Heroes are My Weakness (17 page)

She concentrated on the food, twirling her fork in the pasta and pushing a messy bite into her mouth. It was the best thing she’d ever tasted. Rich and gooey, savory with garlic and smoky with bacon. Completely satisfying. “When did you learn to cook?”

“When I started writing. I discovered that cooking was a great way for me to untangle plot problems in my head.”

“Nothing quite as inspiring as a butcher knife, right?”

He raised his unscarred eyebrow at her.

She was starting to feel a little too snarky, so she relented. “This might be the best meal I’ve ever eaten.”

“Only compared with what you and Jaycie have been fixing.”

“There’s nothing wrong with our food.” She couldn’t muster up much conviction.

“Nothing much right with it, either. The best you can say is that it’s serviceable.”

“I’ll take serviceable. Serviceable’s good.” She chased a bacon morsel with her fork. “Why don’t you cook for yourself.”

“Too much trouble.”

Not an entirely satisfying answer, since he seemed to enjoy cooking, but she wasn’t going to show enough interest to inquire further.

He leaned back in his chair. Unlike her, he wasn’t wolfing down his meal but savoring it. “Why didn’t you order groceries for yourself?”

“I ordered,” she said around another mouthful. “Apparently someone left a message canceling it.”

He cradled his wineglass. “Here’s what I don’t get. You haven’t even been here a full two weeks. How have you managed to piss off somebody that fast?”

She’d give anything to know whether or not he was aware that she might have something valuable hidden here. “I have no idea,” she said, twisting a strand of pasta around her fork.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

She dabbed at her mouth. “There are a lot of things I’m not telling you.”

“You have a theory about this, don’t you?”

“Yes, but unfortunately, I can’t prove you’re the one behind the trouble.”

“Cut the bullshit,” he said harshly. “You know I didn’t trash this place. But I’m starting to believe you might have some idea who did.”

“None. Swear.” That part was true, at least.

“Then why did it happen? Despite the company you keep, you’re no dummy. I think you have your suspicions.”

“I might. And no, I’m not sharing.”

He regarded her with a shuttered expression that was impossible to read. “You really don’t trust me, do you?”

It was such a ludicrous question that she didn’t bother answering, although she couldn’t resist rolling her eyes. Which he didn’t find amusing.

“I can’t help if you won’t level with me,” he said in the voice of someone used to instant obedience.

No chance he’d get that from her. It would take more than fabulous food and great wine to wipe out her memory bank.

“Tell me what’s happening,” he went on. “Why is someone after you? What do they want?”

She placed her palm on her chest and drawled, “The key to my heart.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Keep your secrets then. I don’t care.”

“No reason you should.”

They finished eating in silence. She carried her plate and wineglass into the kitchen. The cupboard door above the sink was still ajar displaying the bottles stacked inside. Her mother had always kept good wine around, thanks to the gifts people brought her. Rare vintages. Highly sought after collectibles. Who knew what she had stored in there? Maybe—

The wine!
Annie gripped the edge of the sink. What if these bottles of wine were her legacy? She’d been so focused on the art in the cottage that she hadn’t thought beyond. Rare bottles of wine fetched exorbitant sums at auction. She’d heard of a single bottle going for twenty or thirty thousand dollars. What if she and Theo had just polished off part of her legacy?

The wine started to come back up in her throat. She heard him walking into the kitchen behind her. “You have to go now,” she said unsteadily. “I appreciate the food, but I’m serious. You have to get out of here.”

“Fine by me.” He set his plate on the counter, showing no more emotion about being kicked out than he did about anything else.

As soon as he was gone, she grabbed her notebook, wrote down the information from the label of each wine bottle, then carefully boxed them all up. She found a marker and wrote
CLOTHES
TO
DONATE
on the flap, then tucked the box away in the back of her closet. If there was another break-in, she wouldn’t make it easy on whoever was out to get her.

“I
KEEP THINKING IF THIS
room looked better,” Jaycie said, leaning precariously on her crutches, “Theo might want to relax here.”

Which meant Jaycie would have a better chance of spending time with him the way she wanted to. Annie flipped the sunroom couch cushions. Jaycie wasn’t a smitten teenager any longer. Hadn’t she learned anything about making better choices in men?

“Theo didn’t come back to the house for dinner last night?”

Annie heard the question in Jaycie’s voice but decided it was best to keep last night’s meal to herself. “He stayed around for a while to give me a hard time. I finally kicked him out.”

Jaycie moved her dust rag across the bookshelves. “Oh. That was probably good.”

T
HE WINE WAS ONE MORE
disappointment. Annie tracked each bottle online. The most expensive was a hundred dollars, definitely pricey, but all of them together weren’t enough to qualify as a legacy. As she closed the lid to her laptop, she heard Jaycie at the kitchen door. “Livia! You’re not supposed to be outside. Come here right now!”

Annie sighed. “I’ll get her.”

Jaycie hobbled out into the hallway. “I’m going to have to start punishing her.”

Jaycie was too softhearted. Besides, they both recognized that it wasn’t right to keep an active child inside all day. As Annie put on her coat and gathered up Scamp, she decided that being a decent person was a pain in the ass.

She found Livia crouched on her heels by the tree stump. The little girl had added something new to the double row of sticks stuck in the ground in front of the hollow stump. A small pavement of stones now formed a pathway under the stick canopy to the tree hollow entrance.

Annie finally realized what she was looking at. Livia had built a fairy house. They were common in Maine, handmade dwellings for any fanciful creatures who might dwell in the woodlands. Made of sticks, moss, pebbles, pinecones—whatever was available in nature.

Annie sat cross-legged on the cold ledge stone and propped Scamp on her knee. “It’s me,” Scamp said, “Genevieve Adelaide Josephine Brown, otherwise known as Scamp. Whatcha doing?”

Livia touched her new stone pavement, almost as if she wanted to say something. When she didn’t, Scamp said, “It looks like you built a fairy house. I like to build things. I made alphabet letters out of Popsicle sticks once, and I made tissue paper flowers, and I made a Thanksgiving turkey from a cutout of my hand. I’m quite artistic. But I never built a fairy house.”

Livia kept her attention firmly fixed on Scamp, as if Annie didn’t exist.

“Have the fairies visited?” Scamp asked.

Livia’s lips began to part, as if she wanted to say something. Annie held her breath. The child’s brow furrowed. Her mouth closed, opened again, and then everything about her seemed to wilt. Her shoulders sagged, her head dropped. She looked so miserable that Annie regretted trying to push her.

“Free secret!”
Scamp shouted.

Livia looked up, her gray eyes coming alive again.

Scamp pressed one of her small cloth hands to her mouth. “This is a bad one. Remember you’re not allowed to get mad.”

Livia nodded solemnly.

“My free secret is . . .” Scamp lowered her voice to a near whisper. “One time I was supposed to pick up my toys, but I didn’t want to, so I decided to go exploring instead, even though Annie told me not to go outside. But I did anyway, and she didn’t know where I was, and it made her really scared.” Scamp paused for breath. “I told you it was bad. Do you still like me?”

Livia’s head bobbed in an emphatic nod.

Scamp leaned back against Annie’s chest. “It’s not fair. I told two free secrets, but you haven’t told me even one.”

Annie could feel Livia’s longing to communicate—the tension gathering in her small body, the misery etched into her delicate features.

“Never mind!” Scamp exclaimed. “I have a new song. Did I mention that I’m an amazing singer? I will now perform for you. Do not sing along—I’m a solo artist—but feel free to dance.”

Scamp launched into an enthusiastic version of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” During the first chorus, Annie came to her feet and danced along, Scamp bobbing above her crossed arm. Livia soon joined in. By the time Scamp delivered the final chorus, Livia and Annie were dancing together, and Annie hadn’t coughed once.

A
NNIE DIDN
’
T SEE
T
HEO THAT
day, but the next afternoon, as she and Jaycie continued attacking the sunroom, he made his presence known. “It’s a text from Theo.” Jaycie looked down at her phone. “He wants all the fireplaces cleaned. He’s forgotten I can’t do this.”

“He hasn’t forgotten anything,” Annie retorted. Trust Theo to find a new way to torture her.

Jaycie gazed at Annie over the purple hippopotamus tied to the top of her crutch. “It’s my job. You shouldn’t have to do this kind of thing.”

“If I don’t, I’ll deprive Theo of his entertainment.”

Jaycie collapsed against the bookcases, sending a leather-bound volume tumbling to its side. “I don’t understand why the two of you don’t get along. I mean . . . I remember what happened, but that was a long time ago. He was just a kid. And I never heard about him getting into trouble again.”

Because Elliott would have hushed it up,
Annie thought. “Time doesn’t change a person’s basic character.”

Jaycie regarded her earnestly, the most naive woman on earth. “There’s nothing wrong with his character. If there was, he’d have fired me.”

Annie bit back a pointed retort. She wouldn’t inflict her own cynicism on the only real friend she had here. And maybe she was the one with the character flaw. After everything Jaycie had been through in her marriage, it was admirable that she could still maintain her optimism about men.

W
HEN
A
NNIE ENTERED THE COTTAGE
that night covered with soot, she was greeted with the sight of Leo straddling the back of her couch like a cowboy riding a horse. Dilly sat in a chair, the empty wine bottle from two nights ago in her lap. Crumpet was sprawled on the floor in front of an open copy of the pornographic art photo book, while Peter had crept up behind her to look under her skirt.

Theo came out of the kitchen, a dish towel in his hands. She looked from the puppets to him. He shrugged. “They were bored.”

“
You
were bored. You didn’t want to write, and this was your way of procrastinating. Didn’t I tell you to leave my puppets alone?”

“Did you? I don’t remember.”

“I could argue with you about that, but I have to take a bath. For some reason, I seem to be covered in fireplace ash.”

He smiled. An honest-to-God smile that didn’t quite fit on his brooding face. She stalked toward the bedroom. “You’d better be gone when I come out.”

“Are you sure you want me to leave?” she heard him say. “I picked up a couple of lobsters in town today.”

Damn it!
She was ravenous, but that didn’t mean she was going to sell herself out for food. Not for ordinary food, anyway. But lobster . . . ? She slammed her bedroom door, which made her feel like a twit.

I don’t see why you’d feel that way,
Crumpet said petulantly.
I slam doors all the time.

Annie stripped off her dirty jeans.
Exactly my point.

She took a bath, washed the soot out of her hair, and dressed in a clean pair of jeans and one of Mariah’s black turtleneck sweaters. She tried to tame her wet hair by putting it up in a ponytail, knowing as she did that her curls would soon pop out like demented mattress springs. She eyed her meager supply of makeup but refused to apply even lip gloss.

The kitchen smelled like a four-star restaurant, and Theo was peering into the cabinet over the sink. “What happened to the wine that was here?”

She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. “It’s boxed up and waiting for my next trip to the post office.” The value of the whole batch was around four hundred dollars, not a legacy, but still welcome. “I’m selling it. Turns out, I’m too poor to drink hundreds of dollars’ worth of wine myself. Or offer it to an unwanted houseguest.”

“I’ll buy a bottle from you. Better yet, I’ll trade it for the food you stole from me.”

“I didn’t steal anything. I told you. I’ll replace it all when the supply boat comes in next week.” She made a hasty amendment. “Except for what you ate.”

“I don’t want it replaced. I want your wine.”

Scamp butted in.
Give him your body instead.

Damn it, Scamp. Shut up.
Annie gazed toward the pots on the stove. “Even the least expensive bottle is worth more than the food I borrowed.”

“You’re forgetting tonight’s lobster.”

“On Peregrine, hamburger is more expensive than lobster. But nice try.”

“Fine. I’ll buy a bottle from you.”

“Great. Let me get my price list.”

He muttered something under his breath as she made her way to the bedroom.

“How much do you want to pay?” she called out.

“Surprise me,” he said from the kitchen. “And you can’t have any. I’m drinking the whole thing myself.”

She pulled the box from the rear of the closet. “Then I’ll have to add a corking fee. It’ll be cheaper to share.”

She heard something that was either a cough or a rough laugh.

Theo had made mashed potatoes to go with the lobster—creamy, garlicky mashed potatoes—indisputable evidence that his offer to fix dinner was premeditated, since there hadn’t been any potatoes in the cottage that morning. What was his motivation for hanging around here? It definitely wasn’t altruistic.