Night Scents (13 page)

"Absolutely."

Which didn't mean, at eighty-seven, she hadn't.

"Why?" her aunt asked. "Did the caller mention it?"

"No—no, not at all. I just wondered at the coincidence." The caller must have known she'd been out on date's property last night. She considered telling Hannah, then decided better of it. There was nothing Hannah could do but worry, and Piper preferred her aunt to enjoy boiling up her herbal concoctions and playing with her new microwave and computer. "Well, it's probably nothing. What can I do for you?"

Hannah took an audible breath. "You can stop humoring me and either get going on the treasure or let me find someone else who will. I can't stand any more of your delaying tactics, Piper." Even miffed, Hannah was too gentle a soul to manage more than mild reproof. "Once we find the treasure, all your doubts will be proven to have been for naught."

We. As if Hannah were going to venture out to Clate Jackson's property in the middle of the night. Piper sighed. "I'm doing the best I can."

"Your best. Ha."

"Hannah, what's that noise I hear? It sounds like a siren."

"I think it is. I hope I'm not being stopped for speeding."

"You mean you're on your cell phone? Hannah, geez. You shouldn't be driving and talking on the phone at the same time. It's dangerous, especially—well, you just shouldn't do it."

"Especially at my age, you were going to say. Phooey. You sound like Andrew. I only take calculated risks." The sound of the siren faded, and Piper could hear her aunt's smug little snort. "There, he's gone. Now, I wanted to tell you that I have a black dress that would be perfect for midnight digging."

"For who, me?"

"Yes, you. I think it will fit you. You can come for it later today." Her voice lowered to a near whisper. "Piper, I had another dream last night. I don't have much more time to solve this mystery."

Piper felt a jolt of fear. "What do you mean? You got a clean bill of health at your last checkup."

"I don't know what I mean. I just know."

"Right." She poked at her granola with her spoon. "Look, you should get off the phone and concentrate on driving. I'll come by later, okay?"

"Good," Hannah said, not bothering to disguise the note of victory. She knew how to motivate Piper. She always had.

Giving up on breakfast, Piper grabbed her knapsack and headed out front, where the wind had died down and the sun was boiling down from a cloudless sky, stirring the scent of the roses that grew in tangles over her picket fence.

"Bitch. I warned you."

She shook off the disturbing words, hoisted her backpack onto her back, and climbed on her bicycle. First stop the library, then Hannah's. By this time tomorrow, she decided, she wanted to have this buried treasure business finished.

Before she'd even cleared the driveway, Andrew's battered brown truck rolled to a stop on her narrow blacktopped road, and her brother poked his head out his window. "Christ, Piper, you look like hell."

"And a good morning to you, Andy."

No one called him Andy. "What did you do, spend the night digging up Jackson's back yard?"

She gave him a sarcastic smile. "No, I'm saving that for tonight."

"You're such a pain in the ass," he said good-naturedly. "Here. Benjamin dropped this by last night. Thought you'd find it interesting reading."

He shoved a magazine out the window at her. She immediately recognized Clate's picture on the cover. He was wearing a charcoal suit and red tie, his arms crossed on his chest, everything about him dark and devastating.

Her brother observed her closely. "Jesus, Piper, are you drooling?"

She scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Hell of a guy for Hannah to conjure up, huh?"

"So, you heard."

"Oh, I heard." He didn't sound at all happy about what he'd heard.

"Well, she didn't conjure him up. She just thinks she did."

"What do you think?"

She rolled up the magazine and shoved it into her knapsack, aware of Andrew's probing gaze, accustomed to it. Together, he, Benjamin, and their father knew the bad habits of every man in town and half on Cape Cod. "Be serious. I don't believe in all her spells and potions."

"Just don't let her get you in over your head. You know how you are with her."

"Andrew—"

"Relax. I'm not criticizing. We all know you and Hannah have a special bond. We understand. She was your anchor after Mother's death in a way none of us ever could be. So, don't get your back up."

Piper sniffed at him. "You aren't any more objective about her than I am."

"Maybe not, but I never would have dug valerian root for her at the crack of dawn, never mind if it didn't involve trespassing. Which it did."

"That was an innocuous favor."

"Yeah. Sure. Read the article on your neighbor, Piper. Then we'll talk about what's innocuous and what's crazy."

He rolled off, and Piper made a face just as if she were four years old and her big brother had pulled her out of a tree she'd been climbing. At least neither he nor Benjamin pulled any punches with her. They were straightforward in their opinion that she needed them in her life to keep her from walking off the plank and landing in shark-infested waters, figuratively speaking. They'd defend her without question, and for that she was grateful. It was just their insistence on prevention—on defending her before anything had happened—that annoyed her.

She gave Andrew time to get well ahead of her, then started down the road, welcoming the warm sun, the rain-scrubbed air, the smell of pitch pine and ocean, and wondering what he'd have thought if he knew Clate Jackson had kissed his baby sister last night.

Clate stared at the shadows on the low, slanted ceiling of the upstairs bedroom he had chosen as his own. It was a cool, quiet, still night. His room had a view out across the marsh to the bay, which was all he cared about. The antique furnishings and the quaint decor didn't interest him. Half awake in the shifting darkness, he was eerily aware that virtually nothing in this house was his. Everything
belonged
to him, but that was something different. He felt like a guest, as if he were sleeping in someone else's bedroom.

An owl hooted in the distance. He could hear the wash of the tide. Hell, what was he doing this far north, this far from his office, his routines, his dogs? He'd left his two big mutts at home with the caretaker while he checked out Cape Cod.

Maybe that damned scrawny old woman
had
put a spell on him.

After watching a troubled Piper Macintosh head up through the marsh, he'd checked with his office, made some calls, and tried to imagine what it would be like to spend a summer up here, the routine, day-to-day operating of his business in the hands of trusted associates.

But there weren't too many people he trusted.

Tuck O'Rourke had come over around noon, and they'd discussed his plans to repair the damage, erosion, and wear and tear he'd spotted outside. Some projects would be simple and quick, others costly and time consuming. Clate was still debating what he wanted Tuck to do. He didn't know why he was hesitating, he knew what needed to be done. But he couldn't dispel an image of himself with shirt off, sweat pouring down his back, as he did the work himself. When he'd first rolled down out of the hills to Nashville, he'd had nothing going for him but his strong back and willingness to work. He had the scars to prove how hard he'd worked. Until now, he hadn't missed physical labor. He couldn't say why he did. Or, really,
if he
did.

He pushed the thought aside. He hated obsessing on things in the middle of the night. Yet he was wide awake, sleep eluding him.

He and Tuck had also discussed the Macintosh family. Despite O'Rourke's taciturn nature, he talked readily about the people he'd known all his life. From their conversation, Clate gained a better understanding of Piper's attachment to her elderly great-aunt. She had lost her mother at two and had latched onto Hannah as her central female role model, and a bizarre one at that, especially in the years since Jason Frye's death. Her nineteenth-century dresses and witchy ideas were legendary in Frye's Cove, and she had a penchant for leading Piper down the so-called primrose path. There'd been various incidents with experimental teas and possible spells.

Then there were her brothers, who had apparently combated their own grief over their mother's death by becoming very protective of their much younger sister. From what Clate could gather, her romantic life had suffered as a result—at least in townspeople's minds.

"I took her out a couple times myself," O'Rourke had admitted. "Andrew and Benjamin made it pretty damned clear they were keeping an eye on me."

Maybe, Clate thought, they'd had good reason. O'Rourke didn't strike him as a man who'd want much more from a woman than what she could provide in bed and in the kitchen. If Clate saw that after only a couple of encounters, Piper's brothers must have seen it after knowing him all their lives.

Still, if the Macintosh men underestimated her capabilities and her self-reliance, this would annoy her, and could explain why she was hesitant about telling too much too soon about her disturbing phone calls.

Clate could understand their impulse to protect her. The spray of freckles, the straight, chestnut hair, the faith in people, the single-minded determination to stand by her crazy aunt, even the kind of work Piper Macintosh did made her seem more vulnerable than perhaps she was.

He flipped over onto his stomach, irritated with himself. It was the middle of the damned night. He should be sleeping, not brooding about his neighbor and her troubles. He was accustomed to being alone. Solitude suited him. As a kid, an only child, the kind of boy other parents didn't necessarily want their own kids playing with, he'd fished, walked in the hills, just sat for hours watching the creek. Only when Irma Bryar had taken him by the ear after he'd been rude to a clerk in the corner store had he begun to make his peace with who he was. He got along all right with people. He just needed his time alone. For a while his place along the river outside Nashville, with his dogs, was enough. But it was harder and harder to keep friends and colleagues away without being rude, and so he'd ended up buying a place on Cape Cod. It was his personal retreat. He wasn't looking to develop it, and he sure as hell hadn't bought it because of some old woman's damned spell on him.

The plain muslin curtains billowed in a sudden breeze. He'd have to pull up a blanket in a minute. He was sleeping nude, as was his custom, even when alone, which had been the case more often than not in the past year. He wondered if old Hannah Frye knew that one.

"Ouch!
Damn it?'

He went very still. The voice—a loud whisper more furious than pained—had come from outside, somewhere beneath his window.

He'd bet a nickel it was Piper Macintosh.

In case he was wrong and it was her anonymous caller, he rolled out of bed and stayed low as he crept to his dormered window.

Silhouetted against the starlit background of sky and sea was the distinct figure of a woman. Clate set his jaw. She must have tripped in the dark. She wasn't moving, probably waiting to see if he'd throw on a light and yell out his window. It was tempting.

Instead, he felt his way to the blanket chest at the foot of his bed, found a pair of shorts he'd tossed there, and pulled them on. He groped for a sweatshirt, pulled it on. Late at night, the mosquitoes could be fierce. He even took time to locate his sneakers, in case Piper tried to run off and he had to lay chase.

He hissed in annoyance. "What the hell's she doing this time?"

Not procuring smelly roots for her lunatic aunt, he'd wager. He remembered her scared, wild look that morning on the beach. She'd fought herself over how much to tell him. There was more. Whatever it was would explain why she was out there now.

He slipped through his bedroom door out to the hall, down the steep stairs, not moving with his usual assurance. It was pitch dark, the ground unfamiliar. He half expected to bump into sharp-cornered secretaries, some damned fussy antique table. In Nashville, he had space, light, tall ceilings, tall windows, spare furnishings. Here, everything was cozy, cramped, intimate.

Maybe old Hannah Frye
had
put a spell on him.

He was through the kitchen, moving fast now. He didn't care if Piper heard him. She wouldn't have time to make her escape.

He tore open the back door, banged open the screen door, and was out in the cool, fragrant night air.

"Oh, damn!"

Her voice, not pleased. There was a clattering sound, then her silhouette streaked down the slope toward the marsh.

Clate jumped after her. "Piper! Hell, woman, don't make me chase you."

She didn't stop to argue. The stars and sliver of a moon provided just enough light for him to make her out as she lurched away from him.

Then she tripped, going down face first, cursing vociferously.

She was still cursing, up on her hands and knees, when Clate caught up with her. She seemed to have on a long, black dress or nightgown that had tripped her up. Without thinking, he grabbed her around the middle and hauled her to her feet.

It was as big a mistake as he'd ever made.

She blew a strand of hair out of her mouth and fastened her eyes, luminous in the near darkness, on him, and he sucked in a breath at what he was thinking, feeling. Every muscle went rigid, as if that could force common sense back into him. He wanted to kiss her, he wanted to scoop her up into his arms and carry her upstairs to his bed.

Her eyes narrowed, and she whispered, "Oh, dear," and he knew they were lost. Her fingers dug into his upper arms. Whether she found his mouth or he found hers, in the next moment he was consumed by the taste of her, the heat of her, the feel of her small, lithe body against his. She responded eagerly, moaning softly. It wasn't instantaneous. It couldn't have been. She must have been thinking, imagining, what could happen if he caught her this time.

With a sharp jolt, Clate realized he wanted nothing more, now, than to sweep her down onto the dew-soaked grass and make love to her until dawn. But Piper had boldly lied to him, snuck onto his property every time he turned his back, and had troubles and distractions that could make her regret what she'd done come morning, no matter how much she wanted him now.