A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (29 page)

In a way, in spite of what she'd done, I could sympathize with the injustice that had been done to her.

Beatrice drew in a deep breath. “But you came back. You shouldn't have come back. I warned you in that phone call.” She took a step toward me. “You should have taken my warning and gone away.”

She was close now, so close that I could reach out and touch the gun. Her eyes were calm again, and very cold. The ice queen.

“You can go by yourself or I can shoot you,” she said in that soothing voice.

 

Sloan was praying as he took the stairs two at a time, then raced down the corridor to the open door of the bell tower. He stopped then. He'd seen the two of them just before he'd reached the house. The image would be forever burned on his brain— Brooke standing with her back to the low wall, and Beatrice with a gun in her hand.

The sick ball of fear had settled in his stomach then. He wasn't going to reach them in time. And even if he did storm up those stairs, Beatrice would hear him coming. All she had to do was squeeze the trigger.

He took a step forward and saw the rope to the bell. Taking it into his hands, he prayed that it would work.

 

“I'll jump by myself.” I'd said the words, but I couldn't seem to move. In a minute, she was going to pull that trigger. It was all I could think of, and yet I couldn't unfreeze.

The bell clanged—so loud that I could feel the vibrations on my skin. The noise shocked me out of my paralysis. Beatrice started, too. I prayed that my reflexes were faster as I dived at her, grabbing her gun hand with both of mine and shoving hard.

The gun went flying out of the tower. We both lost our footing and fell on the wall. For a moment we lay balanced precariously on it—teetering—I
with the stones pressing into my back and Beatrice on top of me. I was sure that we were both going to go over.

Then she pulled herself off me and backed up several steps until she was against the opposite wall. I was still struggling for balance when she started toward me again. Then Hannibal leaped. He hit Beatrice midchest, and I heard her scream as she stumbled backward, hit the wall and toppled over.

Digging my fingers into the edge of the wall, I managed to get my balance. Then I had to sit down. Sloan found me on the floor of the bell tower with Hannibal on my lap when he burst through the door. He didn't say a word. He just pulled Hannibal and me onto his lap.

We sat there for a long time.

W
hen the state trooper, Lieutenant Brady, finally closed his notebook, Sloan rose. It was nearly noon, and he hadn't had a break since the police had arrived on the scene and set up shop in the main parlor. He glanced down the length of the room to where Brooke was still being questioned by a female trooper. He'd been the one who'd insisted that the police use the parlor because he hadn't wanted to let Brooke out of his sight. Evidently Hannibal felt the same way because the cat hadn't left her side since they'd come down from the bell tower.

It would be a long time before he could get the
image out of his mind of Beatrice holding that gun on her and knowing that he wasn't going to make it in time. And he didn't think he'd ever be rid of the sound of Beatrice screaming as she fell. He hadn't reached the tower yet, and for those last few endless steps, he'd thought it had been Brooke who'd fallen. Even when he'd seen her sitting there with the cat, he hadn't believed it. He'd had to touch her, hold her. And then he'd listened as she'd poured out everything Beatrice told her. When he'd learned that his father hadn't abandoned him, Sloan couldn't sort through the flood of feelings that moved through him. He'd simply held on to Brooke. It hadn't been until the troopers had finally climbed the stairs that either one of them had moved.

Since then, he hadn't had a chance to talk with her or with James for that matter. They'd all been caught up in a seemingly endless round of interrogations. As far as he knew, Austin and the Lintons were still being questioned in the kitchen wing. And he'd been told that the troopers had talked to James in his suite.

“How long before you'll be through with Ms. Ashby?” Sloan asked.

“Hard to say. We're taking her over her statement on what exactly happened in the tower in those last few minutes.”

“She's told you what happened.” Impatience
swirled through him. And anger. Ever since the fear and the shock and the relief had faded, a fury had been building inside of him.

“There are things that Beatrice Caulfield told her that we have to follow up on.” Brady spoke in a mild tone. “We'd like to make sure Ms. Caulfield didn't have an accomplice.”

Sloan frowned. “You think her son may have been in on it with her? Or Doc Carter?”

“Not necessarily. We're just trying to eliminate those possibilities.” Brady's tone was mild. “There were a lot of people who might have wanted to eliminate Cameron McKenzie. It's unfortunate that no one chose to report the attack on her five weeks ago.”

“Yes, it is, isn't it?” Sloan murmured.

Brady glanced at his watch. “We may be able to wrap it up in another half hour or so.”

Satisfied that Brooke would be busy for a while yet, Sloan said, “I'll be back.” Then he left the room and strode down the corridor to James's suite. He wanted to check on the old man, and there were things he needed to say to him.

Sloan entered the room without knocking. James was sitting in his massive chair. Only this time he wasn't behind his desk. The old man had moved the chair and angled it so that he was staring out at his domain—the stables and the land beyond.

James turned. “How is she?”

Sloan strode forward. “She's fine—or at least she will be. But it's no thanks to you. You sat there on that throne of yours, pulling strings the way you always do. Hiding Cameron away and luring into your game a daughter you'd never met. You damn near got her killed.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

Damn him. The old man's simple admission had more of his anger fading, but Sloan wasn't finished. “Why? Why couldn't you have just told the police when Cameron was attacked? Why this elaborate charade?”

James leaned forward then. “Do you think the police would have found the truth? Do you think they could have kept Cameron safe from another attack?”

Knowing what they knew now about Beatrice, Sloan had to admit he had a point.

Shaking his head, James sighed. “I decided to bring Brooke here because I thought her appearance on the scene would stir things up and bring everything to a head. I never expected that she would come here impersonating Cameron. And I never dreamed that Beatrice would… My God, I never suspected that my sister was capable of…” James raised a hand and dropped it. “She murdered three times. She murdered my wife, Sarah, and
your father—a man who was my best friend. Then she murdered Elizabeth. And for what?”

Sloan narrowed his eyes. His anger still hadn't run its course, but the look in James's eyes, a mixture of shock and sorrow, had him banking it. He put out his hand and gripped James's arm. “From what Brooke has told me, she murdered three times because she felt she had a right to inherit at least half of this estate, and the only reason why she wasn't allowed to was because she wasn't a man. You might want to give that some thought before you perpetuate the problem.”

James's chin lifted. “What are you saying?”

“You know exactly what I'm saying. You manipulated Cameron into marrying me in order to get half her inheritance. I don't imagine she's any happier with that than Beatrice was when she didn't inherit anything.”

James rose from his chair. “If you're saying that Cameron, that a daughter of mine would turn into a crazed killer…”

Sloan's brows rose. “Don't you dare twist my words, old man. I'm not saying that at all. I'm merely saying that you'd better think long and hard about what you're doing with your kingdom. And remember, you've got a second daughter who isn't nearly as predictable as Cameron.”

“True.”

To Sloan's astonishment, James smiled, then
broke into a loud bellowing laugh that filled the room. He stared as James lowered himself back into his chair. When he finally stopped laughing, James said, “Cameron said much the same thing to me on the phone a few moments ago.” He dug a slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Sloan. “She wants to talk to you.”

Sloan glanced down at the paper and then back at James. “I'm not going to marry her.”

Something came into James's eyes then, something Sloan couldn't quite read.

“I figured that.”

A suspicion formed in the back of Sloan's mind but before he could give voice to it, James said, “Go ahead and call Cameron. If it makes you feel any better, she's already told me she's not marrying you, either. And she's in perfect agreement with you on how much blame I should be shouldering for all of this.”

Reaching for his cell phone, Sloan moved through one of the open doors to the patio outside of James's suite, then punched in the number.

When she picked up the call, Cameron said, “I hear you've had a rough time.”

“Rough time?” Sloan repeated. He hadn't quite put together in his mind what he wanted to say to Cameron. “I guess you could say so.”

She laughed softly. “You're pissed at Dad and me both, aren't you?”

He nearly smiled then, and was surprised that he could. But then Cameron had always understood him so well. Just as he had always understood her. “To borrow a phrase from James, you're a smart gal. It was a near thing.” He paused to push the memory out of his mind. “We nearly lost your sister.”

“Yeah. I got that much from Dad. Believe me, we had no idea that Beatrice was the one who pushed me. My prime suspect was Austin, but I didn't think he had the guts to do it himself.”

“The police are still checking to make sure he wasn't involved in some way, but I think they'll find that Beatrice was acting alone, albeit perhaps in some measure on his behalf.”

“What's my sister like?”

“Like?” Sloan let his gaze move out past the gardens to the stables and the hills beyond. A series of scenes moved through his mind—nearly running her down on the bluff, kissing her in the garden, watching her stand up to James at that dinner party, finding her poking around in his refrigerator, seeing her face down Beatrice in the tower. He wondered when it was that he'd first started falling in love with her.

“Earth to Sloan,” Cameron prompted.

Sloan tried to clear his mind. “Your sister, Brooke, is curious and stubborn and courageous and…amazing. And I'm in love with her, Cam.”

When Cameron spoke, he could hear the smile in her voice. “I take it our engagement's off.”

He smiled then. “Yeah. I'd say so. It'll piss the old man off.”

“Not at all. Haven't you figured it out yet? Part of the reason he contacted Brooke was he thought the two of you might make a better match than you and I. I told him the night I left for L.A. that I was having second thoughts about marrying you. I told him that both of us deserved the chance to find what he'd found with Elizabeth.”

Sloan turned and saw that James was watching him. He should have guessed it sooner. “That sly old fox.”

“Oh, he's that all right, and we just continue to play into his hands. But in this case, I think he's done us both a favor. After watching my sister's soap for five weeks, I think she just might be perfect for you. You'll never be able to predict what she'll do next.”

“Well, there's that.” Then his expression sobered. “But that night when you left, you weren't going to go along with the old man's plans, were you? I've had some time to think about it. You were really going to call off the wedding.”

Cameron laughed. “We'll never know that for sure, will we? Why don't we just say that I'm happy to have a twin who can take my place. She is going to take my place, right?”

“I haven't gotten her input on that yet.”

“Want some advice from a kid sister?”

“Yeah.” It was his turn to laugh now, and he felt his tension and anger melt away. “Yeah, that would be good.”

 

When Sloan and Saturn found me, I was sitting on the bluff very close to the spot where I'd first met Sloan. He didn't say a word as he dismounted. After he'd secured the horse, he sat down next to me and merely put his arm around me. Almost at once, the thoughts that had been swirling around in my head settled, and I felt suddenly and completely at home.

“I know you needed some time to think,” Sloan said. “But I couldn't give you any more.”

“It's all so sad. I'm a writer. I should at least in my imagination be able to understand Beatrice's motivations, but I'm having trouble getting my mind around what she did, what she lived with all of these years.”

“She did it for what we're looking at right now. But she can't have been completely sane to have murdered all of them. My father, both of James's wives.” His arm tightened around me. “Then to have almost murdered you and Cameron…”

He turned to me then and tipped my face up so that I met his eyes. “I had a talk with Cameron.”

My stomach knotted. I didn't want to ask the
question, but I had to know the answer. “Did you work everything out?”

“Yeah. You might say that. When do you have to go back to L.A.?”

My heart sank. Did he think that I was just going to leave, that everything that had happened between us was… Another thought occurred to me. Were he and Cameron going to go ahead with their wedding? Had he come up here to say goodbye? “I—” There was a lump in my throat I couldn't seem to get any more words around.

“I want to go with you.”

I blinked and stared at him. “You want to go with me?”

“Yeah. To L.A. I've got this little plot—you'd probably call it a story line—and I thought that you might help me flesh it out and then see if it would fly on
Secrets?
”

I studied him, trying to read something in those dark gray eyes. “You have a story line for
Secrets
?”

“Yeah.” Sloan tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “It's about these twins who were separated at birth, and one of them was given up for adoption. Years later, the twin who wasn't given up for adoption disappears just before her wedding, and the other one, just learning of her sister's existence, decides to take her place.”

His hand had moved to the back of my neck and
those fingers began to work their magic on me. The chill I'd experienced when he'd told me he'd worked things out with Cameron was fading as the heat spread from his touch all the way through me.

“Then there's what you call a complication.” He brushed his mouth against mine, and even as he drew back, my lips parted in response.

“A complication?”

“Umm, hmm,” he murmured as he leaned down to kiss me lightly again. “She finds that she's very attracted to her twin sister's fiancé.”

He was trailing kisses along the side of my jaw. When he reached my ear, he said, “And another complication is that he's incredibly attracted to her. He can't be near her and not want his hands on her. Not want to be inside of her. And that's not all….”

His teeth nipped my earlobe, but then he drew away again. “The final complication is…I love you, Brooke Ashby. I'm not going to marry Cameron. She doesn't want to marry me, either.”

For a moment, I didn't know what to say. My blood was pounding and there was a ringing in my ears. This was exactly the way I would have written it—if I were writing it. But this was actually happening to me—Ms. Nothing-ever-happens-tome Brooke Ashby. Then I saw something come into his eyes. Was it fear?

“You're going to have to say something, Red.”

“It's a great story line. But there are so many possible complications. There's the land and James…my father.”

“Forget him. He's probably hatching some new plot even as we speak. You come by your talents naturally.”

“There's my job in L.A.”

“It's not a long commute.”

“But—if the wedding's off—I mean—won't my father change the will? Won't you have to make new plans?”

Now it was impatience that flashed in his eyes. “I told you my plans. I'm coming to L.A. for a while. I want us to have some time together away from here. Away from all that's happened here. Gus can run things for a bit. And after James decides what to do with the ranch, we'll come up with a new plan.” He tightened his hand at the back of my neck. “Haven't you ever worked with another writer?”