House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) by Carolyn McSparren Page A

head.
    Paul could see that she must have been a great beauty as a young woman. In some ways she still was. Bones that perfect, a face that oval, eyes that wide would not fail her if she lived to be two hundred years old. Her eagle’s nose gave character to a face that might otherwise have been bland.
    No—never bland. Abraham Lincoln once said any man over forty is responsible for his face. If the same held true for women, then this was the most formidable woman he had ever seen—she made Catherine de Medici look like Mary Poppins.
    If Paul had been able to put words into her mouth, he thought they would be something like “I am entitled.” No hint of insecurity, of compassion, of empathy in those eyes and that full mouth. A woman capable of great passion, certainly, but love? Paul wasn’t so sure about that.
    She would have acquired what she wanted and devil take the hindmost. His father had caught that quality in this portrait. He had painted her with vision, with talent, but without much love. He had seen her much too clearly for a loving son.
    Wasn’t there a poem somewhere that said something like “look on me and be afraid?”
    “Man.” Ann whispered. “Can you see Aunt Maribelle hanging that over the living-room fireplace?”
    “Not if it’s a true likeness.”
    “Too damned true. I’d love to have Gram take a look at this. Would you mind? After I’ve finished cleaning it, that is?”
    “Not if I can be with you when you show it to her.”
    “Sure. She loved talking to you at lunch the other day.Get her started and she’ll regale you with tales of Rossiter for hours.”
    He dragged his gaze from the face in the portrait. His grandmother. Maybe it was best his mother had never met her. He didn’t think Michelle Bouvet Delaney from Paris, France, would have been happily accepted by this Delaney doyenne. He turned to the larger canvas. “What about the other one?”
    “Hey, give me time. Besides, I’m hungry.”
    They sat on the steps of the little house and ate their burgers while Dante lay at their feet and sighed deeply every few minutes.
    Even in its tangled state the garden was being forced into life by the coming of spring. Paul didn’t want to lose the wild spirit the garden had developed on its own. He didn’t think it should be straitjacketed into something formal, but it might be teased into something lovely.
    After lunch, Ann picked up the trash, saw nothing to use as a garbage can and set the box in which their things had come on the counter. “We’ll take this stuff with us when we leave. No sense in leaving more goodies for the mice.”
    Paul was champing at the bit to see what lay under the paint on the other canvas, but he couldn’t let his impatience show.
    Ann stood in the center of the room with her hands on her hips and turned around in a slow circle. “There’s got to be more stuff here somewhere,” she said. “I can almost taste it.” She grinned at him. “It’s not psychic ability, although I wish to God I had some. Sometimes I just get a sense about bits and pieces hidden in old places.”
    “You said maybe baseboards. Should we try to loosen them? Or tap the backs of the cupboards?”
    “Guess we’ll have to. You don’t have to stick aroundif you’ve got stuff to do and if you’ll give me leave to do things on my own. I may have to be destructive.”
    “I’ll stay,” Paul said. As if he could have been driven away by a tank. “Shall I go get us a couple of crowbars?”
    “In a minute. Buddy says this place will probably have to come down, but I’d rather not start destroying it right now if we can help it.” Ann folded her arms across her chest and frowned at the room. “I know where people hide stuff. I’ve done this for years. I ought to be able to figure it out.”
    She hopped up on one of the counters that was free of painting gear. He leaned against the wall beside the door and simply watched her.
    He enjoyed watching her under any