The Carriage House

Eighteen

Andrew ended up with a small cut on his arm from fending off one of the construction workers and a bruise where Tess had kicked him. She didn't have a scratch on her. It was as if she'd gone through the brawl with a protective force field around her, a perk, he supposed, of being Jim Hav-iland's daughter.

She was wrung-out. He could see it in the stiff way she moved, in her eyes and the determined set of her mouth. She'd fight her fatigue. She was in the mood to fight everything.

"Your father says you're not given to seeing things," Andrew said.

But the idea that he and her father had talked behind her back obviously didn't sit well with her, and she didn't respond. She had her arms crossed on her chest and was staring out the side window. They'd passed the Museum of Science, and he'd fought his way onto Storrow Drive. It was dusk, the city lights glowing against the slowly darkening sky.

"I think your father makes a hell of a beef stew."

"That's what everyone thinks."

So, he wasn't anything special. She wasn't giving an inch. "He never remarried after your mother died?"

"No."

"Girlfriends?"

"Some." Out on the Charles River, a lone sculler dipped his oars rhythmically, Tess watching. "He gave up a lot for me."

"Maybe the right woman never came along."

"My mother was the right woman. After she died, there was no one else for him. That's the way he looked at it."

"He didn't want to be disloyal?"

She shook her head. "No. It's just that falling in love again was impossible for him. Real love is a rarity. He was lucky to have had it at all, never mind twice in one lifetime."

It sounded like an excuse to Andrew, or a fantasy on her part. "That's pessimistic."

"Practical. Realistic." She cut a glance over at him, her body still rigid. "I'm talking about real love, not lust, not friendship."

He smiled. "Lust is important."

She turned back to the window and resumed her silence.

Andrew decided this wasn't the moment to tell her that her father had waxed philosophical on his daughter and men. It wasn't that Andrew had asked. Jim Haviland, bartender supreme, had done the talking. He'd said men were few and far between in Tess's life these days, that she'd gone from being too impulsive to too picky-maybe because she had an idealized view of him and her mother, as she'd been only six when she died. He'd talked while he cleaned glasses and stirred the stew, the bar empty that early.

Moving to the back table was Davey Ahearn's idea. He'd seen Tess walking from the subway. It was a setup, pure and simple.

If she'd thrown a chair at him and kicked him, jumped on him, anywhere but her father's pub, with him and her godfather right there, Andrew didn't know what would have happened.

Well, he did, but there was no point thinking about it with her still spitting fire, even as beat as she was.

He wound his way onto Beacon Hill, downshifting on the steep hills. Tess seemed as comfortable here as she did in her father's blue-collar neighbor-hood. Andrew pulled in front of her building, brick with black shutters, brass fittings on the doors. Her apartment had its own entrance behind a wrought-iron fence next to the front stoop and down several steps.

"I notice you didn't need me to give you directions," Tess said.

"I drove by earlier." He pulled alongside the curb and turned to her. "Harl and I decided we needed to check you out. Mission accomplished. I don't blame you for being upset. Now, go home. Cool off."

She nodded at the cut on his arm. "Did I do that?"

"One of the construction workers."

"Billy. He's a hothead. He loves a good fight."

"Seems he's not the only one."

"You deserved it." She softened slightly, sighing. "But it wasn't just you. It was my father, Davey goading me. I don't know, maybe there was something in the beef stew."

"Is that an apology?"

"No." She grinned at him and slid out of the truck. "Thanks for the ride."

He drove to the end of her street, then glanced in his rearview mirror and saw her with her keys out, standing on the sidewalk. He couldn't stay. He wasn't about to leave Dolly and Harl alone on the point with a possible body snatcher in the area.

But he couldn't go off, not just yet.

He backed into a parking space, pulled on the brake, cut the engine and jumped out. He'd been feeling this way all day, a little crazed, a little off center. Unpredictable. A wonder he hadn't thrown her over his shoulder and carried her out of Jim's Place cave-man-style-an impulse the Havilands and Davey Ahearn didn't need to know about.

"We still need to talk." He walked up to her as she stood beside the wrought-iron gate. The gray skies and approaching darkness only made her hair seem blonder, her eyes clearer, but still that very light blue.

She shrugged. "About what? You came to Boston to see if I was a nut, a troublemaker, a stalker, a collaborator with Ike Grantham in some nefarious scheme-to do what, I don't know. What else? A killer. Yes, I suppose you had to be sure I wasn't responsible for a body in the carriage house cellar."

"It never occurred to me you'd killed anyone."

"But nut, troublemaker, stalker and collaborator still stand?"

He resisted the urge to smile. "Not stalker."

She singled out a key and walked around the wrought-iron fence to the stairs down to her apartment. "I should have phoned my father first thing this morning and told him not to let you anywhere near his place."

"You have no idea how not welcome I was this afternoon."

"Good. And actually," she added, a glint in her eyes, "I have a fair idea. Do you want to come in?"

"For a minute."

He followed her down the stairs to a heavy door with a lousy lock. It opened into a small entry with two doors, one to her apartment along the street, another to a second apartment in back. They had lousy locks, too. But when she pushed open her door, he noticed a string of chains and dead bolts that worked from the inside. "Davey stopped by one afternoon," she said by way of explanation.

"Normally I probably wouldn't notice your locks."

"And normally I lead a very ordinary life."

Andrew considered all the contradictions that were Tess Haviland. She was a graphic designer who lived in a Beacon Hill basement apartment. Father a widower. Godfather a plumber. No maternal role models in sight. Office above an old cemetery. Owner of a haunted carriage house given to her by a rich eccentric who happened to be missing.

A woman who'd gone looking for a cat in a cellar and stumbled onto a skeleton, then kept her mouth shut about it.

A woman who might have fallen into bed with him this weekend, almost literally within hours of meeting him, if not for Harl and Dolly.

Or Dolly, anyway. Andrew doubted Harl was much of a deterrent in the sleeping-with-strangers de-partment-for him or for Tess.

"Ordinary," he told her, "is in the eye of the beholder."

She grinned at him. "And I behold myself as ordinary."

"Why?"

"Because I was an odd kid, the one with the dead mother. I like being a regular person."

He edged from the hallway into the living room, which was tiny and had a kitchenette on the other end. She'd decorated with an eclectic mix of flea-market charm and artistic, urban sophistication. There was nothing self-conscious or elitist in the way she put things together, a rooster tray on the coffee table, colorful pillows strewn on the neutral-colored couch.

And a stack of laundry. Lingerie. He noticed a lacy little bra, nothing panties.

She followed his eye, and with a rush of color to her cheeks, snatched up the stack and marched past him to her bedroom. She returned a moment later. "I live alone. I don't have to pick up after myself every single second."

"If it'd been a stack of towels, you wouldn't have bothered."

"It wasn't a stack of towels." She ran her fingers through her short curls, and he looked again for signs of bruises, scratches, cuts from their brawl. None. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"No, thanks."

"Do you think the police did anything today?" she asked abruptly.

He shook his head. "I doubt it."

"They've decided I'm nuts. It's easier."

"Less complicated," he agreed.

"Who knows, maybe the skeleton was Chew-bee's doing. Or maybe she stole it. I think Chew-bee looks after your stretch of coast. Sort of your guardian angel."

"A pain-in-the-neck guardian angel. Dolly blames everything she can on her."

Tess laughed, and it sounded good. "I like the way that kid thinks."

He spotted a picture of Ike and Tess with design work she'd obviously done for the Beacon Historic Project. It was among a cluster of similar photographs, Ike's smile a hot arrow through Andrew. He wouldn't have expected such a reaction, would have said he was over hating Ike-or had never hated him at all. Seeing him here, in Tess's apartment, was a jolt. An unpleasant one.

"Ike was pretty awful at times," Tess said quietly, coming beside him. "But I never took him seriously. I guess that was easy-he was just a client. He was a slasher. He saw people's weaknesses, zeroed in on them."

Andrew nodded. "And he was dead accurate most of the time. That didn't make him any easier to like."

She took the framed picture into her hands, touched his image with real regret, but no yearning, no hint he'd gotten under her skin. "A friend of mine took this picture. A guy I was dating, actually. Ike didn't like him-he said the guy wouldn't know which end of a plunger to use, and I'd never be happy with a man who didn't know how to unstop a toilet."

"Was he right?"

"About the guy? I don't know, we didn't date long enough for me to do the plunger test."

She was teasing, but Andrew saw it as a defense, a way of avoiding what Ike had seen about her. "I meant was he right about you?"

"I know how to use a plunger. That's what counts." She swung off to the kitchen end of the small, compact room. "Are you sure you don't want anything to drink? Pop puts too much salt in his beef stew, I think. I'm dying of thirst."

She filled a glass with water, and Andrew found himself watching her throat as she drank. This wasn't good. He joined her in front of the sink. There wasn't enough room in the kitchen for two people. "Tess, I don't think you had anything to do with whatever you found in the carriage house cellar." He spoke softly, firmly, his eyes connecting with hers. She set her empty glass on the counter and stood very still as he continued. "I didn't, either."

"You?"

"Hasn't that crossed your mind?"

It had. He could see it had. But she only gave a curt nod.

"I have to go home. I can't leave Dolly-"

"I know."

He touched a moist spot on her lower lip. "Maybe you shouldn't stay here alone."

"No. I'll be fine."

"You can drive up north with me-"

"I have work to do," she said quietly, "and I need to think."

He let his fingers skim up her jaw, into her hair. But he didn't look at her. "Ike was in love with my wife."

"I know."

"I think she might have been a little in love with him. They didn't act on it."

"He was difficult in a lot of ways," Tess said, "but he wasn't a scoundrel."

Andrew bit back a sudden, totally unexpected smile. "Scoundrel? What kind of word is that?"

"It's a perfectly good word! Scoundrel. It sounds like what it means."

"So does kiss," he said, looking at her now, her eyes shining, warm. "Kiss. Say it. It sounds like what it means."

"Kiss."

And his mouth found hers, still cool from the water. She sank against the counter, her hand catching him at the side, her fingers digging in lightly. He could feel her pulse jump. Something about him got to her. He knew it, had sensed it almost from the moment they'd met. And her. He'd thought about kissing her when she'd looked up at him from the lilacs after she'd sent Dolly home. But he didn't believe in destiny, hadn't in a long time.

He threaded his fingers into her hair and eased them down the back of her neck, the skin soft, warm, smooth. If he didn't pull back soon, he didn't know if he'd be able to.

"Next time you're in a barroom brawl," he whispered, "throw the furniture with a purpose. Don't just slam it around. That just inflames the situation."

"Maybe that's what I was trying to do." Her eyes had taken on some of the grayness of dusk, her mouth still very close to his. "Inflame you."

They kissed again, harder, deeper, longer. He pressed her up against the counter, drew her thighs around him. Route One and the trip north seemed a million miles away, and he didn't give a damn about Ike Grantham.

"He wasn't in love with me," Tess said, almost as if she'd reached inside his mind.

He knew she meant Ike. "It doesn't matter."

"He wasn't."

Andrew eased back, taking in the shape of her mouth, the way her shirt was wrinkled, askew. It would have been so easy to carry her into the bedroom. "We've been talking about him in the past tense."

She nodded, straightening, tucking in her shirt. "I noticed. It's because he's been gone so long."

"Tess."

"I can't think it was him I saw-his remains." She grabbed her glass and refilled it with water from the tap, her back to him. "It's okay. You can go. I'll be fine here."

"You could call your father or Davey-"

"Just what I need." She turned back, leaning against the counter with her glass of water. "There's one thing you should know. About what Davey said."

Andrew smiled. "After he plucked you off of me?"

"It was a mistake, throwing his beer at you. I should have grabbed someone else's. And yes, that bit about me not going quietly or slowly, whatever that was. It's bullshit."

"Ah."

"It is. Davey doesn't know anything about love or women."

"He knows you."

She snorted in half-feigned disgust. "He does not! He and my father are so old-fashioned-they hate it that I live on Beacon Hill. They think I should go back to a corporate job with a steady paycheck and benefits. Graphic design makes no sense at all to them." She drank some of her water, then pressed the glass to her cheek, and he figured she was hot. Liked it that she was. "Pop's worried owning a carriage house is a message to men that I've given up on the idea of marriage."

"Have you?"

"What? Now you sound like them! My point is, Davey doesn't know anything."

Andrew winked at her. "But he knows how to unstop a toilet."

She groaned.

"Call a friend. Call Susanna Galway. Tess, if someone did steal a skeleton out of your cellar-"

"Then you need to be home with Princess Dolly. Go. If I get spooked, I'll call Susanna." She shoved him toward the door. "Six-year-olds come before a woman who barely an hour ago wanted to hit you over the head with a beer bottle."

"And five minutes ago wanted to jump into bed with me?"

Her breath caught, her eyes sparkling. There was no denying what they both knew to be true, and she didn't even try. "All the more reason to hit the road."

Andrew did so two minutes later, merging with Beacon Street traffic, noticing that night had come and the air had turned cooler. He drove back onto Beacon Hill.

The drapes on her windows were pulled, her lights on, no one out on her quiet street. He knew he had to leave her, that whether she called her family or friends, or got in her car and came north, was her choice to make. He thought about going back in there, packing her up and stuffing her in his truck- and when they got to Beacon-by-the-Sea, to hell with his guest room.

But that wasn't his call. Not tonight.

Tonight, his call was to go home to his daughter.