Carolina Isle (6 page)

“Good morning, David,” Mrs. Weatherly said, her voice lowering somewhat. “And how are you on this very early morning?”

“Very well. And you?”

She didn't answer, but looked at Sara. “Ariel, you have a crease in your trousers. And have you been using that face cream I gave you? Your complexion looks like a teenager's. I'll make an appointment for the dermatologist for tomorrow.”

Sara could only gape at her. One of her great vanities was her skin. In spite of too much sun and nothing to put on it but soap and water, her skin was one of her best features. Yet this woman …

Sara forced herself to smile. “Is that a new gown, Mother? You look beautiful in it.”

“Don't be impertinent,” Mrs. Weatherly snapped, then turned and started back up the stairs. “David, see that she gets into her room. Ariel, I will see you in the morning and you will be given a chance to explain your unpardonable bad behavior.”

Sara stood there, her mouth agape, as she
watched her walk up the stairs, then enter a room and close the door. She looked back at David, speechless.

“Translation: She missed you, was worried about you, and she wants to see you first thing in the morning to hear all about your trip.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING, SARA WAS WAITING
on the street corner when David picked her up at 7:00
A.M.
She knew it wasn't something that Ariel would have done, but she couldn't bear to face “Miss Pommy.” Besides, she told herself, she wanted to see how Ariel and R.J. were getting along. Had he believed the switch?

“Coward,” David said pleasantly as she opened the door to his BMW.

“Through and through,” she said and laughed. “Have you heard from Ariel?”

“Think your boss threw her out before breakfast?”

“He sleeps naked. I worry that he seduced Ariel.”

Sara was only kidding, but when David almost ran into a fire hydrant, she gasped.

“He wouldn't really, would he?” David asked.

Sara was trying to figure out what his concern was. Ariel's last letters said that David was half in love with some “very unsuitable girl” who lived on “the other side” of Arundel. But now Sara was wondering if there was more between them than she'd realized.

As they drove though Arundel, Sara got her first look at the town. It was like a set for a movie about a perfect little town. So this is where I came from, she thought. She hadn't been born in Arundel, but she'd been conceived here. “On top of a Ferris wheel at the county fair,” if her father was to be believed.

They passed big, old houses surrounded by beautiful gardens. Huge trees of magnolia and gingko shaded perfect lawns. Flowers bloomed everywhere. Houses had signs in front of them telling the name of the house and the date it was
built. She saw the name Ambler, her mother's maiden name, twice. In spite of her refusal to memorize the genealogy of the town's founding families, she remembered Ariel's comments about the Amblers: oldest, richest, most prominent. Her ancestors had walked on these streets, lived in these houses.

She came out of her reverie when David turned beside an enormous Victorian house painted blue and white. It was covered with porches, turrets, and little round windows, all romantic and dreamy.

Looking at her, David smiled. “Built by your great, great, great, et cetera, uncle.”

“A man of taste.” How good it felt to belong! she thought.

When they got to the parking lot, Ariel and R.J. were outside putting boxes in the trunk of his rented Jaguar. Actually, Ariel was putting in the boxes and R.J. was talking on his cellphone to somebody in Tokyo. Sara fully expected him to start ordering her around as soon as she stepped out of David's car, but he didn't. Instead, she found out what it was like to be on the receiving end of the R.J. treatment, as she'd heard it described.
He looked her up and down from head to toe, then back again. When he'd finished that, he looked into her eyes.

For the first time, Sara had an idea of why so many women fell for him. But she knew him and wanted nothing to do with his hot looks. It was easy, almost natural, for her to become Ariel and give him her best imitation of the look. When David reached her, Sara squeezed his arm possessively.

R.J. looked from David to Sara, then back again. There was a knowing little smirk on R.J.'s face, as if to say, This
boy
is no competition for a man like me.

Sara had to fight the urge to tell him what she thought of him, but to do that would give the game away.

“You must be Ariel,” R.J. said, at last off the phone. He put himself between her and David, and took her arm to lead her to the front passenger seat.

“And you must be Mr. Brompton,” she said, moving her arm out of his.

“Please, call me R.J.”

She was tempted to say, “Call me Miss Weatherly,”
but she just smiled and put more space between them.

“I'm glad Sara asked to bring her cousin along on this trip,” he said suggestively.

Sara had to bite her tongue to keep from putting him in his place. She'd seen the way he flirted with women and the way they reacted to him, but she wanted none of it. She looked at David with a plea for help, but he was head-to-head with Ariel and they were whispering.

R.J. still had his eyes on Sara when he shouted for his assistant. “Sara,” he called over his shoulder and she almost answered. Luckily, Ariel answered first.

“Yes, sir?” Ariel said, and Sara winced. Never had she called R.J. “sir.”

“Did you get my briefcase and my schedule?”

“I …”

Sara looked over R.J.'s shoulder to her cousin, who was looking wild-eyed and asking for help. Sara slid away from R.J. and went to Ariel. “I haven't seen my cousin in so long that I think I'll go with her,” she said, then led Ariel back into the B and B before R.J. could protest.

“How was it?” Sara asked as soon as they were inside the pretty room.

Ariel collapsed onto the sofa at the foot of the bed, while Sara scurried around and got all the things she knew R.J. would want—which was pretty much everything he'd brought with him except for his clothes.

“He sleeps naked,” Ariel said.

“Did I forget to tell you that?”

“Yes, you did. You forgot to tell me a lot of things, like that his computer gets a funny screen on it and he expected
me
to fix it.”

“What did you do?”

“Turned it off, then back on. What I know about computers you could put on the head of a pin. Does he walk around naked in front of
you?”

Sara was putting R.J.'s recharged camera batteries in his case. “Why are you so interested in his naked body?”

“I'm not. It's just that …”

Sara looked out the window and saw David and R.J. standing close together. Too close. Rather like dogs circling each other. “We have
to get out there,” she said. “Here, take this.” She thrust a briefcase and camera bag onto Ariel's lap.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. It's just that R.J. won't like David.”

“Why not?” There was disbelief in Ariel's voice. “David is so boring that everyone likes him.”

“Boring?” Sara said, looking at Ariel sharply. A man with the ambition to be president is boring? Not quite. “R.J. had to work his way up from the bottom and David's had everything handed to him. David is the kind of man R.J. despises.”

“Does that mean that if R.J. knew who
I
was he'd despise me too?”

“You're too pretty for R.J. to dislike,” Sara said.

“Today you're the pretty one. I need about three more hours of sleep and a hairdresser. You, on the other hand, look great. You have on Prada and I'm in … what is this?” Ariel asked.

“Liz Claiborne, I think, but I don't memorize the labels in my clothes. Whatever it is, it looks
great on you. Really. And the shorter hair suits you. Come on, he'll be blowing the horn in another minute.”

“Not really?” Ariel said, and her voice sounded a bit breathless. “He's really an exciting man, isn't he?”

“You're going to find out how exciting he is if you don't get out there immediately.”

“What will he do?” Ariel asked.

“Not whatever it is that you seem to think he'll do,” Sara said as she piled Ariel's arms full and pushed her out the door. They'd be back by night fall and, if she was lucky, Sara would have a few days alone with David. She smiled at him from behind Ariel and thought about being in the backseat with him on the three-hour drive to King's Isle.

But R.J. thwarted her. “You'll have to sit in front with me since you're to be my navigator, my co-captain,” he said. Since this made sense, there was nothing Sara could think of to protest, so she took the seat next to him, while David and Ariel got into the back. They headed east toward North Carolina's notoriously dangerous coast. Hurricanes, shipwrecks, and a long history
of pirates overhung the many islands dotting the coast. Some islands were large and well inhabited, and some were just spots of land sticking up in the way of the ships trying to get to the mainland.

“Think we'll see Blackbeard's ghost?” R.J. asked Sara as soon as they were underway.

Since she was pretending to be someone else, she couldn't give him her usual monosyllabic replies, but she wanted to. She didn't like the way he was flirting with the woman he thought she was. “Is it Blackbeard's ghost or his treasure you want to see?” she asked.

“Maybe the ghost would lead me to the treasure.”

“I would think that you had enough treasure, Mr. Brompton.”

“Everyone wants more, Miss Weatherly. It's called ambition and it's highly prized in this glorious country of ours.”

“It's also called greed,” she said, but she made herself smile as she said it.

Sara pulled the sun visor down and saw in the little makeup mirror that David and Ariel were head-to-head in the backseat, whispering. I wonder
what they're plotting? Sara thought, then put the visor back up.

“Come on, Miss Weatherly—and, by the way, I told you to call me R.J.—hasn't there been something in your life that you wanted so much that you were willing to work hard to get it?”

“It's good to try to better yourself,” she said as primly as she could manage. “But when you get to the point where you have too much and still want more, it's time to stop.”

“I guess you mean me,” he said, smiling. “But, Miss Weatherly, it's not as though you work for me and have to keep your mouth shut. Tell me what you think. Surely Sara has told you some things about me.”

“I don't reveal confidences,” Sara said as she glanced over her shoulder. What
were
they talking about?

“So tell me everything about Arundel,” R.J. said. “I'm thinking about buying a vacation house there.”

“Do you want to know about the people or the land values?”

He laughed. “You know, even if I didn't know
you were Sara's cousin, I'd know it. You two sound and act very much alike.”

“I couldn't possibly do all that Sara does,” she shot back. “Sara is a saint.”

“I quite agree,” he said quietly, looking in the mirror at the two in the backseat. “On the other hand, she's a terrible secretary. Just the other day, she nearly spilled a pot of hot coffee on me.”

Sara had to turn her head away so he wouldn't see the anger in her face. After everything she did for him, all he could remember was that she'd almost spilled some coffee! Right now she wished she could erase the “almost.”

“Tell me about the people of Arundel,” he said. “Tell me about
your
life there.”

Sara put some of her acting training into use and calmed herself. She made herself into Ariel and began talking about all that she'd memorized. She told him about her mother, and her childhood with her homeschooling. She told him about the old families in Arundel, and how they still named their children after the founding fathers. Sara did her best to sound lighthearted, as though she hadn't a care in the world—the way
she'd seen Ariel's life until she met that virago who was her mother.

Sara had memorized the way to get to King's Isle, so she gave him directions at every junction.

“What made you choose King's Isle?” she asked.

“Ever hear of a man named Charley Dunkirk?”

“Sara and I have been corresponding for years, so I know a bit more about you and your business than you'd think.”

“I can't imagine that Sara ever wrote you a word about
me.
Most of the time she acts like she hates me. The stories I could tell you! Oh, well, where was I?”

Sara narrowed her eyes at him. “Mr. Dunkirk,” she said stiffly.

“Oh, yeah. My best friend. Charley has a wife he pretends is a pest to him, but he's mad about her. Former beauty queen.” He glanced at Sara. “She grew up in Arundel.”

Sara said nothing. What could she say? Ask where the woman lived in town? If Ariel heard the address she'd know if the woman lived above or below the cotton mill.

“Anyway, Charley came to me and said that
his wife, Katlyn, wanted him to buy an island off the coast of Arundel and he wanted
me
to take a look at it.”

“Why you?”

“I have no idea. Charley didn't know either. At first he thought Kat and I had something going on, but—”

“You wouldn't do that to your best friend, would you?”

“Not unless she—” R.J. was grinning, but at one look at Sara's face, he stopped smiling. “Of course I wouldn't. Code of honor, that sort of thing. Anyway, Charley told me that Kat wanted him to buy an island and open a resort on it. A rich resort. He said …”

R.J. sat up a bit straighter and deepened his voice. When he spoke, he sounded very much like Mr. Dunkirk, but Sara as Ariel wasn't supposed to know that, so she had to work to keep from laughing.