Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (16 page)

She laid out a costume consisting of a dark gray windbreaker, black stirrup pants, long-sleeved knit shirt, socks and shoes. Stripping off what she wore, she dressed quickly in the dark clothes. A few minutes later, while there was still a faint glow of daylight in the sky, she let herself out of the house.

She paused for a moment in the side garden to lift her head and sniff the fragrance of sweet olive and azaleas on the night air. She thought she caught a whiff of honeysuckle, too, plus the faint, acrid odor of privet. There was none of the pesky privet shrubs around the house itself now, but there had once been a hedge planted by her grandfather in the thirties. It had been pulled up and destroyed, but its remnants grew wild in the surrounding woods, established by seed scattered by birds. Her steps light, she moved on, heading toward the smell.

She chose a huge, old privet for her refuge. It was thick enough for cover, but had no thorns or prickly foliage. The interior limbs were low enough to make a good perch, and stout enough to hold her weight. The greatest advantage, though, was that the scent of the blooms would cover any lingering hint of her own perfume.

She was taking no chances. She remembered Reid's demonstration of his reflexes and his abilities too well.

Waiting was not easy. There were a thousand tiny rustlings and creaks, chirpings and calls as darkness slowly thickened in the woods. The fine, soft leaves of the privet shifted with the breeze and her slightest movement, brushing against her with the same delicate touch as tiny spiders and other crawling things. Gnats found her, blowing around her eyes, and there came, now and then, the insistent whine of a mosquito in search of bare flesh.

She had left several lights burning inside the house. As the night darkened, the long beams shining from the windows made squares of brightness on the grass, and sent their gleams into the edges of the woods. She watched the open spaces between the trees, adjusting her eyes to the natural shadows that shifted in them as an aid to spotting what was unnatural.

The tree branch she was sitting on began to cut into her legs. She shifted a little, and reminded herself to be patient.

She saw the moving shadow perhaps a half hour later. Her breath caught in her throat, and she strained her eyes to follow it through the trees. It was low to the ground, small and gliding, totally silent. Keeping to the undergrowth just out of range of the light from the house, it moved swiftly and with purpose.

It was a cat.

Cammie relaxed, leaning her head back against the privet's trunk. A spider web attached itself to her cheek and became tangled in her lashes. She wiped it away and sighed.

One moment the opening she had been watching between a sweet gum and a cedar was empty. The next it was filled by the width of a man's shoulders.

Cammie blinked to be certain she wasn't seeing things. The image, broad, bulky, and powerful, blended with the shadows, disappearing then appearing again.

Reid.

She hardly dared to breathe as she watched him reconnoiter the house, moving soundlessly in a wide circle around it. He might have been a ghost, or a larger version of the cat she had seen earlier, or even the panther to which she had once compared him. Satisfied, apparently, that all was as it should be, he returned to a place some thirty yards away, in a direct line with her bedroom window. Hunkering down on his heels, he took up a post. An instant after he ceased moving, she had to rub her eyes and focus with care to tell he was there.

She had been right. That knowledge did strange things to her. She wasn't certain what she felt most, threatened or protected, afraid or gratified.

The one thing she didn't feel was indifferent. She was aware of a giving sensation, as if her primitive female self was responding to the night and the quiet strength of the man who watched. It wasn't what she wanted, but she could not seem to help it.

So what now?

She had a few choice things to say to him. If she could get near enough to do it without him massacring her. She opened her mouth to call out to him in warning. Abruptly, she closed it again.

There was something about his shape there in the gray-blackness of the night that bothered her. Was it too large, too compact? Had there been just a suspicion of awkwardness in the way he settled to his heels?

It had to be Reid; who else could it be?

Unless it was Keith.

It seemed so unlikely. Keith had never been much for hunting. Besides, he was too thin in the body to cast that much shadow.

Yet it had to be one or the other. Didn't it?

The soft night breeze was in her face. That meant she was downwind from whoever was sitting there. It was possible that any slight sound she made would be carried away. She could try to get closer before she made her presence known.

She eased from her perch with exquisite care. Holding the branches aside to keep them from brushing against her, she ducked under them, then stepped carefully from the privet. She had been forced to take her eyes from the place where Reid had been resting. When she looked back, she could no longer see him.

Had he moved, or had she changed her angle of vision, losing him in the shadows? She couldn't tell. She clenched her teeth as a nervous shiver ran over her. Halting with one foot barely on the ground, she hovered in indecision.

It was impossible to stand where she was all night. In any case, there was no guarantee that it was safe, not if the man she had seen was on the prowl — whoever he might be.

She took a slow step, placing her foot just so, putting her weight on it a little at a time to avoid the crackle of fallen leaves. Bit by bit she shifted deeper into the woods, circling away from the house and the man who watched there.

It might have been an hour later, it might have been two hours, when Cammie saw the faint glimmer of the lights of Evergreen through the trees once more. She stepped among the lower limbs of a young pine while she stood straining her eyes at the shadows, turning her head this way and that to listen.

This was crazy, even stupid. She couldn't imagine what had made her think that discovering if Reid was out here was worth risking her neck. She was tired of playing this high-stakes version of hide-and-seek, tired of straining every muscle to keep from making a sound. If she could just get anywhere near her own back door without being maimed, she was going to hightail it inside faster than a cat could blink.

There was nothing to be seen except trees and dew-silvered grass and shadows that were cast by the rising moon, moving gently in the breeze. She was going to go for it. She stepped gingerly from her cover.

A strong arm snaked around her waist, snatching her back against a body as hard and firmly planted as a hickory tree. Her gasp of shock and terror was smothered by a warm hand clamped across her mouth.

“If Keith or anybody else starts wearing gardenia perfume,” Reid growled at her ear in weary exasperation, “I'm in big trouble.”

“HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN OUT HERE, right
here?” Cammie said the minute she could peel his fingers from her mouth.

She felt the stillness that came over him. “You saw someone else?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out.”

His decision was immediate. “Stay here,” he said, the words so low she was barely certain she heard them. “Put your back to the big pine right behind us. Then don't move a finger, not even so much as a millimeter. Don't cough, don't sneeze, don't make a sound, not even a whisper. I'll be back.”

He was gone before she could answer. She stood exactly as he left her for long seconds, trying to control the tremors that suddenly affected her knees. Dear God, but this man could get to her. And the irritating thing was that she wasn't sure whether it was fear or unbridled female yearning. Whichever it was, she didn't like it.

She moved after a moment to do as he said, however. It wasn't a question of obedience, but rather of self-preservation. She didn't intend to give him any excuse for making a mistake about just who it was he was scouting.

The only reason she was aware of his return, she thought, was because he intended it. One moment there was only darkness, the next he was silhouetted against the light from the house. He made no sound, but stood an instant until he knew she saw him. Then he took her hand, drawing her with him away from Evergreen. It was after they had stopped, deep in a section of tall pines a good half mile or more away from the house, that she recognized how trustingly she had followed him.

It was infuriating, when she had so little reason.

The pace he had set had been more sure than swift, but she was still breathless as she stood so close beside him. Her hand in his felt extra warm, as if she touched pure energy. His stance was alert, intent, his attention focused on the way they had come. She waited until he turned to her with an easing in his bearing before she spoke in soft tones.

“You didn't find anything back there?”

“Some sign,” he said with a slight movement of his shoulders. “It might have been yours; it was hard to tell in this light.”

“There was someone there, unless you were playing games.” She did not trouble to hide her suspicion.

“I wasn't,” he said evenly, “but I'm willing.”

“I'm not! I've had more than enough sneaking around.”

“Fine. You can find your own way back any time.”

A chill feathered down her spine. Her voice taut, she said, “I could, believe it or not. But since I came out here because I wanted to talk to you, it would be self-defeating.”

“I thought you were going to yell for the police the next time I came near your place.”

“It seems like a better idea all the time,” she said in exasperation.

“But not so long as you have a use for me,” he suggested, his voice uncompromising. “Why feel around in the dark? Why not just pick up the phone?”

“I didn't think you'd be home, since you had very kindly told me where I might find you.” She waited, not quite breathing, for his answer.

“Maybe,” he said softly, “I told you too much.”

“Or not enough,” she shot back at him as she heard the evasion in his voice. Recognizing also its troubling intensity, she hurried on. “You could have mentioned, for instance, that there is no record of Justin Sayers ever owning the mill land.”

He was silent for so long that Cammie was certain he was weighing excuses. When he spoke, however, his tone was quietly searching. “You want to run that by me one more time?”

Without revealing the source of her information, Cammie told him what Janet Baylor had said in as much detail as she could remember. When she was finished, she paused, then added, “I'm not sure of all the legal complications, but the gist of it seems to be that I own your mill.”

“Congratulations,” he said.

Cammie, hearing the irony in his tone, and his lack of anger, felt her joy slipping further away. Frowning to herself in the dark, she said, “Aren't you going to contest it?”

“Why? I've always been a little uncomfortable with the idea of a family fortune based on a woman's generosity.”

There was something here she didn't quite grasp. In an effort to understand, she said, “What if my information is wrong?”

“In that case, the hard decisions will be mine again.”

“I don't understand you,” she said, the words stark.

“It's no great problem,” he answered. “I'll fight to the death to protect what's mine, but I refuse to raise a single drop of sweat over something that isn't.”

A tight smile curled one corner of her mouth. “I doubt your partners will feel the same.”

He was fast, she had to give him that. There were scant seconds between the time she finished speaking and his short laugh.

“Keith knows? And Gordon?”

“So it appears.”

“I don't think,” he said deliberately, “that it's just the money Keith's after.”

She wondered briefly if he had said that because he thought she needed to hear it. “No,” she replied, “it's the power. It would give him great pleasure to control both you and his brother, even if it's only through me.”

“I never said that I wouldn't fight Keith,” he said.

There were rods of steel buried in the set concrete of his voice. She sent him a long glance, but the shadowed planes and hollows of his face were unreadable in the darkness.

He spoke again, almost at random. “You haven't told Keith you know, have you?”

She shook her head, then realizing he could barely see that movement, if at all, she said, “Not yet.”

He was silent, while far away an owl called, a lonesome sound. He turned his head finally, as if he could feel her speculative gaze. His voice abrupt, he said, “Are you sleepy?”

“Not — really.” She hesitated because she wasn't sure where her answer might lead.

He turned from her, shrugging his jacket from his wide shoulders. He leaned to spread it on the ground, then touched her shoulder with a slight gesture, pressing her down toward it. When she had seated herself, he dropped to the ground beside her.

In the quiet that descended, Cammie could hear the whisper of the night wind above them, feel its damp coolness against her face. The pine needles under them were springy, a resilient bed. The musty, yet resinous scent of them rose around them, mingling with the green freshness of spring. She and Reid sat without touching, yet she could sense his warmth, and just catch the wood fragrance of his after-shave. She thought of what he had said about her perfume, and wondered if he could smell it still.

“Yes,” he said, and gave a low laugh as she turned her head sharply to stare at him. “It's in your hair, I think. What do you do, shampoo with it?”

She looked away, as if he could see the color in her face. “I spray it in the air and walk under it.”

He nodded, as if a mystery had been solved. “After you bathe, and before you dress.”

“What?”

He looked away, or so she thought from the faint rustle of sound. “Never mind. I wanted — I'm curious about this great affair between Justin and Lavinia. Nobody ever talked about it in my family.”

“Too disgraceful?”

He considered that. “It was more that Justin was a private man, I think, and his wife, my great-grandmother, did her best to pretend it never happened. She married Justin, so I gather, only a few months after the break-up of the big affair, as if Justin was caught on the rebound. I heard my mother and her friends talking about it once or twice, but they always changed the subject when they thought I was paying attention.”

“I'm not sure I know all of it myself,” Cammie said slowly. “It came my way in bits and pieces, too. My grandmother, my father's mother, was always defensive about it; she was a good Christian woman, duty bound to be disgusted by such goings-on. My mother was more tolerant, but then it wasn't her side of the family. Anyway, the general gist of it seems to be that Lavinia wasn't happy in her marriage. She was ten or twelve years younger than Horace, and liked to dance and sing. He thought hard work was the sole measure of a man — or a woman — and that church was a sufficient social outlet for anybody. They had a baby son that Lavinia loved dearly and treated like a favorite doll. That was the situation when the logging crews came into the area.”

As Reid nodded his understanding, she went on. “The timber companies were from the East, where they knew the value of the wood. The farmers around here were glad enough to have somebody else do the back-breaking labor of cutting down the huge trees and removing them with oxen teams — as far as they were concerned, the timber was in their way. People like Horace Greenley offered hospitality to the crews; it was the neighborly, traditional thing to do, since there were no hotels of any size and the boardinghouse filled up fast. Justin Sayers was one of the men who stayed at Evergreen.”

“I think I begin to see what happened,” Reid said.

“I suppose it was natural enough,” Cammie agreed. “Greenley treated the logging crews like royalty. There were square dances, box socials, candy pulls, and even brush arbor revivals; everybody got in on the fun, you see, even the preachers. The loggers were so different from the farmers all the young women knew. There were one or two unplanned pregnancies and shotgun weddings. Then the big trees were all gone, except for those in the swamplands that were hard to reach and scattered tracts that people like Horace held on to for their own reasons. The loggers moved on. When they went, Lavinia left town with Justin.”

“Just like that.”

Cammie frowned. “Oh, I doubt that it was easy or that she had no regrets. Well, I know she did have them, because after nearly a year of traveling with Justin to New York and Chicago and Saratoga and staying for a while with his people in Vermont, she returned to Greenley. Horace took her back, which everybody thought was extremely noble of him. Though it turns out it was a sneaking kind of revenge, since he had already divorced her in secret.”

“And then Justin came back, too,” Reid said when Cammie stopped.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I've always wondered why he did.”

“For Lavinia, of course. He had persuaded her to go away with him once, he must have thought he could do it again.”

It was interesting, Reid's certainty, Cammie thought. Was that what he would do if he wanted a woman?

“Anyway, Justin never left again,” she said, “even afterward, when he was married to someone else.”

“Now that was a subject that did come up, why he stayed,” Reid said. “Seems he liked the mild climate and easy Southern ways. Besides, there was, all in all, quite a bit of timber still left standing, and he was a sawyer, not to mention coming from good Yankee merchant stock that had nothing against making money.”

She stared at his shape in the dimness. “I never meant to suggest there was anything wrong with it, or with seeing an opportunity when it stares you in the face.”

A soft sound left him. “Justin was a touchy man, or so I've always heard. So is his great-grandson.” He paused. “Where were we?”

It was a moment before Cammie went on. “This is where everything gets murky. Lavinia was pregnant when Justin got to Greenley, and apparently people were counting on their fingers to figure out who the father was. Maybe she refused to leave her toddler again, or was trying to do what she thought was right. Anyway Justin turned to another woman, and they were married. A few weeks later, Lavinia gave birth to a little girl.”

“And the finger counters, what did they decide?” Reid said. “I only ask because of wondering if some of your cousins might not really be my cousins.”

“No one knows,” she said dryly. “I suppose it must have been too close to call. Anyway, what happened next put it out of most people's heads. When the baby was only a few weeks old, Horace was found dead out in the cotton field with a bullet in his head. There was a pistol in his hand, but everybody said he was too God-fearing a man to take his own life. Most thought Lavinia had shot him.”

Reid let out a soundless whistle. After a moment he said, “She was never arrested that I heard.”

Cammie drew up her knees, clasping her arms around them as she shook her head. “She was a grieving widow and a new mother, her family was socially prominent, and there was no proof. Women of her kind, it seems, could sometimes get away with murder back in those days. Maybe because they so seldom acted without good cause.”

“Do you think she did that, get away with it, I mean?” Reid's voice was curious, yet reflective.

“I'm not sure,” Cammie said slowly. “It seems so unlikely. And yet, what if she found out what Horace had done? What if she knew that when Justin came back for her she was already free, but Horace hadn't told her. I think in her place I might have been ready to commit murder.”

“Maybe Justin killed Horace for some of the same reasons,” he offered. “Maybe Lavinia found out he did it, but couldn't live with it, and that's why they never got back together.”

“You think she took the heat for him, because she knew she wouldn't be prosecuted?”

“I don't much like the sound of that, but I suppose it's possible,” he said.

“But it doesn't explain the land deal. Why did Lavinia sign the acreage over to Justin?”