The Best Way to Lose (10 page)

“That would be a day to mark on the calendar.”

A suppressed laugh bubbled from Sandra Kay. Belatedly she and Pilar applauded the conclusion of a song by the band.

“How long are you going to be in Natchez this time?” Sandra Kay asked when they started playing again. “It seems like you’re never here for more than a few days at a time.”

“Everything seems to be running smoothly. So unless something comes up, I should be here for a while,” he replied.

The confidence in his voice irritated Pilar. She didn’t resist the urge to prick it. “The business may be running smoothly, but it still hasn’t paid any dividends since you’ve taken over.”

“No,” Trace agreed, unaffected by her veiled barb. “But it’s been operating inefficiently for some time. All the changes couldn’t be accomplished overnight. But it’s kept me busy and out of trouble.” He gave her a considering look. “You’ve been busy, too. Every time I pick up a local paper, I read Mrs. Santee this or Mrs. Santee attended that. No wonder they awarded you that plaque.”

“I couldn’t possibly keep up with her,” Sandra Kay declared. “She’s constantly going somewhere or doing something. It exhausts me just to look at her schedule. I don’t see how she spends any time at Dragon Walk.”

“Between the foundation and the antique business, I manage to keep busy, but it’s hardly as grueling as you make it sound, Sandra Kay,” Pilar insisted, but she did try to keep herself occupied as much as possible to avoid the loneliness of having nothing to do and no one to share idle time with.

“It sounds like ‘all work and no play,’” Trace observed and appeared to study her closely, looking for signs of strain and overwork.

“‘Idle hands are the devil’s playground,’”

Pilar countered with another quotation and noticed his glance slide to her fingers.

“Lucky devil,” he murmured in a very low voice, but the brief quirk of his mouth appeared harsh.

She chose to ignore the comment. “Regard-less of Sandra Kay’s opinion, I do have time to play. I just came back from spending two weeks with my parents in Virginia.”

“It wasn’t a vacation,” Sandra Kay inserted in an aside to Trace. “She went antique buying.”

The whole subject became distasteful to Pilar. “I don’t think Trace is really interested in what I do with my time,” she insisted to end this discussion and swung a cool glance at him. “There are a few boxes of things at Dragon Walk—family belongings like old photo albums, some of Elliot’s personal items, and a few things that evidently belonged to your mother. When you have time, you can come by and pick them up.”

“How about tonight?” he suggested. “It’s Sunday, and I have nothing to do.”

She was briefly thrown by his proposal, not expecting him to make it so soon. The boxes had been sitting in a corner of the old butler pantry for more than six months. She had postponed contacting him, knowing that sooner or later they were likely to see each other when he was in town, so there wasn’t any need to make a special point of calling him.

“If that isn’t convenient”—there was a faint
edge to his voice as his narrowed glance observed her reluctance—“I can come by another time. If you aren’t home, I’m sure Cassie could show me where the boxes are.”

“No,” she heard herself say. “Tonight is fine. I wasn’t planning to stay for the entire concert.”

A flicker of surprise showed in his expression. “In that case, I’ll stop out between eight thirty and nine.”

“All right.” She nodded stiffly in agreement.

“Do you see what I mean?” Sandra Kay spoke up. “She isn’t satisfied doing just one thing tonight. Now she’s arranged for you to come over and cart off a bunch of boxes.”

The comment lifted the corners of his mouth slightly, but the movement carried only an acknowledgment of the words. “I’ll see you later, then,” he said, looking at Pilar.

There was a small inclination of her head. Her gaze watched him move away, leisurely strides carrying him out of the park. The rawness within her didn’t go away.

When she pulled into the tree-lined driveway of Dragon Walk, a car turned in behind her. A glance in the rear-view mirror identified Trace as the driver. Her fingers flexed their grip on the steering wheel as she blanked out her thoughts and followed the lane that branched to the separate garage at the rear of the plantation house.

As Pilar walked out of the garage after putting the car away for the night, Trace was
climbing out of his sedan. Nothing was said. Pilar was awkward with the silence, but she couldn’t seem to break it. He was only a couple of steps behind her when she entered the house by the rear door.

“Cassie.” Pilar was startled into speaking her name when she saw the black woman sitting at the kitchen table and looking very smart in a matching slack and summer-top set. “I thought you said you were going out this evening.”

“I was and I am,” she stated. “Eddie called twenty minutes ago to say he had a flat tire so he’d be late. He should be coming any time.” A smile broke across her impatient expression when she saw Trace walk in behind Pilar. “When did you get back in town?”

“Late this afternoon. You’ve got a date tonight, have you?” he concluded with a twinkling look. “Eddie Tabor?”

“Yes, and no remarks from you are necessary,” Cassie warned him, but the wideness of her smile took any strength from the response.

“I asked Trace to come by and pick up those boxes that are in the pantry.” Pilar justified his presence and crossed to the serving alcove between the kitchen and the dining room to show him where they were.

“All of them?” he inquired, coming up behind her and glancing at the half-dozen boxes piled on top of each other in two stacks.

“Yes.” She didn’t pause in the small room for long, not liking the close quarters. “I’ve
already been through them, so whatever you don’t want to keep yourself, you can give away or dispose of however you want.” She returned to the kitchen and walked straight to the refrigerator.

For an instant he let his gaze follow her, then swung his attention back to the boxes and walked over to size them up. From the kitchen came the rattle of ice cubes being dumped into a container. Trace hefted the top box and turned around to carry it outside to his car.

“Will you open the back door for me, Cassie?” When his request met with no response, he glanced at the black woman, who was looking worriedly after a departing Pilar. “Cassie?” The prompting of his voice attracted a blank stare.

“Did you want something? Oh, the door,” she realized and moved to open it for him.

“Is something wrong?” Trace noticed the way her attention immediately returned to the inner door through which Pilar had disappeared.

“It’s none of my business,” Cassie insisted and the line of her mouth was pulled straight. “She’s told me that often enough.”

With the box in his arms, Trace had to wait until he had stowed it in the trunk of his car and returned to the kitchen before he could ask, “What is none of your business?” Cassie wouldn’t have said that much if she didn’t intend for him to know the rest of it.

“The way she’s been drinking lately.” She came straight to the point. “It started out so innocently … just a small drink before she went to bed to help her relax so she could sleep. Then it was a bigger one. Then it became two—sometimes three or more. Now she’s at it again—loading up the ice bucket with cubes and carrying it off with her.”

“Everybody has their own way of dealing with things.” He made a deliberate attempt to sound indifferent, but there was a hardness in his features that hadn’t been present before.

“I know what she’s going through.” Cassie sighed. “I went through it myself. It’s something you fight at first “’cause you don’t want to accept it The loneliness eventually you can handle, but it’s the hunger for a man that’s tearing her up. Don’t you look at me like that, Trace Santee,” she reproved him sharply when he reared his head in open skepticism. “A woman has physical needs the same as a man. It doesn’t make her bad to ache for the touch of a man’s arms around her or the warmth of his body lying beside her in bed. That’s a natural urge.”

“I agree.” Trace didn’t argue with her point. “But, somehow, Pilar doesn’t strike me as being quite as desperate as you’re making her sound.”

“Only because she’s not ready to accept it,” Cassie replied. “She drinks to pretend it’s Elliot she’s missing. She doesn’t want to admit why she’s hurting, because then she’d
have to deal with the frustration of wanting, and having no one to satisfy that desire. She’s going to have to face it sometime, just like everyone else who’s lost their mate.”

A car horn honked in the front driveway, signaling the arrival of Cassie’s date and ending the conversation. Trace picked up a second box and carried it out the back door while he thought over the things Cassie had told him and tried to fit them with the image of self-sufficiency that Pilar projected.

Upstairs in her bedroom Pilar kicked off her low-heeled shoes and stripped out of her dress. It was too hot and sticky to put a lot of clothes back on, so she took a sleeveless wraparound dress of strawberry-pink cotton from the large wardrobe closet and slipped it on, tying the sash into a bow at the side of her waist. She pushed the weight of her hair away from her face and secured it with a pair of combs. She heard the honking of a horn out front, followed by the shutting of the front door a few minutes later.

Before leaving the bedroom to go back downstairs, Pilar picked up the drink she’d set on the vanity and carried it with her. At the bottom of the stairs she hesitated, then walked to the kitchen. Trace was just heading out the back door with two of the lighter boxes in his arms.

“Are you managing all right?” she asked, conscious of the brief way his glance noted her change of attire.

“Yes.” He pushed open the screen door with a corner of the boxes.

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” Pilar replied with a tense effort at indifference. “I’ll be on the side porch if you should need help with anything.”

On her way through the house she stopped in the den to collect the correspondence that needed answering as well as some auction circulars. There was still plenty of light on the west side of the house. Pilar spread her papers out on the glass top of a low wicker table that matched the rest of the white wicker furniture grouped around the porch in inviting clusters.

A breeze, cooled by the shade of the big oaks in the gardened front lawn, drifted onto the porch. Hanging baskets of pink and lavender fuchsia repeated the pastel colors of the patterned fabric covering the furniture cushions. Before Pilar took a seat on the narrow sofa, she went to the tall wicker stand where the ice bucket and bourbon decanter were placed. She added more cubes and a splash of bourbon to her watery drink.

Sitting down, she picked up the auction circulars first and began to check their dates with her appointment calendar. She leaned forward and absently rubbed the cool, moist glass against her cheek. She tried not to listen to the sounds of the back door slamming as Trace made his trips to the car with the boxes.

When the last one was sitting in the rear seat of his car, Trace pulled a handkerchief
from his hip pocket and wiped at the perspiration trickling down his neck. On a sultry evening like this it didn’t take much effort to work up a sweat. He rubbed the kerchief over the top of his lip and glanced absently toward the porch. With a slow gathering of his muscles, Trace turned and walked in that direction.

At the side steps leading up to the porch he paused. His glance was pulled to the figure of Pilar, seated on the white-backed cushions with sprays of pink flowers. She was leaning forward, studying some papers on a wicker table. Her legs were crossed, the skirt of her dress splitting to provide him with a view of a creamy thigh. There was a stirring pressure in his loins. With a tightened jaw, Trace climbed the steps to the porch. Her glance skipped to him, then back to the papers where it stayed as she took a swallow from the glass she was holding.

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you you shouldn’t drink alone?” Trace remarked dryly and walked to the stand to help himself to the bourbon and ice.

“At the end of a day I find a drink pleasantly relaxing,” she returned smoothly, barely looking up when he wandered over to the wicker chair with the tall, fan-shaped back.

“Just one drink?” He glanced pointedly at the quantity of liquor in her squat glass, which couldn’t all be attributed to melting ice cubes.

“Sometimes a large one,” Pilar admitted with a challenging tilt of her head. After that earlier rawness in his presence, she felt pleasantly loose and able to deal with him It showed in the artificially bold glint in her dark eyes.

Her shoulders were hunched to allow her forearms to rest on her crossed legs. The action allowed the crossing front of her wraparound dress to gape slightly. Trace’s angle from the chair permitted him to view the exposed slope of a breast. There was a hardness in the steel-gray of his eyes as he tried not to look, but his gaze kept slipping to it. Pilar appeared totally oblivious to the exposure—and to him.

“Were you able to load all the boxes in your car?” she asked while she ran a pencil down a list of items on a paper.

“Yes, I did.”

Outside of a nod, she didn’t appear interested in his answer as she flipped pages in an appointment calendar, then thoughtfully rubbed the soft eraser end of the pencil along her lower lip. Its slow movement was an unwanted diversion that had his mouth pressed tightly shut.

Everything about her—from the way she sat to the way she was dressed to her gestures—seemed to be deliberately provocative, designed to arouse and stimulate. Yet she showed about as much interest in him as she did a piece of furniture. They were conflicting
signals, her body flashing him one set, and her attitude slapping him away.

If he thought for one minute that she knew what she was doing to him, he’d … Trace cut off the thought because there was no answer to it. He had to move out of that chair while he still had a grip on himself.

R
ising, Trace took a quick swig of his drink and walked to the tall wicker table to replenish it. Silently he blamed Cassie and her talk for all his wild imaginings. For purely selfish reasons he wanted to believe that Pilar was attempting to be alluring for him.