The Buried, page 7
Maybe it was from the cold breeze they’d let in when they opened the door. Or maybe it was with fear. When Erika’s body was first discovered, everyone had assumed it was Genevieve’s. Because Erika was gone for a couple of months already, after leaving that note.
“The sergeant is a guest at the hall,” Bode said. He didn’t want the girl worrying that there was still a killer on the loose, although maybe she should; then maybe she would be more careful about who she trusted now. Though if she was, she probably wouldn’t be helping him out right now.
“Are you going to be here for a while?” Genevieve asked.
“Just a couple of weeks,” Mae replied.
Genevieve smiled. “I was actually asking Bode. Adelaide is down for her nap. Would you mind if I run up to the hall for a minute to see my mom?”
Her mom was a psychologist at the spa, but until recently Genevieve had thought she was her older sister. Happy that she had adapted so quickly and lovingly to their new relationship, he smiled and assured her, “No, go ahead.”
He half expected Mae to ride back with her, but Mae never asked as Genevieve hurriedly put on her boots and coat and headed off in his SUV.
“Come into the living room,” Bode told the sergeant. “There’s a fire in the hearth. I’m just going to go look in on my sweet girl.” His heart already filling with love for her, he hurried across the living room, past the fireplace and the tree that stood next to it, which he’d decorated for Christmas with myriad twinkling lights. Then he headed through another arched doorway and into the nursery.
Adelaide slept on her back with her arms stretched above her head, with her hands squeezed into little fists. Like she was ready to fight, like she needed to protect herself even in her sleep. Protecting her was his job. He’d spent so many sleepless nights trying to figure out how to make sure nothing bad would ever happen to her. But it had without him even knowing it. She’d lost her mother.
“She’s why you agreed to this,” Mae said, her voice all husky again and so eerily similar to her sister’s.
Emotion choking him, he could only nod. But then he cleared his throat. “I need to keep her safe and make sure she knows the truth about what happened to her mother.” He didn’t want her having any doubts about him, like the sheriff’s daughter had had about her mother’s death. But Shannon Howell’s husband hadn’t killed her; her lover had. Bode’s cousin.
Mae’s brow furrowed for a moment, as if something was bothering her. Probably him.
“You still don’t trust me,” he said. Given his family history, she didn’t have any reason to, and there was also Kimber Lee between them. Clearly she held him responsible for her sister’s death, too.
She sighed. “I don’t know if I should. I’m surprised Genevieve Walcott does.”
“Tulle,” he corrected her. “Don’t call her Walcott.” Her grandmother and stepgrandfather were evil people.
“What happened to your usual nanny? You must have had one before now.”
He sighed. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t trust me. Susan’s husband made her quit. He either didn’t trust me or the hall. He didn’t want her working here any longer.”
“Can you blame him?”
He sighed again. “No. But I am not the threat—”
“No matter what your grandfather thinks?” she interrupted.
He shook his head. “I don’t know what my grandfather was talking about, but then, I rarely do.”
“Do you think he has dementia?” she asked, but from the tone of her question, she clearly doubted the possibility.
He chuckled as well, at the unlikelihood of that happening.
“I think he’s as sharp and manipulative as he ever was. . . .”
“And you’re his namesake,” she needlessly reminded him. “Is that why you changed your name?”
Bode signed again. “And so your investigation begins, right where Elijah warned me it would, with me still as your prime suspect. Maybe this is the mistake everybody keeps warning me it is.” Maybe his daughter would wind up hating him as much as Deacon Howell’s daughter had once hated him. He stared down at her in her crib, and a pressure settled heavily on his chest.
Adelaide’s little body stiffened, and her tiny fists clenched even more. Then a cry spilled out of her, as if she could feel his distress. He reached over the railing and lifted her up, wrapping her in his arms, close against his madly pounding heart.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he assured her. “It’s okay. Daddy’s here.” And he had to make sure he stayed here for her, that he didn’t get arrested for something he hadn’t done. That he didn’t get taken away from her like her mother had been.
He turned toward Mae to beseech her to help him, to be fair and impartial and not punish him any more than he had already punished himself for Kimber Lee’s death.
But she stumbled back, as if she was suddenly afraid of him, and her face had gone pale, her eyes wide.
“What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
Then he realized she wasn’t looking at him; she was looking at Adelaide with all that fear and dread. “You don’t like kids,” he said with a strange sense of disappointment.
Maybe it was just that he knew now his mother wasn’t the only one who hadn’t liked kids. Not that he knew that for sure, but how else would she have been able to leave her own like she had?
* * *
Mae stared down at the baby clasped in her arms, wondering how this had happened. Maybe it was the way Bode had looked at her moments before, when he’d picked up his daughter. Maybe she’d wanted to prove him wrong, that she didn’t dislike children.
What she disliked was the sick feeling churning in her empty stomach, the emptiness inside her ever since she’d given birth to Gabriel and given him to Kimber Lee and Jean-Paul. He wasn’t hers; she’d known that from the moment the embryo had been transferred to her womb. And yet . . .
She’d carried him. She’d felt him growing and moving inside her. She’d bonded with him only to lose him like she’d eventually lost his mother. Just seeing Bode’s baby had brought all those feelings, that loss, back to her, overwhelming her.
Ever since Gabriel’s birth, she’d kept her distance as much as possible from children, coming up with excuses to avoid her friends with kids. But in the course of her work, that wasn’t always possible, like now.
She hadn’t had to offer to hold the baby when Bode’s phone rang. But she’d recognized the name on his screen, had seen the look on his face, and knew he’d needed to take it. While Edie Stone was pretty famous, the woman who’d called Bode was a legend. And she could hear him, out in the living room, talking to her as warmly and casually as if they spoke all the time. As if she was a close friend of his . . .
Mae had forgotten for a moment how famous he was. He seemed so down to earth, so friendly and open. Or was that all just an act?
“I assure you, the press isn’t allowed at the hall,” he said into his cell as he paced in the hall outside the nursery door, as if he didn’t trust Mae alone with his daughter. With her lack of experience of actually taking care of kids, maybe he shouldn’t.
Maybe she shouldn’t trust him either. Because even though she could hear only his half of the conversation, she could tell he was lying.
“Edie Stone is here because she’s dating my brother. Dr. Elijah Cooke. No. There’s no story here that I’ve given to her over you. You and I go way back. And yes, I know I need to sit down with you again soon. You’re welcome at the hall anytime, although you might want to wait until it warms up. The bridge to the mainland shuts down in the winter, and it gets pretty desolate out here. Let’s set something up for when the weather’s better. Definitely. And happy holidays to you, too.”
He stopped pacing to lean against the doorjamb and stare in at her and his daughter. “What?” he asked. “You look like you’re upset about something. Still not a kid fan?”
Adelaide was all warm and sweet-smelling and snuggled against her. “You were lying to that person.”
He shook his head. “Not at all. Edie Stone is only at the hall because she’s dating Elijah; otherwise she wouldn’t have been allowed inside. I didn’t give Edie a story. She found one on her own. And now isn’t the best time for anyone to visit the hall, the weather being the primary reason.”
“Wow . . .” she murmured. “It’s almost effortless for you. . . .”
“What?” he asked. “I wasn’t lying.”
“Talking around people, making them believe you.”
“I was being honest,” he insisted.
“You were being evasive without her knowing it,” she said. And his caller was a famous interviewer; how had he gotten out of actually answering those questions without her realizing what he’d done?
“Speaking of evasive,” he said. “You never really answered me about whether or not you like kids.”
“That was because your phone rang,” she reminded him.
“So answer me now,” he said. “Why did you look at Adelaide almost like you were afraid of her?”
Because she was afraid of getting attached to a child only to lose them again. She couldn’t admit that to him without sounding like she thought she would get attached to Adelaide because she would be spending too much time with her, with him.
“I’m afraid of the memories seeing a baby brings up for me,” she admitted. “I’m afraid of remembering how much it hurt to give up the baby I carried for nine months.” Tears stung her eyes as she thought of Gabriel.
He straightened away from the doorjamb. “You gave up a baby for adoption, like the women who came to the manor all those years ago?”
“From what I’ve heard, I gave him up more willingly than they did,” she said. “But he wasn’t really mine to give up. I served as a surrogate for my sister and her husband.”
He nodded. “That’s right. Kimber Lee couldn’t get pregnant, but she wanted a baby so badly. I knew she had one, but I thought they just hired someone.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “That would have been easier,” she said. Easier on her. “But Le-Le asked me. She wanted someone she could trust to carry her baby. She didn’t have many eggs. They only had one embryo, and she didn’t want anything to go wrong.”
“You gave her a healthy baby boy,” Bode said. “She sent me pictures all the time. He was her pride and joy.”
“If he made her happy, why did she keep starving herself?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to get her to eat. To take care of herself. But when Jean-Paul took her to France, I didn’t get to talk to her as often as I should have. I should have been there for her more.”
Mae’s heart ached with the loss of her sister. She hadn’t been there for her either.
Bode stepped closer then, reached out and touched her cheek, brushing away a tear she hadn’t realized she’d let slip out. “That was so incredibly selfless of you, to do that for your sister,” he said. “And I am so very sorry.”
“About me being selfless?” she asked with an attempt at a smile, trying to diffuse the intense moment.
“I’m sorry about being a dick earlier, when I implied you were at fault for Kimber’s insecurities.”
“Why did you say that?” she asked.
“She worshipped you,” he said. “Just like I worshipped my big brother. But that wasn’t your fault any more than it was Elijah’s. And, like you, I don’t think he realizes even now that I felt that way about him.”
“I think I knew,” Mae admitted. “She stole my clothes, my makeup, tried to walk like me, talk like me . . .” Her voice cracked, and Adelaide stirred in her arms. She hadn’t realized the baby had fallen back to sleep until then. “But instead of being honored or flattered, I was just annoyed by her. If only I had that time back, if only I could do it all over again . . .”
“We can’t undo the past,” Bode said. “No matter how much we wish we could.” He touched his daughter then, rubbing his hand over her back. “If I could give her mother back, I would.”
“Are you confessing?” she asked. “Because how could you give back something you didn’t take?”
“I didn’t take her away,” he said. “I would never have taken Erika away from her. I hate knowing she’ll grow up like I did, without a mom.”
“I didn’t know that . . .” She hadn’t grown up on the island or even that close to it, so she wasn’t that aware of the Bainesworth legacy. She knew him best as Bode James, and in every interview he’d done, he had always refocused the attention from him to the interviewer. He hadn’t talked about his past. “Until your grandfather said that about Elijah being his heir, I hadn’t realized all the other ones were dead.”
“They’re not,” Bode said. “At least I don’t think so. My aunt left the island for college and never came back. She was gone before I was even born. And my mom’s been gone a while too.”
“When did your mom leave you?”
He shrugged and flinched. Maybe from his shoulder injury, maybe from the pain of the past. “I don’t know. So long ago that I don’t remember her. Just like Adelaide won’t remember her mother. When Erika left that note, I automatically assumed she was like my mom and just didn’t want to be a mother.”
Which must have been the same thing he’d assumed about her when she’d seen how she’d looked at his daughter. She just couldn’t put herself in that situation, the very one she was in now, snuggling with a baby that wasn’t hers. Having to give her back and walk away.
“But if I would have questioned that note, if I would have considered that it could have been a ruse, maybe I would have found Erika in time to save her.”
“You didn’t know she was in danger,” she said. Unless he had been the danger . . .
She was beginning to believe that less and less, though. But letting herself trust him might put her, who’d spent years in law enforcement, in the most danger she’d ever been in before. The danger of falling for him.
* * *
Evelyn wasn’t comfortable having a stranger in the house. Especially right now, with everything that had been happening on the island, after nearly losing so many people she cared about.
She believed the new boarder wasn’t a reporter. But that didn’t mean she could trust him. That he wasn’t after something. Or someone.
And when she headed up that last flight of stairs to the attic, she intended to ask him that and several other questions about himself. She carried towels for him, and fresh bedding, but it was just a ruse for what she really wanted to do.
What she wanted to know . . .
Everything.
She should have asked him already, or asked the sheriff, Deacon Howell, to find out for her, like she usually did when she took in new boarders. Deacon was very protective of her and her sister. He’d helped her find Bonita so many times when she had gone off to find her baby. Until recently, she’d thought her sister had been talking about the doll she carried around. But now she knew that Bonita kept looking for her child, just like this new boarder was looking for his.
If he was telling the truth . . .
She definitely should have checked that out before she let him take the room. But with Deacon living here now, it would be even easier for the sheriff to keep them safe. Or so she hoped.
Especially when she crept up those stairs, so very quietly, and noticed what the stranger had just unpacked along with some jeans and sweatshirts.
A gun.
No. He definitely wasn’t a reporter because he wouldn’t have needed that if he was. He wasn’t here for a story. Was he really here to find his daughter? Or was he here to kill someone?
Chapter Seven
Bode dreamed of her last night. And he couldn’t remember the last time he had. Probably not since he was a kid. Though he wasn’t sure if it was really her or just a figment of his imagination. Because when he was awake and tried to remember her—what she looked like and how she sounded—nothing came to his mind. She’d left when he was just a toddler. So he wouldn’t have had many memories of her . . . if he remembered her at all.
He lay in the middle of his king-size bed, in sheets tangled from his restlessness, and tried to bring back a memory. Or even the dream.
In his dream, she called him Jamie and held him close, rocking him like he rocked Adelaide to sleep every night. His former nanny, Susan, had admonished him for spoiling her, for making it hard for her to put the baby down for her nap, because he held her so much.
But he knew how quickly that time could pass, and how it felt to have no one there to hold him. While his dad’s brother and sister-in-law had taken them in after Mom left, because their fisherman dad was rarely off his boat, they had never loved them like their own kids. He wasn’t even sure they loved their own kids. Maybe that was what had been so wrong with David and Warren.
His aunt and uncle certainly hadn’t loved him or they might have tried to give him a good memory or two of his mother. Instead, they’d told him how immature and spoiled she was, and that she cared more about partying than her children.
But what if that dream was actually a memory . . .
What if she’d rocked him to sleep every night like he rocked Adelaide?
Then she must have cared about him once. What happened to make her stop loving him and Elijah? Was it just that he wasn’t all that lovable?
In the note Erika had left for him, when he thought she left, that was pretty much what she’d said: that she hadn’t ever really loved him, just as he’d never really loved her. That hadn’t been a lie. While he’d enjoyed her company, he hadn’t loved her. He’d known that the moment Adelaide was born because then he’d felt real love, intense love, never-ending love.
He hadn’t loved her mother like that. But then, he wasn’t sure he’d even really known Erika. She hadn’t talked much about herself or her past. Just that she was raised by a young single mother and that she wanted more. He figured that was why she was interested in him—for his money, for his fame. He had no illusions they had anything deeper, and he was fine with that.
