Stranger in the Moonlight

  Russell was thinking so hard that when the car in front of him suddenly stopped he had to slam on the brakes. When he did, the blue velvet box Travis had handed him yesterday slid forward.

  “Kim doesn’t want them,” Travis had said yesterday when he’d called Russ to his room. “Get rid of them.”

  Russell refrained from pointing out how much the rings cost. Nor did he snap that he wasn’t Travis’s servant. Russell knew this was brotherly bossiness and not business, so he shoved the box of rings under the seat of the Jeep, intending to give them to his mother to deal with.

  Russell turned down the road to the Old Mill. He’d found out—or his mother’s relatives had—that a descendant of James Hanleigh, Dr. Tristan Janes’s first illegitimate child, still lived in Janes Creek. “She’s a widow,” he was told, and he envisioned a gray-haired woman with a bun at the back of her neck. No wonder she couldn’t afford to renovate the old stone mill.

  Russell needed a place and time to sit and think. He knew that it was time to point his life in the right direction, and to do that, he had some difficult decisions to make.

  He parked the Jeep in front, wandered past the herb patch—a Tristan garden, he thought—and went toward the back. He hadn’t taken but a few steps when he heard a rumble that sounded like falling tile, then a half scream, as though someone had been injured.

  He ran toward the sound, through a doorway, and into a room that was missing part of the roof. But he saw nothing and no one, just a stream of sunlight showing dust motes.

  “Help?” came a small sound from above his head.

  He looked up to see a young woman hanging by her fingertips from a rotting piece of wood that ran along the top of the wall.

  “By all that’s holy,” Russell said under his breath as he ran forward to stand below her. “Do you have a ladder?”

  “On the other side,” she whispered.

  Russell ran toward the doorway into the next room, but then he heard the crack of the old wood and he knew she was going to fall. There was time to do only one thing: put himself directly beneath her. His body would cushion her fall.

  He leaped the few steps forward, his arms extended, and got to her just as the wood broke away. She hadn’t looked very big as she hung from the top of the wall, but when her body hit his, he staggered backward. His feet tripped over some loose boards, and he went down. The weight and the momentum of the two of them made him skid backward. He felt skin come off his back as he slid across the rubble. Pain ran through him and he grunted—but he didn’t let go of the woman he held. His arms were around her so tight it’s a wonder she didn’t break in half.

  When he stopped moving, dust billowed around them. Russell was on his back, the woman on top of him. To protect them from the dust and falling debris, he put his hands over her head, hiding her face in his chest, and he buried his face in her blonde curls. As the dust engulfed them, he inhaled the fragrance of her hair. And when it settled, he still lay there, holding her tightly.

  “I think it’s okay now,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

  “Yes, fine,” he said, his nose still in her hair.

  “Uh . . .” she said. “I think I can get up now.”

  Russell’s senses began to return to him enough that he managed to lift his head to look around, but he didn’t release his hold on her. She was a small thing and her body felt good on his.

  When she pushed against him, he reluctantly released her, and she rolled off to sit up beside him. Russell lay where he was and looked at her. Even with a streak of dirt on her face, she was extraordinarily pretty. Her dark blonde hair was short and rampant with soft curls, one of them hanging down over her left eye. Cornflower blue eyes, a little nose, and a mouth that turned up on the corners completed the picture.

  She made a swipe at the dirt on her face but only succeeded in smearing it.

  Russell pointed to the side of her right cheek. She pulled her shirtsleeve over her hand and wiped at it.

  “Did I get it?”

  “Not quite,” he said as he reached his hand out. He was still lying where he’d landed, but he raised a hand toward her face. “May I?”

  “Might as well. It’s not like we haven’t met.”

  Smiling at her joke, he cupped her chin—more than was necessary—and used his thumb to wipe away the smudge. When she was clean, he didn’t let go and for a moment their eyes locked.

  They might have stayed that way if a timber hadn’t fallen to the ground behind them. Instantly, Russell rolled to one side and put his body between hers and the falling wood. Her arms went around him and stayed there even after the dirt settled.

  “I think we better get out of here,” she said and again had to push him away.

  Russell pulled himself to a sitting position, his eyes on hers, and he was smiling. “Are you—?” He cut off at a gasp from her. She was holding out her hands and they had blood on them.

  In an instant she went from sweetly smiling to all-business. She put her hand on his shoulder and twisted her body to look behind him. “Your entire back is bloody.”

  When Russell just kept smiling at her, she grimaced. “Okay, hero, get up. We need to get you cleaned up.”

  She stood and Russell saw that even in her loose jeans and big shirt that covered a tee with MYRTLE BEACH written over the pocket, she was very nicely built. Nothing flashy, but trim and firm.

  She put out her hand to help him up, but when Russell moved, the pain in his back brought him back to reality. But with her big blue eyes on him he couldn’t let out the groan he was feeling.

  When she saw him wince, she slid her arm around his waist and helped him pick his way through the rubble on the floor, out the doorway, and into the courtyard and the sunlight. She guided him to sit down on the low stone wall. “Sit here and don’t move, got it?”

  “But—” he began.

  “I’ll be right back. I have to get my medical bag.”

  Russell’s face lit up. “You’re a Hanleigh.”

  Pausing, she smiled. “I am. At least that’s my maiden name.”

  Russell’s face fell, but then the light came back to it. “You’re the widow.”

  This time she laughed. “I am Clarissa Hanleigh Wells, I own this pile of rocks, and yes I’m a widow. Anything else you need to know before I get my supplies?”

  “You’re a Tristan,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I have no idea what that means. Just sit there, don’t move, and I’ll be right back.” She disappeared around a wall.

  Russell took his cell phone out of his pocket. He saw that he had six e-mails and three voice mails, but he ignored them. He was going to text Travis that he’d found Clarissa Hanleigh, but on second thought, he turned his phone off and put it back in his pocket. He’d see the lot of them at the picnic, so the news could wait until then.

  He looked up as Clarissa was hurrying back to him. She lithely leaped over fallen stones and rotten timbers, a heavy-looking red leather bag in her hand, as she returned to him.

  He just sat there smiling at her in what he knew was an idiotic way.

  She stood before him, looked at him for a long moment, and said, “Take it off.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Oh my!” she said. “Where did you go to school?”

  “Stanford.”

  “I could have guessed. Take your shirt off so I can see the damage.”

  As he began unbuttoning his shirt, Clarissa moved around him, to see his back, and he heard her deep intake of breath. “Never mind. I have to cut this off, and if it’s too bad I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “No,” he said. “I’d rather you fixed it.” He heard her pull on sterile gloves, then felt her hand on his shoulder. He had to hold himself rigid as she began to pull the fabric from out of the scrapes on his skin.

  “I think you should—”

  “No,” he said firmly. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

  She hesitated i
n the cutting. “I had planned to be.”

  “Wanted to be one all your life? You seemed to have been born to be a doctor? That sort of thing?”

  “Yes, exactly,” she said. “Is that what you call a Tristan? Named after my ancestor?”

  “It’s what they call them in Edilean.”

  “Never heard of the place.”

  “It’s in Virginia, and you have relatives there.”

  She stopped, with her hands on his skin. “Jamie and I have no relatives.”

  “Jamie?”

  “My son,” she said.

  Russell drew in his breath as she used tweezers to pull a strip of cloth out of a cut. “Oh. A son. How old?”

  “Five.”

  “I guess he’s the reason you didn’t . . .” He was concentrating on his breathing because what she was doing hurt a lot.

  “He’s my reason for living, if that’s what you mean. But yes”—she paused to pour water on a gauze to blot the blood away—“Jamie is why I didn’t go to medical school. Well, actually, that’s not fair. A good-looking football player, a few tequila shots, and the backseat of a Chevy are the real reasons.”

  “So you married the player?”

  “Yes,” she said softly, “but he got drunk and ran off a bridge before his son was born. Jamie and I have always been alone.”

  “Not any longer.” He turned to look at her just as she was cleaning a cut, and he gasped at the pain.

  “I won’t think less of you if you scream. Or cry.”

  “And lose my hero status?” he said.

  She stopped working, put her hands on his shoulders, and moved her face near his. “You will never lose your hero status with me. You saved my life,” she said softly as she kissed him on the cheek.

  Russell bent his head and kissed the back of her hand.

  She removed her hands. “Lifesaving doesn’t get you anything else. Who are you, why are you here, and what’s this about having relatives?”

  As Russell began to talk, he knew that what he was saying was slightly incoherent, but it was difficult for him to think clearly. Between the pain and the presence of this young woman, he wasn’t quite himself. He started by telling her the purpose of his journey, how he’d come with his half brother, Travis, to help his fiancée, Kim, trace an ancestor in the hope of finding descendants.

  “All of Edilean is related to one another,” he said, “so I don’t know why they need more.”

  “You sound envious.”

  “I . . .” he began. He was going to say that he had relatives, but those people his mother had booked in the B&B only called when they came up with some scheme that her rich boss could finance. Other than that, he and his mother were on their own.

  “Go on,” Clarissa urged him. “How did I suddenly acquire a family?”

  “Shenanigans between Dr. Tristan Janes and Miss Clarissa Aldredge of Edilean, Virginia, back in the 1890s. They produced a child she named Tristan, and the name has been given to succeeding eldest sons.”

  “And they’re all doctors?”

  “I think so. You’d have to ask Kim for the facts.”

  “And she is going to marry your half brother?”

  “Yes,” he said, then couldn’t resist telling her what he’d thought that meant when he was little.

  Clarissa laughed and he liked the sound. “That sounds like my Jamie.” She was bandaging his back.

  “What were you doing here when I rescued you?”

  She gave a groan of frustration. “Trying to repair this place, but I’m no good at it.”

  “I have to agree on that.” Her hands were on his skin, smoothing the bandages, and for a moment he closed his eyes.

  “There, I think you’re done.” She walked around him. He still wore the front part of his shirt, which she hadn’t cut away, and she smiled at his comic appearance.

  He started to pull the remainder of the shirt off, but at a sound from Clarissa he looked up. There were tears gathering in her eyes. It was a natural thing to pull her into his arms, his hands entangled in her hair, her head buried in his shoulder.

  “I was so scared,” she whispered as the tears began to flow. “All I could think of was that my son would lose his mommy. He’d never recover from it. I’d ruin his whole life because of my stupidity. And it was stupid of me to be up there by myself every Sunday morning.”

  “Yes it was,” Russell said as he held her close—and he suddenly remembered that his father had sent him to the Old Mill on a Sunday morning. “You have to swear not to do it again.”

  “But this is all I have,” she said as she pulled away from him. “This old, rotten, falling down pile of rocks is everything in the world that I own. My job barely pays expenses and—”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “What?” She drew away to wipe her eyes and look at him.

  “I’ll stay in Janes Creek and help you.”

  “You can’t do that. I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name.”

  “Oh. Sorry. It’s Russell Pendergast. I’m twenty-eight years old and my father is Randall Maxwell.”

  “Isn’t he . . . ?”

  “Right. A mega big shot in the world. But I think he may have—” Russell thought that the story of whether or not his father had sent him there to meet Clarissa was for another time. “My mother works for him. Or for my brother at the moment, but he’s about to move to Edilean, and my mother wants to live there too. Where’s your son?”

  “In Sunday school. One of the women I work with takes him so I can spend a couple of hours here.” She glanced at the old place. “I think I need more than a couple of hours a week, don’t you?”

  “This place needs months, lots of machinery and materials, and at least a dozen workmen.”

  “Or women,” she said, and he smiled.

  “Right. Where do you work?”

  “Guess.”

  “For a doctor? In a hospital? Something to do with medicine.”

  “It looks like you’re not just a pretty face,” she said, then turned red. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  Russell was smiling at her. “Is there someplace I can get a shirt? I don’t want to go back to the hotel. And breakfast. I’m afraid I left without eating and I’m famished.”

  “I . . .” She hesitated. “In my attic I have a box of my father’s clothes. He was about as big as you. I could throw one in the washer while I make you a pile of bacon and eggs.”

  “When does your son get home?”

  “About eleven.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” Russell said softly.

  “And I’d like for him to meet you.”

  For a moment they looked at each other and there seemed to be an understanding that this could be the beginning of something real, something permanent.

  Russell was the first to break the silence. “Would you and Jamie like to go to a picnic with me today at one? I’m sure there’ll be lots of food, and I think I can arrange to have some entertainment for Jamie there.” His eyes told how much he wanted her to go with him.

  “I think we’d both love that.”

  “Great!” Russell said as he stood up. But that crinkled his back and he winced in pain.

  Again, Clarissa put her arm around his waist to help him.

  “I may stay injured forever,” he said as he put his arm around her shoulders. “So what does Jamie like? Balloons? Animals? Acrobats?”

  “Fire engines,” she said. “The bigger, the redder, the better.”

  “Fire engines it is,” Russell said.

  “I’m going to go get my car and bring it around,” Clarissa said. “Stand here and don’t move your back.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Russell said and watched her hurry away.

  As soon as she was out of sight, he typed out a text message to his mother.

  I’M BRINGING A FIVE-YEAR-OLD BOY TO THE PICNIC. HE LOVES FIRE ENGINES. I’M GOING TO MARRY HIS MOTHER. R.

  Seventeen

  When Travis drove
into the pretty, wooded area that had been set up for the picnic, he was hoping to see Russell’s Jeep, but it wasn’t there. Instead, he saw a brilliant red fire engine and what looked to be an entire fire department of men and women in full uniform. They were standing around talking, laughing, and helping themselves to what looked to be a lavish spread of food and drink.

  “What’s this about?” Kim asked.

  “I have no idea, but then for all I know, Dad’s planning a bonfire.”

  She looked at the idyllic setting and let out her breath. It wasn’t what she now realized she’d been dreading. She thought maybe there would be white-gloved waiters serving champagne in crystal glasses, and there’d be a hundred people there.

  Instead there was just a red-and-white-checked cloth spread on the ground under a huge black walnut tree, with half a dozen red coolers to the side. There wasn’t even a sign of a waiter.

  The only oddity was the local fire department to the side.

  “It’s not what I expected,” Kim said.

  “Me neither,” Travis answered. As he spoke, Penny drove up, quickly got out of her rental car, and ran to them. “Is Russell here?” she asked through Travis’s open window.

  “I haven’t seen him. What’s the—” He cut himself off as Penny hurried away toward the fire engines.

  “Do you think something’s wrong?” Kim asked.

  Travis was looking in his side-view mirror at Penny as she quickly moved from one person to another. “I’ve never seen her lose her cool before,” he said in wonder. “One time we had two sworn enemies in the office at the same time. Dad and I were worried there’d be gunplay, but Penny deftly moved the men in and around and they never saw each other. She saved a multi-million-dollar deal.”

  Kim was looking out the back windshield. “Whatever is going on has upset her. She looks frantic.”

  “Interesting,” Travis said as he turned back and smiled at Kim. “Are you ready to go to this thing? I’m sure Dad—Holy crap!”

  Kim looked up to see another car pulling off the road and into the little parking area. “It’s . . .”