Untamed

Tara stared at her mother, unable to recall a single time she’d ever seen her looking so distraught. “I don’t understand. With your gift—”

“You’d think I’d be able to see what happened, wouldn’t you?” Lina broke in uncharacteristically. She shook her head. “I only see the shadow. Your father suggested it’s because I’m too emotionally close to the situation.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Tara allowed. “In fact, maybe the reason for the dreams in the first place is because you can’t accept Brigid’s death.”

“I thought that might be the case, in the beginning. But now I don’t think it is.”

“Are you saying you think Brigid was murdered?”

“That sounds so overly dramatic, doesn’t it? And murder is such an ugly word.” Lina sighed. “Honestly, darling, I don’t know what to think.”

Neither did Tara. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill Grandy.”

“I know. Everyone loved her so.”

“And you told me the coroner ruled that she’d suffered a heart attack, which made her fall down the stairs.” Tara still felt guilty for missing her grandmother’s funeral. But a late-spring blizzard had kept her in Moscow, where she’d been helping a Russian-American entrepreneur open a pizza parlor.

“That was his official opinion. But I still can’t shake the feeling that he was wrong. That being the case, I suppose I should be relieved you don’t want to take possession of the house. I certainly wouldn’t want something horrible happening to you, darling.”

“You don’t have to worry. The only thing I have to worry about is getting burned from too much Hawaiian sun.”

Mother and daughter sat, hand in hand, watching as the blazing gold ball of sun dipped into the water, turning it a fiery crimson. Neither spoke. There was no need. As always, their thoughts were perfectly attuned.

Such was the legacy of the Delaney women. The legacy Tara had spent so many of her twenty-six years trying to escape. A legacy she feared, as she sat in the warming glow of the setting sun, she could no longer ignore.

All the way back to San Francisco she told herself that she was not going to Whiskey River. The town held too many painful memories for her. Besides, Brigid was dead. There wasn’t any reason to return.

But then Tara thought of her mother’s atypical anxiety, and although she was certain that the dreams were merely a manifestation of emotional loss, that didn’t make them any less upsetting. Perhaps, Tara considered, the thing to do would be to put the house on the market and get rid of it once and for all. Then, maybe, her mother’s mind could be at peace.

Knowing it was the right thing to do—the only thing she could do—Tara reluctantly called her travel agent and canceled her trip. Afterward, she unpacked all the beach and resort wear from her suitcases and tossed in some jeans and sweaters instead.

Then, frustrated but determined, she set the alarm in order to get an early start on the long, lonely drive to Arizona.

THE INSIDE OF Brigid Delaney’s house was, to put it charitably, a mess. A layer of dust covered everything like a ghostly shroud, spiders had taken up residence in all the corners of the ceiling, there was evidence that a family of mice had moved in and there were so many cobwebs draped over picture frames and chandeliers that Gavin felt as if he’d stumbled into Dickens’s Great Expectations.

“Miss Faversham, I presume,” he muttered, sweeping away a particularly thick cobweb hanging from a gilt-framed black-and-white photo of Brigid, clad in a wide straw hat and flower-sprigged cotton dress, gathering herbs in her garden.

The elderly woman he’d grown fond of had been striking. The young woman in the picture was a beauty. Her long wavy hair spilled from her straw hat like a rippling waterfall and her expressive, laughing eyes dominated a high cheekboned face.

Dress her in silks and satins and she could have been a princess. The amazing thing was that, although she’d had a presence that had reminded him of royalty, he’d never met a more down-to-earth woman in his life. Despite her distracting habit of insisting she was a witch.

“Dammit, Brigid.” He glared at the photo as if its subject were capable of discerning his irritation, which, if even half her stories were to be believed, she just well might. “I’m doing my best here. But next time you decide to die and leave everything to a relative, couldn’t you at least make certain the recipient is willing to accept the inheritance?”

He glanced around, depressed by the sight of the parlor that had always been cozy and tidy, looking so forlorn. Telling himself that he was only cleaning the place so he could spend the night in it without giving himself the creeps, he went out onto the service porch, gathered up a bucket and mop and set to work.

IT WAS RAINING when Tara finally pulled into the driveway of her grandmother’s home. Storms in Arizona’s high country could be wild, and this one was no exception. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed like cannon fire. Wind wailed like the cries of lost souls in the treetops and drove the rain across the windshield of her sensible sedan with a force that had rendered visibility next to impossible as she’d driven the last thirty miles up the narrow, curving road to Whiskey River.

Then suddenly, a jagged bolt of lightning lit up the sky in a blinding white sulfurous flash, illuminating the house.

It hadn’t changed. Tara didn’t know why she thought it might have. Beneath the cloud white gingerbread trim, the fish-scale siding was still sky blue and the patterned windows flanking the arched front door were the same colored glass that Tara remembered gleaming like a princess’s jewels when the morning sunlight streamed through them.

The copper roof of the tower had shone briefly in the bright light like a welcoming beacon and reminded her of summer tea parties she’d hosted for her grandmother and her dolls in that octagon-shaped room overlooking the garden.

This was the home where Brigid had given birth to her daughter, Lina, who, not wanting to break the chain of Delaney women, had kept her maiden name when she’d married, handing it down to her own daughter.

This was also the house where Brigid had soothed her granddaughter’s broken heart after what Tara would always call the “Richard debacle.” And proving that life was indeed made up of concentric circles, her grandmother had died here, as well. Of an accident, Tara thought firmly.

“Well, Grandy,” she murmured as she looped her hands over the steering wheel and gazed at the house that was once again shrouded in rain and darkness, “you got your wish. I’m here. Although I’ll be damned if I know why.”

She took the key her grandmother’s attorney had sent her out of her purse, then retrieved her overnight bag from the back seat. The larger bags in the trunk could wait until tomorrow.

She considered waiting a bit longer in hopes that the rain would at least slow down. But a glance up into a sky draped in black clouds assured her that the storm had stalled directly over Brigid’s home.

“Nice welcome, Grandy. The least you could have done was use a few of your powers to turn off the waterworks.”

She counted to three, then opened the car door and, holding her bag against her chest, made a dash for the front porch, which took longer than planned because she had to stop and unlatch the white picket gate.

By the time she reached the wide porch, she was drenched, and shivering. She’d forgotten how cold it could get in the mountains.

Beneath a winged griffin door knocker that had frightened Tara when she was a child was a shiny new doorknob. Wondering what had happened to the old hammered-brass handle she remembered having polished on more than one occasion, she managed to insert the key into the lock and was vastly relieved when it fit.

Just as she turned the knob, a clap of thunder shook the porch. An instant later she was blinded by a flash of brilliant white light. The acrid smell of sulfur assaulted her nostrils and a black veil drifted across her eyes.

Then Tara crumbled to the wooden floor beneath her feet.

Gavin, who had dozed off in a large wing chair positioned to give him a good view of the front windows, was jolted awake by the crack of thunder and almost simultaneous bolt of lightning. On some subconscious level, he’d been aware of a loud thud just after the lightning flash that had obviously struck very close to the house.

“All right!” It was what he’d been waiting for, an opportunity to catch the vandals in the act. He ran into the foyer and yanked open the ornately carved front door.

Instead of the teenage boys he’d thought he would find, Gavin found himself staring down at a seemingly lifeless form lying at his feet.

When another flash of lightning—thankfully more distant this time—lit up the sky, he stared in disbelief at a woman who could have stepped right out of that long-ago photograph of Brigid Delaney.

3

TARA HAD NO IDEA how long she’d been unconscious. One minute she was standing on the familiar front porch fretting about a missing door handle, the next thing she knew she was in some man’s arms, being carried into the darkened house. The house where her mother believed Brigid had been murdered!

“Put me down!” she demanded as she desperately tried to remember the self-defense training class she’d taken after nearly being mugged as she left her San Francisco office late one night.

“And have you swooning at my feet again?” Although the woman resembled a young Brigid Delaney, Gavin realized she had to be the granddaughter, the hotshot accounting whiz Brigid had boasted about.

“I didn’t swoon.” Tara glared up at him, frustrated when the deep shadows kept her from seeing his face. “I never swoon.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” Although it was not easy, maneuvering across the crowded room in the dark with a wiggling, angry woman in his arms, he managed to make his way to the red brocade chaise.

“If you’re planning on raping me,” Tara said between gritted teeth as she landed on the antique fainting couch with a bounce, “you should know that I’ve studied karate.”

“Good for you.” Gavin reached into the drawer of the papier-mâché table and pulled out the box of matches he knew Brigid kept there. Storms were a routine part of living in this remote corner of the state, making power outages commonplace. “Perhaps, after we get to know each other better, you can entertain me by breaking bricks with your bare hands.”