A Light For My Love (15 page)

"I guess I'd better move Mrs. McIntyre to the
deceased group." Mrs. McIntyre's funeral had taken place the week
before. "God rest her soul, this thing was always a problem. I
never knew where to put it before—with the bird group or the flower
group."

Death, apparently, was a great equalizer.
Once a card was relegated to the "deceased group," it didn't matter
if it held birds, flowers, or flying elephants. China had never
understood why calling cards, including those of strangers, held
such appeal for her aunt. But Gert spent a lot of time on them,
arranging and sorting them, to what end China couldn't guess.

Sometimes, when she'd sat up all night in the
carriage house or when sleep eluded her but she still had to
preside at the breakfast table and face a day full of work, she
resented those silly cards. She could always think of half a dozen
tasks more urgent than sorting pieces of paper according to what
flower was printed on them. Then, she would feel guilty, knowing
that her impatience was childish and uncharitable. After all, her
aunt was nearly sixty and entitled not only to China's respect but
to an easier life as well.

It was only that she got so tired sometimes,
of the work, of the responsibility.

Just then, as eight low-throated chimes
sounded from the grandfather clock in the hall, she heard the back
door open and close. So, Jake was finally home. He'd missed dinner
again, probably having spent the afternoon with that draggle-tailed
woman she'd seen him with earlier. But to keep her part of their
new agreement, China had been obliged to put a plate in the oven
for him. The food would be dried out, but she couldn't help that.
If he was late, he'd have to take what he got. She heard his
footfalls on the hall runner and listened tensely to determine
where he was going. Realizing that her hand was clenched damply in
her skirt, she forced herself to relax. Why did he have that effect
on her, making her feel breathless and jumpy, as though she were
waiting for a suitor? Or an executioner? Perhaps because lately
she'd found her eyes straying to him, drawn to his rough
handsomeness and tall, wide-shouldered frame. Or sometimes she'd
realized she was listening for the sound of his rich, mellow voice.
She'd even caught herself idly wondering what it would be like to
touch his hand, his shoulder. She couldn't imagine what prompted
those thoughts, but they had to stop. She had to try harder to make
them stop. She didn't like Jake Chastaine, and that made her
embarrassing daydreams even more unseemly.

His steps grew closer, and she saw that Susan
had put her work down and lifted her vacant eyes with a kind of
expectant, puzzled expression.

Jake appeared in the doorway, nearly filling
it, and China forgot about Susan. He wore his good white shirt and
a suit, something China had not seen on him since those long ago
Sundays at mass. He greeted Aunt Gert and Susan before turning his
attention to China.

"Could I see you in the kitchen for a
minute?" he asked her.

What was it now? she wondered suspiciously.
Whatever he wanted, it couldn't be good—it hadn't been yet. Every
time he asked to talk to her, he had a demand, or a complaint, or
an insult. Or he threatened her somehow in ways that made her
uncomfortable to contemplate. She didn't want to go into the
kitchen and be alone with him.

When she didn't move, he glanced at Susan,
who continued to stare at him. He looked at China again and raised
his brows. "Please?"

With more than a little reluctance, China
rose from the sofa and approached him. His face was pink with the
cold night and she could feel it, even smell it, radiating from his
clothes. He stood aside and let her lead the way back to the
kitchen. When they got there, she turned to look at him, prepared
for some new grievance.

He walked to the stove and stood dose to its
heat, letting the warmth sink into his legs, holding his big hands
out over the still-hot surface. "God, it's a raw night out
there."

"I saved your dinner," she began defensively.
She took up a dishtowel and pulled his plate out of the warmer. As
she expected, the hot oven hadn't been very kind to the salmon
fillet and rice she'd set aside nearly two hours ago. Holding it
out with wary regard, she added, "It looked better than this when I
put it in here."

He glanced at the dinner with only minor
interest. "I know, China, I know. It doesn't matter, this is fine."
He moved to the table and pulled out a chair, motioning her to
sit.

She put the plate at the table setting she'd
left for him, and after pouring him a cup of coffee, she hovered
uncertainly behind the chair. He obviously had something on his
mind. In the brighter light of the kitchen, she could see he was
bothered about something, preoccupied. His eyes looked tired and he
slumped into the chair opposite her. The wind had blown his long
hair into unruly wheat-colored snags.

He picked up the fork next to his plate,
stared at the dry rice and shriveled fish, its edges the color of
coral, and put his fork down again.

China felt a treacherous moment of regret.
Expecting him to gripe about the food, she spoke first. "Jake, it
really did taste good when it was fresh. But it sat too long."

Again, he shrugged it off. "It's not so bad.
Hell, I've gotten by on far worse." He paused, as though trying to
decide something, and then went on. "For the first month after
Quinn and I signed on the
Pacific Star
, I lived on ship's
biscuit soaked in watered-down tea."

"Good heavens, why? Didn't they take on
provisions before she sailed?" She arched her brow and gave him a
knowing look. "Or were you being punished?"

A thin smile dashed across his features, then
disappeared. "No, I wasn't being punished. There was good food and
a lot of it. But I couldn't eat. I was seasick day and night for
four weeks. I couldn't keep anything down and I lost thirty pounds.
When I started puking blood, the captain said I'd never get my sea
legs. By then, we were on the west coast of southern Mexico. He
wanted to put me ashore and leave me there. Quinn talked him out of
it."

China winced slightly. The torturous
seasickness he described happened to unseasoned landlubbers,
sailors who weren't used to the constant rise and fall, and the
rolling, sometimes heavy, swells of the open ocean. "But you did
have your sea legs. You grew up on the water, working on your
father's boat all those years."

"I know. I couldn't understand it either." He
retrieved the fork and took a tentative stab at the fused grains of
rice. "Sometimes I worried that I'd die." The half-smile returned.
"Most of the time I was afraid I wouldn't."

If she'd heard about this at the time it
happened, she would have relished the news. That kind of
green-faced agony was something she'd have wished on him for the
turmoil he'd caused in her family. But now it gave her no joy. In
fact, she felt an alarming urge to reach over and smooth his
wind-wild blond hair.

She pushed down the compassion fighting its
way to the surface of her feelings. If Jake was trying to make her
feel sorry for him, it just wasn't going to work. She responded. "I
see you recovered. Is that what you wanted to tell me?"

Jake glanced up sharply. China remained
standing next to the table, stiff and aloof, gripping the back of
the chair. He didn't know why he'd told her the story, and now he
wished he hadn't. He had never let anyone know about that first
month, which had seemed more like a year. Aside from feeling too
sick to live, and having the daylights scared out of him when he
saw that blood, it was one of the very few times in his life over
which he had no control, and he hated it. He was accustomed to
thinking, doing, and deciding for himself. Even if some of his
actions hadn't always been the wisest, at least he'd been the
master of his own fate.

But for those few weeks he hadn't been the
master of anything, and he wasn't now, and that brought him back to
his reason for asking for this meeting.

"I wanted to talk to you because I have a
business proposition for you," he said, and indicated the chair
again.

China stared at him in amazement and fumbled
with the button on her collar. "Business proposition! Really, Jake,
if you're looking for a loan from me—I mean, you can't be
serious."

He erupted into roaring laughter—snorted, was
what China thought indignantly, failing to see the joke. Her face
grew warm as he sat there shaking his head, his teeth white behind
his smile. He put the fork down again and pushed away the dried-up
dinner.

Propping his elbows on the table, he leaned
his chin on one hand and looked up at her. "I don't want to borrow
money. China, please, sit down so we can talk about this."

Cautiously curious, she replied, "Well, maybe
for a minute." She slid into the chair opposite him, but couldn't
relax.

He lifted the coffee cup to his mouth and
considered her over its rim. With the cup poised like that,
covering most of his lower face, her attention

was drawn to his dark, uncommonly long
lashes, the green eyes, the gold-frosted brows. She glanced away,
breaking the contact. He took a sip and settled back.

"You've lived in Astoria all your life. You
know a lot of people here."

She nodded and shrugged. "So do you."

"Not the kind I'm thinking of, China," he
said drily. "Saloon girls and fishermen aren't likely shipping
customers. I want to talk with the men who own the canneries and
the lumber mills and the flour mill. The
Katherine
needs a
cargo and that's where you can help."

Surprised by his suggestion, she steepled her
hand over her chest. "Me? I don't know anything about the details
of shipping. What could I do?"

He broke off a little corner of the salmon
and popped it into his mouth. "I'd like you arrange a business
dinner for me, here. I'll give you a list of names. You send the
invitations, organize the evening, and act as my hostess."

China couldn't believe what she was hearing.
His plan was out of the question, and he must be out of his mind if
he thought she'd agree to it. "Jake, the rent you're paying
wouldn't begin to cover the expense of something like that."

He swallowed another bite of fish. "I'll pay
all the expenses. It won't cost you anything. In fact, you'll make
money."

She eyed him suspiciously. "How?"

He cut off a chunk of rice with the side of
his fork. "For every deal I make with your help, I'll pay you a
percentage."

China's will to refuse shifted a bit on its
foundations. She pulled her shawl closer. "Well, but—"

"But what?"

She didn't need a list to know precisely
which people Jake should meet. They'd been friends of her parents,
and the children of those friends. She'd been to their homes many
times in the past, and they'd visited here. But that had been long
ago, when she'd moved in their social circle and had lovely
clothes, good food, and enough furniture to fill all the rooms. She
wasn't eager to have the pillars of the community in her house now,
poking their inquisitive, assessing noses into her privation. And,
she suspected, providing she agreed to Jake's scheme, curiosity
would be the chief reason they would accept her invitation—if they
accepted.

"But there isn't enough furniture left in the
front parlor or the dining room," she asserted.

He dismissed the problem. "We'll figure out
something, maybe move some in from the back parlor. I'll take care
of that." He picked a bone out of the salmon and took another bite.
He sat there, chewing the fish and looking at her, as though
formulating the reply to her next objection.

China made a face. Damn him. As usual, he had
an answer for everything. But her next objection was one she
couldn't give voice to. If she agreed to his proposition, it would
mean spending entirely too much time with him, and that was
something she did not want to do. She'd never wanted to lay eyes on
Jake Chastaine again. She reviewed his shortcomings: he was the man
who had urged her brother to abandon his family. He was a rake-hell
with a taste for whiskey and a reputation with women. Despite Aunt
Gert's defense of him, China still believed Jake was responsible
for Althea Lambert's ruin. He'd been too much of a libertine to be
innocent. And since he'd returned, she

had no idea what he did with his time on
those nights when he came home late, but she could certainly
guess.

And worst of all, he was too attractive for
her own good.

But the more she tried to distance herself
from Jake, the narrower the gap became. Now here he sat, eating in
her kitchen and suggesting a business arrangement. He might gain a
lot from this, but what would she really be getting?

Then she remembered standing in Mr.
Herrmann's shop, trying to sell her mother's garnets. And being
refused. Money. Everything always came back to money, she reminded
herself again. She needed it and the Sailors Protective League
needed it for its boarding house. She laced her fingers together
tightly on the table and took a deep breath.

China looked up at Jake and found him
watching her, waiting, his face carefully blank.

"Well?" he asked softly. "Will you do it,
China?"

No, no, say no, tell him you can't—you won't—
"Yes. I'll do it." God in heaven, had she really said that? She'd
given him the answer he wanted, as if powerless to do otherwise.
Jake looked as surprised as she felt. But now that the words were
out, she couldn't retract them.

He bolted the rest of his awful dinner and
wiped his mouth on the napkin. "Hmh, guhd," he replied around the
last of the rice, and swallowed. "Then we'd better shake on it.
This is business, after all." He stood and came to her side of the
table. He rubbed his right hand briskly on the leg of his pants and
extended it to her. "My hands are still cold," he explained.