Everything but the Baby

O’Hara’s Hideaway was in East Nook. Since Allison was determined to stay there, Mark had checked out their Web site and, in spite of its down-home name, it seemed up to East Nook standards.

Mark and Allison shared a cab from the airport—rental cars would be delivered to the hotel later that afternoon.

For the first twenty minutes they chatted easily enough about the differences between the two coasts. But as soon as they hit the bridge, she fell silent. She stared out the window, watching the stately rows of royal palms as if she were getting paid to count them. Her hands were clasped in her lap, every knuckle white. Her simple ruby ring looked like a drop of blood against that pale finger.

He watched her a minute, then spoke. “Thinking about Lincoln?”

She shook her head. “No. I was actually thinking about my grandfather. I’m not sure I’ll even recognize him after all these years.”

She’d explained the whole story to him on the plane—how she’d come to Sole Grande two months ago hoping to reconcile with her mother’s family, who owned the Hideaway. How she’d chickened out at the last minute. And how that had left her vulnerable to Lincoln’s smarmy charm.

She was clearly still nervous about meeting them, though Mark wasn’t sure why. Even if the O’Haras were rotten relatives who couldn’t let go of an old feud, they were obviously good businessmen. They wouldn’t turn away a couple of paying customers.

“It’ll be fine,” he said, resisting the urge to put his hand over hers and chafe some warmth into it. “The quarrel was with your father, right? Why would they hold that against you?”

She shrugged. “I could have contacted them. He told me he’d rather I didn’t, but he didn’t exactly have a gun to my head.”

Mark wasn’t sure about that. Not a bullet-shooting gun, perhaps, but there were plenty of emotional weapons that could be just as effective. The subtle hint that, if a person went against your wishes, love might be withdrawn was a powerful threat. It had worked on his sister, when she was married to her first son-of-a-bitch husband. That guy had left her so uncertain of her own worth that she’d willingly signed it over to the second SOB—Lincoln Gray.

“What exactly was the fight about? Did you father ever give you the details?”

She glanced at him, which he considered a good sign. She looked wan, but at least she wasn’t counting palm trees.

“He never told me the whole thing, from start to finish. But I got the general idea. Mostly I think it was a culture clash. My father was very dignified, very restrained. I guess the O’Haras are more—uninhibited.”

“That’s it?”

“Oh, no. That was just the beginning. Then my grandfather, Stephen, hit my father up for a loan. He already owned the land on Sole Grande, but he needed money to build the Hideaway. My father refused, of course.”

“Why of course? Their hotel seems to be quite a success.”

“My father didn’t believe in loaning money to relatives. He’d earned his, and he thought everyone else should do the same, including me.”

Which she’d done. Mark had looked up Lullabies, too, while he was surfing the net and discovered that she already had nine franchises on the East Coast.

“The real problem, though,” she went on, “the one that led to this total estrangement, was that my father blamed my uncle Roddy for my mother’s death.”

“Why? How did she die?”

“She took a bad fall from a horse. I think she was a good rider—I remember lots of ribbons from competitions she won as a child. But apparently this horse wasn’t fully broken yet. My father always said she wouldn’t have been foolish enough to ride it if Uncle Roddy hadn’t egged her on.”

“So her death was completely unexpected. That must have been hard. How old were you?”

Though her voice was composed, reciting the story as if it were a history lesson she’d learned in school, she had gone back to twisting the ruby ring.

“I was only three, so I really didn’t understand much. Reading between the lines now, though, I get the impression that my mother—her name was Eileen—must have had a wild side, which my father was trying to correct. He said Roddy was criminally immature and a dangerous influence.”

Mark wondered if she could hear how oppressive her father sounded. The idea of “correcting” a spouse was not only domineering, it was dumb. In his experience, people didn’t change unless they wanted to. They might pretend to change, either to please or appease, but what good did that do?

Lauren, Mark’s ex-wife, had pretended not to want children, but the truth came out eventually.

Eileen O’Hara Cabot had defied her husband and sneaked into the stables for one last, fatal ride on the back of a wild horse.

But he wasn’t going to point that out. It wasn’t, in the end, his business.

“Families are complicated, aren’t they?”

She merely nodded at this platitude and went back to looking out the window.

Mark thought maybe it was time for a distraction.

He reached down to the duffel he’d placed on the floor between them and pulled a little box out of the side pocket. “Here. I want to show you something.”

She glanced over with polite attention but no genuine curiosity.

He wasn’t worried. He’d never opened this box in front of anyone without capturing their full attention.

He thumbed it open now, watching her face.

Her eyes widened. “Oh my God.” She started to reach out, but pulled her hand back just in time. She looked up at him. “Is that… Is that the Travers Peacock? I thought you said Lincoln stole it from your sister’s safety-deposit box.”

“He did.”

She was clearly torn between wanting to know more and wanting to just look at the brooch. Though most Travers women in the past century had decided it was just too showy to wear, it was definitely impressive. A small gold peacock stared at you with emerald eyes, its tail spread wide open, almost as big as the palm of a woman’s hand. And what a fantastic tail…a full fan of graceful gold feathers, each studded with emeralds and sapphires, which were in turn circled with onyx and gold.

Allison was still speechless. Still staring.

“The legend is that the Travers Peacock was given to one of my ancestors, back in the sixteen-hundreds, a gift from King Charles II of England. Her name was Elizabeth Travers and apparently she was very beautiful.” He smiled. “If not altogether virtuous.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “If Lincoln took it, then what—”

“More than a hundred years ago, some sensible Travers husband had a copy made, so that his wife could wear it without fear of losing it. It’s exact, right down to the last millimeter. The gold is genuine, because that’s hard to fake. But the stones are paste.”

She shook her head. “I can hardly believe it’s not real.”

“It’s not.” He took it out and handed it to her. “It’s a very good, very expensive fake. I can’t imagine that anyone, short of a jeweler with a loupe, could tell it from the real thing.”

She looked up, her eyes intent. She wasn’t stupid, was she? He had the feeling she already knew where he was going with this.

“Why did you bring it down here?” She frowned slightly. “What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m hoping we’ll get lucky. I’m hoping you might be able to find out where Lincoln keeps it. If you can, I’m going to make a switch. This brooch is very important to my sister. It’s part of our heritage. I do not intend to let Lincoln Gray pawn it for a hundred bucks if I can help it.”

She stroked one of the tail feathers with a fingertip, very gently, as if she didn’t dare risk damaging it. She seemed to have forgotten that it had already survived for more than a hundred years.

She shook her head. “That’s a lot of luck you’re talking about.”

“I know.”