Blue Willow (20 page)

She settled fierce, shaken eyes on him. “Nothing means anything to me right now. I’ve lost it all.”

A long, late-model sedan pulled up along the curb behind the guard’s car. Lily twisted to stare at it, ignited by one last inkling of hope. Two women about her age and a young man got out, gazing curiously at Tamberlaine. They were tall, handsome people, one of the women blond and sturdy, the other dark and slender, the young man too thin but kind-looking, with sandy-brown hair falling over his forehead. They were well dressed and moved with confidence.

Tamberlaine shook his head at them and waved them inside. They went past, casting curious looks at each other and at Lily. She sank back in the seat. “Good-bye,” Mr. Tamberlaine said to her. “And good luck.”

He watched the car pull away, exhaled with relief, then walked into the building. Michael, Cass, and Julia were waiting in the lobby. “What was
that
about?” Cass asked. “Who was she?”

“Someone of no consequence. Don’t mention it to your brother. He doesn’t need the distraction. Not a word. All right?”

“All right, Tammy,” Julia said. “Whatever you say.”

Michael asked, “Has he come down yet?”

“No, he’s still in his apartment. Making arrangements
to bring Elizabeth home from the hospital. We’ve all got to work together now. Come along.”

As they went through the doors to the offices and the private stairs that led up to Artemas’s rooms, Tamberlaine glanced back toward the lobby and the empty street beyond the entrance. He hoped he’d saved Artemas some unwanted trouble. But Lily MacKenzie stuck in his mind. Yes, he had to give her points for trying. Whatever she’d really wanted, he’d never met anyone quite so willing to suffer for it.

Ten

James woke slowly, enjoying the rare sense of contentment, but then suddenly aware that he was alone in bed. Muted sounds came from the kitchen—the oven door opening and shutting, water running in the sink. He raised his head from the pillow and listened, satisfied, relaxing. He’d never cared whether a woman stayed with him afterward, but now he did.

His bare back was cold without Alise’s lithe, snuggling body molded to it. He enjoyed recalling the warmth of her breasts and belly against him, and didn’t pull the jumbled sheet and blanket upward. The sheets, the pillow, the whole bed, smelled of sex. Usually he found the scent more annoying than exciting—a stranger’s imprint on his territory—but this time he reveled in it. The faint scent of Alise’s perfume mingled with the musk. Feeling foolish but indulgent, he reached behind him, brought her pillow to his face, and sighed.

This was a side of his personality he’d never exposed to anyone else, and barely to Alise. Smiling, he looked across the bedroom at stacks of military histories and books on medieval pageantry along the empty walls. Her white lace panties were draped on one mound of books, her bra on another. Just looking at them made him hard.

He tossed the pillow and sheets aside and left the room, padding, naked and aroused, through a living room dominated by a high ceiling with ornate molding at the top. The room contained little besides a heavy couch, a desk, and various computers in one corner, and a massive, baroque sideboard where he’d set a television and stereo components. A mixture of rain and snow drizzled on tall windows with no curtains. It was a wonderful afternoon for staying inside and in bed.

James slipped into a spartan kitchen with white-tiled floors and steel appliances. She stood at a counter with her back to him, the twin curves of her small buttocks peeping from under the waistband of the white sports shirt he’d slung off hours ago, her dark hair tangled along the collar.

Before she realized it, he was behind her with his hands under the shirt. She yelped softly, twisted inside his embrace on her hips, and looked up at him with gleaming, troubled eyes. “I was trying to fix us something to eat from the empty cave of your refrigerator.”

He glanced over her shoulder at the bologna, bread, and mayonnaise sitting on the counter. “Not much luck there, I’m afraid. I’m not very domestic.” His eyes returned to hers. She searched his expression anxiously. “I know. I guess I’m not either.” Her gaze dropped slowly down his hairy chest, and she inhaled with amazement at the jutting penis that prodded her inner thighs.

James shoved her sandwich supplies aside, lifted her to the countertop so that her legs were spread on either side of him, and pressed himself between them, nudging the silky hair at the center. Her eyes flickered with appreciation. His blunt sexuality didn’t threaten her, he’d realized, any more than his brusque, antagonistic nature did. She caressed his face, dissolved the urgent lust in him a little, and quieted him with that simple touch. Her effect continued to astonish him.

“Would you pose for me sometime?” she asked. “Let me sculpt a torso of you?”

“Like this? I don’t know if I want this captured for posterity.”

“I do. I promise not to show it to my professors. Most of them are gay. They’d be envious.” She gave him an impish look. “On the other hand, I might finally get some decent grades and feel as if I have some talent.”

James kissed her forehead. Alise loved art but admitted she lacked the aptitude to be more than a hack. She dabbled in jewelry, making funny little ceramic pins to give away to friends. “I think you have talent,” he said gallantly.

She draped her arms around his neck and gazed at him with pensive regard. “No, after I graduate I’ll take my puny little inheritance from my great-aunt and probably use it to open a gallery where real artists can display their work. I should copy Cassandra and treat art like a business asset.”

“Cass sees getting a master’s in art as a way to learn enough about design to be of use to Colebrook China. She and Michael and Elizabeth and Julia will all have their places in the company, eventually. Cass knows that. She’s driven by it. Don’t judge yourself by her.”

“I’d like to be useful too.” When he smiled slyly and pulled her pelvis against his, sliding his erection up her belly, Alise laid her head on his shoulder and sighed. “Okay, so I’m useful in one way.”

James’s teasing mood faded. He felt awkward, unaccustomed to tenderness, as wary as he was drawn to it. “You think I coaxed you to come here today because I needed someone—anyone—to fill up a rainy weekend afternoon?”

“You didn’t coax me. I wrapped my ankles around your foot in the restaurant, and you couldn’t leave without promising to take me with you. I wanted you to know that I’m not a child anymore.”

“I don’t remember it quite that way. I remember sitting at the table and sticking myself in the mouth with my fork because I was too intent on seducing you.”

“I thought you were distracted by the woman at the next table. She kept pursing her lips at you. I noticed.”

She lifted her head and looked at him with wistful devotion and hope. “There’s been a boy at school. I slept with him because he reminded me of you. Because you were too much older to be bothered with me. I couldn’t
have you, so I took him.” She hesitated, her face flushing at the admission. “Does that annoy you?”

James stared down at her with unfurling adoration but also possessiveness. “Only if you’re disappointed now.”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head. Her eyes were somber and painfully intense. “I wish today could go on forever.” When he didn’t answer, she scrutinized his frowning expression and added, “I shouldn’t have said that. I promised myself I wouldn’t make you feel like a shark with a sucker fish attached to your fin.”

“You think I’m a shark?”

Her olive complexion blossomed into full redness. “I
love
sharks. I only meant that you’re a loner, and you don’t want me the way I want—oh dammit.” She clamped her mouth shut and closed her eyes, then finally looked him straight in the face and said, “I should have known I’d say too much, or the wrong thing. I had to bite my lip when we were in bed together to keep from crying and saying that I love you.” Her dignity crumpled, and tears came to her eyes. “But I’ve always loved you. And I think you’ve always known it. You don’t have to say anything, or apologize.”

He wouldn’t. He
couldn’t
, though the need welled up inside his chest. He distrusted emotional confessions. Melodramas were lurid and pointless—he always thought of his parents’ excesses. Outside of his brothers and sisters, Alise was the one person who understood and accepted him the way he was. Maybe he could give her just enough of himself to keep her with him. Losing her suddenly seemed unthinkable.

“If you’re not happy at college, you ought to leave,” he said. She looked forlorn but not surprised at his abrupt change of subject. “Come home,” he continued. “Enter a college here in New York. You could stay with Cassandra and Elizabeth and Julia until you find an apartment. Elizabeth needs your friendship more than ever, and the brownstone has plenty of room now that Michael has moved to his girl’s place.”

“No,” she said, her voice weary but firm. “I’m not coming
back to
fuck
you occasionally and wonder how many other women are doing the same thing.” The choice of sharp, obscene words was unlike her, and cast an ugly shadow on what they’d done together all afternoon.

He moved away, leaned on the counter adjacent to her sitting place, and studied her through narrowed eyes. His heart raced. “All right. You could live here with me. If it doesn’t work out, then”—he shrugged—“no harm done.”

Shock, then delight, glimmered in her eyes. She dipped her head and scrutinized him from under the wings of slender dark brows, the assessment adoring and deadly accurate. James turned away, flicked a handle on the sink, and scooped cold water into his hands. He splashed it on his face and reached for a towel. The silence grated on him. He felt exposed and cornered. He played by his own rules, and if she wanted to stay, she’d have to accept them. She
would
stay. He’d do anything to keep her here. Anything except wallow in emotion.

She slipped off the counter, reached around him, and shut the water off. Taking his hand, she led him back to the bedroom.

The low droning of the building’s air-filtering system made a constant hum in Artemas’s ears. Whenever he spent several days at the Typlex plant outside Chicago without a break, the low
shushing
sound crept unpleasantly into his sleep, masked in his dreams as the breath of a faceless monster or the buzzing of a wasp—what some might see as a symbol of threat, unhappiness, or doubt. He preferred to believe the restless dreams came from his concern for the success of Colebrook’s new venture.

He walked through the ceramics plant beside James, who seemed unfazed by the droning or the loud rumble of huge ball mills grinding clay and other ingredients into a fine dust for mixing into ceramic compounds. The heat radiating from giant kilns wilted their clothes and made beads of sweat on Artemas’s forearms below his rolled-up shirtsleeves. Ties and jackets were ridiculous accessories
here; by the end of a long day the plant’s sweat and fine dust gave him and whatever he wore a patina of grime.

They moved past slurry-mixing vats, stacks of casting molds, and stopped at an enormous rack filled with green-ware waiting to be pushed into the kilns for firing. “There they are—the first shipment,” Artemas said, speaking loudly to overcome the noise. James stepped closer, his hands sunk in the front pockets of his black trousers, and studied the rack with a somber, satisfied expression. It was filled with hollow ceramic nose cones, slender and starkly handsome objects for their size. Each was no more than two feet wide and three feet tall—a small masterpiece of high-tech ceramic science capable of withstanding intense heat and pressure at the tip of a missile while letting the missile’s radar penetrate to track a target.

Artemas watched his brother’s face closely, wondering if James ever brooded over the ethics. They were helping to create devices of destruction. The missiles that would be sheathed in these nose cones would take lives. But they would also help preserve the peace and balance of power in a chaotic, complicated world. Artemas hated them, but he couldn’t dismiss their necessity.

“They’re goddamned wonderful,” James called to him proudly. “We’re going to make a fortune.”

Artemas wasn’t surprised by his brother’s pragmatic attitude. James saw the world in black-and-white terms, a place in which diplomats were less important than generals. Artemas saw it as a maze of contradictions and compromises, filled with sidetracks and dead ends, where pride and principles were always in danger of being lost, and where the maze too often became a prison.

“I don’t want the others involved in this,” he said abruptly, walking onward. James fell in beside him. “Why not?”

“Because military applications aren’t what I want our name associated with. This investment is a means to an end. We’ll expand into ceramic components for electronic circuitry and medical hardware. We’ll concentrate on building a secure financial base for Colebrook China. And
philanthropy—I want the Colebrook name to be known for humanitarian work—that’s where Michael and Elizabeth belong after they graduate. Cass will always care more about the china company than anything else. Good. That’s where she’ll shine.”

“And Julia?”

Artemas almost smiled. “Julia’s a tornado looking for a place to touch down. With her interest in management, it’s just a matter of steering her on the right course. God help anyone who gets in her way.”

James was silent, his head bowed in thought as they walked. “And me? Where do I fit in?”

“Here.” Artemas led the way up a flight of steel stairs. They entered the complex of offices on the upper level and halted in an unoccupied hallway there. James faced him. Artemas gestured, indicating the industrial plant below. “If you want this to be your project, then it will be.”

“I want it. But you’re the one with the connections.”

“You handle the details. I’ll take care of the politics. I have the patience for negotiations. You don’t.”

James’s eyes gleamed. “If you can pull in the influence we need to get larger contracts, I’ll make damn sure the rest is a success.” He hesitated, searching Artemas’s face. “You already have it. The senator. He has something to do with this.”