Wild Honey (22 page)

Like his own, it was wet with tears.

“B
UT
, M
O-OM
, Robbie’s camped out lotsa times at his cousins’, ‘n’ he’s a four-year-old, too.”

Randi heard the tears threatening Matt’s voice and felt like an ogre. She couldn’t help recalling his words to Travis a couple of nights before, wondering if he’d been hinting at this at the time.

Hinting that with a dad, he wouldn’t need to plead, since the dad would probably join in the all-male camp-out.

Oh,
Lord,
don’t think about that. You’ve lost enough sleep over
the
things he said the other night, as it is! Just deal with what’s going on now, Terhune!

But her stomach clenched at the thought of Matt on an overnight camp-out with Robbie Spencer and Robbie’s tenyear-old twin cousins. What if something happened? Like another urinary infection. The boys would only be in the cousin’s backyard, true, but how would the other children recognize an emergency if it happened? They were just kids!

“Matt, sweetheart,” she began tentatively, searching for a way to say no without upsetting him, “I know you’ve got your heart set on this, but—”

“But!” he cried. “When you say ‘but,’ you always mean no!” Face screwed into a contortion heralding tears, he turned toward his aunt, who was mixing a batch of brownies at the kitchen counter. “Aunt Jill, make her unnerstan’!”

As Jill turned to face them, Randi shot her a look that said,
Make
him
understand.

Jill sighed. Randi was becoming overprotective. The signs had been increasing over the past year, and since
Matt’s recent crisis and hospitalization, his mother’s tendency toward excessive fear and restraint of the child’s emerging independence had mushroomed. Something had to be done.

“Matt,” she said softly, “why don’t you take Ulysses for a romp in the yard while your mom and I talk?”

His lower lip thrust out, Matt cast a doubtful eye over the two women. His aunt smiled at him, and he glanced at his mother and managed to pull in his lip. “All right,” he mumbled. “C’mon, ‘Lysses—” he signaled the pup “—we gots to let these wimmens have a talk.”

“Y
OU COULD’VE SUPPORTED
me,” Randi accused when she and Jill were alone. She gestured in the direction of the backyard. “That little stinker’s sharp as a tack, and like most bright children, he’s not above playing off the adults in his life against each other.”

Jill shoved the brownies in the oven, turned to her and sighed. “I know, love, but hear me out, okay?” She smiled to take the edge off what she was about to say, and Randi gave a reluctant nod.

“Randi, I know you worry about Matt and only want to protect him from harm, but isn’t it possible you could be, uh, overdoing it a bit?”

“Overdoing it?” Randi looked hurt. “What if something should happen with Matt, and the other boys don’t realize it? What if they can’t see he’s in trouble?”

“But the parents will be only yards away.”

Randi speared her with a look that said she wasn’t budging an inch.

“Okay,” Jill said, “if you’re not comfortable with the setup as it stands, what if we send along our cellular phone and teach Matt and the boys how to use it? Better yet, we could give ‘em a call every so often. Maybe we’d be waking them up all night, but kids fall back to sleep with no
trouble. But if something was wrong, we could alert the parents. They’d be there in moments.”

Randi was silent as she digested this. Trust Jill to come up with a creative solution; it went hand in hand with her other artistic talents, she supposed. But Randi’s apprehension didn’t ease, though she was hard put to say why. “I don’t know, Jill,” she began evasively. “I mean, Mall’s just a baby. He’s—”

“He’s not a baby. He’s four and a half years old. But he could resent being
treated
like a baby if you don’t lighten up a bit.”

“Lighten up!” Randi was stung. Yet, try as she might, she couldn’t ignore the ring of truth in Jill’s words. Matt
had
sounded resentful. That had stung, too.

“Look, sweetheart,” Jill said gently, putting an arm about her shoulders, “no one knows better than I how loving and caring a parent you’ve been. No kid could’ve had a better mom. All I’m saying now is, you might wanna take a fresh look at the situation. Your little boy’s growing up. He needs some freedom to try his wings.”

She’s right,
Randi thought,
so why does it hurt? Why can’t I relax about this?

Though Randi was silent, Jill could tell she’d given her pause. “Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you think about it awhile? The camp-out’s not till the weekend. No one’s demanding you make a decision right now.”

Randi cocked her head toward the backyard and managed a grin. “Oh, no? Did you see the look young Master Terhune tossed us as he left?”

Jill chuckled, relieved to see her sister’s sense of humor peeking through. “Just you leave Master Terhune to ol’ Jill the pill, kid. By the time—”

“Mom! Aunt Jill!” Matt’s voice cut across the yard. “It’s Travis! Travis is here!”

“Oh, no!” Randi cast an eye over the paint-stained jeans and T-shirt she frequently wore around the house. Her hand
went to her hair, caught in an askew ponytail that was still damp from the shower she took after jogging. “Lord, I’m a mess! Why
does
that man insist on showing up unannounced?”

Jill flushed. She’d known Travis was coming and why. But Randi wasn’t supposed to know about it, for fear she’d resist what he had in mind—what
they
had in mind, now that he’d talked her into it. And in this, she still had some uncertainty; she prayed she wasn’t making a mistake. “Uh, why don’t you run up and change while I keep him entertained, sis?”

Randi needed no urging. flashing her a look of gratitude, she exploded out of her chair and flew upstairs.

“B
EST BROWNIES
I ever tasted,” Travis declared as he sat at the kitchen table with all three Terhunes.

Matt chimed in with “Me, too!” then glanced at his mother. “Uh, ‘cept for Mom’s,” he added loyally. “Her ‘n’ Aunt Jill make the bestest brownies in the whole world. They’re lots better ‘n Robbie’s mom’s. She puts
nuts
in ‘em. Yuck!”

“Say, Tiger—” Travis glanced at the wall clock and then at Jill “—if it’s okay with Mom and Aunt Jill, why don’t you take one over to Robbie right now? He might like ‘em, too.”

“But for heaven’s sake, don’t say anything about the nuts!” Randi warned, prompting a giggle from Matt.

“Matter of fact,” Jill added with a glance at the clock as she sectioned off four brownies, “you can take some for all the Spencers.”

“Okay,” Matt said cheerfully, “but that baby can’t eat any.” He made a face. “She gots no teeth.”

Chuckling, Jill covered the plateful with plastic wrap and handed it to Matt.

“Robbie won’t care ‘bout the nuts, though,” he called
over his shoulder from the back door. “He eats
anything
chawk-lit!”

“Okay, you two,” Randi said when Matt had disappeared-out the door, “what’s going on? I saw you glancing at the clock, and you couldn’t wait to hustle Matt out of here. C’mon, what’s up?”

“She’s quick,” Travis said to Jill. “I’ll say that for her.”

“Sharp as scissors, my sister,” Jill agreed with a nod. “Maybe she missed her calling. Does the CIA hire women?”

“Very funny,” Randi grumbled, “but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there’s something in the works between you two. Now, out with it.”

“Tsk, tsk.” Travis shook his head. “Bossy, too. Maybe you’d better tell her, Jill.”

“Tell me what?” Randi demanded.

“And impatient!” Jill said with a laugh. But when Randi threatened to hurl a brownie at her, she held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay!”

Randi lowered the brownie to her plate and Jill told her, “You know Travis has reconciled with his family, right? Well, one of the percs of being a full-fledged, dues-paidup member of the McLean clan is the use of—get this, sis—the family yacht!”

Randi’s eyes went wide, but Travis ran a hand over his jaw and groaned.
Yacht.
He never called the damned thing a yacht.

“And,” Jill went on, “he’d like your permission to take Matt out for a cruise.”

“Oh,” Randi said. Just Matt? Why not Matt and her? Why not all three of them? Were women routinely excluded for some reason? “All by himself?” she asked, trying to keep from sounding hurt—and worried.

“Well, no,” Travis said. “I mean, I’ll be sailing with him, and there’s the captain and crew, of course.”

“It’ll only be for a few hours,” Jill put in, seeing the
reluctance on her sister’s face. “We’d wait for them at this little restaurant at the yacht basin Travis told me about.”

Randi shook her head. “I don’t know, Travis…” she began, then caught the arch look on Jill’s face. A look that said,
There you go again!

“It’ll be perfectly safe,” he assured her. “But, tell you what—why don’t I take you out there today? I can show you how safe it’ll be.”

“What, right now?”

“For somethin’ like this, darlin’—” his gaze was strangely full of promise, sending tendrils of that old nameless longing to her nerve endings, “—yeah, now’s the time.”

A
S TRAVIS GAVE HER
a tour of the
Sarah Anne,
Randi was awestruck. The sheer size of the yacht, not to mention its grand appointments, boggled the mind. It hit her now just how wealthy Travis, or his family at least, was. The furnishings alone had to cost multiples of what she made in a year.

“Hope you brought an appetite, darlin’.” Travis’s lazy drawl invaded her unsettling thoughts. “Unless my nose is lyin’, Etienne’s cookin’ up a storm in the galley.”

The tantalizing aroma of something delicious drifted up from below. Randi sniffed appreciatively as he led her toward a set of stairs, carpeted in a plush turquoise wool.

“Etienne?” she asked, suddenly aware of the warmth of Travis’s hand on her arm. She was aware of his “darlin’,” as well, though she’d long since told herself this was nothing more than a casual endearment, perhaps something he threw at many women. But in recent days she wasn’t so sure; memories of the quiet intimate moments they’d shared with Matt, not to mention the kisses they’d exchanged, said there was far more than the casual between them. And if that were true—

“French chef extraordinaire.” Travis’s reply cut off these disturbing musings. “The sucker just lives to cook!” he added with the smile that made her feel giddy and nearly stumble over her own feet.

“Watch it, darlin’,” he warned, running his eyes down
the slim length of her white slacks to her rubber-soled shoes. “The carpet’s not always footwear friendly.”

His arm curved around her back as he helped her down the stairs; it was sure and strong, in no way overly familiar, yet she’d seen the gleam of appreciation in his eyes when he looked at her. His attentions left her oddly uncertain, breathless even, and she wondered why she couldn’t relax with him. This was Travis, a man she knew and trusted, not some stranger. With an effort to appear calm, she glanced about.

The yacht’s interior was done in turquoise and terracotta, with varying shades in between. The cooler hues ranged from the carpet’s rich blue-green to the soft aqua of the silk wall covering; warm earth tones in the upholstered furniture gave way to paler apricots and peaches in various accessories, and tasteful objets d’art graced tables and walls. Everything spoke of luxury and sophistication, with an emphasis on comfort, and was a far cry from anything in her experience.

And if the yacht’s interior wasn’t imposing enough, she was still all too aware of Travis’s closeness. Of the mere inches that separated them as he guided her past a grand piano to a cozy lounge with floor-to-ceiling windows affording a view of the bay. Here, two deep comfortablelooking velvet chairs faced a low table of heavy hammered brass; it bore a tray of delicious-looking hot hors d’oevres. A silver ice bucket held a foil-capped bottle; two fluted glasses rested beside it.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Champagne?”

He shot her a lopsided grin and winked. “Louis Roederer at last!”

“With or without marshmallows?” she quipped, still trying to ignore the effect he was having on her. But that was like trying to ignore a tidal wave, and the results were just as devastating. Tall, tanned and masculine to the last pore, his golden perfection radiated strength and quiet confi-
dence. As he seated her, she caught the clean male scent of him; it mingled with the hint of salt air and sunshine that clung to his hair and clothes.

Taking a deep breath, she released it slowly, trying to dispel the teasing assault to her senses. Yet despite all this, she found herself regretting the loss of his warmth when he moved to his chair.
What’s wrong with me? Do I want the nearness or don’t I? Make up your mind, Terhune!

“No marshmallows at the moment, darlin’, but if you want some—”

“Oh, no…no, that’s all right. Um, what were you saying about the chef?” She fiddled nervously with the ends of the knot that tied the tails of her navy silk blouse at her waist.

“Oh, Etienne.” Travis reached for the champagne. “He’s a former Michelin four-star chef, and a permanent fixture aboard. My father won’t say, but rumor has it he bribed him away from Onassis some years back.” He grinned. “We’ll be samplin’ his specialty for dinner.”

“Dinner?” She checked her watch; it was only four in the afternoon. “But I’m just here for a quick tour to—”

“To see if it’s safe for Matt to sail on the
Sarah Anne,
I know. But you can’t make that decision while she’s in port,” he added smoothly. “Any decent tour’s gotta include a little run across the bay.” He wasn’t about to add that Etienne’s dinner was scheduled to be served around midnight, and by then, they’d be far out to sea. Randi didn’t know it, but she was about to be courted. Yes, courted. An old-fashioned term, maybe, but he meant it, which was what had convinced Jill to agree to what he had in mind; he wanted to marry this woman, to build a life with her—and their son.

“Oh. I see.” She felt warmed and foolish at the same time. She recalled her disappointment back at the house, that he’d asked
Matt
and not her; yet it seemed she’d been invited to sail, after all. And these hors d’ouvres were just
a beginning. Imagine—dinner by a four-star chef. She flashed Travis a bright smile. “How long a run?”

God, that smile! How in hell can they dub her an ice queen with a smile like that? A man could die happy, drinking it in.
“Uh, how long? Oh, a couple of hours or so,” he said vaguely as he gently popped the champagne cork.

He told himself the white lie was necessary; his object was to help her past her fears, past the reasons she came across as an ice queen, and to do that, he needed a few days, at least. Besides, by the time she realized what was up, he’d have her too relaxed to care. He hoped so, anyway. If he didn’t, she’d likely never trust him again.

W
HEN THEY’D CONSUMED
enough champagne and hors d’ouvres to make Randi wonder how she’d ever make room for Etienne’s dinner, Travis introduced her to Captain Baker. Baker, who joined them in the lounge, was a soft-spoken man of about fifty, with silver hair and a closecropped beard to match. In his crisp navy jacket and white slacks, he looked like someone straight out of an ad in a yachting magazine.

For Randi’s benefit, the captain described the standard for maritime safety regulations. He also explained how the
Sarah Anne
met and exceeded the standard in every respect.

“Does that ease your mind, darlin’?” Travis asked after Baker excused himself to see about getting them under way.

“Oh…um, yes,” she answered tentatively. She’d had no idea of the extent of such regulations, and she certainly felt relaxed about the impending cruise. On the other hand, why was he insisting on taking Matt our separately? She’d feel a lot more at ease if she could go along when they…

Your little boy’s growing up, love.
Jill’s words slipped into her thoughts, and Randi put a lid on her misgivings. Matt would be with Travis, and she trusted Travis, didn’t she? Of course she did.

As if on cue, with the captain’s departure, a sound system began to pipe in soft orchestral music. It was languid and dreamy, drenched in long mellow chords carried by the strings.

Travis smiled lazily and reached for her hand. “May I have this dance, ma’am?” Without waiting for a reply, he caught her hand and led her to a polished wooden floor tucked discreetly behind the piano.

As he took her in his arms and began to move to the soft romantic music, she felt light-headed. Maybe she should have passed on the champagne. Yet she suspected it wasn’t the champagne but Travis’s nearness that was intoxicating, stealing along her senses like curling wisps of smoke.

Since he was more than a head taller, she found herself breathing in the scent of him rising from his open-throated shirt: a faint hint of spice from the soap he’d used, maybe a trace of cologne, and the essence of clean healthy male.

“Penny for your thoughts, darlin’.” Throaty and low, his voice drifted somewhere over her ear. She had a fleeting thought that he was holding her just right: comfortably, and not too close, guiding her over the mirror-smooth floor with just the slightest pressure of his hand at her back.

“Mmm? Oh, I was just thinking what a good dancer you are.” She surprised herself with this. Jill had taught her to dance when they were teenagers, and she’d enjoyed learning. Yet she’d always hated school dances. Dancing meant being held by a male partner. She invariably found herself stiff and awkward in the embrace of some adolescent boy she barely knew. After a while she began to invent excuses for not going.

Later on, when she was in college, she limited herself to fast numbers that didn’t require the partners to touch. Yet even then, she’d had to force herself to participate. Just the sight of all those gyrating bodies on a dance floor made her uncomfortable. She realized with a start that Travis McLean
was the first adult male who’d ever held her in his arms on a dance floor. More surprising yet, it felt…easy, as if they’d been doing it for years.

“Funny,” he murmured, “I was just thinkin’ the same ‘bout you. Knew you’d be a good dancer, though.”

She glanced up at him questioningly.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you? You’re grace itself, Randi. The way you move, the way you carry yourself, it’s as if you can’t set a foot wrong if you try. Where’d you come by all that, hmm?”

“I—I’m not sure but, well, I guess it could come from athletics. I’ve always loved sports.” She laughed. “When I was a little girl, Daddy used to say I was a natural athlete and wasn’t I lucky. I could just plunge in and enjoy a sport, while the rest of the world had to work at it.”

Travis found himself as entranced by the sound of her laugh as he was by her smile. She didn’t laugh nearly enough and should do it more often. He made a mental note to work on it. “Sounds like your daddy was a real special person.”

“Oh, he was!” Her eyes closed for a moment and a soft smile curved her lips. The smile widened as she looked up at him. “He was a big blond bear of a man, and the gentlest person I’ve ever known. And he was
funny.
He was always making us laugh with the craziest antics you could imagine. Lord, when I think of some of the things he did, I still get the giggles.”

Travis smiled into her shining eyes. “Tell me,” he encouraged softly.

She chuckled. “I remember a Mother’s Day when I was about six or seven. Jill and I conspired with Daddy to surprise Mama with a special breakfast in bed. He woke us at an ungodly hour—it was still dark outside—and we sneaked downstairs to make flapjacks. Jill and I mixed the batter while Daddy fried sausages.”

Another chuckle. “Jill and I got flour everywhere, all
over the kitchen and ourselves. But Daddy didn’t scold. He just announced that we’d all be clowns. Said flour made the best clown makeup in the world.

“And before we knew it, he was helping us smear butter on our faces and dust them with flour. We found a do-ityourself cake-frosting kit in the pantry, and we used the little tubes of colored frosting to draw clown eyes and big smiling lips. There was a powder room off the kitchen, and we closed the door before crowding around the mirror to apply our ‘makeup,’ so our giggles wouldn’t wake Mama.”

She smiled reminiscently. “Then we carried Mama’s breakfast to her singing ‘All the world loves a clown’ at the tops of our lungs. Lord, if Mama hadn’t been in bed, she’d have been on the floor she was laughing so hard.”

Chuckling, Travis executed a graceful spin on the dance floor that brought her closer, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was telling him about other comical things her father had done: the time he’d coaxed Jill into practicing her piano lesson by covering himself in tin foil and pretending to be a metronome; the way he didn’t just read bedtime stories, but acted out all the parts.

“Our favorite was Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are,” she finished. “The faces he made! And he roared the funniest loudest roars.”

Travis was still chuckling. “Sounds like one hell of a guy. Wish I’d known him.”

“I…I wish you had, too.” She thought of the things he’d told her about his own father, and her heart ached for him, for the child he’d been. “And I wish you’d had…uh, that is…” The words trailed off awkwardly, but Travis only smiled.

“Well, I didn’t,” he said, looking down at her as he drew her right hand to his chest and curled his fingers around it. “Have a warm ‘n’ lovin’ father, that is. But miracles do happen, even if they arrive a little late.”

He went on to tell her more about Trent McLean’s transformation.
When he told her about his father’s eagerness to meet Matt and teach him to swing a golf club, his voice caught and he had to look away.

But she’d seen the sheen of moisture in his eyes, and was greatly moved by the certainty that the estrangement from his father had cut more deeply than he’d let on, for Travis wasn’t a man easily given to tears. That she somehow knew this, without understanding how she knew, was something she didn’t stop to ponder; it simply was.

“Travis,” she found herself saying in a burst of enthusiasm, “what if…well, I suppose we’ll have some careful explaining to do, to prepare Matt, but perhaps we can arrange for them to meet?”

He wondered if she realized what this would mean. Careful explaining could involve telling Matt who Trent was. And if he learned who Trent was, then it followed that he’d learn…His heart began to pound. Was that what she was saying? Did he dare pursue this now?

Randi watched a frown cross his face and misinterpreted it to mean he was uncertain about his father, after all. “I mean,” she hastily put in, “if your dad’s really had a change of heart…”

“He has,” Travis said, an image of his father in the living room at Sunnyfields that day filling his mind. He found himself suddenly blinking back tears as he looked at her. “He means it, Randi, though I sometimes need to mentally pinch myself to believe it.”

She smiled into his eyes. “I’m glad. Better late than never, as they say.” Searching his face, she gave her head a rueful shake. “I only wish it’d come while you were still…”

“I know,” he said quietly. They’d stopped dancing; the soft music flowed around them, blending with the easy movement of the yacht through the water.