Bound By Passion: No Desire Denied / One More Kiss / Second-Chance Seduction

“Exactly.” Nell beamed a smile at her. “It will all boil down to a classic case of conflicting narratives. You deal with that in court every day. The thing is, they may have a more powerful claim on the jewels. Yet we’ve always believed that they were Eleanor’s dowry.”

“Well, the jury’s out on that one.”

“Agreed,” Nell said. “But wouldn’t the possibility make you just keep turning the pages to find out?”

Piper stared at her sister. “This isn’t some story you’re writing, Nell.”

“No.” But it was certainly a story she was thinking of writing. The twist would fit well in the book she was working on—an adult thriller with a romantic subplot.

There was a knock on the bedroom door and Duncan said, “You two ready in there?”

“Yes.” Piper rose and took Nell’s suitcase. “The only reason I’m letting you go is because Reid’s going with you. No one could be more devoted to protecting you than he is.”

True, Nell thought. Yet having a guardian angel along was going to make it difficult to find the necklace on her own without being protected by Reid. But that wasn’t her only problem. Difficulty number two was she wasn’t sure she wanted to be protected from Reid.

But that was an entirely different story line, one she wasn’t quite ready to share with her sister. She had to plot it out for herself first.

* * *

AN HOUR LATER, Reid found himself folded up like an accordion in the front seat of Nell’s sporty little Fiat as she shot it up a ramp onto the beltway that would take them out of D.C. Using the side-view mirror, he checked the cars behind them.

“You think he’ll try to follow us?” Nell asked.

“It’s a good possibility,” he said. “He’ll want to make sure you’re headed up to the castle.”

“That’s what your work is like, isn’t it? Coming up with all the possibilities?”

“Yes.”

“Writers have to do that, too. Except that we can choose one of the possibilities, and you have to deal with what you get. Like getting stuck with me and going up to the castle.”

“I wouldn’t call that getting stuck.” But he was definitely stuck big-time in her little car.

The seat was pushed back as far as it would go, but he still felt as if he’d been stuffed into a shoe box. And he was listening to Bach or Beethoven or Brahms on the radio. He’d never been able to keep those classical composers straight.

He had no one to blame but himself for the cramped conditions. Nell had made several arguments while they’d taken the short walk to where he’d illegally parked his sedan. That was something she hadn’t done when she was six. That summer she’d been willing and eager to do everything he told her.

First she’d demanded they take two cars. In separate vehicles, it would be less obvious that she’d acquired a bodyguard. He’d countered by pointing out that, once they got to the castle, his presence would be clear to anyone. Then she’d gone for the emotional appeal—she’d feel more comfortable if she had her own vehicle. After all, it had been the only steady companion she’d had for the past year when she’d toured the country teaching classes and promoting her book.

But if there was one thing he’d picked up on in the past two hours, it was that Nell was most interested in being a key player in recovering Eleanor’s necklace. Bottom line—she wanted her own car, because it would give her a certain amount of independence. It was that desire to operate independently that was going to make his job more challenging. His knees were bumping against the dashboard right now because he intended to indulge her need for independence on the less important issues so that he could successfully block it on the more important ones.

That had always been his strategy with the VP. Nell was going into a dangerous situation at the castle. She’d put on a cheery act for her sister, and she might have an overly optimistic view on how everything was going to work out, but he didn’t doubt for a moment that she had a clear outlook on the situation.

This couldn’t be easy for her. One minute she’d been signing her books and looking forward to spending another few days with her sister. The next, someone had tried to run down Piper, immediately followed by another written threat against her family.

“We’re going to find a way through this, Nell.”

“I know.”

The confidence in her tone had him looking at her. It occurred to him for the first time that her attitude might be fueled by more than her overly optimistic nature. “Do you have some idea about where the necklace is?”

“No.” She shifted to the center lane as traffic began to clog the right lane. “But I’ve been thinking about it ever since Adair found the first earring. There’s got to be a story behind the way Eleanor divided them up and hid them in different places.”

“You think she had a method to her madness?” he asked.

“Exactly. With characters, motivation is always key. One of Eleanor’s reasons for hiding the jewels had to be that she didn’t want to pass them on to members of her own family. That has to be why she didn’t hide them inside the castle. I think that once it was discovered that they were missing, the surviving children must have searched every inch of that place.”

“Yet Cam believes that whoever is behind this believed that either she hid the sapphires or some kind of clue in the library.”

“That’s a very logical theory,” Nell conceded. “If I were Eleanor, I’d want to leave behind something to point the way. Yet my sisters came upon the earrings without any clue at all.”

Reid shifted to study her a moment. “Do you have a theory about that?”

“It’s more of a story idea.”

“Tell me.”

She shot him a quick look. “Promise you won’t laugh.”

Intrigued now, he said, “I won’t. Cross my heart.”

“That’s what you always used to say to me whenever I got scared that summer we played together. All those days when it was your job to get me up to the cave in the cliff face so that I could wait around to be rescued, you’d say, “You’ll be safe, Nell. Cross my heart. Remember?”

Reid could hardly forget. Hands down, his brothers’ favorite game that summer had been pirates hunting for treasure—the treasure being Eleanor’s sapphires. Of course, any pirate had to kidnap and hold a fair damsel captive. After the first game, it had been Reid’s idea that Nell should have the permanent role of kidnapped damsel. It had been the only way to keep her off the cliff face and safe. “I never lied. And you’re stalling. Tell me your story idea.”

She passed a truck, shifted back into the right lane and said, “Okay. First, Eleanor wanted to leave proof behind that the jewels existed and had been in her possession. That’s why she wore them in the portrait. And she wanted the sapphires to eventually be discovered. She didn’t just throw them away. The two earrings were very carefully wrapped in leather pouches and hidden in places built to survive time and weather. So far the jewels have been found in the places we played as children—in the stone arch and the cave.”

“Correct.”

“So—and this is the ‘don’t laugh part.’ She hid each piece separately—so maybe she wanted them to be found now, and by my sisters and me.”

“You’re implying that she had some insight into the future.”

“Something like that.”

For a moment, Reid considered. “That idea might work very well for a children’s story.”

“But it’s not a possibility that a Secret Service agent would entertain.”

“No. We work in much more concrete scenarios.”

“Hypothetical or concrete, we’re both after the same thing,” Nell said, easing the car into the center lane again.

“With one important difference. You want to discover the story about the sapphires, why Eleanor hid them, figure out who they belong to and why someone else believes they have a claim on them. My goal is much simpler. I want to catch a would-be killer and write ‘the end’ on the story.”

She shot him a grin. “Works for me. And thanks for not laughing.” Then she turned her full attention back to negotiating her way through traffic.

By the time they’d cleared the D.C. area and had entered Pennsylvania, Reid became aware that he had a bigger problem than the cramp in his leg. He’d been trained to use all of his senses, and sitting in the tiny space with Nell, he’d found that he was definitely using all of them.