The Ring on Her Finger (16 page)

“C’mon,” he cajoled. “Let me drive you home.”

She hesitated a fraction of a moment longer, then, much to his relief, said, “All right. If you’re sure it’s not too much trouble.”

Not too much trouble
, Nathaniel echoed to himself. That was a good one. “Of course it’s no trouble. Just the opposite. It means I get to spend a little more time in your company.”

She tilted her head back to look at him, her expression still harboring a certain vigilance. Jeez, what was it going to take to make her feel comfortable around him? He was being as sensitive and charming as he knew how to be.

She said nothing in response to his flattery, only jerked her keys out of the ignition and opened the car door with that lengthy
creeeaaak
again. Then she was standing next to Nathaniel, and somehow, the evening seemed to go brighter and warmer. He tipped his head in the direction from which they’d just come. “I’m parked over on the other side of the restaurant. We’ll have to retrace our steps and start over again.”

And why did that sound like such a good idea?

She smiled, and something warm and wistful caught in his chest. Because for the first time that evening, Rosemary smiled without wariness or suspicion, as if she had finally decided to trust him.

“That’s all right,” she said. “It’s a lovely night for a walk.”

Nathaniel nodded, but suddenly felt a little dizzy. “Yes. It is lovely.”

They made more quiet conversation about nothing in particular until they arrived at his midnight blue Jaguar roadster—which he couldn’t help noting Rosemary gazed at as if it were something to be feared. He thumbed the key fob and opened the passenger side door for her. With great care, she ducked her head and settled herself inside. Then he closed the door behind her, rounded the front of the car, and folded himself into the driver’s seat.

“Oh, my,” she said as she buckled herself in. She ran a hand lovingly over the black leather upholstery. “This is...ah...a very nice car.” She laughed as she concluded the observation, doubtless realizing what an understatement it was.

“Looks good on you,” he said.

Upon further consideration, however, he decided it wasn’t the hundred-thousand-dollar car that improved Rosemary. No, it was Rosemary who improved the hundred-thousand-dollar car. When he thrust his key into his ignition and turned it, the car started with no trouble. But then, no one had disconnected a wire on his battery, had they?

After maneuvering into the city traffic, he switched on the CD player, filling the car with Paul Desmond’s low, jazzy saxophone—very romantic. He didn’t know if it was because of the music or the mood that Rosemary suddenly clammed up like a...well, like a clam, but for much of the drive, they rode in not particularly comfortable silence. With every mile the rumbling Jag ate up, Nathaniel grew more aware of her. Of the way her heat crept across the small confines of the car to mingle with his own. Of the faint scent of lavender that clung to her. Of the way the moonlight filtered through the window and gilded her hair. Of the way her breathing seemed uneven and edgy.

Of the way she made him want things he’d never wanted, with a neediness he’d never felt before.

Eventually, she must have tired of the silence, because as they drove down River Road, past rolling green fields turned black and silver in the moonlight, she said, “It’s too bad it’s dark. I love driving through here and seeing the horses when they’re out.”

Her admission surprised him. “You like horses?”

“Oh, yes,” she said enthusiastically.

“Do you ride?”

“Not since coming to America. But when I lived in Derry, I used to ride quite often.”

“Really?”

Nathaniel suddenly found himself wanting to know everything he could about her. Personal things. Intimate things. Things that would reveal who she was beneath the lovely shell. Which was weird, because he usually didn’t care about what made people tick, particularly women. He especially shouldn’t care about what made Rosemary tick. The only things he needed to know about her were her weaknesses.

“So you had horses when you were growing up?” he asked

“No, not me. But my aunt Brigid worked for a family who lived just outside Derry, and they had horses. When I was sixteen, the stableman offered me a job exercising them. They were beautiful animals,” she added dreamily. “I always thought when I came here I’d buy myself a horse one day, but...” She sighed, and there was something melancholy in the sound. “Well, it’s just not come about. They can be expensive and require great care. I just don’t have the time to devote to one. Abby is my first priority.”

Also interesting, that she would consider someone else’s child her first priority. “What about on your days off?” he asked.

She expelled a single, humorless chuckle. “I don’t have too many of those.”

“Justin and Alexis don’t give you days off?”

“Well, technically, yes,” she conceded. “I have two days off a week, and paid holidays. But it’s not the kind of job where you actually take those days, is it? Do you know what I mean?”

No, Nathaniel didn’t know what she meant. He could have understood if her job had been like his—breeding horses. That was pretty much a constant calling. But baby-sitting? As long as Abby had someone around to make sure she didn’t hurt herself or set the house on fire, why wouldn’t Rosemary take her days off?

“Abby needs me,” she said quietly. “She doesn’t have anyone else.”

“Except her parents,” Nathaniel said.

“That’s what I meant,” Rosemary replied tersely.

Maybe that was what she meant, but it still didn’t make sense. The horse topic, though, now there was something he understood. And could take advantage of.

“So when’s your next day off?” he asked.

“Monday. Why?”

“I have to go to Woodford County to look at a horse a guy wants to sell. You want to come with me? Maybe we could get a little riding in.”

“Oh, thank you, but no. Abby has—”

“Abby has her mother to take care of her that day, obviously,” Nathaniel interrupted. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have the day off.”

“Yes, but you see, she’s being tested that day for a reading problem, and I think I should—”

“You should let her mother handle it.”

For a long moment, Rosemary was silent, and in that moment, the temperature in the car seemed to drop sixty degrees. Then, very softly, Rosemary replied, “I would if her mother could handle it. But if things don’t go well, Mrs. Cove will make Abby feel like a broken piece of furniture she’s going to haul out for the rubbish collectors.”

Unfortunately, Nathaniel could believe that. He wasn’t all that crazy about Alexis, either. But Alexis was Abby’s mother, and as such, she was the one who should be overseeing something like a reading test. “Maybe things will go just fine,” he said. “Maybe this will give Alexis an opportunity to practice her mothering skills.”

Rosemary laughed outright at that. “Mothering skills?” she echoed derisively. “That woman mothers as well as a black widow spider.”

Okay, so maybe Nathaniel had thought of Alexis that way a time or two himself. But that was because black widows ate their mates, right? Or was that praying mantises...mantisi?... mantases?...those ugly green bugs...who did that? In any case, he could see Alexis as one of those, too.

“I’m sorry,” Rosemary hastily apologized. “I spoke out of turn. I had no right to say such a thing about Mrs. Cove. Please. Forgive me.”

Now it was Nathaniel’s turn to laugh. “Why should I forgive you for saying something I’ve thought myself?”

Rosemary gazed straight ahead, but she was smiling. “She is...something, isn’t she?”

He returned his attention to the road. “She certainly is.” He allowed another beat of silence to pass, then asked, “So how about it? Monday? Feel like driving to Woodford County with me? We could make a day of it.”

He had to keep his eyes on the road, but he could feel her looking at him as clearly as if he had been watching her full on.

“Why are you inviting me?” she asked.

A tiny ripple of something he wasn’t used to feeling purled through him. Nathaniel was shocked to realize it was guilt. “Why do you ask?” he countered evasively.

“Because I can’t imagine why you would want me along.”

“Why wouldn’t I want you along?”

“Why do you answer all of my questions with another question?”

“Am I doing that?”

She laughed, but the wariness was ebbing. “Yes. You do. And you’ll have to forgive me if I find it a bit odd that you’re inviting me on a horse-buying trip.”

By now, they had turned onto Glenview Avenue, so Nathaniel slowed the car to focus on the winding, uphill road. “You think it’s odd that I’d want to spend the day with a beautiful woman?”

“No, I think it’s odd that you’d want to spend the day with me,” she said frankly. “I would think you’d have a host of other women who would love to come.”

“And you wouldn’t love to come?”

She said nothing for a moment, then replied quietly, “Actually, I’d love to come.” He waited for the but he was sure would follow...

...and never heard it.

He turned into the quarter-mile-long, serpentine driveway that led to Harborcourt. “Then I’ll pick you up Monday morning,” he said, marveling at the nervousness that spilled into him at the prospect of spending the day with Rosemary.

Oh, for God’s sake, he thought derisively. You’d think he was fourteen years old and had just asked her to the ninth-grade mixer.

“Fine,” she said, that wariness creeping back into her voice again. He really was going to have to work on that. “Monday morning.”

And for the first time in a long time, Nathaniel found himself looking forward to next week.

It was past ten-thirty when Lucy heard a car door slam outside the open window of her living room. But since it sounded so far away, she concluded that Rosemary was home. She hoped her friend had fun tonight. Rosemary didn’t seem like she’d had too much of that in her life. And she was way too dedicated to her work. Lucy couldn’t ever see applying herself to her own job the way Rosemary did hers. Then again, nurturing a child was probably a tad more important than vacuuming up dead spiders and sweeping fossilized Froot Loops out from under the refrigerator.

She shifted her attention back to the TV, thumbing the remote with one hand while burying the other in a big bowl of popcorn. If she had to be in hiding, at least her accommodations were accommodating. She didn’t know who was responsible for decorating the carriage house, but they’d had an eye for interiors. In keeping with the storybook look of the outside, the apartment’s colors were all soft earth tones with white trim—light green in the kitchen, faint oatmeal in the living room, pale blue in the bedroom. The furniture was mostly overstuffed chintz in contrasting earth tones, with wool Dhurrie rugs in the same soft colors scattered about the hardwood floors, and muslin curtains on the windows. There had obviously been an attempt to make the decor gender-neutral, but somehow it still came across as feminine.

She almost felt as if she were living in a make-believe sort of gingerbread apartment. She could easily imagine someone nibbling-nibbling on her house, nibbling-nibbling like a mouse. Except that there was no wicked witch, or fiery oven, or caged little Bohemian children in Lederhosen to bother her.

She’d taken a bath and dressed in a pair of Phoebe’s pajamas—baggy boxer shorts and a short-sleeved, button-up top, both decorated with colorful images of breakfast foods. Now, she was passing the time until she was sleepy enough to go to bed by doing her most favorite thing in the whole, wide world—flipping aimlessly through hundreds of satellite stations and finding absolutely nothing to watch.

But if tonight was like every other night she’d spent since coming to Harborcourt, sleep was going to be elusive. Lucy had never been a good sleeper to begin with, and the stresses of the past two weeks had only compounded the problem. Virtually every night, she’d been up channel surfing until two or three in the morning, then had to tumble out of bed at six-thirty to start work. She’d relied on stolen naps in the afternoon to get by, usually in the pantry or the linen closet—and once under the grand piano in the music room when she’d lain down to polish the pedals, but thankfully no one had been home at the time. Nevertheless, the exhaustion was beginning to catch up with her. She wouldn’t be able to live this way much longer without losing her mind.

She eyed the coffee table, where her phone sat beside her glass of wine, and silently willed it to ring. The phone, not the glass of wine. She wasn’t that exhausted. She hadn’t talked to Phoebe for nearly a week, and that couldn’t be a good sign. The last time they’d spoken, her friend had said that Archie was still missing, that the police were still looking for her, and that her family was still worried. It had been all Lucy could do not to call her mother to let her know she was all right. But who knew whether or not the police had the phone tapped at her parents’ house? They did that on TV all the time, so naturally it must go on in real life, too. Besides, her mother was probably more worried about the blot on the Hollander name than she was about her daughter’s wellbeing. If nothing else, being a fugitive from justice had brought Lucy freedom from that.

She had just landed on a promo for
West Side Story
—“Next on Encore!”—when she heard the sound of another car, this one rolling to a stop in the turnaround in front of the carriage house below.

Max was back.

She heard him leave about half an hour ago and had assumed he must have a hot date with someone, leaving so late in the evening. Not that Lucy cared, of course. Max Hogan could date whoever he pleased, regardless of the woman’s temperature. Still, that date—and that woman—must have ended up being on the tepid side if he was back already.

Gee, what a shame. Not that she cared, of course.

Silently, Lucy crept into the bedroom, where she would be in darkness and could peek through the curtains and not be seen. Below was one of Justin Cove’s newer cars—a red Ferrari this time—and Max was leaning into the passenger side to retrieve what turned out to be a six-pack of something and a Blockbuster bag.