Maybe This Time (27 page)

Then she stood and watched Alice sleep, the little girl's breath still coming in little shudders but more evenly now, her pale lashes almost invisible on her tearstained cheeks.

How had she survived the past two years? How had Carter? All that death, all that loss, all the strangers, the
ghosts
?

She leaned down to Alice's ear and whispered, “I will always be with you,” and Alice smiled in her sleep.

“Oh,” Andie said, and sat down on the floor beside Alice's bed and cried.

•  •  •

North stood in the hallway while Kelly yapped at him, ignoring her to take stock. It was one thing to hear that the little girl went crazy when they tried to take her away, another thing to see that pale little face turn blue, those wild little eyes roll back in terror. Andie was right, the first priority was to get the kids out of this house into someplace safe and normal.

“I just want to go in and
help,
” Kelly said, trying to get past him.

“Get her out of here,” he told Southie, and Southie took her arm.

“Well,
really,
Sullivan,” Kelly said, trying to pull away.

“We saw your newscast,” North said, looking down into her greedy little face, and saw her eyes go wary.

“Newscast?” Southie said, looking at her with narrowed eyes.

“I did it for the
children,
” Kelly said, and Southie said, “Come downstairs and tell me about it,” with a grimness in his voice that even Kelly heard since she let him drag her down the stairs.

“I don't care about any newscast,” Will said, confronting him. “I'm going in there.”

“No,” North said, “you're not. That's my ward in there and you don't have my permission to interfere with her upbringing.”

“Andie wants to raise the kids.” Will met his eyes. “And that means I am, too. We should talk about this, since we'll probably be adopting them . . .”

North let him blather on, feeling almost kindly toward him. He was handling the situation so badly that Andie would probably break up with him before morning. Plus Andie was wearing her wedding ring again; he'd seen it on her hand as she'd cradled Alice in the rocking chair. It was probably just part of her charade, but she was wearing that cheap, pathetic ring again. His ring.

“. . . so you understand why I should be in there.”

“The children are not available for adoption.”

Will folded his arms. “You think you'll get Andie back this way. She'll never leave those kids. They're a deal breaker for her.”

“So you want to adopt them to keep Andie.”

“I care about them.”

“You don't even know them,” North said. “If Andie decided tomorrow that she didn't want them, you'd walk away from them without a backward glance. So, no, I will not be letting you anywhere near them. Go downstairs.”

“I'll go when you go,” Will said, looking stubborn.

“Spenser,” Southie called from the archway, and Will turned around. “Come on downstairs. I'll buy you a drink. You have to try the house brandy. I think Crumb makes it in the basement.”

Will shook his head. “I—”

“You're an uninvited guest in this house,” Southie said, coming to join them, still affable. “And my brother asked you to leave his wards alone. So
come down and have that drink
.”

Will got the same look on his face that Kelly had, surprise that Southie had a serious voice and wariness about what he'd do next. “I'm not leaving without Andie.”

“Let me put it another way,” Southie said, standing beside North. “There's two of us and one of you. And one of us is nobody to mess with. Come downstairs on your own power or we'll drag you down.”

Will looked back at North, who thought,
Try me. Please,
and he must have read the look in his eyes because he gave up. “Tell Andie I need to talk to her.”

“You bet,” North said.
You jerk.

Will headed for the stairs, and Southie shook his head and rolled his eyes as Will went past him and then followed him down.

Dumbass.
Trying to adopt kids to keep Andie. Nobody kept Andie. And the kids deserved to be wanted for themselves, not as Andie-bait.

He leaned against the wall and stared into the echoing space above the Great Hall. They deserved a guardian who paid some attention
to them, too. He'd screwed up leaving them down here, but now things would be different.

Voices rose up, two women arguing, and he looked over the rickety banister and saw his mother and Flo going at it down in the Great Hall, and another woman, sharp and odd-looking even from his angle above, watching them. No wonder Andie had been so glad to see him.

He went downstairs and into the Great Hall, and when Lydia and Flo turned to see who'd come in, he said, “Andie has enough problems without you two rehashing old arguments. Either pull together to help her or get out.”

“I'm not leaving while
that woman
is here,” Lydia said, but Flo nodded.

“He's right,” she told Lydia. “Andie doesn't need us behaving badly, and the anger just makes the ghosts stronger.”

“There are no ghosts,”
Lydia snapped, rounding on her.

The woman with the big hair and bigger hoop earrings said, “Oh, yeah, there are, and this one's right. You gotta calm down.” She looked like a caricature of a New Jersey princess, but her voice was serious and strong.

“And I don't see why you won't leave as long as Andie's here,” Flo went on, indignant. “She's been here—”

“Not Andie,” Lydia said, exasperated.
“Kelly O'Keefe.”

“Oh.” Flo's face changed to puzzlement. “What's she doing here? Andie didn't invite her.”

“She wants Sullivan,” Lydia said, her eyes practically glowing with rage, “and she's trying to ruin North using the children—”

“Well, then, we'll just get rid of her,” Flo said, and Lydia shut up.

“Good idea, you work on that,” North said. “She's in the sitting room right now.”

“Okay.” Flo turned to go and then stopped. “How's Alice?”

“She's quiet now. Andie's with her. But O'Keefe wants to talk to her—”

“Over my dead body,” Lydia said.

“I say we just throw her out of the house,” Flo said, and set off for the living room.

“I may have misjudged Flo,” Lydia said, watching her go.

“Go help her, then,” North said, and Lydia shot him a sharp look and went.

North turned back to the woman sitting at the table, watching him carefully. “I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced. I'm—”

“You're North Archer,” the woman said. “You're the missing piece.”

“Excuse me?”

“You're the one they're all fixated on,” she went on. “Some of them are angry with you and some of them are afraid of you and some of them just want you. And I have to warn you, one of the ones who wants you is dead.”

“You're the medium,” North said, putting it together.

“Isolde Hammersmith.” She stood up. “Things are bad here. Get these people out of here before it gets worse.”

“That's my plan,” North said mildly. “Do you need a ride back to town?”

“I'm staying the night.” Isolde picked up her big leather bag from the stone floor. “Andie needs me.”

North opened his mouth to suggest she'd be more comfortable someplace else—anyplace else—and then heard the storm pound the windows.

“Everybody's in the sitting room,” he said instead. “It's probably warmer in there. Southie was going to light the fireplace.”

“That's good,” she said. “No ghosts. Make sure the fires are lit in the bedrooms, too. Ghosts don't like fire.”

“Good to know,” North said, and went out to the hall phone and checked for a dial tone. The line was working again, so he got out his address book and dialed Gabe McKenna's private number. When the answering machine picked up, he said, “I need you down here
first thing tomorrow,” and gave directions to the house. Whoever was playing games with Andie and the kids, Gabe would find out. And after that, he'd pack up Andie and the kids and take them home. Lydia and Southie could deal with Kelly O'Keefe and Isolde Hammersmith.

Then he picked up his overnight bag from where he'd left it by the door and went back upstairs to the nursery.

When he walked in, Andie looked up from where she was sitting on the floor beside Alice's bed, looking exhausted. “She's okay.”

He sat down in the rocker. “How are you?”

Her chin went up. “I want them forever. Alice and Carter. I'm staying with them forever.” She met his eyes, as if she thought he was going to argue.

“That's good.”

“Who are you?” Alice mumbled, rousing a little from her sleep to blink at him.

“This is Bad Uncle, remember?” Andie said softly.

“Oh, thanks,” North said.

Andie leaned closer. “But he's not taking you away. Nanny Joy got that all wrong. He won't come get you until you want to leave. He promises.”

Alice turned accusing Archer blue eyes back to him, so he said, “As long as you're not in danger, you can stay here until you say,
‘I want to go.' When you want to go, I will take you home to Columbus.”

Alice pushed herself up on her elbows then, her face still blotchy with tears, an ugly doll tumbled beside her. “I'm not in danger.”

“We'll see,” North said.

Alice scowled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I'm not going.”

“As long as you're safe here, you don't have to,” North said.

“Pinky swear?”

“Pinky swear,” he said, having only a vague idea of what that meant until she held out her hand, her little finger crooked. He linked his little finger with hers, hoping there wasn't some kind of ritual that he was going to screw up, and she shook his hand once and let go.

“Okay,” she said. “If you break a pinky swear, you have to cut your finger off.”

“That's the kind of thing you're supposed to tell me
before
you make me do it,” North said.

“Then you shouldn't have done it without asking,” Alice said, and since that was an argument he'd often used in court, he nodded.

“You're right. Pinky swear.”

Alice lay back down again, frankly surveying him now. “You were here before. When Daddy died. When Aunt May was here.”

North nodded.

“You never came back.”

“I know.” All the rationales he'd used—they were in good hands with their aunt, he didn't know anything about kids, somebody had to run the practice—looked pretty stupid in the light of Alice's direct gaze. “I was wrong. I was a Bad Uncle.”

“Whoa,” Andie said, and Alice looked at her. “Bad Uncle doesn't say he's wrong very often. Well, ever.”

“I've said that.”

Andie looked at him, exasperated. “When?”

Right offhand, he couldn't think of an example, so he said to Alice, “I brought you something.”

“Books,” Alice said, and yawned again.

“No.” He opened his overnight bag and pulled out the soft, furry, long-eared, pear-shaped little bunny that had felt squashy in his hands when he'd picked it up after seeing it in a store window. He'd put it on her bed in Columbus so she'd have it when she moved in and then grabbed it on his way out the door with a vague idea that there should be gifts when he arrived. Kids liked gifts. “I thought since your name was Alice that you should have a white rabbit.”

“Huh?” Alice said, and then looked at the rabbit as he held it out to her.

“Alice in Wonderland?” he said and looked at Andie, who shook her head.

“She doesn't know it,” she told him and then said to Alice, “There's an Alice in a book who chases a white rabbit and has adventures.”

Alice looked at the rabbit, and North could tell she wanted it, but something kept her from reaching out.

Andie took it instead. “My God, this is a great rabbit.” She squeezed it, her strong hands holding it up in front of the little girl. “Alice, it's
squooshy.
And really soft. And it's smiling underneath its fur.”

Alice stuck her chin out, clearly trying to resist but watching the bunny anyway.

“And the tag says ‘Jellycat.' Do you think that's its name?”

“No. Its name is . . .” Alice frowned and then held out her hand. “Let me see.”

Andie gave the bunny back to North. “It's from your uncle North.”

Alice looked exasperated. North held out the bunny to her, and she took it, knocking Jessica off onto the floor as she reached for it,
her eyes widening as she held it up in front of her and felt how soft it was.

“What do you say for the nice gift?” Andie said.

“Thank you, Bad,” Alice said automatically, still staring at her bunny.

“You're welcome,” North said, ignoring the “Bad” to watch her stare at the toy. Nobody he'd ever given a gift to had ever looked like that, all that unashamed naked wonder. Then Alice hugged the rabbit to her, and he felt his throat close in, completely blindsided by the little girl and her vulnerability. And he'd left her alone down here with a bunch of idiot nannies and some asshole who was faking ghosts to keep her there. “Bad Uncle” was exactly what he deserved.

“Good present,” Andie whispered beside him, and he remembered she was there, too.

He looked back at Alice, rocking the bunny, her cheek on its head, and cleared his throat. “What's his name, Alice?”

“Her,” Alice said, frowning.

“Sorry. What's her name?”

Alice pulled back to look at the bunny. “She has a pink nose. Her name is Rose Bunny.”

“Not Pinky?” Andie said.

“Pinky is not a real name,” Alice said sternly, and lay back down in her bed, Rose Bunny jammed under her chin.