The Heir's Proposal

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“Carl, I never even came into this house when I lived on the property. My father worked here, but I didn’t. We lived down by the gate, at the butler’s house. I never even came onto the porch.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He gestured toward a glass cabinet in the corner of the room.

“So you never saw the bag of Spanish gold they used to keep in that display case?”

She turned and stared at it. An empty showcase was a sad thing and she realized it must have looked that way for the last fifteen years. Why had they left it like this? Did they think the Don Carlos Treasure would turn up again someday? From what she understood, it was at the bottom of the sea.

“No,” she said softly. “I never saw it.” At least not there.

There was a noise in the hallway and suddenly Jimmy, the current butler, appeared in the doorway, looking surprised to see them in the library. Torie gave him a friendly smile and told Carl, “I’m just running up to get a jacket. You ought to go on out and meet the others. They’re taking a look at the old boathouse. You might just be interested.”

Carl nodded, but he was eyeing Jimmy speculatively, and Torie took the opportunity to escape before he began questioning the man about construction facts. She raced up the stairs to the bedroom and was about to reach for her velour hoodie when she noticed that Marc’s denim jacket was still lying where she’d tossed it on the chair. She hesitated. Something about it appealed to her on a primitive level. She ought to get it back to him.

Instead, she found herself pulling it on and posing in front of the full-length mirror. It was big and heavy and rough and it looked completely wrong for her slender frame—and she knew she had better get it off before Carl came up and saw her in it. But she hugged it to herself, thinking it had a male smell that could be seductive if she let it be. For just a moment, she remembered how it had felt to be in Marc’s arms, coming through the fog. That made her smile at herself in the mirror.

“Go ahead and wear it if you want to,” Marc’s deep voice said.

She whirled, gasping in shock. There he was, standing in the doorway to her bathroom, a pipe wrench in his hand. Her face went instantly to crimson and she shed the jacket as though it had just caught on fire.

“What are you doing here?” she cried out. Surprised, embarrassed, humiliated—she was all three at once.

She could tell he was trying not to smile, but he just couldn’t help himself, and when his grin broke out, it was wide and sardonic.

“Just a little sink repair,” he said, waving the wrench at her. “I thought you’d gone down to the beach with the others.”

She dropped the jacket on the floor and glared at him. “I hate you,” she said unconvincingly.

He laughed, which only made her more angry. “Totally understandable,” he acknowledged.

“I was just…just…” There was no way to explain what she’d been doing, prancing around in his jacket in front of her mirror, so she gave it up. “You ought to let people know when you’re in their bathroom.”

He shrugged. “Exactly why I came out when I did. I wanted to make sure you didn’t do anything you’d regret.” He couldn’t help but grin again. “I’ve got to admit, you look a hell of a lot cuter than I do in that jacket. Maybe you should keep it.”

She glared at him. “I don’t want it,” she said emphatically as she threw it toward him. Her face was beginning to cool down. For a moment there she’d been afraid she would explode with the agony of it all. Things were better now—heart rate slowing, skin cooling, breathing getting back to normal. Maybe she was going to be okay.

“What were you really doing in here?” she asked him, frowning suspiciously. “Checking around for some answers to those questions you were talking about?”

“Why?” He cocked a curious eyebrow her way. “Are there some answers lurking where I could find them?”

Her green eyes narrowed. “You tell me.”

He shook his head as though she thoroughly amused him. “I didn’t go through your things,” he told her patiently. “And I really don’t plan to. Not yet anyway.”

She glared at him. “Not ever!”

He considered her words for a moment. “How about this?” he said. “You go ahead and give me some answers now. Then I won’t be tempted to go digging at all.”

She hesitated, searching his smoky eyes for reasons to believe he was being straight with her. What would he be digging for, anyway? Did he really think she was some kind of scam artist? Or that Carl was?

That gave her pause. After all, she wasn’t too sure about Carl herself anymore.

“We could try that,” she said, attempting to sound reasonable and watching his reaction. “We could both ask each other. Take turns.”

He made a face as though he thought that was going a little far, but still he said, “If you want.”

“Ask me something,” she challenged. “I’ll see if you deserve an answer or not.”

He nodded, considering. “And I’ll see if I can trust anything you tell me.”

Her chin rose and her eyes blazed. “Trust is a slippery thing.”

“You got that right.” He carefully put the wrench down on the desk. “Okay, let’s just try it.” He shrugged. “You start.”

She thought for a second, then said, “Here’s one. Why are you so mean?”

He threw his head back and groaned. “That’s such a girlie question. There’s no way I can answer that.”

She shrugged, nose in the air. “I rest my case. You can’t be trusted.”

He glared at her. “You’ve got to ask things that get to substance, not feelings.”

She glared back. “Okay, let’s hear your great question.”

“Okay.” He looked at her for a long moment, then shoved his hands down into the pockets of his jeans and frowned. “Here’s what I want to know. Why would you lie about being married?”

Her heart flipped over and began to pound. Her hands curled into fists. “So now you’re calling me a liar?” she said breathlessly.

“Oh yeah. Beyond a doubt.”

She flushed. What could she say? He was right. “You’re just grasping for things to make me angry,” she charged, knowing it was a weak one. “You don’t have any proof.”

“I don’t need proof. I’ve got common sense and my own two eyes.” He gave her a half smile. “In fact, I’ve got a whole list of reasons that tell me you two aren’t married.”

“A list?”

“Yeah.”

She turned away, panic fluttering in her throat. “You know, I don’t need this…” she began, but a shout from the direction of the beach stopped the words in her throat and they both went out onto the balcony, looking toward where the sound had come from.

“They’ve started back,” Marc said. “Looks like you missed your tour of the boat house.”

They both leaned on the railing, looking west and watching a gorgeous sunset. All traces of the fog were gone now, and the sky was streaked with red and purple. The ocean was silver blue.

Marc rubbed his eyes as though they were tired and he looked again, shaking his head. “It’s so damn beautiful,” he said softly, almost to himself. “I’d forgotten how much I loved the evening sky out here.”

She looked at him sideways. “You haven’t been back here much lately?”

“No. Not at all, in fact. I’ve mostly been overseas.”

She thought about that for a minute. If she’d come earlier, he wouldn’t have been here. And that would have been a good thing. Wouldn’t it?

“When did you get discharged from the military?”

“A while back. But I only came home two days ago.” His mouth twisted. “I’ve been gone over ten years and it all still looks so much the same. You’d think the land would show the scars of…” He winced, then shrugged, letting the thought go. “Anyway, I can’t believe how much this place means to me. I can see my history everywhere I look.”

He pointed. “See that broken gate to the rose garden? See how it lists? That happened when I told my high-school sweetheart I wasn’t the marrying kind. She slapped me and then slammed that poor gate so hard, it almost fell off the hinges.”

Torie tried to remember who that would have been but the memory didn’t surface. “At least you recovered,” she murmured.

“Yeah. Sort of.”

This time his grin was open and sweet and her heartbeat quickened just seeing it.

But he wasn’t finished. “See that pile of rocks by the oak tree? That’s where my brother and I buried our old dog Neville.”

“Oh.” Torie gasped. She’d forgotten about Ricky. Two years older than Marc, he’d been a shyer, more remote figure, sort of awkward and a bit of a computer geek. What had ever happened to Ricky?

“We had a funeral service and put that dear old dog in the ground,” Marc said. He shook his head, a half smile lingering on his lips.

“Where is your brother?” she asked, hoping he would tell more.

He didn’t answer for a long moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was gravelly. “Gone. I can’t believe how long it’s been. He died just over ten years ago.”

“Oh no!”

The news went through her like an electric shock. It was horrible to think of Ricky gone. And all this time, she’d never known about it. She felt a trembling deep down that shook her. Ricky had never been anything much to her. Not the way Marc had been. She’d demonized him in her mind because he was part of her enemy—the Huntingtons. But was that fair? He was part of her past, too.

There was too much tragedy in the world. Ricky, Marc’s father, her own father—all gone. Tears shimmered in her eyes and she covered her mouth with her hands, as though holding back the dark side of life for all she was worth.

He watched her for a moment, wondering why his brother’s death would seem to touch her like this. That was a part of the fascination he had with her—she was always surprising him. Just when he thought he had her all figured out, she would do or say something that showed him how useless it was to make assumptions.