Magic (22 page)

“I think you don’t want to believe there could be a painless solution to your problems because you’re so damned determined to sacrifice yourself to Addie,” he said, leaning over the desk toward her, unconsciously trying to intimidate her with his size. “You’ve got it all mapped out in that pragmatic head of yours how you’re going to make it up to her for wanting a life of your own. You’ve probably got it figured out to the nth degree the exact amount of suffering you’ve got to do to redeem yourself.”

Silence hung between them like the blade of an ax. Bryan stood on one side of the walnut desk, his chest heaving in the aftermath of his outburst. Rachel stood on the other side, her shoulders stiff with pride, her eyes shining with tears she refused to shed.

After a long moment she said quietly, “I’m not a masochist, Bryan. I’m a realist. In the real world people have to learn to deal with problems in a realistic way. Now, If you’ll excuse me, I have to go see to mine.”

She turned and went to the door, praying she could make her getaway before the dam burst, but the study door wouldn’t open. She grasped the knob with both hands, twisted it, rattled it, yanked on it, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Dammit,” she swore, sniffling as she yanked on the knob and kicked the door with the toe of her sneaker simultaneously. “Damn this stupid old house.”

Bryan watched her, his whole being aching with a ferocious attack of remorse. He’d meant every word he’d said, but he had certainly never meant to say them out loud. He would have done anything to spare Rachel hurt, yet he had just inflicted her with a verbal forty lashes because he was feeling frustrated. It would serve him right if she never spoke to him again, he thought morosely. It would serve him right if she threw him out. Or maybe he should just go …

Apologize, stupid
.

He hesitated, but suddenly his feet were moving forward. He felt almost as if some outside force were propelling him toward Rachel, who was still struggling with the door. He stopped behind her and reached out to carefully cup her shoulders in his big hands. She jumped and stiffened as if she expected him to become violent. Bryan winced. It wasn’t enough that he had to deal with his own pain for what he’d done; now he had to feel Rachel’s as well. It was apt punishment, he supposed, but he couldn’t help but curse his sixth sense just the same.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, bending his head down so the fresh scent of her hair teased his nostrils. “I’m sorry, angel. I shouldn’t have said any of that. I know you’re doing what you think is best. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

Rachel tried to hold herself rigid, but she wasn’t able to sustain it against the strangely physical pressure to lean back against him. The sting of his words was still bringing tears to her eyes, but she had to admit to feelings of regret herself. She’d been the first one to draw blood, bursting Bryan’s bubble of enthusiasm with the pin of practicality. Maybe he wasn’t realistic or responsible, but he was trying to help her in his own misguided way. And she couldn’t deny the fact that she loved him, or that it hurt her to hurt him.

She sighed as the fight drained out of her and Bryan wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry too.”

She was sorry for a lot of things, not the least of which was the inherent differences in their philosophies. She was sorry fate had thrown them together at such an inopportune time. She was sorry she couldn’t believe in magic the way he did.

“I don’t want us to fight,” she whispered, twisting around in his embrace and throwing her arms around his neck. Their time together was going to be too short as it was, she thought, her heart aching. There was no sense wasting it on senseless battles about ideology.

Bryan hugged her tight, closing his eyes against another wave of pain. He had to find some way to show her that her life didn’t have to be all sacrifice. He especially had to find a way to show her they didn’t need to sacrifice their love, that it would be strong enough to withstand anything if only she would believe.

He gave her a tentative, heart-stealing smile, his blue eyes brimming with vulnerability. “Friends again?”

Rachel nodded. She sniffed, blinked back the last of her tears, and lifted a hand to brush at the errant lock of tawny hair that fell across Bryan’s forehead and into his eyes. A gentle smile curved her mouth.

“I thought you were going to get a haircut.”

His expression went comically blank, then guilty. A warm blush colored his high cheekbones. He ducked his head sheepishly. “Um … I guess I forgot.”

“Come on,” Rachel said, chuckling softly. “Maybe we can get Mother to do it for you. She’s a whiz with a scissors, you know.”

They shared a smile, letting the moment heal the wounds they had inflicted, then Bryan turned the doorknob with suspicious ease and they walked out of the study together.

The term
fool’s gold
had taken on a whole new, personal dimension for Bryan. In the three days since he’d discovered the possibility of there being a treasure hidden somewhere in or around Drake House, he had spent nearly every waking moment searching for it. He had inspected the house from its musty, cobweb-filled attic to its dank, dark cellar. He had painstakingly examined every wall and floor in search of hidden compartments. He had experienced considerable excitement upon discovering a secret vault in the basement, only to be visited by crushing disappointment hours later when he finally managed to get the thing open and found nothing inside but some old
National Geographics
and a ship in a bottle.

His search of the grounds had been no less futile. If Arthur “Ducky” Drake had buried his booty, he had certainly left behind no clues in the lawn as to where it was. Of course, nearly sixty years had gone by. Whatever Ducky might have left behind could have been long gone by now.

Bryan heaved a sigh as he went over it all in his mind yet again. He’d spent the entire morning in the study, mostly sitting and staring. This had presumably been Arthur Drake’s favorite room. It was where the man had hung his portrait. It was probably where he had written the journal Porky and Rat so coveted—the journal Bryan had photocopied in its entirety before handing it over to them.

He went over the last of the entries again, then pulled his glasses off and rubbed at his weary eyes. The nearest thing to a clue he had found in Drake’s writings was mention of his pleasure boat, the
Treasure
. It was on that craft Ducky Drake had met his end on Armistice Day, 1931, when the ship had gone down with all aboard her. The last few notes Drake had made in his journal after the mention of “sticking the pig” were about his concerns over the whereabouts of his vanished friend A.W. and a couple of vague references to having some workmen come to do minor repairs around the house—plumbing and brickwork and the like.

Maybe Arthur Drake and his gold were both now lying at the bottom of the Pacific. Maybe Lorraine Clement had been correct in her hunch that Wimsey had been the elusive gentleman bandit, in which case poring over the Drake journal was a waste of time. But if Wimsey were the thief, why wouldn’t he tell Addie where the gold was? Because it wasn’t there?

Maybe Rachel was right, he conceded. Maybe it was all a big wild goose chase.

“That’s no way to think,” Bryan muttered to himself in disgust. Pessimism had never gotten anybody anywhere.

Pushing himself up out of the desk chair, he stretched and cast a cursory glance over his shoulder at the image of Arthur Drake that hung on the wall. He would unravel this mystery as he had unraveled dozens of others over the years. But he needed a clear head to do it.

He had run himself into the ground, spending his days searching for the gold and his nights watching out for signs of Wimsey, not to mention their other nocturnal visitor. What little time he’d spent in bed he’d spent making love to Rachel, trying his best to bind her to him in the most elemental way he could, trying to show her with his body how much he loved her. He couldn’t escape the sinking feeling that his message wasn’t getting through. Or maybe she was simply ignoring it.

Even though they hadn’t argued again, neither had things been the same as before their fight. There was a tension straining their relationship. Bryan could sense the invisible barrier Rachel was erecting layer by thin layer between them. She might have forgiven him for his harsh words, but she couldn’t forgive him for believing in things that couldn’t be seen or touched. And the harder he tried to convince her that his outlook was a better one, the farther she drifted away from him.

She had been working as hard as he, slaving over the state of Addie’s finances and struggling with Addie herself, fighting a futile battle to repair her relationship with her mother before it was too late.

Standing by the French doors, Bryan heaved a sigh. Outside, the morning had turned blue and beautiful. He flung open the doors and drank in the scents. The air was fresh with the tang of the sea and the sweetness of sun-warmed grass and wildflowers.

It was the kind of day meant for playing hooky. It was the kind of day meant for picnics and handin-hand walks, for taking leisurely drives along the shore and making love under the afternoon sun. It was the kind of day too many people let pass by, sure that another would come along at a more convenient time in their lives. Bryan knew for a fact that wasn’t always true. You had to enjoy life moment to moment because tomorrow was a promise that wasn’t always kept. Too many people waited until it was too late, then looked back on their lives with bitterness and regret.

He couldn’t let Rachel be one of them.

Determination giving him a fresh burst of strength, he strode to the desk and picked up the telephone.

“My word, that’s a lovely color on you, Abbey,” Aunt Roberta commented. “Just lovely. And the feathers are really you. Don’t you think so, Rebecca? I think they’re really her.”

Rachel sighed wearily and raised her head, looking past the sea of bank statements, bills, and canceled checks spread out across the dining room table to where her mother sat in a pool of yellow light near the window, glowering at her.

Addie wore another of her nondescript loose housedresses and had an emerald-green feather boa draped around her neck. In her hands she clutched a pottery ashtray the size of a Frisbee, and every so often she thrust it beneath Roberta’s cigarette to catch the fallout. Roberta sat in a rocker beside her, pumping the thing as if she were out to set some kind of record. Smoke billowed from her nostrils, giving the impression that her boundless nervous energy came from a combustion engine.

“For goodness’ sake, Rowena, you look exhausted!”

“I’ve had a lot of work to do.”

“Stealing my money,” Addie muttered.

“There isn’t any money to steal, Mother,” Rachel shot back. Gritting her teeth, she tamped down her temper. “I’m trying to help you. I came back here to help you.”

Addie narrowed her eyes. Her lips thinned to a white line of disapproval. It made her so angry to see Rachel going through her business papers. It made her angry to know she couldn’t have gone through them herself because they made no sense to her anymore. She certainly didn’t want Rachel sifting through them looking for yet another way to humiliate her and snatch away a little more of her independence.

“She’s not my daughter, you know,” she said to Roberta.

Rachel rolled her eyes.

Roberta’s black brows arched up. “She’s not? I thought she was. Bryan said she was. He
told
me Ramona was your daughter.”

“Ramona who?”

“Your daughter.”

“I don’t have a daughter. Pay attention here, Roberta,” Addie said crossly, smacking the woman on the arm. “After all the sacrifices I made for my daughter so she could go on to greatness as a soprano, she ran off with a nightclub singer.”

“Oh, my gosh, Althea,” Roberta whispered in shock, crossing herself with her cigarette. “My gosh.”

Rachel tuned out. She really didn’t have the energy to deal with her mother today. She had been on the telephone half the morning with a woman from the California Health and Welfare Agency, discussing financial aid for people with Alzheimer’s. The bureaucracy was incredible, the benefits negligible in relation to the expenses a chronically ill person faced. She had to consider Addie’s loss of income, housing costs, medical costs, cost for in-home help or respite care, the normal costs of living, taxes, miscellaneous expenses. And somewhere down the road she would have to deal with the expense of putting Addie in a nursing home.

As badly as she wanted to care for her mother herself, Rachel realized that would eventually become impossible. Addie’s condition would inevitably decline to the point where she would need constant care and supervision, and Rachel would not be able to provide that and keep a job as well.

She planted her elbows on the tabletop and rubbed her hands over her face. Already the strain was getting to her. What was she going to feel like after months, even years of this? Despair welled inside her at the prospect of a bleak, joyless future.

Bryan
.

His name drifted through her mind as if someone had whispered it low and soft in her ear. Warmth cascaded through her, enticing, like forbidden fruit. It was strange, but just thinking about him relaxed her.

“Come along, angel,” Bryan said briskly.

Rachel’s head snapped up. Cautiously, she turned to look at him as if she didn’t quite believe he would be there. But there he stood, looking rumpled and sexy in his snug jeans and faded Notre Dame sweatshirt.

“Come along,” he said again, taking her by the hand and tugging her out of her chair.

“Where …?”

He flashed her a brilliant smile, “To play hooky.”

Rachel dug her heels in. “Bryan, I don’t have time to play hooky.”

“I’m not giving you a choice.”

There was definitely something steely and predatory about his smile, reminding Rachel that there was a great deal more to this man than what so pleasingly met the eye. A shiver danced through her at the glint of determination in his deep blue gaze.

“Bryan, I would like nothing more than to take a day off, but I have responsibilities.”

“They’ll still be here when we get back.”

“Bryan, honey, what are you doing with Rhonda?” Roberta asked.

“I’m abducting her, Aunt Roberta.” He let go of Rachel’s hand, quickly bent and put a shoulder to her stomach, and heaved her up, wrapping his arm around her wildly flailing legs. She squealed in surprise.

“Oh, well, fine, dear.” Roberta smiled and waved her cigarette at them. “Have a nice time!”

Addie stuck her tongue out at them.

Bryan frowned at her and turned back toward his aunt, balancing Rachel on his shoulder as if she were a sack of potatoes. He gave Roberta a meaningful look. “You and Addie keep each other out of trouble, okay?”

“Trouble! My stars, honey!” She cackled and coughed. “What trouble could we get into?”

“I shudder to think,” Rachel grumbled. She wriggled on Bryan’s shoulder as he carried her out of the room and down the hall. “Bryan, neither one of them should be left alone.”

“Don’t be silly. Aunt Roberta is a little unique, but she’s perfectly capable of being left on her own.”

“Personally, I think it’s a toss-up as to which of them is loonier, but the point is: I shouldn’t be leaving Mother.”

“Rachel, you can’t spend every hour of every day with her. It isn’t good for either one of you,” he said, toting her down the porch steps and across the lawn. “Think about it. You’re going to be taking care of Addie for a long time. Do you want to end up hating her because you shackled her to you like a ball and chain and threw away the key?”

She was silent as he deposited her in the passenger seat of her car and went around to the other side. Any retort she might have made was silenced by the knowledge that she already had feelings of resentment toward her mother. Hadn’t she wondered herself how bitter she would be in the end?

“Don’t worry about Aunt Roberta.” The Chevette started with a squeal of protest that settled into a pathetic whine. “I explained to her all about Addie’s illness.”

“When?” Rachel asked in surprise. She thought he hadn’t done much of anything lately except search for his ridiculous buried treasure.

“When you had your nose buried in work, I imagine.”

“Better submerged in trying to solve my problems than burying my head in the sand or running off to do Lord knows what—”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” he said as he turned the car out onto the busy coastal highway. “We’re going ballooning.”

Rachel was momentarily struck dumb. For one terrible instant her heart stopped. When she found her tongue again, she said, “Going what?”

“Ballooning.” Bryan grinned, his handsome face lighting up with excitement. “Up in a montgolfier.”

“Turn this car around right now,” Rachel demanded in her sternest voice, proud that none of her sudden panic came through in her tone. She thumped her index finger against the dash. “I mean it, Bryan. Turn this thing around and take me home right this minute.”

“Sorry, angel,” he said. “I’d rather take you to heaven.”

She could tell by the set of his jaw that he wasn’t going to back down. The man could be unbearably stubborn. Well, if he thought he was going to get her into the basket of a hot air balloon, he had another think coming. Of all the silly pranks, dragging her away from work for an afternoon of absolute foolishness. The idea was completely … tempting.

Settling back into her seat, Rachel crossed her arms over her chest and fumed. This was precisely the reason she and Bryan didn’t belong together. He wanted to dazzle her with magic and fun when there simply was no room in her life for either.

They turned off the main road and headed east over the hills. Even this narrow, winding county road was busy, clogged with tourists out for a day of gawking at the beautiful scenery. The lower slopes of the golden hills were speckled with dark fir trees, and the heavier forest worked its way up toward the incomparable blue of the summer sky. They passed sheep farms and apple orchards.