Forbidden Dreams (7 page)

Suddenly, he wasn’t certain this was the right approach. Maybe he’d be better off trying to get through to Evelyn Landry on his own. But how?

He knew the success rate for that kind of operation. Chances were, the lady would deny any possibility of his being right and tell him to mind his own business. And why should she believe him over the man she was probably in love with? Even with an introduction, he knew he’d be scrambling in loose gravel, getting her to believe him.

“Jase,” Shell said impatiently when he continued to look down at the table and play with the sugar. “I want answers.”

He let out a long breath. They both laughed as his stomach growled. “Feed me,” he said, “then I’ll tell you.”

“What?” she said, though she was already on her feet. “You lead up to something like that and then want to back off?”

He shrugged. “With another cup of coffee and some food under my belt, it’ll be easier for me to explain.”

“All right.” She turned to the stove with more enthusiasm than she liked. Shouldn’t she demand the explanation immediately? He could talk while she prepared some food. Why did she feel such intense relief at having it put off?
What am I all of a sudden, some kind of ostrich?

No, of course not, she comforted herself. She was simply hungry, too, and whether he’d been expected or not, remembered or not, Jase O’Keefe was a guest in her home and an old friend. The least she could do was give him breakfast.

She topped off their mugs before poking through the dark refrigerator and pulling out things she knew wouldn’t keep long. Quickly, she made two sandwiches, cut them, and set them on plates. “Spaghetti sauce or ham?” she asked.

He stared at her. “Spaghetti sauce? You make sandwiches out of cold spaghetti sauce?”

She handed him the ham and sat down again. “Sure. Why not?” She took a big bite, chewed, and swallowed. “I like spaghetti-sauce sandwiches. They cover most of the food groups—in here I have ground beef, vegetables, grains.” She flicked a fingernail at a lumpy thing on what he assumed was multi-grain bread. Indicating his sandwich, she said, “Eat, O’Keefe.”

He finished off the sandwich so quickly, she knew he’d been famished. She made him another, which he demolished with slightly less speed and more relish, then sat back in her chair, eyeing him steadily.

“Okay,” she said, “how about that explanation ?”

Her manner added,
And it better be good
.

He drew a deep breath, shoved his plate aside, and leaned one elbow on the table. “You remember my grandmother?”

She chewed her lower lip, perplexed. What could any of this have to do with his grandmother? “I … think so.” She cast her mind back to that summer she and Jase had played together. He’d been staying with his grandmother in her cottage. All that she recalled was an impression of a small, busy lady who never seemed to stop moving. “Is she … ?”

“She died two years ago.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure you miss her.”

“Yes.” Again, he hesitated, scratching his bristly chin with one thumbnail as he studied her. “I was going through a box in her house, and I found a picture of us from that summer. We were both hanging by our knees from the branch of a tree. Gran had dated and labeled it, ‘Jase and his little friend Shirley (Shell) Landry, playing possum.’ ”

“But,” she said, “since that was twenty-three years ago and several thousand miles away in another country, how in the world did you track me down here? And why?” She fixed him with a suspicious look. “ ‘Track down’ being the phrase you used last night.”

“Yes.” He swallowed hard and went on. “Once I saw your name and remembered you, you kept cropping up everywhere.”

Shell’s well-honed instincts for danger sprang up. “Excuse me, but I keep a very low profile. I do not ‘crop up’ everywhere, or anywhere except in my bookstore.”

“And at your father’s annual Christmas bash.” She stared, and he went on. “You were photographed with your grandmother arriving for that party last year—”

“Damn! I hate newspapers!” she exploded, sitting straight up and slamming her hand flat onto the table, jangling cups and spoons. “Poking, prying, invading people’s privacy, never letting up for—”

Seeing his concerned frown, she grabbed for control, struggling to even out her breathing and gulping back what could have turned into a tirade. But she silently continued to condemn the gossipy reporter who’d had that picture published, and Jase for having seen it. But wait a minute. How could he have seen it, unless he’d had a North America-wide clipping service on her case before it was published? A lot of trouble to go to to track down a “girlfriend” who’d been less than seven years old the last time he’d seen her.

“That was a year ago,” she said. “And since when do photos from the ‘around town’ type columns in our local papers make it by wire service all the way to Los Angeles? My father’s party simply wasn’t that important in the scheme of world affairs. Try another one, O’Keefe. That one didn’t quite fly.”

“The clipping didn’t make it to Los Angeles,” he said. “I didn’t see it until a week ago, and it took me from then until yesterday to discover your address.”

She felt hollow and frightened. “How—how did you get that?”

He grinned evilly and brushed an imaginary mustache beneath his nose. “Ve haff our vays, ve schpies.”

He wasn’t going to tell her. She pulled air in through a tight chest. Faint and far away, she could hear Ned working with a chain saw, clearing the road, making it possible to get this man off Piney Point as soon as the highways people put up another bridge. Hell, before that! When she’d first come to the point, they’d had to ford the creek, which must be how Ned had gotten here this morning. In the meantime, she’d simply have to be extremely careful. She might have known Jase O’Keefe when they were children, but that didn’t mean she had to trust him now. Or that she could.

Jase gazed at her suddenly white face, where those freckles he’d remembered stood out too starkly, and her green eyes had grown too large. In that moment, she looked hunted as she tried to hide a frantic expression that bordered on panic. Astounded, he realized she was afraid. Afraid of him? But why?

“All right,” she said tautly. “The hunt’s over. Now what do you want from me?”

Absurdly, he wanted to gather her close and promise her that she had nothing to fear from him, or from anyone else as long as he was near. Equally absurdly, he wanted to promise always to be near.

“I want to escort you to your father’s Christmas party this year.”

“What?” Her indignation didn’t quite hide the relief he saw wash over her. A hint of color returned to her face, forming a pair of bright flags high on her cheekbones.

“If you know my dad,” she said, her voice tense and angry, “you must also know that I never take a date to his party.”

“I don’t know your father. I’ve never met him.”

“No?” She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “So what’s your angle, O’Keefe? If you’ve never met my father, why do you want to go to his Christmas party?”

He met her gaze. “I want to meet your grandmother—or, more specifically, her new boyfriend.”

She stared at him in confusion for several seconds before she let her arms relax onto the table. “Sterling Graves?” she asked. “You want to meet Sterling? But why? I mean, why at my dad’s party? Sterling’s from Palm Springs. You’re from Los Angeles. Surely, you don’t have to come all this way to get invited to the same party as Sterling Graves.”

“I don’t simply want to meet him. I need to meet him, and not as a man from Los Angeles. If I go to that party as your friend, introduced as someone you’ve known for years, he won’t have cause to doubt me or my credentials or my reason for being there.”

“And he would have otherwise?” Shell drew in a deep breath and fixed a hard stare on him. “What are you up to? Who are you, that he might not want to meet you ‘as a man from Los Angeles’? If Sterling prefers not to meet you, why do you imagine for one minute that I’d slip you in under false pretenses? As I’m sure you know, since you know that my dad has an annual Christmas party, its guest list is exclusive; and outsiders are never, ever included. And that goes for you, long-lost and sadly forgotten friend or not.”

Important, influential guests attended her father, Elwin Landry’s, party. They were able to relax in the knowledge that security was tight, that no one, neither fellow guest nor member of the catering staff, could enter the house or grounds that one night of the year without his or her background having been long known to Elwin, or rigorously examined by people he trusted. No one who wanted to work there again or attend as a guest would dare betray that trust.

And his daughter, who loved him, wouldn’t even consider it.

“Yes,” Jase said. “I do know all that. That’s why I’m here with you now. And I’m not a stranger to you, remember. What I’m hoping is that through you, I’ll be admitted, not be looked upon as an outsider, exactly as that bastard Graves will attend with your grandmother as one of the select group.”

Shell stiffened her spine. “Sterling Graves might well become my step-grandpa. That’s why he’s not being treated as an outsider. And why do you need to meet him?”

“Number one,” Jase said evenly, “is to get his fingerprints so I can prove to myself that he really is the man I’m after. I’m ninety-nine percent convinced, but there is one small element of doubt. After your father’s party, I’ll know one way or the other, and be able to proceed with what I must do or back off and take my search elsewhere.”

Shell gazed at him for a long moment, then got up, feeling unsteady and unsure on her feet. “Fingerprints?” She edged past him into the living room. As she added wood to the stove, she remembered Jase’s terrible scars, the questions she’d had about them, and about him, in the night. Now was the time to ask, to demand an answer, not some glib evasion.

She spun and looked at him. “Search? For what? What are you, Jase? Some kind of a cop, or—”

“Or a crook?” He shook his head. “No. What I am, Shell, is a man out to nab the crook who bilked my grandmother of her life’s savings and probably hastened her death. The man whom I believe intends to do something similar to your grandmother.”

For a long moment she said nothing, could say nothing. When her breath came back, she whispered, “You’re kidding.”

He shook his head.

“Why would you make that kind of accusation about a man you obviously don’t even know? I mean, you have to get his fingerprints to be sure. What kind of qualifications do you have for comparing fingerprints?”

He struggled to his feet, hitching the blanket up and tighter around him, and walked toward her. She stifled a snicker. He looked like a debutante wary of tripping on the hem of her gown. Until he stood before her, that was, and gazed down at her with earnest solemnity, silent as if he searched for the right words. “I have … connections who can make a good enough comparison to assure me,” he said finally. “I can’t prove it yet, but I truly believe the man is a con-artist, Shell. I believe he’s about to take your grandmother for a bundle, the way he did mine just before she died.”

Shell couldn’t breathe for a long, painful moment. She had to reject what he said. It was ludicrous to think it could be true. “You’re out of your mind!”

“I am not.” He pounded one fist into the other, nearly losing his blanket. “Dammit, Shell, I believe my grandmother died of a broken heart after Sterling Graves took her money and left her more or less at the altar.”

Shell slipped past him to the table, turning her head to keep her eyes on him. “But, Jase, that’s … well, that’s impossible! Sterling Graves is a perfectly honest man, a true gentleman, old-fashioned, courtly. I spent a week with my grandmother in Palm Springs in the fall, and I met him. She owns a condo there in a sumptuous seniors’ complex. He lives in the same facility, and apart from the fact that I liked him, that’s not a place that lets in deadbeats. If a person—even a guest—is not invited, the guards at the gate don’t admit him. Places like that also the research potential residents’ credentials before they are allowed to purchase a home. He’s the genuine article, and he’s also the best thing that’s happened to my grandmother in many, many years.

“And he can’t be a con-man,” she added in triumph. “He comes from a good family back East, a family my grandmother has known since she was a girl. They went to the same high school. She attended college with one of his sisters.”

He lifted a hand. “Shell—”

She shook her head violently. “No. You’re completely wrong about him, and I won’t have my grandmother upset by you or anybody else making unfounded accusations about a man she’s very, very fond of. Dad and I both hope the two of them will get married soon.”

Jase braced himself on the back of his chair. “They won’t be getting married, Shell. Sterling Graves, as he calls himself this year, never marries his marks. He simply charms the pants off them and takes their money and disappears.”

“Ma-arks?” She made two angry syllables of the word. “You’re crazy, you know, if you think my grandmother is a ‘mark’ for anybody! She’s a bright, canny lady who’s been around the block more than a time or two, and she’s been protecting her money quite successfully since my grandfather passed away. Believe me, if she didn’t trust Sterling Graves implicitly, she wouldn’t have a thing to do with him, no matter how charming he might be.”

With a haughty tilt to her chin, Shell grabbed their plates and cups off the table, swept the remains of her sandwich into the garbage, and all but dropped the dishes into the sink.

Spinning around with a wet cloth in her hand, she glared at Jase. “And one more thing. ‘Lady’ is the operative word in that description of my grandmother, O’Keefe. Evelyn Briggs Landry is a lady of the old school, and no man would charm ‘the pants,’ as you so crudely put it, or anything else off her, unless she was his lawfully wedded wife.” She didn’t quite add so there, but it was implicit in her tone.

Angrily, she scrubbed the tabletop, then paused in midswipe with the cloth, shooting him a frowning look. “What do you mean, ‘calling himself this year’?”