Legacy of Lies (32 page)

Z
ach was growing more frustrated by the minute. He'd arrived at Alex's place, laden down with roses and champagne and a ring he had every intention of convincing her to accept, if he had to camp out on her damn doorstep until she finally gave in.

When she wasn't there, he tried the studio, only to learn from Sophie that Alex was spending the night in Santa Barbara. Zach took that news as a sign that perhaps her anger was abating. When Sophie went on to reveal the negative DNA results, Zach was surprised. He'd come to believe that Eleanor had been right this time.

“She still claims to be mad as hell at you,” Sophie told him matter-of-factly. “But if you want my opinion, I think it's just injured pride talking.”

“I'm going to make it up to her.”

“You'd better.” Sophie waved her letter opener at him. “Or I'll cut out your heart and feed it to the critics.”

With that threat ringing in his ears, Zach drove to Santa Barbara. He found Eleanor in a state. He'd never seen her
like this before. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Her hair was a witch's tangle around her ashen face.

“Thank God you're here!” she cried.

“What's wrong? Your heart?”

“No.” She shook her head violently, causing hairpins to scatter onto the tile floor. “It's not my heart. It's Alexandra!

“She and Averill went sailing. When I came downstairs after my nap, they still weren't back. Naturally I was worried, so I called the yacht harbor. Averill's ketch hasn't returned to its slip!”

Zach took one look at the storm pelting the windows and called the Coast Guard.

“She's not Anna, Zachary,” Eleanor told him as he hung up the phone and headed toward the front door.

“I know. Sophie told me.” He retrieved a squall jacket he kept in the front closet. “But that doesn't matter, does it?”

“No,” Eleanor agreed. “I love her, Zach. So much.” Tears filled her eyes and slid down her cheeks.

“So do I.” He brushed the moisture away with a tender fingertip. “And don't worry.” He gave Eleanor a quick kiss on her wet, weathered cheek. “She's going to be all right.”

She placed a trembling, beringed hand against the side of his face. “Promise me you'll find her, Zach.” Her voice quivered with age and emotion. “Please.”

“I promise.” With that he was gone. To find Alex. And bring her back home where she belonged.

 

Although her heart was racing, some detached part of Alex remained calm. She tensed every muscle in her body to keep from trembling. There was a way out of this, she assured herself. She just had to stall long enough to think of it.

“There's something I don't understand.”

Averill stopped in his tracks. “What's that?”

“Were you the person who came into my room to frighten me that first night at Casa Contenta?” Although she'd certainly suffered enough bad dreams after that terrifying incident, Alex had never truly believed it had been a nightmare.

“No.” He shook his head. “I always figured that was either Miranda or Clara.”

Clara,
Alex decided. Miranda was too straightforward. Not that she wasn't above threats; she just enjoyed making them directly. Clara, on the other hand, had a motive of sorts. If she could convince everyone of ghostly goings-on at the estate, her position as resident psychic would be strengthened. A scent teased at Alex's memory. The aroma of orrisroot that usually surrounded Clara like a noxious cloud. It had been in her room that night. She'd just been too upset to identify it.

Then later, when she was alone with Zach, her mind had been too clouded with desire to think straight.

“But you did do something to my brakes,” she guessed.

“I didn't have any choice. Surely you understand I couldn't allow to you remember what happened that night.”

“But I do remember. And what I didn't know, you've told me.”

He shrugged. “It doesn't matter anymore.”

“Because you're going to kill me.”

His lips pulled into a grim line, but he neither confirmed nor denied her accusation. “It's all your fault, Anna. You never should have come back.”

The wind was wailing like one of Clara Kowalski's lost spirits. Her wet hair was sticking to her face. Alex shoved
it out of her eyes. “You'll never get away with this, Averill.”

“Of course I will,” he said with that same calm self-confidence she suspected eased innumerable worries in the examining room. “It's too bad, really.” He resumed moving toward her, murder on his mind and in his eyes. “Eleanor has already suffered so many misfortunes. It's a pity she has to survive the tragedy of you falling overboard in the storm.

“Of course, I'll tell people how desperately I tried to save you. But the ketch almost capsized, and the deck was so slippery I couldn't get to you in time.”

He was inches away. “So you went sliding off into the sea. To your death.”

When he began ripping at the fasteners of her orange life jacket, Alex realized her entire life had narrowed down to this one fatal moment.

With a fierce strength she'd not known she possessed, she fought back. Her fingernails tore into the flesh of his tanned face, her fists pounded his chest. But he was so strong! And every bit as determined to kill her as she was determined to remain alive.

Providentially, another drenching wave washed over the railing, causing him to slip just enough that she could break free of his iron grip.

Knowing she had no other choice, Alex closed her eyes and dived headfirst into the whitecapped maelstrom.

And then she began to swim. For her life.

 

Zach leaned forward in the copilot's seat, scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars as the Coast Guard helicopter flew low over the storm-tossed waves.

“The guy's an experienced sailor,” Zach complained. “What the hell made him go out in weather like this?”

“Beats me,” the pilot said. “Every time we get a storm, we have to launch a search for a few hotshots who think they're invincible.”

Zach had seen television news footage of idiotic dare-devils being pulled from the surf during a heroic rescue. But Averill Brandford was neither an idiot nor a daredevil.

So what had possessed him to take Alex sailing before a storm that had been forecast for the past forty-eight hours?

“We have to find them, dammit!”

“Hey, there's no point in borrowing trouble. The doctor's boat is not exactly a dinghy. If the guy's as experienced as you say, the chances of them capsizing are slim. Don't worry, pal. They've probably just blown off course.”

Zach hoped that was true. But some inner voice was telling him that Alex was in very real danger. And that time was running out.

“Just keep looking,” he growled.

“That's what we're doing,” the pilot answered with an easy calm that suggested such rescue missions were routine.

The sun, managing only the merest sliver of light through the angry clouds, had almost set into the water. Zach commented uneasily that it would soon be dark.

“That's not as bad as it sounds,” the pilot said. “We'll be able to spot the running lights of the ketch. And on top of that, this baby's fitted for night-vision viewing.”

His words did nothing to ease Zach's panic.

“What's that?” he asked suddenly, pointing down at something in the water. Something a great deal smaller than Averill Brandford's sleek white ketch.

“Just a buoy.”

“No. That orange speck.”

“Probably a piece of driftwood,” the pilot guessed. “But we may as well take a look.”

He dived lower. “Damned if it isn't a person! Get the ring out,” he called out to the third man in the chopper.

Zach was both relieved and terrified at the sight of Alex, clinging to the rocking buoy.

While the man tossed the rescue ring out the open door, Zach shouted out to Alex over the helicopter loudspeaker. His voice cracked with emotion. Taking a deep breath, he cleared his throat and tried again.

Although she'd always considered herself a strong swimmer and she was in a life jacket, Alex had never battled such turbulent waves. She'd shouted instructions to herself in her mind:
Right arm. Left arm. Right. Left. Kick. Kick. Kick, dammit!

Just when she'd thought she could swim no farther, one particularly violent wave had thrown her against the buoy.

She didn't know how long she'd been clinging to the buoy. But it seemed like forever. Her body, which earlier had been cold, was beginning to turn numb. So numb…

A sound rose over the roar of the surf. It was growing closer. She looked up just as the Coast Guard helicopter flew into view.

She heard a voice, but could not make out the words. When a ring attached to a rope came flying out of the open doorway, she assumed she was supposed to take hold of it. But it landed too far away. And she wasn't about to let go of the violently rocking buoy and swim for it.

The man in the doorway pulled the rescue ring back up and tried again. And then a third time. But each attempt fell short. And when the copter tried to fly lower, the wind from the rotor stirred up the water so badly, she almost disappeared beneath the waves. Alex began to despair.

And then, wondrously, the rope appeared again. But this time a man was riding it down. As he neared, Alex feared that she was hallucinating.

Perhaps, she thought wildly, this was what happened when you died. Perhaps those stories about shining lights and tunnels were wrong. Perhaps your last conscious thought was of the one you loved. Or perhaps the man descending from the sky was an angel who coincidentally resembled the man she loved.

“Alex, it's going to be all right, goddammit!” he shouted. “You're going to be all right.”

Although she was definitely no expert on near-death experiences, Alex did not believe any angel worth his wings would use such language.

“Zach?” She stared up at him, strapped into a safety harness, hanging from a steel cable just over her head.

“It's me, sweetheart,” he assured her. “And we're getting you out of here.” She forgot that only days ago she'd been furious at him for deceiving her. Wanting to cover his wonderful face with kisses, she forced herself to follow instructions, latching the safety belt that would hold her to him and the cable.

Then, finally, wonderfully, she twined her arms around the strong column of his neck and together they were raised higher, then higher still, up to the hovering helicopter, where the copilot helped them into the cockpit.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Zach said as he wrapped her in a heavy blanket.

Her teeth were chattering and she was shaking violently with cold and lingering terror. “Y-y-you won't believe what happened!”

“You can tell me all about it later.” Zach put his arm around her and drew her close.

She wanted to tell him everything, in vivid, horrible detail. But her exhaustion was too great. Tears born of relief and sorrow flooded her eyes and streamed down her cheeks.

She put her head on his shoulder, his strong, wonderful shoulder, and closed her eyes. “Zach?”

He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah, honey?”

“Eleanor was right.”

“About what?” he answered absently. His thoughts were still on that breath-stealing moment when he'd spotted her hanging on to the buoy in those storm-tossed waters.

“About me.” Now that she was safe, fatigue claimed her. Her eyes drifted shut. “I'm Anna.”

Santa Barbara
Five years later

T
he sun shone the day Alexandra Deveraux buried her grandmother.

Beside her, his strong arm around her waist, Zach held four-year-old Ellie's hand, while Alex held the baby, Gabriel—named for Zach's father—in her arms.

“I'm so glad Eleanor lived to see her great-grand-children,” Alex murmured. “I'm grateful we all had the chance to become a real family.”

“She never stopped loving you, Alex.” Zach bent and brushed a tender, husbandly kiss against her temple. “All those years, she never gave up hope.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I feel as if she's still with us. Even now.”

“It's not at all crazy. I can feel her, too.” Although Zach had grown up surrounded by a large, loving family, he could not have loved Eleanor more if she'd been his own grandmother. “And her spirit lives on in the kids.”

“Do you know what Grand-mère Eve says?” Ellie looked a long, long way up toward her father, her keen young eyes brilliant with golden facets that radiated outward, like the rays of the Santa Barbara sun.

“What does she say?” Zach asked.

“She says that Grand-mère Eleanor is an angel now. And she's watching over me. Like my very own guardian angel.” Her voice went up a little on the end, as if seeking reassurance that the comforting words were true.

There were days, and this was one of them, that Zach would drink in the sight of his beautiful daughter and son, and marvel that any man could be so lucky.

Zach would have happily married Alex and never asked God for another thing so long as he lived. These two remarkable children, this vivid, breathing legacy of their love, represented more blessings than he would have ever dared ask for.

“My mother is a very smart lady,” Zach assured the little girl. He tousled her marmalade-hued hair that was so like her mother's. “And I think your
grand-mère
Eleanor will make a terrific angel. Don't you agree, darling?” he asked Alex.

“The best.” Alex returned his fond smile with a slightly teary one of her own.

She ran her fingers over the marble stone that marked Eleanor's final resting spot, high on the lush wildflower-studded hillside beside her beloved husband, James. Nearby, on the other side of the Lord family plot, Robert and Melanie—the parents Alex still could not remember—were buried.

The horrifying events of that fateful day when she'd learned her true identity and Averill had tried to kill her were blessedly fading from her mind, misty memories she chose not to dwell upon.

When the Coast Guard located the ketch the following
morning, Averill had not been on board. Since he was an excellent sailor, Eleanor, Zach and Alex had presumed the doctor had chosen to take his own life, rather than suffer the scandal. Not to mention spending the rest of his life in prison.

“I'll bet Grand-mère Eleanor's up in heaven right now,” Ellie said. “Telling all the other angels what to do.”

Zach and Alex laughed at the all too accurate notion.

As they returned to the estate, not to mourn Eleanor Lord's death but to celebrate her remarkable life, Alex thought that although she would always consider Irene Lyons—or Ruth Black—and her brother, David, her true family, during these past years with Eleanor, she had also come to feel, in many ways, like a Lord.

But best of all she was Alexandra Deveraux now. She and Zachary had planted the roots of their own dynasty deep into the rich, sun-warmed soil of Southern California.