The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (11 page)

Poor Anna.
Any sympathy Sam might have felt for Monica was eclipsed by the disgraceful way she treated her sister. It wasn’t just today; Sam had witnessed it on other occasions. It was almost as if Anna were being punished for some reason.

Why did she put up with it? Sam wondered. Did she need the money, or like Maude, was it just a misplaced sense of loyalty? God knew Anna had enough on her hands as it was caring for their elderly mother. If only she’d lose weight, and stop wearing those awful jumpers and cardigans, maybe she’d find the confidence to break loose.

“Why don’t you look around while I find a box for this?” Sam gestured toward the counter. “We have a new line of jewelry that just came in.” A black widow spider would be ideal for Monica, she thought.

It wasn’t until they were heading out the door, Delarosa’s signature red-and-white striped shopping bag hooked over a handle of Monica’s wheelchair, that Sam noticed a familiar black-garbed figure among the handful of customers in back: Sister Agnes.

Her heart sank. The plump, rosy-cheeked little nun looked as guileless as a child in a Nativity play, but lately Sam had noticed that something was always missing in her wake. Usually the items were small and fairly inexpensive: a pewter letter opener, a key ring, a miniature porcelain box. The question was, what to do about it? Sam didn’t want to make a fuss. How would it look to the other customers, accusing a nun of shoplifting? Even more upsetting was the thought of having to pay a visit to Mother Ignatius. The best plan of action, she’d decided, was to simply keep an eye out so it didn’t happen again.

“Good morning, Sister.” Sam strolled over. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Ah, no, Mrs. Kiley, would that you could.” The little nun, as Irish as the Blarney Stone, shook her head in regret. “But ’tis no sin to look, is it? You have such lovely things.”

Sam smiled. “I’m glad you think so.” Try as she might, she found it impossible to dislike Sister Agnes. She might be a thief, but she was a charming one.

“These, for instance.” Sister Agnes fingered a delicate lace table scarf. “They remind me of home.”

“We just got them in.” Sam smoothed the scarf, tucking it back into the pile.

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you had another one of these.”

Sam turned to find a nicely dressed gray-haired woman holding out a fluted bud vase with a chip in its base. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid it’s the last one. Is there something else I can show you?”

“Let me poke around a bit.” The woman reluctantly handed her the vase.

The exchange hadn’t taken more than a few seconds, but when Sam turned around Sister Agnes was gone—along with the scarf. She heard the bell tinkle, and caught a flash of black serge as the little nun disappeared through the door.

She sighed. There was no avoiding it now. Like it or not, she’d have to speak to Mother Ignatius. Not over the phone, though. She’d have to make a special trip.

“Sam.” A familiar voice, low and musical.

She turned around, startled to find Ian standing before her. How had he managed to sneak in without her noticing? Heat rushed up into her cheeks, and she darted a furtive glance over her shoulder. No one was looking their way. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

He flashed her an easy grin. “I didn’t realize I needed an invitation.”

“You know what I mean.”

He didn’t appear the least bit fazed. In the same unhurried voice he asked, “Is there somewhere we can talk? In private?”

She cast another glance over her shoulder. Laura was waiting on someone, and only one other customer was wandering about. “All right,” she said, “but only for a minute.”

She led the way to the tiny office in back, just large enough for a desk and file cabinet. There was no point offering him a seat. She nudged the door shut with her heel. The pounding of her heart seemed to fill the tiny, windowless space.

She didn’t wait for him to speak. “Ian, listen, yesterday was… unbelievable. I don’t regret it for a moment. But it can’t go any further.” She closed her eyes, leaning against the file cabinet. The metal felt cool against her burning skin.

“Because of the age thing?” He sounded more puzzled than anything.

“It’s complicated.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“For
you.
”

“For either of us.”

He stepped toward her, and suddenly she was in his arms. Oh God. How easy it was, like sliding into a warm bath. As if her mind had become separated from her body somehow. A body with a will of its own. She felt his mouth on hers, his sly tongue…

Just this once,
she pleaded, as if to some higher authority. After that, no more. If she was to have any chance of resisting him in the days to come she’d have to end it. Here. Now.

The question was
how?

Wrapped in Ian’s arms, lost in a kiss with no beginning and therefore no end, Sam wasn’t aware of the door easing open behind her. She didn’t hear her daughter gasp.

“Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

Sam broke away from Ian. Her daughter stood in the doorway, gaping as if at a car wreck, her cheeks flushed and eyes wide with horror, a corner of her mouth flickering in an interrupted smile. Then, with a tiny cry, Laura scurried off.

“S
LOW DOWN,”
Alice said. “I don’t want it to end.”

As the Mercedes twisted up the steep road to their house she felt a sudden desire to retreat, burrow into the cocoon of these past three weeks. Maui had been a heaven in which they were lulled to sleep each night by the sound of the surf after lolling on the beach and making love all day. Now life back on earth—messy and unpredictable—was just around the bend, waiting to pounce.

In her mind she could see the red light on her answering machine, blinking like a reptilian eye, the stack of mail by the door, the pile of wedding presents to be unwrapped. Tomorrow there would be suitcases to unpack, calls to return, bills to pay. And then back to work on Monday, where a whole new mountain awaited her. This coming week, with the president in town and the Israeli foreign affairs minister announcing peace talks, she and Wes would be lucky to squeeze in more than a meal or two together, never mind candlelight and roses.

“We still have an hour or so before dinner.” Wes flashed her a grin, miniature twin suns wheeling across the dark green lenses of his Vuarnets. “Enough time for a swim…or whatever else you have in mind.”

“Our bathing suits are packed.” She curled a hand about his neck. “We’d have to go naked.”

He laughed his wonderful, booming laugh. “Alice honey, you’re the only woman I know who doesn’t feel the urge to unpack the minute she walks through the door. I think that’s why I married you.”

“The
only
reason?” She arched a brow.

“Much is contained therein,” he replied cryptically.

The sun had set, and the mountaintops were awash in crimson light. The air blowing through the vents smelled faintly and medicinally of eucalyptus. Wes swerved to avoid a fallen branch, nipping in and out of their lane with the skill of a race car driver. He drove the way he did everything: without a noticeable rise in blood pressure. He was the only man from whose hands she didn’t physically itch to wrest the wheel, the only one with whom she felt completely and utterly relaxed.

She studied his profile—like those on ancient coins—high forehead and Roman nose, clipped beard and thatch of curly iron hair. She rarely thought about the difference in their ages, and when she did it was always with a small measure of amazement. Wes wasn’t like other fifty-four-year-olds. He approached middle age like Teddy Roosevelt charging San Juan Hill—teeth bared and saber rattling. In his seventies, he’d still be pressing down on the gas pedal, juggling four phone lines, and negotiating the sky in his Bell 430. And, she thought, swimming naked with his wife under the stars.

She remembered the day he walked into her life and changed it forever. Twenty-one and fresh out of UCLA, she’d just been hired as assistant producer on the
Marty Milnik Show.
Wes Carpenter, whom she had yet to meet—his office was on the executive floor above—might as well have been the Wizard of Oz for all the talk of his legendary feats. She’d heard the stories of his humble beginnings. How, as owner of a small TV station in Oxnard, he’d had the balls—in the days before licensing prohibited such practices—to beam syndicated network programs, via satellite, to local cable stations across the country. Then there was the one about the overdue bank loan being called: how he’d stridden into First National’s boardroom like a figure out of the Wild West and gotten them not only to extend the deadline but also to up the ante.

She’d been at CTN about six weeks before she came face-to-face with Wes. She was on her way up to the newsroom on the sixth floor when the elevator stopped and a tall, broad-shouldered man with the largest hands she’d ever seen got in. He was wearing twill slacks, an open-necked shirt, and a corduroy blazer that, quite frankly, had seen better days. His cheeks were windburned above the dark line of his beard.
It’s him,
she thought. Their eyes met and she looked down. Peeking out from under the cuffs of his slacks she saw something that made her giggle: one sock was brown, and the other navy.

When he caught her staring, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s just…I couldn’t help noticing.” She pointed at his feet.

He looked down in surprise, and a slow grin spread across his face. “What can I say? Occasionally, I like to mix it up.” He regarded her with interest. His eyes were an unusual brownish green, and he seemed to have more than the usual number of teeth. “And you are?”

“Alice Kiley.” She put out her hand.

It was swallowed by his huge, warm grip. She’d never met a chief executive quite like him, one with the air of a truant schoolboy. “Who are you with?”

In that first dazed moment she mistook his inquiry for something far more personal, replying, “No one.” She hadn’t meant to bare her single status to this perfect stranger—boss, or no—it had just slipped out. One look at his puzzled expression and she realized her error. She felt herself flush. “Actually, I’m with you. I mean…I work for you.”

Wes appeared to take it all in stride, as if accustomed to women making fools of themselves over him. But Alice couldn’t quite believe this was happening. In school she’d always been the sought-after one—the girl voted in her senior poll as the one boys would most like to be marooned on a desert island with. She’d grown used to men stammering in her presence, and could have compiled an encyclopedia of pickup lines. This, though, was a new one on her: a man who made
her
blush.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” His eyes sparkled as if she’d just told him something remarkable. “Never thought there’d come a day when I didn’t know everyone here. How long you been with us?” He spoke with a faint Texas accent, and she remembered hearing that he’d grown up in Austin.

“Two months,” she said, her blush deepening.

“That long? Well then, it’s high time we got to know one another. You free for lunch?”

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

“Twelve-thirty? I’ll meet you in the lobby.” He winked. “I’ll be the guy with one brown sock.”

The elevator stopped at her floor, and Alice stepped out. She might have been landing on the moon for the sudden loss of gravity that sent her floating down the corridor. She knew what love was—with Bruce Kitteredge, her college sweetheart, it had been serious enough for talk of marriage—but this was the first time she’d been infatuated. It was, she thought, exactly as depicted in cartoons: like being hit over the head by a giant mallet.

She hadn’t looked back since.

“I love you,” she said now, with more feeling than usual.

“Same to you, Mrs. Carpenter.” He groped for her hand and brought it to his mouth. Her ring—four carats of emerald-cut diamond—caught the light in a brilliant flash. She was reminded of her deep sense of certainty when he’d slipped it on. Nothing would ever come between them, she’d felt sure.

He shifted gears as the road grew steeper. They wound their way past sandstone bluffs to which scrub pines and manzanita clung precariously. To the right was a sheer drop-off affording a nearly panoramic view of the valley below: sun-strewn pastures and neat rows of orange trees, the green baize of Dos Palmas Country Club. After a seemingly endless climb, their house rose into view. Custom-built in Wes’s bachelor days, it occupied the highest point on Fox Canyon Road: split levels of cedar and glass that, from a distance, seemed to jut from the hillside like some fantastic rock formation.

Alice felt a tiny beat of anxiety. They’d been living together more than a year, but it would be different now. Would marriage be everything she’d hoped for? Everything her parents’ had been?

They started up the driveway—a nearly vertical incline that dipped into a circular turnabout where Wes coasted to a smooth stop. Alice climbed out, stretching to release the kinks from the long drive and even longer flight. The air, though not as warm as on Maui, was wonderfully dry. In the garden the birds of paradise were in bloom, the agapanthus bursting from their stalks. She watched a bird alight on the granite fountain nestled amid pillows of ornamental grass. It reminded her of something; she couldn’t think what. Then she remembered: the girl at the wedding. Was she still with Laura, or had she been packed off to home? Alice would know soon enough.

She started up the path, feeling a vague sense of apprehension. The moment she set foot inside the honeymoon would be officially over, the world that had been left to fend for itself once again knocking at her door.

The first thing she noticed when she walked in was the pile of presents by the door—thoughtfully dropped off by her mother, no doubt. Ignoring it, she stepped down into the living room: a soaring anthem to the outdoors with its cathedral ceiling and skylights, its fieldstone fireplace and floor-to-ceiling glass. She pushed open the sliding glass door onto the deck. The last rays of sunlight glanced in Morse-like flashes off Monica Vincent’s LoreiLinda, atop the neighboring hill. In the canyons below, shadows were creeping out from under boulders and pointing in long witchy fingers from clumps of silver cholla and ocotillo. Digger pines rustled in the mild evening breeze. Directly below, the pool beckoned, and she thought how nice a cool swim would feel.