Night Scents (5 page)

That seemed to sit well with Andrew. "You've met Piper?"

"Briefly." Prudence kept him from going into detail about where, when, and how, although he suspected Andrew Macintosh was less likely than his little sister to skin the newcomer in town alive.

Andrew grunted something about welcoming Clate to town and departed. Message delivered, message received. He didn't like it that his sister no longer had an eighty-seven-year-old woman as her only neighbor, but Clate was to have no illusions that Piper was on her own, unwatched and unprotected.

As he pushed on into the old-fashioned pharmacy, he wondered what Piper herself might make of her big brother's warning. This, after all, was a woman who'd gone toe-to-toe with a stranger before sunup over some damned stinky hunk of root.

Leave it alone, Clate warned himself as he soaked in the atmosphere of the turn-of-the-century pharmacy and found his way to a bottle of simple, no-nonsense aspirin. His gaze traveled to the prophylactic section, then darted back to the aspirin. Hell. If Andrew Macintosh saw that, he'd jump to all the wrong conclusions and there'd be fur flying in Frye's Cove. Clate had no designs on anyone's little sister.

None.

Not even when he thought of her trim body marching off with her smelly root.

He swore to himself, viciously, and grabbed the bottle of aspirin before he drove himself mad. Quiet, isolation, solitude, rest. They were what he needed, what he wanted, and why, ultimately, his instincts had drawn him to Cape Cod.

Chapter 3

Piper stared out across a narrow strip of sandy beach, her bicycle parked next to her on the side of the road. She tried to concentrate on the scenery. A few people were out surf fishing, a half dozen children were racing across the wet sand. The tide was out, the water in the bay as blue as the sky, sparkling in the early afternoon sun. There was almost no wind. It was still early in the season. After the Fourth of July, even Frye's Cove would be crowded with tourists, sightseers, summer residents.

She heard a car on the road behind her, but didn't bother turning around. She wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone. Then the car stopped next to her bicycle, and finally she turned.

Clate Jackson had his window rolled down, his eyes on her. He drove a BMW, probably rented or leased if he'd flown up from Tennessee. "Must be your day off."

"I'm self-employed. I can make my own hours."

"What do you do?"

"A bunch of stuff." She took a breath, calming herself. He couldn't read minds. He wouldn't know what she and Hannah had discussed that morning. Her bike ride and her aunt's bizarre talk about buried treasure had her hot and jittery; she could feel sweat trickling between her breasts. "I'm sort of an expert on traditional early-American crafts. I teach, consult, write. I sell some of my own stuff, mostly just breads and open-kettle jams."

"You work out of your house?" His question was matter-of-fact, but his eyes were a dark, deep blue, unreadable, as if he were still gauging just how big a pest his only neighbor would prove to be.

"I converted a shed on my property into a small studio and I have an office in my house."

He didn't seem too pleased by that idea. She could see him calculating her opportunities to get in his way if she didn't go off to work.

"I stay very busy," she added, then grinned. Or tried to. She felt stiff and self-conscious. She was rattled and tired, and a day of bike riding and Hannah had taken its toll. She wished she'd worn one of her own shirts, at least, instead of her brother's. "Just not today. I'm teaching a class tonight in yarn dyeing. Actually, valerian makes a decent yellow dye." She was deliberately goading him and had no idea why. "But I'm using chamomile flowers tonight."

"From your own garden, I trust."

"And one of my student's." Her tone cooled. "Chamomile's a relatively common herb."

"Harmless?"

His drawl rolled up her spine. "Quite."

He shifted, and the light caught a two-inch white scar along his jaw. She'd missed that one last night. She didn't know how. With the nick of a scar at the corner of his left eye, he looked tough, masculine, not a man she would want even to attempt to deceive.

Which was precisely what Hannah had asked her to do.

Piper groaned to herself. It would have been ever so much easier if Clate Jackson had been a slick, shallow executive, unappealing on any level. Even Hannah would have had to admit the universe had coughed up the wrong man.

"By the way," he said, "I met your brother Andrew in town earlier."

Perfect. Just what she needed on top of Hannah's buried treasure. One look at Clate Jackson and Andrew would be on high alert. She'd taken a detour around the center of town, just to make sure she didn't run into her father and brothers after her unnerving talk with Hannah. They always had a way of seeing through her. They'd know something was up. But she couldn't explain. If she did, the Macintosh men would haul Hannah straight off to the loony bin.

Clate had those searing eyes narrowed on her. Piper tried to look less distracted, less guilty. "And how's big brother?"

"Seemed fine. Told him you and I had met."

"Did you say how?"

"No." A flash of unexpected humor softened his eyes. "Figured I'd leave that up to you."

"Good of you. Andrew—both my brothers are protective of me. And my father, although he's not quite as bad."

The humor drifted from his eyes to his mouth. "So I gathered."

"But I guess I'm protective of them, too, in my own way. If Andrew stops by to see Hannah, she'll tell him about the valerian root herself. She doesn't understand why I shouldn't be traipsing off to your place in the middle of the night."

Clate's eyebrows raised, and too late, Piper realized she could have chosen her words more carefully. She took a step back from his car, feeling hotter and even more self-conscious, as if every part of her were somehow exposed to him.

"Anyway," she added briskly, "I told Hannah that you wanted to preserve your privacy. She just needs a little time to adjust to not having all her herbs right on her doorstep."

"She's happy with her valerian root?"

"Seems to be."

"I hope she'll find another source for it in the future. Well, I'll leave you to your bike ride." But he didn't pull away from the road, eyeing Piper instead; his eyes seemed an even deeper blue in daylight. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, fine. I think I might have strained a calf muscle, that's all." Nothing was wrong with her calf muscles, but she'd needed a simple explanation; the truth was out of the question. But her lie sounded false even to her own ears. "I sometimes overdo it bike riding when the weather's this gorgeous."

"I understand."

Something in his tone—it wasn't obvious—suggested he knew she had fibbed. She forced a smile. "Thanks for stopping."

"If you need a ride—"

"No, that's okay. I'll just ice my calves when I get home."

"I hope they feel better soon." Sarcasm dried out his drawl, the humor and suspicion lingering in his gaze. No doubt about it, he knew he had a liar living next door. "See you around, Piper Macintosh."

She had to fight herself not to dig herself a deeper hole by telling him she did, too, have sore calves and he could damned well come back to her house and watch her ice them if he didn't believe her. The truth was, although her calves were fine, she wasn't. And for once, common sense kicked in before she could compound her problems.

His car disappeared down the narrow road and around the bend out to their spit of marsh, sand, and scrub trees. If Clate Jackson was a light sleeper, he'd see her around sooner than either of them wanted.

Provided, of course, she did Hannah's bidding.

"Buried treasure."

Piper's shoulder sagged. It was nuts.

"Try under the wisteria first," Hannah had advised. "That's my best guess."

Naturally, the wisteria in question was in Clate Jackson's back yard. There would be no asking his permission. Not only did Hannah forbid it, but Piper would have refused. This latest mission made her elderly aunt look goofier than ever, something her aunt couldn't afford these days. Being known as a harmless eccentric was one thing, a dangerous nut was something else.

No matter how hard she tried, Piper just couldn't dismiss Hannah's haunting tale of her parents' deaths. She couldn't pretend she'd forgotten their conversation that morning or simply dig in her heels and refuse to act. After eighty years, Hannah believed she had the long-denied answers to the deaths of her parents within her grasp, and she needed Piper to help her reach them.

Piper climbed onto her bike and pedaled slowly toward home. As she'd listened to her aunt talk, the pain of her terrible loss seemed so fresh. Piper could imagine a seven-year-old child waiting up late into the night, eager to see her father again after his long months at war.

"Father wrote to me every week while he was away." Her face was old and worn now, decades later, her voice quiet and steady as she spoke, but Piper could see in her eyes the hint of the little girl Hannah had been, vivid and curious, determined to see life as it was, not just as she wanted it to be. "He told me an elaborate tale of how he'd saved a Russian princess from certain death at the hands of a roving gang of miscreants. She had already escaped the Russian Revolution, and here she was about to die on a lonely French road, when my father appeared on the scene and rescued her, bringing her to safe quarters. She was so impressed by his courage that she insisted upon rewarding him. She had no money, only gemstones and a Faberge egg."

Piper had been skeptical. "Hannah, that sounds like the sort of fanciful story a father would tell a precocious seven-year-old daughter to keep her from worrying about him getting killed in battle."

"I know. For years that's what I thought. But now"—she'd exhaled deeply, fixing her gaze on her only niece—"now, I'm not so sure."

And so she'd explained.

In the weeks since she'd moved out of the Frye House, new details of her memory of that night eighty years ago had emerged from deep within her subconscious. "It's as if they've lain dormant all these years, and only now, free of that house, could I bring myself to remember. And now that I do, Piper, I remember so clearly!"

In her excitement at the prospect of seeing her father, she'd been unable to sleep. She reread his letters to her, which she'd kept in an iron box, and played in bed, until the scent of roses and the sea in the cold night air drew her to her window.

"The wind had shifted, as it often does. I thought nothing of it at the time. But now—I don't know if I can explain. It's as if my parents were sending those scents to me as they died, enticing me to the window so that I would see what I saw, knowing that I was too young to understand, that it would be many decades before I would seek the answers I'm now seeking." She'd paused, her jaw setting. "It all comes back to destiny."

Afraid Hannah would drift back to the subject of Clate Jackson, Piper had steered her aunt back on course. "What did you see?"

"A shadowy figure. It was dark and cold, the wind was gusting. I heard digging. Then the clouds shifted, and in a quick ray of moonlight, I saw a small trunk sitting on the ground."