“I’m liking less and less the fact that you’re there alone,” Pepper said. “Why don’t I join you? You can say that you need the comfort of having a friend from your present close at hand while you’re exploring your past. Something like that.”
“No.” I’d anticipated that Pepper would suggest something like this, so I was prepared. “I need you to find out more information for me. See what else you can find on Hal Linton, too. He made a move on me last night.”
“Really?”
“I’d like to know what his relationship with Cameron was before she disappeared. In your report, you said they met through Austin and Marcie. If they were having an affair, someone in Linton’s business circle might have been aware of it.”
“I’m on it. Anything else?”
On impulse, I said, “Check into Beatrice’s husband. He ran the ranch for a while after Sloan’s father ran away with Sarah McKenzie. But he’s not here anymore, and no one talks about him. I don’t even know his first name.”
“I’ll get it.” I could hear Pepper scribbling. “Cole thinks I made a mistake, that I should have talked you out of this masquerade—which is a dangerous plan. His words.”
I drew in a deep breath. “Well, the good news is I’m going to be leaving here by Friday evening.”
“That is good news,” Pepper agreed. Then after a beat, she said, the frown clear in her tone. “That’s tomorrow. It’s not that I’m not happy about it, but why do you have to get out of there so soon?”
I cleared my throat. “Because James has decided to move up the wedding. Tomorrow night Sloan and Cameron are going to be tying the knot in a small, private ceremony in the hacienda’s chapel.”
“Wait. Time-out. He wants you to marry Sloan Campbell tomorrow?”
“That’s right. But don’t worry. That’s not going to happen.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“I know you, Brooke. If you haven’t found what happened to your sister by tomorrow, you won’t leave.”
“That’s why I’m calling you. I need anything you can find out ASAP.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Gotta go. Sloan is giving me a tour of the ranch to see if he can stir up any memories. Find out what you can.”
“Brooke—”
“I’ll check in with you later today so that you’ll know I’m all right. Bye.” I disconnected the call and frowned. She’d worry about me now. I couldn’t help that. I was worried myself. But at least Pepper didn’t know about the threatening phone call. And after a morning with Marcie and Beatrice, I wasn’t one step closer to finding out who’d made it.
“Hey, Red?”
It was Sloan’s voice. I hurried to the window and saw him standing in the garden below me. Once again, I felt a rush of pleasure just seeing him. Not good, I thought.
“Beatrice told me you were in your room. I’m running a little late, and I have to stop at the stables.”
I glanced at my watch. “You said ten. I still have to change my clothes.”
“When you’re changed, come over to the carriage house. It’ll save us some time.”
“Sure.”
With a little salute, Sloan turned and walked away. I kept my eyes on him as he strode down the same path he’d ridden on earlier with Saturn. He didn’t look as though he was hurrying, but those long legs of his really ate up the ground.
And he belonged to my sister. I should write that on the palm of my hand the way I used to write reminders when I was in junior high.
The brush of something against my leg made me jump. Glancing down, I saw that it was Hannibal, and my heart returned to its usual place in my body. The cat flicked me a look and then rubbed against me again.
“Are you trying to suggest a truce, or are you warning me off Cameron’s fiancé?”
Hannibal made a soft purring sound in his throat that I wasn’t quite able to interpret. “I was just lecturing myself about the same thing. I’m going to have a talk with Sloan while we’re taking our tour.” And I was also going to find out why he hadn’t tried to talk James out of moving the wedding up.
I’d tell him that I didn’t want him to kiss me again. Which was a big fat lie. And he’d know it because so far my response to his kisses on a scale of one to ten could be measured at about a thirty.
Hannibal purred again. Did I actually hear a note of skepticism, or was I just projecting?
“I’ll explain that I need time to get used to him again.” Hopefully, that would work. But my eyes shifted back to Sloan. Who was I kidding? If I got any more used to him, I’d be in his bed. One more day, I reminded myself. Surely, I could keep from jumping his bones for that long.
“It isn’t as though I don’t have other things to occupy my time.” Like finding out what had happened to my sister. And getting to the bottom of why I looked so much like Elizabeth McKenzie. I glanced at my cell phone. Not to mention, avoiding the fate of the previous mistresses of the Hacienda Montega.
“My plate’s full,” I assured Hannibal. And myself.
After taking one last look at Sloan, I turned and strode into the closet. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hannibal leap onto the bed, but he didn’t go back to stake his claim on the pillows. Instead, he made a circle, then sat near the side where he could watch me select an outfit to wear.
Quickly, I located a pair of riding breeches and boots, but I couldn’t decide on a blouse. Cameron seemed to have a weakness for silk, and I was torn between the peach, ivory or pale blue one. I held each in front of me. Hannibal growled at the blue one.
As I stripped off my jeans and T-shirt and dressed in Cameron’s clothes, I couldn’t help smiling at the idea that I was taking fashion advice from a cat. I wondered if this was something that he and Cameron did on a daily basis. I wanted to think that it was, that there was a softer side to the picture of my sister that everyone else was painting.
When I was done, I turned in a full circle for Hannibal’s benefit. He made no further noise, nor did he make any threatening gestures. I decided to take his lack of reaction for approval, and I felt a little closer to my sister as I left the room.
THE CARRIAGE HOUSE had been built of the same colored stone as the hacienda, making me assume that it dated back to the same era. At one time, it had been used to store horse-drawn carriages. The lower floor had been renovated and now offered the modern convenience of automatic sliding doors.
It seemed a little far from the main house to use as a garage. Curious, I peeked through one of the glass windows and discovered there were indeed cars inside. The rugged truck that I’d seen Sloan use the day before along with its trailer, a black SUV with the logo of the ranch on it, and a sporty little red convertible that only seated two. It was built for speed, and it was exactly the kind of car that I hoped to own one day.
Was it Sloan’s? Or perhaps it was Cameron’s.
At the side of the building, I found a set of iron stairs to the second floor. On my way up I reviewed in my mind what I was going to tell Sloan—that I needed time to get to know him better and it would be better if he didn’t kiss me again.
That at least wasn’t a lie. It would be a lie if I told him I didn’t want him to kiss me again. I knocked on the screen door.
After waiting a bit, I knocked again. When there was still no response, I allowed my inner Alice to open the door and walk into a spacious kitchen that was neat as a pin. Two arches in the wall to my right allowed access to other rooms. Through the far one came the sound of running water and a man singing.
I moved to the closest arch and spotted a large flat-screen TV, what looked to be a state-of-the-art CD player, and two large speakers. Boy toys. There was a comfortable-looking leather couch, and an oak coffee table with a paperback book lying open facedown to mark the page. There were more books in built-in glass-doored bookcases that flanked the fireplace.
My gaze shifted to the art on the walls, and moving closer, I saw that each piece held four photos that had been clustered in the center, then matted and framed. In one group, I saw a man who resembled Sloan standing next to a horse with a baby in his arms. The same man was captured in other poses, two with James. Sloan’s father?
In another, there was a cluster with James and an older boy. He looked to be five or six in one, a teenager in another, and in the others he was a man—Sloan Campbell. It was like having a family album on the walls. Except there were two families and the mother was missing in each set of photos.
Cameron and he had that in common—a mother they’d never known. In spite of that loss, I envied Sloan in a way. My own family was not the type to take photos. There were no albums, no framed pictures on the walls. The ones I had were some that friends like Pepper had snapped and given to me. I glanced around the room and realized that there were no pictures of Cameron—not as a little girl and not as a woman. I found that odd.
Slowly but surely, I was learning about Sloan Campbell. He was a man who worked hard, was good at what he did, and who liked a comfortable, quiet place to come home to at night. I suppose that didn’t make him much different from a lot of men. Or women. I liked to come home to a quiet space myself.