The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes Read online

  And if she did, Dee could save them all a lot of time and grief and just rip her eyes out and feed them to her on a plate.

  ‘Let me give you a ride down there,’ Danny suggested. ‘It’ll be faster’

  That took the starch out of her. He was trying to protect her, to help her, and it hurt. Because for the first time in her life, that was what she wanted.

  So he could take her to Xan, whom he’d seen.

  ‘Dee? Honey, you okay?’

  Dee just nodded, her eyes closed. God, how could she smell him over the overwhelming scent of wisteria and lilac? She did, though, a bracing hint of wind and the sea in this claustrophobic little garden. That awful temptation of freedom and flight. He still had her by the arm, but his hold was gentle. It made Dee want to cry all over again.

  ‘Before we go,’ he was saying, ‘I really need to know something.’ Dee didn’t move. Danny hesitated. ‘Last night…’

  Oh, no. Not last night. Not when she had to fortify herself for Xan.

  ‘Did I hurt you?’

  Dee’s eyes snapped open. ‘What?’

  His eyes were soft and uncertain. Vulnerable. As if he’d thought what had happened had been somehow his fault.

  ‘You’re the bravest woman I know,’ he said. ‘Good God, Dee, you’ve raised your sisters alone since you were sixteen. I just couldn’t imagine you running unless I’d done something terrible. I wanted to follow you, but… I stood outside your house for hours. I saw your sister’s friend show up and almost knocked then…’

  Well, this certainly was the end. Dee was as lost as a romance heroine. How could she not love Danny James?

  ‘Oh, Danny,’ she said, unable to resist the urge to cup that strong face in her hand. ‘How could you think you could ever hurt anybody?’

  ‘Then you…’

  The wind caught the flowers and sent some of them spinning, a shower of purple and magenta that rained around them like fireworks. ‘The problem is mine,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. I would never want to make you feel responsible.’

  ‘You promise.’

  Tears she allowed for no one pooled in her eyes. ‘On my honor. And the girls can tell you I’m tough on that kind of stuff.’

  He took her hand in both of his and raised it for a kiss. ‘I’ve never met anybody like you, Deirdre Dolores O’Brien.’

  He’d met Xan. Dee came so close to asking him if she was more. More beautiful, more compelling, more everything a good man wanted.

  ‘You sure you want to go see her?’ he asked, again echoing her thoughts.

  ‘Yeah. But I have a question for you first.’ She found herself holding tight to those work-roughened hands, really afraid now. ‘Who was she?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  Had the wind died? It sounded so suddenly still, as if breath were being held.

  ‘How would you describe her? Sophia Loren? Susan Sarandon?’

  He considered, her hand still captive. ‘Delilah.’ And Dee had thought she’d lost the capacity for surprise. ‘Delilah?’

  He grinned. ‘I see what you mean about how she gets people to do what she wants. But there’s something… sad about her. Empty, I guess.’

  Dee couldn’t move. She couldn’t look away from him. How do you answer a statement like that? He was wrong, of course. Xan wasn’t sad. She was evil. But she was empty. Just a shell fabricated from manipulation and cupidity.

  ‘Do you trust me?’ she asked.

  It was his turn to reach out, running his fingers down her cheek. ‘Yeah, oddly enough. I seem to have a taste for sharp-tongued shrews.’

  Dee stiffened, until she saw that sly gleam in his eyes. ‘Nobody’s called me that and lived to tell the tale, mister’

  ‘But I like sharp-tongued shrews. Or weren’t you listening?’

  She wasn’t breathing. The wind must have risen, because she swore she had dust in her eyes. And the dust carried that brief, bright sight of Danny James smiling at her. At her. She ached to live that moment, even knowing that by facing off with Xan she was probably tossing out her last chance for it.

  There will be disaster.

  She hadn’t hurt this hard since she’d shoved her sisters onto a bus at three a.m. and made off with them and her mother’s jewels.

  ‘Well,’ she said, as if it were all a game, ‘this sharp-tongued shrew needs to see her aunt. You wanna come?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be anywhere else.’

  Dee climbed on the bike, much easier in jeans and sweater, and wrapped her arms around Danny. Beyond the trees, the sky had gone sulky again, and the burgeoning foliage hung limp. The air was thick as molasses, with that faint promise of lightning and rain. A storm, huh? She’d sure give Xan a storm.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Danny said five minutes later as they stood with Verna on the porch of the Light-horse. ‘She was in room 2A this morning. I know.’

  ‘No, dear,’ the little woman protested. ‘We’ve had that room closed for redecoration. You’re sure it wasn’t a dream?’

  ‘No. She was wearing a white dress, and…’

  White. Ah, Xan, such delusions. Dee grabbed Danny by the arm and steered him for the steps. ‘Jet lag,’ she said brightly. ‘Thanks, Verna.’

  Danny turned on her. ‘But I saw her.’

  ‘I know you did. Now, we’re going to find out where she’s gone to ground and take her out before she wreaks havoc.’

  Two feet from his bike, he stopped and turned on her. ‘Dee, she’s only a woman. Just let her go. I mean, what can she really do to you?’

  Dee looked up at that dear, honest face and struggled again with the truth. She had no choice, now. She had to at least try to make him understand, no matter that it would send him screaming for the hills by sundown. Oh, well, he would have run screaming eventually anyway. Why not get it over with?

  ‘No, Danny,’ she said, holding on to his hand. ‘She’s not only a woman. She’s far more powerful than that.’

  ‘Now, Dee…’ He was already trying to turn away. She couldn’t let him. Not anymore.

  ‘She killed my parents, Danny’

  He froze. ‘You said they died of hypothermia.’

  ‘I lied.’ She shook her head, so frustrated with what she knew, what she realized he wouldn’t want to hear. Hell, Mare didn’t want to hear it. ‘The official report was hypothermia. It matched the findings. Cold. They were so cold…’ Like wax dolls tossed aside by an impatient child. She thought she’d never get warm again after holding her mother. ‘I found Xan bent over them and I screamed and everybody came running, but there was nothing they could do. She convinced the authorities that she’d been trying to save them, but I know better. I don’t know how she did it, but she…’ Dee laughed, knowing perfectly well how outrageous her words sounded. Even so, she straightened and faced Danny. ‘Somehow I think she sucked the life out of them.’

  ‘You can’t believe that.’

  ‘And now she’s come after us.’

  Danny stiffened like an outraged minister. ‘Now, Dee…’

  There was nothing for it. She had to show him. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’re going someplace to really talk.’

  She directed him to a nondescript field at the north edge of town, where Old Church Street crossed a vague path that had once been an Indian track. Weeds littered the vacant lot nobody liked to use, and a straggly cottonwood struggled to leaf. The sky seemed darker of a sudden, the clouds full-bellied and the breeze fetid. Dee hated this place. She walked Danny straight up to it and stood him in the center, right where the paths crossed.

  ‘What?’ he asked, looking around. ‘Is she here?’

  ‘What do you hear?’ she asked, standing carefully away.

  Danny shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. He opened his mouth. He shook his head as if to clear it.

  ‘Screams.’

  He tried to walk away, but Dee grabbed him. ‘What else?’

  ‘This is-’

  ‘What else, Danny?’

  ‘J