The Rebel (8 page)

“Much better on the ground,” he murmured.

Frankie slowly opened her eyes. “I'm not sure I'm standing up anymore, to tell you the truth.”

He smiled with satisfaction. “You want to go upstairs?”

“Yes—no. No, I—” She thought about stepping away but her feet refused to respond.

Probably because her size eight and a halfs knew she wasn't really serious about wanting to put some space between her body and Nate's.

He kissed her lightly and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I take that back. How about we go a little more slowly. Let's go out tonight after we close. Just the two of us.”

It was weird, but the tempting invitation made reality come back. Maybe because she pictured herself taking him into town and having people watch them together. In a small community, there wasn't much to do except gossip. And the conclusions that would be drawn, namely that she was sleeping with her new chef, wouldn't help her or her business.

But that wasn't the only reason to not go any further with him.

Frankie pulled back and then stepped away.

“Actually, I think we should stop.”

He groaned deep in his throat. “Why?”

“Because I like you,” she muttered. Before he
could ask her to elaborate, she put her hand up. “Look, you're leaving at the end of the summer and nothing is going to change that. I've got too much self-respect to be some man's little diversion and I'm not interested in using you in that way, either.”

His hazel eyes burned as he stared at her. “Fine, but it may not be that easy.”

And with that, he turned and headed back for the ladder.

“What's that supposed to mean?” she demanded, going after him.

He just shrugged and put his foot on the bottom rung. “You're assuming we have a choice.”

She watched him take a deep breath, and with his eyes fixated on the gutter, begin to steadily climb back up the side of the house.

A
WEEK LATER, SHE STILL
couldn't get that kiss out of her mind.

Although she took a lot of pride in spanking down Nate's fatalistic attitude. No matter how attractive he was, or how good he'd felt, she'd managed to not jump his bones. She felt like a chronic dieter who'd made it through a Lindt store without buckling.

Restraint came at a cost, however.

Frankie put her head down on her desk. It was utterly exhausting trying to convince her body that it didn't actually want to be invaded by his.

And her nerves were shot. Whenever she was in the same room with Nate, she wanted to jump out of her skin. She kept expecting him to bring up what had happened or try it again, but he was playing it cool.

And naturally, the space he gave her meant she thought about him constantly.

The nights were the worst. She made a point to go up to bed before him, reinforcing the hands-off message with her closed door. It was a good, stalwart plan, in theory. The trouble was, when she heard him
coming down the hall, she kept wishing he'd ignore the signal. She wanted him to knock, probably just so that she could turn him down again. Which was crazy and a little cruel, but somehow drawing the boundaries would make her feel more in control.

As it was, she had to listen to the shower going while imagining what he looked like naked and running a bar of her soap over all of those muscles.

Seeing him in the kitchen was an exercise in self-torment, too, even though he was fully clothed. It was next to impossible for her not to get caught up in watching him cook. You wouldn't figure some man facing off ten pounds of root vegetables with a paring knife would be so damned attractive.

But she could watch him peel potatoes for hours.

He had beautiful hands. Long, strong fingers and wide palms. His forearms were thick and marked with veins and she loved to watch the tendons and muscles shift as he worked.

God, she was pathetic.

But that was what self-imposed sexual frustration could do to a girl.

In an effort to release some stress, she'd made twenty jars of jam this afternoon. Nate had thought she'd lost her mind when she'd pushed him away from the stove, pulled a stew vat over a flame and proceeded to pitch in about a thousand strawberries
and enough sugar to put the city of Albany into a diabetic coma.

The excess was absurd, but she'd give the stuff away to guests as they left. And at least she'd managed to keep her hands off him for another day.

Of course, she'd also wiped out the strawberry census in Saranac for the time being. But there were always blueberries. And raspberries. And rhubarb.

Hell, she could probably make jam out of grass if she ran out of options.

The phone rang and she jumped. She cleared her throat before picking up, just in case her fantasy life had made her hoarse.

“Yes, we have rooms available,” she said, cradling the receiver between her ear and shoulder. She changed screens on the computer. “This weekend I can offer you a lake-facing suite for two nights. No, I'm sorry, the Lincoln Bedroom is booked. Of course, we love children.”

After she took the man's credit card information, she referred him to their Web site for directions. “And may I ask where you heard of us?”

She was still surprised when she hung up the phone. Mr. Little had evidently been impressed enough by the food to give a recommendation to a friend of his. Which meant for the first time this season, they were full for the coming weekend.

Joy stuck her head in the door. “Plumber's back
again. He's got the replacement part and he's going to need to work in here.”

Thank God. The day after the deluge, he'd managed to patch the slow drip that had caused water to accumulate in the ceiling, but it had been a short-term solution. With any luck, a new valve would take care of the problem and she could get a sheet rocker in to seal up the rafters.

As the guy came in with his toolbox, Frankie figured she'd spend some time in the garden, weeding. She changed into ratty shorts and was heading out to the raggedy patch when a Cadillac pulled up. Mike Roy got out and so did a tall, dark-haired man. Both were dressed casually, although the stranger seemed somewhat regal in his linen pants and polo shirt.

Great timing for Mike to show up, she thought, looking down at her clothes. She was doing an excellent impression of a bag lady.

Frustration surged. They'd been playing phone tag all week and she was finally set to see him in his office on Monday. She'd been looking forward to making a professional presentation of her finances and reassuring him that she was going to meet her obligations. Now, that image was going to be harder to project.

Why hadn't he called, she groaned. She would have changed.

Mike waved and then smiled, his bearded cheeks stretching wide at something the man next to him
said. “Hey, Frankie. We just came from the airport and I figured I'd take a chance that you'd be here. Karl Graves, meet Frances Moorehouse.”

As she shook hands, she could feel herself being assessed. The man's grip was strong, his eyes direct, his smile on the chilly side.

“I apologize for the intrusion,” Graves said, his English accent clipping the words into place. “But may we trouble you for a tour?”

“Certainly.” She smiled at Mike, but he was looking at his car keys while he turned them over in his hand. “Well, let's go. Are you thinking of summering here?”

Because the Englishman didn't look like the year-round type. Not in the slightest.

“Perhaps.” Unlike Mike, the man's eyes were all over White Caps. “I live in London but the base of my business is moving to the States.”

“What do you do?”

“I own some hotels.”

She laughed ruefully. “So you know what it's like to deal with guests and their demands.”

“Yes, I know something of it.”

Mike hung back as she gave the tour. She started with the rooms of the first floor and Graves seemed legitimately impressed by the hand-carved moldings around the high ceilings and the wide-planked cherry floors. And he knew his stuff when it came to architecture. He talked intelligently about the Federal
period and the house's infamous architect, Thomas Crane.

“It's unusual to see a Crane this far north,” Graves said as they went upstairs. The man's hand lingered on the thick mahogany balustrade when they reached the landing. “Tell me, do you still have the original plans?”

“There are two sets. One is here. The other is in the National Gallery in D.C.” She took a left at the top of the stairs and went lake-side. “Lincoln's bedroom is over here. He spent three nights with Charles Moorehouse the Third in August of 1859 just prior to announcing his candidacy. Lincoln's thank-you note is framed and hanging on the wall. In it, he mentions the view and the island which you can see to the north—”

She opened the door and stopped dead. Her grandmother was kneeling on the floor, swinging a butcher's knife over her head. Dressed in a peach gown, she was sprinkled with plaster dust and gravely serious.

“Grand-Em!”

Frankie rushed forward as her grandmother heaved her arms and buried the knife in the wall. Before Grand-Em could lift the thing again, Frankie disarmed her.

“I beg your pardon,” was the indignant response. “Give that back!”

“What are you doing?”

“That's none of your concern. This is my room. I shall do what I wish in it.”

What she wished, evidently, was to make one hell of a hole in the wall, and for a frail woman of eighty, she had a good start on the job. There was a four-inch cavity in the plaster and Frankie could see through to the wall joists.

“Maybe we should leave you two alone,” Mike said.

Grand-Em looked over at him. With fragile dignity, she pushed a length of white hair back from her face and assumed an expectant look, as if she were waiting to be properly introduced. In her day, ladies did not speak to persons unknown and waited for someone else to make acquaintances.

Which gave Frankie a shot at getting the men out of the way.

“Thank you, Mike,” she said, getting to her feet. “Please feel free to look around. I'll meet you both on the lawn in about ten minutes.”

“Take however long you need,” the banker said.

Frankie shut the door behind them and hid the knife in the top drawer of the dresser. She wished she could have spared her grandmother the shocked curiosity on their faces, although she couldn't really blame Mike or that Graves man for being spellbound. The sad reality was that Grand-Em looked out of her mind, sitting on the floor in an ancient, faded dress
with dust in her frizzy white hair and a knife over her head aimed at the wall.

As Frankie went back across the room, her eye caught an old, grainy photograph of her grandmother. She'd been in her early twenties and was sitting in an Adirondack guide boat on the lake, holding a parasol in one hand. Long ago, people had visited White Caps just to see if the rumors of her beauty were lies and exaggerations. Back then, she'd been talked about in whispers for things a woman wanted to be known for. Not because she was old and crazy.

Grand-Em reached forward, starting to paw the plaster with her bare hands, and Frankie quickly stilled the knobby fingers. Her grandmother's skin felt dry and flimsy and there were red spots that had been rubbed raw by the knife handle.

“What's going on?” Frankie asked gently.

Grand-Em's sparse brows sunk low over her milky blue eyes. Smoothing the palms of her grandmother's hands, Frankie asked again, “What were you doing?”

Grand-Em looked at the wall. “I can't seem to find it.”

“What are you looking for?”

“My ring.”

“Which one?”

“My first engagement ring.”

Frankie turned over the old hands and touched
the little diamond in the plain gold setting. “But it's right here. Right where it should be.”

“No, no, my first one. The one that Arthur Phillip Garrison gave me.”

“Grand-Em, you were never engaged to someone named Garrison.”

“True. But he asked me to marry him. In 1941. I told him no because I found him not exactly trustworthy, but he was quite sure of himself and left the ring with me. I had to hide it from Father because he would have made me marry him. Poor Arthur. He died not long afterward. I kept the stone because it was announced in his obituary that he was engaged to another woman. Given everything she was dealing with, I figured she wouldn't have wanted to know about me.”

Frankie shook her head. If the story had come out even two years before, she might have been tempted to believe it. But Grand-Em had started to get her life's history mixed up, assigning events to her own past that were borrowed from the lives of others. Last week, she'd declared that her husband had been elected to the Senate and that she'd lived in Washington, D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue. This was after she'd seen a biography on R.F.K.

God only knew who Arthur Garrison was or where she'd picked his name up.

“Grand-Em, why don't we go find Joy?”

“No. No. I must finish what I started. I hid the ring from Father in the wall.”

Frankie gently tugged on her arm. “Come on, now—”

“I will
not!
” Her grandmother pulled free. “This is my room.”

“This is a guest room. Your room is in the back of the house.”

Grand-Em's eyes popped wide open as hysteria reddened her pale cheeks and tightened her hands into fists. “Are you suggesting I live with the staff?”

Frankie tried to stay calm. “Don't you remember—” Now that was a stupid thing to say. “Let's go find Joy.”

“I have work to do here.”

“There's nothing in the wall, Grand-Em. There's no ring except the one on your finger.”

“Are you suggesting I'm crazy?” she said softly.

“No, I—”

“You're going to put me away! You're going to let them take me!”

Frankie tried to keep her voice level. “No. Never. This is your home.”

“I'm not going to get shut away like some insane person!”

With a violent lurch, Grand-Em shot to her feet but she got caught in the skirts of her dress and pitched forward at an alarming angle. She let out a cry and Frankie lunged forward, grabbing her just before her
forehead made contact with a marble-topped bed stand. But instead of feeling saved, Grand-Em obviously assumed she'd been captured because she fought harder. Frankie was able to hold her so that she couldn't hurt herself, but took a lot of kicks in the shins before the struggling finally stopped. When Grand-Em fell still, she let out a soft sob.

“I promise to be better. I just don't want to go,” she moaned. “Please don't send me away. I am lost…even when I am home. What will happen if I am somewhere unknown?”

Frankie held her tightly, feeling the small body underneath the yards of old silk. “I promise. I promise you won't have to go away. Please don't worry.”

Grand-Em put her hands to her face, as if trying to compose herself. She was wheezing raggedly, her chest moving in and out like a bird's.

“Let's sit down,” Frankie said. She helped Grand-Em up to the bed and eyed the phone on the stand, wondering where Joy was. At times like this, Frankie wished she had her sister's way with their grandmother. Maybe if Joy had been the one to walk in, she could have stopped Grand-Em without spurring an attack.

Frankie knelt down and regarded her grandmother with concern. Grand-Em was still shaking and gasping for air. It could have just been the remnants of the panic attack, but maybe it was the harbinger of something more dangerous.

“Are you having trouble breathing? Does your head hurt?”

Grand-Em looked down and a tear rolled down her hollow cheek.

“Shhh.” Frankie stroked her grandmother's white hair, smoothing the waves. “Let's just catch our breath for a moment.”