Because a Husband Is Forever Read online

  The man shook his head sheepishly. “It’s just that I don’t recognize it. But then—” he shrugged philosophically “—estate jewelry is more my wife’s department.”

  The man’s response left her a little confused since he looked to be no older than about fifty. The woman who had sold her the necklace was clearly in her mid or late seventies. Was that his wife? Could there be that much of an age gap between the two?

  But then, she thought, some people aged more than others and…

  The black drape that separated the storeroom from the showroom parted and a pleasant-looking woman with auburn hair and a ready smile walked out. Like her husband, she was thin and of medium height.

  He beckoned her over to the counter. “Oh, Brenda, this is Ms.—”

  Brenda’s dark eyes all but disappeared as her smile widened. She put out both hands to take one of Dakota’s.

  “Dakota Delany,” she finished for her husband. Leaning over the counter, the woman heartily shook her hand. “Yes, I know who you are.” Beaming, she lowered her voice, as if to share a secret. “I sneak out of the showroom every day at two on the dot to watch your program on the little television set in the back. What can I do for you?”

  Dakota smiled at Brenda, trying not to sound abrupt as she looked at the owner. “This isn’t the woman who sold me the necklace.”

  Brenda’s husband seemed as confused as she felt. “I’m afraid this is the only lady who works here, except for the summer when our daughter Suzie helps out.” He rolled his eyes. “If you can call it that. Are you sure you didn’t get this place confused with some other antique shop? There are a lot of small shops that deal in antiques in this part of the state.”

  Her mind felt as if it was a rumpled bed, but this was the one thing she wasn’t confused about. She’d gotten the cameo here.

  “No, it was here, I’m sure of it.” She counted backward in her head. “I was here on Monday.” Monday, the day that Ian came into her life. Which was why she was here. She wanted to talk to the woman who’d told her about the legend. Maybe she needed to speak to someone who seemed to take legends as gospel.

  Right now she needed to believe in a legend.

  The sad look she’d seen earlier in the man’s eyes emerged again. He exchanged a brief, perplexed look with his wife.

  “We were closed Monday,” he told her solemnly. “My great-aunt Rachel died.” He indicated the photograph behind the main counter. Its frame was draped in black velvet.

  “Let me see that piece.” Brenda stepped forward to take a better look at the cameo. Dakota held perfectly still, not for Brenda’s perusal, but because she couldn’t take her eyes off the woman in the photograph he had pointed to. Her gray hair a fluffy halo about her perfectly round face, she was smiling serenely. The woman’s eyes seemed to look right into her.

  She was the woman who had sold her the cameo.

  Brenda had rounded the counter and was examining the cameo closely, her thin fingers lightly touching the oval. “Oh, this looks like it might have been part of the collection I just acquired from my last trip south, Josiah.” She glanced at her husband. “I don’t remember putting it out, but then I guess I must have.” A puzzled expression came over her features again as the woman looked up at her. “And you say someone else sold you this?”

  “Yes.” Dakota’s mouth felt very dry. They were going to think she was out of her mind, she thought. But maybe there was a relative around who looked like the owner’s great-aunt. She nodded toward the photograph. “That lady.”

  The owner shook his head adamantly. “I’m afraid that’s just not possible. My aunt Rachel was very ill the last few years of her life. Bedridden mostly. And a little out of her head,” he confided. “She was almost ninety when she died.” As if anticipating Dakota’s next question, he added, “That photograph was taken twenty years ago.”

  The more she looked at the photograph, the more convinced Dakota was that it was the woman who had sold her the cameo and told her about the legend. Frustrated, knowing how this had to appear to the two people politely regarding her, she looked from the owner to his wife.

  “Are you sure?”

  The man opened his mouth and then closed it again, as if searching for words that weren’t offensive.

  “I should know the details about my own great-aunt.” His tone was polite but firm. His eyes swept over the crowded space. “She used to own this store. Deeded it over to Brenda and me almost fifteen years ago because she felt she couldn’t run it anymore. She helped out for a little while after that, then stopped coming in. It was very hard on her to give this up. We consulted her whenever we could just to make her feel she still had a hand in it.”

  The owner’s wife cocked her head, peering at her. Her expression was kindly. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Dakota could have sworn she’d bought the cameo from the owner’s great-aunt. But now none of it made sense anymore. “No,” she murmured, feeling as if her head was in complete upheaval. “I’m not sure about anything right now.” Bewildered and confused, she turned on her heel and went to the front door.

  In the mirror to the right of the entrance Dakota caught a glimpse of the owners exchanging looks and shaking their heads.

  “Celebrities,” she heard the man mutter as a look of pity crossed his face.

  Dakota closed the door behind her.

  Well, that settled it. She had definitely gone over the edge. There was no other way to interpret all this. She’d bought a necklace from a woman who was probably being buried at the exact time the sale was being rung up. Then she made love with a man she hardly knew, something she never would have done.

  Yet she had.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Already spooked, the stern voice coming from behind her nearly made Dakota jump out of her skin. She swung around, her fist doubled, not knowing who or what to expect.

  Her mouth dropped open.

  Ian was the last person she’d thought she would see up here. Was he an apparition, too? A figment of her imagination? She’d left him showering in the apartment. Driving away from the city, she’d kept checking her rearview mirror for any sign of his car following her. There hadn’t been any.

  She saw that he had parked his car right behind hers at the leaf-littered curb. How could he have known she’d come here? She’d never given him a location, other than to say the place had been “upstate.”

  Damn it, she thought angrily, she was too young and too well adjusted to be having a nervous breakdown. She wanted answers.

  Squaring her shoulders, she fixed him with a look. “How did you know to find me here?”

  The relief that flooded through his veins when he saw her coming out of the quaint two-story, Tudor-style building had taken him by surprise. He was unaccustomed to feeling this level of concern about anyone, except his son, Scottie. Now that he’d located her, he reverted back to his old self.

  An enigmatic smile moved along his lips. “Trade secret.”

  The hell with that, she thought. “No, no cloak-and-dagger stuff. Unless you move through walls and have some kind of long-range vision that helped you find me, I want a logical explanation.”

  To her surprise, his smile broadened. She liked his smile, but she still wanted answers.

  “Don’t get into electronics much, do you?”

  Dakota crossed her arms before her chest. “Not really. What does that have to do with it?”

  He took her arm, moving her away from the shop. Just in case she started shouting, he didn’t want anyone overhearing her. “Let’s just say I used a tracking device.”

  Her eyes widened as she took in the gist of his words. “You bugged me?” Opening her purse, she began rifling through it.

  Very patiently Ian reached over and closed her purse before the contents started spilling out. “Not you.”

  “My car.” It was the only logical guess left. Something about invasion of privacy hummed through her brai
n. Still upset about the way things had turned out between them this morning and really shaken over what the antique shop owner maintained, she took the restraints off her temper. “You bugged my car? Why?”

  Taking her arm again, he guided her toward her vehicle. Dakota pulled her arm away and glared at him. “Because, after seeing you in action, I had a hunch you’d pull this kind of stunt. So I placed a tracking device on your car.” He frowned at her. With everything else in shambles right now, the one thing he wanted intact was his reputation. “I said I was going to treat this like a regular assignment, and I am.”

  “Why would someone pay you to be their bodyguard, then try to ditch you?”

  “Because they’re not the one paying for the service.” He thought of Harry Walters and his three teenage daughters. Keeping them safe in Cannes during the festival had been an assignment from hell. “I’ve been a bodyguard for the children of celebrities. Not all of them like the idea of having a shadow.” He gave her a penetrating look. “But then, I don’t really have to explain that to you, do I?”

  His voice was cold, deliberate. Removed. It was as if they were complete strangers. As if they hadn’t spent the night together.

  As if it was all a figment of her imagination.

  Maybe it had been. Buying the cameo from the old woman everyone swore was dead certainly looked as if it had been. But she had the cameo, damn it, Dakota thought as she fingered it. And she had seen Ian leaving her bed this morning. It was real. All of it was real.

  And she still wanted answers.

  Apparently, so did he. “Why did you take off like that this morning?” Ian asked.

  Ever since she was a little girl, when she was at a loss for an answer, she resorted to flippancy. Nothing had changed in twenty-nine years. “They were having a sale here. I couldn’t miss it. I figured I’d leave you alone. Men don’t like to shop.”

  She could feel his eyes probing as he searched her face. “You’re not a very good liar.”

  “Sorry.” She turned away from him and went toward her car. “I’ll work on it.”

  Instead of letting her go, he took hold of her shoulders and made her turn around to face him. When she did, he fought the very real urge to kiss her. But that would only compound the problem, not solve it.

  “Look, Dakota, about last night—”

  Oh no, she wasn’t going to stand here while he offered up some trite excuse or, worse, said something that reeked of pity. She didn’t need this.

  She tried to shrug out of his hands and found that she couldn’t. The hold was light, but firm. Her eyes blazed. “You don’t owe me any explanations. These things happen between consenting adults. We’re adults, we consented. Leave it at that.”

  He should have. It was for the best, he told himself. But he didn’t want to leave it this way, with an awkwardness between them. Still, what could he do? Nothing had changed from this morning. She was still a celebrity darling and he was who he was, an ex-cop with alimony payments and an empty soul. She was the kind of woman who deserved something more, someone who could envelop her with love, could say the words she needed to hear. The only kind of love he would ever be able to offer was the nonverbal kind. That wouldn’t be enough for someone like Dakota.

  She needed someone else in her life, not him. And he needed to get back to what he was good at. Keeping people safe so they could live their lives.

  He tried not to think about how he’d felt when he’d walked out of his room this morning and found that she wasn’t anywhere in the apartment. In that single second when he’d realized that she’d taken off, panic gripped him. He’d never felt that before and he didn’t like it. Because he was uncertain about her state of mind and because he felt he was to blame for just leaving her like that, panic’s scaly fingers had torn into him, and fear had assailed him, fear that she’d gone and done something stupid.

  It took him several minutes to get himself centered and back on track, back to thinking clearly. Once he was, he’d remembered the tracking device he’d attached to the underside of the rear of her vehicle. He turned it on and watched its progress on his receiver. It didn’t surprise him that Dakota was on the move.

  What had surprised him was that she looked to be leaving the city. Where was she going?

  To her ex-fiancé?

  The thought surprised him. Jealousy had never been an issue for him before. It was an issue now, and he didn’t like it.

  Something for him to work on, he thought.

  Seeking to change the subject, for himself as well as for her, Ian nodded toward the quaint store behind her. “Did you get what you wanted?”

  “No, I didn’t,” she murmured, thinking of the woman who wasn’t there. Had the legend been part of her imagination, as well? Where did fact end and fantasy start? Damn it, she needed to know.

  She was wearing a suede jacket, but it was open and he could see the cameo. Last night it was all she’d had on. He felt his body quickening at the memory and forced it away. “This the place where you got the cameo?”

  Her hand covered the delicate piece, as if she was protecting it from something. “What makes you say that?”

  “Looks like the kind of place that would carry something like that. Besides, you were fingering your necklace and frowning when you walked out of the shop. I thought your impulsive trip up here might have had something to do with it.” When she said nothing to substantiate his deduction, he made a further guess. “Looking for matching earrings?”

  It was the easy way out. If she said yes, they’d be done with it.

  She didn’t take it.

  Maybe talking out loud with someone might put things in perspective for her, make her see something she was missing. Besides, the man had been a detective. Maybe he had an explanation for what she thought she’d seen.

  “No, I came back because I wanted to talk to the woman who sold this to me. I had some…questions.” Dakota refrained from elaborating. Her questions indirectly had to do with him, because he had walked into her life the very day she’d bought the cameo and put it on. And although she didn’t actually believe in magic or legends, she had to admit that something had stirred within her from the first moment she’d laid eyes on Ian.

  In a way it had been as if she was under some kind of spell. She supposed part of her just wanted the old woman to admit that the so-called legend was just a fabrication, a ploy to sell the cameo, nothing more. Barring that, she’d wanted to ask the woman about the original owner, to find out if Amanda’s fiancé ever did return to her.

  She decided it would be for the best if she didn’t go on to say that the owners of the antique shop had told her she’d had a conversation with a dead woman. He’d think she was crazy and why shouldn’t he? Part of her thought she was, too.

  “She never finished telling me the rest of the legend,” she concluded. She felt Ian studying her face. Why? Did she look like someone who’d bought jewelry from a ghost?

  “And did she this time?” he asked.

  “She’s not there,” Dakota responded evasively.

  He didn’t see why that would stop her. In the few days he’d spent with her, he’d come to know that the woman had the persistence of an oncoming train. “You can come back when it’s not her day off.”

  Dakota shoved her hands into her pockets, staring off into the horizon. “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  Dakota swung around. Her voice had a frustrated edge as she declared, “Because she’s dead.”

  “She died right after selling you the cameo?”

  Her shoulders sagged a little, like someone who saw defeat as inevitable. “No, apparently she hasn’t been working in the store for a long time.”

  After deciding not to share this part, she had no idea why she was telling him this. He was only going to laugh at her. Or think she was a loon. But somehow the words just kept coming.

  “The owner said the store was closed last Monday, which was when I bought the cameo. Closed for a funeral.
” She paused a moment, then said, “Hers.” She searched his face for a clue as to what he was thinking. She half expected him to laugh at her, but he didn’t. His restraint was admirable. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  To her surprise he shook his head and looked dead serious as he said, “No.”

  “Okay, then what?”

  Because she looked so lost, he slipped his arm around her shoulders and smiled down at her face. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  She blinked. “Hamlet? I’ve got a bodyguard who quotes Shakespeare?”

  He debated for a moment. Ian didn’t often share things, certainly not an experience that he had kept to himself for more than twenty years. But something prodded him on.

  He made his decision.

  “Walk with me for a minute.”

  Not waiting for her to respond verbally, he led the way. He took her hand in his and guided her away from the shop, away from their cars and toward the winding road that fed into the highway. The scenery was almost heart-stoppingly picturesque. Trees heavy with the multicolored leaves of autumn nodded their heads, allowing their crowns to slip and fall. Dried leaves crunched beneath their feet as they walked.

  “When I was a kid,” Ian began, “I had this blue bike I loved more than anything. Spent hours on it, hanging out until way after dark. My mother was always after me to come home before I got lost. One night I did get lost. I was riding around in the wooded area that ran behind the development where I lived and a fog had set in. So thick you couldn’t see more than a foot in front of you. I was nine and pretty damn scared. And then, out of nowhere, I saw my uncle Danny, my dad’s younger brother walking toward me. I was never so happy to see anyone in my whole life. He took my hand and told me never to do something this dumb again, then pointed me in the right direction. He walked with me a little ways. But just as I saw my house, I turned around and realized he was gone. Jumping on my bike, I pedaled like mad for home. When I got there, some of my father’s friends from the precinct were there. I thought it was because they were looking for me. I told them I was okay, but that my uncle was still out there. My father—never one for interpersonal relationships—told me to shut up and go to my room. That was when my mother took me aside and told me that my uncle had just been killed in the line of duty less than an hour ago.”