Under His Protection Read online

  Nash started back out the door. “Where is Miss Boon right now?”

  “Gone, Detective.”

  Nash heard the smugness in Chartres’s voice before he turned and saw it in his face.

  “She vanished.”

  “When?”

  “She was here at work today and disappeared in the middle of her shift.”

  “And you didn’t think to alert me?”

  “I am now.”

  Nash had the urge to haul the prissy little man to jail just on principle. “Why did she leave?”

  “She didn’t say. In fact, she didn’t say much at all. She just left her cleaning cart outside a room and walked away.”

  Good God, did Kathy Boon fall victim like Peter? “Did anyone see her leave?”

  “No. And yes, I asked. She must have slipped out the servants’ entrance.”

  “I thought those doors were locked.”

  “If she was inside the room, you can open them from in there,” Chartres said.

  Nash left the offices, leaving a message for Baylor that he wanted to see him, then learned where the service cart and Kathy Boon were last seen. He moved through the vacant room and slipped out the back French doors. It was a lower level, below Winfield’s room. He stepped out, careful not to disturb more than necessary. There were small footprints in the dust leading out the door, yet only the forward portion, as if the person had been running.

  He returned to the hall and started questioning the guests. There were only four occupied suites on the floor and all guests had been asleep when Miss Boon was working her shift.

  Great, he thought, dialing the police station. Now he had a missing person.

  And no one seemed to care but him.

  THE WARM BREEZE rolled off the river and across Lisa’s backyard. Nash sat opposite Lisa at the patio dining table, unable to take his eyes off her. Which would be wise since he’d missed his mouth a couple times already. Above her, tiny lights twinkled softly through the arbor.

  Lisa seemed nervous, avoiding anything that had to do with Winfield’s murder. He didn’t blame her. It wasn’t exactly polite dinner conversation.

  “You’re looking at me that way again, Nash.”

  Relaxed back in the chair, he sipped his wine. “What way is that?”

  She tossed down her napkin. “Like you’re trying to figure me out. Stop it.”

  “You’re too complicated to figure out. I gave up years ago.”

  Sadness slipped briefly over her features, then was gone. Lisa stood, gathering dishes, and Nash joined her, carrying bowls and platters into the kitchen. His attention was locked on her shapely behind, and he almost tripped and shattered her grandmother’s china.

  “Dinner was great, Lisa, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, but we’re beating around the proverbial bush, Nash.”

  “Okay, fine. You want me to ask, I will. Why the hell did you marry a man like Winfield?”

  “He was handsome, wealthy, and he loved me.”

  “But you’re so…opposite.”

  “Yes, I know. We didn’t exactly have a long engagement, and the minute I put his ring on, he changed.” She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter anymore.

  But it did. She’d made a big mistake with Peter. At the time, she’d still been freshly wounded from losing her child. She thought, like a fool, that she could make the pain go away by loving another man. It didn’t. It was the wrong man, she thought, looking at Nash and feeling a wild stab through her heart.

  Nash realized he wasn’t going to get more than that and he switched gears. “The night Winfield died you were in his suite.”

  She nodded, rinsing dishes. “And we argued.”

  “About what?”

  “You.”

  He stilled, then finished putting the plate in the dishwasher while she started a pot of coffee.

  “Why me?” Any other time he might be flattered.

  “Well, not exactly you to start. But it always ended up about you.”

  “Wait a sec. Back up a bit.” He waved. “Tell me first—why did Winfield want you back when he’d been cheating on you?” Her skin flamed with color, but Nash wouldn’t let it go. “Why would he beg you not to divorce him even after papers were signed and he was—”

  “—already sleeping with Catherine Delan?” Lisa turned, leaning back against the counter. The coffeemaker sputtered behind her. “For Peter it was power. Peter didn’t want me. He just didn’t want anyone else to have me. Especially you. It was about control, like he had with his clothes, the apartment. And other people. I had to move more than once because he wouldn’t stay away, and the police wouldn’t do anything because I hadn’t divorced Peter. And he hated that I was back in Indigo.”

  Nash listened, hearing more than she was saying as the words poured from her.

  “He liked that I was poor but educated, that I was attractive and had a Southern accent. I honestly think he came to the South just to find me. Or someone like me.” She shrugged. “He sure as hell didn’t like the South that much.”

  “Why would you say he came to find someone like you? He loved you.”

  “Yes, I believed he did. In his way. In the end he traded love for obsession, but he certainly showed his love in the first months. But as you saw by the apartment, it got a little weird.”

  “Before he was unfaithful?”

  Her embarrassment colored her features. “Yes. I’d returned early from a visit here—”

  “I remember when you were here,” Nash interrupted. They’d met on the street outside a shop and he’d been ice-cold toward her. He’d regretted it half the night. “Was that the reason you went back to New York early? Because of me?”

  “Partly, yes, but I was tired of my mother telling me I’d made a mistake. She’d warned me. Mama never liked Peter. You were her favorite.”

  Nash smiled gently.

  When the coffee finished brewing, Lisa turned and filled two cups, adding cream to hers, black for Nash. He took it and sat on a stool. He noticed that Lisa couldn’t be still, moving around the kitchen for fresh plates, then pulling an apple pie from the fridge.

  “Well, I’d come home to sort things out. Seeing you didn’t help, but I knew I had to make my marriage work. I’d already lost you.” She sliced and served the pie. Neither touched it.

  “You’re the one who left me, Lisa.” The words came softly without recriminations.

  Her expression deepened with sadness. “Oh, Nash, you were already gone. When your partner was killed, you just…dried up.” He’d gone from kind and interested in her, to apathetic and distant. She’d felt like a fixture in his life and very insignificant.

  Her eyes burned, and Lisa looked everywhere except at Nash, then took a sip of her coffee. It scorched the back of her throat. It was better than the ache working beneath her heart like a sharp spike.

  “Anyway,” she said on a deep breath, “I got home early and walked in on Peter and Catherine.”

  For a second Lisa looked wounded and betrayed, and Nash felt it from across the counter. She pushed at her hair, her hand trembling, but Nash knew Lisa. She was trying to hide her hurt from him, to be brave and act as if the past few years weren’t a living hell.

  “Lisa?” he said. “Look at me, honey.”

  She did and lost the battle, choking, covering her mouth. He came to her, took the cup from her hand and set it aside, then wrapped her in his arms. She clung fiercely to him, and Nash closed his eyes, a thousand what ifs floating through his mind. All he wanted to do now was soothe her, erase the pain.

  Lisa moaned, digging her fingers into his back, inhaling his scent, feeling safe and…home. “I—I didn’t recognize Catherine then. Or at the funeral.” Very softly she said, “What kind of person does that make me that I even spoke to her?”

  “A shocked person,” he whispered, and she leaned back and met his gaze. “Let it go, she’s not worth it.”

  Lisa nodded. “I know. It was her hair. It was longer and
darker, but that’s no excuse.”

  Nash frowned. The hairs found in Winfield’s suite were bleached with dark roots. But his attention shifted when Lisa stepped out of his arms. He felt suddenly cold and empty. He wanted her back in his arms so badly, he shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from dragging her to him and kissing her till her pain went away.

  “So what was the argument about?”

  Lisa met his gaze and marshaled her nerve. “I still refused to stop the divorce. There wasn’t anything I could really have done at that point, anyway, not that I’d ever change my mind. When he finally understood, he was livid, and that made him mean. He didn’t hit me or anything. But he said I was never good enough to be his wife, that he’d tried to mold me, but I was too stupid to understand that he was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “God, what a pig.”

  “Yeah, well, that was nothing new to me. When I was leaving, he tried to touch me and I think he got my scarf in the process. The next day I wanted it back. I didn’t want him to have anything I loved.”

  She was quiet for a moment, her gaze steady and locked with Nash’s.

  “How did your argument end up on me?”

  “It was his last dig. Always the same. That I should be grateful for what he’d done. Hadn’t he picked me up off the ground and dusted me off, made me into something? Hadn’t he given me more than Nash Couviyon would?” She laughed to herself, but there was no humor in it. “Hadn’t he loved me when you wouldn’t?”

  “Aw, Lisa. I’m so sorry.”

  She blinked, looking defensive. “Why? It’s not your fault. It’s mine. Those were my choices. I’m not blaming you.” She picked up her coffee and started to drink, then made a face and poured it into the sink, leaving the cup there. She gripped the edge of the cold porcelain. “My mistake is not your fault, Nash. I know it and you should, too.”

  Those what ifs were goading him again. “Okay, let’s leave that for now, but tell me, did I make you feel like you weren’t good enough for me?”

  She turned to face him. He was close, too close. “Yes, sometimes.”

  She looked so small right now, he thought. “For that I’m ashamed and sorry, and I didn’t see what I was doing,” Nash said.

  “You didn’t see a lot.”

  “We didn’t want the same things then.” Do you now? a voice in his head asked. Don’t you want a future with this woman?

  “I know. Funny thing, neither did Peter. He said he did, but all it took was seeing him with children to know he thought they were dirty little creatures other people only tolerated.”

  “You really want kids, don’t you.”

  Her smile was soft and melancholy. “I wanted a future with a man I loved. If kids came, then great.” She shrugged. “But I’d had my chance and lost it.”

  “With Peter.”

  Lisa swallowed, knowing it was now or never. “No, Nash, with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Before I broke up with you, I’d asked you where our relationship was going. You said you didn’t want to get serious.”

  “Yeah, I did.” She’d told him she loved him then. For the first and last time.

  “Then after our breakup, you cut me out of your life like I’d never been there. You wouldn’t even speak to me. That hurt the most. It was as if all we’d had, the love I had for you, meant nothing.”

  Nash searched her features. “That’s not true. God, do you know how much it hurt just to look at you? It was killing me, Lisa. I was destroyed and shocked. I didn’t know how good I had it with you till you were marrying Peter.”

  “Oh, God,” she moaned, her lip quivering and crushing his heart. “I wish you’d said something, anything.”

  He searched her face. “What are you trying to tell me? I can see it in your eyes.”

  “I’d needed you so badly then, Nash.” Her voice cracked. Silent tears spilled.

  “Then why did you leave me?”

  “Because you didn’t want a future with me, and I was already carrying your child.”

  Chapter Nine

  “You were pregnant with my child when you left me?”

  The accusing way he said that was something she’d expected. The disgust in his face, she hadn’t. “Yes.”

  “Damn you, Lisa.” He took a couple steps away from her. “How could you keep this from me?”

  How dare he? she thought. “Why don’t you take a second and think back four years ago.” He glared at her. “Think,” she insisted. “You were still stiff from the bullet wound, your partner, David, was dead and you sure as hell weren’t letting me any deeper into your life.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “Why? You’d already made your feelings quite clear. I asked you if you wanted to be married someday, to be a father. You told me very angrily that I shouldn’t expect any more from you, ‘so don’t go making wedding plans, baby,’ I believe were your exact words.”

  “I couldn’t see any future, Lisa.” Furious, he pushed his fingers through his hair. “My partner was dead and I saw how devastated his widow was.”

  “I know that. I was here, remember? Laura and David were my friends, too.”

  “But I couldn’t protect you from that kind of pain.”

  “News flash. I didn’t ask you to protect me. I’m a big girl, Nash. But the point was, you never wanted marriage and a family before David was killed, so don’t blame it on his death. You’d already made up your mind. I wasn’t going to tell you about the baby then. You think I’d want you if you were only doing the right thing?”

  The phone shrilled. Lisa snapped it up and listened. “Yes, he is,” she said, then shoved it at him as she walked past into the living room.

  Nash watched her go, glaring at her back, shaking inside, then put the phone to his ear. “Couviyon. Fine. I’ll be there. I said I’ll be there!” He hung up and went into the living room. Lisa was sitting on the sofa, her knees drawn up, her gaze locked on some far-off point.

  “I have to go,” Nash said.

  “Figured as much.”

  “Lisa, we need to talk about this some more.”

  “It’s done, Nash. Our baby is gone and so is that part of our life.” Her voice fractured and Nash felt the strings suspending his heart give a little. He wanted to stay badly, but there wasn’t time to talk. He walked to the door.

  After a moment she followed.

  He paused, gripping the knob, anger and something else Lisa couldn’t name crimping his features. She felt all they’d gained recently withering before her eyes.

  “What was I supposed to do, Nash?”

  He glared. “Tell me. Let me help you.”

  “Why? To force you to marry me? You’re a gentleman. You would have,” she said before he could. Her gaze raked his features, her heart splitting bit by bit. “Oh, Nash,” she said, her voice weakened with pain, “I didn’t want you that way because you’d made your feelings clear. About me, about any future. When I lost our baby—”

  He flinched, in his eyes, his shoulders, and his grip on the door latch.

  “—I already knew I was alone.”

  He simply stared, his face wiped clean of emotion, then walked away. “You didn’t have to be alone, Lisa. That was your choice.”

  Lisa closed the door, fighting renewed anguish. I shouldn’t be hurting like this again, she thought, then she folded to the floor and cried.

  THE NEXT MORNING Nash was still angry enough to chew nails. Snapping at anyone who crossed his path, he barely noticed the other officers giving him a wide berth, but when he barked at his friend Quinn Kilpatrick, he knew he was in trouble.

  He couldn’t tell anyone what he was thinking or feeling because he didn’t know himself. All he could think for the past few hours was that Lisa had been pregnant with his baby and she’d never told him. If she hadn’t been accused of murder, if her ex-husband hadn’t been murdered in his town, he might never have learned about it.

  But s
he told you. She didn’t have to.

  Why? he wondered. Was she trying to hurt him?

  She was right, he would have married her, but he was honest enough with himself right now to admit that he wouldn’t have been happy about it at the time. That was then, he thought. You were a jerk to everyone. And the only thing he could see was David’s wife, Laura, utterly destroyed by her husband’s death, and himself putting Lisa in that position.

  Would a baby have made a difference then?

  He rubbed his face. Leaving Lisa alone with a child was worse than leaving her alone, right?

  And yet, because he’d let her go, she’d been alone these past years, anyway. Years they could have shared.

  As the day progressed, thoughts of Lisa wore him down to the point that his skin felt as tender as his mood. He wanted to see her and, well, yell some more, he thought as he stood in William Baylor’s office, waiting. When Baylor stepped into the office, the inn-keeper couldn’t cover his surprise fast enough.

  “No one told me you were here, Detective.”

  “That’s because I didn’t announce myself,” Nash said, waiting for Baylor to take a seat.

  “What is this about?”

  “Lying to the police.” Nash dropped a file on the table. Baylor looked at it, then him. “Peter Winfield was trying to buy your hotel.”

  Baylor, small and wiry, seemed to wither slightly in the leather chair. He stared at the file. “Yes, he was. I wouldn’t sell. This home has been in my family for centuries.”

  “Why did he even attempt it?” Nash asked. Winfield had contacted Cal Preston at Fair Briar Plantation, too, Nash had learned earlier.

  “He insisted he wasn’t buying it for himself, but for his wife. She was to be a silent partner.”

  Nash didn’t waste a moment. He slipped out his cell phone and dialed Lisa. When she answered, he felt the hole in his chest gouge deeper. She sounded tired, worn-out. He asked her about the sale.

  “Absolutely not,” she said on the other end of the line. “He never mentioned it, nor would I have agreed. I wanted no more ties to him, Nash.”