She paused to beam a smile at Piper. “Once I have the necklace, this person will contact me, and we’ll find out just what he or she wants. I’m personally interested in discovering why they think they have a claim on the sapphires. Aren’t you?”
Piper had retrieved her phone and now scowled at her. “This isn’t one of your stories where you can plan out the happy ending. The person who wrote this could be very dangerous, and he planned this meticulously. He knew you had that book signing today. He’s probably watching us even now.”
Nell ignored the chill that shot up her spine. “I know.” That would be exactly the way she would write it. “There’s this scene in an old Clint Eastwood movie, Absolute Power, where his daughter asks him to meet her at this sidewalk café right here in D.C. The FBI wants to arrest him, and two snipers are waiting to take him out. He escapes, of course.”
“Of course he does. He’s Clint Eastwood. And at the risk of repeating myself, you’re not.” Then Piper narrowed her eyes. “And what do you know about snipers? You write children’s stories.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t read grown-up ones. My point is that it’s not any more dangerous at the castle than it might be right here. There could be a sniper taking aim at us right now.”
“All the more reason why you need protection. Ever since that article brought the missing sapphires to the public’s attention, there are a lot of people, including some professional thieves, who want to get their hands on those jewels.” Piper tapped a finger on the last line of the second letter. “This is a clear death threat.”
“Yes.” The chill Nell experienced was colder than it had been before. She firmly ignored it as she leaned closer and tapped her finger on the same line. “Piper, the writer is not threatening me. He’s threatening all of you, if I don’t find the necklace. So I’m going up to the castle, and I will find it. You’re not going to talk me out of it.”
“I’m calling Duncan.” Piper punched in numbers.
While Piper relayed the situation to Duncan Sutherland, Nell studied her sister’s face and delighted in the way it softened and then began to glow as she spoke to him. No one believed in the power of the stones more than Nell did. But as a writer, she also knew that the power of the legend didn’t cover all scenarios. Her parents were a prime example of that. They had found true love, but her mother’s death had cut their time short and had devastated her father. Life gave no guarantees.
That meant that she had to be very careful about the way she handled Reid Sutherland.
She reached for her drink and took a long swallow. She and Reid went back a very long time to the magical summer he was ten and she was six. She and her sisters had played games every single day with the Sutherland triplets, games that had opened up all kinds of story possibilities in her mind—posse and sheriff, pirates and treasure, good and evil.
That was the summer that she’d fallen in love with Reid. From a six-year-old’s perspective, he’d been the personification of all the storybook princes and adventure heroes she’d ever read about. Whenever the games they had played had gotten too dangerous or too challenging, he’d been her protector or her champion. Guinevere couldn’t have had a better Lancelot. Cinderella couldn’t have met a more handsome prince at the ball. Princess Leia couldn’t have fought side by side with a more daring Han Solo.
When that summer had ended and Reid had disappeared from her life, he’d remained the hero in all the stories she’d woven for years to come. Knowing full well that, at six, she’d seen Reid Sutherland through rose-colored Disney-movie glasses.
A dozen years later when his mother had married her father beneath Angus and Eleanor’s stone arch, the way she’d seen Reid had been entirely different. He was no longer just a good-looking boy. He’d turned into an incredibly attractive man. While their parents recited vows, she found her gaze returning to him again and again. She hadn’t been able to stop herself. Even now, years later, she could easily conjure up the image of that lean, raw-boned face, the tousled dark hair. The full, firm mouth.
And she could still remember what she’d felt— dryness in her throat, rapid beat to her heart and the strangest melting sensation in her body. When he had glanced over and met her gaze, she’d felt that flutter right beneath her heart, and she’d been certain that she was falling in love with him all over again.
A mistake that could be excused in a naive eighteen-year-old who’d never felt such strong attraction for a man before. Thank heavens she’d never let him or anyone else know that he’d twice been the object of her heart’s desire. He always thought of her as a child; someone he felt indulgent toward. Someone he had to go out of his way to protect from harm. After their parents’ wedding, he’d made his feelings for her quite clear when he’d kissed her on the nose and called her “my new little stepsister.”
Those words had crushed her heart, and inspired by one of Adair’s plans, she’d put pen to paper and created a very different narrative about Reid Sutherland.
Nell took another sip of her icy coffee as the memory poured into her mind in vivid detail. It had been midnight when Adair and Piper had come to her room and awakened her. The wedding guests had long-ago departed, and their aunt Vi was sound asleep. Piper had swiped a bottle of champagne, and they’d gone out to the stone arch, the way they’d done so many times growing up. But with cola or tea in their childhood years.
Beneath the stones, they’d shared their goals and dreams and secrets. More than that, at Adair’s suggestion, they’d written down those goals and put them in their mother’s old jewelry box. As children, they’d tucked the box behind some stones that were loose to tap into the power that resided there. Back then, Adair had come up with the idea of burying all their secret goals in the stones. The theory had been that, if the stone arch had the power to bring true lovers together, it might also have the power to make other dreams come true. Even the very practical-minded Piper had decided that it was worth a shot.
Nell had continued to tuck her goals into the box even after her sisters had gone away to college. Since it was divided into three compartments, it was perfect for their purpose. Adair had insisted from the beginning that they each use a different color paper to ensure privacy. Piper had chosen blue, Adair yellow and Nell had selected pink.
On the night of the wedding, it was Adair, of course, who had suggested that they cap the celebration by writing out their most secret and thrilling sexual fantasy. Perhaps Nell’s fantasy had evolved as it did because she had been standing in the exact same spot when her gaze had locked with Reid’s during the ceremony. Maybe because the memory of what she’d felt was still so fresh—that rush of desire, the glorious wave of heat and the flutter right beneath her heart. Or perhaps it had been the champagne. But, of course, her sexual fantasy had involved Reid Sutherland.
And that night she’d been creatively inspired. Her best story ideas came to her while she was actually writing. The physical acts of running her pen over the paper or her fingers atop the keyboard tapped into her creative imagination the way nothing else did. And she’d certainly tapped into it that night. Nell had been eighteen, a freshman in college, and what she’d written went far beyond her limited experience. The details of those original fantasies were a bit fuzzy now. But the setting she’d chosen and the broader picture were perfectly clear.
No longer was Reid the romantic hero of her childhood fairy tales. No, indeed. In her fantasy, seduction had been her goal. And she’d chosen the most romantic setting she could think of—Eleanor’s garden. Over the years, she’d had plenty of time to embroider and expand on her original ideas. And those scenarios had been fueling her dreams, especially since the Sutherland men had reentered her sisters’ lives.