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Sleep threatened to overtake him, but he fought against it, knowing he needed to stay alert.
He’d gone over it a million times in his mind and still nothing made sense. What could Kacy have that Max wanted? The only answer he could come up with was money. But Kacy didn’t have any. And even if she did, how did Max plan on getting it? And for that matter, if Max had truly been the brains behind the forgeries, wouldn’t he have already known where any money was hidden?
Unless Alex had died before he could tell Max where the money was.
Braedon frowned, trying to piece it together. Kacy had said she met Alex in the Cayman Islands. A damn good place to stash ill-gotten gains. But still, there’d been time to tell his brother. Unless it had been a double cross. Had Kacy and Alex been working together? But that threw suspicion back on Kacy. And damn it, he’d been down that road before. He trusted her, and by God, he was going to prove it to her.
Hell, this was all so complicated. He stood up and walked to the window, still thinking about Max. If Braedon had jumped to the conclusion there’d been a double cross, then Max would, too. And Max would no doubt believe his brother was innocent.
