“At Uncle Sully’s marriage to Bailey you told me that true love was the rarest thing there was. You said that if a person ever found it, she should never, ever let it go. What if you did see Malone, Auntie Lee? Even if it’s impossible, what if you did?”
Under the lace and ruffles, Ainslie felt as if an iron band was constricting her chest. “I didn’t. And I don’t want to talk about it any more, Tara,” she said tightly. “Now, I’m walking out that door to get married to Pearson. Are you coming?”
For a long moment Tara’s gaze defiantly held hers. Then the soft young lips quivered, and with an impulsiveness that she’d begun to display less and less often since becoming a teenager, she rushed to Ainslie and wrapped her arms around her.
“Of course I’m coming, Aunt Lee. It’s not often a girl gets a chance to wear sea-foam green, for goodness’ sake.” Her laugh was uneven, but as she gave Ainslie one last crushing hug and stepped back, her smile was tender. “Besides, even with the door open, that perfume is getting to me. Aunt Cissie must have doused herself in it—she’s the only one who would wear something so romantically old-fashioned as roses.”
“Aunt Cissie doesn’t wear perfume,” Ainslie said absently. “She’s allergic to it.” Straightening her veil and turning to leave, she stopped, her heart suddenly crashing in her chest.
It was no ghost of a scent. Tara was right—it was overpowering, as overpowering as it had been half an hour ago, when Ainslie’d finally convinced herself that both the aroma and the man had been illusions. But now it seemed that the scent of roses was real. And Tara was conscious of it, too.
What if Malone hadn’t been an illusion, either?
“Red roses for true love,” she said through numb lips. “What if he’s still alive? What if he’s still alive?”
“The perfume means something to you, doesn’t it?” Tara’s gaze was fixed on her, her eyes enormous in the paleness of her face. “You think he has come back, don’t you?”
“But how could he?”
In an unconscious reversal of their roles, Ainslie turned to her adopted daughter. Tara wasn’t a child any longer, she realized with a small start. She was a young woman, and her steady gaze was filled with a wisdom beyond her years.
“One way or another, you have to be sure, Aunt Lee. If you don’t go after him you’ll never forgive yourself.” Tara gave her a little shake. “I’ll never forgive you.”
“But Pearson…Father Flynn…all those guests!” Was she actually considering this? Ainslie thought. “I can’t just walk out on my own wedding! Besides, I’ll run into the same crush outside as before. That Susan Frank will have a film crew right on my heels.”
“Go out the back.” Tara jerked her head toward the door leading to the parking lot, her voice quickening in excitement. “He went down that alley about a block away, didn’t he? This street should get you there just as well as the one in front of the church, and it’s quieter. No one will even see you.”
Even as she spoke Ainslie was shaking her head. “Someone will notice, and in this getup I can’t exactly outrun the mob. Leaving Pearson waiting at the altar is terrible enough. He doesn’t deserve his wedding to be made into a public joke in all the papers.”
“You’re right. That would destroy him,” Tara said slowly, her face clouding. Then she brightened. Darting to the small table near where she’d been sitting earlier, she bent over and grabbed something up. She whirled back to Ainslie, her palm outstretched. “Here.”
Ainslie blinked at the object Tara was handing her. It was a small plastic skull with glowing red eyes. Attached to it was a key.
“It’s Bobby’s.” Tara blushed, and all of a sudden she was a teenager again. “Cool, huh? He was showing it to me and in all the excitement I guess I forgot to give it back to him.” She saw the confusion on Ainslie’s face and elaborated impatiently. “It’s the key to his motorcycle, Aunt Lee. It’s right outside—I’m sure if Bobby knew he’d tell you to go ahead and use it. After all, this is kind of an emergency, isn’t it?”
Tara was right, it was an emergency. With any luck, this wild-goose chase could be over and done with in less than five minutes. If it wasn’t—
“Get this darn veil off me, pumpkin.” As Tara swiftly complied, Ainslie bent and lifted the masses of ruffles, revealing the two stiff crinolines that had made her walk up the red carpet resemble the stately progression of an unwieldy ocean liner being nudged along by a tugboat. Stripping them off, she turned back to Tara, feeling blessedly less encumbered.
“Go find Uncle Sully and tell him everything. If I’m not back in ten minutes, he’s to make up some kind of story that’ll save Pearson’s face, okay?”
With that she was gone, running toward the yellow Yamaha that was the only motorcycle in the lot, holding her skirt high as she flew across the gravel.
SHE LOOKED RIDICULOUS, and she knew it. She also didn’t care. Letting the motorcycle’s revs climb as her riding skills came automatically back to her, Ainslie tore down the conveniently deserted street and into the alley. It was flanked, she saw, by a small commercial hotel, boarded up and abandoned.
She cut the bike’s engine, realizing in the sudden silence that she had absolutely no idea what to do next. Aside from the usual litter of junk and garbage, only made notable by a discarded and rotting sofa bed a few feet away, the alleyway was empty.
What had she expected? Ainslie asked herself, her heart sinking. From his odd appearance, the man she’d seen obviously wasn’t completely normal, and when she’d unexpectedly focused her attention on him she’d probably frightened him. Had she really thought it possible that he would be waiting for her around some corner?
Very slowly, she reached for the key in the ignition. As she did so she caught a gleam just beyond the discarded sofa bed, as if something shiny was catching the light there.
She knew what it was even before she jumped off the motorcycle and ran over to it. Lying on its side, covered with a piece of torn plastic, was a shopping cart. Its contents had spilled out onto the ground, but right in front of her eyes was a pair of worn boots.
Looking up, recessed into the wall of the abandoned hotel, she noticed a door painted the same faded red as the brick of the building.
It was slightly ajar.
It had to be where he lived, Ainslie thought, her pulse racing. It had to be. Condemned or not, the place offered shelter and some kind of privacy; she knew instinctively that the man she’d glimpsed would find it impossible to bunk down with a roomful of strangers every night in a shelter. Like a wild animal, he would have a place where he could go to earth.
It would be impossible to find him in there. She hardly had time for a room-to-room search. There was only one way she could force him out.
“Malone! Malone!” Standing in the middle of the alleyway, she shouted the name as loudly as she could. He wasn’t Malone—he couldn’t be, there was no way he could be—but if this was his private lair, she was drawing attention to it. He would want her to go away, but she wouldn’t—not until she saw him face-to-face.
“Malone, I know you’re in there!”
For some reason she knew the stranger wouldn’t hurt her if he did appear. He’d definitely been odd, but there’d been nothing threatening in his oddness. Again she saw the flash of anguish she’d seen in those green eyes that had been too much like Malone’s. The memory was so clear that again her heart leaped crazily.
“Malone!”
“Stop shouting! Dammit, lady, you’re going to lead them right to me!”
The hoarse warning came from directly behind her. Whirling around in shock, Ainslie stared at the big man in the army greatcoat standing only inches away.
The