Magic (26 page)

“You!” Porchind gasped, wheeling away from the wall. He made a dash for the door to the hall, grabbing the knob, twisting and rattling it. The door didn’t budge.

“Oh, that door sticks something fierce,” Bryan said mildly, flipping on a light. “You know how these old houses are. Actually, I like to think the ghost is holding it shut.”

“There is no ghost, you moron!” Porchind snapped, wheeling back around to face him, his florid face contorted with rage.

“No?” Bryan frowned in mock disappointment. “I guess that means Shane might get to use his gun after all.” He shrugged as the fat man blanched. “Well, that’ll make him happy. So, Mr. Porchind, to what do we owe this not-so-unexpected visit? Doing a little after-hours art shopping?”

“I came to claim what is rightfully mine!” he declared emphatically.

Bryan looked surprised. “Yours? Hmmm. I think the authorities might have something to say about that, seeing how you don’t own this house or anything in it.”

“Drake stole that gold.”

“From a notorious criminal.”

“I will have the gold, Mr. Hennessy,” Porchind said purposefully.

Bryan raised a brow as the man produced a revolver from behind him. “Deciding to follow in the family tradition, I see.”

“Shut up,” Porchind ordered, his breath coming in short gasps. “Come over here and take this picture down.”

Bryan shrugged. “If you say so.”

He sauntered across the room and easily lifted the heavy gilt frame from its hook. The wall behind it was blank.

“Where’s the safe?” Porchind demanded, his chest heaving like a bellows. Sweat beaded on his bald head and ran down the sides of his face in little rivers.

“There is no safe.”

The fat man’s eyes bulged as his cheeks turned crimson. “But—but—you told Rasmussen—”

Bryan grinned engagingly. “I lied.”

His admission met with a murderous look. “You rotten …”

Porchind lifted the revolver and aimed. Bryan swung the portrait sideways, catching the man hard across the stomach with the thick frame. Porchind staggered back as his breath left him in a gust. Suddenly his feet kicked out from under him, and he fell backward with a strangled squeal. The revolver discharged as he hit the floor, the bullet exploding into the fireplace, nicking a chunk out of the brick.

The study door burst open, and Shane Callan charged into the room with a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson in his hands. He trained the gun on Porchind and smiled a purely predatory smile, gray eyes gleaming.

“I’d drop that peashooter if I were you, sport,” he said, his voice a low, rough caress.

“Where’s Rasmussen?” Bryan asked.

“Out front with Deputy Screwup.”

“Bryan!” Rachel exclaimed, rushing into the room, her face white, eyes wide. “Are you all right? We heard a shot!”

“I’m fine,” he said coolly.

Turning away from her, he hung the portrait of Arthur Drake back in its place, brushing his fingertips across the tarnished brass plate that was affixed to the bottom molding.

“Are you all right?” he asked as they Watched Shane haul Porchind to his feet and shove him out into the hall.

“I’m fine.”

“And Addie?”

“Are you kidding? The police are here,” Rachel joked, trying to muster up a laugh of her own and failing. “She’s ecstatic.”

The silence that fell between them was awkward, filled with unspoken questions. Bryan let his gaze drink in the sight of her, memorizing everything about the way she looked at that moment—young and frightened in a baggy T-shirt and jeans, her hair falling around her like a rumpled curtain of silk.

Finally, she broke the quiet, asking a question that had nothing to do with the ones in her heart. “How did you know they would be here tonight?”

“Oh, I had a hunch. I sort of sent them.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

“I guess I just wanted to clear all this up for you before I left.”

Rachel’s heart leapt into her throat. “You’re leaving? Leaving Anastasia?”

“I’ve been asked to go to Hungary.”

“I see.”

“I wanted to find the gold for you first,” he explained. “After all, you and Addie deserve it more than Porky and the Rat do.”

Rachel hung her head and sighed. He’d come back here and risked his life for something that didn’t exist. All for her. What was she going to do? She would love him with her last breath, but she couldn’t afford to go chasing rainbows with him.

She watched as Bryan went to the fireplace and selected the poker from the stand of heavy brass fire irons. Using the handle end, which was shaped like a hammerhead, he rapped it against the brick that Porchind’s bullet had struck. The thin layer of brick crumbled and fell away, revealing a surface of shiny gold.

“ ‘Gold is tried by fire,’ ” he said, “ ‘brave men by adversity.’ Seneca.”

Rachel stared in stunned disbelief. She fell to her knees in front of the fireplace and lifted a trembling hand to touch the treasure that had lain hidden all these years, safe and snug behind a wall of false brick.

“Oh, my—It’s real,” she said on a soft breath. “Gold.”

“Yes,” Bryan murmured, watching her. “A considerable fortune’s worth, I’d say, though I admit I don’t exactly keep abreast of the market prices. You’ll want to call Dylan Harrison. He does a little investment counseling on the side. He can tell you what it’s worth in dollars and cents.”

At the moment she didn’t need to know what it was worth in dollars and cents. She knew what it was worth. It was the answer to all her financial woes. It meant they wouldn’t have to sell Drake House. They wouldn’t have to leave Anastasia. Practicality could take a flying leap right out of her life.

She closed her eyes and laughed as giddy joy flooded through her. Sighing, she pressed her cheek to the exposed bar of gold.

“It was really here,” she whispered. “Like magic.”

“Yes,” Bryan said sadly. “It’s a good thing one of us believed in it.”

Bryan turned to quit the room, but the door had swung shut and refused to open when he tried it. He hung his head and let out a slow, measured breath, struggling to rein in his temper. Rachel had made it clear where he fit into her life—nowhere. He wanted only to make a graceful exit, but that privilege was being denied him. He had a feeling he knew why, but he was in no mood for interference from a sixth sense or anything else. Both his pride and his heart were still stinging from Rachel’s rejection. He wanted only to leave.

Cursing under his breath, he stood back and gave the door a kick that clearly demonstrated an acquaintance with martial arts. Part of the jamb splintered away, and the door flew open. An odd thud sounded on the far side of the hall, and a vase teetered on its stand.

Rachel watched him go, her eyes wide, her heart pounding. He was leaving, leaving Anastasia, leaving her. The final barrier to their happiness had been eradicated, and he was leaving!

She scrambled to her feet and dashed out of the study and down the hall.

On the porch Deputy Skreawupp and another of Anastasia’s finest were reading Porchind and Rasmussen their rights. The pair of erstwhile criminals stood glumly side by side with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Porchind’s bowling-ball head was red with indignation. Rasmussen looked as if he would have been stark white even without his greasy makeup. The thin man rolled his shoulders uncomfortably against the straps of the contraption he and his cohort had devised to make the mystic smoke that had floated around him as he had “haunted” Drake House.

“I never should have listened to you,” Porchind hissed. “You should have known it was a trap, stupid.”

“A trap,” Rasmussen mumbled miserably, his head lolling from side to side.

“Moron,” Porchind grumbled.

“Clam up, Porky,” Skreawupp ordered, shaking a stubby pencil beneath the man’s nose. “I’ll muzzle you like a fat circus bear, and I can do it.”

Shane Callan leaned indolently back against a post, watching the scene with an almost feline smile of amused satisfaction. His hands were tucked casually into the pockets of his black jeans. The butt of his pistol peeked out from under his left arm.

Addie watched the proceedings from Skreawupp’s elbow with avid interest.

“I knew they were up to no good,” she said, earning herself a scowl from the sour-faced deputy. “It took you long enough to figure it out, Deputy Dope.”

“They needed evidence, Addie,” Bryan said.

She waved a hand at him. “Twaddle.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” the deputy said to Porchind. He shot a dark look at Addie. “That goes for you, too, honey bun.”

She blew a loud raspberry at him and wound up to sock him one. Rachel caught her by the arm and swung her toward the door. “Mother, why don’t you go in and find a sweater … before the deputy decides to charge you with harassment,” she added under her breath as her mother clomped away.

“Miss Lindquist, we’d appreciate it if you’d come down to the station in the morning to make a statement,” the younger deputy said.

“And we’d
really
appreciate it if you left your mother at home,” Skreawupp added. Rachel’s narrow look glanced off his double chins as he turned to his captive scoundrels and herded them down the steps. “All right, you two scum balls, it’s the slammer for you. The cooler, the can, the county condo. I’ve seen your kind a hundred times. You stalk the helpless on little cat feet and strike in the dark of night. Makes me sick.”

“He’s one of a kind,” Shane commented mildly as the deputy’s voice faded away and the doors slammed on the squad car. He lit a cigarette and sighed a stream of blue smoke into the night air. “Thank God.”

“Thank you for helping, Mr. Callan,” Rachel said, wrapping her arms around herself in a vain attempt to ward off the damp chill of the night as it seeped through her T-shirt and into her skin.

Shane just shrugged as he pushed himself away from the post. “That’s what friends are for.” His cool gray eyes slid from Rachel to Bryan. “I’ll see you back at Keepsake?”

Bryan nodded. “Later. Thanks for the hand.”

“You made my day,” Callan said dryly, shooting his friend a handsome grin. He trotted down the front steps and disappeared into the night.

“He’s an intriguing man,” Rachel said, more to fill the uncomfortable silence than anything. Bryan was standing less than five feet from her, and yet he felt as distant as the moon—and as cool.

“I have to go pack.” He turned stiffly toward the door.

“Would you like a cup of coffee first?” she asked, stalling for time. She felt like a coward for the first time since she’d stood up to her mother five years earlier.

“No.”

The blasted man wasn’t going to make this easy for her, was he? She swallowed a little more of her pride and tried again. “I’d like to hear the whole story behind the gold and Porchind and everything.”

“Does it matter?” Bryan asked, giving her a sharp look. “The gold is yours. I wouldn’t think you’d care how it got there.”

Rachel sucked in a breath at the blow. “That’s not fair.”

Bryan steeled himself against the hurt he’d caused her. She had dealt her share of it earlier. He gave a careless shrug of his broad shoulders. “Well, as I’ve been told time and again,” he said, a sardonic smile twisting his mouth, “life isn’t fair. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

“Bryan.” Rachel abandoned all pretense of subtlety or pride and grabbed at the sleeve of his sweatshirt as he started through the door. She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “I don’t want you to go.”

“That’s not what you told me this afternoon,” he said, his expression carefully blank.

“Things were different this afternoon. I was upset and angry and—”

“And now you’re rich?” he suggested sarcastically.

Rachel took it on the chin and plowed right ahead. “I won’t have to sell the house. I won’t have to worry about the kind of care I can provide for Mother. The gold changes everything.”

He gave her a bleak look. “Does it?”

“Bryan, I love you,” she said, the beginnings of desperation coloring her voice.

Instead of filling with joy, his earnest blue eyes only grew sad behind his glasses. “And it took something as solid, as tangible as gold to get you to trust in that love, to get you to believe it can work and last,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t worth taking a chance on before, but now, since you’re rich, what the heck? How is that supposed to make me feel, Rachel?”

She didn’t answer. She knew how it made him feel. That same horrible, hollow feeling was yawning inside her. At that moment she would have given the lion’s share of the gold to be able to take back everything she’d said to him that afternoon.

“Love can’t be contingent on financial security,” Bryan said gently. “It can’t be contingent on anything at all. Tell me what happens when the gold runs out? Will you stop believing? Will it no longer be sensible or practical to be in love with me? The vows say for richer or poorer, Rachel. For better or worse. In sickness and in health. They don’t say anything about convenience. I sat by and watched someone I loved die. Do you think that was easy or convenient or fun?”

“No,” she whispered, tears clinging to her thick golden lashes.

“No,” he echoed softly, his eyes shadowed with remembered pain. “I won’t stay here because it’s suddenly become easy for you to love me, Rachel. There are lots of times when love has to subsist on nothing more than hope and a belief in magic. When you’re ready to believe that …” His words trailed off on a tired sigh, as if he had already given up on the idea. “Ill leave you the number of a Mr. Huntingheath in London. He knows how to find me.”

He turned then and went into the house. Rachel’s hand fell to her side. Her fingers closed around the memory of touching him, and she raised her fist to press it to her mouth. She watched Bryan go up the grand staircase, but she made no effort to stop him. She wasn’t sure if she had the strength or the right to. Instead, she went to the study and curled up in the corner of the leather love seat to think.

To her left, amid the dark bricks of the fireplace, the exposed bar of gold gleamed dully in the soft light. She stared at it dispassionately. It was the answer to all her prayers save two: It couldn’t bring her mother’s health back, and it couldn’t keep Bryan from walking out on her.

What was it worth, then? Nothing. Less than nothing. It would pay her debts and secure her future, but her future would be empty without Bryan and the magic he brought to her life.

Bryan folded his shirts mechanically. Packing was a routine that had long ago become automatic to him. His hands knew what to do. His mind was free to wander.

He had no taste for a trip to Hungary. The work might prove to be a good diversion, but he could dredge up none of his usual enthusiasm. Maybe he would go home first and visit his parents or take a trip to Connecticut and spend some time with his brother J.J. and Genna and their kids.

But thoughts of family only sharpened the ache of loneliness inside him. He wanted a family of his own. He wanted a wife and children and a home he wouldn’t be a visitor in. For the second time in his life he had had that kind of happiness within his reach, and again the rainbow had eluded his grasp.

It hurt. Maybe it hurt worse because he believed so strongly that wishes could come true. Maybe Rachel was right in expecting the worst from life. At least then you couldn’t be disappointed when that was what you got.

Rachel. He loved her. She loved him. But she wasn’t willing to believe in magic, and he wasn’t willing to settle for less.

“Being a bit hard on the girl, aren’t you, Hennessy?”

Bryan looked up at the sound of the cultured British voice. His gaze went to the cracked mirror above the dresser. In the reflection of the room he could see himself and a shadowy figure standing some distance behind him, near the armoire. The man was tall and slender, an elegant figure in formal attire; a pale, thin man with the insolent bearing of aristocratic breeding. His hair was combed straight back. His suit was immaculate, his bow tie just slightly imperfect—the mark of a true gentleman of his day.

“Archibald Wimsey, I presume,” Bryan said, not exhibiting the least sign of surprise. “I was wondering when you were going to come out of hiding.”

“Hiding?” Wimsey frowned but chose not to challenge the remark. “Work to be done, don’t you know, dear fellow. Couldn’t be the life of the party what with all these good deeds to do, now, could I?”

“Good deeds?”

Wimsey leaned against the armoire as if the thing could actually support his translucent form. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his trousers and scowled up at the ceiling. “I’ve been stuck in this wretched house for fifty-nine years, waiting for some great humanitarian act to perform so I could go on to a more appropriate afterlife. Fifty-nine years! Rather the ultimate story of a house guest overstaying his welcome, eh?”

He dropped his gaze back to Bryan and shrugged. “I wasn’t inclined to muck up my chances by showing myself to one and all just so you could get your name into some bloody obscure pseudoscientific journal.”

“In fifty-nine years you haven’t had a single opportunity to redeem yourself?” Bryan asked dubiously.

“The closest I came was setting fire to Cornelia Thayer’s collection of miniskirts in 1969,” Wimsey reflected with a fond smile of remembrance that faded into a look of disgust. “The woman possessed thighs to rival the trunks of the great redwoods, don’t you know. Unfortunately, eradicating an affront to refined sartorial tastes was not deemed sufficient to get me out of my spiritual exile, To make matters worse, Cornelia took to wearing hot pants.” He shuddered in revulsion at the memory. “Confined myself to the attic over that ghastly turn of events. Finally drove the Thayer’s to sell by pouring buckets of ooze down the walls of their bedroom. Don’t reckon that garnered me any brownie points in the great beyond,” he added thoughtfully, rubbing his long chin.

“I don’t imagine,” Bryan agreed, rolling his eyes. “What landed you here in the first place?”

Wimsey gave him a shrewd look. “I think you’ve figured that one out, chum. You tell me.”

“All right. While your pal Ducky was quietly robbing everyone blind, you let people think you were the gentleman bandit because the ladies thought it was romantic. Unfortunately, the ladies weren’t the only ones who believed it. Pig Porchind believed you stole his gold and he—”

Wimsey made a face and held up an insubstantial hand to cut him off. “Don’t let’s relive the truly unpleasant past.”

“You didn’t know where the gold was, did you?”

“You think I’d be here now if I had?” he asked incredulously, straightening away from the armoire and hovering near the bed. Frowning darkly, he shook out one of Bryan’s dress shirts and refolded it to his own satisfaction. “I’d have bloody well told old Pig where it was and what he could do with it. Ducky had it hidden someplace until it was already too late for me, then he apparently brought the stuff in already disguised as bricks. I hadn’t the vaguest idea where it was.”

He directed his frown at Bryan again. “If I’d figured it out ahead of you and revealed the stuff to Addie or the girl, perhaps I wouldn’t still be here.”