Forever... Read online

  For the entire trip to Connecticut, Darci had sat on the edge of the backseat and asked the driver questions. By the time they arrived in the remote area of northern Connecticut where the town of Camwell was located, she knew more about him than his last two wives had.

  So now she was here, but Adam Montgomery was nowhere to be seen. She was much too full of energy to want to stay in the guest house and unpack her suitcase. Besides, that would take all of five minutes. Instead, she wanted to go exploring—and the first place she planned to explore was the other bedroom.

  His room was quite a bit larger than hers, and it had two queen-size beds in it. She ran her hand over a bedspread and wondered which bed he used; then she went to the closet. It was full of clothes. It was autumn in New England, and the wardrobe inside Mr. Montgomery’s closet looked as though it had been made for the season and the place. When she ran her hand over one of his corduroy shirts, she couldn’t help but notice that the only label inside bore his initials. In other words, they were clothes custom-tailored just for him. There were flannels and corduroys and woolens, and cotton shirts that were impossibly soft. On the floor of the closet were six pairs of shoes, all with wooden shoe trees inside them.

  “Imagine that,” Darci said aloud. “Six pairs of shoes.”

  She snooped through the drawers in the room, then went into his bathroom and looked through everything. She opened every bottle, smelled the contents, touched every item. When she left his room, she knew that she would be able to recognize him just by the smell of him, if she had to.

  The problem now was, where was he? At six P.M., she

  walked back to the hotel’s main house and wandered into every room that wasn’t locked. She said hello to the kitchen staff and asked them their names. She introduced herself to the housekeeping people, and they let her explore the basement of the house. At eight, she went back outside, pulling the jacket of her suit close about her as it was quite cool. She checked the guest house again, but Mr. Montgomery still wasn’t there, so Darci went out again. He had a heavy flannel shirt jacket in his closet that she would have loved to put on, but she thought that that might be overstepping the bounds, so she buttoned her jacket and walked faster.

  A couple of times, she stood still, closed her eyes, and let her mind concentrate on the image of the man she’d met. Where was he? When she heard someone walking, not on the pathway but through the dried leaves on the ground, Darci stopped walking and inhaled. She had found him. Without another thought, she began to follow him.

  He didn’t use the town’s sidewalks but moved from lawn to lawn, and she followed him around Camwell for nearly an hour before she spoke. “What are you looking for?”

  Adam nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of her voice so near, but he recovered himself as soon as he realized who she was. She was standing under a streetlight, wearing the same thin, worn suit that he’d first seen her in, and she looked so fragile that he thought that if he sneezed, she’d probably go flying backward. “Why aren’t you at the hotel?”

  “I wanted to find you and ask you what you want me to do. For my job, that is,” she said, smiling up at him. He looked great, she thought. He had on a fashionably stressed leather jacket over an Aran sweater, and his jeans were perfectly faded.

  “I planned to talk to you about your job when I saw you,” he said, his voice full of annoyance.

  “So what were you doing out here?”

  It was on the tip of Adam’s tongue to tell her that it was none of her business, but if he was going to have to spend time with her, he didn’t want to anger her. In fact, it would be better to get on her good side. He forced a smile. “I’ll tell you everything all in good time.”

  “If you’re searching the town for available sex, I’d be willing,” Darci said, then batted her pale eyelashes at him.

  For a moment Adam wasn’t sure that he’d heard her right, so he just blinked at her.

  Then, as he looked down at her, clasping her arms about herself to keep warm, the idea of intimacy with this shivering girl suddenly seemed very funny. He couldn’t contain his laughter. And as he laughed, his annoyance fled. What she lacked in other areas, she obviously made up for in having a good sense of humor, he thought.

  “Come on,” he said good-naturedly, “there’s a diner down the street. Let’s go get something to warm you up.”

  Minutes later, they were inside a bright coffee shop and he’d ushered her to a booth. The waitress, a tall, thin woman in a blue uniform with a little white apron, asked what they wanted. “Coffee?” Adam asked Darci and she nodded.

  “Anything to eat?” the waitress asked, bored.

  “No,” Adam said, then he looked across the table at Darci. “Actually, you could bring us a couple of pieces of pie, apple if you have it.”

  “This is New England, it’s October, and you ask if we have apple pie,” the waitress said as she went away, chuckling.

  Adam turned to Darci. “Thanks. That was the best laugh I’ve had in a long time.”

  The waitress set two thick green mugs in front of them and filled them with coffee. Adam sipped his black as he watched Darci put three teaspoons of sugar in hers, then empty four tiny paper cups of cream into it. When she had the coffee to her liking, she drank deeply, then held the mug in her palms to warm them.

  “Glad to be of help,” Darci said, looking up at him with big eyes. “So, what were you looking for tonight?” When the waitress set two big wedges of pie in front of them, Darci dug into hers, but that didn’t stop her from looking up at Adam in question.

  “How did you find me?” he asked, avoiding her question.

  “I applied my True Persuasion to you.”

  “Oh,” he said, his lips twitching in a smile. “And what is that?”

  “If you think about something hard enough, you can make it happen. I just thought really hard about your coming close to where I was and you came.”

  “I see,” Adam said, his smile broader.

  “So what were you looking for?”

  “Actually, I can’t tell you yet,” he said, smiling in what he hoped was a fatherly way. “At least there’s no reason to tell you yet.”

  “Are you going to eat your pie?” she asked.

  Still smiling, he shoved his untouched plate toward her. “You want me to work for you, but you don’t want me to know what it is that you’re doing. Not yet anyway. So what has to happen before you’re allowed to tell me? Earthquake? Hurricane? Microsoft buys China?”

  He chuckled. “Very funny. Nothing has to happen. I just need to find something first then I’ll be able to tell you.”

  “Ah. I see,” she said.

  “You see what?” he asked, feeling more annoyed than he wanted to feel. Why wasn’t this snippet of a girl backing off ?

  “The hero myth. You have to find the treasure first, then you stand on it and beat your chest in triumph while the heroine swoons at your feet.”

  “Beat my—” For a moment, all Adam could do was blink at her. Women didn’t usually talk to him like this. Usually women...well,women had never been a problem in his life. Forcing himself to relax, he smiled at her. “All right, I guess you’ll have to be told sooner or later.” Standing up, he looked around the restaurant to make sure that there was no one who could hear him near their booth. When he was sure that he wouldn’t be overheard, he sat back down, leaned toward her, and said quietly, “There’s a witches’ coven in this village, and I’m trying to find out where it meets.”

  Calmly, Darci continued sipping her coffee. Her lack of reaction annoyed him. There wasn’t so much as a flicker of interest in her eyes.

  “Have you asked anyone where it is?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s a witches’ coven. Evil. This one is particularly bad. A coven is not exactly something that’s held out in the open.”

  “But this is a small town,” Darci said as she used the side of her fork to scrape her plate. She’d eaten both pieces of pie.
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  “What does the size of the town have to do with anything?”

  “It’s my experience that in a small town nobody can keep a secret about anything. If I wanted to know what my mother was up to—not that I ever would, mind you—I could call anyone in Putnam over the age of seven and find out.”

  “Remind me never to visit that hometown of yours. However, I doubt very much if there’s anything going on in your town that comes near the evilness of this coven.”

  “Well, there was—”

  Before Darci could finish her sentence, the waitress slapped the check down on the table. “Anything else?” she asked as she looked at the two scrubbed-clean plates in front of Darci. “We got a slice of cherry left.”

  Darci’s eyes lit up. “Oh, that would be—”

  “Actually, we have to go,” Adam said as he handed the waitress some bills.

  “Are there any witches’ covens around here?” Darci asked, her head turned away from Adam’s look of shock.

  “Sure. There’s a big one over at the Grove.”

  “You mean where we’re staying?”

  “Yeah. You’re in the Cardinal House, right? Go out the back door, turn left, then follow the path to the old slaves’ quarters. Can’t miss it.”

  “I hardly think—” Adam began.

  “Is it a really evil coven?” Darci asked.

  “Excuse her, she doesn’t—”

  The waitress acted as though Adam hadn’t spoken. “It’s real nasty. Four people have disappeared around here in the last four years—none of them locals, of course—and we all think they’re doing some folderol with blood down there in the tunnels. The sheriff laughed it off, but his ugly sister-in-law owns his house and everyone knows she’s deeply involved in the thing. Listen, you two be careful, ‘cause it’s nearly the end of the year and they’ll probably want to make it five strangers that have disappeared instead of just four. So have a good night and hope to see you again. Ha-ha. Just kiddin’,” she added before she picked up the money and turned away.

  When Darci turned toward Adam, she saw that he was leaning back against the bench and staring at her in open-mouthed astonishment. But he recovered himself soon enough.

  “Are you ready to leave?” he asked, and Darci could see that he was angry at her.

  Once they were outside, he walked so fast, with such long strides, that she had to run to keep up with him. “Are you going to fire me?” she asked.

  “I ought to!” he snapped.”I didn’t want anyone to know why we’re here,but you....You....”He threw up his hands in a helpless gesture, as though he couldn’t think of anything horrible enough to describe what she’d just done.

  “But everyone would know anyway,” Darci said, still running beside him. “She knew we were staying at the Grove, didn’t she? She even knew the name of our guest house.”

  “You are obviously not taking this seriously.”

  “You wanted to know where the coven is, and I found out for you. What else is a personal assistant supposed to do except help wherever help is needed? But the truth is, I don’t know what is required of me, and, when it comes to that, why did you hire me? Except that you were the answer to my prayers, so maybe— Oh, thank you,” she said as he opened the door to the cottage for her.

  Once inside, she turned to him and waited.

  “I have no idea which of those questions I’m supposed to answer first,” he said stiffly.

  “Do you want to follow the path and go see the witches’ coven right now?” she asked, and there was eagerness in her voice.

  “No, I do not. In fact, I may never want you to go with me.I may....”Trailing off, he turned away from her.

  “May what?” she asked softly.

  “Nothing,” he answered, then gave a fake yawn. “It’s late and I’m tired. And tomorrow I have to—” Breaking off, he looked down at her.

  Darci waited, not saying a word, because she wanted him to tell her whatever it was that she sensed he was hiding.

  But Adam wasn’t going to tell her more than he had to before he had to. “Well,” he said slowly, then he remembered the way she’d made him laugh tonight. “Good night, Miss Mansfield.” When she didn’t so much as smile at his joke, he thought she didn’t understand. “Monroe? Mansfield?” he said. “Get it? Marilyn. Jayne.”

  “I understood it the first time I heard it when I was four,” Darci said seriously. “What exactly is it that you’re hiding?”

  Adam gave a sigh, both because his joke had fallen flat and because she was so blasted perceptive. “We’ll talk in the morning, but for now, I think we should sleep. Good night, Miss Monroe.”

  “Good night, Mr. Montgomery,” she said loudly when he turned his back on her.

  Instantly, Adam turned to her, and for a moment he looked as if he were going to say something. But, as though he could think of nothing else to say, he turned away, went into his bedroom, and shut the door.

  Darci also went into her room, and ten minutes later she was in bed and asleep. But she was awakened by the sound of a door opening and closing. Looking at the clock beside the bed, she saw it was three A.M. Had Mr.

  Montgomery been awake all this time?

  Turning onto her back and closing her eyes, she began to True Persuade him into feeling sleepy. Within moments, she saw the light that was coming in under her door go out and she could feel peacefulness settle over the little cottage. Smiling, she went back to sleep.

  3

  “SO WHAT DO WE DO TODAY?” Darci asked brightly the next morning.

  Since she was wearing the same clothes that she’d worn the day before as well as the day of the interview, Adam frowned. “Did you sleep? Don’t tell me that you’re an insomniac, too?”

  “I could sleep on a bed of needles,” she said, smiling.”Isn’t it beautiful out there?” Outside the window, the New England foliage was a patchwork of brilliant reds and oranges.

  But Adam had never paid much attention to scenery. “Why do you have on that thin suit?” he asked. “You need a jacket or at least a thick sweater.”

  “Don’t have one,” Darci said, never losing her smile. “Don’t worry about me, I don’t mind the cold. My mother says that I move around too much to feel it.”

  Adam opened his mouth to reply but then closed it. He had on corduroy trousers, a cotton flannel shirt, and a heavy sweater over it. “Come on,” he said, biting his lip on his comment about Darci’s mother. “Are you hungry? Let’s get some breakfast, then go to work.”

  “Always,” she said as she walked through the door he held open for her. “I’m pretty much always hungry. So what are we going to do today?”

  Adam didn’t reply because he hadn’t yet thought of an errand that would keep her busy while he did what he had to do. But first, he thought, as he watched the autumn wind whip her thin clothes about her, she needed something warm to wear.

  At breakfast in the sunny, cozy dining room of the Grove, she ate twice as much as he did. But what startled him was that she seemed to be on friendly terms with everyone in the hotel, both guests and staff. “Thank you, Allison,” she said to the girl who poured the coffee. “Thank you, Ray,” she said to the young man who put their plates in front of them. “How’s your back this morning, Mr. Dobbs?” she asked the guest at the next table.

  “Have you told all of them what we’re here for?” he asked quietly as he reached for another piece of bread from the basket in the middle of the table. But Darci had eaten all of the bread, plus a four-egg omelette and three sausages.

  “Haven’t had time,” she said. “I didn’t know until last night.”

  She was smiling, but Adam wasn’t sure if she was joking or not, and that worried him. How could he impress upon her the seriousness of what he was trying to do? “You ready to go?” he asked, then led the way into the entrance hall. But he halted at the door to the outside because Darci had stopped to talk to a man behind the desk. He was a very old man, his skin as brown and thin as an onion’s,
but Darci was smiling at him as though he were the man of her dreams.

  “So tell me, Miss Darci T. Monroe, what does the T stand for?” the old man asked.

  “It’s an old-fashioned name,” she said. “I was named after a silent-movie star, but I’m sure you’ve never heard of her. Theda Bara.”

  At that the man gave a dry laugh. “She was sexier than anything on the screen nowadays.”

  Darci leaned across the desk. “Why you naughty old man,” she said in a voice that fairly purred.”Those were the days before censorship.”

  The old man laughed so hard that Adam feared that he was going to expire right before their eyes.

  Smiling, Darci left the desk and followed Adam outside. “Do you always do that?” he asked when they were in the cool air.

  “Do what?”

  “Flirt and tease,” he said, sounding priggish even to himself.

  When she looked up at him, he was frowning. “I do no such thing!” she said. “I just like....”Pausing, she thought for a moment. “I like to make people feel good. I think it’s like a mirror. If they feel good then it reflects back to me. Don’t you feel the same way?”

  “No,” Adam said curtly as he halted, then reached into his pocket, withdrew his wallet, and handed her three one-hundred-dollar bills. “I want you to go into that store across the street and buy yourself a jacket,” he said. Then, aware of the modern woman’s pride in paying her own way, he added, “You can deduct the money from your pay.”

  Darci handed the bills back to him. “No, thanks. So what do we do today?”

  “Is it the money, or do you have some other reason for not buying a jacket?”

  “I don’t want to spend the money,” she said, smiling up at him; then she gave an involuntary shiver as a cold breeze went through her thin clothing.