The Man Behind The Mask: How to Melt a Frozen Heart / The Man Behind the Pinstripes / Falling for Mr Mysterious

What had Luke done now? She was acutely aware of having failed in her responsibility to her nephew by going into the corral by herself tonight. Now every protective instinct rose in her.

“Nobody swindled me,” Deedee said plaintively. “She sent me energy for Charlie.”

“For a price,” Brendan added softly.

Nora knew she had not sent anyone any energy. And certainly not for a price! But Luke was squirming so uncomfortably she wanted to hit him with her elbow to make him stop drawing attention to himself.

Because no matter what he had done, Luke was no match for Brendan Grant. Not in any way. Not physically, nor could her poor orphaned nephew bear up under the anger that sparked in the man’s eyes.

Taking a deep breath, she said brightly. “Oh, I remember now. Charlie.”

Luke cast her a glance loaded with gratitude and relief, and she might have allowed herself to relish that, especially coupled with the fact he had taken up a coat rack in her defense. Moments when her nephew actually seemed to like her were rare, after all.

But Brendan Grant looked hard and skeptical, and she needed to stay focused on the immediate threat of that.

She put together the few clues she had. One of her gifts was an acute ability to focus on detail. Brendan and Deedee had arrived in the middle of the night. From what she could see of the cat, he was ill, the lateness of the hour suggested desperately so.

“Charlie’s been sick, right?” she said.

“That’s right!” Deedee said eagerly.

Brendan’s expression just became more grim.

“You said you’d send him energy,” Deedee reminded her. “You said to send money. I sent fifty dollars.”

“Fifty dollars?” Brendan snapped. “Deedee! You said you sent a little money.”

“In terms of what my cat is worth to me, that is a small amount.” The woman gave him a look that was equal parts sulk and steel.

“So there you have it,” Brendan said to Nora, exasperated. “If you play your cards right, she’ll sign over her house to you. You won’t need the support of the Hansen Community Betterment Committee. Is that how this operation of yours works?”

“Of course not!” Nora said, feeling the heat rising in her cheeks. “I’m sure it was just a mistake. I must have thought the money was a donation.”

She tried to keep her voice steady, but was not sure she succeeded.

“Uh-huh.” He sounded cynical, and rightfully so.

Nora wanted to whirl on Luke and shake him. She had never even raised her voice to him, but their whole future was at stake here. And worse, if he had sent that letter, and taken that money—and who else could it possibly be?—he had stolen from a vulnerable old woman. How could he? Who was he becoming? And why couldn’t she stop it?

Again she felt the weight of responsibility for her choices. Karen would have never entrusted her to raise her nephew alone. She would have been able to predict this catastrophe coming.

With great care, Nora kept herself from looking askance at her nephew.

“Let’s get in out of the rain,” she suggested, trying to keep her voice steady. Because he had given her his jacket, the rain had soaked through Brendan’s shirt, which was now practically transparent.

She was aware she didn’t really want Brendan Grant, with his bristling masculine energy and wet, clinging shirt, invading her house. She’d been here only a little while, but it had quickly become a sanctuary to her. On the other hand, she desperately needed to buy some time, to take Luke aside and figure out what he had done.

And fix it.

Yet again.

But a glance at the unyielding features of the man who had made her feel momentarily so safe told her this might not be so easy to fix.

The house was not what Brendan expected of a charlatan’s house. There were no crystals dangling in the door wells and no clusters of herbs hanging upside down from their stems. There was no cloying scent of incense.

“Lovely,” Deedee breathed with approval, standing in the doorway, taking it in.

“Disappointing,” Brendan said.

In fact, he found the house was cozy and clean. An uneasiness crawled along his neck as they passed through a living room where a pair of love seats the color of melted butter faced each other across a coffee table where some of those yellow roses from the yard floated in a clear glass bowl.

“Disappointing?” Nora asked.

“No black cat. No cauldron on the hearth.”

Nora shot him a look. She really was the cutest little thing. Again he had that feeling of coming awake. He didn’t want to notice her, but how could he not? Her hair was a mess, standing straight up, strawberry-blonde dandelion fluff. Her eyes were huge in a dainty mudstreaked face. She looked more frightened now than when he had first found her.

The scam revealed. But her shock seemed genuine, and so did her distress.

“Look,” Nora said in a defensive undertone, “I take in sick and abandoned animals. I don’t claim to be a healer.”

Her nephew snorted at that, and she shot him a glare that he was completely oblivious to.

Deedee, deaf anyway, hadn’t even heard.

“As for black cats and cauldrons, I certainly don’t do witchcraft!”

Her muddy, soaked clothes, and his jacket, swam around her, and he guessed she would be determined not to remove her coat and reveal the pajamas underneath.

He wasn’t sure why. The pajama bottoms, which he could see, were filthy, but underneath the mud they were plaid. Utilitarian rather than sexy.

They came to the kitchen, and Nora turned on a light to reveal old cabinets painted that same cheerful shade of yellow as her sofas and roses. The floor was old hardwood planking that gleamed with patina. He smelled fresh bread.

There was a jar full of cookies on the counter, and notes and pictures were held by magnets to the front of a vintage fridge. There was a wood-burning stove in one corner, and an old, scarred oak table covered with schoolbooks.

The uneasiness returned. He thought of those wonders of granite and steel that people wanted for their kitchens these days, that he designed, and suddenly he knew what the uneasiness was. They somehow had all missed the mark.

For all the awards that decorated the walls of his office, he had never achieved this. A feeling.

He shook it off, looked back at Nora. The caption under her high school yearbook picture had probably read “Least likely to bamboozle an old woman out of her money.”

But somebody had. The nephew? The kid practically had a neon sign over his head that flashed Guilty, but on the other hand, didn’t all kids that age look like that? Slinky and defensive and as if they had just finished committing a crime?

What surprised Brendan was that he was interested at all in who did it. And if it was her nephew, to what lengths she would go to protect him.

But that’s what happened when you came alive. Life, the interactions of people, their relationships and motivations interested you.

It was a wound waiting to happen, he warned himself.

“Put the cat there.” Nora pointed to a kitchen island, a marble top fastened to solid wooden legs, and he set the cat carrier down, surreptitiously checking the bottom for any dampness that might have transferred to the seat of his new car.

He knew it said something about the kind of person he was that he was relieved to find none.

“He’s been very sick,” Deedee said. “Just like I told you in the letter.”

“Maybe you could remind me what you wrote in your letter.”

In the light of the kitchen, Brendan could see a knob growing alarmingly on Nora’s forehead. She was wet and covered in mud.

And Brendan Grant was surprised there was a part of him that still knew the right thing to do. And was prepared to do it.

“The cat will have to wait,” he heard himself say firmly, in the tone of voice he used on the construction site when a carpenter was insisting something couldn’t be done the way he wanted it done.

And the people in the room reacted about the same way. Deedee swung her head and glared at him. Nora looked none too happy, either.

“I want to take a look at you,” he insisted. “If you don’t need a trip to the emergency ward, you certainly need a shower and a change of clothes before you check out the cat.”

“I can have a look at the cat first.”

So she wanted what he wanted. For this to be quick. Look at the cat. Tell them what they all already knew about Charlie’s prospects for a future. Of course, what they wanted parted ways at finding out who was guilty of taking money from Deedee, and what the consequences were going to be.

Still, handled properly, the whole drama could unfold and conclude in about two minutes, in and out.

Heavy on the out part. He wanted to head home and go back to bed.

His old life—that cave that was comforting in its lack of intensity, in its palette of grays—beckoned to him. But it seemed to him that nothing was going to go quite as he wanted.

Which he hated in and of itself. Because one thing Brendan Grant wanted, in a world that had already scorned his need for it, was control.

“You first, then the cat,” he told Nora.

Deedee, in typical fashion, appeared annoyed that her agenda was being moved to the back of the line. But Nora looked annoyed, too. It told him a lot about her when she folded her arms over his coat.

Independent. Possibly newly so. No one was going to tell her what to do. Brendan wondered again what the pajamas she was so determined to hide looked like.

“You already told me you aren’t a doctor,” Nora said.

“Doctor or not, a head injury is nothing to take lightly. They can be sneaky and deadly. It will just take me a minute to look at you.”

“I’m fine.”

“Deadly?” The boy got a panicky pinched look around his eyes. “Let him look at you!”

Nora, seeing his distress, surrendered, sinking onto a kitchen chair with ill grace.

“That was quite a hit to your head. Do you think you were knocked out?” Brendan moved close, brushed her hair away from the rapidly growing bump.

Every part of her seemed to be either wet or covered with mud. How was it her hair felt like silk?

“I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I asked,” he said mildly.

“I don’t think I was knocked out.” She offered this grumpily.

“But you can’t say for sure?”

She didn’t want to admit it, but Brendan could tell she didn’t remember, which was probably not a good sign.

Nora knew what date it was, her full name and her birthday. He noted that she was twenty-six, though she looked younger. He also noted, annoyed, that he was interested in her age.

And apparently her marital status. There was no ring on her finger, no signs—large shoes, men’s magazines, messes—that would indicate there was any male besides the boy in residence.

Brendan hated that he was awake enough to notice those things, to wonder at her history, what had brought her and her nephew to this remote corner of British Columbia.

Doing his best to detach, he asked more questions. She remembered what had happened right before she was knocked down and right after, though she did not remember precisely what had knocked her down. She could follow the movement of his finger with her eyes.

“You seem fine,” he finally decided, but he felt uneasy. A concussion really was nothing to fool around with.

“She is fine,” Deedee snapped. “Meanwhile, Charlie could be expiring.”

“I’ll just have a quick look at the cat,” Nora said.

“He’s lasted this long. I’m sure he can wait another five minutes. you need to go have a shower and put on something dry.”

“Are you always this bossy?”

He ignored her. “If you feel dizzy or if you vomit, or feel like you’re going to be sick, you need to tell me right away. Or Luke after I leave. You may have to get to the hospital yet tonight.”

She looked as if she was going to protest. And then she glanced down at herself, and surprised him by giving in without a fight.

“All right. Luke, come with me for a minute. You can see if you can find a shirt that will fit Mr. Grant. He’s soaked.”

That explained her easy acquiescence. She was going to go talk it over with the kid. They were going to get their stories straight and figure out who had done what.

Brendan already knew precisely what she was going to do. She had already started to set it up when she’d said the money had been taken by accident, mistaken for a donation. She was going to take the blame.

Personally, Brendan was strongly leaning toward the conclusion her nephew had done it. How could she possibly think that not letting him accept responsibility was going to do the boy any good?

“Brendan?”

He turned to Deedee, impatient. Was she really going to insist that cat come first again? She did love to have her own way, largely oblivious to the larger picture.

“I’m not feeling well,” she said.

He scanned her face. she loved to be the center of attention. But the fear he saw was real.

“My heart’s beating too fast,” she whispered.

He crossed the room and lifted her frail wrist. Her pulse was going crazy. She searched his face, ready to panic, and he forced himself to smile.

“Let’s make it a double header,” he said. “We’ll take you to the hospital and they can check out Nora at the same time.”

He cast Nora a look.

Her protest died on her lips as she read his face and then glanced at Deedee.

“You’re right,” she said. “I think I need to go to the hospital.”

CHAPTER FIVE

AT HIS AUNT’S declaration, panic twisted the boy’s features, but only for a second. He took in the situation in the room, his gaze lingering on Deedee. Brendan saw calm come to him, almost as if he had breathed in the truth.

“What about Charlie?” Deedee half whispered, half sobbed. “I can’t leave him! Not when he’s—”

The steadiness remained in the boy’s eyes as he looked to Brendan and then his aunt. “I got the cat,” he said, and Deedee relaxed noticeably, slumped against Brendan.

Ninety-two. Deedee could die right now. She could go before the cat. Life liked to put ironic little twists in the story line.

Becky, young and healthy, gone at twenty-six. To this day, it seemed impossible.

A week before she had died, she had said to him, out of the blue, “If I die first, I’ll come back and let you know I’m all right.”

“You won’t be all right,” he’d said, uncomfortable with the conversation, pragmatic to a fault. “You’ll be dead.”

So far, she hadn’t been back to let him know anything, even how to keep on living. So he’d been right. Dead was dead.

And he’d been prepared to deal with it tonight with Charlie. Not Deedee. Not on his watch. With a sense of urgency he was trying to disguise, and feeling somewhat like the ringmaster at a three-ring circus, Brendan pulled his cell phone from his pocket and herded all his charges back out the door into the rain.

“Can you get in the back with her?” he asked in an undertone. “Kick my seat if anything changes. You know how to monitor her pulse?”

Nora nodded and climbed in the backseat of the car with Deedee. Luke and the cat got in the front with Brendan. The car smelled of new leather and luxury. It screamed a man who had arrived.

The type of man who would never see anything in the slightly eccentric owner of a struggling animal shelter.

Not that she cared who found her attractive and who didn’t! Good grief! The lady beside her could be having a heart attack. This was not the time or place!

Starting the car, Brendan never lost focus. He tucked the phone under his ear. “Hansen Emergency? It’s Brendan Grant here. I’m on my way in. I have a ninetytwo-year-old woman who has a very fast pulse. No history of heart problems. No chest pain. I also have a young woman who has had a head injury. Who’s the doctor on call tonight? I know you’re not supposed to tell me, but I want to know.”

Nora took it all in. How his name had been recognized, how the name of the on-call doctor had been surrendered to him with a token protest only.

She took in his confidence as he dialed another number. “Greg? Sorry to wake you. Becky’s grandmother is not well.”

Becky? She’d thought it was his grandmother!

“Who’s Becky?” she asked Deedee.

“My granddaughter. Brendan’s her husband.”

Married. Why would that feel the way it did? Like some kind of loss? Why didn’t he wear a ring? Nora hated married men who didn’t wear rings. They were sneaky, they were looking for—

“She died,” Deedee said tiredly.

“I’m so sorry,” Nora said, and thought of what she was sure she had seen in his eyes when he’d first leaned over her. The common ground. Now she understood it. Sorrow.

“In a car accident,” Deedee went on. She was talking too loudly, the way people who are hard of hearing did. “Brendan doesn’t talk about her. I need someone to cry with sometimes. But he never will. He didn’t even cry at the funeral.”

It was said like an accusation, and so loudly the man in the front seat could not miss it. Nora watched his face in the light coming from the dash. He didn’t even flinch. It was as if he was cast in stone.

But she had seen the pain spilling into his eyes in that first unguarded moment when he had stood over her in the paddock.

“People all grieve in their own way,” Nora said, and saw him cast her a quick glance in the rearview mirror before he reached for his phone again. “And it seems to me maybe he’s there for you in other ways that are just as important.”

Not everyone would be chauffeuring an elderly woman and her sick cat around the country in the middle of the night!

“Of course, you’re right,” Deedee murmured, and leaned her head on Nora’s shoulder. Nora had her hand on the woman’s wrist and noticed, gratefully, the pulse was slowing to normal.

She listened to the deep gravel of Brendan’s voice as he spoke on the phone.

“And I have a head injury, too. I think mild concussion, but a confirmation would be good. See you there. We’re five minutes out.”

He clicked the phone shut and stepped on the gas. The night was wet and the roads had to be slippery, but he oozed calm confidence as he navigated the twisty, mist-shrouded road into Hansen. The powerful car responded as if it were a living thing.

The way a man handled a powerful car told you a lot about him. The way a man handled an emergency told you a lot as well. Not that they were tests, but had they been, Brendan Grant would have passed with flying colors.

His calm never flagged. Not on the wet roads, not as they pulled into Emergency, not as he helped his grandmother out of the back of the car. There were obviously benefits to being emotionally shut down.

“What about Charlie?” Deedee wailed again.

“I’ll stay with him,” Luke said. “Out here. I’m not going in there.”

Nora doubted that he was ever going to get over the thing he had about hospitals. He’d spent too much time in one while his mother was sick. He hated them now.

Brendan didn’t question why, just flipped a set of keys at Luke. “Her house is three blocks that way. The address is on the chain. I presume you have your cell phone with you and that your aunt has the number?”

“Why can’t I stay here?”

“Because if that cat pees in my car,” he said in a low tone that Deedee didn’t hear, “it really isn’t going to survive the night.”

Nora was appalled, but it was a guy thing, because Luke chuckled. Then he sobered. “You’re trusting me to go into her house?”

Brendan’s eyes locked on his. “Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”

Luke ducked his head and didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know how long we’ll be here. Get some rest. Let the cat out of that purse, near his litter box if you can locate it. If your aunt is released, you’re going to have to look after her for the rest of the night.”

Luke glanced at the address on the key chain. “I hope none of my friends see me with this dorky thing,” he muttered, but Nora did not miss the fact that he looked pleased—if somewhat guilty—about Brendan’s trust.

“I could drive him,” she said tentatively, “and come back. I really don’t need—”

Brendan gave her a look that was so don’tmess-with-me it made her stomach feel as if it was doing a free fall from ten thousand feet. She just didn’t have the energy to take him on.

In the hospital, she had that same sense that you could tell a lot about a man by the way he handled an emergency. Again he passed. He handled the nurse with confidence that was palatable, not the least intimidated by her officiousness. In fact, the exact opposite might have been true. He was obviously well-known in the community, and respected. The nurse treated Brendan as if he was part of that inner circle of the emergency ward.

Interestingly, Vance had been terrible at emergencies. He became so flustered if a badly injured animal was brought in that he could not inspire confidence in anyone. You would have thought with practice he would have gotten better, but he never did. He liked catering to the pudgy poodle set, doing routine checkups and giving shots, neutering, and cleaning teeth.

In fact, he’d opted for regular hours only and hired a young vet to handle the nighttime emergencies, and finally any emergency at all.

A few weeks ago, Nora had heard he was engaged to that young vet. Up until then she had nursed a secret fantasy that he was going to show up on her doorstep, confess the error of his ways and beg her to take him back.

She shook it off. For whatever the reason—she suspected because Brendan Grant made things happen—she found herself ushered into an examination room in record time.

In short order, a young doctor was in, a nurse at his side.

“How’s Mrs. Ashton?” Nora asked.

“Old,” he said with a resigned smile. “We’re going to keep her for observation. So, Brendan says a bump on the head? Maybe knocked out?”

“Maybe,” Nora admitted.

“How do you know Brendan?” he asked.

“It’s a long story.”

The doctor laughed. “That’s what he said. He designed our house and supervised the build. He’s an amazing architect.”

Great! In her weakened state, Nora just had to know Brendan Grant was an all-around phenomenal guy.

The doctor repeated some of the questions Brendan had asked her earlier, shone a light in her eye, got her to follow the movement of his finger.

“I should keep you for observation, too.”

“I can’t!” she said. “I have animals that will need feeding in—” her eyes flew to a nearby clock “—two hours.”

The doctor sighed. “He said you’d say that. I’m going to send you home, but with strict instructions what to watch for. And what to do for the next few hours. Any dizziness, any nausea, any loss of consciousness, you come right back in. I’ll give you a handout with symptoms you need to watch for over the next few days. Sometimes even weeks later symptoms can come up.”

After having the nurse go over the sheet with her, they let her go. Brendan was in the waiting room.

“You didn’t have to wait.”

“Uh-huh. How were you going to get home? And collect your nephew?”

“Taxi, I guess.”

“And would the taxi driver be watching you for signs of concussion?” Brendan held up duplicates of the instructions the doctor had given her.

The truth was she was glad she did not have to worry about a taxi right now, or how to find Luke. She was glad this man was in charge. And she might have a concussion, so it was okay to be weak. Just this once. Just for tonight.

The animals needed to be fed in a few hours.

She felt like weeping.

Brendan was watching her closely.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

But just as if he hadn’t heard her, he slipped his arm around her waist, and just as if she hadn’t claimed she was okay, she leaned heavily into him.