Secret Sisters (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Sanctuary Creek, present day

“You're still grieving, Madeline.” Dr. William Fleming folded his hands on top of his desk. The professional concern in his eyes was infused with a gentle, more intimate vibe. “It's been less than three months since you lost your grandmother. You were very close to her. She was your only surviving family member. Naturally you've been traumatized. It is very unwise to make serious, life-altering decisions when you are in a psychologically fragile state.”

On the other side of the window the Arizona sunshine blazed in a cloudless spring sky. But inside William's office the air-conditioning was cranked up very high. Madeline Chase was chilled to the bone. She decided that it probably wasn't fair to blame the AC system. It was William who made her so aware of the intense cold. The all-too-familiar sensation of feeling trapped seethed deep inside. She needed to escape and soon.

She crossed her legs and sat back in the padded leather chair. She had been raised in the executive suite of her grandmother's small but very successful boutique hotel chain. She knew how to look like a woman in charge. And now that Edith Chase was gone, she
was
the
woman in charge. She was the sole heir of her grandmother's innkeeping business.

“If you knew me as well as you think you do, you'd know that I'm well aware of what I'm doing,” she said. “My decision is final. We will not be seeing each other again.”

He removed his stylish, titanium-framed glasses, set them on the desk, and exhaled deeply, making it clear with his body language that although he was very disappointed in her, he was willing to be patient and understanding.

Her attention was briefly caught by his hands. They were among his best features, she reflected—one of the many assets that she had placed in the plus column of the spreadsheet she had prepared a month ago at the start of their relationship. William's hands were smooth, well manicured, and, like the rest of him, not intimidatingly large or powerful. They often moved in graceful little arcs when he talked. They were the hands of a man who read books that came from the literary end of the bestseller lists; the hands of a man who enjoyed dining in trendy restaurants and touring museums that featured modern art. They were soft, nonthreatening hands.

The rest of William went well with his hands. He was on the short side for a man. When she was wearing high heels, as was the case today, they were the same height. She also liked the fact that while he was certainly physically fit, he was slightly built, not heavy or thickened up with muscle.

She had begun to conclude that they might be compatible in bed, at least for a short time. Her relationships never lasted long once things moved into the bedroom. William had certainly been pushing for full sexual intimacy. But she never allowed herself to rush into that aspect of a relationship because sex was always the beginning of the end for her. The only part she ever truly enjoyed was the getting-to-know-you stage. That was the stage when she could still dream, still imagine
that she had found the right man, the one with whom she could have a family of her own.

“You don't want to end our relationship, Madeline.” William assumed his lecturing tone, the one he employed in the classroom. He was a part-time instructor at a local college. “As I've explained, we are ideally suited to each other.”

She laughed. She couldn't help herself. It was either laugh or pick up the nearest heavy object and hurl it in the general direction of William's head. She was an executive who knew it never paid to lose her cool, so she went with the laugh. But there was no real humor in it. The sheer irony of his words was breathtaking. William was, after all, a therapist who specialized in couples counseling.

“That's certainly what you've been telling me for the past month,” she said. “But you're wrong. In fact, I would go so far as to say you've been lying to me.”

“That's ridiculous. Not to mention offensive.”

“I suppose it was all about getting funding for your couples therapy research, wasn't it? I realize it's a tough world out there for those who need grant money. But did you actually think you could seduce me into paying for your study? Really?”

“Madeline, it's obvious that something has upset you. Why don't you calm down and tell me what's going on here? Between the two of us we can sort things out.”

Too late for that,
she thought. She was filled with the same unshakable determination that she felt when she concluded that an employee's skill set was no longer a good fit with the business culture of Sanctuary Creek Inns. Firing members of the well-trained staff was, thankfully, a rare event at Sanctuary. Nevertheless, there were occasions when it had to be done. Her goal at termination interviews was to
counsel out
the employee and suggest that he or she resign to pursue other career opportunities. The cardinal rule for conducting a termination interview
was to
never explain
. Once you started listing reasons for terminating someone's employment, you opened the door to arguments and counterarguments. Things got messy fast. That was only one of the many lessons she had learned from her grandmother.

The difference between getting rid of an ineffective employee and dumping Dr. William Fleming was that, in the case of the employee, she would have sent the person away with a handsome severance package and the conviction that leaving Sanctuary was his own brainstorm.

She had no intention of offering William a damn thing.

“I'm afraid there is nothing to sort out,” she said. She uncrossed her legs and got to her feet. “I appreciate your concern for my
psychologically fragile state
, but my decision is final. We will not be seeing each other again. Do not attempt to contact me in any way.”

She started across the room, heading for the door. She had stayed too long, she reflected. She was on the verge of losing her temper.

William shot to his feet behind his desk.

“This is nonsense,” he snapped. “Sit down and tell me what is wrong. You owe me that much. I know you have some serious intimacy issues, but we've made excellent progress in that area.”

A tide of soul-searing anger swept through her without warning. Her palms tingled with an icy-hot sensation. It was similar to the unpleasant adrenaline rush that accompanied a missed step on a flight of stairs. The realization that a bad fall had barely been averted was always a shock to the system.

She wasn't furious with William—okay, she was definitely pissed at him. She had a right to be pissed, she thought. But she knew her rage was mostly directed at herself. She shuddered to think that she had been considering an affair with the little creep.

She stopped at the door and turned around to face him. Probably a mistake, she thought. The smart thing to do was to leave immediately and close the door on the near disaster that she had just avoided.

And maybe she could have kept going if he hadn't made the crack about her intimacy issues. A woman could only take so much.

“Let me clear up an apparent misunderstanding, William,” she said. “I wasn't seeing you as a client. As far as I was concerned, our relationship was personal.”

“Of course it was.”

He'd switched his tone of voice with the agility of a trained actor. He sounded soothing and reassuring now. He came out from behind his desk and moved toward her. Instinctively she tightened her grip on the doorknob.

“I told myself your deep concern about my intimacy issues was a sign that you cared about me,” she said. “It was irritating, but I believed that you meant well. In fact, you might even have been correct with the diagnosis.”

He came to a halt in front of her and smiled a modest smile.

“Well, intimacy issues are my specialty, darling,” he said. “But if you're not ready to discuss them, we can wait.”

“Here's the thing, William. I wasn't looking for therapy when we met. I was hoping for a serious, meaningful relationship. But now I know for a fact that you aren't any good at relationships.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'll try to keep this simple. You are a lying, deceitful asshole.”

William looked as if he had been poleaxed. “What has happened to you?”

“Data happened,” she said.

“What?”

“I'm a businesswoman, remember? I thrive on data. I asked an investigator to look into your background.”

“What?”

The look of horror on his face would have been entertaining in other circumstances.

“Don't take it personally, it's routine for me.” She smiled. “I always commission a background check on my dates if things look like they might get serious. I was a bit late getting around to ordering the research on you because I've been so busy dealing with my grandmother's estate. But the report came in this morning, and let's just say that it doesn't make you look like the kind of man I want to date.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe. But that is no longer your problem.”

She started to open the door, but he moved much faster than she had expected and planted one hand against the wooden panel. When she tugged on the door she discovered that he was stronger than he looked. So much for judging a man by his size.

The trapped sensation threatened to explode through her. She fought it with logic. She was in no immediate danger. William's receptionist was a few feet away in the reception area. Even more reassuring was the knowledge that her own personal hired gun, Jack Rayner, was in the hall outside the office, waiting for her. As far as she had been able to determine, Jack didn't actually carry a gun, but he was definitely on her payroll.

She was not alone. She was not trapped.

“We both know it's in your best interests to let me leave quietly,” she said. “You don't want a scene. You will only make yourself look like a fool and worse if you actually try to keep me here by force. Think of your professional image.”

“You can't hurl accusations around the way you just did and then walk out,” he snarled. “You owe me an explanation for this wild talk.”

“All right, here's what I know about you, William. You took advantage of your position as a trusted therapist to seduce at least two of your clients in the past year.”

He flushed a dull, angry red. “That's a lie. Who told you that?”

“Both women were married at the time you seduced them. Their husbands were also coming to you for counseling. Do you know what that makes you, William? It makes you a real bastard. If the women ever came forward, your career would go down in flames.”

“I don't know who you hired to dig up dirt on me, but I can assure you the accusations are false.”

“How many female clients have you seduced? I know of at least two. But that's definitely enough to suggest a pattern. Shall I ask my investigator to keep digging?”

“A client's files are confidential. Your investigator had no right to hack into them.”

“Relax. He didn't hack into any files. He just started asking questions. Here's the thing about affairs, William. They never stay secret. Sooner or later someone always talks.”

He seized her arm, his fingers biting through the fabric of her dark blue blazer.

“Listen to me,” he said, his voice low and harsh. “I was providing therapy to those two clients. They needed to know they were still sexually attractive so that they would have the courage to realize that divorce was the correct decision. There was nothing personal about the relationships, certainly not on my end.”

She reached into her shoulder bag with her free hand and took out her cell phone.

“Let me out of this room now or I will call the police. That won't be good for business, will it?”

For a second or two William just stared at her as if she had spoken in another language, one that was utterly incomprehensible to him. Then he glanced at the phone in her hand.

He released her and moved back a step.

“Get out,” he said.

She opened the door and walked into the outer room. The receptionist flushed and quickly became very busy on her computer. Madeline nodded at her politely. The woman did not look up.

Madeline went out into the hall and closed the door very calmly, very deliberately.

CHAPTER THREE

The name on his new business cards was John Santiago Rayner, but everyone called him Jack.

He was waiting for her, right where she had left him a short time earlier: one broad shoulder propped against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. He was dressed in dark trousers, a denim shirt that was open at the collar, a rumpled sport coat, and low boots. He was descended from an Arizona ranching family with a history in the state that stretched back several generations to the days when Arizona had been a territory.

Years ago the Rayners had traded the cattle business for commercial real estate development, but Jack was a throwback. He had the hard, unreadable eyes of an Old West lawman. In the mythic past that infused the modern Southwest, you gave a man like Jack a badge and sent him out into the dusty street at high noon to stop the bad guy.

Okay, so Jack had chosen a career in hotel security and he didn't carry a gun on his hip. But those concessions to the modern age did not make him any less formidable. Even wearing the sport coat, he would not have looked out of place in Tombstone.

He glanced briefly at the door of William's office.

“Any problem?” he asked in a voice that carried the deceptively laid-back cadence of an Arizona accent.

Some of the tension inside her dissipated at the sight of him. He was all the things William was not—too tall, too powerful in too many subtle ways, and his hazel eyes were too difficult to read. But at that particular moment, he looked good. Very good.

She reminded herself that he was a man of many layers. She'd had a glimpse of the hidden side of Jack Rayner the day she had attempted to fire him. It had not gone well. Jack was not the kind of employee you could
counsel out
. As it happened, he was not at all interested in pursuing other career opportunities. He wanted the Sanctuary Creek Inns account and he had been willing to fight for it.

The upshot was that Rayner Risk Management was still under contract with Sanctuary Creek Inns.

In the business world, a contract was a contract, and shortly before her death in a hotel fire, Edith Chase had signed one with Jack's security firm. Madeline had argued against the move because Rayner Risk Management was a very new and very small player in the competitive world of corporate security.

Madeline had tried to talk her grandmother out of signing the contract, but Edith had dismissed her qualms with a few casual reassurances.
I think we can assume he's qualified, even if he lacks experience in the hotel business. He did some consulting work for the FBI.
Madeline had responded with,
That's great, but we're in the hospitality industry. We're not dealing with serial killers or the mob.
Edith had come back with,
Rayner Risk Management is headquartered here in Sanctuary Creek. It's always good to do business with a local firm whenever possible.
Whereupon Madeline had pointed out that Jack probably wasn't a very good businessman because his previous firm, a security agency located in Silicon Valley, had recently gone bankrupt in a rather spectacular fashion.

In the end, she had lost the battle and now she was stuck with Jack Rayner. It did not help that his social graces were minimal. The day they had met in her grandmother's office, Madeline had offered her hand to him in an attempt to be professional, even in defeat. He'd stared at her for a couple of seconds and then looked down at her hand as though baffled about what to do with it. When his fingers had finally closed around hers, she had been intensely conscious of the heat and strength in the man. It had taken some effort to extricate her hand. She got the impression he had forgotten he was holding it.

Ever since that moment she had been telling herself that Jack was not her type. But he did have a few very important things going for him—he was on retainer, he was convenient, and he had signed a confidentiality agreement.

When her intuition warned her that there was something off about William, she had called Jack and commissioned the background check. He, in turn, had made it clear that the small, routine assignment irritated him. Why, she had no idea, because part of his job was to run background checks on prospective new hires. A background check was a background check, regardless of whether the subject was applying for a job in one of the hotels or dating the president and CEO of the chain.

“No, there was no problem,” she said. “It wasn't pretty, but it's done.” She hitched up the strap of her shoulder bag and walked briskly toward the elevators. “There was no need for you to escort me here today. William is a lot of things, but he's not the violent type.”

Jack fell into step beside her, shortening his stride to match hers. He seemed to loom over her, even though she was wearing her highest heels.

“Anyone can become the violent type under the right circumstances,” he said.

She shivered. “Yes, I know. I'm not naïve. But I honestly don't believe that William will be a problem.”

“You're probably right.” Jack looked back toward the office door. “He's not accustomed to having his target turn on him. He'll move on.”

“Uh,
target
?”

“That's what you were to him at the start.”

She winced. “I suppose so.”

“His type prefers easier prey.”

“You sound like you know his type,” Madeline said.

“Met a few in my other life.”

“That would have been when you were some kind of consultant for the FBI?”

“Right.”

“I accept your analysis of William Fleming. Nevertheless, I would appreciate it if you would stop using words like
target
and
prey
to describe me.”

Jack ignored that. “Make sure you don't accidentally take one of his calls. Don't respond to any texts. Don't agree to talk to him or meet him for coffee so that you can talk things out.”

She stopped in front of the elevators and punched the button. “I know the drill. As it happens, I'm leaving town tomorrow morning, anyway. I'll be gone for a couple of days.”

“Where are you going?”

“Cooper Island.” Not that it was any of his business, she thought. “It's one of the San Juan islands in Washington State. My grandmother had a property there. It's mine now.”

“The Aurora Point Hotel.”

She glanced at him, genuinely startled. “You know it?”

“Came across some property-tax records associated with it when I did my initial research on your company.”

She took a deep breath. “Your research was very . . . thorough.”

“I asked Edith about it. She told me that she wasn't concerned with
security for the hotel. She said it was personal property—not part of Sanctuary Creek's portfolio.”

“That's right.”

The elevator doors opened. She moved inside. Jack followed her in and pushed the lobby button.

“Are you going to Cooper Island to take some time off?” he asked. “Not a bad idea. You've been going a hundred miles an hour ever since your grandmother's death. You look like you could use some R-and-R.”

She groaned. “First I'm a target and now you tell me I look like hell warmed over. Got to hand it to you, Jack, you really know how to flatter a girl.”

He frowned. “I just meant that you need to give yourself some downtime. You've been through a lot in the past three months. Edith left you with a solid management team. They're more than capable of handling things for a couple of weeks or even longer now that the initial shock has worn off the company.”

“Forget trying to explain what you meant. I don't think that's your forte. But to be clear, I'm not going to Cooper Island for a vacation. Something has come up regarding the Aurora Point property, that's all.”

“Something that needs your on-site attention?”

“Evidently. I got a message from Tom Lomax, the caretaker my grandmother paid to look after the hotel. He said he wanted to speak to me in person.”

“He wouldn't tell you on the phone?”

“Tom doesn't trust phones, or email either, for that matter. He's a little old-fashioned.”

“He sounds paranoid.”

“Okay, Tom is rather eccentric, I'll give you that.”

“So you're going to fly all the way to Washington to talk to this
Tom Lomax about a problem related to an abandoned property your grandmother didn't even care enough about to insure,” Jack said.

She glanced at him. “Yes, I am. As you pointed out, my management team is perfectly capable of handling company business while I'm out of town. If you have any questions relating to security issues, feel free to contact Chuck Johnson directly.”

“Johnson is a good man.”

“I know.”

Jack looked at her. “You're not going to tell me why you're dropping everything to fly to Cooper Island, are you?”

The doors opened. Madeline walked out of the elevator.

“No,” she said. “Partly because, as I just explained, I don't know what the problem is. But mostly because it's none of your business. This is personal, Jack.”

But she was learning that once Jack Rayner sank his teeth into a problem, it was very hard to shake him loose. He followed her out of the elevator.

“Your grandmother told me that the two of you left Cooper Island nearly two decades ago,” he said. “Ever been back?”

“No.”

She kept going across the building lobby, heading for the glass doors on the far side.

“You didn't need me to do the research on William Fleming,” Jack said.

She glanced at him, wary of the sudden change of topic. “What do you mean?”

“You were never even close to marrying him.”

“I was thinking about it.” But that sounded weak, even to her own ears.

“No,” Jack said. “You would have ended the relationship sooner or later.”

Now she was getting mad. “How do you know that?”

“You wouldn't have asked me to vet him unless you were looking for a way out. I made it easy for you to escape because I found a good excuse you could use. But if I hadn't been around, you would have ended things on your own.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“There's a look people get when they feel cornered or trapped. You had that look.”

“What kind of look is that?”

“Hard to explain. Let's just say I know it when I see it. Like I said, you were looking for a way out, so you asked me to hand it to you on a silver platter.”

She thought about that. She wanted to argue, but he had a point. “You're right. William was a little too perfect. It bothered me. I was going to end the relationship, but I wanted a good reason.”

“A good reason to give to yourself, not to him.”

She reached into her shoulder bag, took out her dark glasses, and very deliberately put them on so that he could not see her eyes.

“I think we're finished here,” she said.

He didn't say anything. Instead he took his own sunglasses out of a pocket, slipped them on, and opened the heavy glass doors.

They walked outside into the brilliant warmth of the spring day. The sun sparked and flashed on the cars parked in the lot in front of the office building. It was only March, but the heat coming off the pavement was already palpable.

Beyond the parking lot was the main street of Sanctuary Creek. The town had been founded well over a century earlier, but it had remained little more than a dot on the Arizona map for most of its history. Eighteen years ago Edith and Madeline had moved to the small community. Edith had opened a B&B to make ends meet. The property had been the first in what had become a chain of boutique inns.

In recent years the town had been discovered by tourists, retirees, and those seeking winter homes in the Sunbelt. The developers had soon followed. Sanctuary Creek was now a picturesque Southwestern destination that rivaled Scottsdale and Sedona.

Jack walked her to her car. His continuing silence worried her. There was another boot waiting to drop.

She got in behind the wheel and looked up at him.

“What?” she asked when she couldn't take the suspense any longer.

Jack looked out at the view of the desert and mountains for what seemed like a very long time.

“I know about commitment issues,” he said. “Got a few myself.”

She clamped her hands around the steering wheel.
Just breathe.

“Excuse me,” she said in her iciest executive accent. “I don't recall discussing commitment issues with you.”

He looked down at her, sunlight glinting on his dark glasses.

“Next time, use someone else to dig up the dirt on one of your dates,” he said, his voice cold, flat; emotionless. “I'm good with the business side of things, but I don't want to get involved in your personal relationships.”

She felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

“Use someone else?” she repeated. “But doing background checks is part of your job.”