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Lucky for him, she had inherited her mother’s quick intellect and had graduated early, earning a full academic scholarship to college. Medical school had been her responsibility.
But perhaps worse than the financial debt had been the emotional distance the separation had created between father and daughter. A distance they had never completely recovered from. Kylie regretted that more than any debt she had inherited.
She watched as a smile touched the corners of Michael’s mouth, deepening the interesting grooves that etched the sides of his lean cheeks.
She noted the rough, unshaven line of his jaw, a look that gave him a slightly dangerous edge. It touched off a strange sensation in her, almost as if she were thirteen again and crushing on him from afar.
Impatient, she pushed the feeling aside. No way was she going back to that place. Too much adolescent angst in there. She’d grown past all of that. Or at least she thought she had.
“You used to hang out with Gracie Greenley, right?” He cocked his head and his smile took on a teasing twist to one corner. “If I’m remembering correctly, the two of you used to climb trees and spy on us older kids. And you were the one who was always falling out of trees or tripping over rocks. Nikki Greenley was always calling you klutz, right?”
Wonderful. Why was it that when you met someone from your childhood they always remembered the embarrassing moments? Why the hell couldn’t he have remembered her as having great legs or a devastating smile? Blood rushed up the sides of her neck.
“Yeah, that was me.”
He studied her for a moment, and she saw a flash of something close to regret enter his eyes. “We were a pretty self-centered bunch of yahoos back then, weren’t we?”
“You could say that.”
“Well, you have to admit that you and Gracie were pretty relentless in your pursuit of us. Nikki hated it when her little sister turned up. I think she saw Gracie as cramping her style.”
“I guess everyone feels that way about their younger siblings.” Kylie shrugged. “But we only wanted to hang out with the cool kids.”
“Oh, so you’re saying that we were the cool kids, huh?”
The teasing note in his voice irritated her. Who was he kidding? Of course they’d been the cool kids. He knew that. Michael had been their leader, the instigator of all the wild, carefree parties out at the swimming hole. Parties she and Gracie would have died to have been invited to.
But Michael had always chased them off, telling them they were too young. That was until the night she and Gracie had wangled an invitation out of one of the younger boys who had taken pity on them. An invitation Kylie wished they had never accepted.
For a moment, fear tumbled around in the pit of her stomach. Would Michael want to talk about that night? Would he want to discuss how it had changed their lives?
She waited, but he turned away, glancing in the direction of her car.
“I suppose you’re here to clean out your father’s belongings.”
She nodded. “I need to get thing boxed up and into storage. The manager told me that the new caretaker will be moving into the cottage sometime next week.”
A stiff breeze whipped down the center of the road and sent chunks of snow flying off the branches of the pines. A hefty clump landed on her right shoulder and several icy chunks slid down the back of her neck. Kylie shivered.
Michael slipped off his glove and casually brushed the snow off the back of her neck. The warmth of his fingers against her cold skin sent a shiver rocketing through her, and she knew her reaction had nothing to do with the coldness of the snow.
He glanced down at her, seeming to notice for the first time that her body was racked with chills. “Why don’t we get out of this cold and into the warmth of the car. You can give me a lift up to the lodge. But I’ll drive.”
“I think I can manage to drive my own car,” she protested.
“No doubt. But try humoring me. I’m a man and I like to feel in control.”
“You should work on that,” Kylie grumbled, even though she’d already decided not to argue.
She opened the hatch of the Civic, and he shoved his damaged skis into the back end, slamming the trunk shut. She opened the passenger’s side door with numb fingers and climbed in.
The heat blasting out of the vents poured over her body and she breathed a sigh of relief. The ice in her veins started to melt.
The driver’s side door opened and he threw his ski hat onto the console between them. Expensive with a prominent gold logo on the band and a thick, tight knit to keep out the cold. Only the best for Michael Emerson.
“I’ll pay for the skis of course,” she said as he slipped behind the wheel and eased the car into Low. “You’ll have to let me know how much I owe you.”
“No need for that. They were an old pair. I have others.”
She was fairly certain he did. Many others. But replacing the skis was a matter of principle to her.
“I’d still like to pay you. The accident was my fault.”
He laughed, the sound rich and deep. “You’re right, it was. So if you have a real need to repay me, I’ll settle for a drink when we get to the lodge. Preferably something strong enough to take the chill off.”
“I think I can manage that.”
She didn’t add that she was only too aware that hanging out in the bar of the Cloudspin, no matter how empty the place was this time of the year, wasn’t something that an employee or a member of their family did. She made a note to herself to send him a nice bottle of wine when she got back to civilization.
His hands, large and capable, gripped the wheel with ease, and she found herself shooting quick glances in his direction, studying his profile and attempting to connect her memories of the arrogant teenager with the man who now sat next to her.
He’d grown up with an easy confidence, a sense of entitlement that only the rich seemed to master.
Not that any of that surprised Kylie. Eleven years ago, when other teens she knew had fumbled and stammered their way through adolescence, Michael had breezed through with ease.
At eighteen, he had commanded the undivided attention of all the females around him, young and old alike. The women had swarmed around him like anxious bees to honey, fluttering and buzzing for his attention.
Not that Michael had shown any indication that he was bothered by all that fluttering. He’d taken it in stride. Even back then, rumors about his sexual escapades had ripped through the employees like wildfire.
But in spite of how she’d felt about his youthful behavior, Kylie kept track of him over the years, and his high profile career in photography and adventure sports had made it a relatively easy undertaking. He’d become a media darling.
She’d been unable to deny her fascination with him. She’d found herself tied to him in some strange way. Just as she had found herself tied to the other teens who had been there that summer eleven years ago—a wild pack of party animals who had lived for the moment
Although her father had sent her away shortly after that night and she had never communicated with any of the others again, Kylie had felt oddly connected to Michael and the other teens from that summer so long ago. Sometimes she felt as though they were locked in a strange time warp.
Whenever Michael had an article in Explorer magazine, articles with his famous scrawling signature accompanied by a perfectly drawn soaring eagle at the bottom, she had devoured them. They revealed a man hooked on perilous climbing expeditions and risky white-water rafting trips. A man who took chances with his life, a true adrenaline junkie.
But it was when the stories about the Manhattan Slasher hit the tabloids and the mainstream papers that she’d really sat up and taken notice. She couldn’t help but wonder about the young man she’d known as a teen. Was it possible that he’d become the killer the papers speculated about?
Had the terrible accident they’d all been a part of created some kind of monster? Kylie knew only too well how Andrea Greenley’s death had affected her.
She shifted in the seat, suddenly anxious to reach the lodge. Something told her that the sooner she completed her business and returned to New York, the safer she’d feel. The further away the nightmare of that night would be.
Glancing up, she noticed they were passing through the stone pillars leading to the main lodge. On either side of the car, elegant, multimillion-dollar homes appeared, each building strategically set among groves of towering pines.
“Does your family still own Bratton Cottage?” she asked.
He nodded, his gaze fixed on the treacherous roadway.
“So, you’re staying there instead of the lodge?” She knew she was talking too fast, her nervousness revealed in a need to make conversation.
“No, I built my own place a few years ago. It’s on a lot close to Bratton Cottage.”
Some of the members, ones whose membership extended back to the early 1800s, had been able to lease land from Cloudspin and build their own vacation homes. Their homes were passed on from generation to generation, the leases expiring after ninety-nine years but with a clause for automatic renewal.
The less fortunate members, the ones unable to afford the exorbitant leases or the cost of building one of the obscenely luxurious homes, stayed at the main lodge.
“I always liked Bratton Cottage,” Kylie said. “It was one of the few places that seemed to fit in with the surrounding scenery.”
“Probably because it’s one of the original cottages. It was built around the same time as the lodge. Rustic.” He tossed another quick glance in her direction. “Of course, my father added a few modern conveniences in order to entice my mother to agree to summer here rather than the city. Not that she ever really minded.”
Nervous, Kylie chewed on a corner of her fingernail. “I always thought some of the newer homes were a bit pretentious. A bit too modern for the Adirondacks.”
He glanced sideways at her, and embarrassed, Kylie shoved her hand back into her lap. She wondered if she might have offended him with her criticism of his friends’ homes.
“I’m glad to see that you haven’t changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“The chewing of your fingernails and—” he reached out and turned the heat down a notch “—the fact that you were never overly impressed with people. You were never shy about speaking your mind.”
She was glad he had turned down the heat. Her cheeks felt overly warm. “My father always told me to mind my tongue and keep my fingers out of my mouth.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t listen real hard to that particular directive.”
She laughed. “You’re right. But then I never claimed to be Miss Manners. Must be because I never went to finishing school.”
“Good thing. A woman who speaks her mind is a person to be respected. Or so my mother always said.”
“From what I remember of your mother, she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, either.”
“You remember right. And for what it’s worth, she would have agreed with your assessment of some of the homes. She hated to see the destruction of the lodge’s natural beauty. When she served as president of Cloudspin’s governing board over fifteen years ago, she insisted on bylaws that preserved and restricted the development of the land.”
“I remember that. Caused quite a stir with a lot of people.”
“What a lot of people don’t understand is that the wealthy have as hard a time fitting in as everyone else. They just have more money to worry about while they’re mired down in their angst. Most of them get fixated on trying to impress everyone.” He shifted into Low for the climb. “When I took over as president, I followed my mother’s lead and enacted some pretty rigid bylaws of my own. I wanted to restrict the kinds of homes members could build. Wanted the architecture to fit in with the natural landscape.”
“That must have put more than a few noses out of joint.”
“Some. But when I built my place, I made sure the design didn’t spoil the natural beauty.” He pointed out the window to a sleek log home perched strategically on a small knoll overlooking the lodge. “That’s my place.”
Kylie stretched to see out the window and gave a small whistle of appreciation. “It’s beautiful.” She noted the soft sheen of light that seemed to form a halo above the cabin. “Skylights?”
He nodded. “My single concession to modern architecture. I like lying in bed and seeing the night sky overhead. Not possible in my place in New York. So, I made some adjustments.”
The thought of him stretched out on a huge Adirondack poster bed, a brightly colored quilt tangled around his long muscular legs and the brilliant night sky overhead leaped into Kylie’s brain. She glanced away, embarrassed at the unexpected direction of her thoughts.
They rounded another curve and the monstrous structure of Cloudspin Lodge came into view. She sat forward, drinking it in. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed the old place.
Modeled after Adirondack hunting camps that had been popular years ago but with a great deal more grace and elegance, the lodge was four stories high with a pitched, moss-green roof. A huge wraparound porch with a domed portico and thick white columns stretched the length of the lodge. From experience, Kylie knew the porch could accommodate a crowd of several hundred.
The main entrance to the lodge was wide, with steps leading up to the double front door. A grove of white birches lined the snow covered lawn, their bare branches strung with festive lights. They twinkled invitingly in the gathering darkness.
The windows on the first and second floors spilled a welcoming yellow light on the snowy front lawn. Wreaths and ropes of pine needles still decorated the windows and the railing of the porch.
In contrast, the upstairs windows, the ones above the second floor, were all dark, giving the upper floors a gloomy, forbidding look. Kylie figured that during the winter months, the third and fourth floors went unoccupied.
As she stared upward, she was startled to see the face of a small child pressed against the windowpane of one of the fourth-floor windows. Kylie leaned against the dashboard, straining for a clearer look.
The child’s hair was long and clung close to her head, as if she had just stepped from a shower. She appeared young, age four or five at the most. She waved, her mouth open to reveal an engaging gap in the front.
Kylie lifted a hand and waved back. She wondered what a small child was doing playing alone in the dark, drafty upper halls of the hotel.
“Who are you waving at?” Michael asked.
“A little girl. She’s on the top floor.”
Michael leaned forward and glanced up at the hotel.
“I don’t see anyone.”
“She’s at the sixth window in.”
Once Michael had rounded the curve to the front entrance, he glanced up again. He shook his head, shooting a quick glance of disbelief in her direction. “There’s no one there, Kylie. You must have seen a shadow.”
She leaned forward again, her gaze quickly sweeping the length of the top floor. The windows were all empty, the small face pressed to the window moments ago, gone.
The hair on the back of her neck prickled and an odd uneasiness rushed through her. Had she imagined the face?
No, she must have miscounted.
She recounted the window. No face, only eerily dark windows staring down at them.
“I could have sworn there was a little girl up there,” she protested, not willing to give up so easily.
“Not possible. We keep the top two floors of the hotel closed off during the winter months—securely locked. The only people who go up there periodically are the maintenance crew to check on the pipes.”
Kylie strained for another look, but there was nothing. In spite of the heat pouring out of the vents, she shivered.
Was she seeing things?
She sat back. What if the dreams, the horrible nightmares that had haunted her for so many years, were now coming to visit her during her waking hours?
She swallowed against the scream of protest that rose in the back of her throat.
Perhaps returning to Cloudspin had been a mistake.
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