A Self-Made Man
Kathleen O'Brien
Adam Kendall: He's rich, he's powerful–he's a man who gets what he wants. When he left town, he was a nobody. Now he's the somebody everyone wants to know–everyone except Lacy Morgan.Lacy Mayfair Morgan: After Adam left, Lacy married money–but only because she had no other choice. Some would say she's worked even harder than Adam to get what she has. But Adam has his doubts.Adam's never forgiven Lacy for lying to him all those years ago. And now that she can afford it, he's going to make her pay.
“Hello, Adam. Welcome back.”
“Hello, Mrs. Morgan,” he replied, and Lacy wondered whether anyone else could hear the slow, scathing emphasis on her name. “You’re looking particularly…prosperous. Marriage seems to have agreed with you.”
“And traveling has obviously agreed with you, Adam,” she observed pointedly, scanning his well-cut tuxedo in deliberate replication of his earlier perusal of her. “You’re polished to a rather high gloss yourself.”
“Apparently, we’ve both learned the value of wearing the right uniform.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Uniform?”
“Yes. After all, if you don’t suit up, they won’t let you play, will they?”
She took a moment to breathe past her anger. Perhaps his clothing was just a costume to disguise the irreverent rebel he’d always been, but her transformation was deeper, more fundamental. She hadn’t “suited up” to play a poised young widow. She had changed far more than her gown. She was no longer naive, desperate or foolish.
“I really wouldn’t know,” she said coolly. “Unfortunately, I have very little time to play. Which reminds me, I should be getting back to the other guests. Perhaps you’d like to see some of our more expensive paintings. After all, now that you’ve gone to the trouble of suiting up as a rich philanthropist, we wouldn’t want to deny you the chance to get in the game.”
Dear Reader,
We’ve all made more mistakes than we can count. We’ve stumbled and grumbled. We’ve misjudged, misbehaved and just generally messed up. The road not taken haunts us, and the road we did take is littered with our mistakes.
But sometimes we get lucky—sometimes life offers us a second chance. And, if we’ve learned anything, we try to do better, to be kinder, wiser, stronger. We use our new chance to fight our way to happiness.
When Adam Kendall, the hero of A Self-Made Man, comes back to Pringle Island, the home he left ten years ago, he isn’t looking for a second chance. He’s looking for revenge. Lacy Morgan, the childhood sweetheart he abandoned, doesn’t want to start over, either. She just wants to be left alone.
But somehow these two wounded people, who thought it was too late for happiness, discover that they learned something very special during those lonely years apart.
They learned how to forgive. And they learned how to love.
I hope you enjoy their story. And I hope that your days, too, will be filled with love and happiness…and all the second chances you need!
Warmly,
Kathleen O’Brien
A Self-Made Man
Kathleen O’Brien
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Manning, who proves daily that “happily ever after”
isn’t just something you read about in books.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
“OH, MY LORD, WHAT’S THE matter with the baby?” The horrified bellow could be heard fifty yards away. “Lacy! Where are you? The baby is upside down!”
The chatter in the crowded riding arena skipped a heartbeat. More than a hundred guests had gathered in the cleverly converted Barnhardt stables, expecting to be lavishly feted in return for their financial support of the new Pringle Island General Hospital Neonatal Unit. This development—an upside-down baby—was clearly quite a surprise.
“Lacy! Come here!”
Under the soft light from overhead fixtures, two dozen faces turned toward Lacy Morgan with expressions of well-bred curiosity. Down along the main aisle, which had once housed the eight Barnhardt horses, other guests poked their heads inquisitively out from the individual stalls, where they had been viewing the items placed for auction.
“Lacy, come quick!” The call grew shrill. “Lacy, for heaven’s sake, come look at this baby!”
Lacy sighed internally, recognizing Tilly Barnhardt’s voice immediately. No one but Tilly could hit that particular note and hold it quite that long. And no one but that eccentric elderly matron would have dreamed of interrupting this glittering event, the kickoff fund-raiser for the neonatal wing, with such a dreadful caterwauling.
“Excuse me. I believe I’m being paged.” Lacy bestowed an apologetic smile on her companion, a gentleman who, for the past half an hour, had been telling her everything any human could want to know about corn options—and perhaps, if she were truthful, just a little more. Murmuring reassuring noises at the other guests, she plucked a champagne flute deftly from a passing waiter’s tray and, lifting her long blue silk skirt slightly with one hand, she glided across the softly polished hardwood floors toward the echoing wail.
She found her elderly friend just inside the tack room, standing in front of a huge oil painting, scowling fiercely.
“Tilly, my love, do hush.” Lacy held the champagne flute out with a smile. “Half the guests think someone is being murdered in here.”
“But look! Look what some fool has done!” Tilly extended one long forefinger toward the painting dramatically. “It’s the Verengetti! It was our coup! The highlight of the entire show, and it’s been hung upside down!”
Lacy patted the older woman’s shoulder, her fingers encountering the familiar rough patches of worn velvet. Tilly had worn that same black velvet dress to meet two presidents, bury three husbands, and raise about five million dollars for the hospital. As the wealthy widow of Pringle Island’s most beloved obstetrician, she could afford to buy a new evening gown for every night of the week. But she could also, she always said, afford not to. Her lack of pretension was one of the qualities Lacy valued most.
“It’s not upside down,” Lacy explained, turning her own attention to the riot of pink and blue splotches that were the Verengetti trademark. In the center the pink and blue formed a baby held in a woman’s arms, and the woman was clearly standing on her head. It was probably a statement about the cosmic implications of motherhood, but Lacy knew that Tilly would find any such explanation unacceptable. “It’s supposed to look like that, Tilly.”
Tilly snorted. “Nonsense.” She studied the painting, tilting her head at such an extreme angle Lacy began to fear that her stiff white wig might topple. “Really?” She transferred her glare to Lacy. “Like that?”
Lacy nodded. “I’m afraid so.” She extended the champagne again, and this time Tilly took it.
“Well.” The older woman drained half the flute in one swallow. “Well.” She flicked a wry glance at Lacy. “I guess you’d know, with your fancy art degree and all. I guess that’s the kind of stuff they teach you at graduate school nowadays.”
Lacy smiled. “I’m afraid so.”
It was an old joke between them. Tilly was the only woman in town who hadn’t ever been impressed by Lacy’s rather extensive academic credentials. Tilly’s indifference had driven Lacy’s late husband crazy when he’d been alive. Malcolm Morgan had wanted everyone in town to admire what a refined, intellectual trophy wife he’d created out of poor little Lacy Mayfair—and for the most part everyone had obliged. Everyone except for Tilly. And, of course, Lacy herself.
Lacy cared less than anyone about her own transformation. After all, what did book learning have to do with appreciating art and beauty? She remembered the day ten years ago when, on a high school field trip, she had seen her first real painting. No college could teach you that sense of paralyzed awe, that sudden tingling as genius touched your soul, just as surely as a hand pressing upon your skin.
Ironically, now that Lacy gazed routinely on works of great beauty, she almost never felt that physical thrill anymore. Yes, she really was Malcolm’s creation, wasn’t she? Lacy Morgan, elegant in blue silk, might have learned a million facts, but she had forgotten something that scruffy little Lacy Mayfair had once known better than anyone. She had forgotten how to feel.
And it wasn’t just paintings that had lost their power. After years of Malcolm’s tutelage, she could identify any opera from a single musical phrase, but no aria ever sounded quite as poignant as her favorite rock and roll ballad had once sounded on an old cheap radio, while she danced with Adam Kendall in the rain….
Adam Kendall. Perhaps it was being here in these stables tonight that had conjured his name. Once, ten years ago, she and Adam had met here at midnight, searching for a place to be alone. If she let herself, she could even smell the hay again, could imagine that she saw the moonlight reflecting in the horses’ dark, liquid eyes as they blinked curiously at the intruders.
But she wouldn’t let herself. She shook herself mentally and took a deep breath, pressing her lips together tightly. She didn’t have time to dredge any of that ancient history up right now. Not tonight.
Not ever, for that matter.
Tucking the feel of Adam’s arms and the smell of freshly cut hay back into the airtight mental casket in which they’d been locked for the past ten years, Lacy borrowed a sip of Tilly’s champagne and studied the Verengetti dispassionately. Did she even like the painting? She wasn’t sure. But she liked the money it would bring to the hospital in tonight’s silent auction. With a coldhearted objectivity that even Malcolm might have envied, she calculated how much. Fifteen thousand, perhaps? More if it weren’t for the upside-down problem.
Tucking her arm through Tilly’s, Lacy nudged her friend toward the central reception area. “We’d better get back,” she said. “It’s not going to do the neonatal unit any good if people start whispering that we’re in here stringing babies upside down. And besides,” she added, completely deadpan, “Howard Whitehead is eager to tell you all about corn options.”
Tilly snorted. “That impossible old windbag,” she said forcefully. “He knows he’s going to give us ten thousand dollars tonight, but he’ll insist on boring us all to death first.” She glanced over at Lacy. “I swear, I don’t know how you stay so calm. It’s not human, damn it. Don’t you ever lose your temper?”
Lacy laughed. “Not with a man who’s planning to donate ten thousand dollars, I don’t.”
Companionably arm in arm, they wandered down the main aisle, peeking occasionally into the stalls, exchanging greetings with old friends, answering questions about the artwork. They had almost reached the arena again when Kara Karlin, one of the hospital’s board of directors, came rushing toward them.
“Oh, there you are,” she said breathlessly. “Lacy, you won’t believe who’s here tonight! And he’s asking for you!”
Tilly groaned. “If it’s Howard Whitehead, tell him you couldn’t find us.”
Kara’s eyes were big brown discs glistening with excitement. “No, no. It’s someone else. Someone new. Well, not really new, but—” She dragged Lacy awkwardly toward the center of the crowd while she talked. “Oh, you’ll see. You just won’t believe it. He’s the most— I mean, talk about glamorous. I mean, he’s so completely— Oh, come on, Lacy. Hurry!”
“I’m hurrying,” Lacy assured her, amused and more than a little curious. Who could reduce this middle-aged matron to such babbling incoherence? She hoped it wasn’t another second-rate entertainer—their quaint small-town New England streets occasionally attracted film productions. Last year a minor soap opera star had nearly brought the town to a standstill by buying condoms at the local gas station. “But, honestly, Kara, unless you want me to trip over my skirt and meet this exciting personage flat on my face, you’d better slow down.”
Kara took a deep breath and squeezed Lacy’s hand. “Fine. Be that way. But just look,” she said excitedly, coming to a theatrical standstill and staring straight ahead, “and see for yourself!”
Lacy paused, surveying the crowd slowly, searching for the mysterious new arrival. If this were another celebrity sighting, she hoped she could muster a polite display of excitement. Sadly, she wasn’t particularly impressed by actors. But that wasn’t really their fault, was it? She wasn’t particularly impressed by anything anymore.
She scanned the familiar faces. Howard Whitehead had snagged some other poor soul. The hospital director was lobbying the mayor. The candy stripers were bunched together, flirting with a waiter. A couple of artists whose work had been donated to the auction were happily arguing in the corner.
And then there was that group of women over by the stage, all bleached smiles and winking diamonds, all clustered around a tall, dark-haired…
The man looked up suddenly, as if he sensed her presence. He looked directly toward her, his gaze as unerring as radar. He stared at her boldly, poised, unblinking, unflinching. And her heart stood still.
Oh, dear God. It couldn’t be.
But it was. Even from across the arena she could see that his eyes were blue. A deep, rich, melted-sapphire blue. As blue as her dress. And with a disturbing flash of insight she knew why she loved this dress, why she had bought it in the first place, why she wore it whenever she could. She touched her neckline, cool silk under shaking fingers, flushing instinctively, as if everyone in the room would suddenly know why, even after ten years, she still draped herself in silk the color of his eyes.
“I—” She knew Kara was waiting for a response, but she discovered that her lungs had flattened to a useless emptiness, and she couldn’t speak. Her lips felt swollen, clumsy. “He—”
“Yep.” Kara chuckled triumphantly, apparently interpreting the stammering as confirmation. “See what I mean?”
Yes, Lacy saw, though it hurt her. She couldn’t take her gaze from him, couldn’t turn away. Not one single muscle in her body seemed to be under her own control.
Her helpless shock seemed to amuse him. He watched her for a long, brazen moment, letting his own gaze wander over the elaborate French twist of her thick brown hair. He had always preferred it loose…. Then down the low, tight bodice, the full, flowing skirt of her evening dress. He had vowed he would buy her just such a dress someday…. And then up again, to the hand she had pressed against her breast, to the ugly square diamond she wore there. He hadn’t even been able to afford a high school ring, but…someday, Lacy. Someday.
But someday had never come. And now she wore another man’s ring. She saw his eyes harden as he stared at the diamond, and she lowered her hand nervously. She shouldn’t have. It was the sign of weakness, the hint of shame he apparently had been waiting for. He watched her hide her trembling hand in the folds of her skirt. And then slowly, with an intense and private knowing, he smiled. It was a beautiful smile. A cruel and unforgiving, diabolically beautiful smile.
He hated her.
A sudden whirlpool formed in her bloodstream, pulling down, down toward a sinking, sickening vortex. Was she going to faint? She wouldn’t allow it, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. How dare he hate her? She pressed her fingers against the rough wooden wall as she felt herself spinning, drowning in a maelstrom of emotion.
Had she said she no longer knew how to feel? Then what was this wild barrage of sensation? Lips, bonfires, rain, hands, music, magic, tears, pain, blood, pain, pain—the memories came hurtling at her like jagged bolts of lightning. She was almost bent double from the sheer electric power of it.
“Well, I’ll be darned. If it isn’t Adam Kendall!” Just behind Lacy, Tilly’s voice was full of a delighted surprise, and in typical uninhibited fashion it carried across the arena easily. “Come here, young man, and give your old friend a kiss!”
Adam’s expression lightened as he recognized Tilly, and, with a few polite murmurs, he obediently began to move toward them. He seemed indifferent to the bevy of disappointed beauties he left behind, but Lacy could tell, from the angle of their collective gaze, which was focused somewhere just below Adam’s waist, that they were consoling themselves by admiring the geometrical perfection in the ratio of shoulders to hips.
And it was perfect. Lacy knew, much better than these women, just how achingly perfect he was, physically. Strong muscles tapered down his long, lean torso, ending in sexy, shadowed hollows just deep enough to accept a kiss. Skin tanned golden from shirtless summers at the concrete factory ran like honey down his back, falling to the paler, tight silken curves of his buttocks….
She heard herself make a small noise, and then she felt Tilly’s hand on her elbow, steadying her. Amazing, really, how much welcome strength could be conveyed through those thin, elderly fingers.
“Courage, child,” Tilly whispered, and thankfully Lacy felt her balance returning. She took a deep breath, raised her chin and, with all the equanimity she could summon, forced herself to watch calmly as Adam Kendall, the most desirable, dangerous man she had ever known, walked slowly, arrogantly back into her life.
“Mrs. Barnhardt,” he said, and this time his smile held no sting. He accepted Tilly’s outstretched hand, then bent to kiss her cheek. “It’s good to see you again. La he extranado.”
Tilly made a small scoffing noise, but Lacy could tell she was flattered by whatever Adam had said. In the old days, Tilly had given him Spanish lessons in exchange for odd jobs around the house, occasional grooming of the horses. Today his accent was flawless, a testimony to her success.
“Nonsense,” Tilly said tartly, covering her pleasure. “Dashing young men do not miss creaky old ladies like me when they set off to see the world. Not for a split second.”
Adam laughed. “The world can be a pretty rough place, Mrs. Barnhardt, even for dashing young men. I remember one particularly ugly winter when I would have traded the whole damn globe for a slice of your blueberry pie.”
Tilly blushed and scowled simultaneously. “Watch your language, young man. You know, I tried to mix a little etiquette into those Spanish lessons, but apparently it didn’t take. You haven’t even said hello to my friends.” She urged Kara forward. “I don’t think you know Mrs. Karlin. She’s the head of our hospital volunteer board.”
Kara grinned goofily, apparently struck dumb by Adam’s smile, and then overcompensated by vigorously pumping his hand. He didn’t protest. He merely raised one eyebrow in mild curiosity and allowed her to continue. Finally, Kara seemed to notice that she still held his hand and let go abruptly, apologizing in unintelligible mortification.
Tilly chuckled. Turning to her other side, she slipped her arm around Lacy’s shoulders. “And of course,” she said with just a hint of protective warning in her voice, “you must remember our little Lacy.”
Lacy forced herself to meet his gaze, bracing for the pain of recognition. She had always loved Adam’s eyes. Stunning blue dramatically framed by black brows and black velvet lashes. Clear, intelligent, audacious, sexy. Uptilted with a secret laughter he had reserved for her, glowing with a rogue tenderness that lay deep beneath the streetwise facade.
And the fire—oh, yes, the fire! Startled by the sight, she realized that she had naively assumed that their decade of separation would have extinguished Adam’s fire—just as it had snuffed her own. But it was still there, the fire that had warmed the coldest nights of her life….
Apparently it would take more than ten years to turn Adam Kendall to ice. She could only imagine the parade of women who had lined up to keep the flames alive after he left Pringle Island, and Lacy, behind.
She fought a shiver that skimmed across her shoulder blades and, somehow, with the help of Tilly’s firm embrace, held her posture erect. She offered him a smile and held out pale, numb fingers.
“Hello, Adam,” she said with extreme courtesy. “Welcome back.”
He took her hand. His tanned fingers were warm, his grip so strong her bones pressed tightly together. But she hardly felt either warmth or pain. He might as well have been shaking hands with a plastic mannequin.
“Hello, Mrs. Morgan,” he said, and she wondered whether anyone else could hear the slow, scathing emphasis on her name. “This is a pleasure. You’re looking well.”
“She’s looking well? Nonsense!” Tilly tightened her hold. “She’s looking magnificent, and you know it. Bellisima, no crees?”
Adam once again scanned Lacy slowly. “Yes,” he agreed finally. “Bellisima. She’s right, Mrs. Morgan. You’re looking particularly…prosperous. Marriage seems to have agreed with you.”
Tilly frowned. “Adam—”
But Lacy had, at long last, found her tongue. Apparently even mannequins could speak up if pushed far enough.
“And traveling has obviously agreed with you, Adam,” she observed pointedly, scanning his crisp, sinfully well-cut tuxedo in a deliberate replication of his earlier perusal of her. “You’re polished to a rather high gloss yourself.”
He shrugged, smiling. “Just window dressing.” He cocked his head sideways, proving his point by suddenly looking far more like a pirate than a gentleman. “Apparently, Mrs. Morgan, we’ve both learned the value of wearing the right uniform.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Uniform?” His smile was really quite unpleasant. Why, then, did it still cause that little hitch in her heartbeat?
“Yes.” His grin broadened, though it never quite reached his eyes. “After all, if you don’t suit up, they won’t let you play, will they?”
She took a moment to breathe past her anger. How dare he? Perhaps his clothing was just a costume, a veneer applied to disguise the irreverent rebel he had always been, but her transformation was deeper, more fundamental. She wasn’t that same untamed child he had once known, painfully thin from poverty, slightly scraggy from neglect, starved for love. His love.
No, by God, she hadn’t “suited up” to play a poised young widow. She had changed far more than her gown. She was no longer naive, desperate or foolish. And she had learned to live without love.
“I really wouldn’t know,” she said coolly. “Unfortunately, I have very little time to play games. Which reminds me, I should be getting back to the other guests.”
She ignored Kara’s shocked inhale, not caring whether the woman thought she was rude. How could Kara understand? Kara Karlin, the mayor’s daughter, knew nothing of Lacy’s past. Lacy Mayfair simply hadn’t existed for the Pringle Island upper crust. Socially, she had been “born” on the day she married Malcolm Morgan.
Lacy turned to Tilly. “Perhaps you should take Adam and show him some of our more expensive paintings,” she said, meeting Tilly’s worried gaze with a grim implacability. “After all, now that he’s gone to the trouble of suiting up as a rich philanthropist, we certainly wouldn’t want to deny him the chance to get in the game, would we?”
UP IN THE OLD HAYLOFT, right next to the hot black spotlight that had been trained on the podium below, Gwen Morgan looked down on her stepmother, who was conversing with some rich guy in a tuxedo. Lacy looked spectacular tonight, Gwen acknowledged reluctantly. That vivid blue suited her, and the choice to go without earrings or necklace was brave in this crowd, but somehow right. Every other woman looked vulgar compared to the elegant widow Morgan.
But then, when didn’t Lacy Morgan look perfect? She had been making Gwen feel ugly, awkward and clumsy, either over-or underdressed, and occasionally even downright invisible, for the past ten years.
Gwen nudged the spotlight an inch, so that its light caught the crown of Lacy’s head, shining on the thick, glossy knot of exquisitely dressed hair. Another flawless call. Gwen touched her own tangled mass of perverse curls, remembering the day, years ago, when she had nearly scorched it all off her head trying to iron it into some desperate approximation of Lacy’s long, swinging pageboy.
Her father, telephoned by the nuns who ran the elite boarding school where Gwen had been incarcerated at the time, had been furious. What fool would bother such a busy man over such a triviality? “Just leave it alone, for God’s sake,” he had barked. “Your hair is problematic enough already.”
Problematic. Even at thirteen, she had known the word was a euphemism for “disappointing.” He’d found her problematic all around—from her messy hair to her bad grades, from her pitiful tennis serve to her intractable acne. And especially problematic had been her maddening habit of being in the way when her father wanted to be alone with Lacy.
Lacy Mayfair Morgan. Her “stepmother.” Her father’s new child bride. A child bride only five years older than Gwen herself. A child bride who, though she’d been born on the wrong side of the tracks, had definitely inherited what Gwen had started to sarcastically call the Sleek Gene.
As Gwen watched now, Lacy smoothly turned away from the tuxedo guy to speak to some other penguin-suited moneybags. The younger girl had a sudden, regressive urge to throw something down on her stepmother’s understated French hairdo. A spitball, maybe, or a water balloon…
Naw. Why bother? It would just give Lacy another chance to handle herself with magnificent aplomb, showcasing the Serene Gene, which apparently was also in her DNA. Gwen watched her stepmother move safely out of range, and she wondered if this was what God felt like. Bigger, higher, above the fray, comfortably able to pass judgment anonymously.
She sighed irritably. Probably not. For one thing, she was pretty sure God didn’t have pests like Teddy Kilgore fiddling insistently at her navel ring.
She captured Teddy’s thumb and squeezed it hard. “Put your paw on my belly button one more time, and I’ll break every one of your fingers.”
It was too dark up here for her glare to have much effect, but she frowned at him anyway. At twenty-one, Teddy Kilgore was two years younger than she was, a straight-A pre-med student, the apple of his snobby mother’s eye, and pretty much a roaring bore. But ever since the day Gwen had come home from boarding school wearing her first training bra, Teddy had been making passes at her every chance he got.
Sometimes she liked it. Sometimes she didn’t. Right now she wished he’d have another beer. Maybe then he’d pass out and let her concentrate on watching the Stepwitch.
No one but Teddy knew Gwen was in town yet. She would have to announce herself eventually, of course. She needed someplace to stay. And, naturally, she needed an advance on her monthly check, which only Lacy could arrange. But Gwen wasn’t ready. She wanted to have these few minutes of secret superiority, silently observing Lacy before the balance of power shifted, as it always did, back to her stepmother.
“Damn it, Teddy,” Gwen whispered, exasperated. The young man had leaned over and begun nibbling at the small gold navel ring, pulling it between his teeth. She couldn’t shove him away without losing an inch of skin, so she grabbed a handful of his silky black hair and tightened her fist warningly. “That hurts.”
He lifted his head and gave her a pout that he undoubtedly thought was sexy. “Aw, c’m’on. If you don’t want men to play with it, why do you wear it?”
“That’s the important word,” she answered, not easing her grip on his hair even fractionally. “Men. Unfortunately you don’t qualify.”
“Well, darn.” Teddy took his disappointment in stride. He rolled over, lying flat on his stomach on the loft, and wiggled his fingers in front of the spotlight. “Look,” he said mischievously. “I can make dirty finger shadows on the curtains down there.”
Gwen looked, wondering if there might be any amusement in a game like that, but though she could see some hazy movement on the curtains behind the podium, she couldn’t make out details. Teddy might have been creating a bunny or a T-rex. She squinted. Or maybe a profile of Adolph Hitler?
Teddy was chuckling, apparently more impressed by his efforts than she was. “Look. I learned this one at school. It’s two people with—”
“Shhh!” Gwen put her hand over Teddy’s fingers and captured them against her pink crystal-studded T-shirt. Lacy was nearby again, this time talking to someone Gwen couldn’t see. Gwen thought she had heard her own name mentioned. “I want to listen to this.”
“What—?”
“Shh!”
“—and we understand she’s been living in Boston,” the disembodied voice was saying, the tones making Boston sound as decadent as Gomorrah. A Pringle Island snob, then—Gwen knew the type. Her father had been the worst. “We couldn’t believe it, of course, but we were actually told that Gwen was installed in a doctor’s household…acting as an au pair!”
Lacy looked unfazed. “Yes,” she said. “I believe that’s true.”
“Oh, Lacy, my dear.” The speaker, who Gwen finally recognized as Jennifer Lansing, the town’s official Minister of Gossip, made a wounded little note of utterly false sympathy. “I know how you must feel. A nanny! After all the advantages you and Malcolm gave her, to be working as a, well, it’s really just a glorified baby-sitter, isn’t it? Malcolm must be turning over in his grave.”
Lacy laughed. “Surely he would understand. She’s quite young, after all. There’s plenty of time to pick a real career.”
Jennifer sniffed. “She’s only a few years younger than you, Lacy dear, and… Well, really, there’s no comparison, is there? Still, perhaps baby-sitting is a step up from her last job, which I hear was waitressing in Spandex tube tops at the Honeydew Café. Better babies than lewd old men with roaming hands, I suppose.”
Lacy bowed her elegant head, accepting the other woman’s sympathy. “I’m sure you’re right. But speaking of babies, have you seen the lovely Verengetti that was donated tonight? I can’t help picturing it in your conservatory. Not everyone has a room with enough scope and style to carry off a painting like that, but you…”
Gwen watched with a barely repressed fury as Lacy led Jennifer away. The nerve of those two self-satisfied snobs! Just exactly what did they think was wrong with being a nanny? Just because neither of them had any children… And as for the Honeydew Café—well, Jennifer was so tightly wrapped, so bony and repressed that people would pay her not to wear Spandex.
Besides, who had appointed them Gwen’s career counselors? She could spend a year laying sewers, if she wanted to. Or she could go be a rodeo clown. It wasn’t anyone’s business but her own.
She didn’t realize she hadn’t released Teddy’s fingers until he protested. “Hey,” he complained, tugging at them. “Ease up!”
She looked over at him, still half-blind with resentment. “Sorry,” she mumbled, trying to hold on to her composure. She felt more like screaming. She felt like yelling down at the departing Lacy that she didn’t give a flying flip what anybody thought of her choices—that her father might have turned Lacy into an obedient little robot-snob, but thank God he hadn’t managed to make one out of his daughter, too.
Teddy must have misinterpreted the intensity in her expression, because his eyes widened, and he made a clumsy move toward her, his lips already pursed for a big, juicy kiss. His awkward lunge pushed them both in front of the spotlight. Suddenly Gwen was truly blinded, this time by hot, white light. She realized that their writhing shadows must be projected on the podium backdrop below, like some X-rated shadow play.
A rather conspicuous method for announcing her arrival in town. The idea definitely had merit, she realized with a rising sense of defiant glee. She stopped struggling and let Teddy wrap his arms around her waist and lower his lips to hers.
Let’s see the Stepwitch handle this. Gwen had observed one indisputable fact through the years: if there was anything that made her frigid little stepmother uncomfortable, it was sex. In fact, she’d bet her trust fund that the widow Morgan, proud possessor of the Serene Gene, hadn’t had a real red-hot firecracker kiss in five years.
Maybe longer.
As Gwen guided Teddy Kilgore’s happily stunned face down toward her collarbone, she recalled what an icy, utterly passive, silently submissive wife Lacy Mayfair had been to Malcolm Morgan.
Heck, maybe ever.
She ran her hands up and down Teddy’s back with exaggerated strokes, knowing it would take broad gestures to attract adequate attention. Teddy responded enthusiastically. “Hot damn,” he murmured against her neck, and then set about taking advantage of his amazing good luck.
He wasn’t a bad kisser, actually. If she hadn’t had other things on her mind, she might even have enjoyed it. Her efforts were rewarded quickly. Within no more than a minute, she heard a few startled sounds from the people right below them. Slowly, as more and more people caught on, a rustle of curiosity moved through the crowd, silencing the normal hum of conversation.
Her fingers buried in Teddy’s black hair, Gwen twisted him a few inches to one side and peered over his shoulder into the audience below. Most of the people were watching the shadow show on the curtains, some smiling with incredulous amusement, some holding back shock with well-manicured, bejeweled fingers.
But one person had already figured it out. One face in the crowd was turned the other way, up toward the loft, up toward the spotlight. Staring straight at the actors.
It was Lacy, of course. Her beautiful face was pale, impassive, as always, but Gwen knew she must be horrified. Echoes came to her from years past. Her father’s voice. Disgusted. Cold.
Control yourself, Gwen, for God’s sake. Haven’t you ever noticed that Lacy never makes a spectacle of herself like that?
Gwen tilted Teddy’s shoulder out of the spotlight’s glare, and tossed her stepmother a broad grin and a wink.
Yeah, she thought wickedly. But I do.
CHAPTER TWO
TWO HOURS LATER, even though the auction was going beautifully, Lacy was done in. The band was still playing “baby” songs—a gimmick that had seemed quite amusing when they’d planned it a month ago.
“Baby, I’m Yours.” “Be My Baby.” “Baby, Come Back.” “Walking My Baby Back Home.” What had she been thinking? And all these paintings of babies—sleeping babies, nursing babies, crying babies, babies cradled lovingly in the arms of doting Madonnas. Suddenly Lacy found the whole thing completely exhausting.
Maybe it was Gwen’s absurdly rebellious arrival. Lacy could only imagine the resentment that had made the young woman put on such a display. When people had begun noticing the sexy silhouettes on the curtains, they had been transfixed—as Gwen had no doubt intended. For a moment Lacy had been stumped. How was such a flagrant piece of bad manners to be handled? Finally, though, she had decided to chuckle, announce that apparently her stepdaughter had joined a theater troupe, and then begin to softly, calmly applaud the performance. Other chuckles had followed, other applause had joined hers, and finally two sheepish young faces had peered down from the loft and grinned.
And, thank heaven, the crisis was averted.
Still, it had taken a lot out of her. Gwen had avoided her the rest of the evening, but Lacy knew a confrontation was inevitable before the night was over. Gwen never came back to the island unless she wanted something, and she never asked nicely. Lacy didn’t blame her. It must be galling to have to ask at all.
And yet, wasn’t it unfair of fate to ask her to handle Adam’s return and Gwen’s bitterness all in one night? Her head was aching, and she longed to go home, crawl under the covers and sleep for a week.
However, as chairman of the fund-raising committee, she couldn’t leave until the last bid was in the box, the last champagne glass drained, the final donor safely out the door. But she simply had to have a moment alone.
She looked around guiltily, like a prisoner scanning the tower watch. For once no one was bearing down on her, requiring a decision or requesting an opinion. Holding her breath, she eased into the small, remote stall at the end of the aisle, an area half hidden by a bank of lush ferns laced with small sparkling white lights. Formerly the stable’s breeding chute, it was too narrow to allow an effective display, so only two or three paintings hung on its padded walls. Most of the guests probably didn’t even know the space was there.
Grateful for the privacy, she pretended to study the largest painting. Ironically, it was one of her late husband’s, which she had donated to the auction somewhat self-consciously, aware that giving away a painting you despised hardly qualified as generosity. She wondered if anyone would buy it. Though it was technically proficient—executed by a fairly well-known Southern artist—she had always hated the thing.
Saturday Morning: Half Past Paradise, it was titled. It showed a sunny summer day in a rustic setting by a river. In the foreground two young lovers lay on a blue-checked picnic blanket, locked in an erotic embrace. In the background, on the corner of the blanket nearest the swiftly flowing water, an infant lay sleeping, utterly forgotten.
Malcolm had bought the painting only a year into their marriage, and had always hung it in a prominent place. Lacy had never told him how she felt about it. Why should she? She hadn’t ever told him how she felt about anything.
“If you want to melt into the woodwork, I’d advise a different dress.” The sheltering curtain of fern fronds rustled, and suddenly Adam Kendall was in the stall, standing right behind her. The white lights crowned his dark head like a twinkling halo. He touched her sleeve, his fingers deeply tanned against the blue silk. “Something less conspicuous. This is the uniform of a player, I’m afraid. Not a bench warmer.”
She looked at him, his broad shoulders effectively blocking the entrance to the shed, and was suddenly uncomfortably aware that these breeding chutes had originally been designed to prevent reluctant mares from escaping.
She fought down a moment of panic. He had caught her, and that was that. She had always known, deep inside, that this day would come. Once she had longed for it, dreamed of it, imagined it down to the clearest detail. Now she just wanted to get it over with.
“Ten years,” she said musingly, half to herself. “Ten years since we’ve seen each other, and all we can find to talk about is clothes?”
He continued to finger the silk, a small smile playing at one corner of his mouth. “But I thought we were doing quite well. It isn’t easy to find the perfect metaphor, you know. Reading between the lines is a dying art, don’t you think?”
How could she pretend not to understand? And, in a way, he was right. Their clothes really were symbols, weren’t they? His old white-kneed jeans and rust-speckled T-shirt had said poverty, hunger, ambition. This new designer tuxedo said luxury, triumph, complacence. But the ratty old T-shirt had smelled so comfortingly of soap and sunshine, and of him. When she had pulled it off, over his shoulders, over his head, she had always pressed it against her face and inhaled deeply, taking him into her lungs before tossing it aside.
Ten years ago, his unkempt black waves of silky hair had said rebellion, defiance, indifference. This new elegant, sculpted disarray said sex, power, confidence. But those tousled waves had always tumbled toward his eyes as he lowered himself over her, dipping his head to her breast. The locks had feathered her skin as he kissed her.
For a long moment she simply studied him, listening to everything his new persona had to tell her, from his squared shoulders to his gleaming cuff links. From his smile to his suntan. From his perfectly knotted tie to his arrogantly arched eyebrow.
But what about that scar? Just below his left eye a tiny line glistened, as if someone had traced the high curve of his cheekbone with a thin silver pencil. Or a knife blade. Where had it come from? What did it say? She stared at the scar, realizing that it was the only imperfection he retained. The only proof that the ten years without her hadn’t been an unbroken string of success and laughter, of wealth and women and satisfied abundance.
“When did you get that scar?” She raised her gaze to his, wondering why, of all the questions she had stockpiled during a decade of silence, that was the only one she could bring herself to speak.
“Years ago. There was an explosion. About a hundred inch-long pieces of glass tried to carve their initials on my face.” His voice was mild and expressionless, as if he were discussing the weather. “One of them did a pretty good job.”
“Was it an accident at work?” She fought the urge to touch the silver scar, to test its depth, to measure with her trembling finger how close it had come to his eye. “At the refinery? I remember that the job was supposed to be dangerous….”
He smiled shallowly. “They don’t ordinarily give you hazard pay unless there’s some hazard involved. And that’s why I took the job, wasn’t it? The idea, if I recall correctly, was to make my fortune as quickly as possible so that I could get back home.” He shrugged. “It seemed rather urgent at the time.”
She swallowed hard, remembering all too well. “But an explosion… You could have been—”
“What? Killed? Too messy for you, Mrs. Morgan? Perhaps you think I should have married my fortune instead.” His voice was low, his eyes speculative as he pretended to consider the idea. “I suppose that would have been simpler. But call me old-fashioned. I’ve always thought money you actually work for sits a little easier in your pocket.”
She felt herself flushing. “Adam…” She couldn’t meet his gaze. “Adam, don’t—”
He laughed softly. “Poor Lacy. You don’t care for this subject, either? All right, then, let’s see… We’ve eliminated the topic of our clothes. The past is off-limits. The truth is forbidden.” He leaned against the teasing wall and scanned the small chute. “Well, I hear you’re an art expert. We could talk about this horrible painting.”
“Adam.” She was shaking her head, trying to take a deep, calming breath. She wanted desperately to leave the stall, but he was blocking her exit. The front of the chute had a panic clutch, but it was on the other side, where breeders could quickly release a mare that was in danger. Ironic, she thought, that an unhappy horse could escape this chute, but a trapped woman could not.
He had come up very close behind her, and was looking at the painting over her shoulder. “Half Past Paradise… Interesting title,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders, turning her around to face the picture as if she were a doll, his to pose at will. “Don’t tell me you like it. I won’t believe you.”
She willed herself to go numb, to ignore his strong fingers against her bare shoulders. She was not going to make a fool of herself. And she wasn’t going to let him presume to tell her what she thought, what she felt.
“It’s a very good painting, actually,” she heard herself say in her best art-school voice. She summoned the vocabulary of the tour guide. “It’s one of Franklin’s best works. The composition is sophisticated, with strong movement in the lines, the river running left to right, the bodies lined up at a forty-five-degree angle. The asymmetry suggests dissonance, confusion, danger.”
“Baloney. Pure textbook baloney,” he observed, calmly unimpressed. “I’m sorry, Lacy, but I know your taste too well. I know you too well. You hate this picture. It may have technical sophistication, but that’s not what you look for in art, or in life. You want vitality, passion, heart—and this garbage has none of those things. You’d never hang it where you’d actually have to look at it.”
Furious, she edged out of his grip, swiveled and met his smug gaze, lifting her chin. “Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you’d like to believe, Adam. Things change a lot in ten years. People change.”
He shook his head. “Not that much.”
She laughed. “Oh, yes, Adam, that much and more. You see, that painting belonged to my husband. It hung in my home, over our library mantel, in a place of honor. I’ve looked at it every day since I was married. Every single day for ten years.”
For a moment he didn’t respond, and she took advantage of his silent surprise to slip past him. She was almost free when his hand caught her wrist.
She turned and glared at him icily, willing him to release her. It was a look that had intimidated many an importunate admirer.
But of course it didn’t work on him. Not on Adam.
“I’m beginning to wonder,” he said quietly, studying her face, “if I might have been wrong.”
“Wrong about what? That I’ve changed? Yes, Adam, you were quite wrong about that. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“No,” he said, a half smile curling his upper lip, and a sardonic angle high on one dark eyebrow. “I mean I may have been wrong about married money.” He looked down at her huge, vulgar, square-cut diamond, tilting her hand so that it flashed in the light. “It’s quite possible that you had to work much harder for your paycheck than I did.”
GWEN DIDN’T SHOW UP at the house after the party, for which Lacy should have been grateful. But as the long night wore on, Lacy realized that even an argument with her stepdaughter would have been preferable to being alone with her thoughts.
Lacy pounded her pillow for hours, making an inventory of the deadly comebacks she should have used, the perfectly crafted put-downs that would have forced Adam Kendall to choke on his own effrontery. But a fat lot of good they did her now, spoken only to Hamlet, her silver Persian kitten who blinked at her angry tone, curled up in the crook of her knee, and fell asleep halfway through her best line.
Stroking Hamlet’s silken fur and envying him his easy slumber, she struggled for hours with frustration, confusion and something that felt like fear. How long was Adam planning to stay? And how much damage could he do to her peace of mind before he grew tired of the game and jetted away again to parts unknown?
She buried her face in her pillow. Oh, God, what was she going to do? The question drummed against her mind relentlessly—but she found no answer in the desperate darkness.
When dawn finally crawled in through the window, Lacy unwound herself from the knotted covers with relief. She hated this feeling—and she despised the wreck she saw in her mirror, all puffy eyes and tangled hair.
Suddenly her pride came marching in belatedly to her rescue. This wasn’t Lacy Morgan. This looked more like pitiful Lacy Mayfair. And she wouldn’t stand for it—she had fought too hard to banish that lonely little girl. Lacy Mayfair had foolishly allowed Adam to have the final word last night. But this morning belonged to Mrs. Malcolm Morgan.
So…what was she going to do? She was going to do what she had always done. She was going to protect herself and survive. She was going to take the lessons she’d learned over the past ten years and put them to work. Lessons about courage, about compartmentalizing, about burying unwanted emotions, about squaring her shoulders and soldiering on. She was going to wrap herself in indifference so thick even Adam Kendall’s blue eyes couldn’t pierce it, so cold even his hot fingers couldn’t melt it.
In fact, she told her reflection sternly, for the first time in ten years she was now completely free. A long-dreaded storm had finally broken. After ten years of seeing Adam only in dreams, she had been forced to talk to him, look into his eyes, feel his fingers on her skin.
It had hurt, but she had survived. Fate had fired its last bullet at her—and it had missed. There was nothing left to fear.
Two hours later, when she arrived at the hospital, a cucumber lotion had soothed her eyes, a small silver clip snugged her hair neatly into its accustomed French twist, and a crisp ice-blue suit completed the picture of a calm working professional.
No more angst. Now it was simply back to business. Raising money, putting out office brush fires, posing with happy parents who wanted to remember their friends on the staff of Pringle Island General Hospital. These were all things that the competent Lacy Morgan, director of community relations, could do in her sleep.
Lacy smiled at the family who waited in front of her now. She had just taken their picture—proud father, ecstatic mother, robustly wriggling baby girl. Yes, she thought, handing the daddy his camera. This was better. Much better.
“Take the baby, would you please, Mrs. Morgan? We want a picture of you two together. We wouldn’t ever have made it though all this without you.”
With pleasure, Lacy accepted the beautiful, pink-faced infant, who was finally going home after three weeks under ultraviolet lights in the nursery. It had been touch-and-go, but this little one was a fighter. Lacy whispered soft nothings and let the amazingly delicate fingers wrap around her thumb.
Soon, when the hospital had its own neonatal unit, these success stories would be commonplace. Small miracles on a daily basis, and she would be a part of that. A worthwhile life, surely. Even if none of the miracles were her own….
The father’s enthusiasm knew no bounds, and he kept the flash popping even after Lacy’s eyes were half-blind with red after-images, even after his tiny daughter had begun to wail in bored protest.
“Mr. Rosterman, perhaps it’s time to take—”
“Lacy?” Kara Karlin’s worried voice broke in. “Can I speak to you a moment?”
Lacy looked over toward the maternity ward door, and saw Kara’s wrinkled brow and pursed lips. She knew that look. Something was wrong. Shifting the baby to her shoulder, where her cries subsided slightly, Lacy left the parents struggling to get a new roll of film into their camera and moved to where Kara stood wringing her hands.
“Lacy, I’m so sorry. I really hate to bother you, but the most awful thing has happened.”
Lacy smiled. Though Kara was nearly fifty and the seasoned mother of four, she lived and breathed superlatives like a teenager. Everything that happened to her was the most something—most terrible, most wonderful, most horrifying, most exciting. All peaks and valleys. Lacy, who had carefully tethered her own psyche to a flat, uneventful plain for years, realized that she sometimes took a vicarious pleasure in watching Kara roller-coaster through her days.
“Surely not the most awful,” Lacy teased, patting the baby’s back softly. “The Most Awful thing happened yesterday, didn’t it, when the caterer brought the wrong hors d’oeuvres to the auction? And yet somehow we survived.” She swayed slightly as she talked, creating a gentle rocking motion. The baby began to suck her fingers placidly, and the quiet was blissful. “We even managed to raise a quarter of a million for the neonatal unit.”
Kara scowled. “Laugh if you like, but if old Mr. Terwilligan had touched one of those seafood canapes, his throat would have swelled up like a blow-fish.” She brushed her damp, graying hair back from her temples. “And besides, this is worse. You won’t believe it, Lacy. The birthday clown is sick. We haven’t anyone to do the basket thing.”
Now that was a problem. The entire pediatric ward was practically holding its breath, awaiting the clown visitation and the attendant shower of toys and candy from his huge green basket. To disappoint the children would be unthinkable.
And therefore Lacy simply wouldn’t let it happen. “We’ll have to find a replacement,” she said calmly, her mind scanning the possibilities like a computer. “Is Leo working today?” Kara shook her head mournfully. “Bart?” Another negative. “Roger?”
“We don’t have a single man in the community relations department today. Oh, what are we going to do? The kids are so excited. Ronny Harbaugh was up all night.”
“Now, Kara, don’t panic.” Lacy concentrated on slowing her breath, lowering her voice, communicating serenity both to the suddenly restless baby and to the older woman, who seemed about to burst into tears.
Rotating the baby to her other shoulder, she studied the possibilities. “No men at all. What about a woman, then?”
Kara looked blank. “But we always use a man. The costume is huge. The eyes are so high—”
“Then we need a tall woman.” Lacy scanned Kara’s trim five-feet-ten inches. “What about you?”
Kara looked stunned, confused by this departure from tradition, terrified at the sudden responsibility. “Oh, I couldn’t. I’ve never… We’ve never… I just couldn’t.” But she wanted to. Lacy could see a tremulous hope in her eyes. “Could I?”
“Of course you can,” Lacy said steadily, putting her free hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “The kids all love you. You’ll be wonderful.”
“But I can’t.” Kara braided her fingers anxiously. “Oh, my goodness, the newsletter! And I was just about to—”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll help you get the newsletter sent out. Whatever else there is can wait.”
“No, really, this can’t.” Groaning softly, Kara gnawed on one already-tortured fingernail. “Oh, this is the worst luck! I was just about to give a tour—”
“I’ll take the tour.” Lacy put a little steel in her voice, though she still smiled encouragingly. “Now for heaven’s sake, Kara, stop worrying and start dispensing birthday presents before Ronny Harbaugh starts a riot in the pediatric ward.”
Kara’s answering smile was equal parts gratitude and anxiety. “Oh… All right, I will, then!” She bustled toward the hallway, turning back at the last minute, her face lit with a new inspiration. “You know, you probably should conduct this tour, anyhow, since you’re the director. He’s not just any investor. He’s the type who’d expect the red carpet treatment, isn’t he?”
Lacy’s stomach went suddenly cold. She gripped the infant more carefully as she felt the room take a quick, violent tilt and right itself in the blink of an eye. Aware of the baby’s parents watching her with a sudden, instinctive anxiety, she fought the urge to follow Kara down the hall.
“He?” She spoke loudly enough to reach the bank of elevators where Kara waited. Her voice sounded normal, thank God. “Who?”
But she knew. She knew even before Kara stepped into the waiting elevator and turned with the name on her lips. “Only the most gorgeous man on Pringle Island, you lucky thing,” Kara called back. “Only that hunky Adam Kendall.”
HE HAD TO GIVE HER CREDIT. The lady had guts.
Adam raised one eyebrow as he watched Lacy coming toward him, her posture erect, her chin high and set. Even though Kara Karlin had popped in about half an hour ago to promise that Lacy would be arriving soon, still Adam would have bet his left cuff link that she’d never show. The tour would be quietly foisted off onto some underling.
He had assumed, in fact, that it was Lacy’s search for a suitable underling that had kept him cooling his heels here in the waiting room of the community relations department. Not that he’d minded—the room was designed for comfort. The chairs opened roomy, inviting arms to visitors. Peach pillows as soft as upholstered clouds tumbled across the sofa. Cheerful apricot artwork smiled from behind the desk. Gentle, indirect lighting spread a buttery glow over every wall.
The room positively oozed warmth. Lacy Morgan, however, stopping now in the doorway to take a deep breath, did not.
Dressed in a knife-slim, glacial-blue suit, her long, thick hair pulled back into a cruel, shining knot at the nape of her pale neck, she affected the room like a blast of refrigeration. She didn’t hurry, even after she saw him sitting there. She smoothed her sleeve carefully, then touched the top button of her collar, which was high, slightly Oriental, and clearly in no danger of slipping open—now or ever. Then she moved to her desk, a study in graceful efficiency. Her slim heels clicked against the wood flooring with a sound that reminded him of ice falling into an empty glass.
She fingered a few papers pointlessly, then looked up, gazing at him with a cold calm. “Kara tells me she promised you a tour,” she said politely. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”
“Really.” He smiled. “Are you sure?”
She obviously hadn’t expected that. A faint line marred the snowy placidity of her forehead before she caught herself and smoothed it away. “Sure of what?”
“That you’re sorry to have kept me waiting.” He hitched one leg over the other and watched her from the comfortable embrace of the armchair. “After last night, I thought perhaps you might have welcomed the opportunity to…put me in my place.”
“Your place, Adam?” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t presume to know where your place might be.”
“Well,” he murmured. “Under your thumb, perhaps?”
She laughed, a brittle sound that once again reminded him of ice cubes tinkling against crystal. “Actually, the last time I remember thinking about where you should go, it was somewhere considerably farther south. And somewhat warmer.”
“Oh?” He smiled and let his gaze travel slowly south across her body. He couldn’t help himself. He knew what she meant, of course—that he belonged in the lowest level of Hell. But she wasn’t very good at this game, was she? She had thrust, but the effort had left her exposed.
In the space of two hot, blinking seconds, she knew how it had sounded. Her eyes widened, and her fingers tightened on the papers they held.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. He waited for the signature cherry-red circles to bloom in her cheeks. She had always been a blusher. She had blushed when Mrs. Bickens called on her in Calculus, when Adam’s fellow construction workers whistled at her as she picked him up after the late shift, when her aunt scolded her for coming in beyond the stroke of midnight….
And, with an intoxicating innocence that had sent quakes through his entire system, she had blushed in his arms when he undressed her. Though they had been alone in the melting summer darkness, it had taken a dozen murmuring kisses to coax her fingers away from her burning cheeks.
But, to his surprise, she didn’t blush now. If anything, her strangely immobile face, ivory under its weight of dark hair, grew even more pale.
She stared at him a long moment and then, slowly, she came around the desk and leaned against the corner. She adjusted her skirt with graceful hands. A wink of silver at her wrist showed beneath her cuff and a scallop of white lace retreated obediently under her hem.
The shift brought their knees together, separated by no more than a sliver of an inch. It was deliberate—he could see the challenge in her steady gaze. She was completely unaffected, she was assuring him, by both his words and his body.
“Perhaps we’d better get something straight,” she said in a voice that was commendably even, if not quite natural. “Touring potential investors is part of my job. Don’t flatter yourself that I would let anything you did in the past—last night or ten years ago—keep me from raising money for this hospital.”
He stared back at her, realizing that suddenly, absurdly, he was angry. Angry at that marble-statue face, at that automaton voice, at those graceful hands that no longer trembled. What a waste. What a criminal waste of sweet fire and flesh and blue-moonlight blushes.
What the hell had she turned herself into? And, more to the point, why did he give a damn?
“Don’t worry, Lacy,” he said with another cold grin, this one curving to within an inch of rudeness. “I know you better than to believe you’d ever let anything come between you and a man’s wallet.”
Had he still been hoping for a reaction? If so, she had bested him again. She merely nodded and returned his smile.
“Especially a wallet as fat as yours,” she agreed concisely. Without waiting for a reaction, she stood. “Shall we get started?”
From then on, it was all business. Without stumbling over a single syllable or a single threshold, she led him through gleaming sterile corridors and into crisply organized offices, delivering as they went one of the most comprehensive sales pitches he’d ever witnessed. From exotic medical terminology to infant mortality statistics, from estimated square footage to anticipated funding partners and percentages, she covered her material so thoroughly that whenever she turned to him with a politely inquisitive smile, inviting questions, he couldn’t think of a single one.
Except perhaps…when did this happen to you, Lacy? Do you remember how, back at old man Morgan’s department store, you were so shy you could hardly look at the customers while you counted out their change?
But of course he didn’t ask any such thing. He already knew the answer. No. She didn’t remember.
She introduced him to doctors and administrators, even a patient or two, apologizing gracefully each time for interrupting their busy schedules, though apologies clearly weren’t necessary. Mrs. Malcolm Morgan was obviously welcome anywhere in this hospital. Two particularly athletic obstetricians, Adam observed wryly, nearly plowed down a maternity ward nurse in their rush to guarantee that they’d intersect Lacy’s path.
Forty-five minutes later, the tour ended up in a wood-paneled conference room, hung from door to door with expensively framed blueprints. In the center of the room, an intricate maze of miniature cobalt and gray buildings sprouted like some geometric fungus across a huge mahogany table.
“The finished product,” she said, waving two elegant, peach-tipped fingers at the table. “Designed by Prescher and Osteen. You may remember them—they’ve been the premier architects on Pringle Island for generations.”
“I remember,” he said, strolling casually by the little painted boxes and dollhouse shrubs. He flicked a very real dead fly from the pretend sidewalk, then tilted a half-cocked grin up at her. “How is good old Biff? Did his daddy’s plastic surgeons ever sand that kink out of his nose?”
But even that didn’t ruffle her. God, she was good. Or maybe, he thought, it wasn’t an act. Maybe she didn’t even remember why he had smashed Biff Prescher’s nose after basketball practice, out behind the gym with the entire basketball team standing around, watching.
“Biff’s doing well,” she said smoothly. “He lives in Seattle, with his wife and four children. I haven’t seen his nose in years. It’s Biff’s father, actually, who was the architect here. You may remember old Mr. Prescher?”
His fingers twitched slightly as he followed the curving lines of the little parking lot. “Sorry, never met him. Somehow I guess our paths just never crossed at the University Club. And I don’t think he ever showed up at my office behind the gymnasium for a nose job.”
She raised her eyebrows gently. To his surprise, she reached out and touched the back of his hand with the silky pad of one forefinger. More proof of how impervious she was, no doubt. He waited.
“Really, Adam,” she said chidingly, hitting a sophisticated note of well-meaning detachment with her well-modulated voice. Deliberately casting herself as a distant friend, a sympathetic stranger… Anything but what she was, a old lover with burning embers strewn at her feet.
“Really what, Lacy?” His eyes met hers.
“It’s just that… This bad-boy-redux act is a bit much, don’t you think?” She tapped his knuckles one at a time. “See? No bruises. No torn, swollen skin. I’d say these hands haven’t broken any noses in a long, long time.”
He grinned. “Or maybe I’m just much better at it these days.”
She shook her head. “In that suit? I doubt it. We’re past that now, Ad—”
He flipped his hand over so fast she didn’t have time to gasp, and he caught her wrist in his palm. She looked shocked, as if she’d been carelessly touching a branch that turned out to be a snake.
“Don’t kid yourself, Lacy,” he said, bending across Prescher Senior’s toy-block kingdom, not caring if he crushed a tower or two. “We’re not past anything. I told you—this is just a uniform. Pockets full or empty, I’m still the same man, and I still don’t care much for snobs. Or hypocrites, no matter how slick and pretty they are.”
She was rallying, but the effort was costing her. He watched the column of her throat adjust as she swallowed her natural reactions of both fear and anger. Her blue eyes lost their strain, rounding instead in an artificially mild enquiry.
“Dear me,” she said softly. “How frighteningly macho…. Should I look into acquiring a helmet and face mask—to protect my own nose?”
He considered for a moment, studying the perfectly shaped nose in question. “No need,” he said finally, letting his words stretch and grow uncomfortably warm and familiar. “If I decide to tackle you, Lacy, I’ll be targeting a spot considerably father south.”
She was going to slap him. He saw the spark flare like silver fire in her eyes, and he caught her free hand just as it began its flinching backswing. He stopped it midair, leeched the willful fury out of it with a slow relentless pressure, and then began to guide it in, toward the soft swell of her breast.
She resisted until the very last moment, and then she finally surrendered, letting him place her hand, palm down, against the blue silk of her blouse.
“There,” he said quietly, letting his hand rest atop hers, letting her deep, irregular breathing rock both palms in unison. “If I wanted you, Lacy, this is where I’d attack. Right here, where your heart used to be.”
CHAPTER THREE
AFTER ADAM’S VISIT, Lacy’s workday was shot. She found it difficult to concentrate on even the simplest tasks. She summoned all her tried-and-true tricks for blocking out disturbing thoughts, but nothing worked. Over and over, even in the middle of a business lunch, even while she cuddled the babies in the nursery, even while she reviewed the auction figures with Tilly, her mind kept returning to Adam.
She kept remembering the way his hand had felt against her breast, the hard look in his eyes when he called her a hypocrite. She replayed again and again, like a broken recording, the derision in his voice when he told her she no longer possessed a heart.
Well, maybe he was right. She hoped he was right. Hearts hurt. Hearts broke, and the broken pieces cut you to shreds from the inside.
“Lacy! Come back from whatever planet you’re on and add these figures up for me. You know I don’t do numbers.”
Lacy roused herself guiltily and smiled over at Tilly, who was clearly already bored with the auction accounting. Tilly hated red tape. The government, she always predicted tartly, was going to regulate charity right out of existence.
“Sorry,” Lacy said, taking the computer printout from Tilly’s hand. “I’ll do that.” She didn’t guarantee accurate results—not with Adam’s face popping up where columns of numbers ought to be—but she’d try.
Tilly tapped her fingers on the desk while Lacy entered figures into the calculator. After about a minute, the older woman stood up and started to prowl the room, stopping in front of the mirror to fidget with her towering white wig. She muttered something under her breath, then dropped onto the couch and began flipping through a magazine noisily.
Lacy knew it couldn’t last, but she keyed in numbers doggedly, trying to get as far as she could before Tilly’s patience erupted.
“I’m hungry,” the older woman broke in less than five minutes later, plopping herself onto the chair in front of Lacy’s desk again. “And we’ve got that fund-raiser dinner tonight, so you know we won’t eat until absurdly late.” She pointed to the calculator accusingly. “Can’t we do this nonsense tomorrow? Let’s go to the cafeteria. Kara told me they had a sinfully delicious chocolate pie today.”
Lacy didn’t look up. “You can’t have chocolate pie,” she said firmly. “Blood sugar.” She wasn’t worried—they had been through this a million times. Tilly had no intention of eating the pie. She just wanted to pretend she was going to—a tiny act of pseudodefiance toward the diabetes that she’d lived with—and resented—for the past sixty years. When she’d been diagnosed, Tilly had been twenty-three, a wild young beauty who had just received her pilot’s license, something that had been unheard of for young women in her social set at the time. The diabetes had grounded her for life. Typical, Tilly observed irritably whenever she talked about it. Fate hated to see anyone having too much fun.
“Well, they should make sugar-free chocolate pie,” Tilly said, tapping a pencil indignantly on the edge of Lacy’s desk. “They can’t just act as if only you young people matter. Lots of people can’t eat sugar! Why, do you know what the statistics are on diabetes in this country today?”
“No. And neither do you. You don’t do numbers, remember?” With a tolerant sigh, Lacy flipped the rocker switch at the back of her calculator. Now that the neonatal campaign had heated up, she and Tilly rarely had quiet moments alone together, so she might as well take advantage of this one.
She watched the older woman, trying to gauge her mood. She didn’t want to cause an explosion. Tilly had spent a lifetime cultivating an image as an out-spoken eccentric, and she’d lost the ability to rein in her emotions—if indeed she’d ever possessed it.
“You know, Tilly,” Lacy said carefully, “we’re going to have to talk about the private detective sooner or later.”
Tilly gave her a mulish look—the same look she’d given Lacy every time the subject had been brought up over the past three weeks. “No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are. He’s been waiting nearly a month to hear from me on how to proceed.”
“Well, let him wait.” Tilly tugged at the hairline of her wig irritably. “He has my retainer. And I haven’t made up my mind yet. I might just want to let the whole thing drop.”
“Tilly.” Lacy leaned forward. “You know that’s not true. A month ago you said finding your daughter was the most important thing in the world to you.”
Tilly harrumphed eloquently and waved her hand in the air. “That’s just because my blood sugar went up so high that day, and I thought I was going to die. I’ve changed my mind about that, too. I don’t believe I will die after all. So there’s no need to rush into airing my dirty laundry in front of any private detective, is there?”
Lacy shut her eyes briefly, praying that her patience would hold out. She hardly knew where to begin refuting an argument as illogical and convoluted as this one.
“First of all, Tilly, you don’t have to be on your deathbed to want to reconnect with your daughter. It’s a perfectly normal urge. I’ve been doing some research, and believe me, the statistics are overwhelming. Almost every woman who has given up a child for adoption someday feels the desire to find that child. And secondly, being single and pregnant may have constituted ‘dirty laundry’ sixty years ago, Tilly, but it doesn’t today.”
“Well, society here on Pringle Is—”
“To heck with Pringle Island society,” Lacy broke in emphatically. “You’re the queen around here. They think what you tell them to think. And besides, since when have you given a fig what other people think?”
Tilly smiled reluctantly. “Well, now that you mention it, I figure it’s been about sixty years.”
Lacy nodded. “Exactly. So what do you say? Shall I tell the detective to start hunting?”
“No. Yes. I mean, I—” Tilly hesitated, her blustery defiance dissipating suddenly, leaving a strange uncertainty in its place. “Lacy, I just…”
For the first time Lacy could ever remember, Tilly seemed at a loss for words. Her eyes glimmered with the hint of tears, and her face appeared to crumple, the animated spunk that was her hallmark slowly draining away. Lacy’s heart faltered, as she looked at her dear friend and saw something she had never seen before: an old woman.
“Tilly, it’s all right,” she said quickly. “We don’t have to do anything that—”
“I’m afraid, Lacy.” Tilly put one delicate, blue-veined hand to her chest as if something were hurting there. “It’s as simple as that. I’m afraid of what we might find out. Maybe it’s better just to have my dreams.” She sighed brokenly, and her hand dropped to her lap. “But then I think…what if this damned diabetes gets me after all, and I lose my chance to say…to tell her…”
Lacy shoved her chair back from the desk and went to her friend, kneeling in front of her. “Don’t,” she said, taking Tilly’s hands in her own. “Don’t upset yourself. We can talk about this more later. There’s plenty of time to decide—”
“There may not be—”
“And stop this foolish talk about dying, do you hear me?” Lacy was appalled to hear her own voice trembling. She firmed her resolve and offered Tilly a reassuring smile. “You’re not going to die, because Dr. Blexrud and I have decided we simply aren’t going to let you.”
Tilly gazed down at her for a long moment, her eyes misty and unfocused. Then she reached out and touched the tips of her wrinkled fingers to Lacy’s temple gently.
“Thank you, sweetheart.” As she stroked Lacy’s hair, Tilly began to smile, the slow warmth brightening her face and making it beautiful. “You’re a dear girl, did you know that?”
Lacy smiled back. “I’m glad you think so. Today, anyway.”
Tilly chuckled, and Lacy’s heart eased as she watched the twinkling mischief return to her friend’s eyes.
“Yes, a very dear girl. But if you think this means you’re going to stop me from eating that chocolate pie, missy, you’ve got another think coming.”
THE HOSPITAL CAFETERIA was crowded, as usual. Tilly and Lacy each grabbed a piece of fruit and a cup of coffee and headed for their favorite spot, a small cluster of picnic tables near the pediatric playground. Though Tilly grumbled, the balmy early summer afternoon was perfect for eating outdoors, and Lacy longed for fresh air to clear her head.
Apparently she wasn’t the only one. The tables were almost as crowded as the cafeteria had been, and Lacy felt lucky to snag an empty one. Tilly saw an old friend and went over for a chat, but Lacy stayed put, shutting her eyes to bask in the warmth of the sun.
She sincerely hoped there wasn’t anyone she knew among the other diners—she didn’t feel up to socializing. She needed to gather her poise before tonight’s dinner. It didn’t look as if Adam Kendall would be contributing any money to the hospital now, so she would have to treat tonight’s guests doubly well. If she could only find time for a short nap….
No such luck. She had just taken a large, sloppy bite of her pear when a shadow fell over her plate. Pressing her napkin carefully against her chin, she looked up, somehow managing a polite smile without opening her lips.
Oh, great. It would be Jennifer Lansing, the chairman of the Pringle Island Historical Society. Lacy didn’t enjoy Jennifer’s company at the best of times— Jennifer’s conversation consisted mainly of snobbishly chronicling the family trees of everyone she knew, which naturally made Lacy uncomfortable. To Jennifer, Lacy’s family tree barely qualified as a shrub…and a common shrub, at that.
Things were particularly tense between the two women right now. The historical society hoped to build a museum, and Jennifer was busy soliciting donations from the very same people Lacy needed for the neonatal wing. Though extremely civilized, it was the most intense rivalry in town, and Lacy knew it was providing juicy dinner-table gossip all over Pringle Island.
“Lacy, darling!” Jennifer waited for Lacy to clean up her chin, then kissed the air around her cheek. “What wonderful good luck that I should run into you now! There’s something I simply must know!”
Lacy smiled. So Jennifer wanted something. That was no surprise. She raised her brows in polite inquiry but didn’t hurry her chewing. Jennifer was rather like a diesel engine. She hardly needed a push from Lacy to get where she wanted to go.
“It’s about Adam Kendall,” Jennifer said, lowering her voice dramatically. “He’s right over there, playing basketball with Jason. Good heavens, Lacy, don’t look now!”
But it was too late. Lacy’s gaze had jerked automatically toward the central play area, where a basketball hoop had been sunk into the concrete for recovering pediatric patients—as well as visiting youngsters. Adam? Here?
She swallowed her pear half-chewed. Yes. Here. Adam, stripped to his T-shirt and slacks, had just stolen the orange ball from Jennifer’s fifteen-year-old son, Jason. As she watched, he arced his torso elegantly, arms extended over his head, to toss the ball toward the basket. It sank with only a whisper of net, and even Jason whooped with delight, high-fiving Adam with genuine admiration.
For a breathless moment Lacy wondered if she’d entered a time warp. She’d spent so many hours, long, long ago, watching him play this game he loved so much. It had been cruel that the coach had kept him off the team—but at six-three Adam hadn’t been quite tall enough to overcome the liability of being poor. Had he been six-ten, the coach would have happily bought his uniforms for him, overlooking the fact that he had no parents to contribute to the program.
His exclusion from the team had been a bitter pill to swallow—one of many he had been forced to endure as the only child of an out-of-work alcoholic.
No trace of that bitterness was left now, even though the golden-haired, silver-spooned Jason Lansing proudly sported the blue-and-white uniform Adam had once so longed to wear. As the two male bodies battled, fighting muscle on muscle toward the basket, both of them were laughing, jiving, obviously loving every rigorous moment.
And Adam— She felt her heart kick at the wall of her chest. Adam looked so young, so virile…so happy. His body was as lithely powerful as it had been ten years ago, his pectoral muscles straining at the cotton T-shirt, his well-defined biceps curving and flexing, his tight hips shifting neatly as he ducked and dodged with an unconscious grace. His eyes were lit with pleasure. Laughter had smoothed the harsh edges from his face.
He didn’t look much older than Jason. He was almost too beautiful to bear.
Lacy swallowed again, as if the pear wouldn’t quite go down, and somehow forced her gaze back to Jennifer. “Yes, I see him. What about him?”
The other woman patted her perfectly coiffed blond page-boy and took one long last look at Adam, like a nicotine addict taking one last drag of a cigarette. Narrowing her eyes, she unconsciously licked her lips. Lacy could almost hear the internal purr of appreciation.
“Well, I hear you took him on the hospital tour this morning.” Jennifer eyed Lacy carefully. Though few people in their social set today had any clue that Lacy and Adam had once dated in high school, of course Jennifer knew. Jennifer was a pro—she made it her business to know everything about everyone. “So. Did the tour go well?”
Lacy chuckled, then took a slow sip of coffee. “He didn’t commit to the neonatal unit, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said comfortably. She knew how to deal with the Jennifer Lansings of the world. Let them know you’re on to them, but do it with the most cordial of smiles. “You’re perfectly free to approach him about the museum. The word is he’s loaded these days, although I’m sure you’ve already heard that.”
Jennifer smoothed her skirt, a stalling technique that surprised Lacy. Since when did Jennifer need to buy time in one of these elementary-level verbal duels?
“Yes. I mean, no….”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lacy could see Tilly returning to the table. Jennifer saw, too, and looked annoyed.
Taking a deep breath, the blonde smiled, obviously deciding to save time by taking the candid approach. “Look, Lacy. I’ve already approached Adam about the museum. That’s under control—in fact, we’re having dinner tonight. But it’s more than that. I’m…well, I’m intrigued by Adam Kendall. But I thought you might—well, I would just hate to step on your toes, you know. I’d hate to spoil your plans without at least warning you.”
Her lovely smile was loaded with false sympathy for the pitiful girl who couldn’t dream of competing with the stunning Jennifer Lansing. “I guess my question is—what exactly are you after, Lacy? The money? Or the man?”
The arrogance! Lacy tasted something bitter in her throat, as if the pear had been rotten. But two could play this game. Widening her eyes as if surprised, she summoned a smile that was every bit as artificial as Jennifer’s.
“Why, the money, of course,” she said with syrup-covered steel in her voice. “As I’m sure you know, I’ve already had the man.”
GWEN WAS STARTING to wonder whether it had, on second thought, been such a great idea to buy a motorcycle.
It had a few good points. She definitely liked the way she looked in black leather pants and jacket. Very James Dean. And she loved the leers she got when she took off the bad-ass black helmet and her long blond curls came pouring out. “Well,” one great-looking guy had said with an appreciative smile. “If it isn’t Hell’s Angel.”
Right then, she hadn’t even minded having crazy hair. Biker chicks weren’t supposed to possess the Sleek Gene.
But she’d owned the bike only a week, and already the honeymoon was over. She had discovered that the stupid leather outfit was hot. Not hot like sexy. Hot like sweaty. Hot like gross and uncomfortable. And the motorcycle made an insane amount of noise, which was kind of cool at first but eventually gave her a thumping headache.
And frankly she was having a little trouble staying balanced on the darn thing. Especially when she was taking off.
She wobbled in an irritating circle now, trying to kick the starter pedal just the right way so it would catch, but she was having a little trouble with that, too. She slammed her heel down for the tenth time, including a one-syllable, four-letter special request under her breath for good measure.
The gas caught briefly, lurching the bike forward, propelling it right toward a little red Austin Healy Sprite that had just pulled into the hotel parking lot.
Then the damn thing stalled again. She tilted sideways, barely managing to avoid bouncing her helmeted head on the sidewalk like a beach ball. But not quite managing to avoid dinging the driver’s door of the Sprite with her handlebar.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered. This was going to be trouble. She knew how guys were about their cars. Darian, her late, unlamented boyfriend, had polished his hubcaps with a toothbrush. Twice a day. And her father—well, once he had darn near killed a valet who had left a fingerprint on the windshield.
Bracing herself for the storm, she straddled the motorcycle defiantly and evaluated the guy who was unfolding himself from the sports car. Late twenties, maybe. Blond hair. Loose Hawaiian print shirt flapping in the summer breeze, lifting to show a pair of khakis that fit well over a neat bottom. Wow. It was kind of hard to see color and detail through her tinted visor, but darn, he was cute.
He was coming her way. To her surprise, he was smiling. “You okay?”
Was she okay? He asked about her before he checked the damage to his car? She tilted her head, wondering if he might be gay.
She pried off her helmet to get a better look. As her curls tumbled free, his eyes widened. She knew that expression. He wasn’t gay.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine. Sorry about the ding.”
He didn’t even turn around to look. “Hey, no problem. A car without dents is like a face without laugh lines. It hasn’t really lived, you know?”
She stared at him. Not gay, but maybe nuts? “I guess,” she said doubtfully. “But still. I’ll pay for the damage.” As soon as her next trust-fund check came through, she added mentally.
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t dream of having it fixed. I’ll tell everybody how this gorgeous woman came roaring by one day and left her mark on me forever.” He held out a tanned hand. “Travis Rourke,” he said, grinning. “Nice bike.”
She accepted his hand. “Gwen Morgan,” she said, her mouth forming an answering grin before her brain had given it permission. “Nice car.” She lifted one brow. “Except for the dent.”
He liked that. He laughed, showing even white teeth. The sound was comfortable, as if he laughed often, not worrying whether it might be more sophisticated to be blasé. For a moment Gwen envied him. It was actually kind of exhausting to have to maintain an attitude twenty-four-seven.
“Are you staying here, too?” He indicated the hotel, which was Pringle Island’s pride and joy—a four-star, gray-shingled resort with a thick, green golf course that overlooked the water.
“For the time being.” She really ought to go stay with the Stepwitch—she didn’t have enough room on her Visa for two hours at the hotel, much less two nights. But she didn’t feel up to facing Lacy just yet. Maybe tomorrow.
Travis Rourke looked pleased. “That’s great. I’d love a ride on your bike—when you figure out how it works, that is.”
She tilted her chin. He’d been nice about the ding, but that didn’t give him the right to mock her. “I just bought it, actually. It’s kind of a pain, and I may not be keeping it.”
“Oh, you’ll keep it,” he said. “Fifty bucks says you’re way too proud to let yourself be beaten by a pile of tin.”
“Really.” She froze him with her most supercilious eyebrow arch. “I’m not sure a five-minute acquaintance quite authorizes you to make that call, does it? In fact, I can, and will, dump this bike whenever I choose.”
He grinned. “Yeah, that’s what I used to say about cigarettes, too. But when I finally quit, they had to send in the nut squad to pry me off the ceiling.”
“Well. That’s where we’re different, I suppose.”
“Fifty bucks.” He held out his hand again. “A hundred.”
Someone was approaching from the other end of the parking lot—a tall man with an expensive business suit and a confident walk. He was headed their way—probably a lawyer who had smelled a fee from inside the hotel and was hurrying out to scatter his business card over the scene of the accident.
Gwen narrowed her eyes, then took Travis Rourke’s hand firmly. She couldn’t afford to lose a hundred dollars, but she couldn’t afford to lose face, either. “You’re on. I don’t know how we’ll prove it, but it’s a bet.”
The approaching man was closer now, close enough that Gwen could tell that he wasn’t a lawyer. At least not the ambulance-chaser kind. He might be the marble office, Rolex and cigar-smoking kind. It didn’t matter much to Gwen. She hated both kinds equally.
“God, Travis, in town less than an hour, and already harassing people in the parking lot?” The tall, dark, gorgeous man turned to Gwen with a smile. If he was a lawyer, she thought suddenly, maybe she needed to revise her opinion of the profession. What a smile. “Sorry about Travis,” he went on, resting his hand on the shorter man’s shoulder pleasantly. “He has six sisters who dote on him, so he thinks he’s irresistible to women.”
Gwen tilted her head. Mr. Corporate Heartthrob was actually a buddy of Jimmy Buffet here? She looked both men over, chewing on the edge of her lip speculatively. Travis Rourke was cute—she hadn’t changed her mind about that. But cute wasn’t the word for this new one. In fact, the word for this one wasn’t even a word. It was just a sound. A kind of whimpering mew of animal appreciation.
She gave the newcomer her special smile, the slow one that included an eye massage. She hoped Travis Rourke noticed that it was much hotter than the one she’d given him. He needed to be put in his place a bit. A hundred dollars, indeed.
“Well, hi,” she said, as if she meant it. “I’m Gwen Morgan.”
“Ahh.” His eyebrows went up as one side of his mouth tucked subtly into a dimple. “I thought the silhouette looked familiar.”
So he had been there, last night, when she and Teddy had… Gwen hated the warmth that seeped disagreeably along her cheekbones. She wasn’t ashamed of her behavior—if ever a group of bores had needed to have a stick of dynamite rammed into their stuffed shirts, that party had been it. But she knew that somehow, once again, Lacy had managed to make her bold whimsy appear merely foolish and immature.
She took a deep breath and stretched, putting the heels of her hands against the small of her back. It was a position that did wonders for her silhouette, and definitely put any questions of her maturity to rest. “Oh, so you were at the auction? Funny. You don’t look like a guy who would be a big fan of cheesy, overpriced baby pictures.”
He chuckled. “Actually, I bought three of them.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you have too much to drink?”
“Baby pictures?” Travis looked put out, though whether it was because he’d been upstaged by his hunky friend, or because he didn’t approve of the baby pictures, Gwen couldn’t really tell. “You’re investing in art now, Adam? I thought you’d invited me here to buy real estate.”
His friend ignored him. “I’m Adam Kendall,” he said to Gwen with another one of those zinger smiles. “It’s nice to meet you. Your stepmother and I are…old friends.”
She heard the hesitation as he tried to decide what to call it…. Old friends? Oh, brother. Was there anymore transparent euphemism than that one?
So the Stepwitch hadn’t always been made of ice? That was an interesting little nugget of information, which she stuffed into a mental pocket, recognizing that it could have its uses someday.
In fact, it might be useful right now. She’d been waiting for a sign to help her decide which of these great-looking guys to choose as her next conquest, and perhaps this was it. She rubbed her thumbs slowly over the ribbed handlebar and moistened her lips in eager anticipation. An “old friend” of Lacy’s. How lucky could a girl get?
“Well, in that case, Mr. Kendall,” she said blandly, reaching around to pat the leather seat behind her. “Hop on.”
CHAPTER FOUR
LACY’S DINNER GUESTS left at ten-thirty, and, though she was exhausted, she forced herself to wash the brandy glasses. She never, ever went to bed with even one dirty spoon in the sink—Malcolm wouldn’t have stood for it, and after all these years it had become a rather comforting habit. A habit she wasn’t going to break now, no matter how she longed for sleep. Adam Kendall, damn him, wasn’t going to destroy her routine as well as her peace of mind.
She still had two glasses to go when she realized that Hamlet, who usually slept on the breakfast nook windowsill, waiting for her to go to bed, was missing. Her chest tightened as she saw the mudroom door open a crack. Evelyn, her day cleaner who had stayed late to help with the party, must have left it unlatched again.
Drying her hands on the white cotton apron she’d pulled over her evening dress, Lacy hurried out to the west portico. She didn’t need this right now. Seeing Adam at the hospital—and then that tacky confrontation with Jennifer Lansing—had left her so drained that she’d hardly been able to carry on a decent conversation at dinner. Foolishly, she’d drunk three glasses of champagne, hoping for a slight lift, but it had only made her disagreeably tipsy, with a headache threatening.
And now this. She pinched the bridge of her nose. There ought to be a law. Surviving a showdown with an old boyfriend should give you a free pass for the rest of the day.
Luckily, Hamlet was predictable. Whenever he got loose, he always dashed gleefully up the big English oak in the side yard, and then, as if the whole escapade hadn’t been his own idea, cried plaintively to be rescued.
She leaned over the edge of the portico’s balustrade and peered up into the murky branches of the hundred-year-old tree. Whoops… Squeezing her eyes shut against the tilting dizziness, she gripped the railing carefully. She took a deep breath to steady herself. She really should have stopped with just one glass of champagne….
Even when she felt stable enough to open her eyes again, she couldn’t see a thing up in the tree. Rain was due before morning, and clouds as thick as black velvet smothered any moonlight.
“Hamlet?” She pursed her lips and aimed small kissing sounds toward the tree. The wind sent the leaves rustling like silk, but no frightened kitten emerged.
Why wasn’t he crying? Protecting her equilibrium by moving very slowly, Lacy leaned farther over the railing, ignoring splinters that might snag her expensive embroidered bodice. The complete silence unnerved her. She told herself she was overreacting—if she hadn’t had too much wine, she wouldn’t be feeling this rising panic. Her breath was coming a little too fast, and she clutched the wood with anxious fingers.
Darn it, this was why she had always refused to own a pet. For ten years now she had resisted tumble-footed puppies, sleepy-eyed cats and operatic canaries—all offered by well-meaning friends who couldn’t accept her preference for solitude. She’d even turned down a goldfish, for heaven’s sake! How could she have let this little lost kitten slip past her defenses?
She kissed the air again, praying that he would hear her, but the murmuring of the ever-rising wind was her only answer. It lifted the sweet scent of her Lady Banks roses all the way from the east garden, but it didn’t bring even a hint of Hamlet. Would he have left the yard? Please, no… The night was so ruthlessly black. It could swallow one tiny silver cat without a ripple.
“Hamlet. Hamlet.” Her headache had arrived. She bent over the railing, waiting for the porch to stop listing. “Oh, where are you, Hamlet?”
“I’m no Shakespearean scholar,” an amused voice said from somewhere just behind her left shoulder, “but shouldn’t that be ‘Romeo’?”
Lacy whirled, her hand at her bare throat. “Adam,” she gasped on an intake of shallow breath that squeaked in a particularly humiliating way. Instinctively, she took refuge in anger. “What were you thinking, sneaking up on me like that? You startled me.”
He raised his brows, silently questioning the extremity of her reaction. “Sorry,” he said politely. “I thought you heard me. I wasn’t exactly in stealth mode. In fact, I just had a rather resonant encounter with your next-door neighbor.”
“Silas?” Oh, dear. Lacy’s annoyance fled, replaced by a sense of dread. She uneasily scanned Adam’s face for bruises or bleeding. “You ran into Silas Jared?”
“I didn’t get his name. Nice fellow? Silver hair? Rather large rifle?”
She nodded nervously. Silas had his rifle out. That didn’t sound good.
“He’s an interesting old guy, isn’t he?” Adam grinned slightly. “He thinks the world of you. Doesn’t care much for strange men on your property, though.”
In spite of herself, Lacy smiled, picturing Adam staring down the barrel of Silas Jared’s ancient rifle. Something—perhaps the three glasses of wine—made the image particularly funny.
“It’s not personal,” she said apologetically, hoping she wasn’t slurring her words at all. She couldn’t bear for Adam to know that she was tipsy. “It’s just that, well, Silas sort of appointed himself my protector when Malcolm died. Sometimes he gets a little…carried away. But don’t worry. That rifle hasn’t been loaded since the Civil War.”
“He mentioned that.” Adam chuckled. “But apparently he also has a bowie knife he’s itching to use.” Hitching one foot up onto the porch step, he leaned across the railing comfortably. “So. Who’s Hamlet?”
“Who’s—” Lacy remembered suddenly, with a sting of remorse, that she still hadn’t found Hamlet. She must be even more scatter-brained than she had realized.
“He’s my kitten,” she said, looking up into the shadows of the oak once more. “I think he’s stuck up in the tree. He’s just four months old, and he can’t get down—”
“Is he one of those flat-faced, spoiled-rotten, purebreds? Fur almost as silver as Silas Jared’s hair?”
Lacy didn’t like the description—it completely overlooked Hamlet’s elegance and charm. But she had to admit it summed up the Persian cat fairly well. “Yes,” she said, too tired and worried to take offense. “Why? Have you seen a cat like that? When? Where?”
“Just now. Through your kitchen window. He had his face in a brandy snifter.”
“Hamlet!” Relief and exasperation flowing equally through her system, Lacy rushed back inside. Just as Adam had said, Hamlet stood on the kitchen counter, whisker-deep in the half-empty brandy glass. “Hamlet, no!”
The kitten lifted a guilt-stricken, brandy-soaked face at the sound of Lacy’s voice. Young as he was, he obviously knew trouble when he heard it. He tried to dart away, but his feet could find no traction on the marble countertop. Skidding helplessly, he churned his little legs until both he and the brandy glass tipped over in a splashing heap onto the kitchen floor. For a chaotic moment the air was filled with splintering glass, meowling cat and one human cry of anguish.
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