House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) (24 page)

“How do
you
feel?”

“I’m an officer of the law. I’m glad the crime is solved no matter how and when it happened.”

“And about Ann?”

“Haven’t figured out how I feel about that yet.”

“When I started this benighted enterprise, I hadn’t met Ann, didn’t know any of the people who live in Rossiter, didn’t even know my half brother. I was operating strictly on theory. By the time I wanted to back out, it was too late. Too many things had happened.”

“Like Ann.”

“Like Ann. I hurt her badly. I don’t know how to make it right.”

“Don’t know as you can, at least right now. Tell her what you’ve told me. Maybe that’ll help.”

“Thanks.”

Later as he lay in the comfortable king-size bed at his motel, he ached to have Ann beside him. He felt as though he might never sleep again. He’d really screwed up. He reached for the telephone and called her. When she answered, he said, “Please, don’t hang up.”

“I won’t hang up.” She sounded cool and detached. Much worse than if she’d been angry or in tears.

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me. You used me.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“It was precisely like that. Tell me, Mr. Bouvet-Delaney, now that you’ve gotten exactly what you wanted, when does your house go on the market?”

“What?”

“I assume you’ll be leaving as soon as you can.”

Then she hung up on him.

A
BOUT TWO
in the afternoon, in a uniform that looked as though it had been slept in, an unshaven Buddy knocked on Ann’s door.

When she opened it, he saw that she had on her safety goggles and a piece of plywood in her hand. “Come in, Dad,” she said. “I’m trying to cut a template for those sconces at the summerhouse.”

“You sound like nothin’s happened.” He scratched Dante’s ears.

“I’ll get around to thinking about it when I can stand to. At the moment I’m trying not to think about anything except this stupid piece of plywood that refuses to do what it’s supposed to.” She hurled it across the workroom. It cracked against the wall and split down the middle. She took a deep breath. “You have to admit I’ve still got my pitching arm.”

“Sit down, Ann, and stop acting like a drama queen.”

“Why not? Want some iced tea?”

“Ann.”

“Okay.”

“Paul came back to the house a few minutes ago. He gave me this to give you.”

“What is it?”

“It’s an envelope. How do I know what’s in it? Open it and find out.”

She pulled a legal-size document out of the envelope with a note attached to it. She said without looking up at her father, “Daddy, this is the deed to the Delaney mansion. It’s been signed over to me.” She gaped at him. “What does he think he’s doing? I can’t accept a
house!
”

“Read the note.”

She ran her eye down the page. “Oh, Lord. Read that.” She tossed the note to her father, dove through her bedroom curtains and began rummaging on the floor for her shoes.

“‘Dearest Ann,’” Buddy read aloud. “‘You said if you owned the house you’d never leave it, so I want you to have it. I know you’ll cherish it the way it should be cherished. Please believe that I never saw the consequences of my actions until too late to avoid hurting you. You’re wrong if you think what I feel for you is casual. I love you. I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you. I’d hoped to give you the house when you became my wife, but I guess that’s not possible any longer. I’ll spend the rest of my life in much more pain than I’ve ever caused you. Goodbye, Paul.’” Buddy looked up. “What’s he mean, goodbye? I haven’t given him permission to go anywhere but a motel room.”

Ann shoved her feet into her sneakers and grabbed her purse. “He and Hack finished putting his plane back together. Don’t you see? He’s flying back to New Jersey. Come on.”

“Where we going?”

“To stop him, of course.” She grabbed her father’s arm and pulled him off the couch. “And use the siren.”

A
S SOON AS
Buddy slammed on his brakes at the edge of the airfield, Ann was out of the car and running toward the hangar where Paul’s plane had been.

“Oh, no,” she said when she saw the empty space. “We’re too late.”

“Hey, Ann,” Hack said over her shoulder.

“How long ago did he take off?”

“Paul? I don’t know. Ten minutes maybe.”

“Can you communicate with him?”

“Sure.” Hack looked at her with curiosity.

“You have to talk him back down here.”

A couple of minutes later Hack called the tail numbers of Paul’s plane and asked him to come in.

Paul responded at once.

“Need you to turn around and come on back,” Hack said. “Over.”

“Why?” Paul asked.

Buddy yanked the microphone out of Hack’s hand and yelled into it, “Because if you don’t, I’ll trump up a charge that’ll get you extradited from New Jersey before you step foot on the tarmac.”

“Buddy?”

“Yeah. Right beside me stands my little girl, and I can sure borrow Hack’s shotgun if I have to. You don’t walk out on a Rossiter girl you been playing house with and not expect to get a shotgun up your backside.”

“Oh, Daddy,” Ann whispered. She was crying so hard, she could barely breathe.

“Is that Ann?”

Ann took the microphone. “Buddy’s right. You’ve toyed with my affections, Paul Bouvet or Delaney or whatever your name is. Giving me a house is not going to make up for that. It’s marriage or nothing.”

She heard Paul laugh.

“Sounds like relief to me,” Hack murmured.

“Even if I get run out of town on a rail?” Paul asked.

“When I get through telling people what happened, they’ll forgive you for my sake. I live here, remember. I’m not some damn-Yankee newcomer.”

“Does that mean I can live there, too?”

“Not as a bachelor, you can’t.”

“Ann, I’m sorry—”

“We’ll talk about that later. Do whatever you have to do to that plane to turn it around.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The three, Hack, Ann and Buddy, waited at the edge of the grass strip as Paul’s silver Cessna glided to a land
ing. Ann was running toward him before the plane had stopped rolling.

Paul climbed out and jumped down. “You’re not still mad at me?” he said.

“I am,” she said, reaching up to kiss him. “But I’ll get over it.”

December 22

T
HE HOUSE SEEMED
to realize that tonight was its official coming-out party. It was no longer the sad harlot, but a shining, vibrant, great lady.

The columns on the front porch and the balcony were wound with garlands of fresh pine. Fairy lights shimmered in the trees. The wreath on the front door was heavy with holly, and the magnolia fan above glittered in the porch light.

In the front hall, the pine Christmas tree rose from the curve of the staircase and reached to the ceiling.

Candles and greenery decorated every table. Paul had been cooking for two weeks with Ann as sous-chef. Then he’d swung into high gear when Giselle arrived with Jerry and her two sons to spend Christmas with Paul and her new sister-in-law.

Melding the two families had been less painful than either Ann or Paul had feared. Jerry and the boys had never been on a duck hunt, so Buddy arranged one for them.

Giselle had been wary of meeting the family of Paul’s new wife. They were all, of course, at least marginally kin to the Delaneys.

“But we’re not Delaneys,” Gram had said. “Not really.”

“You’re aunts or cousins or something,” Giselle said.

Gram patted her hand. “Sometime when you come down for a nice long visit, I’ll show you the family genealogy and explain the relationships.”

Ann and Giselle had liked each other immediately and spent hours talking about their families.

Tonight Paul ladled champagne punch at one end of the dining-room table and watched his wife circulate, kissing a cheek here, squeezing a hand there. She wore a dark-green velvet empire dress that revealed a great deal of creamy bosom, but didn’t quite conceal the small bulge beneath her waist. The baby wouldn’t really start to show for another month, although Ann swore she no longer had a discernible waistline.

Paul thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

The fireplaces crackled cheerfully. The house was alive with warmth and gaiety and joy.

“It would seem Rossiter has forgiven your wayward husband. I think you’ve broken the curse,” Gram said to Ann.

“What?”

“The curse on this house. I said once that everyone who had ever lived here had been unhappy and the house knew it. Now I think it finally knows that love has moved in to stay.”

“Let’s hope so. We’ve a long way to go before we finish it.”

“You won’t ever finish. It’s an old house. Old houses are always needy.”

The doorbell rang. Ann started toward it, but Paul was there ahead of her.

She came up behind him as the door swung wide. On the step stood Karen and Marshall Lowrance with Trey and Sue-sue.

For a moment nobody spoke, then Paul said, “Welcome, and merry Christmas,” and held out his hand.

Later Karen sought Paul out in the kitchen. “Could I speak to you alone?”

“Certainly,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anybody in the conservatory.”

She followed him across the hall, through the music-room door and into the conservatory.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I very nearly didn’t, but Trey wanted to, and there’s something I must tell you. I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Please, let me finish. You and I may never be friends, but you are my son’s half brother and you protected him from his own foolishness.”

“Fortunately no one was hurt. I know how sorry he is.”

“It could have been so much worse if you hadn’t acted like a gentleman. That’s why I owe it to you to tell you this.” She turned away from him and clasped her hands in front of her.

He waited while she assembled her thoughts.

“When my…when David had his accident, when his horse fell with him, I was the first to get to him, even before Maribelle.” She seemed to struggle with the words. “He looked up at me with the sweetest smile and whispered, ‘Michelle.’ An instant later he was dead.” She turned to face him then. “Can you imagine how much I hated that Michelle? How I feared her?”

He nodded.

“Strange, we all tried to do the right thing, and it all turned out wrong.”

“How do you mean?”

“David thought he was right to marry your mother. She thought she was right to get pregnant. We all thought we were right to bring him home and keep him here. I thought I was right to make him marry me, although I knew he didn’t want to. Even Maribelle must have felt she was right when she struck your mother down, just as Addy thought she was right when she helped cover up the crime.”

“I thought I was right to come down here and destroy you all,” Paul said quietly.

“But you chose not to. Thank you for that. I hope you and Ann will be very happy. Trey wants to try to make up not only for what
he
did but for what the whole family did to you and your mother. I don’t know if you can accept him, but I hope you do.”

She smiled and looked back at the carolers singing around the piano. “Since the first Paul Delaney, there’s only been one son per generation. You and Trey broke that tradition, as well. I don’t begrudge my son his half brother nor you yours. Maybe someday you and I can be friends.”

Without another word she walked past him into the salon and back to the party.

Paul stood looking out onto the winter garden until Ann found him. She slipped her arm through his. “Are you okay?”

“Karen said we’d broken the chain of bad choices.”

“Gram said we’d broken the curse on the house, too. Now it’s happy for the first time since the first Paul Delaney built it.”

“It’s scary to be so content. I keep waking up in the
middle of the night afraid I’ll find you’ve disappeared, too.”

“No way. You’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.” She kissed him gently on the cheek.