The Smoky Mountain Mist (6 page)

But nobody seemed to know what Rachel herself thought about the job. Did the benefit of fulfilling her father’s dying wish outweigh the loss of a career she’d chosen for herself?

“This house is too big for just one person,” Rachel commented as she unlocked the front door and let them inside. “I don’t think Diane plans to come back here. Too much of my mother here for her tastes.”

The front door opened into a narrow hallway that stretched all the way to a door in the back. Off the hallway, either archways or doors led into rooms on either side. To the immediate right, a set of stairs rose to the second floor, flanked by an oak banister polished smooth from years of wear. “Did you ever slide down that banister?” he asked Rachel.

“Maybe.” A whisper of a smile touched her lips. “Think you can make it up the stairs? The bedrooms are on the second floor.”

He dragged himself up the steps behind her, glad he was feeling less light-headed than he had back at the bed-and-breakfast. Rachel showed him into a simple, homey room on the left nearest the stairs. “I’ll make up the bed for you. Why don’t you go take a shower? The bathroom’s the next door down on the right. There’s a robe in the closet that should fit you. I’ll see if Paul’s left any clothes around you can borrow for the night.”

When he emerged from the shower fifteen minutes later, he returned to the bedroom to find the bedcovers folded back and a pair of sweatpants and a mismatched T-shirt draped across the bed. A slip of paper lay on top of them. “Sorry, couldn’t find any underwear. Or anything that matched. After I shower, we’ll find something to eat.”

She had finished her shower first and was already downstairs in the cozy country kitchen at the back of the house. “Something to eat” turned out to be tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Rachel had finally shed the dress she’d worn to Smoky Joe’s the night before, replacing it with a pair of slim-fitting yoga pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt that revealed her long legs and slender arms. She was thinner than Seth normally liked in a woman, but he couldn’t find a damned thing wrong with the flare of her hips or the curve of her small, firm breasts.

“Is tomato soup okay? I should have asked—”

“It’s fine. I can grill the sandwiches if you want.”

She turned to look at him, smiling a little as she took in his mismatched clothes. Her stepbrother, Paul, was a little slimmer than he was, so the clothes fit snugly on his legs and shoulders. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to it?”

“The shower worked wonders,” he assured her, bellying up to the kitchen counter beside the stove, where she’d already prepared the sandwiches and set out a stick of butter for the griddle pan heating up over the closest eye. He dipped to get a better look at the stove top, relieved that it was a flat-top electric with no open-flame burners.

She gave him a sidelong glance as he moved closer to where she stood stirring the soup. “I’m not used to cooking with company.”

“Me, either.” He dropped a pat of butter on the griddle pan. It sizzled and snapped, and they both had to jump back to avoid the splatter.

Rachel laughed. “I see why. You’re dangerous.”

“We could switch,” he suggested. “Surely I can manage stirring soup.”

Switching positions, they brushed intimately close. As Seth’s body stirred to life, he realized the cut of the sweatpants wasn’t quite loose enough to hide his reaction if he didn’t get his libido under control, and soon.

Just stir the soup. Clockwise, clockwise, switch it up to counterclockwise—

“Why are you so interested in what happened to me last night?” Rachel broke the tense silence.

He glanced at her and found she was looking intently at the griddle, where she’d laid both of the sandwiches in a puddle of sizzling butter, her profile deceptively serene. Only the quick flutter of her pulse in her throat gave away her tension.

“What is it they say? Save a person’s life and they’re your slave forever after? Maybe I’m just waiting for you to pay up.”

She cut her eyes at him as if to make sure he was teasing. “Yeah, that’ll happen.”

He grinned. “Maybe I’m sucking up to the new boss.”

Wrong thing to say.
Her slight smile faded immediately. “New boss. I haven’t even let myself think about that yet.”

“Is that going to be a problem? Me being an employee, I mean. And being here like this. Because I’m feeling a lot better, really. I don’t have to stick around so you can watch out for my mental state.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I was thinking about being the boss, period. All those people depending on what I do and say now.”

He had stopped stirring while they were talking, and a thin skin was forming on top of the soup. He started stirring again, quickly whisking the film away. “Hasn’t that been the case for a while now?”

She was quiet a moment. “I guess so. It just didn’t feel real as long as my father was around to be my safety net.”

To his dismay, he saw tears glisten in her eyes, threatening to spill. The urge to pull her into his arms and hold her close was almost more than he could resist. He settled for laying one hand on her shoulder and giving it a comforting squeeze.

She wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand and flipped the sandwiches over. “I had a long time to prepare for my father’s death. And it was a relief by the end to see him finally out of pain. But now that I’m past that numb stage—”

“Your dad was a good man. Not many people would’ve taken a chance on someone like me. This world’s a worse place with him gone.”

His words had summoned tears again, but also a smile, which she turned on him like a ray of pure sunshine that brightened the room, even as the drizzle outside darkened the day.

He smiled back briefly, then forced his attention back to the soup before he got any deeper into trouble.

Chapter Six

After lunch, Rachel made a pot of coffee and they took their cups into the den on the eastern side of the house, where a large picture window offered a glimpse of Copperhead Ridge shrouded with mist. The rain had picked up again, casting the trees in hues of blue and gray. When she turned on the floor lamps that flanked the room, the scene outside faded into reflections of the warm, comfortably furnished den and the two slightly bedraggled people who occupied it.

Seth found his own reflection depressing, given how quickly his bruises were darkening, making him look like the loser of a cage match. He turned his attention instead to Rachel, whose honey-brown hair lay in damp waves around her face. Scrubbed clean and pink, she looked about a decade younger and prettier than she had any right to be.

“How’s your head feeling?” she asked.

Light,
he thought. But it didn’t have much to do with his mild concussion. “Better. Not really hurting anymore.”

Her brief smile faded quickly. “I don’t know what to think about Davis.”

“You mean whether or not he’s still alive?”

She sank into an armchair across from the sofa, curling her legs under her. She waved for Seth to sit across from her on the sofa. “I mean if he’s dead. How am I supposed to feel about it?”

“I don’t know that you’re
supposed
to feel any particular way,” Seth offered. “You just feel what you feel.”

“I did love him once. He was the first man—” She stopped short, a delicate blush rising in her cheeks. She slanted a quick look at Seth. “It didn’t last. We wanted such different things out of life.”

Whatever it had been that Davis Rogers had wanted out of life, it was surely closer to Rachel’s desires than anything Seth had done or wanted to do in his own life. If she and Davis had been miles apart, she and Seth were separated by whole galaxies.

But it doesn’t matter, does it? That’s not why you’re here.

“I haven’t even seen him in years. We ran into each other a while back at a football game in Charlottesville. Said hi, promised to call but never did—” She closed her eyes. “Why did he come here?”

“Probably to attend your father’s funeral and see how you were.”

“And now he might be dead because of me.”

Seth reached across the space between them, covering her hands with one of his. “If he’s dead, it’s because someone beat the hell out of him.”

“Because of me.”

He crouched in front of her, closing his fingers around her wrists. “Look at me.”

Her troubled blue eyes met his.

“I know someone’s been methodically removing people from your life to isolate you. I know whoever’s pulling the strings hired Mark Bramlett to kill four women who were close to you. And now, maybe, he’s killed your old boyfriend, who came to town to make sure you were okay. I think he may have been behind drugging you last night, too.”

Rachel’s eyes darkened with suspicion. “How do you know this?”

“I started to suspect something was going on when I realized three of the four Bitterwood murders involved women who’d worked at Davenport Trucking. That was strange enough. Then I asked around and found out that Marjorie Kenner had been your friend and mentor—another librarian, right?”

“Right.” She looked stricken by his words, as if the mere reminders of all she’d lost had hit her all over again. He wished he’d found some way to soften his words, but he doubted anything he could have said would have made her feel the pain any less keenly.

“What I don’t know,” he added more gently, “is why. If someone wanted to get you out of his way—”

“His?”

“His, her—whichever. If someone wanted you out of the way, why not just kill you?”

She blanched. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do. You just can’t say it out loud for some reason.”

She slanted a troubled look at him. “How do you know so much about me?”

He ran his thumb lightly over her knuckles, gentling her with the movement. He saw her start to relax a little, soothed by the repetitive movement of his thumb. “I know because I observe. I used to be a con man, you know. That’s what con men do. Observe, compile, formulate and exploit.”

Her nostrils flared with a hint of distaste. “You’re approaching my trouble like you would approach a potential mark?”

“Might as well use those skills for good.”

Her eyes narrowed a little, but she gave a slight nod. “So what have you observed?”

“You’re scared of something. Not everyone can see it, because you hide it really well. But I see it, because that used to be my job. Finding a person’s vulnerable spots and figuring out how to use them.”

“But you haven’t found out what it is.”

“Not yet.”

Her lips twisted in a mirthless smile. “And I’m supposed to spill what it is to you, make it easier?”

“I’m not the one trying to hurt you.”

“How do I know that?” She pulled her hands free of his grip and pushed him out of her way, rising and pacing the hardwood floor until she reached the picture window. She met his gaze in the window reflection. “I don’t really know you. And what I do know scares me.”

He couldn’t blame her. What he knew about himself would scare anyone. “I don’t want to see you get hurt, and whether you like my skill set or not, I can use it to help you out. So whatever you can tell me, whatever you’re comfortable sharing—I’ll listen. I’ll keep your confidence, and I won’t use it against you.”

She turned around to look at him. “I’m taking a huge risk just letting you stay here, aren’t I?”

She wasn’t going to tell him what scared her so much, he realized. It was disappointing. Frustrating. But he didn’t blame her.

“Okay.” He nodded. “I can leave if you want me to.”

She licked her lips and held his gaze, searching his expression as if trying to see what was going on inside his mind. “No. I know you’re feeling better, but head injuries can be quirky. I’d rather you stay here where I can look in on you every few hours to make sure you haven’t gone into a coma.”

He grimaced. “What, you’re planning to wake me up every couple of hours or something?” He added a touch of humor to his voice, hoping to lighten the mood.

It worked. Her lips quirked slightly, and there was a glitter of amusement in her blue eyes when she answered, “That’s exactly what I’m planning to do.”

Behind the humor, however, he heard a steely determination that caught him by surprise. She apparently took the job of keeping an eye on him seriously, and he suspected it was as much for her own sake as his. Maybe it gave her a welcome distraction from the strain and grief of her life these days.

He nodded toward the picture window. “Do you always leave these windows open like this?”

Her brow furrowed. “Most of the time. It’s such a beautiful view.”

“It is,” he agreed. “But it gives people a pretty good view of you, too.”

Her eyes darkened, and she wrapped her arms around herself as if she felt a sudden chill. “I never thought about that.”

She wouldn’t have. She wasn’t used to being a target, and Seth wished like hell she could continue living her life without precautions. But there was too much danger out there, focused directly on her, for her to let her guard down that way anymore.

The windows were curtain-free, but he thought he saw levers on each double-paned window that suggested between-the-glass blinds. “Whenever it’s dark enough outside to see your reflection in the windows, you should close the blinds.”

She pressed her lips in a tight line, as if it annoyed her to have to make even that small accommodation to the dangerous world around her. A sign of a charmed life, he thought, remembering how early in his own life he’d learned to take precautions against the dangers always lurking, both outside and in.

Another way he and Rachel Davenport were worlds apart.

Starting at the opposite end of the room, he helped her close the blinds until they met in the middle. She paused at the last window, gazing out at the darkness barely visible beyond their reflections.

“You think I’m spoiled,” she said quietly.

He didn’t answer. He’d more or less been thinking exactly that, although not with any disapproval. He envied her, frankly.

“There’s a lot about my life you don’t know.” She closed the blinds, shutting out the rainy afternoon, and turned to look at him, her expression softening. “You look terrible. I think you may have a broken nose.”

It certainly hurt like hell, but he’d examined the bones himself while taking his shower, where he could throw out a stream of profanities without offending anyone. Cracked or not, the bones and cartilage were all in the right places. “It’ll heal on its own.”

“Said in the tone of a man who’s had a broken bone or two.”

“Or ten.” He made a face. “I’m fine.”

She looked skeptical but didn’t press him on it. She crossed back to the armchair and curled up on its overstuffed cushions, pulling her knees up to her chest.

He didn’t feel like sitting, so he wandered around the den, taking in the good furniture—some antiques, most not—and the eclectic collection of knickknacks dotting the flat surfaces around the large, airy room. Tiny animals sculpted from colored quartz formed a menagerie on a round side table near the sofa. On the fireplace mantel sat a small collection of Russian nesting dolls, painted in bright colors.

The fireplace itself was, thankfully, cold and unlit, though the extra heat might have helped to drive away the afternoon chill still shivering in his bones. He’d live without it, thank you very much.

He didn’t care for fire.

The house he’d grown up in would have fit in this room, he thought, or close to it. He, Dee and his parents had lived there in grim strife for nearly fourteen years, until his father had blown the whole damned thing up, and himself with it.

He wondered what Rachel Davenport had been doing around the time of that explosion. Probably up to her eyeballs in homework from Brandywine Academy, the expensive private school she’d attended to keep her away from the Appalachian hillbillies who filled Bitterwood’s public schools.

Envy is an unattractive trait.
Cleve Calhoun’s voice rumbled in his ear, full of wry humor. Hilarious advice coming from the man who’d used envy, greed, pride and vanity with great expertise against all his hapless marks. But however bad his motives for teaching Seth a few practical life lessons, Cleve had been right most of the time. Envy
was
an unattractive trait. And unfair to the envied, in Rachel’s case.

It wasn’t her fault she’d been loved and protected. Every child should be so blessed.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” Rachel asked.

He turned to look at her. “I’m not tired.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “This isn’t your first beating.” It wasn’t a question.

He didn’t know whether to laugh or grimace. He managed something in between, his lips curving in a wry grin. “No, ma’am. It’s not.”

“Did you deserve them?”

That time, he did laugh. “Some of the time.”

“Why did you choose the life you did?”

He wandered back over to the sofa, thinking about how to answer. When he’d been younger, he might have told her he didn’t choose to become a con man. That life had chosen for him. He’d spent a lot of time blaming everyone in the world but himself for his troubles.

But everyone had choices, even people who didn’t think they did. Delilah’s childhood had been the same as his, but she’d chosen a different path, one that had made her a hero, not a criminal. He could have chosen such a path if he hadn’t let hate and anger do him in.

That had been his choice. Nothing that happened before excused it.

“When I was young,” he said finally, sitting on the sofa across from her, “I had a choice between two paths. One looked hard. The other looked easy. I chose easy.”

A little furrow formed in her brow as she considered his words. “That simple?”

He nodded. “That simple. I was angry and tired of struggling. I was eaten up with envy and mad at the whole damned world. So when a man offered me a chance to get everything I wanted and stick it to people who stood in my way, I took it. I reckon you could even say I relished it. I was good at it, and in a twisted way, I think it gave me a sense of self-worth I’d never had before.”

“So why aren’t you still doing it?”

“Because nothing good, nothing real, gets built on lies.”

Her solemn blue eyes held his gaze thoughtfully. “Or you could be lying to me now. Maybe this act of repentance is all for show.”

“I guess that’s for you to figure out.”

She buried her face in her hands, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I’m so tired.”

He knew she wasn’t just talking about physical tiredness. The past few months must have been hell on her emotionally, losing so many people who mattered to her, including her own father. “Why don’t you go lie down? Take a nap.”

“I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on you, remember?”

“I’m fine. Really. The ol’ noggin’s not even hurting anymore.”
Well, not more than a slight ache,
he amended silently. And it was mostly at the site at the back of his head where he’d taken the knockout blow.

After a long, thoughtful pause, she rose to her feet with easy grace. He wondered idly if she’d taken ballet lessons as a child. She had the long limbs and elegant lines of a dancer.

Delilah had always wanted to take dance lessons, he remembered. He wondered if his sister had made up for lost time once she’d gotten away from Smoky Ridge. He’d have to remember to ask her.

“There’s food in the fridge if you get hungry.” She waved her arm toward the cases full of books that lined the walls of the den. “Lots to read, if your head’s up to it. There’s a television and a sound system in that cabinet if you’d rather watch TV or listen to music.”

“In other words, make myself at home?”

Her lips quirked. “I’m not sure it’s safe to give you that much rope.”

He grinned back at her, unoffended. “Smart girl.”

She headed for the stairs, but not before Seth saw her smile widen with pleasure.

* * *