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‘Well—’ She had picked up the baby in her arms, swathed only in a diaper, and was rocking him. The little eyes were blinking, as if the lids were too heavy for them. A few pacing steps would put the lad away, for sure. ‘It’s not such a big story,’ she said softly. ‘My dad ran a photographic studio in our home town, and I worked with him. And then he died very suddenly. My mother thought I was too young to run things. Probably she was right. I was only sixteen. She hired a man to run the shop. Jef Stowbridge. And then later, when everyone else except Marion and me had grown up and left home, she married Jef. Only—’

‘Only you couldn’t get along with your stepfather?’

‘Well, yes—but—it’s not what you’re thinking. Jef is just right for Mom. But he and I didn’t see eye to eye about the business, and Mom felt she had to be on his side. I could see that it might cause a split in their marriage—so I just packed my bags and
I
split. That was two years ago and, from what I hear, they’re very happy.’

‘And you?’

‘Well—things didn’t work out exactly as I expected. The
Chicago Tribune,
the
Boston Herald,
the papers in Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and Richmond—they just didn’t seem to know they needed a photographer fresh out of college, with three cameras and no experience. But I did find a niche, made a living wage, and even had four photographs of my own in a national exhibition last year. It’s a living.’

‘But you’re not wedded to it?’

‘No—hardly. I like what I do, but photographers are a dime a dozen, and you have to conform. I hate that word.’

‘Me, too,’ he said quietly. She had been watching the baby, but his comment brought her head up. He was solemn, appraising. He has something on his mind, she told herself. Something big. Oh well.

He started to say something more, but she stopped him. ‘How about hushing up,’ she whispered. ‘The little fellow’s finally asleep. He must have missed a great deal of rest, what with all the newness of things, and his non-stop crying.’

The bed was a Hollywood type, pushed up against one of the walls. She took two pillows and arranged them to make a little pen for him. He was smiling in his sleep. His long blond eyelashes were tightly curled against his cheeks, and his tousled hair hung down over his face in long curls. He reminded her of somebody. Who? The thought escaped her. She bent over the bed to get him properly placed. ‘What a waste,’ she whispered.

‘How so?’

‘Look at him. All those curls and eyelashes wasted. He should have been a girl!’ She pushed herself back up to standing position, and felt a sudden tension, a touch of fear. Harry King was standing as close to her as a stamp is to the envelope. She tried to back away, but found that her knees were pressed against the side of the
bed,
and would not answer her command.

‘He needs to—to sleep, Mr King,’ she stammered. His presence was upsetting her, and she could not tell why. It should have been a pleasure standing beside him. In all Katie’s life she had had a fear of standing beside boys. They were always shorter than she, so much so that she had adopted a defensive crouch in the presence of men. But this man towered over her. She had to bend her head back to see his face!

‘The name is Harry,’ he said quietly. ‘Call me Harry. Mr King was my father. You’re a cute little rascal, Katie.’

Her head snapped back in astonishment. No one had ever called her that. Well, not since her tenth birthday. Cute little rascal? Did he need glasses? Those blue eyes were close to her—close and staring. It seemed to Katie as if he never blinked. There was a tremor running up and down her legs, something she had never experienced before. He noticed.

‘What’s disturbing you?’ he asked. His deep voice was like a caress, almost as if he were stroking her, hypnotising her. It took a conscious feat of will-power for her to snap out of it.

‘I must be tired,’ she said. ‘I was driving all night. All night.’ Her teeth were chattering, and she knew it had nothing to do with missing a night’s sleep.

‘You know what I like about you?’ he asked. And then didn’t wait for an answer, just like his aunt. ‘I get the feeling that I could kiss you without having to bend over like a pretzel, or break my back doing it. Like this.’

He proceeded to demonstrate. His head moved slowly towards her, trapping her in the pools of his eyes. For a second he hesitated, as a flash of alarm crossed her face, but only for a second. She closed her eyes, trying to wall out the sight of him, and stiffened her will; brought all her defences to bear. And was totally out-manoeuvred.

In the course of her years Katie had been kissed before, on occasion by experts. But with him, something went wrong. His lips feather-touched hers, for just a brief moment of contact, and in that moment some sort of static spark leaped between them, stinging both into the realisation that something extraordinary had happened.

He pulled back from her, leaving her in a puzzled daze, one hand raised to her cheek as if to assure herself that everything was all right. Her eyes opened slowly. He was poised above her, searching her face, a wide grin on his. She tried to move away from him, but again her knees refused the order. He lowered his head again, applying a steadily increasing pressure against her lips until she sighed and opened them to his probing, seeking tongue. Much against her will, her hands encircled his neck, burying themselves in the thick hair at the back of his head. His arms were both around her, pressing her closer against his steel frame. For some reason her leg muscles buckled, throwing her entire weight on to his arms.

He freed one of his hands and it roamed up and down her backbone. She gasped at the fiery touch, and moaned as his hand circled to her breast and hesitated there. Deep in her mind there was an insistent nagging need to get closer to him, but her limp body was beyond her control. She gasped again as the pressure on her mouth increased. The noise disturbed the baby, who whimpered in his sleep, and brought them both back to reality. He lifted his lips from hers, touched the tip of her nose gently, then released her.

With his strength gone from her she collapsed on to the bed, gasping for breath. He had both hands in his pockets now, watching her like a hawk peering down at his next victim. And then, slowly, that wide grin came across his face again. He laughed softly. ‘You’ve got weak knees for this kind of game,’ he chortled.

‘I don’t—I—that’s not part of the contract for domestics,’ she spluttered. ‘I wish you hadn’t done that. What will your—what will Eloise say?’

‘But we both know that you’re not a domestic, don’t we?’ he returned. ‘And as for Eloise, I won’t tell her if you won’t!’

‘Why you—you conniving arrogant—chauvinist!’ She spat the words at him, her face flushed with anger. ‘You’re going to marry Eloise, and you play games with me at the same time?’

‘Now, now,’ he chuckled. ‘You may think I’m going to marry Eloise, and Eloise might think so too, but the truth of the matter is that I’m just not the marrying type. ’

‘And you think that gives you the right to—to force yourself on me?’

‘Come on, love,’ he taunted. ‘I can’t help it if you have weak knees. That was hardly forcing, you know. And don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it, because I know you did. I did, too. I would think that my aunt would have picked out a more experienced candidate though. Now, perhaps you’d like to tell me what kind of a plot Aunt Grace is working on this time?

‘Coincidence is a little hard to swallow. This road and this house are about as far as you can get from the mainstream of life. Anybody who chose Highway 19W as a short cut to Ohio needs her brain transplanted. It only took me sixty seconds to see that dear Aunt Grace is up to her little game again. And that makes you an accessory to the crime, doesn’t it?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about!’ Katie snapped at him. ‘I don’t know you, I didn’t know your aunt, and I don’t even know this poor little kid. Is that all a coincidence?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t put it past Aunt Grace and my sister to work up some double-barrelled scheme. Don’t be alarmed, though. I always manage to uncover the plot before the trap is sprung. Are your bags still out in your car? I’ll go get them. You can just sit there and think about what new cover story you plan to tell me, or you can hop across the hall and consult with the First Witch. I’ll walk very slowly to give you a better chance.’

‘Why you—you insufferable—’ But the invective had lost its flavour as the door closed behind him. Just sit here? Why that—insulting man! I’ll get down to my car somehow, and I’ll—but she had been just sitting, and the inaction did her in. She fell over on her side, feet still on the floor, and dozed away into another fog, forgetfulness.

He returned in about an hour with her three bags. He set them down quietly in the corner, and came over to the bed. With much tender care he picked up her legs and swung them up on the bed. Then, still moving cautiously, he unlaced her high-top brogues and slipped them off. He also loosened the belt of her jeans and brought a blanket from the cupboard to cover her and the baby.

Her wild russet curls had fallen across her eyes and cheek. He brushed them back with a light finger. There was a tiny droplet of perspiration standing on the very tip of her nose. He bent over, and removed it with his tongue. He stood there for another three or four minutes, brooding over her, tracing the outline of her under the blankets, recalling the spark that had jumped between them. It was so obviously another one of Aunt Grace’s ploys, yet something didn’t feel right, and he was at a loss to say just what it was. He walked back to the door, jingling the change in his pocket with a nervous hand.

‘A professional bachelor needs to be very wary indeed,’ he muttered to himself as he went out into the corridor. ‘Take care, Harry.’ But as he wandered down the stairs he wondered if he really wanted to—take care, that is.

Waking
up had always been a problem for Katie. She did it in stages, unfolding her long slender frame somewhat in the manner of a folding ruler. On this particular morning she faced not only the unfolding problem, but also the fact that she was in a strange bedroom. Both eyes flew open as she struggled to place herself. When recognition struck, she rolled over frantically, searching. ‘The baby!’ she moaned as her stiff muscles complained. There
had
been a baby. And that monstrous man who thought she was some sort of devil in league with his aunt—Aunt Grace? But there was no baby in sight. A cocoon of blankets and pillows still made a little nest, but it was empty. She rolled back to the edge of the bed and managed to get her feet on the floor.

There was a considerable chatter outside the window, where two blue jays were disputing landing rights on the higher branches of the hickory tree standing close by. Katie checked her watch, then straggled over to look out. There was a delayed reaction. Her watch said eight o’clock, and she was looking eastward, straight into the glare of the sun. ‘Good Lord,’ she muttered, ‘Eight o’clock in the morning?’

Without stopping for shoes she dashed to the door, struggling the while with her jeans, which seemed to have come undone. She stopped to readjust them. Then, assured of some modesty, she pulled the door open, ran barefoot down the stairs, and burst into the kitchen.

‘My stars!’ Aunt Grace commented from her position at the stove.

‘The baby! I can’t find the baby,’ Katie stammered. ‘The baby’s gone!’

‘Not to worry, my dear. You must have been tired. You slept so long that Harry took the boy down to the swimming pool. You’ve slept almost twenty-four hours, girl. And I’m just starting breakfast. Want some?’

‘Just coffee,’ she muttered, trying to calm herself down. ‘Just coffee.’ She stumbled over to the kitchen table and dropped heavily into a chair. ‘I’ve never done that before,’ she said, ‘Not ever in my whole life!’

‘Nervous reaction,’ Aunt Grace replied. ‘You’ve been living on nerves, my girl. Here, take this coffee and go outside. I’ll call you when breakfast is ready.’

Katie cradled the warm mug in her hands, tipped in a tiny splash of milk, and strolled out on to the brick patio behind the kitchen. She moved idly towards the corner of the house, and surveyed the scene. The house was an old Federalist home, of warm, worn brick, with two clapboard wings extending from each side. It was settled near the forward edge of a small plateau, shaped like a stage, looking out over the western valleys and mountains. Behind her, where the backdrop of a stage would be, was an abrupt cliff, shooting almost straight upwards a matter of two hundred feet. In front of her, where the footlights might be, the plateau gently curved around, over a tremendous drop. Only where the bridge crossed the tumbling river, to her left rear, was there any access from the outside. A high wire-mesh fence guarded the lip of the abyss, stretching round to her right until it was blocked from sight behind a small apple orchard.

A nearer clump of trees looked unnatural. A line of poplar trees protected an area from which she could hear Jon squealing. Katie walked quietly across the soft grass until she came upon an Olympic-size swimming pool, surrounded by a concrete apron. The whole pool area was guarded by windbreaking trees, and the water was heated by solar panels. As she walked into the enclosure Jon and Harry squirmed out of the pool, chased each other in the sunlight, and then collapsed on to a pair of wating sun-loungers. Jon saw her almost immediately.

‘Momma,’ he squealed, wiggled down on to the concrete, and wobbled in her direction. Harry rolled over on his lounger to look up at her. The baby’s wobbling was getting out of control. Before he could land back in the pool Katie spurted forward and swept him up. He immediately began to play with the thin gold chain she always wore, communicating in his own private language.

‘So, he thinks you’re his mother?’ Harry called. He stood up and slipped into a robe. Katie could not stop her wandering eyes from inspecting his long lean frame. Big, of course. But slim. Well muscled, with not an ounce of fat to be seen.