Linda Lael Miller Bundle (12 page)

“You don’t understand. H-he’s writing another book.”

By now, Alice was a member of the necessarily small group of people who knew that Mitch Prescott and the mysterious “Zebulon” were one and the same person. She had read his books avidly, one after another, Shay knew, so she should have gotten the point. It was obvious from what she said next she hadn’t. “Isn’t that what writers do? Finish one book and start another?”

Shay was suddenly annoyed, and the sharpness of her tone reflected that, as did the hot color in her cheeks. “It isn’t the writing that bothers me! It’s the research! Alice, he could be killed, captured, tortured!”

“That’s why you’re throwing him over? Shay, I thought you were made of better stuff.”

Alice’s words, though moderately spoken, stung Shay. “I’d be sweating blood every time he left the house, Alice! I love him too much to—”

“On the contrary, dear,” Alice broke in quietly. “It seems to me that you don’t love him enough.”

Shay leaped to her feet, insulted, and stomped out of the room, out of the house. Alice could get back to her apartment on her own, she knew; she had bought a small car from Marvin Reese and was already an expert at navigating every part of Skyler Beach. Shay got into her own car and drove away, going far too fast.

She got a speeding ticket before she had traveled four blocks, and the fact that she deserved it did nothing to temper her mood. By the time she got back to her house, she was a wreck.

When Hank came home from school, he took one look at his mother and asked if he could go over to his friend Louie’s house to play until dinner. Feeling guilty, Shay smiled and ruffled his hair. “Have you got any homework?”

“They don’t give homework in the first grade, Mom,” he said indulgently.

“Oh.”

Hank was perched on the arm of her chair, his eyes taking in the paint smudges on her face, her tangled hair, the coveralls. “Do you like your new job, Mom?”

“I haven’t started it yet, but I’m sure I’ll like it a lot.”

“Will you have to dress like that?”

Shay laughed. “No. I painted my office today, that’s all.”

“I thought the contractors were supposed to do all that stuff.”

“I wanted to do my office myself. And don’t ask me why, tiger, because I don’t know.”

“Are we going to live over there, where your office is, I mean?”

Shay shook her head. “There won’t be room, once all the other shops open. I rented the last one today.”

“You didn’t rent Grammie’s knit shop out, did you?” Hank demanded. Rosamond had always been Rosamond to him, but Alice, who had won his affections instantly, was “Grammie.”

“Of course I didn’t,” Shay said with a frown. “What made you ask a thing like that?”

Hank’s thin shoulders moved in a shrug. “I was just wondering.”

Shay didn’t believe him. Somehow, in the uncanny way of a child, he’d sensed that she and Alice had had words. She felt ashamed of her outburst now and made a mental note to call Alice and apologize the moment Hank went outside to play. “Grammie’s looking forward to having you help her at the shop.”

Hank looked manfully apologetic. “I won’t be able to go every day. I’ve got little-league practice and stuff like that.”

“I’m sure Grammie will understand.”

“And the guys might tease me if they see me messing around with yarn and junk.”

Shay kept a straight face. “They might.”

Hank brightened. “I’d better go and find Louie now. See ya.”

“You be back here in half an hour, buddy,” Shay warned. “Supper will be ready then.”

“Okay, Mom,” he called, the sound mingling with the slamming of the front door.

Shay got out of her chair, took a quick shower and put on her bathrobe and slippers. This was a night to be dissolute, she decided as she put hot dogs on to boil and opened a can of pork and beans to serve with them. After tearing the top off a bag of potato chips, she dialed Alice’s number.

“I’m sorry,” she said without preamble.

“Call Mitch Prescott and tell him the same thing,” Alice immediately responded.

Shay stiffened. “I will not.”

“You’re a fool, then,” Alice answered. “A man like that doesn’t come around every few months, like quarterly taxes and the newest
TV
miniseries, you know.”

“You’re impossible!”

“Yes,” Alice agreed. “But you love me.”

Shay laughed in spite of herself. “That’s true. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Absolutely. My cash register and some of my yarn are supposed to be delivered.”

Shay was hanging up the telephone just as Hank dashed in, flushed from some backyard game and ready for his supper. He ate and took his bath without complaint, then settled down to watch the one hour of television allowed him on a school night.

Shay settled into the easy chair in the living room and began reading Mitch’s manuscript again. It was a great improvement over the first draft, which had been wonderful in its own right, and she again had the feeling that she was meeting Rosamond Dallas for the first time. She stopped long enough to see that Hank brushed his teeth and said his prayers, but the story of her mother’s life drew her back.

She turned the last page at three-fourteen that morning, wide awake and awed by the quiet power of Mitch’s writing. She had expected the book to need minor changes. But it was perfect as it was. Unfortunately. Revisions would have given her an excuse to work closely with Mitch again.

Stiff and sore, Shay set the manuscript carefully aside and rose from her chair. Working with Mitch would have been a foolish indulgence, considering her decision to end the relationship. No, it was better this way, she told herself—she would simply call him in the morning and tell him that she could see no problems with the book being published just as it was. Their association would then be officially ended, and Shay could go on with her life.

What kind of life was it going to be, without Mitch? The question chewed at Shay long after she’d fallen into bed. Sure, she had Hank and Alice and her business, but what was she going to do without those fevered bouts of lovemaking that always left her exhausted but strangely revitalized, too? What was she going to do without the laughter and the fights and the adventures?

Adventures. Shay sighed. That was the key word. She simply wasn’t cut out to sit at home, chewing her fingernails, while the man she loved risked his life in order to research some new journalistic feat.

Alice’s accusation came back to haunt her then, echoing in her mind. She did
too
love Mitch enough. She loved him, as she had maintained to Alice, too much. If she married Mitch and then he was killed, she would be devastated.

She sat up in bed with a jolt. Only in that moment did it occur to her that she would be just as devastated if he died without ever marrying her, ever touching her again. Why had she thought that separating herself from Mitch would save him?

The next morning was splashed in the singular glory of early October and Shay drove slowly up the hill to Mitch’s house. The distant sound of a hammer made her walk around back instead of ringing the doorbell.

Mitch was kneeling on the roof of the playhouse, half a dozen nails jutting from his mouth, his tanned chest and shoulders bared to the crisp bite of the weather. Shay stood watching him for a moment, her heart caught in her throat.

He stopped swinging the hammer to look at her, and there was no welcome, no tenderness, in his eyes. “Well,” he said.

Shay was careful not to reveal how much his coolness hurt her. “If you have a minute, I’d like to talk.”

He began to drive another nail into another tiny shingle. “I’m busy.”

Shay was shaken to her core, but she stood her ground. “I came to return the manuscript, Mitch,” she lied. In truth, the book had been an afterthought, an excuse.

He went on working. “Leave it with Mrs. Carraway,” he said brusquely.

“You aren’t going to let me apologize, are you?” Shay reddened, embarrassed and hurt and yet unable to turn and walk away.

“Apologize all you want. I’m through playing the game, Shay.”

“The game? What game?”

Now, Mitch set the hammer aside, but he remained on the roof of the playhouse and his manner was no friendlier. “You know what I’m talking about, Shay. You come to me when you need comfort or a roll in the hay, and then you run away again.”

“A roll in the—my God, that’s crude!”

The broad, sun-browned shoulders moved in a shrug cold enough to chill Shay. “Maybe so, but it’s the truth. You want the fun, but you’re too cowardly to make a real commitment, aren’t you? Well, get yourself another flunky.”

“You said you loved me!”

A small shingle splintered under the force of a blow from Mitch’s hammer. “I do,” he said, without looking at Shay. “But I don’t want to play house anymore. I need the real thing.”

Baffled and as broken as that shingle Mitch had just destroyed, Shay turned and hurried away.

I
f there was one thing Shay learned in the coming weeks, it was how little she knew about the catering business. She made all the standard mistakes and a few new ones to boot. By the end of October her confidence was sorely shaken.

Alice lifted the furry Halloween costume she was making for Hank to her mouth and bit off a thread with her teeth. While her grandmother sewed at the kitchen table, Shay was frantically mixing the ingredients for enough lasagne to feed fifty people.

“You expected starting your own company to be easy, Shay?”

Shay sighed as she wrapped another panful of lasagne and put it into the freezer. “Of course I didn’t. But I have to admit that I expected a lack of business to be the problem, not a surplus. I have four wedding receptions and people are already calling about Thanksgiving. Who ever heard of having Thanksgiving dinner catered, for heaven’s sake?”

Alice chuckled. “The solution seems obvious. Hire some help.”

Shay leaned back against the counter in a rare moment of indolence. “I hate to do that, Alice. If things slow down, I’d have to let people go.”

“You’ll just have to make it clear from the beginning that the work could be temporary.”

“All right, fine. But how am I going to make the time to interview these people, let alone train them to cook?”

Alice let the costume rest in her lap. “Dear, dear, you are frazzled. You simply call the junior college. They have a Displaced Homemaker program, you know. Ask them to send over a few prospects. I’ll do the interviewing for you, if you’d like, right in my shop. If any seem promising, I’ll send them on to you.”

“You’re brilliant,” Shay said, bending to plant a kiss on her grandmother’s forehead. “How in the world did I ever get along without you?”

Alice chuckled and went back to her sewing. “What are you wearing to the Reeses’ Halloween party?” she asked over the whir of Shay’s portable machine.

Shay was mixing tomato sauce to pour over a layer of ricotta cheese. “I’m not going.”

The sewing machine stopped. “Not going? But it’s going to be marvelous, with everyone in costume….”

“I plan to drop off the food and then leave, Alice, and that’s that.”

“You’re no fun at all. Where’s your spirit of adventure?”

Shay remembered a few of the “adventures” she’d had with Mitch Prescott and felt sad. “I’ve never been the adventurous type. Besides, I don’t have a costume.”

“You’ve got that bee suit. Wear that.”

“Wear it? When I’ve been all this time trying to live it down? No way. I’ll stay home and greet the trick-or-treaters, thank you very much.”

“Party pooper.”

Shay laughed. “What are you going to wear, by the way?”

The sewing machine was going again. “I’m dressing up as a punk rocker,” Alice answered placidly. “Cyndi Lauper will have nothing on me.”

Shay shook her head. It seemed odd that her grandmother was so full of life and she herself could think of nothing but work. She should wear the bee suit for Halloween after all, she thought. It was a costume that suited a drone.

Mitch was tired from the flight and sick to his stomach. Meetings with unrepentant serial killers tended to have that effect on him.

Mrs. Carraway was busy carving an enormous pumpkin at the kitchen table. “Hello, Mr. Prescott,” she said, beaming. “Welcome back.” She started to get up and Mitch gestured for her to stay put.

The last thing he wanted was food. He rummaged through a cupboard until he found a bottle of Scotch and poured himself a generous helping. “What are you doing?” he asked, frowning at the pile of pumpkin pulp and seeds on the table.

Mrs. Carraway arched an eyebrow, either at his drink or his question; Mitch didn’t know which and didn’t care. “Why, I’m making a jack-o’-lantern; it’s Halloween.”

Mitch lifted his glass in a silent salute to the holiday. He needed a shower and a shave and about eighteen hours of sleep and he’d just spent two days talking to a man who was a whole hell of a lot scarier than your run-of-the-mill hobgoblin. “How fitting,” he said.

The housekeeper gave him a curious look, probably thinking that she’d signed on with a reprobate. “Are you all right, Mr. Prescott?”

He thought of Shay and how badly he needed her to hold him in her arms and remind him of all the things that made life good and wholesome and right. “No,” he answered, refilling his glass and starting toward the doorway. He paused. “The world can be a very ugly place, Mrs. Carraway. You see, for some people, every day is Halloween.” He lifted the glass and took a burning gulp of Scotch. “The trouble is, they’re bona fide ghouls and they don’t wear costumes so that you can recognize them.”

Mrs. Carraway looked really worried. “Won’t you have something to eat, Mr. Prescott? It’s almost suppertime.”

“I may never eat again,” Mitch answered, thinking of the things Alan Roget had confessed to him. He shook his head as he climbed the stairs, drink in hand. The tough journalist. He had walked out of that interview feeling as though he’d been exposed to some plague of the spirit and he’d been back in his hotel room all of five seconds before being violently ill.

Mitch entered his massive bedroom and it was empty, though specters of Shay were everywhere: lounging in the hot tub, kneeling on the bed, counting the extra toothbrushes he kept in the bathroom cabinet.

He drained the glass of Scotch and rubbed his eyes, tired to the very core of his being. “Shay,” he said. “Shay.”

Shay felt an intuitive pull toward Mitch’s house; the sensation was so strong that it distracted her from the food she’d prepared for the Reeses’ Halloween party. She hurried to finish packing the cheeseballs and puff pastries and then went into her office to dial the familiar number.

This is silly, she told herself as Mitch’s phone began to ring.

“Prescott residence,” Mrs. Carraway answered briskly.

Shay bit her lower lip. She should hang up. Calling Mitch was asking for rejection; he’d made his feelings perfectly clear that day when Shay had gone to him to apologize. “Th-this is Shay Kendall, Mrs. Carraway.”

“Thank heaven,” the housekeeper whispered, with a note of alarm in her voice that made Shay’s backbone go rigid. “Oh, Mrs. Kendall, I have no right interfering like this—I’ll probably be fired—but Mr. Prescott is in a terrible way.”

“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

“He’s been away on business for several days, and he just got home an hour or so ago. He said some very strange things, Mrs. Kendall, about every day being Halloween for some people.”

Shay closed her eyes, thinking of the monsters that had populated Mitch’s books. “Is he there now?”

Mrs. Carraway suddenly burst into tears. “Please come, Mrs. Kendall. Please. I don’t know what to do!”

Shay looked down at her watch and bit her lower lip. She had to deliver the food to Jeannie and Marvin’s town house, but after that the evening would be free. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she promised. “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”

Lofty words, Shay thought as she hung up the telephone in her office. Suppose everything wasn’t all right? Suppose Mitch wouldn’t even see her?

After loading the Reeses’ hors d’oeuvres into her new station wagon, Shay went back inside her building to find Alice just closing up her yarn shop. “Something is wrong with Mitch,” she told her grandmother bluntly. “I’ve got to go to him as soon as I deliver the Reeses’ order. Hank is going trick-or-treating with his friend Louie at six, but if I’m late…”

Alice looked concerned. “Of course I’ll look after him, my dear. You take all the time you need.”

Shay kissed her grandmother’s lovely crinkled cheek and hurried out to her car. She made the drive to Marvin and Jeannie’s house in record time, and virtually shoved the boxes of carefully prepared cheeseballs and crab puffs and paté-spread crackers into the hands of a maid hired to serve that evening.

Everything within Shay was geared toward reaching Mitch at the soonest possible moment, but some niggling little instinct within argued that she needed a way to get past whatever defenses he might have erected against her. She stopped at her house for a few minutes and then went on to Mitch’s.

Mrs. Carraway answered the doorbell almost before Shay had lowered her finger from the button. If Mitch’s housekeeper was surprised to find a velveteen bee standing on the doorstep, she didn’t show it.

“Upstairs,” she whispered. “In his room.”

Shay made her cumbersome way up the stairs. This was no time to try to hide the fact that she knew the way to Mitch Prescott’s bedroom.

She tapped at the closed door.

“Go away!” Mitch bellowed from within. His voice was thick. Was he drunk?

Shay drew a deep breath and knocked again, harder this time.

There was muffled swearing and then the door swung open. “Dammit, I said—” Mitch’s voice fell away and his haunted eyes took in Shay’s bee suit with disbelief.

“Trick or treat?” she chimed.

“Good God,” Mitch replied, but he stepped back so that Shay could enter the room.

She immediately pulled off the hood with its bobbing antennae and tossed it aside. After that, she struggled out of the rest of the suit, too. Mitch looked a little disappointed when he saw that she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt underneath, but then he turned away from her, his broad shoulders tensed.

“What’s wrong, Mitch?” she asked softly, afraid to touch him and yet drawn toward him at the same time. She stood close behind Mitch and wrapped her arms around his middle. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

He turned in her arms, and she saw hurt in his eyes, terrible, jarring hurt, and disillusionment, too. “You don’t want to know,” he said hoarsely.

“Yes, I do, so start talking.”

Remembering all the times when Mitch had been there for her, Shay took the glass from his hand—he’d clearly had too much to drink—and set it aside. She filled the empty hot tub with warm water and flicked the switch that activated the jets beneath the surface. She took Mitch’s T-shirt off over his head and then removed his shoes and his jeans, too. He was still gaping at her when she began maneuvering him toward the bubbling hot tub.

“Get in, Prescott,” she said in a tough, side-of-the-mouth voice, “or it won’t be pretty!”

A grin broke through the despair in Mitch’s face, though just briefly, and he slid into the tub. Shay kicked off her shoes, and then stripped completely, enjoying the amazement in his eyes.

She stepped into the tub, standing behind Mitch, working the awesome tension from his shoulders with her fingers. “Talk to me, Mitch.”

Haltingly, he began to tell her about his interviews with Alan Roget. Shay had read about Roget, knew that he was a vicious killer with a penchant for calling attention to himself. She listened staunchly as Mitch poured out the ugly, inhumane things he’d be expected to write about.

When Mitch turned to her, there were tears on his beard-stubbled cheeks. Shay held him, her hands moving gently up and down his heaving back, her tears flowing as freely as his.

“How can I write about this bastard?” he demanded once, in raspy horror. “It makes me sick just to think about him!”

Shay caught Mitch’s strong face in her hands and held it firmly. “You have to write about him, Mitch, because there are a lot of other psychos out there and if one woman recognizes the type and stays alive because of it—just
one woman,
Mitch—it will be worth all the pain!”

“I can’t do it!” Mitch roared, and then a grating sob tore itself from the depths of him. He shuddered in Shay’s arms. “Dammit, I can’t do it anymore!”

“Yes you can, Mitch. I’ll help you.”

He drew back from her, studying her face with those tormented, fatigue-shadowed eyes. “You’ll what?”

“I know you don’t want a relationship with me,” Shay said, wondering where she’d found the strength to admit to something that had been impossible to face only an hour before. “So there won’t be any strings attached.”

“Strings?”

“I love you, Mitch, regardless of how you feel about me. Tonight, I’m going to drag you back from everything that’s ugly and base if I have to drive you out of your mind to do it.”

She held her breath and plunged under the water to pull the plug, and the water began to drain away, but neither she nor Mitch made any move to climb out of the tub. “Your therapy begins right now,” Shay said.

Because of Shay, and only because of Shay, Mitch was able to fly back to Joliet for one final interview with Roget and then to return home and write about the man. It was hell, and he swore he’d never tackle a project like it again, but by Thanksgiving he’d roughed out the skeleton of a first draft.

Shay sat on her sofa with her feet tucked underneath her, reading the last chapter. The scent of the turkey Alice had cooked still hung in the air, mingling with the spicy aroma of the pumpkin pie that would be served later. Mitch tried not to watch Shay’s every expression as she read, but his eyes strayed in her direction at regular intervals.

Hank, worn out by a day of celebrating, was asleep on the couch, his head resting on Shay’s lap. Mitch grinned, remembering the game of Dungeons and Dragons he and the boy had played earlier.

To keep from looking at Shay again, he watched Alice, who was sitting in a rocking chair, knitting a bright red sweater. These two women and the boy made up a family Mitch wanted very much to be a part of, but he couldn’t risk proposing to Shay again; their relationship was too delicate for that.

Sitting on the floor, Mitch cupped his hands behind his head and leaned back against the chair he didn’t feel like sitting in, grinning when Alice caught him staring at her and winking mischievously in response.

Shay finally finished reading and set the manuscript aside. Her eyes were averted and there was a slight flush in her cheeks and Mitch sat bolt upright.

“You don’t like it,” he said, hating his own vulnerability to this woman’s opinion.

Shay met his gaze with a level stare of her own. “You detest this guy, Mitch. The other chapters were okay, but this one is a—a vendetta.”

“Of course I detest Roget! He’s a murderer!”