Pull Of The Moon

How could Edmund Meadows have let his niece talk him into this folly? “I wish you’d talked to me.”

“Why? So you could tell me I was a doddering old fool?”

“She’ll hurt you. Like all the others.” Nick had gotten good at sniffing out frauds. He knew this woman’s type. The kick in the gut he’d gotten when he’d seen her outside determined to get in only proved she was nothing more than another opportunist.

He jerked his chin at the photo beneath Rita’s hand. She’d be embarrassed if he told her he knew about her nightly supplications with God in the tower room. But if he told her, then he’d have to admit his own guilt, and he couldn’t bear the look of disappointment in her eyes. “She looks just like the picture.”

Rita’s gaze went wide and a little desperate. Her hands flattened over the photo, covering it completely. “She works for the station.”

“This pretender’s good. I’ll give her that.” Patient and resourceful. Hitting just the right notes to instantly win Rita’s confidence. The worst kind of con artist. He should know; that same blood ran through his veins. “She could’ve been using her job to dig deeper into your past.”

“You’re reaching, Nicolas.” Rita searched through the Notes section of her red leather agenda and tapped a paragraph on the page. “Valerie Zea has worked at WMOD for six-and-a-half years. She started as an intern right after college and has moved up to coordinating producer. She took a year off after her father died, but came back. Last year she won an Emmy for a segment she produced on a private investigator who specializes in missing children. Simon Higgins, the executive producer, tells me she’s the best person for the job.”

Was Higgins in on this farce? What would he gain by it? Time to run some background checks and stop this before the situation got out of control. “I’m trying to protect you from another fraud.”

“I understand.” Rita glanced at her notes. “She’s requested access to the archives for research, and I’ve agreed to let her sort through my collection.”

A growl formed at the base of Nick’s throat, but he swallowed it back. “You’re inviting trouble, and you hired me to keep you out of trouble.”

“You do your job well, Nicolas. This time, though, you’re wrong.”

“Rita—”

Rita closed her agenda with a snap. “She’ll want to interview you and Holly, as well.”

Something in Nick froze. “No, that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to put my mother through public humiliation again.”

Rita’s lips quivered into a tremulous smile. “It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary. I have to do something. Someone knows where my baby is. I just want to bring her home.”

And like that, a mountain of shame swamped him. Rita had exhausted every possible avenue to find Valentina—the police, private detectives, offering exorbitant rewards for information and promising no questions asked if only her daughter was returned. She’d followed every lead, no matter how thin. Once, on another anniversary, she’d even admitted she’d take a body just to know for sure what had happened to her precious daughter.

“Rita,” he started, but had no idea what to say to ease her grief and make her see that her desperation would only add to her pain.

Her pale blue eyes turned to him. “I know you think I’m a fool, but I don’t care. I know Valentina is alive.” She banged her chest with a fist. “I can feel her in my heart.”

How could he argue with that? Which didn’t mean he had to set her free with the wolves. “Okay, but I’m not leaving you alone with her.”

Rita stood, tucked her agenda against her chest, blood-red against her ice-blue blouse. “Don’t you have a meeting with Emma Hanley and Carter Stokke about the Valentina Pond project?”

Another scam as far as he was concerned, but Rita’s friend, Emma, had made a killing on Phase One, and Rita thought that, if she got in on Phase Two, it would add value to the acreage she owned on the back side of the pond. So he’d run the numbers for her and give her the black-and-white proof of his initial gut feeling. “It’ll wait. You’re more important.”

She rounded her desk and squeezed him into a quick hug. “Thank you, Nicolas, for indulging me.”

Stepping back, he nodded. She was no more than a small and fragile bird in his arms. “I’ll go get her. We’ll meet you in the library.”

Nick’s steps ate up the Oriental runner lining the hallway. Cripes, he didn’t need this.

Loyalty to Rita as much as love for this place kept him rooted at Moongate. Though he was raised at the mansion, he didn’t mistake himself for something he wasn’t. And although Rita treated him like a son, he was ultra-aware he wasn’t family. He was CEO of Meadows Investments. Nothing more. He understood that his value here was in his achievements. Which was why he’d worked at building an identity for himself outside the mansion walls with the soccer and the tutoring and the carpentry. Yet he was determined not to let Rita down, to prove she could count on him to watch out for her best interests—just as she’d once watched over him and his mother when they were helpless.

Mostly, he needed to prove that his will was stronger than the tainted blood that ran through his veins.

He wouldn’t let anyone con Rita out of a single penny. He knew all the tricks. After all, he’d learned from a master.

No pseudo-Valentina with dreams of easy riches was going to get the best of him, no matter how realistic her mask.

Chapter Two

Valerie waited, as ordered, in the foyer. Not because she was afraid of Nicolas Galloway, even though his dark look and sharp bite were enough to intimidate anyone, but because there was no point in stirring up trouble until she absolutely needed to.

Save your spit for the important stuff, kiddo, Higgins had told her early in her career. Learn to pick your fights.

She was expected at Moongate. After all, Rita Meadows had requested the interview. She would allow Valerie to do her job.

The station could always send someone else, Valerie supposed. Bailey, for example. But there wasn’t enough time. Not if the package was going to air in time for the anniversary as Ms. Meadows wanted. And in a time crunch, Valerie could get things done that would send Bailey in a tizzy.

Valerie glanced at her watch, then sipped the last cold drop of the French vanilla coffee, clinging to her otherwise empty cup, and wished for more. Her restless feet paced the foyer, and her gaze speared into the hall, anticipating Nicolas Galloway’s return.

The slow bong of a grandfather clock reverberated from somewhere far inside and echoed in the chambers of her head. The baneful peal shot her back to the middle of the night when she’d woken up a prisoner in her tangled sheets, bitter terror clinging to her skin along with the sweat. She had an overpowering urge to rub the hairs writhing on the back of her neck, to run.

It’s just a house. And she wasn’t stressed. Tired because of the early flight, maybe, but not stressed. So there was no reason for her to think of the dream.

But the hall boring into the dark heart of the house had the cold breath of a mausoleum. The smell of dusty funeral roses drifting from it plucked at her memory. “One too many creepy black-and-white movie, Valerie.”

She toyed with the empty coffee cup, looking for a place to dispose of it. What was taking Nicolas Galloway so long? How long did it take to say, Hey, the person you’re expecting is here?

Faraway giggles echoed somewhere over her shoulder. Well, it was about time. Valerie turned toward the stairs and the foyer shifted before her, setting off a jerky projector-like run of memories she had no right to own.

As if the outside fog had crept inside, the edges of the room blurred. The cream paint on the walls darkened to caramel. A cut glass vase filled with pumpkin-colored mums appeared on the small marble-topped table. A gilded mirror reflected the bouquet, making it pop. A red kick ball sailed in from the open front door, bounced with a wet thwack on the polished pine floor and right into the vase, knocking it to the floor. Water, broken flowers and jagged pieces of glass spread over the floor like some sort of modern art mosaic. Two sets of children’s hands reached for the shards.

“It’s okay. Here. Nobody’ll know.”

One pulled open the drawer of the decorative table and hid the broken glass inside. The other gathered the flowers.

“Shh, don’t tell.”

Valerie shook her head and the smoky scene vanished. The table and mirror were still there, but the bouquet and vase were gone. She looked down at her coffee cup. “Wow, that was some potent stuff.”

Before she could stop herself, she stepped to the table and opened the drawer. Empty. “What, you expected to find broken glass?”

With a half laugh that rebounded against the ceiling of the foyer, she closed the drawer. She stopped midslide when the chandelier’s light caught the glint of something shiny trapped in the seams.

She ran a finger along the inside edge and gasped an “Ouch” when something pricked her skin. On the tip of her index finger stood a splinter of clear glass. She drew it out and sucked on the bead of blood left behind.

Doesn’t mean anything, she told herself. Could be from anything—a mirror, a lightbulb or a glass. Pocketing the bloody splinter, she willed her racing heart to slow. She left her hand balled inside the pocket of her blazer to dampen its shaking.

“Obviously, you’ve had too much coffee.” She shouldn’t have stopped for that last large cup. Bad for her nerves. Bad for her heart. Hadn’t the doctor warned her just last month to cut back to stop the palpitations?

She’d probably read about the vase incident during her research and it had stuck in her mind. Wouldn’t be the first time. This feeling of déjà vu happened to her more often than she liked to admit. She’d read something, see a photograph, and then, once she got on location, she’d have that feeling of having been there before.

But never this real. A tight feeling coiled in her gut.

“Get a grip.” Nothing to get spooked about. One of her high school teachers had called this ability of hers to recall almost everything she’d ever seen eidetic memory and seemed fascinated by it. Of course, that was after he’d accused her of cheating on a test, and she’d had to prove to him that everything on the page had come straight from her brain and not Mark Peach’s paper.

Spinning away from the scene of the mirage, she forced herself to concentrate on the collection of Currier & Ives prints, showing off the same scene of a country lane and pond in four seasons. The house in the background looked remarkably like Moongate Mansion. Maybe she could use them as a montage to show the passage of time.

“That’s better.” Work was her salvation. When it came to work, her fate was in her hands, not in some monster’s from a dream. She could do this. She’d done it hundreds of times before. The only pressure on her was the one she was putting on herself. “Stick to the plan.”

Houses, according to a psychologist she’d once interviewed for a segment on dream analysis, were a metaphor for the human psyche. This one seemed rusted in time. Haunted almost, like a restless mind. Maybe that’s what Rita wanted by looking back into the past—a cure. If she understood what had happened to Valentina, then she could let go of her child and finally find peace.

The floor of the hall thundered, and Nicolas Galloway reappeared, long, determined strides making short work of the distance between them.

“About time,” she mumbled, tugging her blazer back in place with her free hand.

His expression remained frozen in the feral position, and instead of an apology, he barked, “Follow me.”

Sheesh, he didn’t even pause to see if she followed, just assumed she would. She was used to following directions, but unbending commands were another thing. And she’d had just about enough of going through an intermediary to get to her appointment. “I really need to speak with Ms. Meadows.”

“You’re in luck. You’re getting your wish.”

As she scrambled after Nick, the raspberry brambles on the hall wallpaper shifted as if rustled by a breeze. The smell of burned toast stung her nose. The scraping of a knife against dry bread scratched at her brain.

“It’ll be just fine. See?” A woman’s voice. “Now, which do you want, strawberry or blueberry preserve?”

Valerie stopped and peered into the dining room, set with Lenox china, Pairpoint crystal and silver-plated dinnerware.

“What are you doing?”

At the boom of Nick’s voice, the image vanished, leaving behind an empty table and chairs. Valerie swiveled her head to look at Nick frowning at her from the library entrance. At least this time she remembered where the flash of memory had come from—the photograph from Victorian Homes of a Thanksgiving dinner at Moongate the year before Valentina disappeared. “I thought I smelled toast burning.”

“Someone’s bringing tea.” He disappeared into the room.

Valerie hurried to catch up with him. Tea was good. Tea meant Rita Meadows would let her see the archives. Tea meant that Nicolas Galloway owed her an apology—not that she was holding her breath for one. And maybe it also meant food. Which made her think of Mike. He was going to be royally cranky that she was taking so long. A well-fed Mike was a happy Mike, and a happy Mike got her good footage. Payback from Mike, on the other hand, was never a good thing.

“Sit,” Nick ordered.

Arguing right now would be a waste of breath, so she chose a wing chair that gave her width and height, and deposited her portfolio and purse on the floor at her feet and the empty coffee cup on the side table. She didn’t play games, but she didn’t make easy prey, either.

Nick paced the marble hearth of the fireplace as if he was drawing up some sort of war plan, and she pulled back her shoulders readying her defenses.

“We need to set some ground rules,” he said. “One, you are not to wander unaccompanied on the grounds or in the house at any time. That goes for your friend with the camera outside, too. I’ve already sent someone to detain him.”

Detain Mike? Good luck to anyone who tried to separate Mike from his camera. “Ms. Meadows has already given her permission to shoot.”

“This is nevertheless Ms. Meadows’s private home and intrusion into her privacy will not be tolerated. We do not want a tabloid exposé that will exploit Ms. Meadows’s pain at the tragedy of her daughter’s kidnapping.”

What bug had crawled up his butt? “Look, you’ve made it clear you don’t want me here, but if you think you can intimidate me into leaving, you’re wrong.”

He rounded on her with High Noon intensity. “Right now, I’m cooperating, but don’t cross me, or you’ll regret the day you showed up on our doorstep.”

Jeez, Louise, what did he think she was going to do? Blow her career by ticking off the man who paid her salary? “An exposé is certainly not our intention. At his niece’s request, Mr. Meadows asked his executive producer to put together these segments on Valentina’s kidnapping. Mr. Meadows expects clean and true reporting any time his station airs a package. This will be no exception.”

“Ms. Meadows is the constant target of people who would prey on her pain for gain. There are certain facts we would rather not make public in order to protect the family from scam artists.”

Okay, she could see why he might be a tad touchy on the subject. Her task was to mollify him and wow him with her ability to present a fair and balanced portrait of the family’s misfortune. “I understand your point, Mr. Galloway. As I said, we’re not out to prey on Ms. Meadows. But she was the one who asked that we tell her daughter’s story with the hopes of bringing her home.”

“It’s been twenty-five years.” The statement sounded remarkably like a trick question.

“I understand. But finding the child’s…location would allow Ms. Meadows closure, don’t you think?”

His presence was an iceberg in a room too small to contain him, and she was uncomfortably aware of his proximity, of his stark and grim gaze—of his pain. Then, like the incidents in the foyer and the dining room, for a flash, his face wavered. A play of light and shadows had her chest heaving with a sweet ache of longing and her arms yearning to loop themselves around his neck.

A chill pierced her skin, raised a crop of goose bumps. Her fingers clawed around the arms of the chair to keep herself from slipping into the unwanted fog once again. Her breath hitched in her throat and a pang of loss nearly swallowed her. How could that be? She shook her head and, when her gaze reconnected with his, the same un-yielding glower glared back at her.

Nicolas Galloway was no friend.

Yet his eyes stirred dark echoes of her recurring dream and spiked her blood with unease. Why?

“Are you okay?” he asked, frowning.

“Too much coffee.” She flashed him a smile that, to her horror, wobbled.

With a sudden jolt as if she’d hit him, he turned his back on her and resumed his pacing. “Two, we’ll need approval over the final product.”

Valerie shot to her feet. With the amount of blood, sweat and tears she spilled to write, shoot and edit a package, there was no way she was going to let him mess with her baby. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“We have to be sure you haven’t inadvertently leaked privileged information.”

She had the station owner and the interview subject on her side. Why was she letting him get under her skin? She forced a smile. “Well, then, you’ll have to take that up with the executive producer. Keep in mind that I do have a tight production schedule to adhere to if Ms. Meadows’s story is to air in time for the kidnapping’s anniversary.”

Wrong tactic, of course. She knew that the second she uttered the words. Keeping the package off the air was exactly what Nicolas Galloway wanted.

“That, of course, is your problem.” Nick’s pacing came to an abrupt halt and his gaze fixed on the doorway.

Rita Meadows paused at the entrance to the door, holding on to the door frame as if she were dizzy. There was a lot of that going on today. Someone needed to check the furnace and see if the carbon monoxide level was okay.

Rita’s recovery was quick. She pasted a work-the-room smile on her sculpted face, extended a hand and welcomed Valerie with the practiced ease of someone used to dealing with people. “You must be Valerie. Mr. Higgins speaks highly of you.”

“As he does of you.” Rita’s hand was cold and brittle in Valerie’s and a wave of sympathy made Valerie squeeze warmth into her grip.

Close-up, even with her understated makeup, Rita looked hollow-eyed, a little too thin, a little too pale. Her hair, the color of expensive champagne, was twisted ele-gantly at her nape, giving her a fragile kind of beauty that seemed somehow tragic to Valerie.

Nick rushed to Rita’s side, cupped her elbow and led her to the sofa, where he stood beside her on guard like the pit bull of his reputation. Stray out of line, get too personal, his cutting expression said, and I’ll rip you to shreds.

Aye, aye. Message received, she telegraphed back, and his frown deepened.

She could see why some women might fall for him. The primitive quality he exuded told a woman that, as long as he was there, she would be safe from predators. For many—her friend Sheree among them—that promise of savage protection was the fodder of dreams. Personally, Valerie already had too much overprotection in her life. The last thing she needed was to add a man’s shadow to the one already stalking her.

Rita looked up at Nick, touched his arm. “Is Holly bringing tea?”

Nick gave a sharp nod, but his quick eye shift toward the door betrayed his uncertainty. He wasn’t going to leave to check on tea when there was an intruder sitting in his employer’s library waiting to pounce on her.

Chill, she wanted to say. I don’t bite.

“I know you must be tired from the flight,” Rita said to Valerie, “so I won’t keep you long.”

“I just wanted to introduce myself and set up a convenient time to go over your archives. I have another interview on Thursday, but I’d like to tape yours on Friday.”

“You may come by to look at the archives at any time.”

“Eleven.” The sharpness of Nick’s voice coated the air with rime. “It’s the only time I have available.”

“I’ll be here, Nicolas,” Rita said. “I can walk her through my collection.”

His jaw tightened and antagonism bristled from him, but he didn’t say a thing. What was it costing him to keep silent? She was starting to understand just how much Rita Meadows meant to him, how far he’d go to protect her. How could Valerie reassure this many-times-bitten pit bull she meant no harm?

“Eleven will be fine.” Valerie injected light and air into her voice. “My photographer will also need access to Valentina’s room and the living room, as well as the grounds.”

“Yes, of course,” Rita said.

“We’ll keep our visit as short as possible.”

“Take all the time you need. I want Valentina’s story retold in all its details. You never know what will trigger someone’s memory.”

As Rita explained what she wanted to accomplish by airing Valentina’s story, Nick stared at Valerie until the room was sucked dry of air and her head grew light.

“Nick! Nick! Watch me!” A splash of water.

“I have better things to do than watch a baby play.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“Are, too.”

“Well, forget it, then. I’m not telling you my secret.”

A lakeside gazebo with green-and-white striped awnings. Green water. Green trees. Eye-hurting blue sky. Valerie remembered seeing a picture of Nick and Valentina sipping lemonade at Rita’s feet on a dock. Why was that picture coming back to her now?

“May I ask you a personal question?” Rita asked Valerie, changing subjects.

“Sure.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be thirty next May.” By then she’d planned on being in New York, working as a producer for a major network in the news division—at least according to the life plan she’d drawn up when she was eighteen. Come to think of it, she’d only checked one item off that long list. “That probably sounds as if I don’t have much experience—”

“Oh, no, dear, I don’t doubt your qualifications. How tall are you?”

Wow, where was this coming from? And what did it have to do with her ability to shoot an interview? “Five-four. ” With three-inch heels. “My mother’s short. That’s where I get it. The shortness, I mean.” Oh, good, now she was babbling. Definitely time to get solid food in her.

Rita’s face crumpled. Her body curled into itself and spasmed in time to a coughing fit. The red agenda she clutched in her lap fell to the ground, spilling its contents. A photograph fluttered and landed upside down at Valerie’s feet.

“Rita?” Moving with speed and athletic grace, Nick knelt at his employer’s side, a glass of water in hand. “Here.”

Rita sipped the water Nick offered her, but the coughing only worsened. Nick gently stood her up.

Not knowing what to do to help Rita, Valerie picked up the agenda and put the pages back in place.

“Stay here,” Nick ordered, glaring at her, then escorted Rita out of the library.

Valerie picked up the photograph, turned it over and gasped. The hairstyle was wrong, and the smile was too stiff, but otherwise, the picture could be hers. “What in the world?”

Why did Rita have her picture? And why didn’t she remember posing for it? What kind of twilight zone had she walked into?

After ten minutes of waiting for Nick’s return, questions running laps in her mind as she studied the photograph from Rita’s agenda, the coffee Valerie had had on the car ride up was putting pressure on her bladder. The tinkling of water in the brass tranquility fountain on an accent table didn’t help.