Bed of Lies (56 page)

They both stopped right there, a little too close for comfort. He was sure he'd blown the whole thing.

"Sorry, I was just going to get the door for you."

Once upon a time, in another life, he'd had a mother who'd taken great pains to instill some manners into him. He'd found they worked wonders with women, whether he was trying to impress them or just get them to talk to him. He still used them to this day, something he was sure would come as a surprise to the woman who'd taught him so much. He hadn't laid eyes on her in years.

"No, I'm the one who's sorry," Emma said. "You just startled me."

"Look, I can come back another time," he offered. "When Sam's here."

"Don't be silly. I'll make some coffee and take your name and number, and when Sam calls, I'll tell him you came by."

Great.
He could just imagine how that would go.
Guess what, Sam? Guess who's here?
He wondered if the name even meant anything to the right Sam McRae anymore.

"I'll come back," he said. "It's almost Christmas, and—"

"No, really. Come in." She practically dragged him inside. "Sam said it's been crazy around here. He's got three projects going at once, and nothing coming together the way it should. He wouldn't have left, but Ann's husband wanted to be at the hospital with her and someone needed to take care of their kids. And if something did happen to the baby..." She stopped. "Sorry. More than you need to hear, I'm sure. But you know how much Sam hates letting a customer down."

"Sure," he said, as if he did know.

"I'd hate to let you get away when Sam needs help," Emma said, standing next to a little table in the hall that held a phone and a neat stack of papers. She had a list and she seemed to be working her way down it, much in the same way he was. She'd crossed six things off already. "He already warned me about Mrs. Wright, about the party she's having in January, when half her kitchen is still in pieces and her custom cabinets went somewhere out West instead of here, the way they were supposed to. I don't suppose you know anything about cabinets, do you?"

He shrugged as easily as he could. "I can install marble or granite with the best of 'em. Could probably hang cabinets, if I had to. I'm better with brick, and I'm great with rock."

"Rock?" Emma asked.

"You know, fireplaces, patios, sidewalks, walls, siding for houses, any kind of decorative stone."

"Oh. I don't know if Mrs. Wright has any of those or not. We'll ask Sam when he calls."

"Okay." He figured he'd just have to talk her out of that somehow, but that was for later. For now, he just wanted her to talk.

He shrugged out of his coat, which she offered to take and hang up. He used the time when her back was turned to study what he could see of the house—gleaming woodwork, polished wood floors, soft yellow walls, and lots of windows draped in lace-panel curtains and floral-print swags.

It was neat and clean, and it smelled of something he could never have identified by name but just seemed to say "home." There was a big curving staircase to the right, rows of pictures in a pleasing, if haphazard, arrangement up the stairway wall. He was hungry to study each and every one, but she turned around and caught him staring.

"Great house," he said.

"Isn't it?" She paused there in the hall in front of the staircase and underneath a small, octagonal window of stained and beveled glass. Morning sun was streaming inside. Dancing across the walls, it caught in her hair and her eyes as she stepped to the right, into the light. It was like she was standing in fairy dust, he thought. Like he'd caught a fairy creature come down to earth.

As if any creature like that would have anything to do with him.

He shook his head to dislodge the image, but it stubbornly remained, the dazzling young woman smiling up at him, too accepting and trusting for her own good.

"The house is more than a hundred years old," she said. "It belonged to Rachel's grandfather, although it was in bad shape when Sam and Rachel came here. You should see some of the pictures. They practically rebuilt it."

"Oh?" So maybe Sam McRae wasn't so rich, just lucky enough to have a wife who inherited a house like this and lucky enough to know what to do with it. Maybe he and Sam would have something in common after all. He'd have loved to get his hands on an old place like this. Not that he ever expected anyone to drop a house like this into his hands.

Emma led him into the front room. He ran a hand over the big, intricately carved, mahogany mantelpiece over the roaring fire, let himself glance at those photographs, trying not to be too obvious.

"That's your mother?" he asked, pointing to one of a pretty blonde woman with a baby in her arms. They looked sweet, both of them.

"Yes. And my sister, Grace. She'll be eight in a couple of weeks." Emma pointed to another picture of a boy, dark haired and mischievous looking. "That's Zach. He's twelve and almost as tall as Rachel and me. And, of course, that's Sam."

It was a casual shot, outdoors in front of a huge Christmas tree. They were all bundled up in coats and gloves, the kids in hats and scarves. Five people huddled together and grinning like crazy. The pretty blonde woman holding a much younger Zach, Emma leaning in close to her side, and the baby, a bundle of pink fluff, looking quite content in Sam's arms.

He studied the man, looking for something familiar in the shape of his face or the color of his eyes. He'd only had a glimpse so many years ago, when the man had been nothing but a stranger to him, maybe a hazy memory from so long ago when he was a little boy. He wasn't sure if he remembered Sam or if he'd conjured up an image in his mind, simply because he wanted so badly to remember.

This picture on the mantel screamed normal, happy family. His family had looked like that once upon a time. But it had all been an illusion, now faded away. Emma came to stand beside him, waiting quietly and letting him look.

"You have a lovely family," he said finally, and then had to turn away. Searching for anything to latch on to, his gaze caught on the intricate swirling pewter that made the base of a snow globe. "That's unusual."

"Recognize the house inside it?" Emma asked.

"Should I?"

He hadn't even looked, to be honest, but he did now. It was a Victorian, the same dove gray with light blue trim, lovingly rendered in such detail. He'd never seen such a beautifully made piece inside a ball of fake snow. Emma handed it to him.

"It's this house?" he guessed.

"Yes."

He flipped the heavy glass globe over in his hands, then flipped it back, making it snow, as it was outside right now.

"I had one of these when I was a kid. Used to love it."

"Me, too," she said. "I had a cheap version of this one, actually."

"This one?"

"Yes. That's a family heirloom, but copies are made here in town. You must not have come in from the east or you would have seen the factory. Rachel's grandfather was Richard Landon."

"The guy whose name's on all the signs?"

"Yes. This was his house. He used it as a model for this snow globe, which became his first well-known piece. He used a lot of the buildings in town as models."

"The Christmas town?" He'd seen all the signs, but had been too distracted by his mission to even try to figure out what they were talking about. Christmas town. Christmas festival. He wasn't big on Christmas.

But looking at the house inside the snow globe, he realized he did know it. He'd had a version of
The Night Before Christmas
illustrated with, among other things, pictures of this house. If he was a man who still believed in anything like magic or signs or things that were somehow meant to be, he'd have said that was significant. But he didn't believe in any of those things anymore, and that book was all over the place. Practically every kid had a copy.

"Yes, it's the Christmas town," Emma said. "If you're going to be here for the next week or so, you'll see. The festival's starting on Thursday."

He wasn't in the mood for any kind of festival, and he hadn't truly celebrated Christmas since maybe the last time he'd seen Sam. His life had gone steadily downhill from there. Handing the snow globe back to Emma, he said, "It's a beautiful piece."

"Come on." Emma put it back on the mantel, then steered him toward the kitchen. "The coffee's hot. I know it's closer to noon than morning, but I was on the train all night. I slept some this morning, and now I'm starving. I was about to make breakfast. Have you eaten?"

"No," he lied, not sure if he could choke down a single bite—but he wanted to stay.

Emma sat him down on a stool at the breakfast bar and poured him a cup of coffee, strong and black, just the way he liked it, then poured one for herself.

"How do you like your eggs?" she asked.

He took about two seconds to consider it, then said, "Any way you want to make 'em."

It would keep him here for a while longer, and he could probably keep her talking while she cooked.

She made great eggs, scrambled them with three kinds of cheese and some peppers, served them up with a toasted English muffin and blackberry jam she said one of her great-aunts made.

Great-aunts who made jam? It sounded so damned normal.

He'd grown up in a small town much like this. But now he lived in a big, anonymous place where hardly anyone knew his name or where he was from or what he'd done. He liked it that way. Emma seemed to fit right in here, in a pretty, old house with all her relatives out making jam and probably baking fresh bread. She seemed as wholesome a woman as he'd ever met in his entire life.

It was like a trip back in time to the childhood he'd left behind. He sat there for the longest time just watching her move through the kitchen and letting her chatter while she worked, mostly about Sam's business. It sounded like the man did well for himself, and the woman she called her mother did stained glass. Stonework couldn't quite compare, but it was construction and at the best of times a bit of artistry.

Under any other circumstances, he thought they all might have something in common.

"So, you think Sam won't be back for a week?" he asked, once he'd cleared his plate not once but twice and thanked her for the meal.

"I'm not really sure. It depends on what happens with Ann," she said, getting up and taking her plate to the sink. He followed her, doing the same. "Even if the baby doesn't come now, she might be in the hospital for weeks, and she has a three-year-old and a six-year-old. Sam and Rachel might bring them back here. I know that would be hard on Ann, but Rachel has tons of family here. Two other sisters, a sister-in-law, and two great-aunts. That way everyone could pitch in and help take care of the kids. Ann and Greg wouldn't have to worry about anything but the baby."

He nodded. Sam McRae seemed to have an abundance of family.

"I'm sure they'll be back in time for Christmas," Emma said, reaching for the dishwasher to load the plates and the silverware. "Can you wait that long?"

He thought about it. What else was he going to do? "I can wait."

"Well... Do you have a place to stay?"

He frowned. Surely she wouldn't invite him to stay here. Surely she knew better. He might have to stay just to make sure nothing happened to her.

"I'll find something," he said, as she pulled jam and salt and pepper off the table. He took them from her, put the jam in the refrigerator and the salt and pepper in the cabinet from which she'd taken them.

"Well... It's kind of hard with the festival and everything. The town just fills up, and it's not like we've got that many motels anyway."

"I'll be fine, Emma."

"You could head toward Cincinnati," she said, wiping off the breakfast bar with a hand towel. "It's not far."

"I'll do that," he said.

"Okay... If you're sure. But..."

Rye grinned as he figured it out. She thought he was down on his luck. Granted, his pickup looked beat-up. It probably needed to be washed after driving so long through all that wet, muddy snow. But it wasn't that old, and it was beat-up because it was a working man's truck. His clothes were nothing fancy. Jeans and a shirt were all he needed. But he supposed she could have taken those two things together with what he'd said and come to the conclusion that he needed a job so badly, he'd come here with nothing but a passing acquaintance with Sam McRae and the most casual mention of a job. Not that he didn't know what it felt like to be desperate for work. But he wasn't at the moment.

"I just wrapped up a big job in a suburb of Atlanta, and I guess you could say I've been thinking about heading this way for a while. It seemed like as good a time as any. And don't worry. I can afford a hotel room. I won't end up sleeping in the truck or anything like that."

"Sorry." She'd finished with the table and hung the towel on a hook by the sink, facing him reluctantly. "I didn't mean to pry."

"I know."

He leaned back against the counter, crossed his arms, and let himself take another long, slow look at her. She was sweet, he realized. Kind. Generous. And likely very, very soft. Where had all the women like her gone? Probably they were all gathered in little towns like this one and the one he'd left behind as a boy. And somebody had to look out for them.