Magic (24 page)

He didn’t look to Rachel for confirmation or approval. He didn’t look at her at all. He simply walked away. She watched him go, thinking he looked like a stranger. There was an air of cold authority about him as he took his aunt by the arm, murmured a few curt words to her, and led her away.

Rachel wondered if she had ever really known him. But the point was moot. She was never going to have the chance to find out now. He was walking out of her life, taking all the light with him. As the fog bank rolled in around her, she thought of her future and ached at how empty it would be.

“Now, keep your eye on the dollar bill,” Bryan said.

He sat back on his barstool, his concentration on the trick rather than on the small group of semi-interested onlookers. He folded the bill into an intricate bow shape, squeezed it between his palms, turned his hands. When he turned his palms outward again, the bill was gone.

“Great trick,” Dylan Harrison said from behind the bar. He wiped his hands on a towel and leaned against the polished surface. “Now make it reappear, Houdini. I want my buck back.”

Bryan sighed, took a sip of his whiskey, and performed the trick in reverse. The bill did not reappear. On three tries the best he could manage to produce was a wilted flower and a lint ball. He frowned, his broad shoulders slumping dejectedly as his audience wandered away.

Dylan reached across the bar and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t sweat it, Bry. I’ll put it on your tab.”

“I’ve lost it again,” Bryan mumbled. “I’ve lost my magic.”

“You’re having an off day, that’s all.”

“There’s an understatement.”

Losing Rachel put the day in the catastrophic category. He’d seen it coming, of course. It was just that his unflagging optimism had convinced him he would be able to prevent it when the time came. He’d been wrong.

After the fight to end all fights, he had taken Aunt Roberta out to Keepsake—Faith and Shane Callan’s inn—dumped her there, and made a beeline for Dylan’s Bar and Bait Shop, the popular waterfront establishment owned and run by Alaina’s husband. He still needed to return to Drake House for Roberta’s and his belongings, but he hadn’t been able to face that task without a little fortification of the distilled variety. He needed something to dull his too-sensitive senses. Time, mostly, but in lieu of that a nip or two of Dylan’s Irish wouldn’t hurt—especially since Dylan was liberally watering the stuff when he thought Bryan wasn’t looking.

That wasn’t the standard practice at Dylan’s. It was a neat bar that catered to tourists and locals alike. The floors were swept, the glasses clean, and the booze uncut. He was getting special treatment because he was obviously in such rough shape. Dylan was looking out for him, like any good, conscientious friend would. It made him feel a little better to think that Alaina had ended up with such a good guy. If he had to be lonely and miserable for the rest of his life, at least his best friends had found happiness.

“My, you look like hell,” Alaina said mildly, sliding onto the stool next to his.

“I know, I know.” He sighed. “I need a haircut.”

“That too.”

She was immaculate as usual, every chestnut hair in place, not so much as a speck on her Ralph Lauren ensemble of gold slacks and a midnight-blue silk blouse. Bryan, on the other hand, knew he looked as if he’d been sleeping in an alley. His jeans were rumpled. Roberta had burned a hole in his sweatshirt, and the tail of his white T-shirt hung down beneath the hem. It might have been a style popular with the fraternity crowd, but it didn’t cut the mustard with Alaina, who probably would have given up her civil rights before her Neiman-Marcus charge card.

He shot her a look, wincing at the tender sympathy and concern in her gaze. He didn’t know if he was up to having Alaina feel sorry for him. She was more in the habit of giving a person a swift kick in the britches and telling them to buck up and get on with it.

“Oh, don’t get nervous,” she said, extracting one of her precious, rationed cigarettes from her monogrammed case. Ignoring her husband’s scowl, she lit it and took a deep, appreciative drag. As she exhaled, her shrewd gaze shifted to Bryan again. “I’m not going to do the poor-Bryan routine. Faith tells me she already failed in the attempt.”

“Have the three of you ever considered sharing your amazing communications skills with the intelligence community?” he asked, his brows pulling together in annoyance. “I could give you a phone number.”

Alaina ignored the remark if not its implication. “And if it’s spiritual analysis you want, Jayne will be more than willing to provide that. Practical advice is more my line of expertise.”

He cringed at the mention of the word. “Please. I’ve had all the practicality I can stand for one day. I think it’s giving me a rash.”

“Can we see?” Dylan asked with a bright smile. His wicked sense of humor actually managed to cut through Bryan’s cloak of pain and coaxed a chuckle out of him.

Alaina rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have to go gut fish or something?”

Her husband leaned across the bar, grinning as he touched the tip of his nose to hers. “Yeah, but I was saving that to share with you later, sweetheart. I know how you like to get slimy.”

“Beat it, Harrison,” she said without batting an eyelash. The polar ice caps would melt before Alaina Montgomery-Harrison would put her manicured hand on a dead fish.

“You don’t want me around?” Dylan shrugged. “I get it. I can take a hint.”

“Since when?” she said dryly, tilting her cheek up for his kiss.

He waved to Bryan and let himself out from behind the bar so he could help attend to the many customers who had wandered in before heading off for dinner at one of Anastasia’s several fine seafood restaurants.

“You’ve got a good one there,” Bryan commented.

“Yes, I have. How about you?”

“Dylan? Gee, honey, I like him, but …”

She gave him a look that ended his nonsense in mid-sentence. “Don’t pull that act on me, Bryan. I’m sure you fool the uninitiated on a regular basis, but I am hardly that, now, am I?” She paused with typical lawyerlike drama to let her point sink in, then started her line of questioning over. “Rachel?”

Bryan sipped his drink and stared across the bar at the crowded shelves that lined the wall. “It’s not working out,” he said shortly.

Alaina took another long pull on her cigarette. She had been afraid something like this would happen. Still, her instincts told her Rachel Lindquist realty loved Bryan, and an idiot could have seen how in love Bryan was with Rachel. The man was absolutely besotted. She even knew the problems—irreconcilable differences of philosophy, and extenuating circumstances. The question was, how to reconcile the irreconcilable?

“Look,” Bryan said, hoping to avoid any more painful prodding of his feelings for one night, “maybe it’s best this way. I didn’t come to Anastasia looking to get embroiled in another hopeless situation. I did what I could to help Rachel and Addie.… It didn’t work out,” he finished lamely.

Alaina chose her strategy with ruthless calm. Delivering the blows, however, was another matter. She didn’t enjoy inflicting pain, especially when Bryan had suffered so much already, but it seemed the only way.

Taking a deep breath, she braced her shoulders and launched her attack. “Yes, maybe you’re right. You’re really not up to this. You gave it a shot, you failed the test,” she said with an idle shrug. “Let it slide. Heaven knows a chance at everlasting love comes along as regularly as the bus to Mendocino. You might as well wait for a woman who isn’t so much trouble.”

Bryan sucked in a surprised breath, but Alaina retreated before he could voice his rebuttal.

“If you’ll excuse me, sweetheart, I think I’ll go help my husband gut fish.” She slid gracefully off her stool, leaned over to kiss Bryan’s cheek. “You have fun wallowing in your self-pity.”

She left him sputtering, sauntering away in a cloud of Chanel and smoke.

“Dirty player,” he muttered. He should have known better than to go against her. He probably had a note someplace reminding him of that, but he was too tired to look for it.

So he was feeling sorry for himself, he thought angrily. So what? He had a right to.

So does Rachel
.

“Right?” He sneered. “She practically makes a living at it.”

That’s not fair
.

“Oh, shut up,” he said to his little voice, ignoring the stares he drew from several other patrons at the bar. He wrapped his hand around his chunky tumbler of liquor and took another sip.

It was a matter of circumstances conspiring against them, he reflected. If he and Rachel had met at another time, in another place. If he had been able to prove to her Wimsey’s existence. If he had found the gold.

To take his mind off his self-pity, he thought about the gold. Lorraine Clement believed Wimsey had stolen it. But if Wimsey had stolen it and Addie truly spoke to Wimsey on a regular basis, if Wimsey was indeed the force he knew was present in Drake House, then why wouldn’t Wimsey have led Addie to the treasure?

No. His mind kept turning to Arthur Drake. He knew with certainty that Ducky was their man. If only the clever thief had thought to leave a clue for some worthy adversary …

“Adversary,” he mumbled, his brows pulling together. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. Suddenly his eyes went wide. “
Adversity.”

Realization roared through him like a flood tide, leaving him awash in goose bumps. It had been there all along, right under his stupid nose!

He swiveled around on his barstool just as the front door opened and Felix Rasmussen slipped in and slinked along one wall like the rat he so resembled. Bryan fought back a grin. Maybe his luck hadn’t all run out.

Helping himself to the whiskey bottle, he splashed a little more in his glass, then on his hands, and he baptized his cheeks with it as if it were aftershave lotion. He rubbed a little through his hair, took a quick swig, and gargled before swallowing. Then, with his glass in one hand and the bottle in the other, he made his way unsteadily across the room to the small table where Rat had taken a seat.

“Mister Rasmussen!” He gave the man a lopsided grin. Rasmussen’s eyes darted back and forth as he searched hastily for an escape route. He found none, and his bony shoulders drooped in resignation as Bryan straddled the chair across from his. “How ya doin’?”

“I’m—fine—Mr. Hennessy,” Rasmussen said solemnly, the way a dying man might say he was fine.

Bryan slapped a big hand down on the tabletop. “Glad to hear it! Me, I’ve had better days.” He leaned back in his chair and took a gulp of his drink, letting it dribble down his chin. “Yeah, yeah. Got tossed out of Lindquist’s, you know. She gave some feeble excuse about my drinking, but …” He waved a hand. “Women, huh, Felix? Women! You know how it is.”

“Women,” Rasmussen echoed. He looked as uncomfortable as a man who had accidentally sat down in something wet. “A—yes.” He nodded, but his expression clearly said he had not the slightest idea of how it was.

Bryan gave him a shrewd sideways look. “You’ll never get that house away from them. You know that? You never will.”

Rasmussen’s thin mouth tightened to the point of disappearing entirely.

“You know what I think?” Bryan asked, breathing heavily in the man’s face. Rasmussen coughed and blinked. “Do you know what I think, Felix? She said she didn’t believe me, but I think she wanted it all to herself, the little—”

He paused to belch, tapping his sternum with his fist. Rasmussen was on the edge of his seat, waiting to hear the rest of the statement, but Bryan waved it away.

“Forget it. What do I care? Huh, Felix? What do I care? I don’t need her with her loony mother. Rich babes are a dime a dozen.” He paused to take a swig right out of the bottle and wiped his shirtsleeve across his mouth. Leaning across the table, he pointed at Rat. “Hey, you got a dime?”

Half the bar turned to stare as he burst into loud, obnoxious laughter, reached across the table, and thumped Rat on the arm in a gesture of male camaraderie that nearly knocked the man to the floor.

“Jeez, I kill me!” Bryan laughed. “I’m a damn genius. Did you know that, Felix? Huh? Did you know you were up against a damn genius?”

“Genius,” Rasmussen murmured, his furtive gaze zipping nervously around the room.

“Let ’em rot in their ugly ol’ house. Ha! I can get what I want. It’s in the wall behind that por-hic!-trait. I can get what I want just like that.” He tried to snap his fingers and managed to overturn his drink in the process. The watered-down liquor pooled on the table and ran over the edge and onto the floor, the whole process enchanting Bryan. He smiled boyishly, leaning down close to the mess. “I made a waterfall. Look at that, Felix.”

Dylan suddenly appeared beside the table, looking sad and sympathetic. He dropped a towel into the miniature lake and put a steadying hand on Bryan’s shoulder, just saving him from falling off his chair. “Come on, pal. I think you’ve had enough.”

“Says who?” Bryan demanded. His chin jutted out at an aggressive angle.

“Says me.”

“Yeah? Both of you?” He dissolved into giggles and reached across the table toward Rat, who arched back out of his way. “Maybe they’re right!”

“Come on,” Dylan said with the tolerance of long experience. “You can sleep it off out back. There’s nothing like the smell of live bait to sober a guy up.”

He helped Bryan up and led him toward the door that separated the bar from the bait shop. Rasmussen bolted for the front without hesitation. The instant he was gone, Bryan straightened and stretched and grinned at his friend.

“Well, that was fun!” he said brightly. “Can I use your phone?”

Dylan shook himself out of his incredulous stare. “Yeah, sure.”