Just Before Sunrise (15 page)

He got in his car. He'd go home, see if Annie was there. If she wasn't, he'd head over to San Francisco. One way or another, he'd find her.

Or she'd find him.

If she was mad about what he thought she was mad about, Garvin didn't blame her.

Annie got lost three times on her way to Garvin MacCrae's house in the hills above San Francisco Bay. Michael Yuma's directions were rough at best. Unfamiliar with the narrow, winding roads of exclusive Belvedere, she wasn't surprised she kept taking wrong turns. The streets were a maze, and the expensive houses nestled into the hillside were often not even visible from the road.

Plus she was on edge. She was gripping the wheel too hard, breathing too hard,
thinking
too hard.

But not thinking clearly. Otherwise she'd be on her way back to San Francisco by now, looking after her gallery, checking in with Sarah Linwood, whom she hadn't seen since Sunday. She slowed to a crawl in front of a wood-and-stucco house tucked atop a steep hill overlooking the bay. Although not as remote as her cottage in Maine, it seemed isolated, removed from the rest of the world, with tall oaks and evergreens drenching it in shade and ivy and myrtle and sweet woodruff tangled in its small front yard.

This had to be Garvin's house, Annie decided, pulling over. She left her car idling. The front entrance was clearly on the house's upper level, with more house below, out of view given the near-vertical incline of the hill. It was attractive but not ostentatious, an intriguing contrast to his working marina.

"Well, Otto," Annie said, staring over at the shaded house, "what do you say? Doesn't look as if anybody's home to me."

Otto flopped down on the backseat, never to be convinced he didn't really fit there. On nonauction days, it was often his preferred place to ride. He seemed in no dire need of a walk. The trek across the Golden Gate had amused him. He'd be fine if she decided to venture down Garvin MacCrae's front walk.

Annie climbed out of the car and breathed in the clean, cool air before accepting that she was going to do what she was going to do, and she might as well get on with it. Maybe Garvin was home, after all. Maybe she'd wait for him on his doorstep.

"Maybe you're nuts," she muttered.

She'd spotted him following her last night at the San Francisco public library. She had no idea where—or when—he'd picked up her trail. It was only by chance he hadn't followed her all the way up to Sarah Linwood's little pink house, except she might have been more on her guard if that had been her destination. She'd simply glanced behind her at the right moment, and there he was, watching her from across the lobby. By the time she'd made her way through the crowd to have his head, he'd vanished.

She was fit to be tied. Had he followed her all day? Had he thought kissing her gave him the
right
to follow her? She'd spent a restless day at her gallery before giving up and calling someone to cover for her for the rest of the afternoon while she tracked him down.

Squirrels chattered in the trees, the pungent greenery scented the air. A light breeze rustled as she mounted the two wide, flat stone steps to the front door. She rang the doorbell, just in case a housekeeper or somebody was there.

No one answered.

She sighed, glancing around, noticing the silence.

What if she had to leave before he came back? She'd have missed her chance to get a picture of the man.

Otto, his head stuck out the back window, yawned as he watched her, white slobber oozing out over his jaw. She could leave him stuck in the car for only so long. It wasn't as if she could wait around forever.

With no rail to impede her, she had only to step off the side of the step to reach Garvin's front window and have a peek inside his house.

Without further thought, she did just that. She squeezed behind an overgrown rhododendron, its fat buds and waxy leaves poking into her back as she stood on her tiptoes and pressed her face to the window.

From what she could see, the house was long and narrow, the front door opening into a main room with spare, functional furnishings in neutral colors. There were french doors to a deck, the gleam of San Francisco Bay and San Francisco beyond.

It wasn't easy, Annie thought, to integrate all she'd learned about Garvin MacCrae into one tidy, predictable, or even understandable man. Her library research had only added to her confusion. He had married a Linwood heiress. He had worked for a decade as an ambitious, driven financial wizard. He had refused to take a dime of his wife's money and instead had established a charitable foundation in her name. Five years after her death, he ran a marina.

A car sounded on the street, and she ducked down behind the rhododendron. Peering through the leaves and buds out at the street, she saw Garvin's black sports car ease in behind hers.

She groaned, feeling like a sneak. "Terrific."

Garvin got out of his car, frowning. Otto gave a low bark. It wasn't anything fierce, just a greeting. He and Garvin MacCrae were pals. Garvin eyed her car, he eyed Otto. Even knee-deep in ferns and myrtle and squatted down among rhododendrons, she could tell he was in a raw mood. He wore a black plaid flannel shirt, unbuttoned, over a black polo shirt, a pair of tattered jeans, boat shoes. He looked haggard, hard, sexy, in no mood to catch a woman hiding in his rhododendrons.

But with Otto and her car right there, he'd know she couldn't be far away. Ever one to look reality straight in the eye and do what had to be done, Annie pushed her way through the rhododendrons and tangle of undergrowth out across the small yard.

Garvin started down his walk. He was hyperalert, studying her closely, and she remembered her encounter with Michael Yuma. She hadn't, she recalled, exactly had her temper under tight rein.

"I understand you're looking for me," he said.

She picked a long vine off her ankle and cast it behind her. "Damned right. I'm here to skin you for following me last night."

"I figured as much."

She tripped out to the street. He ground to a stop about a yard from her. She noticed the frayed collar of his polo shirt and the day's growth of beard along his jaw. Everything about him was raw-edged, earthy. "I don't like being followed."

"I don't like being lied to." There wasn't even a hint of guilt in those dark green eyes. "I'm just sorry you ended up at the library instead of Sarah Lin wood's doorstep."

Annie snorted, incredulous. "Wait just a minute! You're the one who's done wrong here. I just spent a nice, quiet day running my gallery, experiencing San Francisco—"

It was his turn for an incredulous snort.

She thrust her hands on her hips and glared at him, not nearly, she realized, as furious as she'd expected to be now that they were face-to-face. But she
was
indignant. "All was quiet yesterday. Really. No strange men hiding in my workroom, no suspicious, irritating, stubborn men interrogating me. I did have Cynthia Linwood stop by—"

"And Ethan Conninger."

She frowned, eyeing him suspiciously. He looked smug. Too smug. "How do you know?"

"Because I watched you all day."

She stared at him. "You what?"

He shrugged, matter-of-fact. "I started in the morning and kept at it until you spotted me at the library." He strode past her, unrepentant, and glanced back when he reached his doorstep. "Lucky for you I'm not Vic Denardo."

Speechless, she spat and sputtered while he shoved his key into his front door. He pushed the door open and turned back to her, his eyes lost in the shifting shade. "If it's any consolation," he said mildly, "for the most part I was bored as hell and not exactly thrilled with myself."

"Where were you?"

"At the coffee shop on and off, and that maternity store—"

"You must have fit right in there," Annie said dryly.

Something vaguely like humor flashed in his expression. "It has a good view of your courtyard from the back window. I pretended I was contemplating the perils of fatherhood."

Suddenly—unwillingly—Annie could see him as a father, a dirty-faced toddler on his shoulders. She shook off the image. "Well, I'm glad you suffered."

He laughed. "I'll bet you are." He rubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw, and she could see how tired he was. "You look done in, Annie. Chasing over hill and dale after me doesn't agree with you. Why don't you come inside and have a glass of iced tea?"

"Chasing after you feels just fine," she said airily, then, seeing the amused look on his face, realized what she'd said. She groaned. "I meant—"

"I know what you meant." He grinned and stood to one side, motioning her in. "After you, Annie."

Gathering her remaining shreds of dignity, she breezed up the steps, shot past him, and entered his house. The interior was cool and still and shaded, all wood and neutral colors. Across the main room, the world seemed to drop straight off into the blue waters of the bay, sparkling and glistening in the last of the afternoon sun. In a sitting area off to her right, an Audubon print of a peregrine falcon hung over a huge stone fireplace. Further to her right, on the short wall at the end of the room, nautical maps had been perfunctorily tacked into every inch available. A chest in the corner next to the french doors held a small telescope and a half-dozen pairs of binoculars.

"I'll get the tea," Garvin said, withdrawing through a doorway off the dining end of the room, where a large table of polished, gleaming cherry looked unused.

Still tense, uncertain she shouldn't have just jumped back in her car and gone home, Annie unfisted her hands and shook her fingers, trying to work blood back into them. "You're tense," she muttered to herself. "Tense, tense, tense."

She wandered across the room and examined the wall of maps. The daughter of a seaman and former director of a maritime museum, she could find her way around a nautical map. These, it seemed, were all of San Francisco Bay and the surrounding waters.

Garvin materialized beside her, handing her a tall glass of iced tea. As he took a sip of his own, he reached an arm in front of her and pointed to a spot on one of the maps. "This is where we are." He moved his hand down toward the water; she watched the muscles in his wrist, noted his scars and calluses. "This is my marina."

Annie drank some of her tea, aware of how close he was to her. "I didn't expect a real working marina."

"A lot of people don't."

"Because of your background?"

"And its location. This is a high-income area. But I'm finding a lot of boat people are like myself and don't care about the frills."

"My father was like that. He did a variety of things—fishing, lobstering, crewing—whatever work he could get that was on the water. He died at sea."

"What happened?"

Suddenly it seemed natural to tell him. "He answered a distress call. Some college kids had gone out frostbite sailing and got into trouble. While he was getting the last one aboard, he went into the water himself and was lost. He had hypothermia. He couldn't hang on."

"I'm sorry."

"My mother said he'd never have been able to live with himself if he didn't do what he could to save those kids' lives."

"Did she blame them for what happened?"

Annie shook her head, remembering her mother telling her the story, trying to make the man she'd loved real to his daughter. "They shouldn't have gone out that day. They didn't know how to handle such conditions, but they didn't know what would happen. My father could have waited for the Coast Guard to get there. If he had, all three boys would probably have died of exposure. So he minimized the risks and did what he felt he had to do."

"And your mother understood that," Garvin said quietly.

"Yes."

"The boys?"

"They were from Boston. They're grown men now, of course. Long before I became director of the local maritime museum, they funded a new wing dedicated to my father's memory. They've had to live with the consequences of that day, just as I have."

"You've a forgiving nature, Annie Payne."

"They made a mistake that day, but there are those who said my father made a mistake, too. That he should have remembered he had a wife and infant daughter at home." She drank more of her tea, trying to put into words something she'd never tried to explain to anyone before, not even Gran. "But I think he did remember, and that's why he did what he did."

Garvin stared at her a moment, then nodded slowly. "He owed it to you both to do the right thing."

"If you want right done by you," she said, "you have to do right by others."

He turned to his wall of maps. "It's complicated, knowing what's right."

"Sometimes. Not always."

"Not on that day?"

She glanced at him. "They tell me he never hesitated."

Garvin's gaze seemed focused on some point on one of his maps, his face expressionless, unreadable. Annie thought of the pictures she'd seen of him last night. A different Garvin MacCrae from the one she saw now. He'd had a young wife, a successful career, a future very different from the life he now lived.

Everything—his very soul, it seemed—had changed with the murders of Thomas Linwood and Haley Linwood MacCrae.

"I can understand why you want to catch up with Vic Denar-do," Annie said, her voice suddenly shaky. "But we don't even know if that was him on Sunday."

"I know."

"If I could see a picture of him—"

"You could ask Sarah." He drank more of his tea, eyeing her. The dark shadow of beard only added to his air of rough masculinity. "She might have one."

Annie gave him a sideways look. "You don't give up, do you?"

He swore under his breath and surged forward, snapping locks on the french doors, flinging them open, pushing out onto the narrow deck. An icy breeze blew into the house. Annie shivered. The temperature must have dropped. Or maybe she was so overheated, she felt the cold more. She debated walking out the front door and driving off. Garvin could stand out on his deck the rest of the afternoon and the whole damned night with just his bitter suspicions for company.

Of course, his suspicions had merit.