Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (17 page)

He swung his head toward her. “You don't doubt that she did that?”

“Not really. Justin apparently thought it belonged to him all those years ago, or he would never have put his sawmill there.”

“Maybe the two of them were silent partners?” he suggested. “Stranger things have happened.”

“Or if Justin did shoot Horace, maybe Lavinia felt guilty because she was afraid she had driven him to it.”

Reid went stiff beside her. “No great-grandfather of mine ever took a payoff, if that's what you're suggesting.”

“Not exactly,” Cammie said in tentative tones. “But what if the two of them, together—”

“No. I don't believe he would have killed in cold blood, either. Maybe during some blowup over the whole situation, yes, but not just to be rid of the husband. Justin was your regular Victorian patriarch, upstanding, proud, stubborn, not too flexible—”

“Rather like Horace, except younger and better-looking,” Cammie said in wry amusement. At the questioning motion of Reid's head, she added, “I've seen pictures of Justin in the town history. You're a lot like him.”

“I'd say thanks, but I'm not sure it's a compliment.”

She was, but it didn't seem a good idea to admit it. As she looked away from him, she rocked off balance, her shoulder touching his. She could feel the warmth of him through her windbreaker, and also the firm ridge of muscle that ran down his arm. It seemed he was returning the pressure, supporting her without comment or effort.

She shifted to regain her position, then released her knees to sit forward. Moistening lips that were suddenly dry, she said, “Anyway, I don't suppose we'll ever know all the details. Lavinia might have been trying to keep Justin around, or maybe she traded the land to him in exchange for cutting timber for her. Or possibly she did it for Greenley out of the goodness of her heart, because she thought the town needed the industry. She did, apparently, have an altruistic streak. She donated the first three hundred acres of land to the state for use as the beginning of the game reserve, you know, several years later.”

“And Sayers-Hutton Bag and Paper has been adding to the reserve as it acquires land ever since. Did you know that?”

She frowned. “I never realized.”

“A family tradition to the tune of thirty thousand acres — less Lavinia's three and whatever was acquired from other landowners, of course.” A short laugh shook him. “The state may have no title to the land, only jurisdiction over management of the wildlife, but I'd like to see anybody try to take even an inch of it out of the program.”

“I wouldn't, even if I could. Nobody's trying to kill woodpeckers back in the reserve.”

“I am not,” he said with soft distinction, “trying to kill woodpeckers.”

She barely glanced at his still form. “You could have fooled me.”

“God, Cammie, you make me want to—” He stopped, drawing a harsh breath.

The tension that stretched between them had been there all along. In the sudden quiet, it seemed to take on a life of its own. Cammie could feel it shivering over her skin, insinuating itself into her veins. Her stomach muscles tensed and her thighs tightened. Her mouth throbbed, as if with the rush of blood that might come with a kiss. She knew, abruptly, that if she moved, if she said a single word, Reid would reach for her. The shock was how much she wanted to break his tenuous control, how hard it was to keep from it.

His voice, when he spoke again, seemed to come from far away and to carry a ragged edge. He said, “I would like you to do me a favor.”

“What is it?” The words were husky, not quite steady.

“I want you to let me talk to Keith about this business with the deed before you let him know you've found out about it. It's asking a lot, I know, but I'd like to see what kind of excuse he comes up with for not letting me know.”

“Why should I do that?” she asked, tilting her head.

“No good reason except my own satisfaction,” he said with a trace of wry humor. “Will you?”

If he had argued or demanded, she would have refused. As it was, the quiet nature of his request made it seem not unreasonable after all.

“Why not?” she said.

Reid arrived at the mill an hour early next morning. It was becoming a habit; he had learned that he got as much work out of the way in that first hour as he did in the rest of the morning. More and more often, the mill supervisors and other personnel were coming to him with problems and suggestions as they learned he was approachable as well as being his father's son.

He was proud of their growing confidence and trust in him. At the same time, it made him feel guilty, since he was thinking of selling them out.

That wasn't precisely correct, of course. There would be guarantees in place, the mill would go on just as before only bigger and better. Still, he sometimes wondered, as he sat looking at the pictures of his father and grandfather and great-grandfather, Justin himself, if they would have seen things his way.

He wasn't getting much done this morning. He had dragged the profit and loss and operating statements out of the safe again, going over them for the tenth time or more. There were still one or two sets of figures that bothered him. Bookkeeping wasn't his field, but he had traced the problem to procurement. That was Keith's area of responsibility. As soon as his secretary made it in for the day, he was going to send for copies of the checks issued for supplies, as well as the invoices for the past six months.

He couldn't concentrate for thinking of the night before. The way he had found Cammie in the woods, waiting for him, tapped much too directly into his fevered dreams for comfort. He was tormented by his fantasies of what could have happened, might have happened. He could not stop himself from wondering what she would have done if he had pulled her down on the pine straw with him in the dark, baring her soft skin to the night, and to his touch and taste.

He should be getting used to the aching pressure of desire she brought to him on sight, much less from sitting with her shoulder pressed against him in the dark. He wasn't. If he closed his eyes, he could conjure up the scent of her, of gardenias and clothes dried in sunshine.

God, he wasn't even safe from wanting her in his own office.

He sometimes felt like a starving man allowed only a single taste of a banquet before being forced to stand guard over the forbidden richness. That it was his own circumstances that caused it made it no better.

There was a bittersweet pleasure in it, regardless. Cammie was coming to accept him as a part of her life, even if not an important part; the night before proved it. She had believed he'd known nothing of the legal problems with the mill land, he was almost sure of it. Not that it was possible to be absolutely certain of anything with her. Cammie was good at hiding her feelings. Too good.

At least she hadn't ranted and raved, hadn't delivered one of her verbal assaults. He felt he'd come away from that hour or two of closeness with relatively few bleeding wounds. Who could tell? Unless something happened to spoil the rapport, the two of them might manage one day to have an entire conversation without insulting each other. Not that he was holding his breath.

His early morning work time was gone; he could hear other people arriving in the offices down the hall. Somewhere there were even raised voices, somebody letting off steam. He might as well see if Keith had made it in, have his talk with him and get it out of the way so he could concentrate on other things. If the opportunity presented itself, he might even ask him a question or two about the huge amounts of certain supplies, ink for instance, that the mill was suddenly using as if there was a direct pipeline to the distributors.

As he left his office and started down the hall, a door opened near the far end. Two men emerged.

Reid slowed, with every well-honed instinct tingling. The hard, compact look of the two men, the assessing stares that they turned in his direction, bordering on insolence, tightened his stomach muscles. He felt, in that instant, the absence of a weapon at his side. It was the first time he had thought about that kind of thing in weeks, the first time since he had returned to Greenley.

The two men, strangers as far as he could tell, nodded politely in his direction, then walked quickly away down the hall in the direction of the mill entrance. Reid frowned after them as he realized the office they had been visiting belonged to Keith. His face hardened as he moved on down the hall. Knocking once on the door, he pushed inside without waiting for an answer.

Keith sat hunched over his desk with one arm wrapped around his belly. He pressed a blood-smeared handkerchief to the red wetness that trickled from the corner of his mouth and inspected the result. As the office door clicked shut, he looked up, exposing a bloodshot eye that was rapidly turning a vivid bluish-purple.

“What do you want?” he said thickly.

“Nothing that can't wait. Do you need a doctor, or somebody to take you to the hospital?” The damage, Reid thought, looked more painful than life-threatening, but there was always the possibility of internal injuries.

“I don't need anything — especially from you,” Keith muttered, the words compressed and difficult as he squeezed his ribs. “Get out, leave me alone.”

It was plain to Reid that Keith didn't intend to discuss what had happened. The reason wasn't hard to imagine. He'd been worked over, and the men who'd done it weren't social acquaintances. Reid pegged them as professional strong-arm boys. Cammie's complaints about her husband's spending habits, and the conclusions he himself had reached, were beginning to make an interesting kind of sense.

Keith's color was improving, probably the effect of temper. Reid stared down at the weak, self-indulgent man who had been married to Cammie, and was amazed at how little sympathy he felt for him. He wished, for reasons that he didn't much care to examine, that he could have been behind a few of the punches that had redecorated the other man's face.

After a moment he said in hard tones, “If you're in good enough shape to shoot off your mouth, Hutton, maybe you'll be able to understand one more warning, painful or not. Sneaking around Evergreen can be a dangerous occupation. A man could get hurt seriously, if he isn't careful.”

Cammie's husband gave him a snide look. “You're a fine one — to talk.”

“You could say that,” Reid said, giving the words a different meaning from the one intended. “And I would advise you to pay attention.”

“Cammie's — my wife. She would have come back to me if — you hadn't come sniffing around.”

“If you think so, you're a bigger fool than I figured. Speaking of which, maybe you can answer a question for me. I'm interested in hearing just why I wasn't informed about the problem with the title to the land this building is sitting on.”

Keith Hutton stared at him with wide, glassy eyes before he snapped them shut and let out a groan. “Jesus, what a time — to spring something like that.”

“You did know about it, then; I thought so. What was the idea? I had to find out sometime.”

“You — You ought to talk to Gordon. Yeah, that'll get it. He can tell you all about it.”

“About what?” The question, peremptory, sharp with worry, came from the open door. Gordon Hutton stepped into the room. As he took in his brother's condition, his lips pressed together in a tight line. He swung around, closing the door behind him with a snap. As he turned back, he said, “What's going on here?”

Keith watched his brother with a shadow of fear in his watery eyes. Dropping the handkerchief and wrapping both arms around his ribs, he said, “Sayers is pissed because — because nobody told him about the missing title.”

Gordon Hutton's face was pale and his eyes cold as he turned on Reid. “And you took your fists to my brother? If that's the way you conduct business, it looks like a good thing you're getting out of the mill!”

Reid raised a brow, but before he could speak, Keith said in gasping haste, “Let it go, Gordie. I — I probably said a few things I shouldn't. Anyway, Sayers does have a stake in the deal. You can tell him how it was, can't you?”

It was obvious that Keith didn't want his brother to know what had actually taken place in his office. Reid's first inclination was to set the record straight. After a second's consideration, he thought that there might be more advantage in having Keith indebted to him, at least until he found out why he'd been elected as the heavy.

With his gaze on the older brother, he said, “Maybe I directed my questions to the wrong man, anyway.”

Gordon Hutton grunted. “I have a meeting in half an hour and a lot of paperwork to get through beforehand, but I can give you five minutes. Come along to my office.”

The peremptory command might have been a bid for time, but Reid thought it was primarily a power play, an attempt to dominate the issue by forcing him to face Gordon on his turf. He'd seen that game played by experts in the military, had weathered enough of it to last a lifetime. His voice perfectly polite, but his gaze unyielding, he said, “My office is closer. I won't keep you any longer than necessary.”

Gordon swung with stiff movements and strode ahead of him down the hall. It was plain, as he entered Reid's office, that he had to fight the urge to walk behind the desk and take his usual chair there. He compromised by standing behind the visitor's chair and bracing his hands on its back.