Aquamarine (7 page)

“Finally.” Shea grinned and a dimple flashed in her right cheek.

Kirsten had had an identical dimple.

“What is it?” she asked, and he realized he’d been staring.

“You look so damn much like her. It can’t be coincidence.
Somewhere along the line you must have Rainey blood.”

“Not that I’m aware of. You know what they say. Everyone has a double somewhere in the world. I guess I just happen to be Kirsten’s.”

Her explanation was a little too glib. Her gaze slid away from his.

Shea McKenzie was hiding something. He’d bet a month’s income on it. She wasn’t Kirsten, but she had some connection with the Raineys. With Jack.

It wasn’t, he remembered, until after he’d shown her the pictures of Jack that she’d agreed to impersonate Kirsten. At the time he’d thought compassion for a dying man had sparked her sudden change of heart. But what if compassion hadn’t been the motivating factor? What if seeing Jack’s photographs had stirred a darker emotion?

Who was Shea McKenzie, anyway? An illegitimate daughter? One Jack didn’t even know about? If so, maybe her presence in Liberty wasn’t a coincidence, after all.
Maybe she’s after the money.
The nasty suspicion slithered through his head, poisoning his thoughts.

Dammit. Had he been paying more attention to his hormones than his common sense? A smart man would have asked Sheriff Carlton to run a discreet background check on Ms. Shea McKenzie a week ago when she first turned up. And maybe
he’d
do that too. First thing tomorrow.

Teague stepped onto the dock, stretching out a hand to help Shea. Her fingers were warm, her palm a little moist, as if she was uneasy, as if he made her uneasy. She glanced up at him with a nervous smile. “Thanks,” she said, her voice a breathless whisper.

Oh, hell. First thing tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon. The day after.

He thought about kissing her, dragging her down on the worn boards of the dock and kissing her long and hard until she was as sick and dizzy with wanting as he was.

Had she read his mind? A flicker of fear lit those pale Rainey eyes. And unless he was mistaken, a flicker of excitement too.

Neither of them spoke. Water lapped against the pilings. A breeze rustled through the pines. Out on the lake a trout broke the surface with a plop. In the gathering dusk, Shea’s skin looked pale, almost luminous against the backdrop of trees and water. She would feel like silk against the roughness of his callused palms. Feel like silk and taste like honey.

He wanted her. God, but he wanted her. Her warm, spicy scent teased his senses. She was so close, close enough to touch. All he had to do was …

A mosquito whined past his ear, then nailed him on the forearm. He swatted at it, and the prosaic action snapped the thread of heightened awareness linking them. He frowned at the dark hump of Massacre Island in the distance. Damn, what was his problem? He was thirty-two years old, for crying out loud, not some horny teenager.

Turning abruptly, he led the way to the boathouse and showed her where the extra key was kept. “Just in case you need to use a boat sometime when they’re all put away. Hungry?” he asked without making eye contact.

“Starved.” She sounded so normal, so unconcerned,
he glanced over at her. Had he imagined that golden moment on the dock?

“We could run into Liberty, grab a pizza or something, or you could cash in that raincheck. I do a mean omelet,” he said.

She smiled an innocent, let’s-be-friends smile, but her lower lip trembled just a little. “Right now I’m so hungry I’d accept a dinner invitation from the devil himself.”

That’s right
, he told himself.
Keep it light. Keep it casual.
He lifted an eyebrow. “I suppose you know that remark just earned you the dishwashing detail, McKenzie.”

She hadn’t been kidding about being hungry, he thought as he watched her polish off the last of her omelet and a second roll, then eye the apple pie with a predatory expression. “You’re definitely not Kirsten,” he said.

“So I’ve said. Repeatedly. What finally convinced you?”

“Kirsten ate like a bird, was always on a diet, always worrying about her weight. She used to irritate the hell out of me. We’d go out to dinner and she’d order the most expensive thing on the menu, eat two bites, then say she was full. You, on the other hand, take a much less inhibited approach to food.”

She laid down her fork and studied him from between narrowed lids. “Meaning what? I suck it in like a vacuum cleaner?”

He laughed at the outraged expression on her face.“Relax. It was a compliment, not an insult.”

“Oh,” she said, her cheeks turning a delicate pink.

“Got room for some pie?”

Her eyes sparkled and her lips curved in a smile. “Yes, please.”

He cut her a generous piece.

She paused, the first bite just inches from her mouth. “Aren’t you having any?”

The truth was, he’d rather watch her eat. She did it with such gusto, such obvious pleasure. “Maybe later,” he said. “I had more lunch than you did.”

She nodded, then closed her eyes as she savored the taste.

“I couldn’t eat. That visit was so nerve-racking. It didn’t help to have Ruth Griffin glaring at me through the entire meal as if she thought I might slip poison into someone’s food.”

“She’ll warm up. Give her time.”

Teague watched in fascination as she licked a flake of crust off her fork. Before meeting Shea, he hadn’t realized what a turn-on it could be just watching a woman eat.

“Teague?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

He laughed in surprise. Ghosts? Talk about your non sequiturs. What was going on in that head of hers? “No. I think when you’re dead, you’re dead, and that’s it. Finito. Caput. The end. Why do you ask?”

She stabbed a slice of apple as if she had a grudge against it. “I know this sounds crazy, but today, out on the island, a couple of times I knew things I shouldn’t have. Like somebody was filtering information into my brain.”

He studied her face closely. Was she setting him up for some con? “Give me an example.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Like when I knew Cynthia had decorated Kirsten’s room.”

“Decorating is what Cynthia does best. In the fifteen years or so she and Jack have been married, she’s redecorated the cabin at least four times. I probably mentioned something about it when I briefed you on the family.”

“That’s my point. I don’t remember your touching on the subject.” She frowned slightly, biting her lip. “I don’t know, though. Maybe you did.” She didn’t sound convinced.

“Okay, what’s
your
theory? That Kirsten’s haunting you? Planting her memories in your brain?”

“I told you it sounded crazy.”

“Not crazy, exactly.”

She squared her jaw and pressed her lips together in a firm line. “Don’t patronize me, dammit. I know it sounds nuts, but I also know I’m not imagining all the weird little anomalies. There have been too damn many of them for coincidence.”

“Such as?”

“Such as how did I know Kirsten called Kevin ‘Skeeter’? The nickname wasn’t mentioned in the diaries. I’m positive. And later, when we went to see Jack, I ‘remembered’ where Kirsten’s old Nancy Drew collection was shelved. Not to mention …” Her eyes glazed over as if she were listening intently to the murmur of distant voices.

“What?” The fey expression on her face made him nervous.

“The crystal.” She shivered, even though the room was warm.

“The aquamarine cluster in Kirsten’s room?”

She nodded.

“What about it?”

Shea frowned at a spot on the wall just over his left shoulder. “I’m not sure. But when I touched it, I had the eeriest sensation. A communication, I think, but it came so fast, I couldn’t make sense of it.”

“In that case, you can count Kirsten out. According to Glory, the rock’s one of Beelzebub’s treasures. No connection to Kirsten at all.”

“There’s a connection,” she said flatly. “You didn’t feel what I felt.”

Teague took her hand between his. She vibrated with tension. Bizarre as her ideas sounded to him, she believed what she was saying. “If it bothers you that much to visit the island, don’t go back.”

“But I have to.” She tugged her hand free of his grasp and faced him directly. “Teague, are you absolutely certain that Kirsten’s dead?”

The pain had dulled to an ache over the years, but it still bothered him to talk about Kirsten’s disappearance. “Ninety-nine percent sure.”

“So who killed her? And why? You must have a theory.”

“Theories, yes. Proof, no.” He shoved his chair back and gripped the edge of the table so hard, the tips of his fingers looked white.

“Whom do you suspect?”

“Nobody. Everybody.” He shook his head. “The world is full of sickos.”

She put down her fork and shoved the pie plate away. “Since you brought up sickos, how about Ruth Griffin as a suspect? She’s definitely unbalanced.”

“In her own way, Ruth cared for Kirsten. She didn’t approve of everything Kirsten did, but she loved her anyway.”

“Maybe loved her to death.”

“But—”

“No, just listen for a second.” Shea cut off his protest. “If Ruth thought Kirsten was doing something that put her immortal soul in danger, Ruth might see murder as a way of ‘saving’ her.”

In a twisted way, it made sense. “Maybe,” he admitted, “but to my mind, Cynthia had a better motive.”

Shea looked skeptical. “Somehow she doesn’t strike me as the evil stepmother type.”

Teague shrugged. He’d never cared for Cynthia. Neither had Kirsten. “People aren’t always what they seem. Cynthia puts up a good front. She plays the lady of the manor role to the hilt, but she knows what it’s like to be poor. Before she married Jack, she scraped along on a secretary’s wages. The woman has a streak of stinginess a mile wide. She resented every cent Jack spent on Kirsten, thought he favored her unfairly over Kevin. Could be all the money he dropped on the damned wedding was the final straw.”

“Damned
wedding?” She raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t in favor of it?”

“Truthfully?” He grunted. “I was dead set against it. Hell, we were already married. What was the point?”

“Kirsten didn’t just manipulate her father,” Shea said slowly. “She manipulated you too, didn’t she?”

“Kirsten …” He shrugged. “Nobody said no to Kirsten.”

“The elopement was
her
idea, wasn’t it? Kirsten’s.”

He stared at the scarred wooden surface of the table. “I would have married her eventually.”

“But not that way, not knowing how her father felt about it. About you. What did she say to convince you?”

Oh, hell.
“She told me about the baby.”

Shea shifted in her seat. He couldn’t read her expression but sensed he’d thrown her a curve. “The baby,” she repeated. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Now Kirsten’s back—without her child. How did you explain that little discrepancy to Jack?”

“I let him think Kirsten had miscarried as a result of rough handling during the kidnapping.”

“Logical.” She looked at him, her face inscrutable. “I wonder what really happened to the baby.”

Teague knew, but he didn’t enlighten her. Some secrets were best left buried.

This was a major tactical error
, Shea thought. She and Teague stood side by side in the narrow Pullman kitchen, Shea washing the dishes and Teague drying them. Kirsten, Jack, murder, possession, even the puzzle of the missing baby seemed unimportant at the moment. All she could think of was Teague.

Shea was aware of his every movement, from the surprisingly deft way he handled the old white stoneware, his big hands as sure and confident as they had been on the tiller of the boat, to the casual way he leaned against the counter, waiting for her to pass him the next item to dry.

His hair was short, but the way it hugged his head suggested it would curl if allowed to grow longer. At this hour stubble darkened his jaw, giving him a rakish air.
Shea still thought he looked more like a carnival roustabout than a landscape architect.

“You don’t smile enough,” she said, immediately wishing she’d had the sense to keep her thoughts to herself.

Teague shot her a measuring look. “Kirsten used to tell me the same thing.”

Kirsten. Always Kirsten. She let the water out of the sink, then moved past him to wipe off the counters. “I’m not Kirsten,” she said evenly, not looking at him.

“Yeah, I know.” He took the dishcloth from her and hung it on a rack under the sink. “Kirsten wouldn’t have agreed to do the dishes. She wouldn’t have known how.”

Shea shrugged. “I didn’t grow up with live-in servants.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s getting late. I should be going.” When she started to move toward the living area of the big open room, he stopped her with a hand laid gently on her shoulder. “What?” she asked, turning toward him.

“Don’t go. Not yet.” He was totally focused on her, his intention clear.

A kiss. Oh, yes. She’d been waiting for this since that moment on the dock.

Teague bent his head to press his lips to hers with a gentle pressure. Too gentle. Too controlled. It drove her crazy.

She stood on tiptoe, straining toward him, but he pulled back, never quite breaking contact while deftly, wickedly, resisting all her efforts to deepen the kiss.

Frustration honed her need; heat built in waves. Her body buzzed and tingled in places far removed from her lips. And even farther removed from his. “Please,” she whispered. “Kiss me right.”

“Tell me what you want,” he said, his voice rough with passion.

So she told him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed herself hard against him, and pulled his face down to hers, telling him with actions instead of words, deepening the kiss and demanding the fulfillment of the fantasy she’d been toying with on and off all evening.

He tasted of coffee, warm and rich and sweet.

Shea broke away at last, breathing hard, her pulse pounding, and rested her flushed face against his chest, where his heart beat a fast, steady rhythm. She felt flustered and a little embarrassed at having so thoroughly lost herself in the moment. Apparently food wasn’t the only thing she had an appetite for.