Strangers In Paradise Page 4

  "Thank you." She didn't look at him; she could feel his gaze slide her way as he drove. She wondered uneasily what he was thinking.

  Rex drove the car up to the house. When they got out, he tossed her the keys, pointing to the house. "Glad you left a night-light on."

  "I didn't know I had," she murmured.

  "What?"

  "Nothing, nothing," she said quickly. But she'd be damned if she could remember leaving lights on. She hadn't even explored the house yet--all she had really seen was the kitchen.

  Rex automatically walked with her up the path to the front door. He frowned, when he saw the window that she had broken.

  "You didn't get that fixed today. You should have."

  "I will." She wondered why she had said it so quickly, so defensively. She didn't owe him any explanations.

  She managed to open the door on the first try, and that was a nice boost to her ego. She turned and smiled at Rex, laughing. "I did it."

  "Yes, you did." he hesitated, wondering if she should invite him in. But then, he didn't want her anywhere near him, and she'd had a miserable night on his account. Still...

  She trembled suddenly, looking down. He was a very attractive man. Tall, dark and--masculine. They were far from friends, yet in their first meeting they had taken a forbidden step toward intimacy. She had taken a step...and she wanted to retreat from it. He was rugged and blunt--a loner. They both wanted privacy. "Thank you," she murmured.

  "You're welcome," he said, staring at her as she went into the house. "I'll pick up that hose for you tomorrow." "I should make the rental agency do it." "It's no big thing."

  She nodded, then realized that she was returning his stare. His eyes were so dark in the night. He was wearing jeans again, and a navy polo shirt. His arms, which were mostly bare, were tanned and nicely muscled.

  She wanted to ask him in. Of all the things that had happened the night before, she remembered the tenderness in his voice and the feeling of his arms as he'd held her. Something warm inside her stirred, something she quickly fought.

  She wasn't ready for a relationship. She might never be ready again in her life.

  She knew he didn't want her here on the peninsula. He had warned her to go--he had even laid odds against her staying. Still, she wanted to see him smile, to hear him laugh. She wanted to know what lay in his past that he would crave this solitude, that could have made him so ruthless when he had first touched her, so gentle when he had realized how terrified she had been.

  "Good night, then. Sleep well, Alexi."

  "Good night, and thanks again."

  Alexi stepped into the house, frowning as she looked around the lighted hallway.

  But then, even as she stared, she heard a little noise-- and the house was plunged into total darkness.

  She didn't scream at first. Her heart shuddered instinctively, but she wasn't really afraid. The Brandywine house had been built in 1859, there could easily be problems with such things as electricity.

  But then she heard the footsteps, loud and clear. They came crashing down the stairway. She could feel the wind.... The stairway was at the other end of the hall, and she was very aware that someone was close--very close-- to her.

  And it certainly wasn't Rex Morrow--not tonight. He had just gone out the front door.

  She did scream then, just like a banshee. Someone had been upstairs. In the house.

  "Alexi!"

  There was a fierce pounding on the front door, and she knew the voice shouting her name belonged to Rex.

  She turned around, groping madly in the darkness and found the lock. The stubborn thing refused to give at first. Where was the person who had made the sound of footsteps? Her scream had cut off all other sound, and now she didn't know if someone was still coming for her in the darkness or if that same someone had bolted on past.

  "Please, please...!" she whispered to the ancient lock, and then, as if it were a cantankerous old man who needed to be politely placated, it groaned and gave.

  She threw the door open. In the darkness she could just barely make out Rex Morrow's starkly handsome features. She nearly pitched herself against him, but then she remembered that the man was basically a hostile stranger, even though she knew Gene held him in the highest regard--and even though she had already clung to him once before.

  She stepped back.

  "Why did you scream?"

  "The lights went out and--"

  "I thought you were a whiz with electricity."

  "I lied--but that's not why I screamed. Someone came running down the stairway." "What?"

  He looked at her so sharply that even in the darkness she felt his probing stare. Did he think that she was lying--or did he believe her all too easily? "I told you--" "Come on."

  He took her hand, his fingers twining tightly around hers, and, with the ease of a cat in the dark, strode toward the parlor. He found the flashlight and cast its beam around. No intruder was there.

  "Where did the...footsteps go?" he whispered huskily. "I--I don't know. I screamed and...I don't know." He brought her back into the hallway and stopped dead. Alexi crashed into his back, banging her nose. She rubbed it, thinking that the man had a nice scent. She remembered it; she would have known him anywhere by it. It was not so much that of an after-shave as that of the simple cleanliness of soap and the sea and the air. He might be hostile, but at least he was clean.

  There was only so much one could expect from neighbors, she decided nervously.

  He walked through the hall to the stairway, paused, then went into the kitchen. The rear door was still tightly locked. "Well, your intruder didn't leave that way, and he didn't exit by the front door," Rex said. His tone was bland, but she could read his thoughts. He had decided that she was a neurotic who imagined things. "I tell you--" she began irately. "Right. You heard footsteps. We'll check the house." "You think he's still in the house?" "No, but we'll check."

  Alexi knew he didn't believe anyone had been there to begin with. "Rex--"

  "All right, all right. I said we'll search. If anyone is here, we'll find him. Or her. Or it."

  He released her hand. Alexi didn't know how nervous she was until she realized that her fingers were still clinging to his. She flushed and turned away from him.

  "Why did the lights go, then?" she demanded.

  "Probably a fuse. Here, hold the flashlight and hang on a second."

  She turned back around to take the flashlight from him. He went straight to the small drawer by the refrigerator, then went toward the pantry.

  "I need more light."

  Alexi followed him and let the beam play on the fuse box. A moment later, the kitchen light came on.

  He looked at her. "Stay here. I'll check out the library and the ballroom and upstairs."

  "Wait a minute!" Alexi protested, shivering.

  "What?"

  Impatiently he stopped at the kitchen door, his hand resting casually against the frame.

  She swallowed and straightened with dignity and tried to walk slowly over to join him.

  "I do read your books," she admitted. "And it's always the hapless idiot left alone while the other goes off to search who winds up...winds up with her throat slit!"

  "Alexi..." he murmured slowly.

  "Don't patronize me!" she commanded him.

  He sighed, looked at her for a moment with a certain incredulity and then started to laugh.

  "Okay. We'll search together. And I'm sorry. I'm not patronizing you. It's just usually so quiet out here that it's hard to imagine..." His voice trailed away, and he shrugged again. "Come on, then."

  Smiling, he offered her his hand. She hesitated, then took it. They returned to the hallway. Alexi nervously played the flashlight beam up the stairway. Rex grinned again and went to the wall, flicking a switch that lit the entire stairway. - "Gene did have a few things done," he told her.

  There were only two other rooms on the ground floor-- except for the little powder room beneath the stairway, w
hich proved to be empty. To the right, behind the parlor, was the library, filled with ancient volumes and wall shelves and even an old running oak ladder reaching to the top shelves. Upon a dais with a wonderful old Persian carpet was a massive desk with a few overstuffed Eastleg chairs around it. Apart from that, the room was empty.

  They crossed behind the stairway to the last room--the “ballroom,'' as Rex called it. It was big, with a dining set at one end with beautiful old hutches flanking it, and a baby grand across the room, toward the rear wall. Two huge paintings hung above the fireplace, one of a handsome blond man in full Confederate dress uniform, the other of a lovely woman in radiant white antebellum costume.

  Forgetting the intruder for a moment, Alexi dropped Rex's hand and walked toward the paintings for a better look.

  "Lieutenant General P. T. Brandy wine and Eugenia,"

  Rex said quietly.

  "Yes, I know," Alexi murmured. She felt a bit awed; she hadn't been in the house since she'd been a small child, but she remembered the paintings, and she felt again the little thrill of looking at people from another day who were her direct antecedents.

  "They say that he's the one who buried the Confederate treasure.''

  "What?" Alexi, forgetting her distant relatives, turned around and frowned at Rex.

  He laughed. "You mean you never heard the story?"

  She shook her head. "No. I mean, I've heard of Pierre and Eugenia. Pierre built the house. But I never heard anything about his treasure."

  He smiled, locking his hands behind his back and casually sauntering into the room to look at the paintings.

  “This area went back and forth during the Civil War like a Ping-Pong ball. The rebels held it one month; the Yankees took it the next. Pierre was one hell of a rebel--but it seems the last time he came home, he knew he wasn't going to make it back again. Somewhere in the house he buried a treasure. He was killed at Gettysburg in '63, and Eugenia never did return here. She went back to her father's house in Baltimore, and her children didn't come back here until the 1880s. Local legend has it that Pierre haunts the place to guard his stash, and the locals on the mainland all swear that it does exist."

  "Why didn't Eugenia come back?" Rex shrugged. “He was a rebel. At the end of the war, Confederate currency wasn't worth the paper it had been printed on. There was no real treasure. Maybe that's the reason that Pierre had to come back to haunt the place."

  Alexi stared at him for a long moment. There seemed to be a glitter of mischief in his eyes. A slow, simmering anger burned inside her, along with a sudden suspicion. "Sure. Those footsteps belonged to my great-great-greatgrandfather. You will not scare me out of this house!"

  "What--?" He broke off with a furious scowl. "You foolish little brat. I'm not trying to scare you."

  "The hell you're not! You want me out of here--God knows why. You don't have to see me, you know." His eyes narrowed. "Maybe I should leave now." She lifted her chin. She wanted him to stay. She wasn't afraid of ghosts, but someone alive had been in the house. Someone who had come here in stealth. Even if Rex didn't believe her.

  She swung around. "This is ridiculous! I came to my old family home on what is supposed to be a deserted, desolate peninsula, and it's more like Grand Central Station!"

  "Alexi--"

  "Just go, if you want to!"

  Rex watched her, his mouth tight and grim, then swung around. "I'll check the upstairs. If someone tries to slit your throat, just scream."

  He was gone. Alexi stared after him, shivering, hating herself for being afraid. She hadn't been afraid to come-- she'd been eager. She'd desperately wanted to be alone. Where there were no crowds, where people didn't recognize her. But she'd just barely gotten there, and already the darkness and the isolation were proving threatening.

  Nothing was going to happen, she assured herself. But she wrapped her arms nervously about herself and returned to stare up at the paintings. Perhaps some kids believed in the legend about the gold. High school kids. They didn't want to harm her; they just wanted to find a treasure--a treasure that didn't really exist.

  She smiled slowly. They were really marvelous-looking people; Pierre was striking, and his Eugenia was beautiful. "Even if you could come back as a ghost," she said to Pierre's likeness with a wry grin, "you certainly wouldn't haunt me--I'm your own flesh and blood." "Do you often talk to paintings?" Startled, she swung around. Rex Morrow was leaning casually against the doorframe, watching her. "Only now and then."

  "Oh." He waited a moment. "Upstairs is clear. If anyone was in the house, he or she is definitely gone now." "Good."

  "Want me to call the police?" "Think I should?" She realized that he still didn't be her. Or maybe he didn't think she was lying--just that she was neurotic. Paranoid. And maybe he even felt a little guilty about her state of mind, since he had attacked her last night.

  He paused, then shrugged at last. "Whoever it was is gone. Probably some kid from the town looking for Pierre's treasure. He probably left by that broken window. You must get it fixed."

  “I will--tomorrow. First thing. And maybe it was someone looking for Pierre's treasure. Numismatically or historically, maybe those Confederate bills are worth something."

  "Maybe."

  "They could be collectible!"

  "Sure. Confederate money is collectible. It's just not usually worth..."

  "Worth what?"

  "Only rare bills from certain banks are worth much. But who knows?" he offered.

  They stood there for several moments, looking at each other across the ballroom.

  "Well," he murmured.

  "Well..." she echoed. Her gaze fell from his, and once again she wasn't at all sure what she wanted. He'd checked the place for her; she was sure now that it was empty.

  He didn't want her on the peninsula. He had said so himself. It was certainly time that he left--and she should be happy for that, since he was such a doubting Thomas. But she couldn't help feeling uneasy. She didn't want him to go.

  Fool! she told herself. Tell him "Thank you very much," then let him go. A curious warmth was spreading through her. If he left now, they could remain casual acquaintances. But if she encouraged him to stay...

  It was more than fear, more than uneasiness. She wanted him to stay. She wanted to know more about him. She wanted to watch him smile.

  A slight tremor shook her; the warmth flooding her increased. She had the feeling that if she had him stay now, she would never be able to turn her back on him again. She was still staring at him and he was still watching her and no words were being spoken, but tension, real and tangible, seemed to be filling the air. Alexi inhaled deeply; she cleared her throat.

  "I think I'll have one of your beers," she said. "Since they are in my refrigerator."

  "Help yourself."

  She hesitated. Then she spoke. "Want one?"

  He, too, hesitated. It was as if he, too, sensed some form of commitment in the moment. Then he shrugged, and a slow smile that was rueful and sexy and insinuating curled the corners of his lip.

  "Sure," he told her. "Sure. Why not?"

  Chapter 3

  Alexi passed him quickly and hurried on into the kitchen. She dug into the refrigerator for two beers.

  “Are you the one who has kept the kitchen clean?'' she asked casually. It was spotless; Alexi imagined that one could have eaten off the floor and not have worried about dirt or germs. The rest of the place was a dust bowl.

  “In a manner of speaking. A woman comes out twice a week to do my place. She spends an hour or so here."

  Alexi nodded and handed him a beer. She walked past him, somehow determined to sit in the parlor, even though the kitchen was by far the cleaner place.

  Maybe it was the only way she could get herself to go back into the room.

  She knew he was behind her. Once she reached the parlor she sank heavily into the Victorian sofa, discovering that she was exhausted. Rex Morrow sat across from her, straddling a straight-backed chair. Cool H
and Luke in a contemporary dark knit.

  He smiled again, and she realized he knew she was staring at him and wondering about him. And of course, at the same time, she realized that he was watching her speculatively.

  "You're staring," he said.

  "So are you."

  He shrugged. "I'm curious."

  "About what?"

  He laughed, and it was an easy sound, surprisingly pleasant.

  "Well, you are Alexi Jordan."

  She lifted her hands, eyeing him warily in return. "And you are Rex Morrow."

  "Hardly worthy of the gossip columns."

  "That's because writers get to keep their privacy."

  "Only if they hole out in places like this."

  She didn't say anything; she took a long sip of her beer, wrinkling her nose. She really didn't like the brand; its taste was too bitter for her.

  It was better than nothing.

  "Well?" he said insinuatingly, arching a dark brow.

  "Well, what?"

  "Want to tell me about it?"

  "About what?"

  "The rich, lusty scandal involving the one and only Alexi Jordan."

  Only a writer could make it all sound so sordid, Alexi decided. But she couldn't deny the scandal. "Why on earth should I?" she countered smoothly.

  He lifted his hands, grinning. "Well, because I'm curious,

  I suppose."

  "Wonderful," she said, nodding gravely. "I should spill my guts to a novelist. Great idea."

  He laughed. "I write horror and suspense, not soap operas. You're safe with me."

  "Haven't you read all about it in the rags?"

  "I only read the front pages of those things when I'm waiting in line at the grocery store. One of them said you left him for another man. Another said John Vinto left you for another woman. Some say you hate each other. That there are deep, dark secrets hidden away in it all. Some claim that the world-famous photographer and his world-famous wife are still on good terms. The best of friends. So, what's the real story?"

  Alexi leaned back on the couch, closing her eyes. She was so tired of the whole thing, of being pursued. She still felt some of the pain--it was like being punch-drunk. The divorce had actually gone through almost a year ago.