Better Than Gold (15 page)

He opened the package and she snatched the condom and looked up into his face as she rolled the soft latex down onto him. Then she pulled him on top of her and into her where she needed him to be.

She luxuriated in his kisses, unwilling to give them up until she let herself go, let the waves of pleasure crash over her and over her...

Wrung, sated and gloriously happy she stroked his brow and laughed. “Hello.”

“Welcome to my home,” he said as he ran his fingers through her hair.

“I am so happy to be here.”
And I love you, Daniel MacCarey, my dear friend. Someday I hope you want to know it.

After their breathing returned to normal, he shifted onto his side and flipped the bedspread over both of them.

“Well, I practiced for hours and hours, so that I could be in your presence and not jump you,” she said, smiling.

“How’d it go?”

“Not well, but I’d be willing to go back out and try it again.” But she didn’t move, other than to sigh and touch his face to assure herself she wasn’t still sitting in her car having a daydream. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll go back out...”

“You make me crazy. I can’t look at you and not want you.” He hugged her as though he cherished her.

Yet, she knew there was desperation in those words. She felt the same when she thought of how much she wanted him and how much he needed to maintain his distance.

She lay beside him measuring each breath, wondering which one of them would flinch first. It was as if they stood nose to nose on a tightrope, each needing to get to the other side but neither willing nor able to pass the other. She breathed in the warm musky scent of him, felt his steady heartbeat under her hand.

Eventually, pride and responsibility won out. She patted his chest. “I need to go hang up the dress.”

He kissed her and she slid out from under the spread, taking his robe from the chair and wrapping it around herself.

When she came back into the bedroom with the dress and her bag, he was coming out of the bathroom with boxers on.

They hid nothing. He couldn’t make the wanting go away any more than she could make wanting him go away.

He took the dress and hung it in his closet beside another garment bag, his tux she’d wager. Daniel in a tux.

“You can put the rest of your things in there,” he said, indicating the bathroom.

When she came back out empty-handed she said, “You may think I eat all the time...”

He flicked his eyebrows.

“Well, I’m hungry. Did you have a place picked out for lunch or should I go forage?”

“We can eat here if you don’t mind.”

“If you at least have peanut butter and bread, I’m good with here.”

He invaded her space, leaned down and dropped a kiss on her lips, and when she was ready for more, he stepped back and said, “I think we can do better than peanut butter.”

Her stomach growled loudly.

He unfastened the belt of his robe from around her waist, bent over and put his lips to her stomach. “Right away. Right away,” he said to her belly and planted a sloppy kiss.

She laughed and pulled his face into her. He nipped softly and sidestepped her hold.

“We need to feed you.”

She retied the robe as he led her out of the bedroom.

“Sex and food. Can I come and visit you often? This feels like a vacation.”

His smile held a touch of longing.

“My balcony gets full sun and it’s very warm on a day like this.” He led the way to his dark blue tile and white kitchen with wood trim and accessories.

“Wait.” She put out her hands to stop him. He did stop and she continued. “You did
not
pick out this kitchen scheme.”

“I did not. It was available when I needed something.”

In a hurry she bet. More of his secret, more of where his pain came from.

She smiled at him when she wanted to hug him. “Lunch outside would be wonderful. Do you mind if I wear your robe on the balcony, or will it stir up your neighbors?”

“The neighbors will be pleased for the lovely distraction.”

“Hey, I’ve got some scoop to tell you about while we dine.”

“As luck would have it, I have some for you.”

“Can we eat now?”

“Grab those.” He pointed to a stack of table linens and dishes.

“I love dinner plates. Yum, they have so much fiber.”

He laughed and pulled out a tray of delectables from the refrigerator.

When she returned from putting the place settings on the balcony table, he had slipped on a T-shirt and plaid flannel lounging pants. Barefoot and tousle-haired he looked sexy and relaxed. She liked to think she had something to do with that.

She grabbed the glasses from the counter and the carafe of chilled water and headed back through the living room with dark gray and blue furniture with wooden trim. She was starting to see the theme in this place.

* * *

O
N
D
ANIEL
’
S
WARM
and sunny balcony, they set up a feast of gourmet food he had ordered from the deli down the street and large glasses of orange juice. Mia was right, it did feel like a vacation.

“Tell me your scoop and I’ll tell you mine,” she said, bliss written all over her face as she made it halfway through a turkey sandwich on a petit bun, with the domed part of the bun hollowed out and filled with lettuce and some kind of herbed mustard-mayonnaise.

“My great-aunt Margaret’s secret involves the ring. Apparently, it was destined to belong to Princess Charlotte of Wales, who died in 1817.” He told her about tea at Eleanor Wahl’s home. “Charlotte was the daughter and only child of the man who became George the IV.”

“How did your great-aunt Margaret get the ring?”

“Mrs. Wahl and several of her friends, experts in the era, are trying to find out, but there’s more.”

Mia rubbed her hands together in anticipation and he put his fingers on her cheek and let them wander lower.

She gasped when his fingertip brushed the side of her breast. Clearing her throat, she said, “I love a good mystery.”

He gently caressed the warm, giving flesh of her breast and wondered if the neighbors would call the cops or just keep watching.

She pressed his hand and then sat back and closed her eyes. “Hey, you’d better keep talking or we’ll get arrested and it’ll be worth it. Sex in the sunshine. Glorious.”

When he pulled his hand away, she grabbed hold and brought his knuckles to her lips before she gave the hand back to him.

He shook his head and grinned at her. “And the coat of arms stamped on the inside does not belong to Charlotte’s family nor her husband’s. Mrs. Wahl and her friends are working on finding out whose it is, feverishly, I’d wager.”

“There’s something, I’d wager.” She gave him a suspicious look. “You didn’t go to the post office and pick up that package from your aunt’s attorney, did you?”

“You’re wrong. It’s sitting on the desk in my office here.”

“Unopened. And yet you seem so manly and brave. Open the package already.”

“I thought you might like to help me, since you were nice enough to come and be arm bling for a fund-raiser.”

“That’s what I am?”

“It’s what my boss believes. He also believes you are two people. I told him I was inviting the builder. Your other persona has a dirty pair of coveralls and probably a comb-over.” He put his fingers in her hair and brushed it all over the top of her head.

She burst out laughing and looked so lovely with the sun glinting off the golden highlights in her hair. He wanted her now and always. He wasn’t even going to ask himself what he thought he was doing. He was just going to sit there and take it.

Mia smiled and put her hand over his. Her expression seemed wistful. They sat like that for a while, feeling the sun, letting the passion fade to manageable.

“Mia,” he said when he thought some of his sanity had returned. “How prepared are you for this to be the remains of a town founder?”

“Worse, I think I’m finally prepared for this to be the remains of Liam Bailey, the long-lost pirate with a relative living in Bailey’s Cove.”

He wasn’t sure why, but those words caused a kind of relief in him. “What do you know?”

“Do you want to go ‘hmmm’ or roll your eyes first?”

“Hmmm.”

“All right. I’ve found out the man who owned the half of South Harbor that Liam Bailey did not own, Archibald Fletcher, had a daughter who fought to have the name of the town changed to Bailey’s Cove. Fought hard against her father’s apparently apoplectic objections, and the day after her father died she convinced the town council to make the change.”

She put her hand over his lips. “That’s not the hmmm part. When she went before the council, her son Rónán McClure was with her. This Rónán was referred to as the ‘dark-haired one,’ which leads me to believe the other children were not.”

“Hmmm.”

“So, first of all, and this is just an aside, I don’t think I told you Bailey named his hotel the Sea Rose Inn. He also built that large white home on the hill overlooking town. After he disappeared, Colleen insisted her father acquire it and she lived there with her husband and children.”

She took a big breath and plunged on.

“So add all that to this. I went to the church yesterday and looked up marriage and birth records. Shortly after the pirate was supposed to have disappeared, Colleen
Rose
Fletcher became Colleen Rose McClure. That was in May of 1818. In September of 1818 the McClures had their first child baptized, Rónán Uilliam McClure. Liam is a shorter version of Uilliam. Since a baby that young has only a small chance to survive in today’s world, this was no premature baby.”

She gave him a quick look, and he wondered if she had seen the distress he suddenly felt because she hurried on. “So much for ‘hmmm.’ Are you ready for eye rolls?”

“Ready.”

He struggled to stay with her instead of getting lost in the past, but he did a practice eye roll. “Ah-yuh.”

She giggled and he’d bet his life she didn’t do that very often.

“Turns out Heather Loch comes by her fascination genetically. In 1924 the chief of police mentioned— Let me think of how he said it.”

She looked out over the lawn and the small lake surrounded with side-by-side condominiums and then spoke again. “He said they were obsessed with being descended from a man who had no children and they start looking for treasure as soon as they could hold a shovel. He thought they were cursed because most of them grew up to be, well, less than stellar citizens, and some of them died when they were kids.”

“Died
when they were kids” punched him right smack in the gut. He refused to double over, and he had to force his breathing to be normal.

“He said the most recent offender against their peaceful town was Bryon Loch. Daniel?”

He pulled it together and looked at her. “Loch.”

She scooted her chair over next to his, put her arm around his shoulders and didn’t say a word more. She was a good friend. The best.

So why was he doing this to her?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

M
IA
GOT
UP
and kissed him on the forehead. He could see in her face she knew his demons had raised their heads.

“Sit here,” she said gently. “I’ll clean up. You stay. Take in the sunshine.”

He leaned back, turned his face up to the warmth and closed his eyes, but after a minute pushed up from the chair and followed her into the condo.

She put the last glass in the dishwasher and turned to smile at him. Her delicately featured face held the effects of everything going on in her life and he knew he was one of her problems.

He took hold of her hands and pulled her toe-to-toe with him. “Mia, we can’t keep doing this to you.”

She bowed her head. “I know. I thought I could deal with it. I thought I could be close to you, have you, and keep my emotions in check.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“My part is my own fault. I thought it didn’t have to matter if we made love, had fun sex and then walked away.” She put her cheek on his chest and broke his heart the rest of the way.

He held her close and pressed his lips to delicately fragrant hair. “I knew better and I let us get involved.”

She pushed away and looked at him, at first confused and suspicious. “I’ll get my things together and be gone in a few minutes.”

“Please don’t do that.” He held her hand when she started to walk away.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to be able to meet these people this evening. I want you to have the chance to let them meet you, see the human consequences of delaying your project.”

Emotions played across her face and she came to a decision. “I’d like that. Bailey’s Cove deserves that.”

“Do you think it’s possible we’ve defused the situation between us enough that we can manage to get through the next few hours?” He watched her face for any signs of doubt or fear, signs he should back off. “Especially since we have something to do to distract us.”

“The package on the desk in your office? I’d better help you or it’ll sit there forever, won’t it?”

“It might.”

She looked up at him and smiled, a smile bright enough that it might have held forgiveness.

Relief he didn’t know he’d been waiting for surprised him. If he had broken her unflagging spirit, destroyed another woman, he might as well bury himself in the vast Maine forests away from civilization, from her.

“I’ll get the package,” he said as he slowly released her hand.

She nodded.

He picked up the package from his desk and hefted it on the palm of his hand. It had turned out to be a postal box with a standard printed label, black and white, bar codes, the works.

When he returned to the living room, Mia was dressed in her jeans and sweater and sitting on the edge of the sofa. One of his kitchen knives sat on the coffee table.

“I didn’t know if you had a box opener or a utility knife, so...” She picked up the knife.

“So that’s for the package?” He trusted her. He trusted her with his life and he knew it.

Mia looked up toward the ceiling and clasped her hands. “We love you, Great-Aunt Margaret, and I’ll help this sorry nephew of yours through this package of stuff if I have to tie him to the chair and prop his eyes open.”

She unclasped and then reclasped her hands. “And thank you for taking such good care of your nephew all those years.”

“She did, too.” He took the knife, slit open the package and pulled out the contents.

“The MacCareys.” Mia put a hand on his arm as she read the cover.

He had seen the fat binder before. “Aunt Margaret worked on this all the time I knew her. She never tried to coerce me to help with or even look at it. It’s the family genealogy. At first, as a kid, I wasn’t interested, and then I was too busy.” And then, well, he couldn’t.

He couldn’t because there were bound to be other children, other MacCareys who had died young, from the same genetic flaw his young son had gotten from him.

He opened the binder to the most recent entry and glanced at the page before he opened the book wider so Mia could see inside. Margaret had mercifully left out any information about himself except to note him below his deceased parents. The chapters had many photos and much text augmented by clippings, letters, handwritten and typed notes, apparently from the present to long ago. The older pages had been encased in plastic page covers to preserve them.

“It’s wonderful how the handwriting seemed to go from typed to ball point to fountain pen to quill,” she said, pressing a fingertip to one of the covered pages with quill writing.

When he reached the oldest pages, the beginning of the MacCarey line in the United States, he knew by her gasp Mia recognized the coat of arms at the same time he did.

“Daniel.”

The page held an image of a carefully drawn and colored coat of arms. A similar image had been stamped on the inside of the ring from Aunt Margaret. The faded greens and yellows must have once been vibrant. On the triple-peaked shield divided into quadrants of alternating color, the blade of a sword crossed with a tree, and a ship floating on the ocean sat in the background. The stamp on the ring had only the sword and the tree. The ship and the waves would have been too much detail for such a small stamp.

Inside the pocket of the back cover of the binder sat a letter-size envelope with “My Beloved Daniel” handwritten on the front.

“She must not have wanted to scare you off by putting the letter in the front pocket,” Mia said in a soft voice. “Smart woman.”

He ran the tip of his finger over the writing and opened the letter so both of them could see it.

To Daniel MacCarey, or if he never looked in this book that troubles him so much, to anyone who will give a thought and perhaps a prayer to the MacCarey family.

Mia pressed her body against his, put a warm hand on his leg and squeezed, a gesture of comfort. He opened the letter.

Daniel, I wanted to give you the underpinnings of your family line in case you ever read this.

Alas, the origin of the coat of arms is lost to me. This drawing and the ring have been passed down for a century and a half. The ring belonged to Colleen McClure, given to her by her lover. Her oldest child was not fathered by her husband and we, Daniel, the MacCareys, are descended from the child conceived out of wedlock. This may not be a shocking horror in your day and age, but it was then and Colleen wanted to make sure the secret was never forgotten. The secret passes with the ring and the coat of arms. I think she might have been afraid the family would reject her first son’s heirs as illegitimate if the truth was known about the father, so she refused to name him outright or to say anything at all about the mystery man.

Unfortunately, and it distresses me to say this, one branch of Fletcher/McClure descendants, twice removed from the child born of love, was obliterated by someone keeping the records and there is no information about who might have been added and then taken away. I will leave you to make your own conjectures.

Other than that, we are an ordinary collection of geniuses and outstandingly good-looking human beings.

Have a wonderful life, Daniel. I knew you would read this—eventually.

Your great-aunt Margaret Irene MacCarey

“Did I tell you Great-Aunt Margaret was a terrific woman with a delightful sense of humor?”

“Well, she certainly wasn’t wrong about the good-looking part.”

“Yes, she was a beautiful woman.”

She gave him a light elbow in the ribs.

“I’m starting to put a name to the mystery man. Since I’m not a scientist or an anthropologist, I can make up anything I want.” She scooted to the edge of the couch and turned to face him.

“The pirate Liam Bailey is you grandfather about eight or ten times removed.” When he reached for her, she leaped up and danced away. “Arrgh, matie, shiver me timbers. Yo ho ho and a bottle o’ rum, I believe it’s time for me to get in the shower and get ready.”

“Towels are in the cupboard.” He started to follow her.

“It’s a bathroom. I think I’ll find everything I need.”

Daniel sat back on the couch and pulled the book into his lap. Was Mia right? Was it possible for coincidence to be so facetious as to make him related to the man in Mia’s wall?

Then he closed the book. How could it possibly make a difference to anyone except a historian, or perhaps an anthropologist?

He gathered up the book and tapped on the bathroom door. “Mia. I need to leave for a half hour or so.”

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

* * *

M
IA
HUNG
HER
clothes on the hook on the door and stepped into the shower. As soon as the water poured down over her head, tears poured from her eyes.

She had been so smug. Had known everything there was to know about a broken heart. In fate’s retribution, here she was, left to spend several more hours with a man who couldn’t reject her, but couldn’t love her, either.

When mere tears didn’t seem to be enough, she leaned against the wall and sobbed until she was sitting on the floor in the flow of the water trying to wish the pain from her heart.

She loved him.

She loved him and could not find an opponent to fight to win him over.

Yet she needed to do battle this afternoon anyway. She needed to convince these people whom she did not know that she mattered, that the folks of Bailey’s Cove mattered.

And she would. That’s what she did. That’s who she was.

She stood and shook herself to try to clear all the negative thoughts from her head. Then she lathered soap all over herself. Once again she cleansed the touch of Daniel MacCarey from her body and, if she was the unluckiest woman ever, soon it would be from her life.

That she had been too cavalier about getting her heart broken was yet another of those life lessons she had not known she needed to learn.

Now she had learned and relearned.

She would open Pirate’s Roost or she would become a sorry old cliché and die trying. She needed to throw herself into the work. It didn’t matter who that was from her wall. Pirate. Arrgh, she’d deal with the lookers. Treasure hunters? Bring ’em on. A woman with a broken heart had a lot to compensate for, and one thing she knew about herself, she could fight hard.

The past six months of hands-on work at Pirate’s Roost had taught her a lot. She wasn’t kidding when she told Monique she’d wield a hammer herself if need be, and the nails, screws, saw.

She got out of the shower and wrapped a fluffy towel around her head. She dried off her body briskly with another. No matter how deeply she dug in her bag of supplies, however, she could not find her toothpaste. She could brush without it, but that always seemed like wasted effort.

This time she put on her own robe and opened the bathroom door to let out the steam the vent was not handling and flipped on the mirror lights. She needed to assess how much damage she had done to her face and eyes by crying.

Not too bad. She splashed cold water on her face over and over.

Once again, she looked for the elusive toothpaste. No luck.

Everybody had toothpaste, so must Daniel.

She opened the medicine cabinet, found the tube and squirted some on her brush. As she put the tube back, she realized on the shelf above there was one of those small, wallet-size photos standing, slightly curled on the shelf behind the shaving cream.

Daniel kept close the photo of a woman and child, where he could see it every day. Not displayed out in the open where visitors could see it. Hidden where only Daniel could see—unless a visitor ran out of toothpaste.

Mia scooted the can aside and picked up the picture. The woman was beautiful and the little dark-haired child so cute, but a little sad even though he smiled.

When Mia looked more closely at the child, she saw a distorted version of Daniel looking back at her.

She winced and started as Daniel strode into the bathroom and took the picture from her.

The steel of determination shuttered any reaction he might have had to finding her holding his secret.

“It’s them.” The words came out on a breathy gasp.

He put the picture in the pocket of his shirt. “How did you know?”

“Put your hackles back down.” She rubbed his chest to reassure them both that this was not a breach. “I don’t know much and what I thought I might know you just confirmed.”

He looked suspiciously at her and the dark pain began to slowly dance in his eyes. He forgave her the transgression or he would not have let her see his emotions at all.

“You are a very strong person, Daniel. I’ve never doubted that, so when I called you Danny, just the sound of the name brought up something so terrible it took you out as if I had hit you with that hammer. That had to be the name you were called in your family unit. Whatever happened to you was so dark and so profound it had to involve a child. That’s all I thought I knew.”

When he turned away from her she knew she did not know it all yet. She wanted to go to him and demand he tell her, but a promise was a promise.

“Hey. I’m sorry.”

“That’s just it.” He turned back. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

She nodded acceptance. “I’d like to air-dry my hair some on the balcony if you would like to use the shower.”

Now he nodded.

“I just need my brush.” She grabbed her things from the bathroom, including the toothbrush, which she stuffed into the plastic bag it had been stored in. The toothpaste smeared and mushed all over the inside of the bag and she hoped that was not a prediction of the next few hours.

She glanced up to see his reflection in the mirror. He looked...alone.

When she left the bathroom with her bag over her shoulder and her arms full of stuff, he stopped her and placed a kiss on the top of her head.

Forgiveness, complete and full of sorrow.

She turned and hurried away.

Dropping everything on the couch except one towel, her hairbrush and the robe she wore, she let herself out into the warm afternoon sun.