The Man Behind The Mask
The truth was she was glad she did not have to worry about a taxi right now, or how to find Luke. She was glad this man was in charge. And she might have a concussion, so it was okay to be weak. Just this once. Just for tonight.
The animals needed to be fed in a few hours.
She felt like weeping.
Brendan was watching her closely.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said firmly.
But just as if he hadn’t heard her, he slipped his arm around her waist, and just as if she hadn’t claimed she was okay, she leaned heavily into him.
They collected Luke and, since no one had any idea when Deedee would be home, recaptured Charlie. Nora tried to stay awake and couldn’t. She awoke to find herself in Brendan Grant’s arms for the second time that night.
There was absolutely no fight left in her.
None.
Because Luke was bringing Charlie into the house instead of out to the barn. She didn’t allow any of the animals in the house. How could she? If she did, soon they would be overrun!
But she just didn’t have the energy to make a fuss about it right now. Instead, she snuggled deep into Brendan’s reassuring strength and let him carry her into her house and up the stairs to her room.
“Is she okay?” Luke asked, pointing Brendan to a room on the right of a narrow hallway. He disappeared with Charlie and the cat carrier into a doorway farther up the hall.
“She’s just done in,” Brendan assured him. He nudged open the door and hesitated on the threshold of Nora’s room.
It was confirmed she was completely, one hundred percent single. No man could be trusted with so much white: white walls, white curtains, white pillows, white bedspread. Her room reminded him of innocence. There was something alarmingly bridal about it.
And that was the last thing Brendan wanted to be thinking of as he carried Nora Anderson across the threshold!
He looked down at her and felt a wave of relief. Still wrapped in his too large jacket, mud from head to toe, she was the world’s least likely bride. In fact, her bridal vision of a room was about to be damaged by her muddy little self.
Brendan took a deep breath, stepped in, and quickly made his way to the bed, where he set her on the edge.
Luke appeared in the doorway. “Anything I can do?”
“Oh, Luke,” Nora said. “Where did he come from? You know the rules. We can’t have animals in the house.”
Brendan turned, expecting to see Luke had Charlie. Instead, he had a black-and-white kitten riding in the palm of his hand.
“This one’s different,” Luke said. “I’m calling him Ranger.”
“We don’t name them!”
Luke looked mutinous. “I’m keeping him. For my own.”
Nora chewed her lip. “We need to talk about that,” she said.
“But not tonight,” Brendan said firmly. “Luke, can you get rid of the kitten for now, and find me a flashlight?”
He disappeared and came back, with no kitten, but a flashlight.
“Shine it right in your aunt’s eyes. Do you see what it does to her pupils? That’s called dilation. It’s very important that both her pupils are dilating in the same way. I need you to try it.”
The boy grasped the flashlight without any hesitation. Brendan was going to take it as a good sign that Luke was not nearly as rebellious as his aunt was.
“Yes, her eyes are doing the same thing. The black part is getting smaller when I hold the light up.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!”
“Good. That’s exactly what you are looking for. You need to wake her up every hour after I leave and check her eyes. If you see a change you need to call 9-1-1.”
“There’s no need to frighten him!” Nora protested.
“I’m not frightening him. I’m asking him to step up to the plate. I’m treating him like a man.”
Luke puffed up a bit at that.
“Well, he’s not a man.”
And then deflated.
“He’s not a child, either.”
The boy puffed up again.
“Either he checks you or I stay for the night.”
She blanched at that, then folded her arms over her chest with ill grace and glared at him. That settled, Brendan conducted some very simple tests on his unwilling patient while Luke watched.
“The doctor already did this.”
“Luke needs to see what to do.”
Finally, Brendan was satisfied. “Do you need anything? A drink of warm milk, maybe?”
“Oh.”
There was something kind of sweet and kind of sad about her surprise that anyone would look after her.
“That would be nice,” she said shyly.
“Luke, can you go warm some milk?”
Luke left and Brendan leaned over and pulled off her shoes. Gently, he tugged the jacket off her.
“I can do it!”
“It’s not as if you’re in a see-through negligee.”
She scowled at him, but let him free each of her limbs from the jacket.
He pretended not to notice her pajama top at all, but it was adorable. How was it a pink pajama top with kittens on it that said Purrfectly Purrfect Me could be more sexy than a negligee?
“Stand up for a minute,” he ordered. She did, and he deftly pulled back the white quilt. Surprise, surprise, pure white sheets.
He guided her under the covers. She sank into her bed, then struggled to sit up. “Set the alarm. I have to be up. I have to feed the animals in two hours.”
The clock was holding down some papers on a bedside table. He could tell now wouldn’t be the best time to relate what the doctor had told him. She had to rest. Completely. For at least twenty-four hours. She wasn’t even supposed to look at a computer screen or read. So he pretended to set the clock.
He looked back at the bed, and her eyes were already closed, her breath coming out in soft puffs.
So much for the warm milk.
He went and looked at her. He felt the oddest desire to kiss her, not passionately, but a good-night kiss, like a father might give a child. Protective. Happy she was safe.
Happy he had managed to keep at least one person safe from the perils of life.
Brendan went down the steps. The kitchen was empty; no milk was out or on the stove. Luke was stretched out on the living room couch.
The empty carrier was beside him, and Charlie, a cat who hated both animal and man equally, was stretched out over the boy’s chest. The black-and-white kitten, Ranger, was curled into Charlie’s belly. They were all fast asleep.
Brendan moved closer. Charlie didn’t even look like the same cat. He certainly didn’t sound like it. The death rattle Brendan had heard earlier was gone.
Maybe he had died. Brendan reached out uneasily and touched him. The cat’s fur was warm beneath his fingertips and the animal sighed.
He yanked his hand back. There was no such thing as a healer, he told himself, annoyed. Nora had barely glanced at the cat, anyway.
The boy’s cell phone was on the coffee table, and Brendan picked it up and checked. Sure enough, Luke had set the alarm to go off every hour on the hour. But the boy couldn’t be trusted to cook milk. Besides, he looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, his face pale and taut, even in sleep.
Brendan suddenly knew he couldn’t leave them alone with this.
He could feel it. Around the boy. And around her. They’d both been carrying it for too long.
Brendan flicked through the settings on the phone, turned off the alarm and slowly climbed back up the stairs to Nora’s room.
CHAPTER SIX
OUTSIDE THE DOOR of that terrifyingly bridal bedroom, Brendan flicked open his own cell phone.
Logically, he knew he could not take this on right now. He had a deadline coming up. Village on the Lake was an amazing opportunity, and he knew the condo project would be the most prestigious of his career to date.
But once before he had chosen work when there was another choice to be made. He had been driven by his need to succeed, driven to outrun the ghosts of his own childhood, driven to be worthy of a wife who came from far different circumstances than he had.
He had needed to be something, or prove something, to have something he didn’t have, and he had made a choice that had left him with nothing at all.
That choice had left his heart trapped behind a wall, in a yawning cavern of emptiness.
Could you come to the same fork in the road again? And make a different choice? Not one that would change what had been, nor could alter what had already transpired, but one that changed who you could be?
He shook off the thoughts, finished dialing. His secretary’s voice came over the answering machine.
“You’ve reached Grant Architects. We can’t take your call right now, but we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”
“Linda, I won’t be in today.” Added to all the work that Nora and her nephew undoubtedly did themselves, Deedee was in the hospital. She would need company. And word-search books and updates on Charlie. Brendan had no doubt she would be the world’s most impatient patient.
“There is a possibility—” horrible as it was, he recognized it was a real possibility “—that I might not be in this week. Send—” he named a junior architect “—to supervise the Village.”
And then he closed his cell phone and contemplated the magnitude of what he had just done. He didn’t miss work. Not ever.
And then, anticipating it would start ringing right at seven—with fires to be put out, clients, construction site foremen, Linda protesting time off was impossible—he shut it completely off.
He knew there were going to be a lot of questions about his absence. Saying it was uncharacteristic was an understatement.
There were going to be a lot of questions.
And he was not at all sure he had any answers. Because niggling at the back of his mind was the thought that he didn’t want to be there when they broke ground on Village on the Lake. He didn’t want to be there as his plan took on life. He already knew that his feeling of dissatisfaction would grow in proportion to the buildings taking shape, becoming more and more real.
He slid through the door of the bedroom. There was a chair—white, of course—beside her bed and he took it, a bit guiltily, because his clothes were a little the worse for wear also. He was tempted to put his cell phone back on to use the alarm, just as Luke had intended to do.
And then Brendan was annoyed with himself that he had lasted less than a minute without wanting to rely on his cell phone, so stubbornly didn’t turn it back on.
It was part of that relentless busyness that had helped him survive. Just like putting even more ungodly hours in at work than he had before the accident.
Something in him wanted to stop. That astounded him. Something in him wanted to rest, and be introspective.
Was part of him ready to heal, to crawl back into the light, shielding his eyes from the brilliance? And maybe, just maybe, was this a place where things like that happened? Where something that was dead in a man could be resurrected?
Maybe it was. Look at that cat down there.
Honestly, Brendan could not believe he was entertaining such thoughts—totally unfounded in any kind of science, totally whimsical, the magical thinking of a little boy.
Mommy, I’m going to buy you a castle someday. I promise.
The memory of those words shook him, and he shivered as though someone had walked across his grave. Hadn’t he known from the minute he had driven under that sign that things were about to go sideways?
Annoyed with himself, he sought refuge in the way he always had, but on a point of pride would not turn on his phone to check the weather or the stock report. He prowled restlessly. Starting with the virginal whiteness, the room told him things about her that she might have preferred he didn’t know.
There was a picture of her and Luke on her dresser. But none of a man. There was a stack of bills there, too. Why would she have those in her room, unless she wanted to worry over them in private, protect the boy from anxiety?
There was a laundry basket on the floor, full of neatly folded items. She would have been devastated that her underwear was on top. It reminded him of her pajamas, utilitarian, not sexy. There was no jewelry on the dresser, no nod to that feminine longing for the pretty and the frivolous.
If he was a man who felt things, he might have felt a little sad for her and what the room told him about her. Snowed under with responsibility, alone, and sworn off the small pleasure of celebrating her own prettiness.
And then his eyes went to the papers stuck under the alarm clock. They looked like letters, and he shifted over and cut his eyes to them. He wasn’t going to read personal mail.
Only they didn’t look personal. In fact, the letter on top began “Dear Rover.”
Intrigued, remembering Deedee had said something about Nora being Ask Rover, he picked up the letter.
“Dear Rover,” he read, “I have a new boyfriend. He is everything I ever dreamed of. Handsome. Funny. He has a good job. There is only one problem. I have a thirteen-year-old malamute cross named Sigh. They hate each other. What should I do?” It was signed “Confused.”
The handwriting changed. Though still feminine, it was Rover’s—make that Nora’s—response, Brendan realized. Further intrigued, he saw she had answered and then crossed it all out. He took the chair next to the bed and squinted to read through the scribbles.
Dear Confused,
Though dogs are capable of such emotions as jealousy, quite often they are better judges of character than human beings. What effort has your prince made to win over your dog? Has your new love been sensitive to the fact your dog is aging, and you might have to soon say good-bye? Has he done one single thing to make that moment easier for you? I’m afraid, from a dog’s point of view, he sounds like a jerk. I think you would be better off without him. I am not sure I could be trusted not to bite him, possibly in a place that would make it difficult for him to reproduce. Thank you for your question, though really questions where the answers are of such a life-altering nature might be better answered by your best friend, your mother or your priest. Best barks, Rover.
This was crossed out, but it seemed to him with a certain reluctance.
Brendan felt his lips twitching. He flipped to the next page.
Dear Confused,
Thirteen is very old for a malamute. Do you want to make such a weighty decision based on a dog who will not be with you much longer?
This, too, had been crossed out.
He flipped the page, looking for her answer, but instead found a different letter.
Dear Rover,
My dog, an English bulldog named Petunia, won’t come in the basement laundry room. She sits outside the door and howls and shakes. Do you think I have a ghost? —Haunted
Again, there were two replies. The first, with a big X through it, said:
Dear Haunted,
English bulldogs are known for many lovely traits, intelligence not being among those. Your laundry room is unlikely to be haunted so much as presenting a myriad of smells and sounds beyond poor Petunia’s ability to comprehend them. This situation is unlikely to ever get better, so you could save yourself a great deal of frustration by leaving Petunia upstairs while you go to the basement to do laundry. If you give her a chew bone before you go, there is a good chance she won’t notice you are gone until you get back.
The second response was measured, and made no comments about the intelligence of bulldogs. It explained that laundry rooms had strange sounds and smells, that Petunia needed to be introduced to the elements separately and slowly, and that dog treats would help.
Still smiling, Brendan set the papers back on the table.
It penetrated his exhaustion that something was different than when he’d arrived.
For a moment he couldn’t figure out what it was.
And then he did: it was absolutely quiet. He got up and went to the window. It wasn’t just that night was melting into daybreak. The rain had stopped. And on the horizon was something he hadn’t seen for forty days and forty nights.
He blinked like a man emerging from a cave.
Or maybe he hadn’t seen it since the night his wife and his unborn child had died.
On the horizon, the sun was coming up.
“Hey, sweetheart, what’s your name?”
Nora shook herself groggily. She stared up at the man looking at her, felt his hand on her shoulder.
“Not sweetheart,” she said, certain it was a dream and closed her eyes.
That hand on her shoulder, a light in her eyes, “what day were you born?” and then wonderful sleep claiming her again.
“Just for a second, follow my finger with your eyes.”
Nora awoke with a start. Sunshine splashed across her bed. Sunshine! The warmth of it was a delight.
All night she had had strange dreams that Brendan Grant was in her room, but now she glanced at the chair where she was sure he had sat, and could clearly see it had been but a dream. The chair was empty.
Sunshine! She looked at the clock. It was noon!
“Oh goodness! The animals!” She sat up too quickly and it made her feel dizzy. She was aware her head hurt, and other parts of her felt bruised.
How was it possible to feel so good, filled with wonderful dreams, and so bad at the same time? Physically aching, sick that she had slept through looking after her animals.
She lay back down, just for a moment.
“Hey.”
Brendan Grant was standing in her doorway. Despite the fact he was in the same shirt as last night, and it had been wet, and dried wrinkled, and his hair was rumpled and his face becoming shadowed with whiskers, he looked amazing. Handsome, oozing confidence, one of those superannoying guys who took charge.
Superannoying unless You happened to be in need of someone to take charge!
“Don’t sit up. Doctor’s orders. You have to rest. All day.”
She couldn’t let on for a single second that, in her weakened state, she found that take-charge attitude ever so slightly attractive.
“I can’t rest all day! I have to look after the animals.”
“I’ve got it covered.”
She scowled at him so he would never guess how much those words meant to her.
“You sat with me all night,” she said. She knew she should be appreciative. It came out sounding like an accusation.
“I did.”
“That’s an unexpected kindness to the stranger you think swindled your grandmother.”
“I was hoping you’d talk in your sleep.”
“Did I?” she asked, aghast.
“What are you afraid of? A confession? Don’t you remember? I asked you questions every time I woke you up.”
“Yeah, like what my name was. And my birthday.”
He slapped himself on the forehead. “Shoot. I didn’t take advantage.”
For some reason she blushed, as if he meant taking advantage in a different way. He lifted an eyebrow.
“I didn’t take advantage like that, either,” he said softly.
“I wasn’t suggesting you had,” she said primly. Feeling terribly vulnerable, she pulled her quilt up around her chin. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get dressed. I need to look after my animals.”
“They’re all looked after.”
“But how?”
“Luke helped.”
“Oh,” she said uneasily. She didn’t really like the thought of Brendan being alone with Luke, interrogating him.
“Don’t worry, he didn’t tell me a thing.”
She didn’t like that she was transparent, either!
“Even though I shamelessly tried to pry information out of him.”
“About?” she asked, attempting a careless tone.
“I started small, building up to the big question. I asked where you were from, and he said from a nice place, not a dump like this. I asked how long you had been here, and he said too long, and I asked how old he was and he said nineteen.”
“We’re from Victoria, we’ve been here six months and he just turned fifteen.”
“Then I asked him who took the money from Deedee.”
She held her breath.
“He said lots of people open the mail. The place is practically overrun with volunteers. He said he thought some of those old ladies were pretty shifty looking.” Brendan was watching her way too closely. “Are they?”
She felt backed into a corner. Of course her volunteers were not shifty looking! But she wasn’t calling Luke a liar, either. She fidgeted with the quilt and didn’t answer.
“I thought I’d better find out for myself who looked shifty. So I had Luke call some of them to come help with morning chores. Funny, I can’t really see any of the ones who showed up stealing from my grandmother, but I interrogated them, anyway.”
“You did not,” she said skeptically.
“I did. They all admitted to opening mail. None of them looked guilty, though. None of them remembered a letter from my grandmother. Of course, I’m not sure any of them would have remembered what they had for breakfast this morning. Don’t you have a system for dealing with mail? It doesn’t seem very efficient that anyone who feels like it, or wanders by the mailbox, opens the letters.”
“Systems are not my strong suit.”
“Neither is volunteer selection. If the ones who showed up today are any indication, it’s kind of like having my grandmother for a volunteer. The old biddy brigade.”
Now he sounded like Luke!
“They are invaluable to me!” The truth was Nora needed some young, strong people to volunteer, but they just weren’t who showed up when she put an ad in the paper. She hated it that the weaknesses in her organization were so blatantly apparent to him after an hour or two.
“But you can’t let any of your current volunteers near a large animal. They can’t do any heavy work. One’s afraid of dogs and one is allergic to cats. They all hate the parrot. Who bites.”
“That’s Lafayette. Did he bite you?”
“Of course he bit me. Luke says he bites everyone. Before saying things that would make a sailor blush. In three languages.”
“Did you put antiseptic on it?”
“Who’s looking after who?”
He was gazing at her keenly. She had sounded way too much like she cared. He was a tyrant, obviously. He’d waltzed in here and completely taken over. She couldn’t just let him!
“I don’t want to get sued. After infection sets in and your finger falls off. Then you sue me, and at your recommendation, I’ve lose the funding from the Hansen Community Betterment Committee.”
“I haven’t decided about a recommendation to the HCBC. Yet.”
“And please don’t alienate all my volunteers.”
“I couldn’t alienate your volunteers if I tried, and believe me, I did. But oh, no, they came around the barn after me, promising me cookies, brownies and roast beef dinner. And talking about what a nice girl you are. And available. ‘What a shame. No boyfriend. And so pretty, too.’”
“I don’t have a boyfriend because I don’t want one,” Nora told him, and felt a crimson blush go up her cheeks.
“Some jerk broke your heart,” Brendan said, and his tone was light, but his eyes were not. They darkened with a menace that made her gasp.
He was seeing way too much, and it had to stop!
“Get out of my room. I need to shower and get dressed.”
He sighed theatrically. “It’s as hard to pry information out of you as it is out of your nephew. Do you need help?”
Her mouth fell open. She gasped like a fish on a bank.
He laughed, backed into the hall, his hands in cowboy surrender, and shut the door. But he had to get in the last word.
“If you’re dizzy or feel like you’re going to vomit, call me. Even if you’re naked.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
NORA WAS GLAD Brendan Grant was on the other side of that door and couldn’t see her face. Even if she was naked?
He was trying to shock her, and she was not going to give him the satisfaction of responding.