Linda Lael Miller Bundle (7 page)

“Everybody has hang-ups about their mother,” she sputtered when the silence grew too long and too damning. She glared at Mitch, remembering all that Ivy had told her over the past few years. “Or their stepmother.”

Mitch sighed and stared up at the ceiling, still maintaining his attitude of relaxed certainty. “The difference is, my dear, that I can talk about my stepmother. She and I don’t get along because she was my father’s mistress before he and my mother were divorced. In effect, you could say that she took him away from us.”

“My God,” Shay whispered, feeling sympathy even though there was nothing in Mitch’s voice or manner that asked for it.

“It was traumatic at the time,” Mitch said evenly. “But Dad was a good father to me and, eventually, my mother remarried. She’s disgustingly happy.”

“But Ivy’s mother—”

“Elizabeth does the best she can. She loved my father.”

Shay was silent.

“Your turn,” Mitch prompted.

She stared into the snapping fire for a while, drifting back to another night. “Rosamond was her own greatest fan,” she said. “And yet she could humiliate herself so easily. I remember one of her lovers—a tennis bum—he was good-looking but if you tapped on his forehead, nobody would answer the door.”

Mitch chuckled. “Go on.”

“He was part of the reason that Mother got bored with Riley, I guess. After Riley and Garrett were gone, he decided that it was time to get back on the old circuit. He was going to walk out and I’ll never forget—I’ll never forget the way Mother acted. He was trying to get into his car and she was on her knees in the driveway, with her arms wrapped around his legs, begging him to stay.” Shay turned shadowed, hurting eyes to Mitch’s face. “It was awful.”

“You saw that?” Mitch must have tried, but he failed to keep the annoyance out of his voice.

“I’ve seen a lot worse,” she answered.

“Stay with me,” he said, clearing away aging memorabilia to make a space beside him on the sofa.

Shay couldn’t leave, but she suddenly felt too broken and vulnerable to stay. “I don’t want—”

“I know,” he said, standing up and extending one hand to her. After a moment or so, she rose and took the offered hand and Mitch led her gently up the stairs and into his bedroom.

Furnished now with a massive waterbed, chairs and bureaus and a freestanding chess table set up for play, the room didn’t seem so vast.

Deftly, as though he did such things as a part of his daily routine, Mitch undressed Shay and then buttoned her into one of his pajama tops, a royal blue silk affair with piping and a monogram on the pocket.

“You do not strike me as a man who wears pajamas,” she said, aware of the inanity of her remark but too shaky to say anything heavier.

“A Christmas present from Ivy,” he explained, disappearing into the adjoining bathroom. A moment later Shay heard the shower running.

“Why am I staying here?” she asked the cosmos, holding her arms out from her sides.

When the cosmos didn’t answer, she followed Mitch into the steamy chamber and helped herself to one of the new toothbrushes she found in the cabinet drawer. As she brushed, she fumed. Six toothbrushes, still in their boxes. The man expected to entertain a harem!

Behind the beautifully etched door of the double shower, Mitch sang at the top of his lungs. Shay glared at her reflection in the steamy mirror. “If you had any sense at all,” she muttered, “you’d go home! This is a man who keeps extra toothbrushes, for God’s sake!”

Having said all this, Shay went back to the bedroom and crawled into bed. The sheets were as smooth as satin and the lulling motion of the water-filled mattress, coupled with the song of the tide coming in through the terrace doors, reduced her to a sleepy, languid state.

She felt the bed sway as Mitch got into it, heard the click of the lamp switch, stirred under the sweet weight of the darkness. “Are you going to make love to me?” she asked.

He chuckled and drew her close, holding her. “No,” he said.

Shay yawned. “Don’t let go, okay?”

“Okay,” came the hoarse reply.

They both slept soundly, huddled close in that gigantic bed, neither asking anything of the other except their nearness.

Mitch awakened to an exquisite caress and opened his eyes to see a tumble-haired vamp kneeling on the bed beside him, her whole face lit by a wicked grin. “Ummm,” he said, stretching, luxuriating in the pleasure she was creating. “The truce is over, I take it?”

“Every man for himself,” she agreed.

“In that case…” He stretched again, with deceptive leisure, and then flipped over suddenly, carrying Shay with him, imprisoning her soft body beneath his own.

Her eyes widened in mock surprise and he laughed, using his nose to spar with hers.

She caught her hands together at the back of his neck and drew him into her kiss; it was a soft, nurturing thing, and yet it sent aching waves of desperate need crashing through him. He sensed that she was exerting some tender vengeance for the way he’d pleasured her in the RV the day before and he was all for it.

When the opportunity afforded itself some moments later, Mitch pulled back far enough to rid Shay of the pajama top and then fell to her again, settling against her but reluctant to take her.

Suddenly she parted her legs and the warmth of her was too compelling to be resisted. He entered her almost involuntarily, thrust into the agonizing comfort she offered by the strength of her hands and the upward thrust of her hips.

She guided him, she taunted him, she rendered him mindless with need. For all Shay’s beautiful treachery, however, her moment came first and Mitch marveled at the splendor in her face as she cried out, tossing her head back and forth on the pillow and grasping at his shoulders with her hands.

“I love you,” he said.

It was clear enough that Ivy’s feelings were hurt. Entering the office, after a hasty shower and change of clothes at home, Shay remembered her promise to have lunch with her friend the day before and was chagrined, even though there had been no time to go out to eat.

“Hi,” she said, standing before Ivy’s desk.

Ivy kept her eyes on her computer screen. “Hi,” she said remotely.

“Free for lunch?”

Ivy looked up quickly, and the clouds separated, revealing the sunlight that was integral to her nature. “We might have to stay in. I got kind of behind yesterday.”

Shay was relieved that no permanent damage had been done to this most cherished friendship. Ivy might be nosy, but it was only because she cared so much. “We could always call Screaming Hernando’s and have them send over a guacamole pizza.”

Ivy made a face and then giggled.

The morning went smoothly, and when noon came, Ivy and Shay were able to slip away, Ivy having set the office answering machine to pick up any incoming calls. They had chicken sandwiches at the coffee shop across the street.

“I thought you were mad at me,” Ivy confided between delicate bites from her sandwich. “I guess I shouldn’t have called Mitch and told him you were filming another commercial.”

Shay leaned forward, forgetting her sandwich. “So that was how he knew. I should have guessed. Ivy Prescott, what possessed you?”

“Actually,” Ivy replied, “it wasn’t anything quite as dramatic as possession. It was plain old bribery. Mitch promised to try to get along with my mother if I would call him whenever you were doing a spot.”

“Traitor!”

“What can I tell you? I love my mother and I love Mitch and I want to see them bury the hatchet, especially with the wedding coming up.”

Shay remembered what Mitch had told her the night before, when they were talking about hang-ups. “Is it working?”

“They’ve been civil to each other,” Ivy said, shrugging. “I guess that’s a start. So, are you and Mitch an item, or what?”

“An ‘item’? Have you been reading old movie magazines or something?”

Ivy executed a mock glare. “Stop hedging, Shay. You don’t need to tell me, you know. You can just sit by and see me consumed by my own curiosity.”

Shay sighed. “If you’re talking about the love-and-marriage kind of item, we’re not.”

Ivy’s eyes were wide with delight. “That’s what they all say,” she replied. “So the gossip is true! You and Mitch are doing more than working together!”

“Now that is definitely none of your business, Ivy Prescott,” Shay said firmly. “And exactly what gossip is this?”

“Well, you two were inside the RV together for quite a while yesterday….”

Shay willed herself not to blush at the memory and failed. She hoped Ivy would ascribe the high color in her face to righteous indignation. “What were you doing, standing out there with a stopwatch?”

“Of course not!” Ivy’s feathers were ruffled. She squirmed in her chair and looked incensed and then said defensively, “I don’t even own a stopwatch!”

T
his is some pile of bricks,” Ivan announced, gazing appreciatively up at the walls of the house while Mitch was still recovering from the surprise of finding his agent standing on his doorstep. “Pretty big for one person, isn’t it?”

Mitch stepped back to admit the small, well-dressed man with the balding pate. Ignoring Ivan’s question, he offered one of his own. “What’s so important that it couldn’t have been handled by telephone, Ivan?”

Ivan patted his breast pocket and grinned. “An advance check of this size warrants personal delivery,” he answered.

Mitch turned and walked back toward the library where he’d been working over his notes for the Rosamond Dallas book, leaving Ivan to follow. Mrs. Carraway, who had been upstairs cleaning most of the morning, magically appeared with coffee and warm croissants.

Once the pleasant-faced woman had gone, Ivan helped himself to a cup of coffee and a croissant. “Nice to see you living the good life at last, Prescott. I was beginning to think you were going to spend the rest of your days crawling through jungles on your belly and hobnobbing with the Klan.”

Despite his sometimes abrasive manner, Mitch liked and respected Ivan Wright. The man was always direct, and he played hardball in all his dealings. “I guess I’m ready to settle down,” he said, and his mind immediately touched on Shay.

“That could be good, and it could be bad,” Ivan replied. “What are your plans for after?”

“After what?”

“After you finish the Rosamond Dallas book.” Ivan added jam and cream to his croissant.

“I haven’t made any plans for another project, if that’s what you’re getting at. I may retire. After all, I’m a rich man.”

“You’re also a young man,” Ivan pointed out. “What are you, thirty-seven, thirty-eight?” Without waiting for an answer, the agent went on. “Your publishers want another book, Mitch, and they’re willing to pay top dollar to get your name on the dotted line.”

The thought made Mitch feel weary. He was having a hard enough time working up enough enthusiasm to write about Rosamond, but he supposed that was because of Shay. No matter how delicately the project was handled, she would, to some degree, be hurt by it. “We’re talking about a specific subject here, I assume.”

Ivan nodded, licking a dab of cream from one pudgy finger. “You’ve heard of Alan Roget, haven’t you? That serial murderer the FBI picked up in Oklahoma a few months back?”

Mitch remembered. The man had been arraigned on some thirty-two counts of homicide. “Sweet guy,” he reflected.

“Roget may be a pyscho, but he’s a fan of yours. If anybody writes his story, he wants it to be you.”

“They don’t need his permission to do a book,” Mitch pointed out, and he remembered saying a similar thing to Shay.

“No,” Ivan agreed readily, calmly. “The difference is that he’s willing to talk to you, tell you the whole disgusting saga from his point of view. Another writer could do the job, of course, but they’d be operating on guesswork.”

“What about my anonymity? How could we trust this maniac to respect that?”

“He wouldn’t have to know your real name. That can be handled, Mitch, in the same way we’ve handled it in the past. What do you say?” A master of timing, Ivan waited a moment and then laid the sizable check Mitch and Shay would share on the coffee table between them.

“I need time to think, Ivan. For one thing, I’m not sure I even want to hear all the rot this space-case probably plans to spill.”

“Going soft, Prescott?”

“Maybe.”

Ivan gave a delicate sigh and stood up. “Well, I’ve got a cab waiting. Got to get back to the airport, you know.”

Mitch only shook his head. He was half Ivan’s age, but even in his jungle-crawling, Klan-breaking days, he hadn’t lived at the pace that Ivan did.

“You’ll call?” Ivan asked, tugging at the jacket of his Brooks Brothers’ suit to straighten it.

“I’ll call.” Mitch sighed the words.

Shay raised one eyebrow when Ivy informed her that the bank was calling. She couldn’t be overdrawn, could she? She’d just deposited the bonus check Marvin had signed before he left, making payment for the four commercials.

“Ms. Kendall?”

Shay drew a deep breath and set aside the stack of paperwork, also left behind by Marvin, that she’d been wading through. “Yes?”

“My name is Robert Parker and I’m calling in reference to your account.”

Shay tensed and then willed herself to relax. She had balanced her checkbook only a few days before, and her figures had tallied with the bank’s. “Yes?”

“It seems that a sizable amount of money has been deposited and, well, we were just wondering if a mistake had been made. This sum is well beyond what the Federal Reserve will insure in any single account, you know.”

“I don’t understand,” Shay said, resting her forehead in the palm of one hand. “Surely a four thousand dollar bonus check—”

“Four thousand dollars?” The bank officer laughed nervously. “My, my, this deposit is many times that amount. I was certain that there had to be some error.”

Shay was a little stung that the banker could be so incredulous, even though she was incredulous herself. Maybe she’d never had more than eight hundred dollars in her account at any one time, but she wasn’t a deadbeat and if she’d been overdrawn a time or two, why, that had been accidental. “Wait just a moment, Mr. Parker, wasn’t it? Where did this deposit come from?”

“The check itself was drawn on the account of a Mr. Mitch Prescott.”

It was a moment before Shay remembered the book she and Mitch were supposed to be writing together; her mind hadn’t exactly been on the professional aspects of their relationship. “Then the money is mine,” she said, as much to herself as to Mr. Parker. “Would you mind telling me the exact amount?”

The sum Mr. Parker replied with made the pit of Shay’s stomach leap and sent her head into a dizzying spin. Mitch had told her that her share would be a “lot” of money, but never in Shay’s wildest dreams had she expected so much.

“We’ll have to verify this, of course,” Parker said stiffly, seeming to find Shay’s good fortune suspect in some way.

“Of course,” Shay answered. And then she hung up the receiver, folded her arms on the desktop and lowered her head to them.

She was rich.

The more Mitch thought about the Alan Roget project, the more it appealed to him. It would be a study in human ugliness, that book, but for once in his life he had something to counterbalance that. He had Shay.

Eager now to get the Rosamond Dallas book behind him, he unpacked his computer equipment and the attending paraphernalia and brought the machine on-line. Working from his notes and the tapes containing Shay’s observations about her mother, he began composing a comprehensive outline of the material he had on hand.

He was interrupted, at intervals, by the telephone. Mrs. Carraway tried to field his calls, but there were several that could not be avoided, one from a pedantic bank clerk questioning the deposit he’d made to Shay’s account after Ivan had left, one from his daughter, Kelly, who wanted to tell him that she could visit over Christmas vacation, and one from Lucetta White. Lucetta had heard, through the grapevine, that he’d landed a “plum” of an assignment and asked for details. Mitch had talked for fifteen minutes and told Ms. White exactly nothing.

He was sitting back in his desk chair, his hands cupped behind his head, when the telephone rang again. To spare Mrs. Carraway the problem, he answered it himself with a crisp “Hello?”

“Hello,” Shay replied, and the single word resounded with bewilderment. “About that money…”

Mitch waited for her to go on, but she didn’t, so he replied, “Your share, as agreed. Is anything wrong?”

“Wrong? Well, no, of course not. A-are we working tonight?”

“I’m working. From now on, your part will be an occasional consultation. Of course, I’ll need you to read over the material, too, as I write it.”

“Oh,” she said, and she sounded disappointed. Perhaps even a little hurt.

“Shay, what’s the matter?”

She sighed. “I feel a little—a little superfluous, I guess. And overpaid for it in the bargain.”

Mitch laughed. “You could never be superfluous, my love. Listen, if you want a more active part in writing the book, you can have it.”

He could almost see her shaking her beautiful, leonine head. “No, no. I have things of my own to do, now that I’m a woman of means.”

Mitch arched an eyebrow, not sure he liked the sound of that. “Like what?”

“Oh, getting solid financial advice, talking to the tax people, starting my catering service. Things of that nature.”

Mitch hadn’t known that Shay had aspirations to go into business for herself and he was a little peeved that she’d failed to confide something so important. He scowled down at his watch and saw that it was nearly five o’clock. “I won’t keep you, then,” he said stiffly, and even as he spoke the words he wondered what it was that made him want to put space between himself and this woman when he needed her so much.

There was a brief silence, and then Shay answered, “No. Well, thank you.” She hung up and Mitch sat glaring at the receiver in his hand.

No. Well, thank you, he mimicked in his mind. She had what she wanted now, the money; apparently their lovemaking and the special rapport they’d formed weren’t important anymore. Mitch hung up with a bang that was no less satisfying for Shay’s not hearing it.

As Shay wandered up and down the aisles of the public library that evening, choosing books on the operation of small businesses, she was awash in a numbing sort of despair. All of her dreams were suddenly coming true, or, at least, most of them, and she should have been happy. She hugged the stack of self-help books close to her chest. Why wasn’t she happy?

She knew the answer, of course and was only torturing herself with the question. She had thought she meant something to Mitch Prescott and found out differently. She had provided the research material he needed for his book and he’d paid her and, as far as he was concerned, the transaction was complete. There would be a few “consultations,” and he wanted her input as the book progressed, but he’d made it clear enough that she wasn’t to expect anything more.

Shay drove home slowly, heated a can of soup for her supper and immersed herself in the books she had checked out at the library, making notes in a spiral notebook as she read. It wasn’t as though she needed Mitch Prescott to be happy, she told herself during frequent breaks in her concentration. She had Hank, she had her job, and she had the money and the determination to make her life what she’d always dreamed it could be.

Well, almost what she’d dreamed it could be.

For the rest of that week, Shay concentrated on her job at Reese Motors, grateful that she would have a little time before she had to do another commercial. She talked to Hank frequently by telephone and visited Rosamond every afternoon. From the convalescent home she invariably went to the public library, exchanging the books she’d scanned the night before for new ones. She told herself that she was preparing for her own entry into the world of private enterprise and she was learning a great deal, but the main reason for her marathon study fests was Mitch Prescott. Being absorbed in business theories kept her from thinking about him.

By Saturday morning, she was haggard. Ivy, showing up on her doorstep bright and early, was quick to point that out.

Shay yawned, feeling rumpled and dissolute in her old chenille bathrobe. “How do you expect me to look at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning? Don’t you ever sleep in?”

The weather was nice and Ivy looked disgustingly vibrant in her old blue jeans and summery cotton blouse. “Sleep in?” she chimed. “And let the world pass me by?”

“The world wouldn’t dare pass you by,” Shay responded dryly, staggering toward the kitchen, homing in on the coffeepot which, blessedly, operated on a small timer set the night before. “Where’s Todd?”

Ivy settled herself in a chair at Shay’s table, shoving aside the current stack of business books with a slight frown. “He’s working. Ambition is his curse, you know.” She stopped for a breath. “I’m going to this great auction today. Want to come along?”

Shay poured coffee for herself and Ivy and stumbled over to the table to collapse into a chair. “Why would I want to go to an auction?”

“To buy something, silly. This is an estate sale, and they’re holding it in a barn.”

“I’m not in the market for harnesses and milk stools,” Shay muttered, beginning to come alive as caffeine surged through her veins.

“The newspaper ad says they have a lot of great stuff, Shay. Antiques.”

“Milk stools.”

“You’re impossible. I bought my brass bed at a sale like this, and for a song, too.”

“They probably just wanted you to stop singing.”

“Very funny. Come on, Shay, come with me. For the drive. For the fresh air. Good Lord, you look terrible.”

Shay knew she couldn’t face another day of studying. Maybe it would be fun to poke through a lot of junk in some old barn and then treat Ivy to lunch. “You haven’t asked me why I look terrible, Ivy. For you, that’s a drastic oversight.”

Ivy sat up very straight and smiled. “I haven’t asked because I already know. You and Mitch are on the outs.”

“You’re pleased about that?”

“I know it’s temporary. Now, are you going to the sale with me or not?”

“I’m going. Just let me finish my coffee.”

“No.” Ivy shook her head. “They sell coffee at the sale. They sell it in little stands along the road. They sell it everywhere. Take your shower and let’s go!”

Muttering, Shay abandoned her coffee and made her way to the bathroom.

The carousel horse stood, its once-bright paint chipped and faded, in the middle of the barn where the auction would be held, as though waiting for Shay.

She drew in her breath and moved toward it, her eyes wide. It couldn’t be Clydesdale!

Shay crouched to look at the horse’s right rear hoof. Sure enough, splotches of Rosamond’s favorite fire-engine red fingernail polish still clung to the wood. The marks had been made one glum and rainy afternoon in the long-ago, by Shay herself.