Page 56 of Megan's Mate
Megan laughed, wiped her eyes. “He choked him first.”
“Ha!” Colleen rapped her cane in appreciation. “Don’t spare the details.”
Chapter 9
B. behaving oddly. Since return to island for summer she is absentminded, daydreaming. Arrived late for tea, forgot luncheon appointment. Intolerable. Unrest in Mexico annoying. Dismissed valet. Excess starch in shirts.
Unbelievable, Megan thought, staring at the notes Fergus had written in his crabbed hand beside stock quotations. He could speak of his wife, a potential war and his valet in the same faintly irritated tone. What a miserable life Bianca must have had. How terrible to be trapped in a marriage ruled by a despot and without any power to captain your own destiny.
How much worse, she thought, if Bianca had loved him.
As she often did in the quiet hours before sleep, Megan flipped through the pages to the series of numbers. She had time now to regret that she’d never made it to the library.
Or perhaps Amanda was a better bet. Amanda might know whether Fergus had had foreign bank accounts, safe-deposit boxes.
Peering down, she wondered whether that was the answer. The man had had homes in Maine and in New York. These could be the numbers of various safe-deposit boxes. Even combinations to safes he’d kept in his homes.
That idea appealed to her, a straightforward answer to a small but nagging puzzle. A man as obsessed with his wealth and the making of money as Fergus Calhoun had been would very likely have kept a few secret stores.
Wouldn’t it be fantastic, she thought, if there was some dusty deposit box in an old bank vault? Unopened all these years, she imagined. The key lost or discarded. The contents? Oh... priceless rubies or fat, negotiable bonds. A single faded photograph. A lock of hair wound with a gold ribbon.
She rolled her eyes and laughed at herself. “Imagination’s in gear, Megan,” she murmured. “Too bad it’s so farfetched.”
“What is?”
She jumped like a rabbit, her glasses sliding down to her chin. “Damn. Nathaniel.”
He was grinning as he closed and locked the terrace doors at his back. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“I am. But you didn’t have to sneak up on me that way.”
“When a man comes through a woman’s window at night, he’s supposed to sneak.”
She shoved her glasses back in place. “They’re doors.”
“And you’re too literal.” He leaned over the back of the chair where she sat and kissed her like a starving man. “I’m glad you talk to yourself.”
“I do not.”
“You were, just now. That’s why I decided to stop watching you and come in.” He strolled to the hallway door, locked it. “You looked incredibly sexy sitting there at your neat little desk, your hair scooped up, your glasses sliding down your nose. In that cute, no-nonsense robe.”
She wished heartily that the practical terry cloth could transform into silk and lace. But she had nothing seductive to adorn herself in and had settled for the robe and Coco’s perfume.
“I didn’t think you were coming after all. It’s getting late.”
“I figured there’d be some hoopla over yesterday, and that you’d need to settle Kevin for the night. He didn’t get wind of it, did he?”
“No.” It touched her that he would ask, that it would matter to him. “None of the children know. Everyone else has been wonderful. It’s like thinking you’re alone in a battle and then finding yourself surrounded by a circle of shields.” She smiled, tilted her head. “Are you holding something behind your back?”
His brows rose, as if in surprise. “Apparently I am.” He drew out a peony, a twin to the one he’d given her before. “‘A rose,’” he said, “‘without a thorn.’”
He crossed to her as he spoke, and all she could think for one awed moment was that this man, this fascinating man, wanted her. He started to take its faded twin from the bud vase on her desk.
“Don’t.” She felt foolish but stayed his hand. “Don’t throw it out.”
“Sentimental, Meg?” Moved that she had kept his token, he slipped the new bud in with the old. “Did you sit here, working late, looking at the flower and thinking of me?”
“I might have.” She couldn’t fight the smile in his eyes. “Yes, I thought of you. Not always kindly.”
