Heartwishes Part 9

Jean looked back at him, her jaw in a hard line. "Colin and I are in love."

"Really?" he asked, with a fake smile. Even with his dark hair dyed gray, he was a handsome man, and he'd kept his lean figure even as he neared fifty. He was her father's younger brother, adored and spoiled by their mother as he grew up, and always bailed out of trouble when he was an adult and learning the art of thievery.

Jean strode across the room to the door.

"Is it that trust fund he lives off of that you care about?" He put his hand over hers on the doork.n.o.b and his face softened. "Can't an uncle be jealous?" he asked. "I used to be the number one man in your life, but now I hear that my beloved niece is with a . . ." He smiled. "A sheriff. Of course I want to disparage him as much as I can."

Jean looked away for a moment. When he wanted to be, he was quite charming-and they had so much history together. She truly wanted to know what he was doing in Edilean. Was he again after her mother, or had he targeted someone else? She knew that anger wasn't going to find out anything. Besides, he was the one who'd taught her how to mask her feelings. Turning, she gave him a hint of a smile.

When he thought he saw her capitulate, he put his arm around her shoulders. They were both tall and thin, and he was only eleven years older than she was. Before she reached ten years old, she thought her uncle Adrian was the smartest, most clever man on earth. It had taken years for her to learn the truth about him. He was always after something, and every word he uttered was a lie.

"Come on," he said. "For old time's sake, let's share a meal. I always did love to be in a kitchen with you."

She agreed, but only because she needed to know what he wanted. Throughout their cooking-which they did easily and without getting in each other's way-she talked to him. She tried to make it sound as though she was telling him about her life, but she was actually warning him. Just a few months before, when the search for the eighteenth-century paintings had been going on, Edilean had been full of FBI and Secret Service agents. "And a super-detective lives here now," she said at the end. She wasn't going to mention that Mike Newland spent most of the year in Fort Lauderdale.

"I know," he said, his deep blue eyes twinkling. "Jean, dearest, please relax. I came here only to see you."

"Why?" she asked as she put the risotto on the table.

"Is love too old-fashioned for me to say?"

Jean knew he was lying. When she was a child, he'd show up in her bedroom in the middle of the night. He never did anything as prosaic as ring a doorbell or knock. She'd be asleep, then wake up to see him standing there looking down at her. He'd put his finger to his lips for her to be quiet. She'd stand up and hug him and he'd shower her with gifts. There were pretty, smocked dresses from France, shoes of the softest Italian leather, dolls that were the envy of her friends. When she got older, there were earrings with real sapphires, and when she graduated from high school he'd given her a pearl necklace.

Her mother had been horrified the first time she found out that her brother-in-law had entered their house during the night. She demanded that an alarm system be installed.

"It won't matter," her husband, his older brother, said.

But she didn't believe him. She became a fanatic about keeping doors and windows locked and the alarm on. But one morning Jean came into the kitchen wearing a dress with a print of little bouquets of willow branches, their long, thin leaves in several shades of green, a pink ribbon tying them together. It had a Baby Dior label and Jean said Uncle Adrian had given it to her during the night. Her mother had been nearly hysterical, screaming that she wanted to put iron bars over every entrance.

Her husband put his hands on her shoulders and tried to calm her down. "Whatever you do, he'll see it as a challenge. You can put up cameras, bars, whatever you can think of, but if he wants to see his niece, he will."

"But she's a child! He wakes her up in the night and I don't like it."

"I hate it!" he said with pa.s.sion. "I've hated it all my life. When I was a teenager and he was still in elementary school, he was always snooping in my room. I used to put my most private possessions inside a locked box, then put it in another box, then into a third one. Each one had its own lock. The next morning at breakfast, Adrian would spread the things out across the table for everyone to see."

She was calming down. "What if we asked him to please come to the front door during the day?"

"You don't think I have? He won't do it. Just let him see Jean and don't try to defeat him at his own game."

"But-" She couldn't think of any way to thwart the man.

It was after Jean's father died while she was in her first year in college that the real problems began. Her father, an accountant, had set up a trust for his only child's education, so her first three years at school were easy. Except for the grief of her father's pa.s.sing, she enjoyed herself, and finances had been no problem.

But one day during the summer holidays, Jean came home to find her mother screaming. Every penny they had was gone. Jean's trust fund had been emptied, the insurance money was gone, two savings accounts had zero balances.

"I know he did it!" Mrs. Caldwell said when they returned from the bank.

"Who?" Jean asked.

"Your father's brother, that's who!"

"Uncle Adrian? I thought he was in jail," Jean said.

"He got out last week," Mrs. Caldwell said, "and I know he did it."

The next year had been horrible. The police could find no way that Adrian could have taken the money. "It's just not possible," they said. Jean could tell that they thought her mother had taken her own money, probably as a tax evasion.

Jean helped her mother put a mortgage on the house that her father had worked so hard to leave debt free. Jean got student loans and a job so she could finish the last year of college. She had no more time for social events or dates. Worse was that she gave up her hope of law school. It cost too much.

During that awful year, she never saw or heard from her uncle Adrian. But her mother never ceased to complain about him. She'd had to give up her charity work and get a job washing hair at a nearby salon. They both knew that, eventually, they would have to sell their beloved home.

But it all ended almost a year after it began. Adrian showed up in Jean's bedroom one night, just as he'd always done.

She glared at him. In the last year he'd become the enemy, the one who'd caused their poverty. "Did you-?" she began, but as always, he put his finger to his lips. He loved secrets.

He handed her a little blue velvet box. Jean opened it to see a beautiful ring of diamonds and pink sapphires. When she looked up, her uncle was gone.

The next morning the bank called to tell Mrs. Caldwell that all her money had been redeposited-with a 12 percent increase.

It had taken a lot for Mrs. Caldwell's husband's former partner to persuade the IRS that this wasn't new income, and that 40 percent of the money should not be paid in taxes, but he did it.

Mrs. Caldwell quit her job and Jean went to law school, but what had happened changed her mother. She became bitter and angry, and began to look for everyone's ulterior motive.

Jean never told her mother, but while she was in law school, she spent a lot of time with her uncle. She thought that the reason he'd put her and her mother through such h.e.l.l was because he didn't see them as people. She thought that, maybe, if he came to actually love them he'd protect them, and he'd never hurt them again.

Over the years she was studying law, he taught her how to cook, to dress, even to dance. Unknown to her mother, several times he sent her plane tickets and she went to exotic locations where she met fabulously interesting people-and had quick affairs with several of them. Through her uncle she gained a sophistication few of the other students had. She did well in her studies, and her outside life was exciting.

The only flaw in their relationship was that her uncle never allowed her to mention what he'd done to their mother-or to Jean. To Adrian, what had happened was over and therefore she had no right to bring up the past.

After her graduation from law school, her uncle disappeared as quickly as he'd arrived, and she didn't see or hear from him for over two years.

But soon after Jean got a job at an excellent law firm in Richmond, Virginia, her mother called and said, "He did it again."

Jean knew exactly what her mother meant. This time, it was Jean who changed. The man she'd spent so many days and weekends with, who'd taught her so much, had thought so little of her that he'd yet again stolen from her mother.

It wasn't easy for Jean, but she supported her mother for eighteen months-and she never told of her a.s.sociation with Uncle Adrian.

By the time the money was returned to Mrs. Caldwell's bank account, she was too angry to recover. The trauma of her husband's death and the two long bouts with dest.i.tution had made her much older than her years. On Jean's last visit home, she had caught her mother burying gold coins in the backyard. "I need to hide them in case he does it again," she said.

Adrian's voice brought Jean back to the present. "Tell me everything about this man you love," he said as he took a bite of the risotto. She'd never seen him eat on anything but fine china and sterling silver, so now, seeing him with the cheap plates that came with the rented house was disconcerting.

"He's nice. He's kind," she said cautiously.

"So why hasn't he asked you to marry him?"

Jean narrowed her eyes. His lower status of living could be something he was using as a disguise or it could mean he was broke. When he needed money, he went for it anywhere. "Why do you want to know? If you think I know Colin's bank code and that you can wheedle it out of me, I don't and you can't."

"Bitterness never becomes a lady," Adrian said. "And at your age-" He broke off when he saw that he'd overstepped himself. "Dear Jean, I apologize for all I've done to you and your mother. Both times I was in a situation where I had no other source of income. I did my best to make it up to you, both financially and personally."

That remark hurt. Was he saying that all the time he'd spent with Jean while she was in law school was merely a repayment of a debt? Maybe that was true, because what they'd shared had clearly meant nothing to him. Later he'd still robbed her mother a second time.

When she looked at him, she realized that he knew exactly how he'd made her feel. She'd once heard someone say that when a person says something that hurts you, you better believe that it was intentional.

She stood up. "You're after something, and if you don't tell me what it is, I'm going to Colin right now and tell him everything."

He didn't get in the least upset, just smiled at her in a way that she used to find charming but now saw as devious. "Is it impossible for you to believe that I came here for the sole and only purpose of seeing you?"

"Yes, it is."

He smiled in what seemed to be approval. "Well, perhaps I wasn't telling the entire truth. I am a bit interested in what I read about this town."

"About Edilean? Oh yes, of course. You're after the paintings they found here last year. I should have known that all those millions would attract you. I'll tell you now that those paintings have nothing to do with me."

"I know," he said softly, "but reading those stories did remind me of something I'd lost."

"The Crown Jewels?" One time in Budapest a man had told her that the only thing Adrian had not stolen were the English Crown Jewels.

"Yes," he said, "and by that I mean my dear niece. Jean, you are the only person who means anything to me and I came to see you, to get to know you again. I apologize for the disguise but . . ."

"Your face is on too many wanted posters?"

He gave a smile that she well remembered; it used to make her feel that they were in a conspiracy together.

She sat back down at the table. Anger was only going to make him tell more lies.

"More bread, dear? I bought it at Armstrong's. It's a small town, but the grocery is excellent. And such an interesting woman runs it. She is a veritable fountain of information. A few groans of pain and she tells me everything about everyone."

Jean took a roll from the basket. "What do you want information about?"

"Nothing in particular. Just something to pa.s.s the time while you're in Richmond."

"Why don't you stay there instead of here?" She looked around the ugly interior of the little house.

"No one talks to one another in a city," he said. "Is that why you dislike little Edilean so much? You don't want people talking about you and what you do when you're not working?"

She started to protest, but he put his hand up.

"My dear niece, remember that I know you very well. You barely tolerate the rural nature of Richmond. How often do you go to New York and the pied-a-terre you keep there? Tell me, does that big, hulking boyfriend of yours know of that place?"

When Jean didn't answer, Adrian smiled. "I thought not. Did you know that your young man has some secrets of his own? He bought a house here in this little town. Has he shown it to you?"

"Not yet," she said.

"That's interesting. Did you know that he took that adorable little Gemma there on the day she arrived in town?"

Jean's involuntary intake of breath was his answer.

Again, he smiled. "Would you like to hear more of what I heard?"

Jean looked down at her plate for a moment, then back up at him. "I believe I would." She took a deep drink of the excellent wine. "Tell me everything you know."

7.

GEMMA AWOKE SLOWLY and spent a few minutes remembering what had happened. She'd been on Colin's shoulders, then in his arms. Someone had yelled a warning, Colin had jumped to one side, then fallen, but making sure he didn't land on Gemma. She remembered getting up, but after that was a blank. Right now, her left side ached and her head felt a bit cloudy, but otherwise she was fine.

She was in a room that looked like a cross between a bedroom and a hospital unit. The bed had controls to raise and lower it, and near her was a big machine that kept up a rhythmical beep, but the rest of the furniture was homey and comfortable.

The most extraordinary thing was that curled up in a big blue chair, sound asleep, was an angelically pretty little girl, about eight years old. She was clutching a fat teddy bear that was dressed like a pirate, complete with a purple vest and gaudy jewelry.

The child stirred, and when the bear nearly fell, she opened her eyes. She had long dark hair and deep blue eyes and very long lashes. "h.e.l.lo," she said.

"h.e.l.lo," Gemma answered back and started to sit up. Under the thin blanket she was still wearing her jeans, but her shirt and bra had been replaced by a hospital gown.

"No one saw you," the girl said as she sat up straight in the chair and yawned.

"Saw me?" Gemma asked.

"With no clothes on. Uncle Tris made the men leave before he examined you. That's okay because he's a doctor."

"I've heard of him." She was trying to look at the big bandage over her ribs.

"My mother says that all the women in three counties know about her brother."

Gemma smiled as she managed to sit up. "You wouldn't know what happened to me, would you?"

"The whole world saw everything."

Gemma looked at the girl in question. What did that mean?

"When you climbed on Uncle Colin and got that boy down, Deputy Carl filmed it, and he put it on YouTube."

"That's not good," Gemma said as she swung around to get out of bed, but she was dizzy, so she lay back down.

"Uncle Tris gave you happy drugs." She lowered her voice. "He thinks I don't know what narcotics are, so that's what he calls them to me. He's afraid I'm going to grow up to be a drug dealer."

"I have to agree that that wouldn't be a good choice of careers."

The girl stood up, her bear held tightly to her. "This is Landy. Would you like to shake his hand?"

"Sure," Gemma said and held out her hand to grip the fuzzy paw. The bear wore a patch over its left eye. "Named for Orlando Bloom?" she asked.

The child's eyes widened. "n.o.body knows that. Uncle Colin said you were smart and you are."