Chapter Two #2
Coco beamed and tucked her arm through his. “Thank you. Now, why don’t we go in and have that chat?” She steered him to a wing chair by the fireplace, knowing that the springs in the sofa were only a memory. “I must apologize for C.C. She has a very quick temper but a wonderful heart.”
Trent inclined his head. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“Well, you’re here and that’s what matters.” Pleased with herself, Coco sat across from him. “I know you’ll find The Towers, and its history, fascinating.”
He smiled, thinking he’d already found its occupants a fascination.
“My grandfather,” she said, gesturing to a portrait of a dour-faced thin-lipped man above the ornate cherrywood mantel. “He built this house in 1904.”
Trent glanced up at the disapproving eyes and lowered brows. “He looks... formidable,” he said politely.
Coco gave a gay laugh. “Oh, indeed. And ruthless in his prime, so I’m told.
I only remember Fergus Calhoun as a doddering old man who argued with shadows.
They finally put him away in 1945 after he tried to shoot the butler for serving bad port.
He was quite insane—Grandfather,” she explained. “Not the butler.”
“I... see.”
“He lived another twelve years in the asylum, which put him well into his eighties. The Calhouns either have long lives or die tragically young.” She crossed her long, sturdy legs. “I knew your father.”
“My father?”
“Yes, indeed. Not well. We attended some of the same parties in our youth. I remember dancing with him once at a cotillion in Newport. He was dashingly handsome, fatally charming. I was quite smitten.” She smiled. “You resemble him closely.”
“He must have fumbled to let you slip through his fingers.”
Pure feminine delight glowed in her eyes. “You’re quite right,” she said with a laugh. “How is Trenton?”
“He’s well. I think if he had realized the connection, he wouldn’t have passed this business on to me.”
She lifted a brow. As a woman who followed the society and gossip pages religiously, she was well aware of the senior St. James’s current messy divorce. “The last marriage didn’t take?”
It was hardly a secret, but it made Trent uncomfortable just the same. “No. Should I give him your regards when I speak with him?”
“Please do.” A sore point, she noted, and skimmed lightly over it. “How is it you ran into C.C.?”
Fate, he thought, and nearly said so. “I found myself in need of her services—or I should say my car needed them. I didn’t immediately make the connection between C.C.’s Automovations and Catherine Calhoun.”
“Who could blame you?” Coco said with a fluttering hand. “I hope she wasn’t too, ah, intense.”
“I’m still alive to talk about it. Obviously, your niece isn’t convinced to sell.”
“That’s right.” C.C. wheeled in a tea cart, steering it across the floor like a go-cart and stopping it with a rattle between the two chairs. “And it’s going to take more than some slick operator from Boston to convince me.”
“Catherine, there is no excuse for rudeness.”
“That’s all right.” Trent merely settled back. “I’m becoming used to it. Are all your nieces so... aggressive, Mrs. McPike?”
“Coco, please,” she murmured. “They’re all lovely women.” As she lifted the teapot, she sent C.C. a warning glance. “Don’t you have work, dear?”
“It can wait.”
“But you only brought out service for two.”
“I don’t want anything.” She plopped down on the arm of the sofa and folded her arms over her chest.
“Well then. Cream or lemon, Trenton?”
“Lemon, please.”
Swinging one long, booted leg, C.C. watched them sip tea and exchange small talk. Useless talk, she thought nastily. He was the kind of man who had been trained from diapers on the proper way to sit in a parlor and discuss nothing.
Squash, polo, perhaps a round of golf. He probably had hands like a baby’s.
Beneath that tailored suit, his body would be soft and slow.
Men like him didn’t work, didn’t sweat, didn’t feel.
He sat behind his desk all day, buying and selling, never once thinking of the lives he affected.
Of the dreams and hopes he created or destroyed.
He wasn’t going to mess with hers. He wasn’t going to cover the much-loved and much-cracked plaster walls with drywall and a coat of slick paint. He wasn’t going to turn the drafty old ballroom into a nightclub. He wasn’t going to touch one board foot of her wormy rafters.
She would see to it. She would see to him.
It was quite a situation, Trent decided.
He parried Coco’s tea talk while the Amazon Queen, as he’d begun to think of C.C.
, sat on a sagging sofa, swinging a scarred boot and glaring daggers at him.
Normally he would have politely excused himself, headed back to Boston to turn the whole business over to agents.
But he hadn’t faced a true challenge in a long time.
This one, he mused, might be just what he needed to put him on track.
The place itself was an amazement—a crumbling one.
From the outside it looked like a combination of English manor house and Dracula’s castle.
Towers and turrets of dour gray stone jutted into the sky.
Gargoyles—one of which had been decapitated—grinned wickedly as they clung to parapets.
All of this seemed to sit atop a proper two-story house of granite with neat porches and terraces.
There was a pergola built along the seawall.
The quick glimpse Trent had had of it had brought a Roman bathhouse to mind for reasons he couldn’t fathom.
As the lawns were uneven and multileveled, granite walls had been thrown up wherever they were terraced.
It should have been ugly. In fact, Trent thought it should have been hideous. Yet it wasn’t. It was, in a baffling way, charming.
The way the window glass sparkled like lake water in the sun.
Banks of spring flowers spread and nodded.
Ivy rustled as it inched its patient way up those granite walls.
It hadn’t been difficult, even for a man with a pragmatic mind, to imagine the tea and garden parties.
Women floating over the lawns in picture hats and organdy dresses, harp and violin music playing.
Then there was the view, which even on the short walk from his car to the front door had struck him breathless.
He could see why his father wanted it, and was willing to invest the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to renovate.
“More tea, Trenton?” Coco asked.
“No, thank you.” He sent her a charming smile. “I wonder if I might have a tour of the house. What I’ve seen so far is fascinating.”
C.C. gave a snort Coco pretended not to hear. “Of course, I’d be delighted to show you through.” She rose and with her back to Trent wiggled her eyebrows at her niece. “C.C., shouldn’t you be getting back?”
“No.” She rose and, with an abrupt change of tactics, smiled. “I’ll show Mr. St. James through, Aunt Coco. It’s nearly time for the children to be home from school.”
Coco glanced at the mantel clock, which had stopped weeks before at ten thirty-five. “Oh, well...”
“Don’t worry about a thing.” C.C. walked to the doorway and with an imperious gesture of her hand waved Trent along. “Mr. St. James?”
She started down the hall in front of him then up a floating staircase. “We’ll start at the top, shall we?” Without glancing back, she continued on and up, certain Trent would start wheezing and panting by the third flight.
She was disappointed.
They climbed the final circular set that led to the highest tower. C.C. put her hand on the knob and her shoulder to the thick oak door. With a grunt and a hard shove, it creaked open.
“The haunted tower,” she said grandly, and stepped inside amid the dust and echoes. The circular room was empty but for a few sturdy and fortunately empty mouse traps.
“Haunted?” Trent repeated, willing to play.
“My great-grandmother had her hideaway up here.” As she spoke, C.C. moved over to the curved window. “It’s said she would sit here, on this window seat, looking out to sea as she pined for her lover.”
“Quite a view,” Trent murmured. It was a dizzying drop down to the cliffs and the water that slapped and retreated. “Very dramatic.”
“Oh, we’re full of drama here. Great-Grandmama apparently couldn’t bear the deceit any longer and threw herself out this very window.” C.C. smiled smugly. “Now, on quiet nights you can hear her pacing this floor and weeping for her lost lover.”
“That should add something to the brochure.”
C.C. jammed her hands into her pockets. “I wouldn’t think ghosts would be good for business.”
“On the contrary.” His lips curved. “Shall we move on?”
Tight-lipped, C.C. strode out of the room. Using both hands, she tugged on the knob, then dug in a bit and prepared to put her back into it. When Trent’s hand closed over hers, she jolted as though she’d been scalded.
It felt as though she had.
“I can do it,” she muttered. Her eyes widened as she felt his body brush hers. He brought his other arm around, caging her, trapping her hands under his. C.C.’s heart bounded straight into her throat, then backflipped.
“It looks like a two-man job.” With this, Trent gave a hard tug that brought the door to and C.C. back smartly against him.
They stood there a moment, like lovers looking out at a sunset.
He caught himself drawing in the scent of her hair while his hands remained cupped over hers.
It passed through his mind that she was quite an armful—an amazingly sexy armful—then she jumped like a rabbit, slamming back against the wall.
“It’s warped.” She swallowed, hoping to smother the squeak in her voice. “Everything around here is warped or broken or about to disintegrate. I don’t know why you’d even consider buying it.”