Chapter 7
7
As it turned out, Liam McKettrick had very old-fashioned manners.
Instead of saying goodbye at the door of the restaurant, he walked Madison all the way to the Bentley, doing that hand-on-the-small-of-the-back thing the whole time.
It gave her the same deliciously vulnerable feeling as the last time he’d touched her that way.
Once she had unlocked the door, Liam reached around her to open it.
She stood in the gap, looking up at him.
He adjusted his hat, grinned again. “What about that date I mentioned? Are you up for that, Ms. Bettencourt?”
Madison felt like a smitten teenager, which was stupid because, one, she was thirty-two, not sixteen, and two, she’d only called it quits with Jeffrey a couple of days before, and therefore had no excuse for being this attracted to someone else so soon.
She shouldn’t be thinking the thoughts this man made her think just by being in close proximity. Being near him made the nerve endings thrum under her skin.
She hesitated.
“What?” Liam prompted, watching her with an expression of gentle courtesy, his head tilted slightly to one side.
Madison looked away, looked back. “When it comes to dating,” she confessed quietly, “I don’t have the best track record.”
Liam rubbed the back of his neck, pondering that statement. Sighed. “Madison,” he said, finally, “I’m not asking you to move in and share my bed. I’m asking you to dinner .” He paused, regarding her in a way that made her throat tighten and the backs of her eyes burn. “I’m going to be honest, here. I’m drawn to you—not just physically—and I have been since you came barreling into the Hard Luck Saloon in a wedding dress and a fit of fury. I think you’re beautiful. I think you’re smart. I think you’re funny. But I don’t have any particular agenda. I just want to spend some time with you and see if that takes us anywhere.”
“No expectations? No pressure?”
“No, Madison. I just want to buy you dinner—or cook it for you, out at my place, if you trust me enough for that. I want to hear some of your story and tell you some of mine. For now, that’s all.”
She knew she should have said no, even as she said yes instead.
She wasn’t ready for this.
She was too ready for this.
Talk about confusing.
“All right,” she said. “I’m planning to visit Coralee again this evening, and I’ll probably be pretty wrung out by the time that’s over, so tomorrow would be better.”
“Tomorrow it is,” Liam agreed.
God, she could tumble right into the blue depths of those eyes of his and fall forever and ever, never hitting bottom.
“What shall I bring?”
“Yourself,” Liam replied easily. Then he swept up the Bentley in a long, slow and admiring glance. “And this fantastic car.”
“Could we ride horses?”
Madison didn’t know why she’d asked such a thing of a man who was practically a stranger; it just popped out of her mouth. She had ridden a lot during high school and college, but over the last decade or so, while she was busy failing at love and marriage and succeeding in business, she hadn’t made time for it.
There was something so centering about riding a horse, not in an arena, but in the countryside, with nature all around.
“I can definitely arrange that,” Liam said. “What’s your skill level?”
She laughed. “Reasonably competent and sadly out of practice,” she replied.
“Got it,” Liam said. “I’ll choose your mount accordingly.”
“What about you?” Madison countered, because for some strange and most likely silly reason, she didn’t want to part with this intriguing man quite yet. “What’s your skill level?”
“Damn good and getting better all the time,” came the reply.
It was an innocuous remark, though spoken in a drawl that might have been considered sultry, and Madison’s sometimes frisky mind took a leap into double-entendre territory.
She blushed.
That made Liam touch her cheek, lean in, and place a light, brief and completely world-shattering kiss on her mouth.
Damn good and getting better all the time.
Dangerous words, those, but along with that whisper of a kiss, they sent a thrill racing along Madison’s nerve endings and sparked tiny fires in places she hadn’t known there were places.
She drew back, almost as if he’d shocked her with a cattle prod, and lowered herself into the driver’s seat of the Bentley, a little stunned.
A lot stunned.
The kiss had been a mere brush of his lips, actually, but she could still feel it on her mouth, lingering there, making her want more kisses, deeper ones, from a man she barely knew, no less. “Tomorrow night, your place,” she confirmed, all business now. “What time?”
“Early, if you want to ride for a couple of hours before supper,” he replied. “Say four thirty?”
“That is early. Don’t you have to tend bar at the saloon, or keep the peace in the town of Bitter Gulch?” Madison teased, deliberately prolonging the conversation and wanting to kick herself for it.
She’d already had her emotional knees broken by two different men, and now she was flirting—yes, flirting —with another. What was she, anyway—a sucker for punishment?
Instinctively, Madison knew she could trust him. But could she trust herself to behave, alone in the wide-open spaces of Montana with a man like Liam McKettrick?
She told him she’d see him the next afternoon, closed the car door, and drove off, the kiss still resting on her mouth, thinking about the fertility treatments she planned to sign up for.
If she didn’t reach a single other goal in her entire life, she wanted a baby to love, to nurture, to raise in a normal home, but if that was going to happen, it would happen in its own time. Maybe she needed to lighten up, at least for now.
She shifted her thoughts to Liam.
Keely and Cavan were, in fact, due to arrive the day after tomorrow, by Liam’s own account. He’d made it pretty plain over lunch that he meant to get things right this time, make up for the months he and the kids had spent apart.
He hadn’t said much about his reasons for the gaps in his relationship with his son and daughter, both of whom he clearly loved fiercely, but Madison had heard enough to make a few guesses.
His late wife—Waverly, wasn’t it?—had obviously been a difficult person, and in the aftermath of her death, her parents had done all they could to keep him from taking Keely and Cavan away.
Why, Madison wondered, had such a strong man allowed his former in-laws to buffalo him that way?
Had he felt guilty for not loving his wife, even when he knew she was dying?
Had he been overwhelmed by what was absolutely a tragedy, his lack of romantic love for Waverly notwithstanding?
He’d said he’d loved the woman he believed his wife to be, rather than the woman she actually was. Perhaps he had mourned that other Waverly, the one he’d imagined.
Maybe his grief for that nonexistent partner had crushed him. Rendered him temporarily incapable of stepping up, even for his own children.
Was that even possible?
As little as she knew about Liam, Madison had figured out that he was strong, not only in his mind and body, but in his soul.
Madison felt a little deflated as she drove on through the town of Silver Hills and followed the highway back toward Painted Pony Creek.
She was so distracted, her lower lip caught between her teeth, that when Liam honked his horn just before turning off onto a road that probably led to his ranch, she almost jumped out of her skin.
She hadn’t realized he was right behind her, though it only made sense that he would be, since they’d just left the same town and headed in the same general direction.
Not much gets by you , she told herself.
The kiss was forgotten for the moment, and Madison’s emotions were in a tangle by the time she reached home—good feelings all snarled up with reluctance and no little regret.
She should have said no to the horseback ride, no to dinner, and gone about her business.
She had plenty of things to think about, after all—Coralee’s deteriorating condition and the inevitable meetings with her grandmother’s attorney, dealing with the aftermath of Jeffrey, if there was an aftermath. Maybe she’d get lucky, and the breakup would be what it ought to be—history. Nothing more than a bump in the road.
She’d meet with Brynne Garrett, who had planned the splashy wedding that wasn’t, and clear up any financial obligations. Maybe demonstrate that she wasn’t the crazy runaway bride she must have appeared to be the day she walked out on a man she’d once truly believed she loved, leaving him and his mother flustered and furious.
Madison liked Brynne as a person and wanted to apologize directly for what must have been the calamity of the season, if not the year, from a wedding planner’s viewpoint. She’d even hoped they might become friends.
On top of all this, Madison had her business to consider. Should she sell the company, with Audra’s agreement of course, and move back to Painted Pony Creek for good?
The idea had considerable appeal, though it would be a major change.
Or maybe because it would be a major change.
She was pulling into the driveway at home—no sense putting the Bentley into the garage, since she planned to go back to Silver Hills again after a nap, another shower, and a light supper, to spend an hour or two with Coralee—when she caught sight of the childish thread bracelet on her wrist.
Naturally, seeing it brought Bliss Morgan to mind.
Why the sudden fascination with a child she hadn’t seen in nearly twenty-five years? She wasn’t sure, beyond the fact that she hated loose ends.
And Bliss’s sudden disappearance was unfinished business, to Madison anyway.
Was it possible that the little girl hadn’t been real? Hadn’t Coralee referred to her as an imaginary friend over and over again?
There had been no big uproar in the community when Bliss vanished, leaving only the bracelet and a goodbye, scratched into the back of a matchbook, as a farewell. But what if she hadn’t been the one to leave the bracelet or the one-word note?
Madison had been a very lonely kid up until she went away to boarding school, and she’d had her share of imagined friendships. In elementary school, for example, she’d lived in a fantasy world for days at a time, a place populated by interesting people of the see-through variety.
Boarding school had been a turning point. There, she’d made dozens of actual, flesh-and-blood friends, and except for the odd moment of homesickness, or when she read a book that reminded her of those simple summer days in her childhood, she hadn’t thought much about Bliss.
She got out of the car, shut the door behind her, and headed for the elaborate entrance to Bettencourt Hall.
She was inside, in the entryway, standing beside the beautifully carved grandfather clock, before it occurred to her that she hadn’t locked the Bentley.
Alas, this was Painted Pony Creek, not some violent slum.
Most people didn’t even lock their houses , let alone their automobiles.
She set her purse on the side table next to the Italian pottery umbrella stand and turned to lock the main door.
Madison had lived in this house until she was twelve, and never worried about thieves or home invaders, but she’d been a city dweller since then, and security was important to her.
She made a mental note to be more careful in the future.
She strolled through to the kitchen, at once anticipating tomorrow’s get-together with Liam and pondering the mystery of her lost childhood friend.
What did she know about Bliss Morgan?
Not much.
Bliss had told her enough about her parents for Madison to figure out that her cemetery picnic companion came from a dysfunctional home.
As for that home, Madison recalled Bliss mentioning that she lived in an old camper, “in an open place way back in the woods.”
Madison had never been there, though she’d been tempted, once or twice, to follow Bliss and get a look at the place.
Bottom line, she’d been too scared. From the way Bliss described her father, she figured she would have been unwelcome. The man had sounded dangerous, and naturally Madison hadn’t wanted to encounter him.
Sadly—and oddly, to her way of thinking—there hadn’t been so much as a ripple of adult concern after Bliss went missing.
Madison knew that if she or any of the other kids Painted Pony Creek called its own had vanished, seemingly between one moment and the next, there would have been police from several jurisdictions and many dedicated volunteers combing the surrounding area for any sign of the lost child.
But there had been no police, no volunteers, no search dogs.
Surely, though, she had to be mistaken about that. Mean drunkard that he was, and as uncaring as he sounded, wouldn’t Bliss’s dad have raised some kind of alarm when he discovered that his daughter was gone?
He might not have known right away, Madison reasoned sadly, climbing the main stairway and making for her room. He might not have been sober enough to deal with the situation at the time. Or he simply hadn’t noticed.
It was even possible, regrettably, that he just hadn’t cared .
In fact, he might even have caused Bliss’s disappearance, Madison thought with a shiver.
If so, he’d gotten away with a heinous crime.
Reaching her frilly, preteen girl’s bedroom, she swapped out her sandals for her hiking boots and her blouse for a faded old T-shirt with a picture of Johnny Depp on the front and added another item to her mental to-do list.
Redecorate this room to suit a grown woman.
If she decided to stay in Painted Pony Creek, anyway.
On her way down the back stairs, she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and went out through the kitchen door.
The floorboards of the sunporch creaked as she passed over them, and, making a rare exception, she didn’t bother to lock up this time.
She wasn’t going any further than the old family cemetery, and that was close by, only a few hundred yards beyond the tree line at the bottom of the overgrown vegetable patch.
If she didn’t go back to Boca Raton and take up the life she’d designed to fit perfectly, like a tailor-made garment, she would restore that garden to its former glory. Raise heaps of healthy vegetables and share them with the food bank in town.
Reaching the graveyard, Madison wondered what she’d expected to find—almost certainly nothing—but that was the last place she’d seen Bliss, all those years ago.
It was, in fact, the only place she’d seen Bliss.
And that made it the logical place to start.
Start what?
She looked around her, noticing that the old, old gravestones and markers were almost completely hidden under deep grass and thickets of brush, thistles and all.
She waded through the bushes, thorns grabbing at her jeans and scratching at her hands and forearms, to the stone where Bliss had always chosen to sit when they met—and most likely when she was alone. She uncovered the chiseled lettering. Charles C. Bettencourt III.
Madison perched on that stone, listening as bees buzzed and birds chirped in the branches of nearby trees, alerting each other to the unauthorized presence of a human being.
“Bliss,” she said, very softly. “Where are you? What happened?”
Of course there was no reply, but there was the very vaguest sense that she wasn’t alone. Perhaps there were ghosts around, she thought fancifully, ancestors somehow tethered to their burial places.
Not likely, she reflected.
If she were a ghost, she wouldn’t waste her time haunting some weedy old cemetery. She’d go where the action was, where the living were going on with their busy, bustling lives.
She’d eavesdrop and possibly pull a few harmless pranks.
Hiding things that weren’t vital to everyday living, like TV remotes and can openers and hammers and lipsticks perhaps.
Silly thoughts.
All this visit had accomplished, really, was to add yet another task to her schedule. Madison was the last of the Bettencourt line, or would be once Coralee passed away, and all around her lay her late family members, forgotten beneath their moss-edged, tilting stones.
It was her moral responsibility, as a Bettencourt, to clean the place up.
Pull away the weeds and the thistles and make these people’s names visible again. It would be a symbolic gesture, a reminder, if only to her, that these remains, buried deep, had once been living, breathing human beings. With names.
The job wouldn’t be easy, though. She’d have to wear a hat to protect herself from the sun, and she’d get blisters and scratches, even with work gloves on.
But, as Coralee would have said, it was there to be done.
Not that Coralee had ever been one to pull weeds and tear out thorny brush, even when she’d been physically capable of doing so.
She’d always hired someone to perform jobs like this.
Madison stood, reasoning that she could certainly do that, too. Estelle, the housekeeper, would know plenty of locals willing to work hard under a summer sun, and paying said laborers wouldn’t be a hardship, either.
Still, for whatever reason, Madison knew this project had to be her own.
And she’d made up her mind to do it.
Resigned, she began making her way through the dense underbrush again, only realizing after she’d come out on the far side that she wasn’t headed toward the house, but in the direction of the creek.
She could hear it bubbling and swirling its way between its rocky banks, smell its fresh, clean scent.
This was Painted Pony Creek proper, the stream for which the town had been named, way back in pioneer days.
Madison had rarely visited the place, alone anyway. Estelle had brought her here sometimes on hot summer afternoons to cool off. They’d sat side by side, dangling their bare feet in the shallow water, forever hurrying on to wherever, and they’d talked about things Coralee hadn’t seemed interested in, like boys and school and where that creek was headed, anyway, sweeping whole legions of trout and other fish right along with it.
She smiled at that memory.
Estelle was due to return to work the next morning.
Maybe she would remember something about Bliss.
Estelle had always known everything about everybody for miles around, since she’d been born and raised in Painted Pony Creek.
Finally realizing where she was going, Madison walked faster, following the creek as it twisted and turned among the trees and various bushes.
She picked a handful of blackberries along the way, and nibbled at them as she made her way in the direction Bliss had pointed toward one long-ago day, indicating where the camper was but at the same time making it very clear that Madison ought to stay away from that place, because it might be bad news if her dad happened to be around when she got there.
The recollection of that warning sent an icy shiver trickling down Madison’s spine, though she wasn’t afraid, not in the least. She was a grown woman now, not a child, and she could protect herself if the need arose.
Probably.
It wasn’t as if she knew kung fu or anything, but still. She wasn’t in the habit of backing down easily.
When she reached the clearing, she spotted what remained of an ancient camper, lying on one side under a huge oak tree capped with lusciously green chattering leaves.
A crow squawked somewhere nearby.
Madison moved closer to the wreck, noting the metal peeling from the parts of it that were still visible. The thing was so rusted that it seemed a hard wind would reduce it to particles, floating like dust motes in the bright sunshine of a July afternoon.
It was well on its way to dissolution already, collapsing to the ground as though it were melting.
She looked around carefully.
For what? Tire tracks? Footprints?
She didn’t know.
There was no sign that anyone had been near this relic in years.
Madison imagined the camper as Bliss must have known it, certainly nothing fancy but upright, at least, a place where people took shelter and slept and ate whatever passed for a meal.
Her heart cramped painfully at the thought of how it must have been for Bliss, only eight years old and existing—make that surviving —in what amounted to an oversized breadbox.
Truthfully, a garden shed probably would have been more comfortable and offered better shelter.
Madison decided she had seen enough, at least for now.
She wasn’t about to climb inside that twisted mess in search of clues, like some Nancy Drew wannabe. After all this time, there wouldn’t be any.
There were probably spiders, though, and mice, too. And God knew what else.
No, she’d approach this dilemma the right way.
Cautiously. Sensibly.
As soon as time allowed, she’d pay a visit to the sheriff’s office in town. The municipal police department, too.
Maybe Eli Garrett or Melba Summers would be able to find something in their records. A visit to the town library was in order, too. She would look for old newspaper articles, written in the days when the internet was in its relative infancy.
Bliss , she thought, I’m still your friend. I let you down before, but I’ll find out what became of you if it takes the rest of my life.
Why was she undertaking what was probably an impossible task? Madison asked herself that as she made her way back toward Bettencourt Hall.
It was entirely possible that Bliss was dead.
Even likely—especially if she’d been kidnapped by some pervert.
If she hadn’t been taken, then there was a definite chance that her no-account father had beaten her to death in a drunken rage, buried her someplace where she’d never be found. She’d certainly shown up for a few of their casual picnics with bruises on her upper arms, and once, a black eye.
She’d refused to tell Madison how she’d gotten the shiner—or the bruises—and any attempt to press for further information was met with stubborn silence.
Madison hadn’t really needed an answer, anyway.
She’d been sheltered, it was true, but not so sheltered that she didn’t know fathers and mothers sometimes hit their children—or worse.
By the time the house came in sight, Madison had set all these thoughts aside to simmer, like a batch of Estelle’s beef burgundy or special stew. Something would surface when the time was right.
In the meantime, she let the whole thing go.
Back inside the house, Madison showered again, washed her shoulder-length hair and blew it dry, and even applied a little lipstick, having decided she wasn’t hungry yet, and would prefer to wait and have supper after she came back from visiting Coralee.
Finally, wearing a pretty pink-and-white floral sundress and slip-on sandals, Madison locked up the house, climbed behind the wheel of the Bentley and started the engine.
She was mildly surprised, once again, that the car ran as well as it did.
Evidently, Coralee had seen that the vehicle received proper maintenance, right up until she’d had to be hospitalized. She hadn’t mentioned that during their frequent telephone chats—Coralee on a landline, Madison on her cell—but there were probably a great many things the old woman had left unsaid.
Heaven knew that had always been her way, really. Especially when Madison was still a young girl, living at home.
Oh, Coralee hadn’t clammed up completely, thank heaven. She’d answered Madison’s questions about her dead mother and father, and shown her numerous photo albums, but she’d never actually shared anything at random, the way most people would have done.
There had been no funny anecdotes, or sad ones, either.
Coralee had never been the sentimental type.
And she’d always been far more interested in adults than children.
In those days, she’d held what she referred to as “salons” in the main parlor, hosted bridge tournaments in the home library, thrown glittering dinner parties in the elegant dining room, which looked, even now, like it belonged in a Greek palace.
It even had pillars.
Estelle had worn a uniform and served refreshments at such events, while Madison, spellbound, spied on the proceedings from various hiding places, like the alcove behind one of the bookcases in the library.
Funny.
Funny peculiar, not funny laugh-out-loud.
She hadn’t thought about that secret room in years. Back in the day, it had been the place she went to cry, scribble in her journal, or simply hide, not because she was in any danger, but because she wanted to be alone with her thoughts.
By now, she reflected, driving through the dusk out of Painted Pony Creek and onto the road to Silver Hills, her secret chamber, as she’d liked to think of it then, was probably full of dust, cobwebs and mouse droppings.
She’d take a look tomorrow, maybe do a little scrubbing and sweeping.
Had she ever told Bliss about that hideaway?
Probably, though she knew for sure she’d never been able to persuade the other girl to come anywhere near the main house. She’d seemed almost afraid of the place, as though it were somehow alive and might gobble her up.
Ridiculous, of course.
Bettencourt Hall was old, even getting crumbly in places, but it definitely wasn’t scary. It was benign, through and through, and Madison had always felt safe there, secret spy space aside.
Way back when she’d first arrived at boarding school, Madison had been deeply, wretchedly homesick—not for Coralee, or even for the kindly Estelle, but for the house itself.
Every time she stepped through the front door, it was as though all those stately rooms had somehow coalesced into a living being, eager to embrace her and make her feel welcome.
It was indeed a special house.
And with every day that passed, Madison was less willing to leave it for her lovely condo in Boca Raton, or for anyplace else.
That old mansion was more than a house.
Even more than a home.
It was a sanctuary, a place to hide and to heal.