OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 (8 page)

Keeley traced the carefully set pattern, the stone daisies she and Mary had formed, then pushed deep into the soft sod during one of their early visits to the grave.

Mary had been right … about so many things.

In the days before she’d left the Sudan, Keeley had come across a mother burying the last of her four children in a shallow, dusty grave beside the road leading out of Darfur. Keeley closed her eyes against the pain of remembering.

So many dead, and with them gone, so much lost: the innocence and joy of children, the love and nurturing of women, the lore and stories of the elderly, the hope and power of so many young men.

So much killing …

Mothers left with no time to grieve. Or with no grief left in a soul battered by it. Children, women, the elders: in the Sudan, they were fresh meat to the brutal Janjaweed militias who arrived without warning and slaughtered without cause.

With only minutes to spare before forced relocation, the child’s burial was a hasty roadside affair lacking ritual or tradition, attended by only a fragmented group of people whose homes and hearts were too damaged and shocked by the raid—and their own losses—to speak.

Keeley had knelt beside that mother—as she was kneeling now beside her mother’s grave—her psyche numbed by the hunger, pain, and horrific violence of her final weeks in Africa. She’d picked up a handful of stones, and while the mother watched vacantly, she formed a stone daisy over the child’s grave.

Another woman, then another, joined to form a silent circle around the shallow little grave. Each made a flower, each touched the shoulder of the grieving mother. Each then shuffled toward the dust of the road and into an unknown future.

Kneeling in St. Ivan’s well-tended graveyard, Keeley’s vision blurred; her mother’s grave became a thousand graves, graves solitary and long forgotten, left to the sand and soil, embraced only by earth, wind, and fire.

She bowed her head and prayed, first for the mothers of Darfur, then for the nameless child by the side of the road.

With the memories came pain and a surging sea of regret.

She should have done more, so much more, instead she’d been weak, sabotaged and made useless by her own fractured nerves, finally told to go home. A right decision, but her failure all the same.

She stood and looked down at the grave.

In the past, Keeley Farrell, that’s all in the past. Let it go. Let it go.

Her life was here now, doing Mary’s work, helping one person at a time, loving one person at a time, and making sure the doors of Mayday House remained open to the women who needed sanctuary.

It might be a small thing, but it was her calling, and she’d give it everything she had in her to give.

Gus strode out of the bank, enough cash in his jeans to tide him over while he was in Erinville—which he hoped wouldn’t be too long.

As usual the amount of money in the account made him uneasy. Over a million and a half. Hell, he might as well stuff the cash under his mattress for all the thought he gave it. He’d worked his butt off—literally—for years to get it, and now he had no idea what to do with it. In the beginning it was for Josh.

And to open the road to April.

If there was even a chance Hagan knew anything about his sister, Gus had no choice; he had to act on it. The last time he’d seen her she was nine and he was eleven. Since then, no matter how much time he put in, how much money he spent, he’d found no trace of her.

How the hell Hagan learned about his missing sister was anybody’s guess, but he’d put his money on Cassie. She’d probably been through his bank statements, picked up on the funds funneled to private investigators from a time he couldn’t risk returning to Seattle to look for April himself. No giant leap for Hagan to take it from there.

Gus’s stomach clenched. If that son of a bitch was lying about what he knew, he was a bigger fool than Gus pegged him for—and he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.

When Gus stopped being Dinah’s paid plaything a while back, and went into the personal security business, he’d made more money than he’d ever figured he would. It seemed the rich and paranoid were willing to pay plenty for a bodyguard who looked good in a tux and had the ability to take out a man’s eye with a knife from fifty feet.

Yeah, he’d made more than enough for himself and Josh, and in the last couple of years, enough to hire the best of the best to look for April. All of which had netted him zero, leaving him coldly furious and dangerously frustrated. Feelings that had worsened since his return to Seattle. Being on the other side of the country made it easier to forget—at least intermittently. Here on the coast, the memories roared back.

Pushing thoughts of his failure aside, he walked out of the bank into a cool misty day and headed up the street to where he’d parked his Jag.

He wasn’t happy getting tangled up in Dinah’s life again, even if it was to save her sophisticated ass.

But if she was in trouble …

He cursed himself, pushed thoughts of Dinah aside.

Damn it, this job wasn’t about her—or the crazy nun—it was about finding April. He unlocked his Jag, got in, and shoved the extra cash into the duffel bag in the back seat of the car.

Fifteen minutes later he was heading southeast on the road to Erinville.

Lightly scratching the scar on his jaw, Gus turned his mind to the problem at hand which was how to find out what was going on at Mayday House, while lying through his teeth to a woman who had a pair of lie detectors for eyes.

Dinah was right about one thing: his male “attributes” weren’t going to help with Farrell. Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t give them a try.

Even if he wouldn’t touch that nun with a barge pole.

Dinah Marsden drank the last of her morning coffee, her thoughts divided between the unceasing ache left by Gus’s absence and the drone of Cassie’s voice telling her about her schedule.

“… the opera tonight with the Smythes and the Uriens—”

“Who in hell are the Uriens?” Dinah snapped, forcing herself to the matter at hand.

Cassie, sitting across from her at the breakfast table, flipped through Dinah’s schedule. “Friends of the Smythes and the Connellys. You met them at the AIDS fund-raiser in March?” Cassie looked at her in that irritatingly quizzical way she used when she knew damn well Dinah had no idea what she was talking about—but should. It was an expression she used more and more of late.

Dinah made an impatient hand-it-over gesture with her fingers, and Cassie shoved the schedule across the table.

Dinah read, then shook her head. “I have no idea who these people are.” And it made her nervous. People made jokes about senior moments. Although what was funny about forgetting things, forgetting seriously important people, she’d never know. One thing was obvious; all the cosmetic surgery in the world didn’t stop brain seepage. She pushed the book back across the glass-topped table toward Cassie. “Check them out, will you?”

When Cassie nodded, took a bite from her toast, and picked up the novel she’d set beside her plate, Dinah added, “Now, Cassie.”

She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “Of course,” she said and gave Dinah that increasingly common dead-fish look of hers that said nothing and everything. She started to get up.

Dinah shot out a hand and closed it over hers. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Cassie. Sit down. Finish your breakfast.” She forced a smile, tamping down her edgy impatience, a feeling that dogged her more and more of late. “The Urine can wait.”

“It’s Urien, Dinah.”

“What a difference an E makes!” she quipped, receiving only a faint smile in response.

Rodina came in and filled both their coffee cups.

“Oh… I remember now,” Dinah said, relieved. “Miles and Bunny Urien. Construction. He’s building the Balustrada Towers at the other end of South Beach. She’s director of the Canterby Foundation. Something to do with illiteracy.” Both of them worth knowing. She sighed. Which didn’t change the fact that she hated opera, or that she hated her life— since Gus had walked out of it.

I wonder who he’s fucking….

Her stomach curled, and the hand she used to reach for her coffee shook. No. She wouldn’t think about that, couldn’t bear the images evoked. She’d been a fool to let him go. There must have been a way to hold him. Keep him.

He’d called only once, and typical Gus, the message left with Rodina was terse: he’d seen the nun “with no results.” And he’d see her again when he could. The “when he could” part pissed her off. But then he didn’t know that every day that nun spent in Mayday House brought Dinah closer to disaster, and she didn’t intend to tell him.

She cursed herself for the stupid whim that had caused her to involve him in this nasty bit of business in the first place, but looking back, why she did it was pathetically clear. It was rich-bitch Dinah Marsden’s twist on the old I-forgot-my-sweater trick, concocting a reason to contact him again, because she’d been terrified that when he left Miami, she’d lose him forever—a man who to this day she knew absolutely nothing about, other than how marvelous he was in bed. From day one her questions about his past met with rigid, unyielding silence and, truth be told, she hadn’t much cared. Pasts, as she well knew, often deserved to be forgotten—certainly hers did.

Then a couple of months after he’d come to live with her, he’d told her he needed new names and birth certificates for him and Josh, his little brother. It was the first of only two times he’d asked her for anything, and she’d complied, no questions asked. Not that asking would have done any good. Gus kept to Gus. Had in the beginning and had in the end.

Which made her even more of a fool for trusting him with Mayday House, something so critical it could destroy her life.

She hadn’t started out being a fool for him, had simply thought she’d procured a young, energetic lover, a plaything, someone she could control. Then one day everything changed; Gus changed—like all self-protective chameleons do. It amused her now to think she’d ever thought she controlled Gus Hammond.

She remembered the exact day when he took control. It was the day that stupid bitch, Idona, had asked to borrow him—for the fifth time. Dinah had said yes, afraid even then to admit her growing feelings for him—but, God, he was so beautiful, so maddeningly detached, so deliciously fuckable, yet always filled with that strange dark pride, that incredible inner assurance. Like a tall young king he was—even when she began sharing him with her friends. At first it was a lark, a way of proving she didn’t care, and a means of attacking that frustrating, untouchable pride of his that drove her crazy.

When she’d make a date for him, he’d given her one of his cool dark totally inscrutable looks, and said, “Where and when?” Never who, because the who didn’t matter.

Until Idona. Twice as wealthy as Dinah and ten years younger, she’d wanted to keep Gus, had asked him to move in with her, promised him the moon, and a few million stars to match. Dinah pulled in a breath; even now that moment of truth paralyzed her. When she’d confronted Gus, accused him of disloyalty, he’d looked at her, his eyes cold and unforgiving. “You’re the one with all the hot friends, Dinah. Me? I go along for the ride. Or should I say rides? You want exclusive, say so.”

She’d said “so” and he’d set out his conditions. No sex unless they both wanted it. A college fund for Josh, and night school classes for him—college after that. And no hassles when he chose to leave.

That was the day she’d fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love with Gus Hammond.

And if she was going to get him back, she’d have to take care of the nun and Mayday House herself—or at least help things along. She had a hunch who the nun was, but who the hell would have thought she’d show up now, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible place—that horrible old house.

Taking in another breath, she decided not to dwell on it, or the stupid nun.

Gus wasn’t so easy to put out of her mind. At least he hadn’t taken the escort job she’d sent his way. Okay, maybe she had been testing him, but dear God, she was happy he’d passed.

He’d been gone over two weeks, and it was like missing every second beat of her heart. She’d sworn she wouldn’t call, that she’d have more pride than that—but she had called. Hadn’t connected either time. And now here she was, a busy day to be scheduled, and all she could think about was Gus.

She was suddenly, abruptly, and absolutely goddamn tired of thinking about him. She needed to hear his voice.

“Cassie, get Gus on the phone, will you?”

Cassie, her nose, as usual, buried in one of her paperbacks, lifted her head and gave her another fish-eyed stare, thick with disapproval. “You sure?”

“Sure about what? Whether my pride can take it when he tells me to get lost?”

At first Cassie didn’t answer, her tight expression saying it all; then she said, “He’s all wrong for you, Dinah. You know that. He’s across the country. Let him be.”

Cassie was right, of course. Gus was the last man on earth she should care about. For one thing there was the age difference. Twenty-four years was twenty-four years no matter how many times she went under the knife. She was old enough to be his mother, Josh’s grandmother. Fuck!

“Just get him on the phone, will you?”
Because if I don’t talk to him, I’m going to go crazy.

“Okay, if that’s what you want.” Cassie sighed, put down her book, and picked up the phone.

Dinah waited, tried to be cool, tried not to count the seconds until the call went through.

After what seemed forever, Cassie clicked off.

“Well?”

“There’s a message on his home voice mail, says he’ll be gone a week, maybe more, and to leave a message.”

A week or more. No way. She couldn’t bear it.

“Try his cell.”

Cassie dialed again. Listened. “Same message.”

“Check my schedule, see when I have a few days free. And if you can’t find any, make some,” she said, getting to her feet.

“Dinah … don’t.” Cassie’s face managed to look sympathetic and disapproving at the same time.

“Don’t what? Follow the man I love like some kind of aging rock groupie?”
Don’t hurt like a young
girl who’s lost her first love? Don’t be a foolish old woman who can’t accept an “I don’t love you.” as final?