TURNED THE flame on beneath the teakettle on Piper’s stove. She preferred coffee, but the ritual of making tea had always soothed her nerves. It brought back memories of the times she’d talked through her problems while she’d watched her aunt Vi brewing a pot in Castle MacPherson. Nell had spent a lot of time in the sunny kitchen after her sisters had left for college.
Adair had been the first to leave. Nell and Piper had shared one more year before Piper had deserted her, too. Then for her last two years of high school, she’d been alone. Of course, she’d still had her aunt Vi. And her father had been there, tucked away in his rooms painting or teaching some art classes at nearby Huntleigh College. But there’d been no one to sneak out to the stone arch with in the middle of the night, no one to laugh with as they’d written down their hopes and goals and dreams on different-colored papers and buried them.
Spotting the teapot in Piper’s kitchen, Nell lifted it off the shelf, then nearly dropped it because her hands were trembling. So far she’d been able to hide that little fact from her sister. Since Piper’s clothes looked as if they’d wiped the street, she was showering and changing before Duncan arrived.
Thank heavens Nell’s own navy suit was made of some kind of miracle fabric she could roll up into a ball, stuff into a duffel bag and then shake out wrinkle-free. It had been perfect for her lifestyle during the past year. All she’d had to do to repair the damage from their close encounter with that wannabe hit-and-run driver was to sponge off a few spots of dust with cold water.
If only all her problems were that easy to solve. Tea, she reminded herself, as she searched through the cupboards and finally located the box. When it slipped through her fingers and landed on the floor, she retrieved it and set it gingerly on the counter. Pressing her palms flat on the ledge, she took a deep, calming breath.
She had to settle down. Once the nice young officer had taken their statements and escorted them up the alley stairs to her sister’s apartment above a Georgetown boutique, her knees had begun to feel very weak.
A perfectly normal reaction, she’d told herself.
Someone was threatening her family. She hadn’t heeded the warning in that first letter fast enough, and they’d taken action, nearly succeeding in killing Piper. Now that the initial adrenaline rush had worn off, shaking hands and wobbly knees were understandable.
But the butterflies in her stomach weren’t just due to what had nearly happened in the street. They’d started frantically flapping their wings when Piper had told her that Reid Sutherland was on his way over. He would arrive momentarily.
Nell thought she’d have more time to prepare for meeting him again, time to think and to map out possible scenarios. Find the necklace first. Then deal with Reid Sutherland. Closing her eyes, she drew in another breath. The way she saw it, her problem was twofold. If he came to the castle with her, he posed a threat to her plan to prove to her family that she could take care of herself. The other problem was more personal. She wanted very much to bring to life her fantasies about seducing Reid. They couldn’t be denied. Wouldn’t be denied. But the last thing she needed to deal with right now was her attraction to him. She needed to find that necklace.
On her own.
Reid might present a challenge there, too. The Reid she remembered had made all her decisions for her. And she’d let him.
She couldn’t allow that to happen again. No way was she going to slip into her old habit of letting others involve themselves in her life and control it.
The sudden shriek of the teakettle made her jump. But it also jarred a thought loose. In a well-plotted story, the heroine never has the luxury of time to plan everything out.
She had to face the unexpected—and improvise. That was the key to a good page-turner.
It was also the key to becoming the truly independent woman she wanted to be. A girl would want to separate the two problems and solve them one at a time. A woman would take on the challenge of juggling two or three agendas.
Anyway, why not? A thrill moved through her just thinking about it. There had to be a way to find the necklace and fulfill that fantasy she’d written seven years ago. She’d just have to find it.
Turning off the kettle, she refocused her attention on making tea and noted with some satisfaction that her hands were steadier as she poured water into the china pot. Though the specific details of the sexual narratives she’d buried seven years ago remained a bit fuzzy, her overall goal was still crystal clear. That one searing look Reid had given her ages ago had awakened a desire in her that couldn’t be denied. Wouldn’t be denied.
All she had to do was find a way to convince him. She measured out tea leaves into a tea ball. As she swirled some of the hot water in the teapot to warm it first, then tipped out the water into the sink, she noted that her hands were perfectly steady.
Good. But this was not the time to wonder how it might feel when she ran them over Reid Sutherland’s skin. After carefully adding boiling water to the china pot then adding the tea ball, she turned back to face the table. She had a much more pressing problem.
Someone had tried to run Piper down with a car.
Before her sister had gone into the bedroom to change, Nell had spread out all three letters carefully on the table so that when Duncan and Reid arrived, they could examine the evidence. The third letter frightened her the most.
Losing another member of your family.
The man who’d gunned his car straight at Piper wasn’t fooling around.
Neither was she. Nell welcomed the spurt of anger. She turned back to the counter, opened a drawer, and located a pad of paper and a pen. From the time she’d first learned to write words, she’d made it a habit to capture her ideas on paper. Moving to the table, she read the third letter again.
This time it was something else entirely that jumped out at her.
Forty-eight hours.
That was the important part of the message. Why hadn’t she absorbed it sooner? A ticking clock was a literary device many writers and moviemakers used. She wrote the number on the pad. The writer of this story wanted to put pressure on her to find the necklace fast.
The sudden knock at the door had her nearly dropping her pen.
“Duncan made good time,” Piper called from the bedroom. “I’ll be right out.”
Nell set down her pad and pen on the counter, before she moved to the door and opened it. It wasn’t Duncan standing there. It was Reid. For the first time in her life, she experienced what it was like to be struck dumb. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Lucky for her, his attention was focused on the young officer who’d agreed to stand guard outside on the landing.
Hers was focused on Reid. She might have been transported back in time. Except he wasn’t the same. On that day, her eyes had been riveted on a twenty-two-year-old boy on the edge of manhood. Right now she was looking at a man. Perhaps the most intimidating man that she’d ever seen. His shoulders were broader, his face leaner, the angles more defined. Even the long rangy body was more muscled.
Harder. That’s what it was, she decided. Reid Sutherland looked bigger and harder than she had remembered him being. He was definitely not storybook prince material anymore. Those characters were never scary. And Reid was—just a little. When he turned, and she met his gaze, she realized that one
