Petals on the Pillow (2 page)

“I’m sure I have no idea, Harrison,” Kendra replied. She turned back to Kelly and the smile faded, turning quickly into a look of concern as her gaze traveled up and down Kelly’s soaked and dripping clothes. “I’m sorry, dear. How did you come to be so completely soaked?”

Kendra’s sartorial perfection made Kelly all too aware of the way her wet hair clung to her scalp and how her sodden blue jeans dripped on the marble floor beneath her feet. On top of that, her knee ached where the sharp edges of her case had slammed into it repeatedly as she had raced up the hill. As she looked into Kendra’s curious, sympathetic and perfectly made- up eyes, Kelly wondered exactly how far down her cheeks her own mascara had run.

The unfairness of it all, unsurprisingly to Kelly, made her hackles rise. How dare that man stand up there with that supe
rior look on his handsome face and refer to her in the third person while she dripped all over his floor through absolutely no fault of her own? The high note of indignation cleared the fog of self-pity from her head.

Ignoring Kendra, Kelly jammed her hands at her hips and craned her head back to glare up at Harrison St. John from under her sodden, twisted mass of hair. “The reason ‘she’ is so wet, Mr. St. John, is because ‘she’ had to drag all her belongings up from your blasted security gate in a typhoon. ‘She’ would not be dripping all over your lovely marble floor if you had the decency to at least haul her suitcases up for her.”

He arched one black brow at her. “Why on earth didn’t you ring the buzzer at the gate? Someone would have come to help you.”

“Ring the buzzer?” Kelly said between gritted teeth, resist
ing the urge to smack her forehead, but only just barely. “Great idea. Or it would have been if the damn buzzer actually worked.”

Harrison St. John’s green eyes glittered from beneath his narrowed lids with a predatory gleam as they locked with hers. A cold smile settled grimly at the corners of his hard mouth. Kelly felt a shiver of apprehension.
She’d been here all of five minutes and she was already mouthing off to a man who could cause the stock market to plummet just by taking a vacation. As she met the stare of those ice-cold eyes with an unflinching assurance she didn’t actually feel, Kelly wondered if this was exactly how a rabbit felt when it looked up at a bird of prey. What she knew for sure was that the heat of her anger had chilled faster than nightfall in the Cascade Mountains and that an entire flock of butterflies had taken up residence in the pit of her stomach.

That peculiar cold something in the quality of his gaze made her slam her mouth shut before any more smart remarks came tumbling out of it, a feat in and of itself. Even when the predatory glitter abruptly faded from his eyes, the tension that bristled around Harrison St. John kept Kelly uneasy in a com
pletely unfamiliar way. His face seemed nearly expressionless, but she thought she saw his jaw bunch before he spoke again in a warmer tone.

“I hadn’t realized the buzzer wasn’t working. I hope you’ll forgive us, Ms. Donovan. We don’t get many visitors to the Manor these days and it’s easy to let things not in use fall into disrepair.” A small smile barely traced his lips. “We certainly didn’t mean to half-drown you. Kendra.” Harrison’s voice became sharper. “Please see Ms. Don
ovan to her room so she can, um,” he paused delicately, “clean up. And send Jenkins down to check the buzzer as soon as the storm passes.” He disappeared back into recesses of the house.

“This way, Ms. Donovan,” Kendra said and strode across the rotunda to begin mounting the stairs. “Let’s get you to your room so you can at least dry off. I hope you won’t catch cold. I know we’re all terribly anxious for your work to begin. Betsy especially.”

Kelly was left to follow, leaving a damp trail behind her, while she wondered exactly how a woman walking on marble in four-inch-heels could make no more sound than a cat.

They went up two flights of stairs, twisting through the shadows as they ascended nearly the full height of the rotunda.

Then Kendra silently led the way down enough wainscoted hallways to leave Kelly hopelessly turned around. They went past uncounted dim and recessed doorways. Kelly peered into their shadowy depths, scanning for movement, but finding nothing more than the feeling of being watched that had started at the gates to the Manor and had yet to relent.

Finally Kelly followed Kendra into a spacious suite and dropped her gear on the floor in a heap. She flopped onto the four poster bed, falling backwards with her arms spread-eagled.

“I trust you’ll find the accommodations adequate,” Kendra said.

Kelly propped herself up on her elbows and smiled at Kendra who hovered in the doorway. “Completely.”

She looked around the large and gracious room, furnished lovingly with what were either beautifully kept antiques or really terrific reproductions. Who wouldn’t be thrilled with a room like this one? Lisa and Kelly’s entire apartment could fit easily into this one room. Dim and murky now with the rain beating down outside on the terrace, in the morning it would be bright and sunny. The pale yellow wallpaper adorned with little roses that seemed gray now would be cheerful. The gauzy draperies around the bed would drift in the breeze let in by the French doors. Kelly imagined herself sketching in the early morning light among the bedcovers. She nodded. “Yes, quite adequate.” Kendra gestured to a door that stood slightly ajar on the side of the room away from the terrace. “I’m sure Mrs. Jenkins furnished your bath with all the appropriate necessities, but I’ll check it if you like.”

Kelly shook her head. “That won’t be necessary.”

“I’ll leave you to unpack then. Dinner is served at seven. I’ll send someone to see you to the dining room. Even with the east wing closed off, Hawk Manor can be somewhat confusing to a newcomer. Believe me.” Kendra smiled tightly. “And, by the way, we do dress for dinner here.”

“Thanks for the etiquette tip, Kendra. I’ll try to rustle up something dry.”

A laugh trilled from Kendra’s throat, although it never quite touched her clear blue eyes. “How wonderful. You’re not too angry with us about the buzzer. I’m sure your stay here will be most pleasant for us all. Until dinner then.” Kendra pulled the door shut behind her with a well-oiled click.

Kelly pulled herself from the bed, limbs protesting, and surveyed the damage to her hair and make-up in the full-length cheval mirror. It was worse than she’d thought. Her half-wet hair stuck out wildly in all directions and her mascara dripped nearly to her chin.

“I believe, Harrison, that ‘it’ is the artist.” She imitated Kendra’s well-heeled and modulated voice, trying to banish the immediate feeling of inferiority that Kendra’s presence had left in the pit of her stomach with sarcasm. It didn’t work. “Jealous, Kelly?” she chided herself. “Not only unbecoming, but pointless as well. You simply don’t run in the same league with that one.”

Sliding the drapes aside, Kelly peered through the French doors that dominated the center of one wall of her room. The storm had downgraded itself from a tempest to a steady down
pour. Even through the gray rain, however, the view took Kelly’s breath away.

It was simply and completely spectacular. The room perched on the short edge of the house’s western wing. Beneath the balcony that ran along Hawk Manor’s entire side, the ground dropped away to the crashing Puget Sound. A small dock jutted out into the wild waves. A little lonely boathouse braved the wind beside it. Age had grayed its wood and it sagged lopsidedly on the shore. The forlorn way it leaned into the wind sent the same little thread that had made her catch her breath when Lisa left slithering like quick-silver again through her heart. Kelly shivered again.

She let the heavy drapes fall back into place and dragged her suitcase to the bureau. It took only minutes to unpack her meager supply of clothes. Her entire wardrobe wouldn’t have begun to fill the drawers of the stately old piece of furniture and what she had brought with her would probably have fit in one drawer. Kelly spread it out among two or three, just to make herself feel like she was putting the lovely bureau to appropriate use, and reminded herself that she wasn’t there to model the latest fashions.

Kelly had come to paint. All she had to do was paint a rea
sonably respectable Cinderella scene on a wall for Harrison St. John’s most likely spoiled-rotten daughter, collect her money and then get the hell out. Out of this strangely silent and shadowy old place that was way too big for a three-bedroom bungalow kind of girl.

With Kendra’s departure to who-knew-where, silence wrapped the Manor like a thick layer of cotton. Not even the breath of a whisper moved through the long halls and the unnatural quiet closed in on Kelly. Every way she turned she felt unseen eyes following her. She kept unpacking, trying to convince herself that the sensation was nothing more than nerves, but the eerie repressed silence of Hawk Manor pressed down on her.
She opened her supply case, pulling out tube paints and solvents to make sure nothing had broken or spilled during her wild run up the hill. As she bent to take her brushes from the case, the feeling of being watched became unbearably strong.

Kelly stood up and set the brushes rolled in their bam
boo mat on the bureau. A glimpse of movement, something fluttering and yellow, caught her eye. She glanced over at the mirror. The hair on the back of her neck bristled. A shriek gurgled and died in her throat.

In the carved cheval mirror, from a corner that had been empty moments before, Kelly saw the ghostly and speckled reflection of a little girl.

Chapter Two

Kelly stared, frozen in place, mesmerized by the ghostly reflection of the child in the old and slightly speckled mirror. She looked no more than ten with black hair pulled back into lopsided pigtails and a dusting of freckles across a snub nose. Baggy overalls layered a shirt printed all over with lilacs and topped with a little purple ribbon at the neck. Even in the spot
ted reflection of the faded mirror, the child’s green eyes shone brightly as she evenly returned Kelly’s gaze.

And then the little ghost girl sneezed.

Kelly dropped to the bed, hand clutched at her thumping heart. She tried to get her breathing under control enough to talk. When she finally did, the words came out in gasps. “You’re real.”

“Well, duh,” the girl replied, wiping her nose on her shirt sleeve.

“Good Lord! You scared me half to death. I almost wet my pants.”

The child giggled. “That would have been funny.”

“For you, maybe. By the way, who the heck are you anyway?”

“I am Elizabeth Andrea St. John,” she said making a formal bow. “But you can call me Betsy. And don’t let Mrs. Jenkins hear you swear. She’ll make you put a quarter in a big jar she has each time she catches you. She says she’s saving up to go to Tahiti and if she had heard you coming up the hill from the
gate she’d probably have enough money by now.”

“Who’s Mrs. Jenkins and how long have you been watching me?” Kelly’s sense of humor started to return to her as her panic fled. Now that her heartbeat had slowed to something less than frantic, she could begin to appreciate the lighter side of the sit
uation.
That’s also what you get for letting a lot of rumors and shadows get under your skin,
she told herself.

“Mrs. Jenkins is our housekeeper. She takes care of the inside of the house. Mr. Jenkins takes care of the outside. And I’ve been watching you since you got to the gate with your friend in the little blue car,” Betsy said, fiddling with the but
tons on the front of her overalls.

“Did it ever occur to you to open the gate so my friend in the little blue car could drive me up instead of watching me curse my way up the hill in a hurricane?” Kelly asked with an arched brow worthy of Betsy’s own father.

Betsy grinned, her nose crinkling. “Father says never to open the gate to strangers.”

Kelly nodded, knowing when she’d been beat. “Well, thanks for all the help, pal.”

“Hey! At least I remembered you were coming today. Nobody else but me and Mrs. Jenkins did.”

“I appreciate the big welcome. Next time
I want to be frightened into incontinence I’ll make sure you’re on the greeting committee.”

“You really did look scared.” Betsy giggled.

“I really was scared. Where were you hiding anyway?”

“Just in the bathroom. That’s why the door was open.” “What would you have done if I had asked Kendra to check that it had been appropriately set up for me?”

“I would have hid inside. There’s tons of places to hide in this house.”

“I’ll bet there are.” Kelly looked around the room and shuddered, remembering the sensation of hidden watchers tracking her through the house. The feeling was no less discon
certing now, even with the knowledge that her sinister voyeur was a little slip of a ten-year-old girl.

Betsy bounced up and down on the bed next to her, bring
ing Kelly back to the present. “I’m the one who hired you, you know.”

“You are?” Kelly replied, digging through her case again. “That’s funny. I could have sworn the signature at the bottom of that letter was Harrison St. John. Not Elizabeth Andrea St. John.”

Betsy frowned, still bouncing. “That’s just a formality. I’m the one who picked you from all the other artists that applied.”

“I guess that makes you my patron, then.” Kelly smiled.

Betsy smiled back. “I guess it does.”

“Thanks very much for the gig. I appreciate it.”

“You’re quite welcome.” A frown furrowed Betsy’s brows again. “By the way, you do know that when Kendra said we dress for dinner, she meant to dress up, right?”

Kelly smiled at the concern she saw in the little girl’s eyes. “I pretty much guessed that, too. You want to help me choose what to wear? I don’t have much to pick from.”

“I know. I saw you unpack.” She made a beeline for the highboy.

“Hey, don’t hold back, Betsy. Tell me how you really feel.” Betsy spun back around from the dresser, eyes wide and hand to her mouth and Kelly immediately regretted her sar
casm. “Don’t get upset. I was just teasing,” Kelly assured. Her reward was a thousand-watt smile on Betsy’s very real and freckled face that was warm enough to banish every awful shudder the day had produced so far.

Betsy rummaged for a few brief seconds and then pulled a long blue sheath out of a drawer. “I guess this will have to do for tonight, but I don’t know what you’re going to wear tomor
row.”

***

Scarcely an hour later, but dry and with the mascara scrubbed off her cheeks, Kelly followed Betsy and Kendra down the wide and winding staircase into Hawk Manor’s front hall. Harrison St. John waited at the bottom, leaning against the banister. Even relaxed and waiting the air bristled around him, a nearly visual disturbance in Kelly’s field of perception. From halfway down the stairs, his gaze caught hers with the power of a tractor beam. Tangible and bold as a caress, he let it slide over her and her simple dress. His dark brow arched and a smile drifted lazily across his face, sending a surge of heat to Kelly’s face and rather effectively tying her tongue again. “Well, Ms. Donovan, you’ve certainly made quite a transformation since your arrival.”

He was devastating in a tux.
Of course, he would be,
Kelly thought. He had practically been born in one. Hawk Manor had been built by Harrison’s grandfather with a fortune made in lumber. Money, and the poise it could bestow, would have been a given in Harrison’s upbringing, but even his powerful self-confidence couldn’t account for the effect he was having on her right now. Besides, Kelly prided herself in being close to completely inured to the effects of money and power.

His low voice thrummed along her nerve endings and set off an answering rumble in the pit of her empty stomach. The butterflies that had moved into her stomach when she’d first laid eyes on Harrison started their endless fluttering again. Kelly felt herself physically sway on the stairs, her feet sudden
ly clumsy beneath her as a cold draft swirled around them. She paused for a moment to regain her sense of balance while

Kendra and Betsy sailed on, apparently oblivious to the power of his voice and its impact on Kelly.

“Good evening, ladies,” Harrison said with a slight tilt of his head as he addressed them. He extended his arm and Kendra moved smoothly in front of Kelly to slip her slender wrist into the crook of his elbow. A slight frown creased Harrison’s forehead and then slid away as his features once again ordered themselves into their standard impassive arrangement.

Kendra, of course, loo
ked smashing in something shimmery and silver that made her look like a moonbeam. Her laugh trilled at something Harrison said, her hands with their lovely long white fingers fluttered first to her own throat and then to grip his forearm tightly enough to crease the fabric.

Betsy and Kelly meekly followed the handsome couple into the drawing room.

Harrison immediately took up a post, legs spread and broad shoulders braced, in front of the fire that roared in the huge open fireplace. The firelight flickered behind him, casting his face in shadow and throwing red-orange highlights into his jet black hair and onto the pale empty rectangle over the mantel behind him. His gaze met Kelly’s once more as she walked across the room and again she experienced that same disconcerting sensation of heat and cold at the same time making her shiver even in the presence of the huge fire.

Nearly as tall as Harrison himself, the fireplace’s scale was echoed in the high ceilings that soared overhead in graceful proportion to the room, their elongated lines dwarfing the spindly Victorian furniture grouped around the hearth.

Kelly sat and shifted her weight, trying to find a comfortable position on the loveseat on which she huddled, while she listened to Kendra and Harrison make small talk about the weather. She felt like she was sitting on cardboard covered with glossy thread. Her drink sat untouched on a side table that shone with polish. Something about the way Harrison, Kendra and Betsy moved the room made it feel more like a stage set than a place where real people actually lived and breathed. Kelly felt like she’d stepped into a scene from one of those movies where someone could pop in and say, “Tennis, anyone?” at any moment. Or at the very least, a Noel Coward play with people sipping sherry and saying unbearably witty things. In Hawk Manor’s drawing room, however, beautiful setting aside, conversational tidbits dropped into a black abyss of stiff silence that held the room in a death grip while Betsy twisted at the collar of a stiff and frilly dress and Kelly tried to avoid Harrison St. John’s gaze which seemed to land on her every time she looked up.

The butterflies dancing in Kelly’s stomach had kicked into a samba before they ever sat down to dinner. The strained and stilted atmosphere churned inside her, and every time she looked up she was faced with the cool green lakes of Harrison’s eyes, as he watched with a speculative air that made her want to shrink down under the table.

Course after course hit the table. Soup, salad, an entree. Kelly picked at what was placed in front of her. She began to wonder if the man ever blinked, and wished she could just ignore his stare. It unsettled her. Made her feel like another tastefully arranged delicacy arranged upon his plate ready to devour. Even more unsettling was the unfamiliar reaction it wrung from her. It certainly wasn’t the distaste she usually felt for men who leered in her direction. Instead, a spark of excitement coursed through her every time her eyes met his. And they did again and again, like a moth drawn to a flame.

Betsy, so talkative and spirited in Kelly’s room that after
noon, stayed silent and awkward now. When she accidentally tipped over her glass of water, the gasp that wrung out of her was completely out of proportion to the act. Harrison’s voice murmured the assurance, “It’s only water, Betsy. No harm was done.” But he kept his gaze averted from her. The little girl’s head drooped lower on her chest.

Finally, despite a desperate look from Betsy, Kelly pleaded fatigue and escaped from the dining room, grateful for the solace of her room. Spread-eagled on the bed in her room again, she swore to herself that she would find a way to eat in the kitchen tomorrow night. She had heard people laughing and talking in there as she had slunk out of the huge dining room and back to her room. At the moment, she didn’t care if they served gruel to the servants. She’d prefer eating bugs at every meal to another evening dining in Hawk Manor’s formal dining room.

It hadn’t been much of a stretch to say she was tired. Exhaustion dragged at her, making the climb up the stairs seem interminable. The day had been filled with too much packing and hauling of heavy cases. She slipped out of her dress and into her nightshirt. The sheets were cool and fresh and the bed felt wondrously flat. She closed her eyes and let the tapping of the rain against her window lull her while Hawk Manor and consciousness slipped away.

It must have been hours later when she sat straight up in her bed, because the late evening twilight had fled and Kelly was disturbingly aware of the depth of the darkness that had closed in around her. Her heart thudded in her chest, echoing against her ribs. Anxiety filled her. She had to move. A need to get out of the house that she couldn’t understand pushed her relent
lessly forward. She leapt out of bed. Stumbling down the long hallway, she wound and twisted her way until she found the stairs. She raced down seemingly endless flights until she burst out of the house to the hill outside her window. She didn’t know where she was going or why she must go. All she knew was that her heart seemed to be beating faster than she’d ever felt it beat before.

Rain stung Kelly’s cheeks like thousands of ice cold needles. Wind lashed her hair across her face, blinding her and covering her mouth. She could hardly see more than a few feet in front of her face. Somehow she knew the boathouse and the dock lay directly in front of her. She turned in that direction to see a blue light that pulsed and danced where the end of the dock should be.

The dock. She had to get to the dock. The answer was there. Rain fell so hard and fast she could barely see. She stumbled over a branch and felt the rough wood of the dock under her hands. Kelly looked up. A woman stood at the end of the dock, dressed in a summer dress of filmy yellow. But the dress was sodden and the woman’s dark hair was clogged with weeds. They wound round her face, blotting out her features in shadows and tangles.

Kelly saw her lips move and thought there would be no way she could hear the woman above the raging storm and crashing waves, but it was as if her words burst directly into Kelly’s brain.

“Save him,” she said, her voice mellow and smooth as silk. “Please save him.”

“Who?” Kelly yelled back over the storm. “Save who?” “Heal him,” the woman’s voice echoed in Kelly’s head. “Heal his wounds.”