Secret Sisters (9 page)

Madeline held her breath. She knew everyone else in the vicinity was doing the same. For one tense moment it looked as if Xavier might not take the face-saving way out that was being offered. Something dark and menacing flared in his eyes.

But he did not lose control.

Ignoring Jack's extended hand, he rolled to his feet and dusted
himself off. For a split second his features twisted into a mask of raw fury. But in the next instant he was suddenly smiling his neon-bright smile.

“Clumsy bastard, aren't you?” he said in a chatty tone. “You might want to be careful in the future. There are a lot of dangerous places on Cooper Island. We usually lose a couple of tourists every year.” He turned back to Madeline. “I'll catch up with you later, Maddie. It will be fun, hmm? I hear you recently inherited your grandmother's hotel chain. Nice.”

He walked away without a backward glance and vanished through the tavern doorway.

Madeline realized that she was shivering with reaction. She dropped onto the vinyl seat and reached for her wine. Jack sat down, watching her intently. Everyone else in the room suddenly went back to whatever they had been doing, but the conversations were a little louder than they had been prior to the small, tense scene.

“Are you all right?” Jack asked quietly.

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you. But I'm afraid it isn't over.”

“No,” Jack said. “Guys like that can't let anything go.”

Madeline gulped a little wine and put the glass down very carefully. “This is not good, Jack. I appreciate what you did, believe me, but now you've made yourself a target.”

“That was pretty much the point of the exercise,” Jack said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Madeline sat on the edge of the bed and watched Jack prowl through her room, checking the locks on the windows and the door. Satisfied, he went to the connecting door that separated his room from hers and opened it.

“You've had a long day,” he said. “Try to get some sleep.”

“Sure,” she said. She knew she wasn't going to get much sleep, but there was no good reason to whine about it.

“I'll leave this door ajar,” he said. “If I hear anything that doesn't sound right in your room, I'll come in and check, okay?”

“Okay.” She made a face. “No, it's not okay. I'm worried, Jack.”

“About Xavier Webster?”

“About you. Xavier looked like he had some control tonight, but the thing is, he was always sneaky as a kid. I told you, he rarely got caught. Now that he's an adult I've got a hunch that he's probably even better at hiding in the shadows.”

Jack contemplated her for a long moment.

“This isn't the first time I've dealt with a bastard like Xavier Webster,” he said finally. “Let me do my job.”

She winced. “Sorry. Didn't mean to imply you don't know what you're doing. It's just that guys like Xavier are scary.”

“And you don't like feeling that you need someone else to protect you. It makes you feel vulnerable.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Everyone is vulnerable to something. The trick is to recognize your own weaknesses and blind spots so that you can come up with a way to protect them. In this case you did the smart thing and brought in a professional. That's what smart people do when they're facing situations outside their sphere of competence.”

She smiled. “Do you have to give that lecture to every client?”

“Only the stubborn ones.”

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night.”

He went into the other room and pulled the door almost but not quite shut behind him.

She held it together all the while she was getting ready for bed. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and changed into her nightgown without losing it. She wrapped the B&B's complimentary robe around herself, tied the sash, and turned out the lights.

By the time she was ready, the other room had gone silent and dark. Evidently Jack's nightly routine was more efficient than hers. The stillness that seeped through the narrow opening between their rooms made her wonder if he was already fast asleep.

She went to the window and pulled the drapes aside. From where she stood she could see the lights of the Webster family compound crowning the cliffs on one side of the cove. The windows of the sprawling main house and both guest cottages were illuminated.

The Aurora Point Hotel loomed on the opposite cliffs, dark ruins of a haunted past.

She thought about the shock of finding Tom dying; her panicky
flight up the service stairs, fleeing an unseen killer; and the decision to summon Jack to Cooper Island. She pondered the fact that her best friend from childhood might be in mortal danger. And then she thought about how Jack had made himself the target of a man who was probably a dangerous sociopath. Last of all she made herself consider the possibility that someone had murdered Edith Chase.

And she knew that it was all her fault. The past was coming back to haunt all of them because of her. Tears burned in her eyes.

She turned away from the dark view and headed toward the bathroom. At the very least she could do the decent thing and spare Jack the sound of a weeping woman. He was dealing with enough problems as it was.

Inside the bathroom she closed the door, turned on the light, and sank down on the cold side of the white porcelain tub. She grabbed a fluffy towel off the rack and buried her face in the thick cotton.

She gave herself up to the tears. It was not the first time she had cried alone since Edith Chase's death.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jack waited for the bathroom door to open again. When it didn't, he systematically ran through the various explanations for the unnatural silence in the next room. He could think of only two or three logical possibilities—illness, an anxiety attack, or tears. He figured he could eliminate illness because there had been no flushing of the toilet and no water running in the sink. That left the anxiety attack theory or tears. Madeline had a right to either or both.

She wasn't pacing the floor. He concluded that ruled out the anxiety attack. Tears, then.

Damn.

He waited a moment longer. When the bathroom door still failed to reopen, he pushed aside the covers and sat up on the edge of the bed. There was a hotel robe in the bathroom, but he never actually felt dressed in a robe. When you were dealing with a client, it was generally a good idea to keep your clothes on.

He got to his feet and reached for his trousers. He took his time stepping into them, hoping that the bathroom door would open. It didn't. He collected the shoulder holster and the gun. Accessories made
the outfit, he reminded himself. Also, he had a policy when it came to weapons—if he was convinced that the job required one, he made sure it was always close at hand.

Satisfied that he met the minimum sartorial requirements, he pushed the connecting door open and went into the other room. The bed had been turned down but was otherwise undisturbed. There was enough moonlight to reveal the little chocolate on the pillow.

He paused halfway across the room and listened closely. Still no sound from the bathroom. If Madeline was crying, she was doing it very quietly.

He braced himself and reluctantly knocked on the door.

“Everything okay in there?” he asked.

There was a short silence from the other side.

“Yes. Fine.”

Madeline's voice was tight and hoarse. He tried to figure out where to go next. There was nothing in the Detecting for Dummies manual that covered these situations. It wasn't the first time he'd dealt with a client who broke down in tears, but such events usually occurred in an office setting. There was a reason he had made the executive decision not to take divorce and missing-person cases; a reason why he had skewed his career toward corporate security since leaving the FBI consulting work.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, for lack of anything more inventive.

“No.” There were some sniffs. “Please go away. I'm okay. Just tired.”

He heard water splash in the sink.

“Are you wearing a robe?” he asked.

There was a pause from the other side of the door.

“Why?” Deep suspicion underlined the single word.

“Because I think we should talk, and it's never a good idea to have conversations with an undressed client.”

“Oh, for pity's sake.” She yanked open the door. Her face was flushed and a little blotchy from the crying jag. Her hair was down around her shoulders and somewhat damp from the hasty cold-water splash. But she was in full command of herself. Irritation sharpened her glare. “I told you, there's nothing wrong.” She stopped, taking in the sight of him standing in the shadows. “You're dressed.”

“Well, sure. Like I said, there's a rule about being dressed while engaging in conversations with clients.”

She surprised him with a misty but real smile. “We in the hotel industry have similar rules. Sorry. Didn't mean to make you think there was a major crisis going on over here. You can go back to bed now.”

She started to take a step forward but stopped abruptly when she noticed the holster and gun in his hand.

“I didn't know you brought a gun,” she said.

She looked a little nonplussed, as if she wasn't quite sure where to go with the observation.

“You said you thought someone had been murdered,” he reminded her.

“Right. Okay.”

He could almost see her making the decision not to question the weapon.

“I'd better let you get to bed,” he said. “As you pointed out earlier, it has been a very long day.”

“Yes.”

He couldn't think of anything else to say. There was no excuse to hang around in her room for another minute. But he did not want to leave.

He turned away, checked the lock on the door again, and walked resolutely toward the entrance to his room.

“Jack? Thanks for everything you've done today.”

“It's my job.”

She gave him a wan smile. “I know.”

He couldn't take it any longer. He did not want her gratitude any more than he wanted to be the guy who vetted her potential dates. He went into his own room, leaving the connecting door just slightly ajar.

He stood there for a while, listening. She did not go to bed. He heard her move back to the window. He knew that she was just standing there, looking out into the darkness.

And he was suddenly very sure what she was thinking. He had been there more than once.

He opened the door again. She was at the window, as he had known, her arms folded, her hands tucked into the long sleeves of her robe.

“Don't,” he said.

She turned her head. “What?”

“Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault, not any of it. Not Lomax's murder. Not the fact that your friend may be in danger. Not that scene with Xavier Webster tonight. Not the decisions your grandmother made eighteen years ago. None of it is your fault.”

She watched him very steadily. “I feel like I'm standing at the center of a slow-burning fire that was ignited by what happened all those years ago.”

“We're going to put out the flames.”

“Jack—”

He set the holstered gun on the table and moved toward her. Carefully, remembering her reaction to the way Xavier had grabbed her up out of her seat, he rested his hands on her shoulders. She did not flinch or pull away.

“You and I are going to figure out what is going on, and then we're going to make it stop,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

He smiled. “And in return, you will never again ask me to vet one of your dates.”

She shook her head, reluctantly amused. “That really irritated you, didn't it?”

“A hell of a lot more than I anticipated.”

“Why?”

“Probably because there's a conflict of interest involved. When this is over I want to be your next date. If you say yes, you're going to have to ask someone else to do the background check.”

He waited for some indication of anger or simple surprise.

She stilled. In the shadows her eyes were unreadable.

“You were right,” she said.

“About what?”

“I was relieved to get that negative report on William Fleming. If you hadn't come up with the dirt I would have had to find a polite way to break off the relationship. You got me off the hook. Which means I used you. I apologize.”

“No apology needed.”

“Yes, there is. Because for the past three months I've been wondering what you would say if I asked you out on a date.”

The shock slammed through him. He slid his hands upward to cup her face. She made no move to resist.

“I would have said yes,” he said.

“That's good to know. I'm sorry that things have gotten so complicated.”

“You really do need to stop apologizing. A good executive never apologizes.”

“That is one theory of management,” she agreed. “I'm not sure I subscribe to it.”

“Either way, the complications don't matter.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm in the business of fixing complications, remember?”

She slipped her hands out from the sleeves of the robe and touched his jaw with one finger.

“How could I forget?” she whispered.

He kissed her carefully, a first-date kiss intended to invite and seduce. It was a kiss designed to reassure, a kiss meant to send the message that she was safe with him. She had been through so much. The last thing she needed was a sexual encounter that she might regret in the morning. The last thing he wanted was to be the source of that regret.

Her response was cautious at first. He expected that.

What he didn't expect was the way the simmering heat between them erupted with the fierce energy of summer lightning. The kiss plunged into the red zone with little warning. Madeline's hands became small claws on his shoulders. Her mouth was hot and wet. She shivered in his arms, gasped for air, and pressed herself against him.

With a near-violent effort, he tore his mouth free.

“This is not a good idea,” he managed.

She didn't seem to hear him at first. Then she froze. He could literally feel the chill that swept through her. He gently set her away from him.

“A bad couple of days at Black Rock, remember?” He raised his hand and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “You need sleep.”

She took a step back, folded her arms very tightly once again, and hid her hands inside the long terry-cloth sleeves. He could not read her there in the shadows—couldn't tell if she was hurt or embarrassed—but either way he was pretty sure he had screwed up.

“You're right,” she said. She was clearly back in control. Her brittle smile held a steely edge. “This was a huge mistake. And it was my fault.”

“Don't start,” he warned.

“I apologize for putting you into such an awkward situation. You
were trying to comfort me and I attempted to take advantage of your good intentions.”

“That is not what was happening here.”

“I hope you won't feel it necessary to terminate our contract; however, I will understand if you do. If you elect to depart, I would appreciate a referral to another security firm, one you feel can handle a job like this one.”

Outrage sparked through him. “Are you trying to fire me again?”

“No. You seem to have gotten a handle on this case very quickly. Besides, I don't look forward to going through another learning curve with a different security expert.”

“I don't know what you think you're doing here,” he said, “but let's cut out the heavy drama.”

“You started it with all that crap about not taking advantage of me,” she said.

That stung.

“It's the damned truth,” he said. “I was trying to do what was best for you under the circumstances.”

“As I recall, you don't want to be the messenger when it comes to my personal life, remember?”

“That decision has got nothing to do with this situation.”

“I disagree,” she said, very crisp and sure now. “The deal is that you will no longer be advising me on the suitability of the men I'm interested in dating. That means you will not make decisions for me regarding your own suitability.”

“This is crazy.”

“You may, of course, make your own decisions about the wisdom of getting involved in a personal relationship with me,” she said.

“No shit.”

“It was a kiss, Jack. I was in the mood and evidently you were, too.
It was your decision to end it and I can respect that. But do not try to tell me you did it for my own good. Is that clear?”

“This is what I get for trying to play the gentleman?”

“No, this is what you get for pissing me off,” she said.

“Fine. Next time this happens I won't worry about whether going to bed with you is a good idea.”

“Excellent. That would seem to settle things, then. Apparently you're not going to terminate our contract and I'm not going to fire you, so I'll see you in the morning.”

“Right.” He collected the holstered gun and went to the doorway of his room. There he stopped and turned his head to look at her. “Out of sheer morbid curiosity, do you get involved in arguments like this a lot with your dates?”

“Nope, this was a first.” She gave him a bright, victorious smile. “And I must say, it did wonders for my mood. I feel a lot better now than I did twenty minutes ago.”

“That is a damned frightening thought.”

“Sort of cathartic, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, glad it was good for you.”

He was astonished by how much professional control he was forced to summon to resist the temptation to slam the door on the way out of her room.