One Night in Weaver... (6 page)

Exhilaration was still flowing in her veins as she took the plastic-wrapped treat. “You seem very tall,” she admitted breathlessly. She was five-seven and he had a good half foot on her.

His eyes crinkled. “You seem very short,” he returned and bent over to pick up her shoes. He dangled them in front of her. “Without these.”

“I’m still not short,” she countered and took them from him. She set the pumps upright on the sidewalk and slid her feet back into them, which brought her eyes considerably closer to his. Instead of making her feel more in control, though, it just made her more aware of how close the added height brought their lips.

“My sisters, now,” she said quickly, “
are
short.” She briskly set off for the parking lot and silently noted the way her fingers had squeezed the brownie from a perfectly cut rectangle into a near bow-tie shape. “The Trips, I mean. They’re five-two if they stretch. Which is an inch more than their mom.” He’d left the door unlocked, so she pulled open the squeaking passenger door and quickly tucked the brownie out of sight in a side pocket of her briefcase. She hadn’t been worried about her belongings. The truck had been in full sight the entire time, and there wasn’t a soul around except them anyway.

Stepping up onto the running board, she pulled herself up into the high seat and fastened her seatbelt while he got behind the wheel. Only then did she reach for her cell phone, also inside her briefcase.

Seeing she had four missed calls from Tristan Clay had her grimacing. There was only one reason he’d call her directly, and that was because of Jason McGregor.

“Something wrong?”

“Don’t know.” She unclicked her seatbelt again. “Would you mind waiting for a moment?” She didn’t really wait for an answer as she pushed open the door and climbed back out again, moving a few feet away from the truck before listening to the only message that had been left.

* * *

Seth watched her from inside the truck. He hadn’t seen the display on her phone so had no way of knowing who or what had put the serious look back in her eyes. Could be a patient. Could be McGregor for all he knew. Or it could be something more personal.

At the moment, he was just sorry to see that the lighthearted smile inside her chocolate-warm eyes had departed.

When she looked at her phone and tapped the screen before holding it to her ear again, moving even farther away from the truck, he decided it was a patient. A few minutes later, she ended her call and returned to the truck, her lips set.

“You all right?”

“Yes. A small crisis, I’m afraid.” She chewed her lip and seemed to come to an abrupt decision as she looked at him. “With a...a friend. Would you mind dropping me at her house? She lives closer to here than if I went back to the office to get my own car. I’m sure you have to get back to Cee-Vid—”

He backed out of the parking spot. “Where’s her house?”

Hayley’s lips and eyes both softened slightly. “Turn left at the end of the block. She lives in that new development out past Shop-World. Toward Cee-Vid’s airstrip. I assume you know where that is?”

His hands tightened fractionally around the steering wheel. The safe house was in the general direction she described. “I do. I’m surprised that you do.” Not many people did.

She exhaled, as if relieved. “Last year, Mr. Clay loaned one of his Cee-Vid planes to Casey so that he could take Jane to a funeral. She told me about it.” She refastened her seatbelt while she called Gretchen and asked her to reschedule the rest of her appointments for the afternoon.

Even though Hayley held the cell phone tightly to her ear, Seth could hear the laugh in her secretary’s voice as she said, “My, my. Lunch went that well, did it? I have never been happier to reschedule Mrs. Pittman.”

Hayley’s gaze skittered over him. Her cheeks were pink. From the sun, possibly, but he’d already seen for himself the way she could blush. For a woman whose profession was delving into the minds and emotions of others, it was a curiosity to him that she could still blush at all.

“It’s not like that,” he heard her mutter into the phone. “I’ll check in with you in a half hour. Thanks, Gretchen.” Then she was tucking the phone back in the side pocket of her briefcase. “Sorry.”

“Why?”

“Because—” She broke off and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She pointed out the turn ahead. “Left there.”

And a few minutes later, it was a right. Then another left.

The closer they got to the safe house, the tighter Seth’s nerves got. For all he knew, she
could
have a friend living out this way.

But the prickling at the base of his neck was telling him otherwise.

And when she gestured vaguely a few minutes later and said he could just stop on the street and drop her off, he knew his instinct had been right on the money. “You need me to wait?”

She looked genuinely surprised. “Oh, no. You’ve done enough already.” She gathered the strap of her briefcase and pushed open the door. “I don’t want to keep you any longer than I already have.”

“It’s not a problem. I have an understanding boss in Mr. Clay.” He hoped to hell she would never know how ironic those words were.

Her cheeks looked even brighter. “My friend can get me back. Thanks, though. And thanks for lunch, Seth. I really enjoyed it.”

“So did I.” The words were true. So much more than they should have been, considering the situation.

She looked over her shoulder at the quiet house and then back at him. “I’m still holding you to dinner. After everything calms down.” She pushed a blond lock of hair that had come down from her ponytail back behind her ear. “With the wedding and all.”

And all
, he figured, included McGregor. “Sure. Maybe I’ll even see you at the wedding. You can save a dance for me at the reception.”

A shy smile bloomed on her lips. “I’d really like that.” Then, seeming to realize that she was just standing there smiling at him, she quickly shut the door and headed briskly up the walk toward the front door of the safe house.

He was pretty sure the chaos surrounding Casey and Jane’s wedding would be well over long before things were resolved with Hayley’s “patient.”

And he was even more certain that when it came to Hayley and him, Seth wasn’t going to be able to wait that long. Not now that he’d tasted her lips again. And no dance at a wedding reception attended by half the town was going to suffice.

He waited until she reached the front door, which opened the second that she got to it. Without a backward glance, she disappeared inside and the door closed once again.

He pinched the pain between his eyebrows and turned the truck around, driving back the way he’d come.

He’d barely pulled into the Cee-Vid parking lot when his own phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and let out a long, low curse at the sight of “Boss” on the screen. Reluctantly, he put the phone to his ear. “Yeah?”

“What the hell do you think you are doing?”

He sighed. The pain between his eyebrows deepened. “You were at the house,” he surmised.

“And saw you drop off Dr. Templeton.” Tristan’s voice was terse. “I want an explanation.”

Rather than enter the Cee-Vid building, Seth veered off to one side where he could speak without being overheard. “She had a crisis with a ‘friend.’ Her words. I dropped her off.” His boss’s silence spoke volumes. “We had lunch together,” Seth finally added.

“Why?” It wasn’t curiosity in the other man’s tone; it was demand.

Seth rubbed his hand down his bristled cheek. Even though he had spent fifteen years answering orders in the army, he’d spent the past five happy to remove that from his daily routine. Right along with looking like a clean-cut recruiting poster model.

But Tristan was still his boss. And Seth had no desire for that to change. He didn’t like the situation with McGregor, but he understood the need for the Hollins-Winwords of the world. So he answered.

“Because I like her,” he admitted. “She has no idea that I know what’s going on inside that house.”

“You want McGregor’s hide nailed to a wall,” Tristan countered. “You could never prove your father’s partner killed him, but you’re damn sure going to make sure McGregor doesn’t get away with killing your friends.”

Seth sucked down the emotion that rose hot and quick inside him. He’d been too young and green to do anything about it when the authorities had decided that Chuck Banyon’s drowning on a boating trip with his business partner had been only a tragic accident. That the business deal they’d been at odds over hadn’t been adequate motive.

But that had been two decades ago. And despite knowing he’d failed to unearth the truth, Seth was no longer a devastated kid. “Because I
like
her,” he repeated tightly.

“Then
un
like her,” his boss said flatly, “or be damned certain that her appeal has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she’s the only one McGregor is talking to. I don’t want anything messing up this case, and that includes you messing with Dr. Templeton!”

Chapter Five

“V
ivian.” Hayley maintained a calm tone despite the frustration building inside her. “You
promised
you’d go with me to the wedding tomorrow.”

Vivian’s diminutive figure was wrapped in a heavy gold silk robe. But even dressed as she was for bed, she still had a long strand of pearls around her neck. She was working them between her fingers as if they were worry beads as she paced across Hayley’s small living room. “You’re going to be busy, dear. I haven’t been a maid of honor since the Stone Age, but I do remember it is a busy time. The styles may have changed, but I highly doubt that has.”

Hayley sank down on a chair and toed off the shoes that she’d been wearing for the past several hours, all through Casey and Jane’s wedding rehearsal and the dinner they’d thrown at their place afterward. It was late. And on top of a nearly full day at work before that, it felt even later. She wanted sleep. She wanted someone to put their arms around her and solve the world’s problems.

Who was she kidding?

Problems were what
she
was supposed to be good at solving.

She wanted Seth to put his arms around her, period.

But Seth wasn’t here. She hadn’t seen or talked to him since he’d surprised her with lunch three days earlier.

And her grandmother
was
here. “When’s the last time you were out of the house? Besides your morning walk?”

Vivian’s lips tightened. She was eighty-six years old but the same dark brown eyes that Hayley also possessed still held plenty of life, and right now they clearly broadcast her displeasure. “If you want me to leave, Hayley, you need only say the words.” She sniffed haughtily. “You wouldn’t be the first family member to wish me gone, after all.”

“I don’t wish you gone, Vivian,” Hayley said quietly. Honestly. “You surely know that by now.”

Her grandmother sighed heavily, some of the starch leaving her rigid posture. She crossed to the couch and sat in the corner, looking smaller than ever and unusually delicate. “You’ve been hospitable for six months.”

“It’s not hospitality driving me,” Hayley corrected. “You’re family. Maybe if you’d just tell me what happened between you and my father and Uncle David, I could—”

“They’re unforgiving souls,” Vivian said abruptly. “That’s what happened.” Her lips tightened again. “They’re not at all like their father. He forgave anything, even when doing so proved ruinous.”

Hayley’s bed was so close, yet further away than ever. “Tell me more about what he was like. My grandfather.” Vivian had already told her how they’d met. She’d been a violin-maker’s daughter and Sawyer had been a rich young man who’d played the violin. “Besides the fact that he played violin.”

“Rich,” Vivian said so immediately that Hayley couldn’t help but smile even as tired as she was.

She propped a pillow behind her back and crossed her bare feet on top of the coffee table. Vivian had had three husbands after Sawyer Templeton, but she’d never taken their names. Only Sawyer’s. “And?”

“And handsome. And...he had a soft heart.” Vivian’s pearls clicked softly between her fretting fingers. “Too soft, I always thought. Particularly for a young man inheriting a steel empire. I thought I was the strong one.”

“Women often are,” Hayley murmured.

“I wasn’t strong, though. I was just typical. A product of a privileged life. Which I’d had, even though the Archers were nothing like the Templetons.” Vivian suddenly pinned her with a look. “Times were different then, Hayley. When I was a young woman. You understand that, don’t you? Reputations. Scandals. They could ruin a person back then.”

“Some might say they can ruin a person now. But, yes, I understand what you’re saying.” She just wished her grandmother would be more specific about what had threatened to ruin Sawyer Templeton. It was hard to untie a knot if all you knew was the general length of the rope.

“There were
expectations
of people like your grandfather. And his father before him. There were things one did. And things that one simply did not do. People of our class didn’t mix with...others.” Vivian made a face. “And yes, I know how that sounds. But back then...” Her voice trailed off and she looked away. “I was nineteen when I married Sawyer,” she said after a moment. “He was four years older. I believed that the only thing of importance was fulfilling all of those expectations. But Sawyer... Oh, he was just different. He didn’t care what other people thought. So it was up to me to care.”

“Vivian,” Hayley prompted gently. “You were a young woman in a different time. Nobody here is judging you for anything, except you.”

The pearl clicking got faster. “Now I’m paying the price.”

“My father and Uncle David will come around.” Saying the words helped to remind Hayley, too, that there was always hope they would at least attempt some sort of reconciliation with their estranged mother.

Vivian’s expression was tight. “They wouldn’t accept the photograph albums I put together as Christmas gifts. The albums you said would have some impact.”

“And I still think it would make an impression that you’d preserved so many memories from their childhoods.” She’d put the carefully wrapped boxes containing the albums in her closet so Vivian wouldn’t be constantly reminded of them.

“Yet Carter wouldn’t even come here on Christmas Eve to see his own daughter because I was here,” Vivian said. “He’s more like
me
than he ever was like his father. Unforgiving to the end.”

“Well, the end isn’t here yet,” Hayley countered immediately. “I’ll try talking to Dad again. Remember, you’ve only been in Wyoming for six months. That’s not a lot of time, considering how long it’s been since he and Uncle David both chose to leave Pennsylvania.”

Vivian finally released her pearls, rested her head against the couch cushion, closed her eyes and sighed. “Thatcher left first,” she murmured. “My firstborn. He broke my heart. And then he died in that horrible skiing accident and I never had a chance to tell him I loved him.”

“Vivian.” Hayley moved from her chair to sit beside her grandmother and gently took her beringed hand in hers. “You will still have time to tell your family that you love them.”

Vivian slowly opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. “I’m an old woman. I don’t have forever to wait, dear. I’m closer to the end than I want to think about.”

Hayley wasn’t going to deny the basic fact of her grandmother’s age. “The same thing can be said of any of us. Life is never a given—not for anyone, regardless of their age. The fact that Thatcher died when he was a young man is proof of that. So the point is to act while you can.

“Maybe we haven’t gotten through to my father and Uncle David yet. But
please
don’t let that stop you from getting out there and living your life right now. You have to stop hiding yourself here in my house. I know how different Weaver is from what you’re used to. But I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve gotten out and about with me. The only thing you do is walk around the block each morning. Do you stop to say hello to anyone?”

“You don’t understand.”

Hayley squeezed Vivian’s hand. “Then help me understand.”

“You’re very much like my dear Arthur,” Vivian murmured.

Hayley knew that Arthur Finley had been the last of her grandmother’s four husbands. That before his death, he’d been the one to encourage her to mend the long-standing rift between her and her sons. “I would have liked to have known him. I’d like to think my dad and Uncle David would have, too.”

“They would have just accused me of causing his death, too,” Vivian said tiredly. She finally looked at Hayley. “That’s what they always blamed me for. Driving Sawyer to his suicide.”

Hayley absorbed that, trying not to show her shock.

Not once had she ever heard her father say anything about the death of his father. “Arthur died of cancer. You told me that months ago. They can’t very well blame that on you. And suicide is—”

“Sawyer did
not
commit suicide,” Vivian said flatly. “He died in an automobile accident when your father was only a baby. Sawyer was terribly upset with
me
as usual, but he never would have abandoned his children, no matter what they grew up to believe.”

“How would they have even gotten the idea of suicide?”

“Because Thatcher was convinced. When he was sixteen, he found the accident report. It had never been made public. The benefits of wealth and influence.” The soft lines in her face seemed even more prominent. “Sawyer’s car ran off an embankment. The cause behind that was never established. But Thatcher drew his own youthful conclusions.”

Vivian had once run through her litany of husbands and Hayley quickly calculated. “Was this before or after your second husband died?”

“Just after Theodore died.” Vivian’s lips twisted. “Thatcher was hardly upset about
that
. He’d never gotten along with Theodore and certainly didn’t grieve his death. I can’t blame him for that, though. I hardly got along with Theodore. Our marriage was mostly convenience. I had three young sons. I needed a husband to help raise them, and he was suitable. And he liked marrying into the Templeton money.”

“Whether Thatcher liked him or not, Theodore was still a father figure for your sons. Grieving or not, his death undoubtedly affected Thatcher, too. As well as his brothers. Teen years are impressionable ones.”

Vivian didn’t respond to that, instead choosing to return to the subject of Jane and Casey’s wedding. “You should have a proper date for the wedding tomorrow.”

“I have a proper date.” Hayley lifted Vivian’s hand and lightly kissed the back of it. Because she’d learned more details about Vivian’s life when her dad was a child in the past ten minutes than in the entirety of her grandmother’s six-month stay, Hayley knew better than to push Vivian where she didn’t yet want to go. So she rose to her feet and gave her grandmother a steady look. “And I’m expecting her not to stand me up. For one thing, I would very much like a chance to introduce her to more of my friends.” She hesitated, and then dangled some actual bait. “One in particular.”

Vivian eyed her. “The young man who surprised you with lunch even after you’d cancelled your dinner date?”

Hayley nodded. She was too adult to acknowledge the giddy curl inside her, but that didn’t stop it from happening. “Seth knows Casey from Cee-Vid. He’ll be at the wedding.” And the reception, though she didn’t bring herself to offer up that piece of information. A comment about saving a dance was one thing. Actually having it come to pass was another. “If you really do want to meet him, it will be a good opportunity.”

Vivian pursed her lips. “You’re pretty good at maneuvering people where you want them.”

Hayley’s eyebrows shot up and she let out a dismissive laugh. “If only, Vivian. I would be having a much easier time not just with my family, but with some of my patients.” She leaned over and picked up her discarded shoes. “The wedding’s not until four. I’ll be coming and going for most of the morning, but I’ll be here to get you at three. Agreed?”

Vivian let out a put-upon sigh. “Fine.” She slowly pushed herself off the couch and the diamonds on her hand winked in the lamplight. “I know it wouldn’t be white tie at that hour, but will a cocktail dress suffice?”

Hayley nearly chewed her tongue in half to keep from laughing because her grandmother was obviously serious. “Um, sure,” she managed. If Vivian had spent more time getting to know some people around town, she never would have had to ask the question. Around Weaver, jeans were de rigueur, even at a wedding. “But anything you would wear to church would be just fine, too,” she assured her grandmother. Frankly, the clothes that Vivian wore every day around the house were more formal than what most of the local guests would undoubtedly be wearing. “You’re going to be fine, no matter what, Vivian. Trust me.”

“And what about you? Did you finally get your dress from the seamstress?”

“Isabella Clay,” Hayley confirmed. Casey’s cousin-in-law had made the dresses for the wedding party, including the bride’s. “I managed to get over to her place this afternoon to pick it up.”

“And?”

“It’s lovely.” Isabella had once been a costume designer for a ballet company in New York. And Hayley had gotten to know her when she’d been counseling her now-adopted son, Murphy. “Even you will approve. Come on.” She took her grandmother’s hand. “I’ll show you. And you can help me decide what I need to do with my hair.”

The pleasure on Vivian’s face was worth putting off going to bed for a little while longer.

* * *

Seth stood outside the Weaver Community Church, watching people file through the open front door to attend Casey and Jane’s wedding. The last time he’d worn a tie had been with his dress uniform before he’d left the rangers, and the pale silver one he wore now felt confining. He kept wanting to tug it loose, but a lifetime of self-discipline kept him from doing so.

The wedding was supposed to start at four and it was nearly that now. He and Casey had spent a lot of long hours together inside the cavernous communications center hidden away in the center of the Cee-Vid building where they watched over the safety of Hollins-Winword agents and assets all around the world. Casey had invited him to the wedding, so Seth had agreed. But he couldn’t say he’d had any burning desire to actually go rub elbows with the couple.

No. The draw now wasn’t his buddy the groom or the bride. It was the maid of honor. Which in turn was the reason why going inside the church was now a problem.

He was an invited guest and had a reasonable excuse for being there. But he’d also been essentially warned away from Hayley by his boss.

He’d spent the past four days arguing with himself over that call from Tristan. Assuring himself that his interest in Hayley wasn’t increasing exponentially because of her interactions with McGregor.

He was pretty sure it wasn’t.

But he knew himself. As a ranger, he’d always gone a hundred and ten percent above the call to succeed. Working with Hollins-Winword wasn’t any different. He believed in justice, and at times getting there wasn’t a pretty thing.