Night Scents (30 page)

The brothers seemed surprised that someone might not actually like Cape Cod, but after a few more questions along the same lines, they departed. Clate wasn't sure how satisfied they were with his explanations, and he wondered who the hell was spreading credible rumors about his intentions.

The thought propelled him to his car and into town. Time he and Mrs. Frye had a talk about what she was holding back.

Hurtling herself down the main road from Hannah's house, without benefit of bicycle or car, was Piper Macintosh. He pulled over, rolled down his window. She started, jumping up a good foot and nearly tripping on the sandy shoulder. "Oh, it's you. Gosh, you startled me. My mind was wandering."

"I'm surprised to see you out on your own."

She smiled wryly. "So am I."

"How's your aunt doing?"

"Fine. I just came from there. She kicked me out, in fact. She wanted to be alone. I think a night in the hospital has sobered her." Piper tilted her head back and studied him, her chestnut hair gleaming in the midday sun. "She predicted you'd come along, you know."

"Did she?" Clate was amused. "A lucky guess, although I suspect she knows I've run out of patience with her. I'm not one to grill old women, especially when they've just been released from the hospital, but I think it's time she told us the rest."

Piper made a small noise to register her disgust. "I don't know how you can stand being suspicious all the time."

"I couldn't if I weren't also right most of the time." He spoke lightly, but held his ground. "She is holding back, Piper. She has been from the beginning. Just as you are now."

"That's not fair."

"I'm right and you know it. You want a ride?"

"Not if you're going to go off and harass my aunt."

"No. If she wants to be alone, I'll hold off for now. Where you headed?"

She slid into his passenger seat with the air of someone who was doing something she really wasn't convinced she wanted to do. Nothing like daylight and an aunt fresh out of the hospital to spark clear thinking. He was a danger to her status quo, her life as she knew it, and yet no amount of rational thinking was going to stop her from wanting to make love to him again. He understood, because he was in the same damned boat. Loving Piper Macintosh wasn't an easy proposition. And loving him—well, she already had a taste of what that was like or she wouldn't be so jumpy about sitting in his car.

"I should go home," she said. "I need to spend a few hours in my office. I'm behind on a million things."

"Did you tell Hannah we dug for her treasure?"

"Not yet. I didn't have a chance before she threw me out."

He paused as he turned the car around and started back toward town. "You're sure it's not because you don't want to disappoint her?"

"Disappoint her? Clate, she won't be convinced that treasure's not out there until we've dug up the entire yard right down to the marsh. Then we'll probably have to start on the preserve."

His grip on the wheel tightened. "Piper, there's no treasure."

"There might have been eighty years ago. Someone could have moved it in the interim and Hannah just never knew. I'm going to reread everything in her shoebox, all my notes, finish the timetable I was working on yesterday at the library." She was talking to herself more than to him, planning, trying to establish control over her life. "I keep thinking there's something I've missed."

Clate acknowledged her words with a neutral nod. "If you need any help, let me know. I'll be around. I have to go to Nashville at some point, but I can put it off for a few days."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her swallow at the intrusion of his life—his real life. Nashville was another world. His business, his friends, his life there. Hell, she'd never even met his dogs. He'd planned to decide how he was going to use his place on Cape Cod, get the lay of the land, before bringing them up. Now he'd already fallen for a woman.

Which was an inadequate way to explain his relationship with Piper Macintosh. He'd more than fallen for her.

He said, "Your brothers checked up on me, just in case I'm plotting against you, your aunt, and all of Frye's Cove. If you could follow their circuitous reasoning, they had a point. Depends whether they choose to believe me or what they've been hearing about me."

"More rumors?"

He told her. She listened without interruption, and finally he said, "I have to say, I didn't think much about what the Macintosh family might be losing out on when I bought your aunt's place. I thought more about the Fryes. Here's this woman who married late into the family, selling out everything: land, house, furnishings, the silverware, tangible pieces of Frye history. She let her husband's granddaughter have any family papers she wanted, but that's it."

"That's all Sally said she wanted. She wasn't interested in the rest."

"Why not?"

"She didn't feel attached to it. She grew up in a Boston suburb. She visited her grandfather here, but that was about it until she and Paul bought the inn. Sally's always adored Hannah. I think she didn't want to interfere with whatever Hannah chose to do. Besides, the Frye house has its problems, and Sally and Paul might not have wanted to be saddled with them right now, given the money they're sinking into the inn."

"What about furnishings?"

Piper smiled. "Let's just say Sally has very definite likes and dislikes."

Clate slowed as he drove through the village center, where dappled sunlight fell on the town green and flowers glinted in boxes on the porch of the Macintosh Inn. Very pretty. Easy to get caught up in the myth and the fantasy of Cape Cod. He glanced over at Piper. "You don't think Sally was hoping Hannah would change her mind or that she just didn't want to make a scene? You know, alienate townspeople while she and her husband were trying to get an inn up and running."

"Sally's not that labyrinthine in her thinking."

"Well, I'm getting off the track. As I said, I considered that the Fryes might get their noses out of joint. But I didn't consider your family."

She jumped in her seat, spun around at him.
"My
family?"

"Whoa, there. I'm not making any accusations. Your brothers have made it clear they don't like having such a prime piece of Frye's Cove real estate in the hands of an outsider."

"Only an outsider could afford her price," Piper said. "I think Hannah knew that going in."

"Part of her strategy to lure the man of your dreams here?"

"The man of my destiny." She shot him a dry, amused look. "I'm not sure my dreams had anything to do with it. But do go on."

Clate eased his car down toward the water, the winding, narrow, picturesque roads feeling more familiar to him. He noticed a sailboat out in the bay. If he came up here on a regular basis, he could learn to sail. "I just started wondering if your brothers had anything to gain—"

"You suspect my
brothers?"

"I'm not willing to rule anyone out. That's the only point I'm making. I don't actually suspect anyone. Their visit made me realize that we need to maintain a certain amount of neutrality and objectivity—"

"You do," she said curtly. "I don't."

He bit off a sigh. He'd done a hellishly bad job of explaining himself.

"I suppose you haven't ruled me out, either?" she asked coolly. "I could be making the calls up. To get attention, to get revenge for my aunt selling out, to get you onto the hot seat. I could come up with a dozen wild reasons that make about as much sense as suspecting my brothers."

"That wasn't my point." His teeth were clenched. The woman damn well knew that wasn't his point. "I'm just trying to encourage you to keep your eyes open and to withhold judgment."

"Not of my brothers. I refuse."

"All right, then, not of your brothers. Hell. But of everyone else, okay?"

She remained rigid, arms folded across her chest. "I would hate to be so cynical that I couldn't trust anyone."

"Yes," he said, glancing over at her as he turned into her driveway, "you would."

Chapter 14

All afternoon Clate could feel Piper's presence on the other side of the hedge. He imagined her picking vegetables and herbs, gathering wildflowers, working at her out-of-date computer in her office, snipping fabric in her studio with her ancient pinking shears. Irma Bryar would have liked and understood his Cape Cod neighbor and her simple ways. A good garden, a solid house, good friends.
"They're all I need, Clayton. I'm a happy woman."

He remembered his yearning to make his mother happy. The flowers, the chores, the times he'd bring her coffee and toast and offer to do anything, anything, if only she would be happy. All thrown into the abyss. Nothing he could do. Nothing she could do. Happiness, contentment, were beyond her.

Not so with Piper. He thought of her delight at seeing the roseate tern, at picking strawberries in her little garden. Her happiness might mean everything to whoever loved her, but she would never make it their responsibility, their burden.

Tuck stopped over, and together he and Clate reseeded the areas where he and Piper had dug for treasure. Tuck asked for no explanation. Not wanting to lie to a man he intended to entrust with his property while he was in Tennessee, Clate offered none. As far as O'Rourke was concerned, the entire lawn needed reseeding and fertilizing. Never mind that it was lusher and greener than most in Frye's Cove, certainly than Piper's; she was into naturalizing.

"You know," Tuck said, leading up to something. He peeled off his Red Sox cap and scratched his sweaty head. "I've been thinking about those herbs we found cut down, then Hannah turning up sick."

"The doctors didn't find anything wrong with her."

"Yeah, exactly."

Clate narrowed his eyes. "What are you saying?"

"I'm not saying anything. I'm just wondering if she—I don't know, if she got in to something, I guess, and made herself sick. I had a sheep once that nearly died of eating moldy hay."

"You're saying Hannah could have poisoned herself."

Tuck reddened. "Not on purpose. I mean, my sheep wasn't looking to make himself sick. Hannah..." He replaced his hat, rolled his big shoulders. "It's none of my business, but I think maybe it's time she stopped messing around with herbs and stuff. She's going to kill somebody one of these days, if not herself."

Clate nodded, walking out to Tuck's truck with him. "It's none of my business, either, but I'll give it some thought."

Tuck had barely backed out of the driveway when Hannah herself arrived in her little raspberry sedan.

"I thought you were supposed to be on the mend today," Clate said as she climbed out in one of her weird prairie dresses.

"A few cups of sage tea and I'm right as rain." She gave her long skirt a good shake and inhaled deeply. "Oh, I do miss my fresh sea air. May I come in?"

"Of course."

She smiled, deceptively sweet. "You're a Southern gentleman, aren't you?"

He laughed. "Not hardly."

"Meaning you were raised to exercise good manners," she clarified, "not that you're necessarily gentlemanly with money. Although I suspect you are, more than you're willing to admit."