Irish Eyes (Stolen Hearts Romance) (25 page)

“This part hasn’t been such a trial, lass,” he admitted, a grudging cross between a sneer and a smile on his face. Then his eyes lifted to meet her gaze in the mirror, and for the first time, his expression mellowed. “And I have to tell you, it has staved off the thing I’ve long dreaded. A thing that could be much, much worse.”

Her stomach clenched. “When Cameron and Shaughnessy face off over the gold?”

Devin nodded.

“But they’re old friends," she reminded the boy, with an encouraging smile that felt as forced as her words. “Really, now, how bad could it be?”

“If Uncle Cam surrenders the gold?” The boy gazed out the window a moment, seeming to try to assess the situation fairly. He sighed and shrugged again. “Not too bad, I guess. But if he doesn’t surrender it—”

“What?” She sputtered out a laugh, her attempt at lightness betrayed by a panicky, shrill note. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

The boy pressed his lips together. His green eyes darted to one side and then the other. Clearly, he had to consider the gravity of discussing this family matter with a stranger. Despite his confinement, Devin obviously had a deep affection for Shaughnessy, as he did for his uncle Cameron.

Julia understood how difficult it must be on someone so young to have his loyalties divided like this, then to have to choose between them. That’s why it meant all the more when the boy raised his grim eyes to the mirror and held her gaze there for a few, pulsing heartbeats.

“Uncle Mike has a gun,” he finally murmured.

She swallowed the gasp that rose to her lips. Her mind fumbled through a dozen thoughts without picking up on any one. She blinked and mumbled, “You don’t think Shaughnessy would kill us, do you?”

“No.” The boy shook his head, his expression earnest. “No, I don’t think he’d ever do that. Uncle Mike would never kill
us
.”

The implication sent a blade of freezing fear through her gut.

She knew Cameron was a trained professional, but she also knew he had gone to great lengths to avoid any risk to his old friend. As she sat there, her heart slamming out a punishing pulse in her ears, she had to wonder. If it came to a showdown, would Cameron’s loyalty to his friend ultimately cost him his life?

*

Cameron clasped the decoy pot to his stomach. He scrambled up the riverbank, aware that to convince Michael, he had to put on a credible show.

The tracks of his boot soles gripped the flat gray rocks as he made his way up along the side of the Waterfall. If he intended to make a spectacle of himself, he thought, he should do it in the most visible spot possible.

At the top, on the edge of the falls, he paused. His fingers tightened against the wet ceramic surface. He straightened his back. He gazed down at the weighted pot and tried to conjure up a reaction for Michael’s sake.
His mind went blank. A little more than a week ago, he’d have known exactly how to respond to the moment he first held the long-sought-after gold in his hands. Today, it all seemed so meaningless.

Julia’s face flashed in his mind. His chest constricted. How could his priorities have changed so quickly?

He glanced below his rocky perch, to the falls hurtling down into frothing whiteness and he had his answer, like the river, like Julia, once he had relinquished the struggle to win the gold, he had found something worth so much more.

The heaviness of both the bogus pot and the very hoax he hoped to perpetrate with it made his arms and his heart numb. If only he could find another way to reach Michael. If only he’d had his priorities straight before and could have approached his friend with this new outlook. If only—

“A penny for your thoughts, old friend—or should I suggest another type of coin. A gold coin, perhaps?”

The pure malevolence of the tone oozed over Cameron’s taut nerves like slick, black oil over still, dark waters.

He twisted his neck to peer over his shoulder. “Michael. If I said I was surprised to see you here, I’d be lying.”

“I told you—’twould be my shadow that fell across your back when you finally claimed the treasure.” The afternoon sun glinted off the black barrel of his handgun.

Cameron tensed his abdomen against the handle of his own gun, thrust into his waistband. “So that’s what it’s come to, has it? That you’d threaten me with a gun? For what? A few gold coins you can never spend?”

“For sure an’ I came armed, old friend. Just as I have no doubt that you did as well.” He motioned with his gun. “Now, keep one hand on me gold and with the other hand throw down your weapon.”

Cameron gritted his teeth. He tossed his gun with a soft thud onto a carpet of pine needles in a spot of dirt among the rocks. He supposed he should feel bested, but he felt relief instead. With the gun out of his reach, the temptation to use it was gone.

“Good. Good.” Michael edged closer, kicking Cameron’s gun farther away. “Now, if you’ll just give me the gold.”
He held out his hand.

Cameron’s gaze dipped to the ruddy palm stretched out toward him. “First you tell me where Devin and Julia are.”

“I don’t think so.” He waved the gun again. “I’m going to need every advantage possible to get out of this park—and then the country And hostages make fine shields.”

A shudder gripped Cameron from the core of his being. “You’d do that? With a boy who has been like a nephew to you?”

Michael slitted his eyes. His expression became a treacherous wince. “No harm has come to him and none will.”

Cameron answered the hard gaze with one of his own. “And what about Julia?”

“I have no intention of harming the pretty lady—but whether or not I do, that remains in your hands.” He pointed the handgun at the pot in Cameron’s arms.

The thought of Julia in direct danger gave rise to a sour burning in Cameron’s mouth. His mind blurred between his hope of redeeming his old friend and the need to rescue her. If he could reach Michael, he reasoned, maybe he could accomplish both.

“Michael, tell me this lunacy hasn’t gone so far that you would think of hurting an innocent woman.”

Shaughnessy angled his square chin upward. “I would do no such thing.”

That was the Michael he once knew. Cameron relaxed a bit.

“Unless you force me to it,” Michael added, his voice dripping venom. “If the woman comes to harm, you will bear the guilt, Cameron, not me.”

Suddenly it became clear to Cameron why Michael had taken the chance of speaking to the bubble-haired Imogene— even going so far as to get her phone number. He’d needed a second hostage all along because they both knew that the threat of Michael hurting Devin was practically nonexistent.

By bringing Julia along, by involving her at all, Cameron had provided Michael with the perfect human collateral against capture. A dull, throbbing anguish twisted in Cameron’s chest at the thought of his own imprudent actions and the truly cowardly actions of his friend.

Only a truly vicious mind would have plotted such a thing. He narrowed his eyes at his once-closest friend.

“What’s happened to you, man?” Cameron whispered, his head shaking. “Has the thirst for gold and glory choked out all that once was good in you?”

“I’ve told you, it isn’t me, but you who holds the lady’s fate in your hands.”

Cameron sighed and anchored the ceramic pot against his chest with his curved arm. “I can’t believe there stands before me the same lad who took his first communion at my side, now with a gun aimed at me.”

“Shut up and give me the gold.” He stabbed the gun at Cameron, implying his patience had worn thin.

Cameron pressed on. “Have you gone so far around the bend, Michael, that not even the caring of your life long friend can bring you back?”

Jagged copper highlights glinted in Michael’s hair as he inched closer still, his eyes hard as flint and his face a grim mask. “I didn’t come for a lecture, Cameron, I came for me treasure. It’s mine. It’s due me.”

“It’s not yours. And it’s not the family’s. It really has nothing to do with us, you know” Cumberland Falls resounded in his ears. He could feel its power under his feet.

“Tis the prize of our forefathers.”

“Tis their curse. This gold and the want of it took everything they had from them—their dignity, their freedom, and eventually their lives.”

“Don’t you see, Cameron? That’s why we deserve to lay claim to it.” Michael took another cautious step closer to the water’s edge. “Tis the redemption of our family’s honor.”

chuckled.

Michael stopped his creeping progress. “What’s so funny?”

“All these years, I’ve thought our lives were taking us in such very different paths. But we were more alike than not, Michael.” Cameron scooted backward, relying on the traction of his boots to keep him from slipping on the damp rocks. Michael watched with wary eyes but did not move.

“You thought you deserved to be the one to claim the gold,” Cameron said. “I thought that I alone could retrieve it and redeem the family name. But what a pretty price we’ve both paid, haven’t we, Michael?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Cameron could feel the spray of the crashing falls now. It left a dewy film over his hands, his face, his clothes. “I mean we followed what we thought were different paths and ended up at the same place brought here by the same thing. Two lonely men with neither wife nor home nor children. Just this.”

He wrapped his hands around the lip of the pot and held it
up.

“Once I have that—” Michael pointed to the pot with the tip of the gun, “—the others will fall into place.”

Cameron laughed a sharp laugh. “Now there’s another example of how alike we are, friend. I’ve told myself the same thing. Once the matter of the gold was settled, my life could begin. In the meantime, my life has been passing me by as I struggled away after this.”

He gave the pot a shake. The spare change and rocks they’d planted in the container clanked and rattled.

Michael lapped at his lips like a famished man eyeing a feast, his voice gruff when he ordered, “Enough.”

“Oh, I couldn’t agree more. Enough.” He glanced at the water that rushed toward the falls then lost control in a beautiful, terrifying flood.

He shifted the pot into both hands then slowly pushed it outward toward the gunman.

Michael extended his empty hand.

The sound of the falls swelled. The earth beneath their feet trembled. Rivulets ran down Cameron’s cheeks and neck and as he turned his head away from Michael, the sun shot through the fine mist and the rainbow appeared.

“It’s time to give up the struggle, Michael. Because I’ve recently learned an amazing thing.” Cameron smiled and faced his longtime friend and nemesis. “Something better than we have ever imagined for ourselves can happen… if we finally learn to let go.”

He used the weight of the pot to swing it up and out. The ceramic slid easily from his grip.

“No!” Michael lunged, flinging the gun aside as he stretched out both his hands.

Cameron stepped in before Michael’s desperate attempt to capture the pot sent him headfirst over the falls. In one fluid movement, Cameron caught the other man around the shoulders, pinning down his arms.

“It’s over, Michael,” he whispered. “After all this time, it’s finally over.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When Irish eyes are smilin’—”

“Norman!” Julia pushed back from her desk and tossed the pencil from her cramping fingers.

“Yes, Julia?” Norman Wilson stuck his head in the door of her office and grinned like a cat who had just eaten a canary. Coarse hair, the color of burnished silver, poked out like close- cropped feathers from underneath his red baseball cap.

Despite her agitation at his choice of performance material, Julia had to smile at the man who had become her best volunteer as well as a good friend.

“Could you...you know?” She placed her index finger to her lips to ask for quiet.

He spread his arms wide. “Ah, Julia, can I help it if there’s song in my heart?”

She supposed not. But why did it have to be
that
song?

“It’s a lovely spring day,” he said with a heartwarming exuberance. “The shelter is in great shape, we break ground today on phase two of our Help the Homeless Project, the Reds are at Riverside, and all is right with the world.”

She could argue that last point. All was not right with
her
world.

Yes, these past few weeks had been busy and fruitful. Thanks to the groundwork laid by Cameron, and with Norman’s dogged persistence in follow-up, they had recently branched out into a new project. Renovation of an old hotel would begin soon to create a residential facility to be a stop gap step for the working poor, to keep them off the streets and get them back on their feet while paying a manageable rent. That made her proud and she supposed it would also have made Cameron proud—to learn that she hadn’t rushed in and assumed the responsibility for the new undertaking. In fact, she hadn’t even asked to be a part of the selection committee for the facility’s director.