Copper Lake Confidential (22 page)

“Wow.” That quickly the candlesticks’ provenance was dismissed. Pulling one hand loose from where she hugged herself, he led her into the kitchen, flipped on the overhead light and seated her at the table. He took two mugs from the cabinet, looked at the coffeemaker, then took a bottle from another cabinet instead. After sitting next to her, he opened the scotch and poured some into each cup.

She gazed at it longingly. She’d never been much of a drinker, but a little liquid heat and courage was so tempting. Grimacing, she said, “I’m not supposed to drink with the medication I’m on. Not that it seems to be working so well lately.”

“What is it?”

She pulled the bottle from the pocket of the gym shorts she wore with a T-shirt for pajamas and handed it over. He gave it a doctorly study, taking note of the dosage, the date it was refilled and how many pills were inside, then set it down and nudged the cup closer. “A few sips won’t hurt.”

The scotch was good, smooth, burned her throat and heated her core temperature to almost normal. It felt pleasurable enough that she took another drink. Even her fingertips and toes were warming, and her knees had stopped knocking. If it weren’t for the subject, she could almost pretend this was just a man and a woman who were attracted to each other having a drink together in the middle of the night.

“What did Scooter do when you let him outside?”

The unexpected question made her blink. “He raced out the door, ran into the shadows near the back fence and presumably did his business there, then sniffed around the pool and all the way back to the house. Usual dog stuff.”

He was quiet a moment before saying, “I should have told you, Mace, so you would’ve known but...Scooter doesn’t go out at night.”

Chapter 13

H
er grip tightened around the cup, and she took a third drink, larger than the first sips. Her mouth thinned and shadows darkened her eyes. Stephen shrugged. “I suppose it could happen. I can’t remember him ever doing it before, but that doesn’t mean he can’t. It’s just his routine is to go out before bed, then sleep like a log until morning. Unless...”

“Something wakes him,” she said flatly. “You think whoever lit those candles was in the house when he got me up?”

He hesitated to answer. She’d had enough scares already. But that was the point, wasn’t it? She’d had plenty of scares by someone, ghost or human, who had access to her house. If one more fright put her on edge enough to keep her and Clary safe, it would be worth it.

As long as it didn’t push her
over
the edge.

“More likely the guy woke him as he was leaving. Scooter would have let you know if someone was actually in the house when he was awake. Maybe his point for going out was to make sure the guy was gone.”

“But the alarm was set. I had to disarm it to let him out. I had to reset it when he came back in.”

He summoned his calmest doctor voice. “Honey, if someone’s been moving things, they’ve been in the house before. They have the code and the key.”

“But—but who? I haven’t just given out codes and keys to random people. There’s no reason.”

Random people.
That was the problem. Whoever was doing this wasn’t some acquaintance.

When she reached for the cup, he took her hand instead and pulled her over onto his lap. Her slender body was trembling again, nowhere near as badly as when she’d dragged him from a deep sleep, but enough to make him hurt for her. Enough to make him want to hurt whoever was doing this to her. “Who has access?”

She dragged her fingers through her hair before settling her head on his shoulder. “Me. Brent and Anne. Robbie Calloway. The alarm company. Possibly the cleaning service Robbie hired when I told him I was coming back.” A defensive tone entered her voice. “Who has access to your house?”

“Me, Marnie and my landlady.” He trusted Marnie with his life, the same way Macy trusted Brent.

But Stephen didn’t really know Brent, and he hadn’t talked as much to Anne as he had to Brent. His gut instinct was to trust them, but with Macy’s sanity on the line, if not her life, he couldn’t rule out anyone automatically.

“Okay. Robbie. Could he have a motive to hurt you, scare you, make you think you’re crazy?”

“No.
No one
does.” She lunged to her feet to pace, and he missed the warmth and weight of her body immediately. “I’m just an average woman, Stephen. I’ve got a daughter, and we’ve both got some money. There may be people who don’t like me, but no one who cares enough to qualify as an enemy. No one feels that intensely about me.”

“That’s not true.
I
feel intensely about you.”

Slowly she smiled, though the stress didn’t leave her face. “But in a good way. No one dislikes me enough to want to hurt me.”

She wanted to believe that. So did he. But the events of the past few days suggested otherwise.

Okay, so he knew Robbie and figured he could dismiss him. The Calloway family had multiple fortunes of its own, one with Robbie’s name on it. He would have been careful about the access granted to the cleaning service, and as for the alarm company, Macy was just one more customer. There was nothing personal between them and her.

And this was very personal.

“What about Mark’s mother and grandmother?”

She had stopped in the doorway to the living room and was watching Clary sleep. Her own shoulders were rounded, and when she faced him, exhaustion was etched into her face. “They both had keys. Lorna probably still does. But Robbie changed the code after Mark died.”

Granted, Lorna could buy the code from a cash-strapped employee at the alarm company or even hire someone who could bypass it. But Lorna hadn’t had contact with her daughter-in-law in a long time. Why harass her now?

Which led back to Brent and Anne. Brent knew how fragile his sister was. He knew how much money she and Clary had. He was next in line for custody of his niece and control of both fortunes.

But he loved his sister—loved her in the never-ending do-anything-for-her way Stephen loved Marnie. If Brent needed money, hell, if he just wanted it, all he had to do was ask, and Macy would give it to him.

Anne loved her, too, and Clary. She was like a second mother to Clary. Macy credited both Brent and Anne with getting her through the ordeal of losing her baby and her husband with her sanity more or less intact.

Could Anne love Clary too much to let her go? Now that Macy was ready to settle elsewhere, was Anne afraid of losing her little girl?

It didn’t feel right. None of it felt right.

Across the room, Macy was standing with her arms across her chest again. Earlier the posture had made her look vulnerable, as if she were trying to protect herself. Now she looked on the offensive, as if she knew the things he was thinking and didn’t like them one bit. “No one I know would do this.”

Someone
she knew
was
doing it. Or Mark’s ghost was hanging around. Or she was terrorizing herself.

Grimly he left the table and went to stand beside her, close enough to feel the chill emanating from her, to smell the faint fragrance of her perfume, the fainter scent of her fear. Together they stood and watched Clary for a moment, then he bumped his arm against hers. “You need sleep. Let me move Clary into the bedroom.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “She’s fine where she is.”

He stilled, gazing down at her delicate fingers, the nails pale pink with white tips. Pretty, pampered hands, but strong enough to pick up her daughter and carry her where she needed. Strong enough to fight for her daughter. For herself.

She sweetened his next breath as well—less fear, more woman. He shifted his gaze to her face, also delicate, pretty. “Tell me you’re not planning to sleep in that chair.”

She shook her head.

“Tell me you’re not planning for
me
to sleep in that chair.” He managed something of a grin. “Though I will if you want.”

Amazingly, slowly, she shook her head again.

Wow.
He combed his fingers through his hair. He’d thought...wanted...wondered... But now...
Wow.

A hint of a smile touched her lips. “I feel very intensely about you, too, Stephen. I want to sleep with you, but I also want to
sleep
with you. I want to be close.”

He didn’t have a clue exactly which meant have sex—sleep or
sleep.
He didn’t care. If all she wanted tonight was to share space and warmth and know she wasn’t alone, he was okay with that.

But when he followed her into the bedroom and turned from adjusting the door so they could hear any sound from Clary, Macy was stripping off her clothes. He stared long and hard. In a minute, he’d have to take his glasses off, and he wanted to remember her like this—naked, pale, sleekly curved, so damn beautiful and smiling at him with shy innocence, uncertainty, need.

You’re getting lucky tonight,
a voice crowed in his head. The cheerleader/homecoming queen/prom queen had chosen the nerd. He felt just like that nerd again as he removed his glasses and everything went fuzzy, as his knees went weak and his erection swelled hard. If he tried to speak, he was pretty sure his voice would wobble and squeak, so he didn’t say anything. He just walked to her, cupped her face and kissed her.

He was devouring her, easing her closer to the bed, when she began tugging at his boxers. She got distracted, though, her delicate, strong fingers wrapping around him and wringing a guttural groan from him. Evading her hands while still feasting on her mouth, he shucked the boxers, managed to find the night table behind him and located a condom inside before they tumbled onto the bed together.

* * *

He didn’t know how much time had passed. Two condoms’ worth, the first too fast, of course, the second long enough to make a nerd proud if he weren’t too tired to think about it. Then Stephen grinned. A true nerd was never too tired to take credit for and pride in his accomplishments. He’d made the Warrior Princess cry out, made her cling to him as if he were the only important thing in her world. Damn right he was proud.

Beside him she slept, her head on his shoulder, her arm over his middle. Her breathing was even and slow, her sleep so deep that when he brushed her hair from her face, she didn’t even twitch. He wouldn’t be surprised if she could sleep twenty-four hours. Sexual release was good for more than just sexual frustration.

But just as release had made her melt and go limp, he was now wide-awake, and his thoughts returned to her brother and sister-in-law. Macy had known Brent all her life; presumably it would be harder for him to harbor any great secrets without tipping her off.

Anne was another matter. She and Brent hadn’t been married a year yet. How long had they dated? Where had they met? Was it good fortune that she seemed to love his family as much as he did?

There wasn’t a correlation between length of time known and depth of love. Stephen had met Macy a week ago, and he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, be father to Clary, have more babies. He wanted to make Macy laugh and smile, to wake up with her every morning, to be exactly who he was and to let her be exactly who she was. He felt right with her. He belonged with her.

Anne could have had that instant strong connection, too. If her family was warm and loving, she would have been predisposed to want that kind of relationship with her in-laws. If her family was distant and dysfunctional, she could have been predisposed to want a normal relationship with her in-laws, to embrace a healthy family life with enthusiasm.

Unable to sleep and needing to do
something,
he carefully slid out from beneath Macy. She didn’t murmur or cling; her breathing didn’t change. She adjusted her head on the pillow and kept right on sleeping. He put on his glasses and boxers, then the thought of Clary made him add shorts and a T-shirt.

When he left the bedroom, Clary was still asleep, too. Scooter, curled up by her legs, lifted his head to watch Stephen, then laid it down again.

In the kitchen, Stephen picked up the mugs from the table, rinsed and left them in the sink, then he picked up the pill bottle. It was a popular medication, used to treat both depression and anxiety. It was a pill short; at some point, she’d felt the need to double the dose. Only six remained. And they weren’t working, she’d said.

Wrapping his fingers tightly around the bottle, he went into the office and logged online, looking up the medication. He scanned the information on the manufacturer’s website, the side effects—hallucinations, hauntings and amnesia weren’t among them—and looked at the enlarged photo of the tablet. It was round, white, with letters and a number on one side, the other blank.

With nothing else demanding his attention, Stephen opened the bottle and shook one tablet into his palm. Round, white, letters on one side.

But they didn’t match the letters shown on the screen. When he turned the pill over, it wasn’t smooth like the one on the screen. It had numbers. Maybe it was a generic, though the bottle indicated it was the brand name.

Next he searched for a description of the pill, and a result popped up an instant later. It was a medication for hypertension. No wonder it hadn’t helped her anxiety. In fact, considering that the pharmaceutical company was adamant that patients should be weaned from the anxiety medication, she was damn lucky she hadn’t had more than a few hallucinations.

Had it been an honest mistake? A pharmacy tech in a hurry sticking Macy’s label on someone else’s meds, the pharmacist not catching the error before the prescriptions were picked up?

Considering everything else that had happened, he didn’t think so. Someone had deliberately replaced her anxiety meds with blood pressure medication.

And who had access? Brent and Anne.

God, it would break Macy’s heart if her brother was trying to make her think she was crazy. Mark’s betrayal had been bad enough. Could she survive being betrayed by Brent?

It must be Anne. It
had
to be, for Macy’s sake. It would still hurt, but that was a recoverable hurt.

Grimly he returned the pill to the bottle, then did what he’d been putting off: he did a Google search for Macy and Mark. By morning he intended to know
everything
the internet had to say about either of them.

* * *

Waking up was a slow, easy transition from sleep to awareness. The sun shone through the window at the head of the bed, casting light and creating shadows. The bedroom door was closed, but Macy could hear two voices—Clary’s cheerful little-girl and Stephen’s deeper all-man rumble. A sweet, satisfied, broad smile stretched across her face.
Cute little nerd vet,
Anne and Brent had called him. A bumper sticker she’d seen somewhere said
Nerds Try Harder. Stephen didn’t need to try. He was perfect.

She rolled onto her side, facing his room. Unlike his office, it was sparsely decorated: one full bed made for snuggling, a dresser, a nightstand. White sheets and pillowcases, tan blanket, navy bedspread. It was a room where he slept, nothing more.

Except last night.

She didn’t know what time it was, only that it was daylight and she could easily sleep another ten or twelve hours if she didn’t have an appointment with the second dealer at nine. Besides, the aroma of coffee was faintly on the air, its fragrance rich and dark enough to start her heart pumping. It drew her from the bed and into her pajamas, folded neatly on the dresser—definitely not where she’d discarded them. With a finger-comb for her hair, she opened the door and her senses were assaulted with the scents of coffee and something savory-sweet.

Stephen and Clary sat at the kitchen table, identical mugs and empty plates in front of them. She was gesturing wildly, her favored way of talking, and he listened as if he really cared about flying dragons and knights of the realm. Considering his fantasy-book career, maybe he did.