Relative Strangers (18 page)

“You lied to him.” Adrienne had to whisper her hoarse accusation. “You told him Marguerite was dead.
”
Another bout of coughing left her struggling for breath.

“The slut eloped. Left the family. She’s as good as dead to us now.”

Adrienne tried to gather the strength to argue with him, but she grew weaker by the minute. She was dying. She knew that now. Dying without ever having told Horatio the truth.

“What’s the matter, old woman?” Jonathan taunted

Bastard,
she thought, but she could not give voice to the word. The room was growing dark. There was no more light, no more air.

Jonathan’s triumphant laughter was the last thing she heard.

* * * *

Corrie woke in a cold sweat.

Wow!

That had been more than she bargained for.

She couldn’t stop shaking.

Swinging her trembling legs over the side of the bed, she tried to stand and ended up falling back onto the mattress. Slowly her breathing steadied and her mind began to work again.

Now what?

She’d had her theories confirmed, but what would be the point of revealing what she knew? To discredit Jonathan? Why bother after all this time? The only person who would be hurt was Stanley Kelvin. It didn’t seem right that the sins of the great-grandfather should be visited upon the great-grandson.

What did Adrienne want her to do?

Tell the true story, obviously. It seemed important to the ghost that people know Marguerite had survived and was the legitimate heiress of the Meads.

But challenging inheritance rights at this late date seemed awfully petty. She supposed such things had been considered more important in the old days, but it didn’t make much difference to her who owned the Phoenix Inn. She certainly didn’t want it.

Perhaps Adrienne, confined as she was to the Sinclair House, didn’t know the Phoenix Inn was in disrepair, that the Mead inheritance had dwindled to almost nothing.

Revealing the truth to the remaining members of each family would have to be enough for Adrienne, Corrie decided. She would tell the Sinclairs what she’d deduced. But first she must inform Stanley Kelvin.

Before she could change her mind, she reached for the phone and put through a call to the Phoenix Inn. She introduced herself to Kelvin, then said, “I’d like to discuss the feud between your family and the Sinclairs.”

To her surprise, he didn’t ask why. “Be at the Phoenix in an hour,” he told her, then abruptly broke the connection.

Corrie wondered if she was making a mistake. Still, it seemed only fair to tell Kelvin what she’d figured out about Jonathan and Marguerite. She’d assure him that she had no intention of making the information public and then leave. Once all the Mead and Sinclair descendants knew the truth, Adrienne would be free.

Filled with a new sense of purpose, Corrie headed for Lucas’s office. Before she left, she’d have just enough time to bring him up to date.

* * * *

One look at Corrie made Lucas realize how impossible it would be to let her go without a fight. He simply could not imagine a future without her in it.

Standing in a sunbeam, she hesitated in his doorway. She brought light into the room with her. Literally and figuratively.

He wanted to wake up each day looking into that perfectly sculpted face, those gloriously blue eyes, touching those feather-soft tresses.

Her delicate perfume wafted across the office toward him, as light and free-spirited as she was.

Then he noticed the wariness in her stance. And the fact that she was carrying her coat. Was she going somewhere for a few hours? Or leaving for good?

His heart in his throat, he looked for luggage in the lobby behind her before she closed the door. He saw none, but he was not entirely reassured.

Hiding his joy and his torment at seeing her again before he’d decided how to handle the tricky situation between them, he asked after her father.

“You’re stuck with both of us for a few days longer,” she said.

“Good.”

“Maybe.”

She’d managed a faint smile, but the expression faded as she hesitated just inside the door. For a moment he thought she might turn around and leave again without speaking, but then she crossed the office and seated herself in the chair that faced him. Lucas fought the urge to go down on his knees in front of her and beg her forgiveness for doubting anything she’d ever told him.

While he was there he could ask her to marry him.

Unfortunately, he had to be honest. He still didn’t believe in ghosts. Which brought him around to the problem of a future with Corrie. Was it impossible? Could he spend the rest of his life with a woman who was convinced she’d had supernatural experiences?

“Any sign of Adrienne since you’ve been back?” he asked. Might as well get it out in the open.

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

In succinct sentences, she told him what the Hanover family Bible had contained, then recounted the events she’d watched unfold in her subsequent dreams. Her conclusions were logical enough . . . if one believed in the paranormal.

“You can’t deny the birth and marriage entries in the Bible,” she said.

“You’re right.” Food for thought there. “That means you’re
already
family,” he murmured.

“Already?”

“Never mind that now. What you say makes sense. Some sense, anyway.” She’d thrown a lot at him.

It was a helluva coincidence that she’d come to Waycross Springs, where her ancestor had lived. Still, it might be accounted for by some childhood memory of her mother talking about a similar visit.

But a ghost?

He didn’t think so.

Corrie faced him from the other side of the desk, defiance in the set of her shoulders. “I’ve arranged to meet Stanley Kelvin in a little while. I mean to tell him what I’ve learned of the family history.”

He shot out of his chair, barely able to stop himself from shouting at her. “What the hell do you want to go and do that for?”

“Because that’s what Adrienne wants of me, Lucas. I have to tell him the same things I’ve just told you.”

“There’s no need to talk to Kelvin. Let him go on believing he owns the Phoenix.” He strode around the desk and tugged her to her feet. This was a
bad
idea, but how could he convince Corrie of that?

She glanced at her watch. “I’m going to be late if I don’t go now. I’ll be back before you know it, Lucas, and then it will all be over. Adrienne will be gone.”

“Don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“Dammit, Corrie.” He couldn’t seem to find the words to explain. With no other resort left, he gathered her close and kissed her, putting everything he felt for her into that one desperate act.

She responded instantly, sweetly, but after a moment she began to ease out of the embrace.

“I love you, Corrie.”

“I love you, too, but I have to do this.”

“I don’t want you near him. He’s dangerous, Corrie. Unstable. And if you tell him the Sinclair House has a ghost, he’ll—”

“What touching faith you have in me. I’ve no intention of saying anything about Adrienne. I’ll let him think I found all this information in family records.”

“Oh, that will really go over well. Make him think you have documented proof that he could lose the only thing he seems to care about.”

“I’ll reassure him. After all, I don’t want his hotel.” She broke free and slipped into her parka, bullheaded as ever. “Don’t worry, Lucas. It’ll be fine. You’ll see. I’ll come straight here as soon as I get back.”

“Corrie, I know what I’m talking about. Kelvin hates anything to do with the Sinclairs. He won’t react well to what you have to say and if he’s heard gossip that you’re involved with me, that will make him even more unpredictable.” Kelvin could well know all about their relationship. Waycross Springs was a very small town.

She’d reached the door.

“Dammit, Corrie. Why can’t you trust me on this?”

“Because you aren’t rational where Stanley Kelvin is concerned. Besides, no woman with any sense should take for granted that a man knows what’s best. If Adrienne hadn’t listened to her Lucas, if she’d gone and talked to her brother as she wanted to, none of this would have been necessary.”

On that note, she sailed out of his office, closing the door firmly behind her.

Lucas slammed his fist down on the hard surface of his desk. He welcomed the pain. Damned stubborn woman. Didn’t she realize how unbalanced Kelvin was?

Well, no. She didn’t. How could she when she’d never even met the man?

Lucas felt more confused than he’d been in his entire life. Perhaps he had overreacted. Maybe Kelvin was no threat to Corrie. He didn’t even know her. On the other hand, if she was walking into danger, it was because of Lucas, because Kelvin had guessed she meant something to a Sinclair.

He tried to tell himself he was being foolish. He should have a little faith in Corrie. He’d already accepted that in order to take their relationship forward, they’d have to agree to disagree on some things. Compromise.

But not on this. Irrational as it seemed, he was convinced Corrie needed him at her side when she talked to Stanley Kelvin.

He glanced toward the file cabinet, where Corrie had claimed she’d seen the shade of Adrienne Sinclair. No woman in late-nineteenth-century dress stood there. But there was an odd shimmer in the air.

He blinked and it was gone, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just gotten the go-ahead from beyond the grave.

Stopping only to grab a coat, he left the Sinclair House at a run. Seconds later, squealing tires marked his exit from the hotel parking lot. He broke every speed limit in Waycross Springs, intent on getting to the Phoenix Inn in record time. He figured that if the cops chased him, so much the better.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Although she’d known that the Phoenix Inn was no longer on a par with the Sinclair House, Corrie was still shocked to walk in and see its run-down condition. While not precisely dirty, since that would have led to complaints of health and safety violations, the lobby was decorated with threadbare carpeting, poor-quality furniture and cheap reproductions of famous paintings.

The combined smells of stale tobacco, cheap whiskey, and spilled beer nearly overwhelmed her the moment she set foot inside. One end of the spacious reception area had been turned into a barroom.

“Yeah?” said the slovenly woman behind the registration desk.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Kelvin.”

Snapping a wad of gum, the woman picked up an old-fashioned, rotary-dial black phone and slowly gave one number a turn. “Someone here to see you, Mr. Kelvin.” A nasal laugh accompanied the announcement. She hung up after a moment and sneered at Corrie. “He’ll be out in a sec, honey. Sit yourself down and wait, why don’t ya?”

Corrie considered telling the woman that she wouldn’t dare sit on the furniture but decided there was no point in antagonizing her. Instead she wandered around the lobby, keeping as far away from the barroom end as she could.

It was impossible not to make comparisons. Like the Sinclair House, Stanley Kelvin’s place possessed the stately lines and sweeping curves of grand hotel architecture, but with the effects of decades of neglect and decay it reminded her more of the seedy dumps portrayed in film noir movies of the thirties and forties. She half expected to see a Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney clone emerge from the door marked office.

Instead she got Stanley Kelvin.

“Come in. Come in.” He actually rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

Corrie swallowed hard, wondering if she knew what she was doing after all.

Where Lucas had kept the furniture of the last century for his office—that massive oak desk, the antique file cabinet, and a deep, beautifully colored Persian carpet—Stanley Kelvin had installed two rickety chairs, a cheap, unfinished kneehole desk, the kind that came in a box labeled “some assembly required,” and a gunmetal-gray file cabinet that appeared to be army surplus.

“It wasn’t always like this,” he said defensively.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

But he wasn’t interested in hearing her apology. Kelvin was still talking. “I only just got it back from the guy who bought it when I declared bankruptcy. I’ll fix it up. You wait and see. After the Sinclairs go out of business, the customers will flock here in droves.”

Appalled, Corrie kept silent. He actually believed what he was saying. Suddenly she felt sorry for him.

She also wished she hadn’t come. Could she reveal only that she was descended from the missing Marguerite and not the secret of Jonathan’s questionable birth without letting Adrienne down? She hoped so, because she didn’t have it in her to shatter the dreams of this poor excuse for a man. Dreams were probably all he had.

“Well? What do you want to know about the Sinclairs?” he asked her.

“Actually I’ve come here under false pretenses,” she confessed nervously. “There’s something I want to tell you. It’s about a woman named Marguerite Mead.”

Before she could explain that Marguerite Mead and her own great-grandmother, Daisy, were one and the same, Kelvin seized her by the shoulders. His fingers pinched her and she cried out.

“Son of a bitch,” he swore.

With genuine confusion, and the beginning of real fear, Corrie gaped at the snarling little man. Stanley Kelvin was far stronger than he looked. He all but dragged her across his office into a smaller attached room.

“Now, wait just a minute—”

“Shut up. Let me think.” He released her but stood so that he blocked the exit.

Corrie subsided, watching him warily. They were in some sort of storage closet, a windowless, empty room from which there was no obvious means of escape.

Don’t argue with him, she warned herself. Desperately, she tried to think of some way out of this situation. She wished now that she’d asked Lucas to come with her. She’d been much too quick to dismiss his warnings about Stanley Kelvin.

* * * *

Standing in Kelvin’s office, hidden by the shadow of the door, Lucas barely restrained the urge to rush to the rescue, but he could see Corrie. She was unhurt. And although he’d arrived in time to see the momentary panic Kelvin’s actions had roused in her, now she seemed to be coping.