Change of Heart (23 page)

Eli reached across the console and took her hand in his. “It’s okay now. You’re with me.”

“What does that mean? You’re going to give up your government job and stay home with me? We’ll have a couple of kids? I’ll become a housewife?”

Eli pulled his hand away.

“I’m sorry,” Chelsea said. “That didn’t come out the way I meant. It’s just that . . . Well, I . . .”

“You have a low boredom threshold,” he said. “You always did. You loved the excitement when we were kids. The football players used to threaten me about you. Why would a hot babe like you run around with a skinny nerd like me?”

“Did they? I never knew that. They didn’t bully you, did they?”

“Oh, yeah. But after Frank married Mom they only did it one more time. After I came home one day with a couple of black eyes and a cracked collarbone, a gang of my big Taggert cousins went to school and talked to a whole lot of people.”

Chelsea didn’t laugh. “Why didn’t you tell me about being bullied?”

“You were what kept me sane. Look! He’s getting off the highway.”

They left the expressway and drove for another thirty minutes and began to see signs for a lake.

“Interesting,” Eli said, looking at the GPS. “This place seems to be equidistant between Richmond and Charlottesville.”

“The cities where the two Longacre Furniture stores are,” Chelsea said. While Eli drove, she’d looked them up on her phone. From what she could see, the stores were big, carried high-end merchandise, and were thriving. “Too bad Orin sold the stores,” she told Eli.

As the road narrowed and the traffic thinned out, Eli had to stay far behind the black Mercedes. “I wish I could have rented a more anonymous car. This one is too recognizable.”

“We can do that tomorrow.”

He looked at her sharply. “I thought you’d want to go back to Edilean or at least to the nearest airport. Rural Virginia isn’t exactly exciting, certainly not like a polo field.”

“Cut it out!” she said. “He’s turning down that road.”

Eli held back as the black car went down a narrow road.

“He’ll see us,” Chelsea said. “He’ll recognize—” She broke off when Eli backed up and returned to the main road. When she glanced at the GPS screen, she knew what he was doing. The map showed a big lake that had fingers of water. There were several carefully planned lanes following the lake, with wider roads leading to them. They were heading into a planned community, all of it laid out for easy access.

“Take a right,” Chelsea said.

Eli glanced at the map, then looked at her in question.

“Trust me, I know what I’m doing. Go right. There are always service roads in these places, but they won’t show up on the GPS.”

He followed her directions and within minutes they were on a gravel road that led them beside a huge house. It was a perfect McMansion, with great windows that looked out at the pretty lake.

Chelsea got out of the car before Eli turned off the engine.

“Wait a minute!” He caught her arm. “We’re trespassing.”

“We’re a young married couple looking to buy. Besides, it’s too early for anyone to open their lake house.” She was looking across the water. “Is that Orin’s car? I wish I had binoculars.”

Eli went to his car, got a pair, and handed them to her.

“Part of your spy kit?” When he didn’t answer, she looked at him and Eli shrugged. “You don’t carry a firearm, do you?”

“Of course not,” Eli said, but he was grinning.

“I think you and I should have a talk about your life since you began working for the government.”

“Nothing to tell. You know us nerds, we just sit at a desk all day and look at computer screens.”

She put the binoculars up to her eyes. “Last time you went out of the country, where did you go?”

“Antwerp.”

“Ever been shot?”

“Just twice.”

She could hear the amusement in his voice. “That all?” Chelsea said. “How often do you see the president?”

“Whenever he calls me to come.”

“Like his kids?”

Eli laughed. “I’ve helped a bit with homework. Isn’t that ol’ Orin?”

Across the wide finger of the lake was a big house, mostly made of stone, with tall windows looking out over the water. There was a sprawling patio with furniture, a big barbeque pit at one end. A man in a white shirt and black trousers came out and stood there looking at the water.

“Is that a drink in his hand?” Eli asked.

“Yes.” Chelsea lowered the binoculars. “Good eyesight. Open the trunk, would you? I think I’ll get some of that camera equipment you got for me.”

“I wanted it used for sunsets but you’re going to use it for spy work.”

She ignored his comment. As she pulled a camera and a 400 mm lens out of the back, she said, “What happened to your glasses?”

“I had a new type of eye surgery. It should be on the market in the next five or six years, but Russia wants to get a cut every time the surgery is performed anywhere in the world. That request is being fought.”

“So you’re one of the first to try it out?”

“It’s hard to wear glasses when you’re running away from bullets.”

She walked back toward the lake. “You’re joking, right? You haven’t really—”

“Who is that?”

They watched as a woman came out of the house. She had on dark trousers and a blue blouse and she too held a drink. She was short and plump in a curvy, appealing way. Orin put his arm around her waist and pulled her close to his side.

Chelsea propped the camera on a stone planter and began shooting. “What do you think? Mistress or wife?”

“My guess is wife. And if she is, then he still owns the two furniture stores.”

“How did you deduce that?” she asked, then put up her hand. “Wait. Don’t tell me. The stores . . .” Her head came up. “This house is halfway between both stores so he can get to them. And if he’s here in what is usually a resort house so early in the season, it’s because he has to be here year-round to take care of the stores. Orin Peterson may have managers, but it looks like he’s a hands-on businessman.”

Smiling, Eli took the binoculars from around her neck and looked. “That’s a wife. She’s pointing at the paving and he’s nodding, which means that she’s nagging him to
do
something.”

“And since he hasn’t done it, that means he’s a husband.”

As they were laughing, Orin began waltzing his wife around the patio, then led her into the house.

“He’s using the distraction technique to get out of doing it,” Chelsea said. “My father is a master at it.” She looked at Eli. “Now what do we do?”

“I’m going to take you back to Edilean. We can get there in a few hours and you can have a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow Pilar can make reservations for you to go anywhere in the world.” He held the car door open for her.

But Chelsea sat down on the side of a stone planter, the camera on her lap. “What he’s doing is serious, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. I think that after I drop you off, I’ll run some deep background checks on him. Come on, the faster we get back, the sooner the guys can start on this.”

Chelsea didn’t move but looked across the water to Orin’s big stone house. There was a nice motorboat beside a little dock and a cute little canoe beside that. It looked like it was possible that he and his wife
did
have children.

“He took three hundred dollars from her,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

Behind her, Eli closed his eyes, and for a moment his hand tightened on the car-door handle. He walked to stand behind Chelsea. “I’ll have a government check sent to her. It’ll say tax refund on it.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure,” Eli said. “Now I think we should go. There’s not much daylight left. Hey! We didn’t eat what we bought. Did I tell you about the trouble I had with that cooler? It’s actually a rather funny story. I—”

She looked up at him. “You’re going to come back, aren’t you?”

“Back
here
?” He looked out at the lake. “It is rather pretty. I saw signs that say there’s a little town nearby. But I know small towns bore you. Tell you what. We’ll go back to Edilean, pack some of your clothes, then we can return to this area. I bet there are resorts around here with massages and . . . and the other things girls like you like.”

“Girls like me,” Chelsea whispered.

“That wasn’t a put-down. I just meant pretty girls. Beautiful ones. Like you. With hair and all that.”

When she stood up, she looked him in the eyes for a moment, then she went to the car and got in.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Eli got into the driver’s seat. “We’ll be there very soon,” he said as he backed the car onto the little road. “Tell me about your modeling career. It sounds really interesting. My cousin Ranleigh tried that but he caused too much chaos so he left. What do you think—”

“Go left,” Chelsea said.

“Edilean is to the right.”

“We’re not going there.” When she looked at him, her eyes held no humor. “We are going to drive into the town and get a couple of hotel rooms. I think that over the years that odious man has cheated Grace and her daughter, Abby, out of a lot of money. Tomorrow we’re going to start finding out if that’s true or not.”

“Chelsea, this is not any of our business. I told you that I have friends who are law enforcement agents. My cousin Todd—”

“They would have to get search warrants and to get them, they’d need more proof than an illegally heard conversation. By the time an arrest could be made, Orin will be living where he can’t be extradited. You know all this and it’s why you’re planning to return without me.”

Eli’s eyes nearly shot fire—a look she’d never seen before. “We aren’t kids anymore, and yeah, it looks like there’s a lot of money involved in this.” He turned the car toward Edilean.

Chelsea didn’t say a word.

He drove half a mile, then pulled over to the side. “You plan to return by yourself, don’t you?”

She took a moment before answering. “Eli, I don’t expect you to understand this, but I have to do this. I
need
to do it! I . . .” She couldn’t go on, but she knew something was happening to her. With every minute she spent with Eli, she felt herself regressing, going back to who she once was, to someone she barely remembered. “I need this,” she repeated, this time in a whisper.

Eli made a U-turn and headed toward the nearby town. “No separate rooms. You’re not getting out of my sight.”

“Poor me,” Chelsea said.

In spite of his fear of where this could lead, Eli gave a bit of a smile even as he shook his head in frustration.

9

C
helsea stood in the doorway of the B-and-B room and looked around. The old house was cute and homey. There had been fresh muffins on the counter when Eli checked them in. The room had two big beds covered in spreads with blue and white flowers on them. Homemade quilts were at the foot of each bed.

Eli stepped past her to set their bags on the floor. They hadn’t spoken much since he’d turned the car around, and it was beginning to annoy her.

“How long are you going to be angry at me?” she asked.

“Until you swear that you’re going to go home and not think of this ever again.”

“I don’t have a home!” she blurted out, then was shocked that she’d said that. She turned away so he couldn’t see her face as she was close to tears.

But Eli put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to look at him. When she kept looking away, he pulled her into his arms and held her.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said, her face against his shoulder. “Ever since we went”—she swallowed—“camping, I don’t seem able to think clearly. It’s like I’m not myself.” She pulled back to look at him. “You’re doing something to me, but I don’t know what it is.”

The light in the room was quite dim. Atmospheric, really. Not quite candlelight, but almost. She was very aware that they were alone in a bedroom, and she remembered Pilar saying what a good kisser Eli was. And that he’d said he wanted to kiss her.

She lifted on her toes a bit and put her lips up for him to kiss.

But Eli didn’t take the opportunity. Instead, he stepped away, no longer touching her. “You’re right. Your hair is a mess. I think it has tree sap in it and some twigs. Shampoo won’t get that out. How about if you sit down and I brush it out before you shower?”

“Sure,” Chelsea said, frowning.

“First, I—” He nodded toward the bathroom and hurried inside and shut the door. He put his hands on the counter and his head down. Refusing Chelsea’s offer had been difficult. Actually, nearly impossible. But in an instant, he’d seen the consequences of such an action. He would never have been able to stop at one kiss. The two of them alone in the pretty room, the beds crying out to be used . . . No, he wouldn’t stop.

And then what? he thought. He would become one of Chelsea’s men? Just one of a list of them who she’d used, then left?

No. He wanted a great deal more than that from her.

Tomorrow, he thought, he’d step out of this thing they’d accidently become involved in and they’d return to Edilean— Then what? How did he win her?

When he left the bathroom, Chelsea was unpacking her bag.

“I swear everything in here smells of burnt wood.”

“My favorite. Come on, sit down and let me fix your hair.”

She sat on a little bench, her back to him, and he began to try to disentangle the rat’s nest her hair had become. He’d never done anything like that before and he found the softness of her hair erotic. It seemed to wrap around his arms. There were curls at the end and they held on to his wrists, as though they were pulling him to her.

“You do like girls, don’t you?” she asked.

Eli paused as he tried to remove a piece of tree bark. If she’d turned around, she would have seen how much he “liked” girls. “I do, yes,” he said.

“But just not me. Except you said you wanted to kiss me.”

“I don’t want to be Rodrigo or Clive or Thomas or Nigel. If we become more than just friends, I want you to see
me
, not just a body that’s been built by sweating in a gym.”

She ignored the last part of what he said. “So you have kept track of me to the point where you know the names of my exes. You didn’t just discard me because I quit writing letters.”

“No, I didn’t.” He was smiling. She’d managed to twist what he’d said to being about his never-ending . . . What? Obsession with her? “There, I think I got most of it out.”

Chelsea stood up and turned toward him. With her eyes on his, she pulled her shirt over her head, exposing her breasts, encased in a very pretty, very skimpy bra. “Eli,” she said, “trust me, I know who you are.”

She picked up her toiletries bag and went into the bathroom.

Eli stood still for a moment. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t won even one round with her.

When he heard the shower water running, he got his phone and stepped outside to call his father.

“Eli!” Frank said. “How are you doing? How’s Chelsea? Where are you?”

“Dad, I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything,” Frank said, then began to make notes while Eli told him all he knew.

“I don’t know what this guy is doing, but I’m pretty sure it’s illegal,” Eli said.

“Anybody who’d go through that much subterfuge of different houses and cars should be looked into. What I would like to know about is the woman Grace’s husband.”

“Me too. I thought I’d see what I can find out about him.”

“Can you use any of your government sources from there?”

“Yes,” Eli said. “I can key into most of them.”

When Eli stopped talking, Frank knew his son hadn’t called only about some guy’s shady business practices. “I talked to Jeff and he said you took Chelsea camping. Did you forget what happened when she was a kid?”

Eli couldn’t repress a laugh. “I carry the photo with me. It’s one of my favorites.” After their first campout, Eli had crawled out of his tent to what looked like a bear cub. Chelsea was on her stomach on a big branch, arms and legs hanging down. Eli had used Chelsea’s camera to take a picture before he ran to get her dad to get her down.

“I guess you had a reason for taking her camping a second time,” Frank said.

The question unleashed something in Eli. Since they’d met, he and Frank had been kindred souls. “Dad, you should have seen her when she showed up at my house in Edilean. She had on so much makeup I hardly recognized her. Her eyelids were nearly black and she had on clothes so tight they were like tourniquets.”

“Some men like that,” Frank said.

“I like
my
Chelsea better than who she was pretending to be.”

“So what did you do when you saw her?”

“Actually, I pretended to be Jeff.”

“Ah,” Frank said.

“Right. The truth is that it hurt that she didn’t recognize me.”

Frank was smiling, proud of what his son was saying. Like Eli, he’d kept track of Chelsea over the years. She’d been on three magazine covers before she dropped out of the fashion world. The string of boyfriends she’d had afterward had dismayed him, and he’d tried to get Eli to go to her. “She’s not ready to be rescued yet,” Eli had said, but he wouldn’t elaborate on his meaning.

“So you took her camping?” Frank asked.

“Yeah.” Eli was nearly laughing. “She really hated it! It was just one night, but I got her to take that black stuff off her eyes, and she pulled her hair back. She looked great. Like a real person. And she talked to me. I thought things were going well, but then the next morning she started complaining again, then we overheard this man and . . .” He trailed off.

“You’re afraid for her to get involved,” Frank said.

“Yes.”

“Good. I think you should leave this to me. I’ll have my people look into it. If he’s pulling a scam like this in his business, I doubt if he’s honest with the IRS. You and Chelsea should go back to Edilean and spend some time together. Take her shopping. Women love it when you go shopping with them.”

“Is that why Mom buys all your clothes for you? Why she oversees the tailor when you have suits made? Why she—”

“I get your point,” Frank said. “Maybe shopping is too much to deal with. You don’t want Chelsea involved with this lying scumbag, but I don’t want
you
around him either. Two times I’ve had the authorities at my door saying you’d been injured. That’s my lifetime limit.”

“Both times it was my own fault. I shouldn’t have—”

“Stuck your nose where it didn’t belong!” Frank said. “I’ve heard all that. I want you to promise me to get out of there. Both of you! Got it?”

“Yeah, I do.” Eli hesitated. “Dad, do you have any hints on how to make a woman love you? I mean,
really and truly
love
you?”

“Lord no!” Frank said with feeling. “If it hadn’t been for two interfering kids, today I’d be—” He let out his breath. “I don’t even want to think where I’d be. But it sounds like you’re doing well. You and Chelsea used to be master sleuths. Too bad you can’t find something less dangerous to fix than a crooked businessman.”

“You know, Dad, I think you might have come up with a good idea. I wonder what girls today wear to a prom?”

“From what I’ve seen, they dress like thirty-year-old hookers. But I think Chelsea would be able to answer that better than me.”

“I agree. I have to go. Tell Mom and the kids I love them. And you,” Eli added.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Love doesn’t cover it. I owe you and Chelsea my life. Good night.”

When Eli got back into the room, Chelsea was sitting on a bed, her face clean and shiny, wrapped up in a bathrobe, her long legs bare and a computer open on her lap.

He knew he’d never seen anything more delicious-looking in his life.

“Was that a call to Frank, your mom, Pilar, or Jeff?” she asked without looking up. “Or was it the prez?”

“Dad. Jeff seems to have a girlfriend and the president is busy. Pilar is—”

“Is sick of you.”

“Is she?” Eli asked. “Is that why you weren’t jealous of her? By the way, Jeff fixed all that up,
not me.”

“Of course he did. You have the hot body but a lack of interest in the mating ritual, while Jeff is the opposite.”

What she’d said was so ridiculous that Eli laughed. “You and Jeff would get along well. He wants to do a soul exchange and put himself in my body. But of course my body would deteriorate without consistent exercise—which he hates. Move over.”

He sat down on the bed beside her and leaned over to look at the screen.

“You should take a shower,” she said. “You smell like smoke.”

“What artificial scent does your polo player use?”

“I’m not telling. Look what I found.” She turned the screen around. There was a newspaper article about the suicide of Gilbert Ridgeway, one of the partners of Longacre Furniture.

“Suicide?” Eli was frowning. He took the computer from her and began typing. In minutes he’d brought up an official coroner’s report on Gil Ridgeway.

“You have access to files like this?”

“Yes. He hanged himself and his wife, Grace, found him.” Eli set the computer back on Chelsea’s lap, put his arms behind his head, and leaned against the headboard.

“Out with it,” she said. “I can see the wheels in your brain working. What did you and your dad talk about?”

“Besides you? He’s going to have some people look into the finances of the two furniture stores.”

“And the other businesses?”

He looked at her.

“You’re not the only one who can use a computer. Longacre Furniture is a subsidiary of a larger corporation. They own several businesses around Virginia. A car wash, a couple of motels that look pretty sleazy, six liquor stores, and a few other things. And poor Orin and his dying wife—you know, the babe in the blue blouse—own an apartment in New York on Central Park South and a house in the Caymans.

As she spoke, Eli’s eyes grew wider. “You didn’t find this on Google.”

Chelsea shrugged. “I have contacts too. So what are we going to do about this?”

“Nothing. Dad will take care of it through legal channels. It’s not for you and me.”

“Okay,” she said as she put the laptop on the bed, and started to get off it.

Eli caught her arm but Chelsea didn’t look at him. “I thought maybe we might go back to Edilean and see if we could help Grace and Abby.”

“By doing what?”

“I don’t know, but maybe Robin and Marian could figure out how to get a dress for Abby. You have any idea what teenage girls wear to a prom?”

Chelsea turned halfway toward him. “What about Grace?”

“I bet we could find her a better job than whatever she has now.”

“Maybe when Pilar quits, Grace could take over.”

“That would take a year or more of security clearance. And if her husband committed suicide because he was involved in something illegal, and his business partner is a criminal, that’s going to take even longer.”

Chelsea had turned all the way around and was glaring at him. “Do you have any romance in you at all? Or have you become some muscle-bound, soulless machine?”

Eli didn’t reply to that, but slowly sat up straight, then reached out and pulled her down to the bed. Before she could reply, he put his lips on hers.

He’d meant it to be a sort of demonstration kiss, but the moment his lips touched hers, he knew this was what he’d been waiting for. This woman was the reason he’d paid little attention to other women.

Her mouth opened under his, her arms went around his neck and pulled him closer. Their tongues met. Years of longing, of understanding, of memories, flowed through them.

It was Chelsea who broke away, turning her head to one side. “Go,” she whispered. “Leave me.”