There is always love (9 page)

"You see what a reputation you've earned, Mr. Sanders," Linda said lightly. "Mrs. Colton, it is wonderful to see you here." She nodded to Greg Merton, smiled at Grant. "Not surprising to find you, Skiddy. When do you work or do you?"

"Not till seven-thirty p.m. when I take you out to dinner." Grant pointed his remark at Sanders, bending over Ruth who was filling a cup.

"Give this to Lindy, Greg. How will you have your tea, Mr. Sanders?"

"As it comes. I like to taste the tea."

Merton set a small table beside the chair Linda had moved nearer Janet Colton and set down the cup and saucer.

'Thanks." She ignored him and turned to his sister. "It must be gorgeous in the country now." She could think of nothing less banal with the memory of Greg as he had raged at her in Madam Steele's garden dominating her mind.

"It is. I have asked Miss Brewster to come to us for next week end," Janet Colton answered cordially, "and I want you also, very, very much. It is not too cold for the swimming pool and—"

"We hoped we would find you at home. We're famishing for tea," interrupted a voice from the doorway.

Her mother and sister. Linda realized at once what this meant. An invitation for Hester to join the week end would be wangled out of Mrs. Colton. Why not? She herself hadn't the least intention of going. She appraised her mother from a stranger's viewpoint. Her modish "burnt-sugar" hat was the essence of style, her smart matching wool suit accentuated the slim perfection of her figure. Her chestnut hair showed no touch of gray. Her brown eyes were brilliant. Her creamy skin was unlined.

Linda tried to remember when she and her mother had begun to grow apart. She had been such a devoted mother. Was it the day Skid Grant had invited her to the Club dance, when before he had always taken Hester?

"I'm so happy to meet you, Mrs. Colton.'* Mrs. Bourne's voice held just the right tinge of warmth. "Gregory talks of 48

you constantly. Keith, it is delightful to see you again. I've often wondered what we did to you the last time you dined with us that you ran away without bidding us good-by."

Linda bit back a smile. For the first time since she had met him she saw Keith Sanders nonplussed. She sensed him reaching mentally for an answer which wouldn't materialize, as he tugged at his blond mustache. With a wicked grin Skid Grant came to his rescue.

"You mustn't check up on these city fellas. Aunt Evelyn. They haven't time to remember the manners they learned at their mother's knee. Now take Mrs. Grant's little boy, he's grown up in the way he should go."

"Don't be ridiculous, Skiddy," Hester interrupted curtly. "I hope my little sister is giving satisfaction, Mr. Sanders?'* She smiled invitingly. He drew a chair beside her.

"She is, but I could use another Bourne—for decoration. You're not by any chance looking for work, are you?"

"Is he ribbing me, Greg?" Hester appealed to Merton who was standing with one arm on the mantel.

"Sure. He has the world's smartest secretary now and he knows it. Why should he want another?"

"Apparently you didn't hear me, Merton. I said *for decoration,'" Sanders reminded smoothly. "I hope you'll allow me to make up for my lack of manners last smnmer by taking you and your daughter to dinner and the theater, Mrs. Bourne."

*Thank you, Keith—^you don't mind if I call you Keith, do you—you young men seem like boys to me. I won't go, I'm spending my evenings improving my contract, but Hester—"

"I didn't mean Hester, I meant your other daughter," he corrected curtly.

Linda could have cheerfully strangled him as her mother's face stiffened and the color flew to Hester's hair. How abominable of him. It wasn't the first time he had shown claws, sharp, tearing, cruel claws. She had seen it happen tn the office. Janet Colton's voice broke the uncomfortable silence.

"I'll send the car for you next Friday, Miss Brewster. Mr. Sanders, I want that perfect secretary of yours for the week end. So don't send her to the country on an assignment." She hesitated before she added: "Miss Hester, you will join us, won't you? If convenient the chauffeur will pick you all up here."

"Thank you. I'll love to come."

Janet Colton laughed in response to Skid Grant's suggestive cough.

"Don't teU me I can't count on you, Mr. Grant?"

"Skid to you, Mrs. Colton. The invitation is so sudden. Thanks, I'll be there with bells on. Sanders, this is where you get completely and utterly left."

"I'm afraid there is a reason for my being left, Grant. You see, while I'm a pal of her husband's, I've cut Mrs. Colton's brother out of a big piece of business. Naturally she's sore about it."

For an instant Greg Merton's anger beat against the silence.

"Don't talk like a darn fool, Sanders," he protested, "and don't lug business in here."

Something woke in Linda, something savage, resentful. Greg Merton had accused her of having told her boss that Mrs. Steele was about to sell her estate. This was the moment to have that straightened out.

"Keith," she said reverting to the familiar name she had called him last summer, "I want you to tell Greg Merton that you did not hear through me that the Steele estate was to be put on the market, that I had never mentioned it to you."

Sanders looked from her face to Merton who had taken a step forward. His eyes were at their coldest. His smile was at its most sardonic. He stroked his clipped mustache.

"I'd do a lot for you, Miss Bourne, but I can't lie about a matter of business. Where else would I hear of it if you hadn't told me?"

Linda's gasp of amazement was lost in Greg Merton's cool laugh.

"That makes it just perfect. Come on, Janet. Let's go."

X

THE MUSIC had fiddles and piccolos as well as drums. It whimpered and whistled. To its rhythm Spanish Infanta skirts drifted and swished against Victorian velvets in the crowded space between the tables. A touch of Watteau. A touch of pre-War hobble. Glimmer of paillettes. The Orient in jewels. The pulled-back look. Skirts yards wide in the Degas ballet manner. The covered-up effect. The near-nude. Sleek heads snuggled against black broadcloth shoulders. Eyes smiling alluringly up into eyes that flamed in response or smiled back with amused detachment. A shimmering kaleidoscope of color. A sea of perfume. A blaze of jewels, real or simulated.

"Here we are Lindy, geared to a session in the world's 50

newest, most jammed night club. How do you like this joint?"

"Garish but dramatic."

"You've said it. Now that we have dined do we move on, dance or set?"

"If you don't mind, Skiddy, let's just 'set' and watch the dancers for a while. This is certainly the season to dress as one likes. There is about every type of costume on that floor but slacks."

"That's a pretty slick outfit you're wearing, half white and half green. What's the slithery stuff?"

"Silk jersey. I like the way it drapes."

"Suits you down to the ground. It's photogenic to the nth degree. What'll you have to drink? Your usual riotous orange juice?"

"With soda to make it sparkle. I love the tickle as it goes down. It's really quite stimulating, believe it or not."

"Oh yeah? I'll take champagne. The brew must be exciting. Your eyes are all twinkle, twinkle in anticipation."

"That isn't what makes me laugh, it's the thought of coming to a de luxe night spot and drinking orange juice. Aren't the women's clothes scrumptious? I could care for that little silver number that just waltzed past."

She watched the dancers as he gave the order. It was a relief to be here, to see something that would push Keith Sanders' face, his voice from her mind as he had declared:

"I'd do a lot for you, Miss Bourne, but I can't lie about a matter of business. Where else would I hear of it if you hadn't told me?"

As he had spoken the solid ground of faith in him, in his honesty, had cracked and crumbled under her feet. Re had said he couldn't lie. He was lying and he knew it. She closed her eyes tight as if to shut out the vision of Greg Merton's masklike face as he listened. Instead she shut it in. What difference did it make? Sanders' lie was but a confirmation of Greg's belief that she had repeated his conversation with Janet Colton to her boss, wasn't it?

"Come back, Lindy." Grant tapped her hand lightly with a stubby finger. "Living over that scene at Ruth's this afternoon, aren't you? What was it all about?"

She regarded him thoughtfully. His evening clothes accentuated the roundness of his ruddy face with the blunt, freckled nose, the brown of his large, expressive eyes behind the bone-rimmed spectacles. His smile was heart-warming. In short, he was a rock of refuge in an ocean of uncertainty. She would get his viewpoint.

"I'd like to tell you, Skid, if you'll regard it as confidential?"

"Sure. Come across. I*m worth my weight in secrets. Nobody loves me but they all confide in me. I'll be silent as a tubeless radio. Shoot."

To the accompaniment of muted violins she told him of the conversation between Greg Merton and his sister at the Inn about their Aunt Jane and her estate; of being sent by Sanders to The Castle, which he had been commissioned to sell; of meeting Greg in the garden there, of her stunned surprise, of his furious accusation that she had rushed back to town from the Inn to inform her boss that the estate was in the market.

"It hurt, hurt terribly, to have him think I would do a thing like that, so, while the two men were together at Ruth's this afternoon, I had a crazy hunch to bring it into the open, to have Keith assure Greg Merton that he had not learned of the proposed sale through me. You heard his answer."

"Then you didn't tell him?"

"Skid! Do you believe Keith Sanders and not me?"

*Take it easy, Lindy. Of course I don't. What are you going to do about it? Chuck your job? Have you heard Opportunity calling? I'll bet you haven't. That's a busy line, these days. If you check out and hunt for the perfect boss you'll have some hunt. Business isn't conducted on purely altruistic lines, now."

"I can't work for a man whom I believe to be dishonest, can I?"

"I suppose you can but you don't have to. If you didn't tell Sanders—^hold everything, I'll change that *if to as—how do you account for his so quickly finding out that the Steele estate was in the market?"

"I can't account for it. Madam Steele told her nephew that Bill Colton had recommended Sanders and that she had taken his advice. Greg Merton immediately jumped to the conclusion that I had rushed the news his sister had told him at the Inn to my boss, who had then asked Mr. Colton to say a good word for him."

"Bill ColtonI Husband of that stunning woman we met this afternoon?"

"Do you know them?"

"By reputation only until I met her today. They are real people and I don't mean maybe. I wonder why Colton is herding with Sanders and the high-flying bunch he travels with."

"You don't like Keith, do you?"

"I do not. He's an exhibitionist. But that doesn't mean that I'm advising you to throw up your job with him until you are sure of another, if you want another. You wouldn't prefer to marry me, would you?" His voice was light but the earnestness in it hurt her. 52

••No, Skid, but I—"

"None of that I-love-you-like-a-cousin stuff, and don't blink your lashes. I can take it. There are plenty more fish in the sea with tawny hair and big brown eyes and—"

"Like Hester's/* Linda suggested eagerly.

'That's an idea," he grinned. "But she's gone off the deep end about Merton, hasn't she? I rather got that impression."

**You're right. But perhaps he'U throw her over because he can't stand her *business-chaser' sister. In spite of your advice, Skid, I've made up my mind to leave Sanders' ofl&ce."

"You didn't think I believed you would act on it, did you? Ruthetta is the only female I know who will ask a man's advice and take it. If you step out of your present job what will you look for? Employers aren't sending out scouts to bring in secretaries. Got anything in your mind?"

Even as she shook her head, before her eyes flashed a sheet of creamy letter paper with bold Spencerian script. Madam Steele had offered her a position. Opportunity calling? Was it a rainbow to follow which might have a pot of gold at the end of it, or was it a blind alley from which she would have to back out?

"Lindy! Lindy!" Grant's low, strained voice roused her from her preoccupation.

"What is it. Skid? You're white." She followed his eyes. He was staring at the back of a woman at a nearby table. Linda couldn't see her face, could see only the gold-sequined sheath which outlined her figure as if she had been melted and poured into it. She was laughing and gesticulating with an arm glittering and flashing with diamonds. Someone he knew?

"Have you seen a ghost. Skid?"

"Let's dance."

As they stepped onto the crowded floor he put his lips close to her ear:

"Get this, Lindy. I'm about to go screwball for a purpose."

She bent back her head to look at him. What did he mean? His face was still white. He sounded mysterious. It wasn't what he had been drinking. He hadn't finished one glass of champagne. However, he was Skid Grant whom she had known for years. She could trust him.

"Can I help?"

"You sure can. When we get back to our table I'll pretend I'm blotto. Pull me away and get me out of the room. It'll be darned unpleasant for you, but you'll do a great favor to me. Are you game?"

Linda swallowed hard. She hated to be conspicuous and to drag a man who was tight out of a night club was going some. But it was Skid. He had a good reason or he wouldn't ask her to do it. She nodded. Her voice wouldn't come.

"Don't call me Skid. Call me—^Tom. Tom—Sterling's the name. Here we go."

His face was still colorless as they returned to their table. Linda was cold with apprehension. What was he planning? He swayed on his feet, picked up his glass and drained it. Grinned at her vacantly.

"Let's go, Sugar. This is a rotten Club an' . . ,"

The guests at a table turned to look at him, laughed and whispered. Skid heard them and swung in their direction. He glared at the woman in sequins and the man beside her who had sprung to his feet. Linda's heart stopped beating, Alix Crane and the suave Seiior Lorillol Now what?