Somewhere I'll Find You (21 page)

“Why?
As if you could make it off the couch.”

She was probably right, but still, he was determined to try.  There were some things he needed to tell her about Erik, but not while he was half-naked and flat on his back.  Moving to his feet, he took an awkward step.  “See, I’m fine – marvelous in fact.  Now, where are my damned clothes?  I want to talk to you, but not like this.”

“Get back on that couch and I’ll consider it.”  Her dark eyes flashed a warning even as she crossed her arms.  “I mean it, back on that couch – now!”

Michael gave her a crooked grin while his headache took second place on his priority list.  “From anyone else, that statement could be promising.”  With a sigh, he turned back to his temporary bed, groaning as he tucked
himself
under the blankets.
  When he did, a sudden, nearly debilitating weariness struck him, lowering his lids against even his determined spirit.
  “I sincerely doubt . . .,” he added drowsily a moment later, “that I could manage a serious response right now, anyway.”  His eyes
fluttered
close
d
while his words drifted away.

Glaring downwards, Paige looked at the man filling her chintz sofa.  At least his color was good and his breathing steady.  She moved away and crossed to the window, shivering at the sound of the wind outside.

Damned stubborn idiot.

Nothing had gone right since that damned auction and this man bursting into her life. And there was something ab
out him that she couldn’t shake, something that had reminded her of her father.

She glanced out the window as she thought of the man that she had never really known.  He had been a stubborn m
an in a dangerous profession.  It was a
profession that
had
finally caught up with him.  When an old friend had called him back for one last
job, he had reluctantly agreed
,
leaving Paige with relatives while he returned to England.

He’d never come back, caught in the sights of a sniper in a country Paige couldn’t even pronounce
.
She’d never forgiven the man that had called him in, not now, not ever.

But not all the anger in the world would bring him back.

She brushed a tear from her cheek, staring out into the night.  Her father had been a
passionate
, blustery man with fierce storms that raged inside him.  Perhaps the anger came from memories of the five years he’d spent in his youth on every police roster in Europe.  Paintings by the old masters, uncut diamonds
,
or a rare
Fabergé
egg,
it didn’t matter;
none
of it
w
as
safe from the limber fingers of Sean O’Neal.

Or Patrick McGee, as he had called himself.

He’d seen the error of his ways one night when a bossy female art student from America had caught him rifling her jewelry chest.

Sean had been lost before he’d gotten one full look at the striking, titian haired
beauty.  They had spent the next twelve hours arguing the morality of theft – and the following twelve making passionate love.

Sean would always joke that he had stolen the best
jewel ever to leave America, but there had
always
been
a somber look in his eye when he said it.

Soon
enough,
Paige
had come
howling into the world, the product of
a
short-tempered Englishman and an adoring California girl.

Under her mother’s pressure, Sean had turned his back on crime and begun working for the English government.  They always had jobs for a man with light fingers.

Jobs like planting a false set of documents at the Russian Embassy, replacing the attaché case of a courier to Syria, and the stealing of a set of incriminating photos from an East German who was blackmailing a very high English cabinet minister.

Her father had slipped in and out of the night, and with every success
,
his handler had grown more demanding.  Just one more job, just one more case.  And he had agreed
,
for it was the only job he knew.

And the jobs had stretched out over the years. 
When
Paige was ten
, she had begun to comprehend – and worry over -
her parent’s constant quarrels
. 
No longer were
their discussions
punctuated
with laughter in the aftermath
,
with her father taking her mother into his strong arms
, and the increasing bitterness of their fights seemed to take more than a simple emotional toll on Paige’s mother
.

Dark circles shadowed her mother’s bright green eyes
, speaking of sleepless nights spent in a lonely bed,
while a
decreasing appetite and growing
cough took her sl
ender figure down to a rail-
thin form.
  But by then, Sean was never around to see any of it.  Her father had begun to be no m
ore than a stranger was
and by the
time,
Sean returned from ‘one last job’, it had been too late to save her.  Sean grieved for the remainder of his life.
  Faced only with the guilt that surrounded him and the knowledge that his absences had helped to create the situation in which he now found himself, he fled back to his work in England, leaving his daughter behind in the care of relatives. For a while, that was all right with Paige – she missed her father as much as she missed her mother, but she had been born in America.  She’d had no ties to her father’s country.  It was only in her teen years, well after news of his death had reached her, that she began to cultivate an interest in finding out about the man she had never known.  A scholarship had cemented her path and so she’d follow
ed it to England – only to find she was
soon mired in a world of
top-secret
information and
stealthy intelligence missions of which she had never had any knowledge.

Sharply, she shook her head, yanking herself back to the present, even if it did contain Michael. 
I’m back here in America.  Where I belong.  And that world, which was never mine, is all behind me now.
She scowled at Michael. 
It’s entirely his fault. 
His presence was bringing back memories that she would rather leave forgotten. 
But even as she mused on all of it, staring at his sleeping form, she knew he was going to change her life all over again. 
Just like Dad did.  He’s going to turn everything upside down, and damn him for it.  Damn them both!

A sharp, groaning
crack
from overhead interrupted her unwelcome thoughts, and she froze.  
No, no, no, not the roof.  Please don’t let it be the roof. . .
Casting a last glance at Michael’s slumbering form, she blew her hair away from her face with a resigned sigh and dragged herself up the narrow wooden stairs that led to the attic.

Her prayer was not answered, because the roof was exactly the problem.

Cold wind and a hail of sand poured in while Paige looked on
in utter dismay
,
her
candle in hand.   It took her long minutes to trace the source of the draft, a jagged hole in the back of the roof.  Muttering words that would
not
bear overhearing, Paige dragged out from a protected corner the materials needed to patch the hole.

When she had pounded
in
the last nail, she sank down on the wet wooden floor, wearily dropping her hammer.
  From more than one past experience, she knew it wouldn’t hold for long, but her bone deep weariness and stress from the last twenty-four hours had finally crept up on her so that she could do nothing more than laugh.  She sat on the attic floor and giggled helplessly
, tears rolling down her cheeks
as the flapping tarp groaned against the nails she had randomly pounded into the remaining good sections of the roof.

And even as laughter continued to take hold of her, Paige could feel a presence beside her – it was as if someone was laughing along with her.  Sprawling backward, she kicked her damp slippers off into the dusky shadows beyond her candle, wriggling her bare toes on the boards.
Maybe, it’s the ghost of Erik Fletcher laughing with me.
  She hoped so.  She hoped that there had been some laughter for him.   She stared around the attic, her laughing fit slowly subsiding.  In i
t
s place came the reality that she was sitting barefoot on a soaking wet floor in an attic
with a rotten roof while a thunderstorm roared
overhead
.  The thought brought on another fit of laughter. 
I wonder what he would think if he could see me now?  I hope Erik would have a good laugh.

With a shake of her head, Paige reached for her discarded slippers.  It was cold and wet
up here
, and the fire downstairs seemed to be calling her. 
But i
n her desperate search for her slipper, she
snagged a loose floorboard, and crawled forward to investigate
.

Without warning, the old wood gave way beneath her, tossing her painfully on her side.  She didn’t
fall
far, but the impact stunned her.  When she finally reached her candle, she discovered not one, but a dozen panels had rotted through.  Beneath them lay a
recess
long hidden beneath the flooring.

Paige’s hands trembled as she probed the dark hole, not wanting to think of what else could be lying in wait there.
Pushing through dust and cobwebs and heaven knew what else, she reached deeper until she touched something shoved deep in the recess.
 

Paige worked the heavy object toward her, and then eased its smooth bulk onto the
upper
floor.  In the
candlelight,
she saw it was a large chest, its leather casing fitted with brass handles.

Her breath caught when she opened it, a hint of gardenias teasing the air. Inside, snuggled against the silk-wrapped walls lay folded clothing wrapped in tissue paper.

She pulled item after item from the chest, delighting in the shine of
silk,
and satins.  Full-skirted and tightly fitted at the waist, the garments were sewn in the style of the 1930’s.  Pulling aside a layer of cloth, she found a pair of navy slippers
with
rhinestone buckles
. 
Nestled between
the slippers lay a pearl choker that glowed warm
ly
in the
flickering ligh
t
of her candle
.  For a moment she didn’t move, awed by the sense that she had somehow stepped back into time, caught in the drama of a strangers life.  Something called to her, telling her to run her fingers over soft satin and touch the glowing pearls.