Linda Lael Miller Bundle (4 page)

“He did drop in for chicken last night,” Ivy reminded her friend.

Shay blushed to remember the way she had sobbed in Mitch’s arms like a shattered child. She’d probably scared him off for good. “That didn’t go too well. Don’t get your hopes up, Ivy.”

“Buy something fabulous,” insisted the irrepressible Ivy. And then she rang off.

By the time Hank had paraded through the kitchen in each of his new outfits—by some miracle, only one pair of jeans would have to be returned—the casserole was finished. Mother and son sat down to eat and then, after clearing the table and leaving the dishes to soak, they went off to the mall.

Exchanging the jeans took only minutes, but Shay spent a full hour in the fabric store, checking out patterns and material. Finally, after much deliberation, she selected floaty black crepe for a pair of dressy, full-legged pants. In a boutique across the way, she bought a daring top of silver, black and pale blue sequins, holding her breath the whole while. The blouse, while gorgeous, was heavy and impractical and far too expensive. Would she even have the nerve to wear it?

Twice, on the way back to her car, Shay stopped in her tracks. What was she doing, spending this kind of money for one party? She had to return the blouse.

It was Hank who stopped her from doing just that. “You’ll look real pretty in that shiny shirt, Mom,” he said.

Shay drew a deep breath and marched onward to the car. Every woman needed to wear something wickedly glamorous, at least once in her life. Rosamond had owned closetfuls of such things.

The telephone was ringing when Shay entered the house, and Hank leaped for the living room extension. He was a born positive-thinker, expecting every call to bring momentous news.

“Yeah, she’s here. Mom!”

Shay dropped her purchases on the couch and crossed the room to take the call. She was completely unprepared for the voice on the other end of the line, much as she’d hoped and dreaded to hear it earlier.

“You’ve heard about the party, I presume?” Mitch Prescott asked with that quiet gruffness that put everything feminine within Shay on instant red alert.

“Yes,” she managed to answer.

“I don’t think I can face it alone. How about lending me moral support?”

Shay couldn’t imagine Mitch shrinking from anything, or needing moral support, but she felt a certain terrified gladness at the prospect of being asked to go to the party with him. “Being a sworn humanitarian,” she teased, “I couldn’t possibly refuse such a request.”

His sigh of relief was an exaggerated one. “Thank you.”

Shay laughed. “Were you really that afraid of a simple party?”

“No. I was afraid you’d say no. That, of course, would have been devastating to my masculine ego.”

“We can’t have that,” Shay responded airily, glad that he couldn’t see her and know that she was blushing like a high-schooler looking forward to her first prom. “The Reeses’ beach house is quite a distance from town. We’d better leave at least a half an hour early.”

“Seven?”

“Seven,” Shay confirmed. The party, something of an obligation before, was suddenly the focal point of her existence; she was dizzy with excitement and a certain amount of chagrin that such an event could be so important to her. Shouldn’t she be dreading her son’s imminent departure instead of looking past it to a drive along miles and miles of moon-washed shore?

While Hank was taking his bath, under protest, Shay washed the dishes she’d left to soak and then got out her sewing machine. She was up long after midnight, adjusting the pattern and cutting out her silky, skirtlike slacks and basting them together. Finally she stumbled off to bed.

The next day was what Hank would have called “hairy.” Three salesmen quit, Ivy went home sick and the people at Seaview called to say that Rosamond seemed to be in some kind of state.

“What kind of ‘state’?” a harried Shay barked into the receiver of the telephone in her office.

“She’s curled up in her bed,” answered the young and obviously inexperienced nurse. “She’s crying and calling for the baby.”

“Have you called her doctor?”

“He’s playing golf today.”

“Oh, at his rates, that’s just terrific!” Shay snapped. “You get him over there, my dear, if you have to drag him off the course. Does Mother have her doll?”

“What doll?”

“The rag doll. The one she won’t be without.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Find it!”

“I’ll call you back in a few minutes, Mrs. Kendall.”

“See that you do,” Shay replied in clipped tones just as Richard Barrett waltzed, unannounced, into her office.

“Bad day?”

Shay ran one hand through her already tousled hair and sank into the chair behind her desk. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

Richard held up both hands in a concessionary gesture. “I’m sorry.”

Shay sighed. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you that way. How can I help you?”

“I just wanted to remind you that we’re going to shoot the first commercial Monday morning. You’ve memorized the script, I assume?”

The script. If Shay hadn’t had a pounding headache, she would have laughed. “I say my line and then read off this week’s special used-car deals. That isn’t too tough, Richard.”

“I thought we might have a rehearsal tonight.”

Shay shook her head. “No chance. My mother is in bad shape and I have to go straight to the convalescent home as soon as I leave here.”

“After that—”

“My son is leaving on a camping trip with his uncle, Richard, and he’ll be gone a month. I want to spend the evening with him.”

“Shay—”

Now Shay held up her hands. “No more, Richard. You and Marvin insisted that I take this assignment and I agreed. But it will be done on my terms or not at all.”

A look of annoyance flickered behind Richard’s glasses. “Temperament rears its ugly head. I was mistaken about you, Shay. You’re more like your mother than I thought.”

The telephone began to jangle, and Ivy wasn’t out front to screen the calls. Shay dismissed Richard with a hurried wave of one hand and snapped “Hello?”

A customer began listing, in irate and very voluble terms, all the things that were wrong with the used car he’d bought the week before. While Shay tried to address the complaint, the other lines on her telephone lit up, all blinking at once.

It was nearly seven o’clock when Shay finally got home, and she had such a headache that she gave Hank an emergency TV dinner for supper, swallowed two aspirin and collapsed into bed.

Bright and early on Saturday morning, Garrett and his family arrived in a motor home more luxuriously appointed than many houses. While Maggie stayed behind with her own children and Hank, Shay and Garrett drove to Seaview to visit Rosamond.

Because the doll had been recovered, Rosamond was no longer curled up in her bed weeping piteously for her “baby.” Still, Garrett’s shock at seeing a woman he undoubtedly remembered as glamorous and flippant staring vacantly off into space showed in his darkly handsome face and the widening of his steel-gray eyes.

“My God,” he whispered.

Rosamond lifted her chin—she was sitting, as always, in the chair beside the window, the rag doll in her lap—at the sound of his voice. Her once-magical violet eyes widened and she surprised both her visitors by muttering, “Riley?”

Shay sank back against the wall beside the door. “No, Mother. This is—”

Garrett silenced her with a gesture of one hand, approached Rosamond and crouched before her chair. Shay realized then how much he actually resembled his father, the Riley Thompson Rosamond would remember and recognize. He stretched to kiss a faded alabaster forehead and smiled. “Hello, Roz,” he said.

The bewildered joy in Rosamond’s face made Shay ache inside. “Riley,” she said again.

Garrett nodded and caught both his former stepmother’s hands in his own strong, sun-browned ones. “How are you?” he asked softly.

Tears were stinging Shay’s eyes, half blinding her. Through them, she saw Rosamond hold out the doll for Garrett to see and touch. “Baby,” she said proudly.

As Garrett acknowledged the doll with a nod and a smile, Shay whirled away, unable to bear the scene any longer. She fled the room for the small bathroom adjoining it and stood there, trembling and pale, battling the false hopes that Rosamond’s rare moments of lucidity always stirred in her.

When she was composed enough to come out, Rosamond had retreated back into herself; she was rocking in her chair, her lips curved into a secretive smile, the doll in her arms. Garrett wrapped a supportive arm around Shay’s waist and led her out of the room into the hallway, where he gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead.

“Poor baby,” he said, and then he held Shay close and rocked her back and forth in his arms. She didn’t notice the man standing at the reception desk, watching with a frown on his face.

W
hen Hank disappeared into Garrett and Maggie’s sleek motor home, a lump the size of a walnut took shape in Shay’s throat. He was only six; too young to be away from home for a whole month!

Garrett grinned and kissed Shay’s forehead. “Relax,” he urged. “Maggie and I will take good care of the boy. I promise.”

Shay nodded, determined not to be a clinging, neurotic mother. Six or sixty, she reminded herself, Hank was a person in his own right and he needed experiences like this one to grow.

Briefly, Garrett caressed Shay’s cheek. “Go in there and get yourself ready for that party, Amazon,” he said. “Paint your toenails and slather your face with gunk. Soak in a bubble bath.”

Shay couldn’t help grinning. “You’re just full of suggestions, aren’t you?”

Garrett was serious. “Devote some time to yourself, Shay. Forget about Roz for a while and let Maggie and me worry about Hank.”

It was good advice and Shay meant to heed it. After the motor home had pulled away, a happy chorus of farewell echoing behind, she went back into the house, turned on the stereo, pinned up her hair and got out the crepe trousers she’d made for the party. After hemming them, she hurried through the routine housework and then spent the rest of the morning pampering herself.

She showered and shampooed, she pedicured and manicured, she gave herself a facial. After a light luncheon consumed in blissful silence, she crawled into bed and took a long nap.

Upon rising, Shay made a chicken salad sandwich and took her time eating it. Following that, she put on her makeup, her new crepe slacks and the lovely, shimmering sequined top. She brushed her hair and worked it into a loose Gibson-girl style and put on chunky silver earrings. Looking into her bedroom mirror, she was stunned. Was this lush and glittering creature really Shay Kendall, mother of Hank, purveyor of “previously owned” autos, wearer of jeans and clear fingernail polish?

It was. Shay whirled once, delighted. It was!

Promptly at seven, Mitch arrived. He wore a pearl-gray, three-piece suit, expertly fitted, and the effect was at once rugged and Madison Avenue elegant. He was clean shaven and the scent of his cologne was crisply masculine. His brown eyes warmed as they swept over Shay, and the familiar grooves dented his cheeks when he smiled.

“Wow,” he said.

Shay was glad that it was time to leave for the Reeses’ beach house; she had rarely dated in the six years since her divorce and she was out of practice when it came to amenities like playing soft music and serving chilled wine and making small talk. “Wow, yourself,” she said, because that was what she would have said to Hank and it came out automatically. She could have bitten her tongue.

Mitch laughed and handed her a small florist’s box. There was a pink orchid inside, delicate and fragile and so exotically beautiful that Shay’s eyes widened at the sight of it. It was attached to a slender band of silver elastic and she slid it onto her wrist.

“Thank you,” she said.

Mitch put a gentlemanly hand to the small of her back and steered her toward the door. “Thank you,” he countered huskily, and though Shay wondered what he was thanking her for, she didn’t dare ask.

As his fancy car slipped away from the curb, Mitch pressed a button to expel the tape that had been blaring a Linda Ronstadt torch song.

The drive south along the coastal highway was a pleasant one. The sunset played gloriously over the rippling curl of the evening tide and the conversation was comfortable. Mitch talked about his seven-year-old daughter, Kelly, who was into Cabbage Patch Kids and ballet lessons, and Shay talked about Hank.

She wanted to ask about Mitch’s ex-wife, but then he might ask about Eliott and she wasn’t prepared to discuss that part of her life. It was possible, of course, Shay knew, that Ivy had told him already.

“Have you started furnishing the house yet?” Shay asked when they’d exhausted the subject of children.

Mitch shook his head and the warm humor in his eyes cooled a little, it seemed to Shay, as he glanced at her and then turned his attention back to the highway. “Not yet.”

Shay was stung by his sudden reticence, and she was confused, too. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” came the immediate response, and Mitch flung one sheepish grin in Shay’s direction. “I was just having an attack of male ego, I guess.”

Intrigued, Shay turned in her seat and asked, “What?”

“It isn’t important.”

“I think maybe it is,” Shay persisted.

“I don’t have the right to wonder, let alone ask.”

“Ask anyway.” Suddenly, Shay was nervous.

“Who is that guy who was holding you in the hallway at Seaview this morning?” The question was blurted, however reluctantly, and Shay’s anxieties fled—except for one.

“That was Garrett Thompson. His father was married to my mother at one time.” Shay folded her hands in her lap and drew a deep breath. “What were you doing at Seaview?”

The Reeses’ beach house was in sight and Mitch looked longingly toward it, but he pulled off the highway and turned to face Shay directly. “I was asking about your mother,” he said.

Shay had been braced for a lie and now, in the face of a blunt truth, she didn’t know how to react. “Why?” she asked after several moments of silence.

“I don’t think this is a good time to talk, Shay,” Mitch replied. “Anyway, it isn’t anything you need to worry about.”

“But—”

His hand closed, warm and reassuring, over hers. “Trust me, okay? I promise that we’ll talk after the party.”

Mitch had been forthright; he could have lied about his reason for visiting Seaview, but he hadn’t. Shay had no cause to distrust him. And yet the words “trust me” troubled her; it didn’t matter that Mitch had spoken them: she heard them in Eliott’s voice. “After the party,” she said tightly.

Moments later she and Mitch entered the Reeses’ spacious two-story beach house. It was a beautiful place with polished oak floors and beamed ceilings and a massive stone fireplace, and it was crowded with people.

Marvin took one look at Shay’s sequined blouse and bounded away, only to return moments later wearing a pair of grossly oversized sunglasses that he’d used in a past commercial. Shay laughed and shook her head.

“I hope his tie doesn’t squirt grape juice,” Mitch commented in a discreet whisper.

Shay watched fondly as Marvin turned away to rejoin the party. “Don’t let him fool you,” she replied. “He reads Proust and Milton and speaks two languages other than English.”

Mitch was still pondering this enlightening information—Marvin’s commercials and loud sports jackets were indeed deceptive—when Ivy wended her way through the crowd, looking smart in a jump suit of pale blue silk belted with a slender band of rhinestones. Her aquamarine eyes took in Shay’s outfit with approval. “Jeannie sent me to bid you welcome. She’s in the kitchen, trying to pry an ice sculpture out of the freezer. Would you believe it’s a perfect replica of
Venus de Milo?
”

“Now we know why the poor girl has no arms,” Todd quipped, standing just behind Ivy.

Both Ivy and Shay groaned at the joke, and Ivy added a well-aimed elbow that splashed a few drops of champagne out of Todd’s glass and onto his impeccable black jacket.

“Six months till the wedding and I’m already henpecked,” he complained.

“I’ve been thinking about those condos,” Mitch reflected distractedly. “From an ecological standpoint…”

“Business!” Ivy hissed, dragging Shay away by one arm. They came to a stop in front of a table spread with plates of wilted crab puffs, smoked oysters, crackers and cheeses.

Shay cast one look in Mitch’s direction and saw that he was engrossed in his conversation with Todd. It hurt a little that he apparently hadn’t even noticed that she was gone. She took a crab puff to console herself.

Ivy frowned pensively at the morsel. “Isn’t that pathetic? You’d think a place as big as Skyler Beach would have one decent caterer, wouldn’t you? Mrs. Reese had to have everything brought in from Seattle.”

The crab puffs definitely showed the rigors of the journey, and it was a miracle that
Venus de Milo
had made it so far without melting into a puddle. Shay’s dream of starting her own catering business surfaced and she pushed it resolutely back onto a mental shelf. She had a child to support and there was no way she could afford to take the financial risks such a venture would involve.

“You look fantastic!” Ivy whispered. “Is that blouse heavy?”

“It weighs a ton,” Shay confided. Her eyes were following Mitch; she was memorizing every expression that crossed his face.

“Let’s separate those two before they start drawing up plans or something,” Ivy said lightly.

Shay wondered how long it would be before Todd balked at Ivy’s gentle commandeering but made no comment. A buffet supper was served soon afterward, and she and Mitch sat alone in a corner of the beach house’s enormous deck, listening to the chatter of the tide as they ate. Stars as bright as the sequins on Shay’s blouse were popping out all over a black velvet sky and the summer breeze was warm.

When silences had fallen between herself and Eliott, Shay had always been uncomfortable, needing to riddle the space with words. With Mitch, there were no gaps to fill. It was all right to be quiet, to reflect and to dream.

Presently, a caterer’s assistant came and collected their empty plates and glasses, but Mitch and Shay remained in that shadowy corner of the deck. When the Reeses’ stereo system began to pipe soft music into the night, they moved together without speaking. They danced, and the proximity of Mitch’s blatantly masculine body to Shay’s softer one was an exquisite misery.

Shay saw his mouth descending to claim her own and instead of turning to avoid his kiss, she welcomed it. Unconsciously she braced herself for the crushing ardor Eliott had taught her to expect, but Mitch’s kiss was gentle, tentative, almost questioning. She felt the tip of his tongue encircle her lips and a delicious tingling sensation spread into every part of her. His nearly inaudible groan rippled over her tongue and tickled the inner walls of her cheeks as she opened her mouth to him.

Gently, ever so gently, he explored her, his body pinning hers to the deck railing in a tender dominance that she welcomed, for rather than demanding submission, the gesture incited a passion so intense that Shay was terrified by it. Had it been feelings like these that had caused Rosamond to flit from one husband to another, dragging one very small and frightened daughter after her?

Shay turned her head, remembering the bewilderment and the despair. No one knew better than she did that the price of a grand passion could be a child’s sense of security, and she wasn’t going to let that happen to Hank.

“I’d like to go home,” she managed to say.

Mitch only nodded, and when Shay dared risk a glance at his profile, turned now toward the dark sea, she saw no anger in the line of his jaw or the muscles in his neck.

They left minutes later, pausing only to make plausible excuses to Marvin and Jeannie Reese, and they had traveled nearly half an hour before Mitch broke the silence with a quiet, “I’m sorry, Shay.”

Shay was miserable; she was still pulsing with the raw desire Mitch had aroused in her. Her breasts were weighted, as though bursting with some nectar only he could relieve them of, the nipples pulled into aching little buds, and a heavy throbbing in her abdomen signaled her body’s preparation for a gratification that would be denied it. “I just—I guess I’m just not ready.” Like hell you’re not ready, she taunted herself.

“I wasn’t going to make love to you with half of Skyler Beach just a wall away,” Mitch pointed out reasonably. “Nor did I intend to fling you down in the sand, though now that I think about it, it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”

Shay had forgotten all about the party while Mitch was kissing her anyway and the reminder of that stung her to fury. “What exactly was your plan?” she snapped.

“I was in no condition to plan anything, lady. We’re talking primitive responses here.”

Shay lowered her head. She’d been trying to lay all the blame for what had nearly happened on Mitch and that was neither fair nor realistic. The only sensible thing to do now was change the subject. “You said we would talk after the party. About why you were at Seaview this morning.”

“And we will. My place or yours?”

Did he think she was insane? Either place would be too private and yet a restaurant might be too public. “Mitch, I want to know why you’re interested in my mother’s illness, and I want to know right now.”

“I never explore potentially emotional subjects in a moving vehicle.”

“Then stop this car!”

“Along a moonlit beach? Come on, Shay. Surely you know what’s going to happen if I do that.”

Shay did know and she still wanted him to stop, which made her so mad that she turned in her seat and ignored him until they reached Skyler Beach. He drove toward her house, chivalrously giving her a choice between asking him in or spending a whole night in an agony of curiosity about his visit to Seaview. There would be agony aplenty without that.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Shay said stiffly.

He simply inclined his head, that brazen tenderness dancing in his eyes. Moments later he was seated at the table in Shay’s small spotless kitchen, his gray jacket draped over the chair back. “What did Ivy tell you about me?”

Shay, filling the coffeepot with cold water, stiffened. “Not much. Come to think of it, I don’t even know what you do for a living.” It was humiliating, not knowing even that much about a man who had nearly made love to her on a sundeck.

“I’m a journalist.”

Shay set the coffeepot aside, water and all, not even bothering to fill the basket with grounds. She fell into a chair of her own. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do understand, Shay,” he countered gently.

Shay felt tears gather in her eyes, stinging and hot. To hide them, she averted her face. “You plan to write about my mother, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

Swift, simmering anger made Shay meet his gaze. Damn, but it hurt to know that he hadn’t taken her to the party just because he found her attractive and wanted her company! “I think you’d better leave.”