Stolen Seduction (33 page)

flopped onto the couch next to Hailey in the tiny cabin of the boat and placed a hand on her stomach

with a groan.

“Do you still get seasick?” Hailey asked with a frown, secretly happy for the interruption. She

didn’t like where her thoughts were going. And she didn’t want Shane to be right. “I thought you’d

outgrown that. Remember the time we sailed up Lake Worth and you puked all over the settee in

Daddy’s new boat?”

“Yeah, I do,” Nicole tossed back, trying to get comfortable and looking miserable. “And thanks for

reminding me of that fun memory. Though it does explain why you got the deed to Daddy’s boat,

and I didn’t.”

“I’m sure if he thought you’d wanted the boat, he’d have left it for you.”

“Yeah, right,” Nicole muttered.

Hailey glanced up the steps. “You’d do better up there where you can see the horizon, rather than

down here.”

“No, thank you. Your boyfriend’s biting everyone’s head off. I didn’t particularly want to watch Billy deck him.”

Twisted as it was, the thought of that warmed a cold space in Hailey’s chest. Right about now she’d

pay money to see Billy take a swing at Shane.

“What happened between the two of you, anyway?” Nicole asked.

Hailey’s smile faded. “Nothing.” Nothing she was going to get into with Nicole, anyway. Nothing

she was going to remember herself, either. If he didn’t want her, well…she wasn’t going to force

herself on him. She had more self-respect than that.

Nicole obviously knew a dead end when she saw one, because they sat in silence, the water lapping

the hull and the distant muffled conversation from above the only sounds in the small salon. Having

Nicole here was more than a little odd. And the fact her sister had suddenly decided to work with

Hailey instead of against her was the biggest shocker of them all. Had Nicole finally matured? Or

was that Billy’s influence?

“Nicole,” Hailey said hesitantly, not sure if she should delve into this topic but needing to regardless, “about Billy—”

“What about him?”

How could she put this delicately? “He matters to me. Even though Rafe and I aren’t married anymore, he’s family, and because of that, I know he puts on a front, but he’s got a big heart underneath. I don’t want to see him get hurt. If you’re just toying with him—”

“For your information, he used me. And just so you know, I’m the one who’ll probably get hurt in

this when it’s over, so there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

The defensiveness in Nicole’s tone told Hailey her sister was being serious. But it was the worry on

her face that suggested Hailey had misread the entire situation. “You’ve…fallen for him.”

Nicole flicked her a look. “Yeah, right.” Then focused on her hands. Shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Not maybe. Definitely.”

“And you don’t like that, do you?”

Hailey thought about Nicole giving her the numbers last night and figuring out the coordinates of

the island and the way Billy had stepped in without being asked and arranged all of Teresa’s funeral

plans so Rafe didn’t have to. She also remembered the way Billy had been torn between coming

with them today and staying in San Juan and how he’d only agreed to tag along once Rafe had

made him go. If Nicole was the reason Billy and Rafe were finally going to get their relationship

back on even ground, then maybe her hanging around with Billy wasn’t such a bad thing after all. “I

didn’t before. Now…I’m undecided.”

“I’m so excited,” Nicole muttered, sounding put out, but looking like she was greatly relieved.

“Why weren’t you at the will reading?”

Nicole didn’t seem surprised by the question, and she shrugged, focusing on a spot halfway across

the floor. “Wasn’t invited.”

“What do you mean, not invited?”

“I mean, our mother didn’t bother to tell me when it was. She didn’t want me involved in this little

race. Though she was more than happy to take my sculpture when I came back.”

“She’s collecting them, too?”

“Not for the same reason you are. She’s destroying the ones she gets her hands on.”

Hailey’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know this?”

Nicole pinned her sister with a look, the same one she’d given as a teenager whenever Hailey had

come home from college and tried to make nice between the two of them. “I’m not as brainless as

everyone thinks.”

“I don’t think you’re brainless, Nicole. Flighty, maybe, but not brainless.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “Did it ever occur to you that a lot of it was an act? Yeah, I like to have a

good time, but I graduated college with a 4.0 GPA. I know as much about Roarke Resorts as you do,

but not from working there, from studying and paying attention. Did you know that all those years

you were trying to get away from Daddy and the hotels, I was just trying to get him to give me a

chance? I finally quit because it was obvious he wasn’t interested and I was sick of hearing ‘No,

Nicole, you’re not ready.’ Sheesh, getting into Harvard’s MBA program first try didn’t even impress

him. So I didn’t go. Instead I did what they seemed to expect of me. I left and I partied and I had a

good time.”

Hailey stared at Nicole, for the first time seeing her as something other than the spoiled younger sister. Suddenly, Nicole’s outlandish behavior made sense. All these years, while Hailey thought she’d

been taking advantage of their father, Nicole had been doing exactly what a five-year-old did when

she couldn’t get someone to notice her. She pushed and prodded and got into all kinds of trouble because even negative attention was better than nothing at all.

“I didn’t know any of that,” Hailey said softly.

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Hailey. About me and Mother and Daddy and everyone who works

at RR.”

Hailey was beginning to think that was true. And it was time those things changed. Especially now,

when she was seriously contemplating staying on at RR when all of this was said and done. “So tell

me.”

Nicole’s eyes held hers so long, Hailey wasn’t sure Nicole would confide in her. Then Nicole surprised her and said, “You know Mother wasn’t with Daddy the night he died.”

“I know. She was at her country club at some fund-raiser for cancer research.”

Nicole shook her head. “She wasn’t at any country club. She was with Paul McIntosh. They’ve been

having an affair.”

“What? How do you know this?”

“Because I saw them together. And because I overheard a conversation they had about it.” When

Hailey only stared at her, Nicole added, “There’s that whole brainless bimbo thing. People tend to

forget I’m around.”

Holy…Paul McIntosh was a good twenty years younger than Eleanor Roarke. And for the last year,

Hailey’s father had been trying to get Hailey to go out with Paul in the hopes they’d one day get

married. He was the only non-Roarke executive officer of the company, and it was no secret Garrett

had thought of Paul as the son he’d never had.

There was only one reason Hailey could see for the two of them to be together. And it all circled

back around to her father’s will. She looked at her sister. “Did you give her the number from your

statue?”

Nicole’s lips thinned. “Of course not. I know it’s a horrible thing to say considering she’s our mother and all, but I didn’t trust her. I still don’t. She purposely kept me from Daddy’s will reading so I

couldn’t participate.”

Hailey stood and paced the small salon as thoughts of her mother and Paul swirled. Were they

working together? If so, that explained why she was destroying statues after she found them.

“Something else you should know,” Nicole said. “Remember your little run-in in the elevator at

RR?”

Hailey stopped and looked at her sister. “What about it?”

“It was Paul.”

Hailey had been right. She’d recognized that voice but hadn’t wanted it to be true.

“That means Lucy Walthers is the one who planted your dagger,” Shane said from the steps.

Hailey looked up sharply. He was standing with one foot on the salon floor, one on the step behind

him, both hands braced against the narrow walls, his midnight eyes focused right on her. She hadn’t

heard him come down the steps, but she didn’t miss the bump in her heart or the way the reaction

pissed her off.

She turned her attention to Nicole. “How do you know that?”

“I eavesdropped on a phone conversation when I was home a few days ago. I don’t think Mother intended for you to get arrested, just detained.”

“So I’d be out of the picture while she and Paul looked for the sixth sculpture. But how does Lucy

figure in? And does Mother know about her?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole said.

“Did Lucy kill Bryan?” Shane asked

“Now that,” Nicole said, glancing at Shane, “I don’t know.” She looked back at Hailey. “But it’s

safe to say none of them have been sitting back doing nothing like you thought all this time. Mother

doesn’t have your number or mine, but odds are good she got Graham’s and Bryan’s. And she

knows where Daddy’s island’s located. If she happened to recognize the longitude and latitude coordinates—”

“Then she’s already either been here,” Hailey cut in, “or will be shortly.”

“Yeah,” Nicole said, looking between Hailey and Shane again in a way that told Hailey Shane was

watching her with that heated look and Nicole was more than a little curious what was going on between them. “But here’s the thing I don’t get. Why does she care who runs RR? It won’t affect her.”

“Some people like power,” Shane said.

“No.” Hailey looked around the salon as she remembered arguments she’d overheard her parents

having when she was a child. Eleanor screaming about the hours her father worked at the resort and

how she wasn’t his true love. About how much Eleanor hated that company. Every single person

who worked there.

Slowly, wheels began clicking into place in Hailey’s mind. “She just wants to make sure a Roarke

doesn’t end up running it. Especially one of her children.”

“Murder’s a drastic way to go about it,” Shane said.

A sick feeling settled in Hailey’s stomach. Yeah, it was. But no one in her family ever did anything

that seemed to make a lot of sense.

“Not when you’ve never liked your kids in the first place,” Nicole muttered from the couch. “I never understood why they even had kids. You,” she looked at Hailey, “yeah. I get that. You only have

to do the math to know she was pregnant when they got married. But me? Seven years later? When

it was obvious neither of them enjoyed being a parent? Why bother?”

“I don’t know,” Hailey said. “But lucky for you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

“No,” Nicole said. “Unlucky for her. Because we’re going to find that sixth statue before she does.

And then she’ll be the one answering the questions.”

“Arnold said the plot your father picked for his burial is located on the top of that hill,” Shane said,

pointing across the no-name island that belonged to the Roarke family.

The key was fairly flat, about a mile square, if that, with a small rise covered by a scattering of trees

and shrubs, right in the middle of the landmass. They’d anchored the boat off the east side and had

split up to hike around and take a look at anything out of the ordinary. Billy and Nicole had gone to

the western shore, and Shane and Hailey were taking the east. They planned to meet up somewhere

in the middle.

Hailey held out her cell phone to see if she could catch a signal. The clouds were really piling up

and the sky had taken on a gray color that didn’t look promising. Though the temperatures this far

south didn’t drop drastically, there was a chill to the air.

“Lucky for you I called him back and found out my mother had her lawyers interfere and put a stop

to Daddy being buried here.”

Damn lucky, as far as Shane could see. He’d already contacted Tony and had him phone the Dade

County ME to have Garrett Roarke’s tox screen run again, and he was more than a little thrilled at

the knowledge they weren’t going to have to dig up a dead body after all.

He was also more than a little curious about the reason Eleanor Roarke was so adamant about having her husband cremated when that obviously wasn’t his dying wish.

He followed Hailey through the beach grass. Though she wasn’t ignoring him outright, she’d definitely cooled considerably, and that little spark they’d shared since meeting up again in Chicago

was long gone.

His gaze swept the landscape in an attempt to ignore the sway of her hips or the fit of her jeans or

the way she’d left her hair down this morning to spill blonde, sexy curls around her shoulders.

When she stopped abruptly at the edge of the rise, he nearly ran into her before slamming on his

own brakes.

“I’ve been here before,” she said, glancing around.

“Nicole mentioned your father used to bring you here when you were kids, right?”

“But only a handful of times when he needed space from our mother and brought us sailing. Nicole

used to get seasick, so it didn’t happen often. And on the rare instance he took us, I was left in

charge of Nicole on the beach while he hiked inland for whatever reason.” She glanced toward the

hill. “I don’t ever remember walking in with him, but I’d bet a hundred bucks I’ve stood right here

before.”

The look in her eyes told him not to bet against her.

They picked their way around flowering shrubs and vines until they came to a rock mass on the opposite side of the hill. Shane would have kept walking, but Hailey stopped him with a touch to his

arm. “Wait.”