“Eggs and pizza?” he asked.
“The eggs are for me. The pizza is for Houdini.”
“Got it,” he said. “All right, to get back to our business. You do know about the Sebastian-North legend, I assume.”
“I do now.” Alice took a small swallow of the wine and lowered the glass. “But I had never heard about it until a year ago.”
“A year ago?”
“That’s when I found out that I was descended from a certain Nicholas North.”
That stopped him for a few beats. “I know you grew up in an orphanage, but didn’t you know anything about your family history?”
“Nope.” She drank some more wine. “The most that anyone at the orphanage could recall was that I arrived there at about age three after my mother was killed in a car accident.”
“What do you mean, that was all anyone could recall? There must have been some records when you were taken in.”
Alice shrugged. “There was a fire in the records office at the orphanage when I was four. What little information there was relating to my family history was lost.”
“What about your father’s people?”
Alice gave him a cold smile. “Nothing. The general theory at the orphanage was that I was the product of a one-night stand or a short-term affair in which neither party had kept current with their anti-pregnancy shots.”
Drake said nothing.
Alice raised her brows. “They do happen, you know.”
“What happens?”
“One-night stands between two people who don’t take precautions.”
He realized he was flushing a little. “I’m aware of that.”
“Society and the legal system do everything possible to make sure no one grows up without a family, but kids still get orphaned.” She paused. “I realize that sort of thing doesn’t happen in the Sebastian family world, though.”
“No,” he said, refusing to let her sarcasm get to him. “It doesn’t. We take care of our own.”
Alice gave him a cool smile. “How very traditional.”
“Moving right along, how did you find out about the connection to Nicholas North?”
“Long story. Involves my dead husband.” Alice drank more wine. “I don’t like to talk about him.”
“We’re going to have to discuss him at some point because I think he’s linked to this thing.”
Alice eyed him coldly. “What thingwould that be?”
“The treasure that North and Sebastian buried on Rainshadow. It’s gone missing.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You think I stole it, don’t you?”
He watched her closely. “Did you?”
“No.” She held up one hand, palm out. “And before you ask, no I can’t prove it.”
“Do you know who did steal it?”
“Uh-huh.” She studied him over the rim of the glass. “Fulton Whitcomb.”
“Your husband.”
“Dead husband. And it was just a Marriage of Convenience so it doesn’t really count. Death results in an automatic dissolution of the marriage. The surviving spouse does not inherit any property. She has no legal or financial obligations pertaining to her husband’s estate. It’s like the marriage never happened.”
“Unless there are children from the union,” Drake said softly.
Children changed everything. The birth of a child into an MC automatically converted what was otherwise a dressed-up romantic affair into a full-blown Covenant Marriage. Dissolving a Covenant Marriage was a legal, financial, and social nightmare. His brother, Harry, had discovered that the hard way.
“Yes, well, there were no children,” Alice said coolly.
“Because both of you kept current with your vaccinations?”
“I certainly kept mine up-to-date. Not that it mattered.”
Drake heard a tiny mental pingwarning him that this was important. “Why didn’t the shots matter?”
“Because getting pregnant would have been biologically impossible under the circumstances.” Alice drank the last of her wine and set the glass back on the table. “Fulton and I never had sex.”
Maud came out of the kitchen carrying two plates. She set the pizza down on the bar. Houdini waved ecstatically and chortled.
Maud chuckled and carried the platter of eggs, toast, and potatoes to the booth where Alice and Drake sat. Alice looked at the repast as though it were a diamond necklace.
“Thanks, Maud,” she said. “This is just what I need.”
Maud went back to her work behind the counter. Drake folded his arms on the table and watched Alice dive into the eggs. It occurred to him that she was hungry because she had used up a lot of energy that evening with the magic act and then defending herself in the alley. She was probably exhausted.
She swallowed a bite of eggs and began munching on a slice of toast. She paused mid-munch, glaring at him.
“What?” she said around a mouthful of toast.
“Nothing,” he said. “I know you’re hungry. I’ve been there. Go ahead. You can tell me your side of the story when you’ve finished. I’ll tell you mine while you eat.”
She nodded and went back to her eggs.
“Here’s where things stand on Rainshadow,” Drake said. “The treasure, which consisted of three dangerous Old World crystals of unknown properties, was stolen sometime during the past eighteen months. Recently one of the crystals was recovered deep inside the Preserve on the island.”
Alice ate some of the potatoes. “Just one?”
“The other two crystals are still missing. We believe they are also on Rainshadow.”
“We?”
“My family.”
Alice frowned. “Well, that’s weird. I wonder why someone took them back to Rainshadow after going to the trouble of killing Fulton and stealing the stones.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not to get too personal, but why would you enter into an MC with Whitcomb if you didn’t intend to sleep with him?”
Alice raised her brows. “Because I was an idiot.”
“I’m guessing there was another reason.”
“Nope, I’m pretty sure that was the actual reason. I told myself that I was falling in love with him. He was so charming, so much fun. I thought that eventually I would want to sleep with him. I explained that I was attracted to him but that the relationship was moving too quickly. I said I needed some time to be sure of my feelings for him and his for me. Believe it or not, he claimed he wanted a full Covenant Marriage.”
“Fulton asked you to enter into a CM?”
Alice grimaced. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? You know, I think it was his insistence on a CM that made me uneasy. It all seemed a little too good to be true. A fairy tale in which the handsome, charming, wealthy prince whisks the little clerk from the museum gift shop off her feet and asks her to marry him.”
“You don’t believe in fairy-tale endings?”
Alice shrugged again. “I grew up in an orphanage, remember? You learn a lot about real life in an orphanage. Deep down, I sensed that there was something wrong with the perfect picture that Fulton painted. Regardless, I admit I had a few hopes and dreams. But I wouldn’t go for the CM. I did, however, let him push me into an MC.”
“Even though you weren’t ready to sleep with him.”
Alice frowned. “You’re really fixated on that aspect of the thing, aren’t you?”
“Just curious,” he lied. He was fixated, damn it.
“Fulton said he wanted some kind of commitment between us while I got to know him better. I’m pretty sure he figured that he’d talk me into bed fairly quickly. He was probably right. After all, he had dazzled me with a gift that no one else had ever given me.”
“An expensive piece of jewelry? A car?”
She smiled wistfully. “None of the above. Fulton Whitcomb gave me something far more precious—a piece of my family history.”
Drake experienced the sharp, edgy whisper of understanding. “He was the one who told you that you were Nick North’s descendant.”
“Yes. He was really into the antiquities market. He said he had a line on Nick North’s diary. He promised to find it for me—” Alice broke off abruptly, as if she was not sure how much more she ought to say. “Along with a couple of other interesting North family documents,” she finished a little too smoothly. “My turn to ask some questions. How did you find me?”