Relative Strangers Part 16

"What touching faith you have in me. I've no intention of saying anything about Adrienne. I'll let him think I found all this information in family records."

"Oh, that will really go over well. Make him think you have doc.u.mented proof that he could lose the only thing he seems to care about."

"I'll rea.s.sure him. After all, I don't want his hotel." She broke free and slipped into her parka, bullheaded as ever. "Don't worry, Lucas. It'll be fine. You'll see. I'll come straight here as soon as I get back."

"Corrie, I know what I'm talking about. Kelvin hates anything to do with the Sinclairs. He won't react well to what you have to say and if he's heard gossip that you're involved with me, that will make him even more unpredictable." Kelvin could well know all about their relationship. Waycross Springs was a very small town.

She'd reached the door.

"Dammit, Corrie. Why can't you trust me on this?"

"Because you aren't rational where Stanley Kelvin is concerned. Besides, no woman with any sense should take for granted that a man knows what's best. If Adrienne hadn't listened to her Lucas, if she'd gone and talked to her brother as she wanted to, none of this would have been necessary."

On that note, she sailed out of his office, closing the door firmly behind her.

Lucas slammed his fist down on the hard surface of his desk. He welcomed the pain. d.a.m.ned stubborn woman. Didn't she realize how unbalanced Kelvin was?

Well, no. She didn't. How could she when she'd never even met the man?

Lucas felt more confused than he'd been in his entire life. Perhaps he had overreacted. Maybe Kelvin was no threat to Corrie. He didn't even know her. On the other hand, if she was walking into danger, it was because of Lucas, because Kelvin had guessed she meant something to a Sinclair.

He tried to tell himself he was being foolish. He should have a little faith in Corrie. He'd already accepted that in order to take their relationship forward, they'd have to agree to disagree on some things. Compromise.

But not on this. Irrational as it seemed, he was convinced Corrie needed him at her side when she talked to Stanley Kelvin.

He glanced toward the file cabinet, where Corrie had claimed she'd seen the shade of Adrienne Sinclair. No woman in late-nineteenth-century dress stood there. But there was an odd shimmer in the air.

He blinked and it was gone, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd just gotten the go-ahead from beyond the grave.

Stopping only to grab a coat, he left the Sinclair House at a run. Seconds later, squealing tires marked his exit from the hotel parking lot. He broke every speed limit in Waycross Springs, intent on getting to the Phoenix Inn in record time. He figured that if the cops chased him, so much the better.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Although she'd known that the Phoenix Inn was no longer on a par with the Sinclair House, Corrie was still shocked to walk in and see its run-down condition. While not precisely dirty, since that would have led to complaints of health and safety violations, the lobby was decorated with threadbare carpeting, poor-quality furniture and cheap reproductions of famous paintings.

The combined smells of stale tobacco, cheap whiskey, and spilled beer nearly overwhelmed her the moment she set foot inside. One end of the s.p.a.cious reception area had been turned into a barroom.

"Yeah?" said the slovenly woman behind the registration desk.

"I have an appointment with Mr. Kelvin."

Snapping a wad of gum, the woman picked up an old-fashioned, rotary-dial black phone and slowly gave one number a turn. "Someone here to see you, Mr. Kelvin." A nasal laugh accompanied the announcement. She hung up after a moment and sneered at Corrie. "He'll be out in a sec, honey. Sit yourself down and wait, why don't ya?"

Corrie considered telling the woman that she wouldn't dare sit on the furniture but decided there was no point in antagonizing her. Instead she wandered around the lobby, keeping as far away from the barroom end as she could.

It was impossible not to make comparisons. Like the Sinclair House, Stanley Kelvin's place possessed the stately lines and sweeping curves of grand hotel architecture, but with the effects of decades of neglect and decay it reminded her more of the seedy dumps portrayed in film noir movies of the thirties and forties. She half expected to see a Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney clone emerge from the door marked office.

Instead she got Stanley Kelvin.

"Come in. Come in." He actually rubbed his hands together in antic.i.p.ation.

Corrie swallowed hard, wondering if she knew what she was doing after all.

Where Lucas had kept the furniture of the last century for his office-that ma.s.sive oak desk, the antique file cabinet, and a deep, beautifully colored Persian carpet-Stanley Kelvin had installed two rickety chairs, a cheap, unfinished kneehole desk, the kind that came in a box labeled "some a.s.sembly required," and a gunmetal-gray file cabinet that appeared to be army surplus.

"It wasn't always like this," he said defensively.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"

But he wasn't interested in hearing her apology. Kelvin was still talking. "I only just got it back from the guy who bought it when I declared bankruptcy. I'll fix it up. You wait and see. After the Sinclairs go out of business, the customers will flock here in droves."

Appalled, Corrie kept silent. He actually believed what he was saying. Suddenly she felt sorry for him.

She also wished she hadn't come. Could she reveal only that she was descended from the missing Marguerite and not the secret of Jonathan's questionable birth without letting Adrienne down? She hoped so, because she didn't have it in her to shatter the dreams of this poor excuse for a man. Dreams were probably all he had.

"Well? What do you want to know about the Sinclairs?" he asked her.

"Actually I've come here under false pretenses," she confessed nervously. "There's something I want to tell you. It's about a woman named Marguerite Mead."

Before she could explain that Marguerite Mead and her own great-grandmother, Daisy, were one and the same, Kelvin seized her by the shoulders. His fingers pinched her and she cried out.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," he swore.

With genuine confusion, and the beginning of real fear, Corrie gaped at the snarling little man. Stanley Kelvin was far stronger than he looked. He all but dragged her across his office into a smaller attached room.

"Now, wait just a minute-"

"Shut up. Let me think." He released her but stood so that he blocked the exit.

Corrie subsided, watching him warily. They were in some sort of storage closet, a windowless, empty room from which there was no obvious means of escape.

Don't argue with him, she warned herself. Desperately, she tried to think of some way out of this situation. She wished now that she'd asked Lucas to come with her. She'd been much too quick to dismiss his warnings about Stanley Kelvin.

Standing in Kelvin's office, hidden by the shadow of the door, Lucas barely restrained the urge to rush to the rescue, but he could see Corrie. She was unhurt. And although he'd arrived in time to see the momentary panic Kelvin's actions had roused in her, now she seemed to be coping.

"Let me tell you about the Meads and the Sinclairs," Kelvin was muttering. "The Meads may have done some terrible things, but the Sinclairs are every bit as wicked."

"I'd like to hear what you have to say," Corrie said. Her voice shook a little, but she sounded sincere. "However, I think you've misunderstood my reason for being here."

"I was just a boy," Kelvin whined, paying no attention to Corrie's words at all. "My mother was a widow. Hugh Sinclair thought that meant she was fair game."

Suddenly Lucas wanted to hear whatever Kelvin had to say too.

"He never intended to marry her. He didn't want to be saddled with raising another man's son."

Stanley Kelvin's father, Lucas recalled, had been killed during World War II. Hugh hadn't been old enough to enlist. That meant he'd been barely twenty during the time Kelvin was babbling about. Maybe a young man sowing wild oats but hardly a seasoned seducer. If he'd been intimate with Kelvin's mother, an older woman, it had to have been at Rita Kelvin's invitation.

That wasn't an image Lucas cared for. He remembered "old lady" Kelvin as the woman who called the cops every time a bunch of kids took a shortcut across her backyard.

"He ruined her life," Kelvin complained. He was pacing, ignoring Corrie completely. "He ruined mine too. She loved him and he abandoned her. Left town. Came back married to another woman."

A quick calculation rea.s.sured Lucas. What Kelvin tried to make seem like a matter of months had actually been some fifteen years.

Hugh had been thirty-five when he'd met and married Lucas's mother.

"I'm sorry for that," Corrie said, "but it wasn't the Marguerite who was your mother that I wanted to talk about. It was the earlier one. Horatio Mead's runaway daughter."

"Oh, I know about her too." Bitterness made Kelvin's voice harsh, but there was a slight relaxation in the set of his shoulders. Lucas wondered what had prompted his sudden p.r.i.c.kly defense of his mother, then decided he didn't want to go down that road, not even in his imagination.

"What do you mean?" Corrie asked Kelvin.

"She abandoned her family. Betrayed the Meads. Just as the sainted Adrienne did. Marguerite was supposed to marry old Nehemiah Jones, so he'd invest in the hotel. She ran off with the local bootmaker instead."

"Mr. Skinner," Corrie murmured. She'd begun to edge toward the door.

"Hold it right there," Kelvin ordered. "I don't trust you."

"The feeling is mutual, Mr. Kelvin. Why are we here in this . . . closet? Wouldn't it be pleasanter to discuss our business in the lobby? Let me buy you a drink."

His laugh was nasty. "I wouldn't touch the rotgut they serve at my bar."

"Then I think I'd better be leaving." Corrie's voice shook, enough to prompt Lucas to take action.

Before Kelvin could even think about making any threatening moves, Lucas had pushed past him to shield Corrie with his own body. The expression of relieved surprise on her face set his heart racing. He'd been concerned she'd resent his interference.

"Time to leave now?" he suggested.

She seemed to get her nerve back once she knew she was not alone, and said, "Perhaps a moment more?"

Kelvin might be wary of Lucas's greater physical strength, but he plastered on his familiar smirk. "If you're going to tell me you want to go looking for Marguerite's heirs," he told Corrie, "I can a.s.sure you that you'll be wasting your time. I lost this place to bankruptcy. Then I bought it back with my own hard-earned money. It's really mine now. Nothing can take it from me."

Bought with money embezzled from the Sinclairs? Lucas wondered. In spite of that suspicion, he couldn't help feeling sorry for Stanley Kelvin. This pathetic man had plainly grown up under the thumb of a twisted and vindictive mother who'd taught him to hate because her own desires had been thwarted.

"I am Marguerite's heir," Corrie said, "but I don't want your hotel. I only want what Adrienne Sinclair must have wanted, for both families to know and accept the truth."

"We've always known." Kelvin looked insufferably smug. "Old Jonathan hated his sister. Horatio sent him to find her. Jonathan came back and told the old man she was dead. End of story."

"Not quite."

Lucas was concerned about how much more Corrie meant to tell Kelvin, but he didn't try to stop her.

"The rest of my family needs to be told," she said. "And the Sinclairs."

Kelvin shrugged. "So tell them."

Lucas waited.

After a moment, Corrie nodded. "End of story," she said. "And it had better be the end of the feud as well." She looked Stanley Kelvin right in the eye. "One more hint of trouble at the Sinclair House and I go straight to Officer Tandy and report that you a.s.saulted me."

Kelvin sputtered in protest, but she cut him off.

"With your record, who do you think a jury will believe? Smarten up, Mr. Kelvin. You stay in your hotel and we'll stay in ours."

Grinning broadly, Lucas offered Corrie his arm. When she took it, they swept out of the closet and through the office in a grand manner that would have made Adrienne proud. Neither of them spoke until they were safely inside Corrie's car and heading back across town. Lucas left the hotel van behind to be picked up later.

"You were right," she said. "I shouldn't have gone alone."

"I should have offered to go with you."

He could feel her intense gaze on his profile as he drove. "You do realize I'm related to that man? That he's family?" she asked.

"I don't recommend that you embrace Kelvin as a cousin. Look what happened to Pop when he tried."

"Don't worry about it." She paused. "Do you suppose I convinced him to end the feud?"

"You convinced me. I especially liked the way you referred to the Sinclair House as our hotel."

He glanced her way and wondered why the inside of the car hadn't caught on fire. The look in her eyes raised his internal temperature to a boil and turned his voice raspy. They might have been talking about Kelvin, but she sure as h.e.l.l wasn't thinking about any man but Lucas.

"I intend to embrace my newfound cousin," he vowed. "Often."

"You mean me?" she whispered.

"I mean you." With an effort, he forced himself to pay attention to his driving. Keeping his eyes on the road ahead cleared his mind enough to warn him to be sensible. He mustn't rush Corrie. They had all the time in the world now.

"Ready to share this story with my folks and your father?" he asked.

"Do we have a last chapter yet?"

He thought about that for a moment. "Not yet," he conceded, "but I'm convinced you and I are headed for a happy ending." He dared another quick glance. Again she was watching him intently. "I know we need to take it slow. Get to know each other better without matchmakers or ghosts involved. But I can't help believing we have . . . something ahead of us."

Her voice sounded as breathless as he felt. "Yes," she said. "Definitely . . . something."

A short time later, at Lucas's parents' house, Corrie told the story of what she'd discovered one more time, revealing the reason Adrienne had come back to haunt the Sinclair House and her own connection to the family.

She felt a growing sense of belonging there. And an inexplicable but very strong certainty that Lucas had stopped doubting her. Impossible or not, he accepted that she'd been in contact with Adrienne's spirit.

A sudden movement from Hugh startled them all. Slowly, laboriously, he rolled his wheelchair to the desk and began to type a message into the laptop. Lucas went to stand behind him, reading over his shoulder.