Just Before Sunrise (34 page)

"I don't know. I sold the five acres where my grandparents built the cottage. I could have rebuilt."

"You didn't leave yourself an out?"

She tried some of her soup, her eyes on the fire; but Garvin didn't know what they were really seeing. A similar evening in Maine? Her lost cottage? There was, he thought, so much he didn't know about Annie Payne. He wondered if she could feel her dream of the life she'd lead in San Francisco slipping away.

Finally, she said, "Not an easy out, for sure. I've invested everything I have in my new life out here. If I went back, I'd have to start over."

Garvin tried his soup. It was hot enough, but he tasted nothing. A grating of cheese might have helped, a grinding of pepper. He hadn't bothered with either. "Do you need Sarah for your gallery to succeed?"

"The way I've dreamed of it succeeding, yes, I need her—or someone as good as she is. But I'm pragmatic. I didn't count on finding a Sarah Linwood, especially not right away. I've concentrated on doing what I'm good at, offering what I like, and developing a steady repeat business."

"Do you have a business plan?"

She glanced at him, a glint of humor in her slate blue eyes. "That's the MBA in you talking. I'm just stumbling along, figuring things out as they need to be figured out. That's not very businesslike of me, I know."

"I disagree. The most successful entrepreneurs I know begin with a dream and plan and implement goals and objectives around that dream. Flexibility—a willingness to be responsive, to revise the plan—is critical."

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, making the dark circles under her eyes less noticeable. "I see you as a man who runs a working marina. It's hard to think of you as some financial mogul."

"You didn't know me six years ago."

"No, I guess not."

"But a part of me always wanted to run a marina. It was my biggest dream when I was about nine years old. That and playing in the World Series." He could feel the cold gripping him, even with the fire hot in his face. "After Haley's death, I started teaching troubled teenagers how to sail. I met Michael Yuma. His life was a mess in a totally different way from mine. But his energy, his zeal for sailing—they were infectious, they reminded me of that old dream of mine. Pretty soon I was running a marina and he was my righthand man."

"Then running a marina is what you want to do?"

He thought a moment. "Yes, I guess it is. Yuma and I work well together. He handles most of the people end of the business. I prefer working in the boatyard. It's the kind of work I did to put myself through school. I liked it then, and I like it now."

"Do you miss the financial district?"

"No. I enjoyed that life at the time, and it's allowed me to live as I do now. I've no regrets." He looked at Annie. "But I'm not the same man I was. I've changed."

She nodded and said quietly, "I understand."

In that moment, Garvin thought she did, and he didn't feel as cold.

After dinner there was no question, no discussion, about what came next. They went into his bedroom together, and they made love through the night, with the lights out and the curtains drawn, creating their own, impenetrable world, apart from the past, oblivious to the future. As he felt her, tasted her, loved her, Garvin could sense her urgency, her demand—her need not just for physical pleasure, although that was there, but for him. All of him. Nothing held back. In the way she loved him, stroked him, responded to his caresses, he could feel her searching for a way to connect with him beyond the physical. As they came together, as she moaned with passion, he knew he wanted to give that part of him she was looking for, if only he knew what it was.

Toward dawn she came to him. She eased on top of him, slid herself onto him, so that he grew hard inside of her. She rose up, and he caught her breasts in his palms, stared up at her in the silvery light, her hair hanging down, her eyes lost in the shadows.

She smiled and moved her hips, making it impossible for him to think about anything but now, that moment, and her.

Michael Yuma took one look at Garvin and said, "Uh-oh."

Garvin winced. "Sorry. I don't mean to take my mood out on you. Look, you deserve a day off. Go on home."

Yuma grinned. "Think I'm going to let you run this place in the mood you're in? Man, one look at you, people'll duck for cover. You're bad for business, my friend."

Garvin started down the dock. It was a bright, clear, gorgeous Sunday morning, but his night with Annie Payne and the morning paper, with Sarah Linwood plastered on the front page of the city section in all her eccentricity, had taken their toll. His world was damned near spinning out of control. It was something he'd promised himself would never happen again.

Yuma clapped one hand on his shoulder, his dark eyes unusually serious. "Go on, Garvin. Go do what you have to do. I don't have anything pressing at home. I can hang in here another day."

"Look, Michael—"

"I'm keeping up with the talk, and I read the morning paper. You've got a lot on your mind. Now go on. Get out of here."

Garvin hesitated, but he knew Yuma was right. Trying to hold up his end, as preoccupied as he was, wouldn't help anyone. He gave his friend a curt nod. "Thanks, Yuma."

He shrugged off Garvin's gratitude. "Everyone else around here'll be thanking me, too."

As Garvin headed back up to his house, he found himself thinking about being out on the water with Annie Payne. She was the child of Maine seamen, the former director of a New England maritime museum. She would know the water. One day, he thought, then gritted his teeth. It was the first time he'd really considered the future in a long time. Maybe it was a positive sign, maybe it wasn't. But it was there, the thought of sailing with Annie Payne.

She and Otto had taken off in her rusting station wagon. As he picked up Otto's discarded two-by-four from the middle of his living room floor, Garvin understood that come what may between him and Annie Payne, his life up on his hillside had changed forever. The cease-fire he'd had with himself and his past —and his future—was over. He would never feel isolated or removed up here again, or even, he thought, at peace.

On his way out, Vic Denardo emerged from the shadows of a larch and sauntered out to the walkway. Garvin went still, taking in the man who for the past five years he'd believed had killed his wife and her grandfather. He looked remarkably unchanged, a few more lines at the corners of his eyes, an added crease in his forehead, but the lively dark eyes, the irreverent curve of his mouth, were the same. His amiability wasn't feigned. It was natural, even if he had committed premeditated murder.

"I didn't kill anyone," he said, coming toward Garvin.

He could feel the tension in his spine, could feel his hands curling into tight fists. Yet he remembered, too, in spite of everything, that he'd once considered Vic Denardo a friend, a man he could trust in the most elemental and basic of ways. He owed it to Haley, and maybe to himself, to think before he acted, to reserve judgment until all the facts were in. "If you didn't kill Thomas and Haley, Vic, who did?"

Denardo didn't answer.

"Sarah?"

"I don't know. Could be she set me up. She knew I was going to see her old man that night. But I haven't seen her since she took off. I've always figured it was a Linwood thing and I was just a handy outsider to blame it on." His dark eyes fell on Garvin. "For a while I wondered if it was you."

"What changed your mind?"

A grin started, died. "You're a little too eager to cut my balls off."

Garvin didn't smile back, didn't even try. "What do you want?"

"Take me to Sarah." He gazed up at the sky a moment, sucking in a deep breath; then he looked back at Garvin. "I read the piece in the paper. I know I could find her on my own. That's what she wants. But I want to go together, you and me. I was set up once. It's not happening again."

Garvin nodded. "Then let's go."

Chapter Fifteen

The moment Cynthia Linwood burst into her gallery, Annie knew she was in one of her snits. She marched right up to her desk and thumped it with her perfectly manicured nails. Not one hair was out of place. "How could you let Sarah do that interview?"

"It was her idea," Annie said calmly. "I have no control over her."

"You should have stopped her. That woman's determined to bring ruin to what's left of her family just because she didn't live the life she felt she deserved to live. I've no patience with her. She's a rich woman. It's not like she's from the projects."

"If she felt trapped in her life—"

Cynthia sneered, her way, Annie decided, of coping with fear. "She never had to lift a finger to feed herself. So far as I'm concerned, she's ungrateful. Thomas was never as rotten to her as she'd have everyone believe. Her own cowardice and snobbery held her back—and not forever, did it? She managed to do what she wanted to do in the end. Gambling, a sordid affair, now this outrageous high drama of her return home. In fact, Sarah
always
did what she wanted to do."

"You don't like her," Annie said.

Tears sprang to Cynthia's eyes, and some of the anger went out of her. "I don't know her well enough to like or dislike her. I suppose I sound meanspirited—"

"Angry, I'd say."

"I
am
angry. When he saw that article, John—" She took in a sharp breath, her anger bubbling just under the surface, mixing uneasily with her concern for her husband. "Seeing Sarah again has been a terrible strain on him. The article didn't help. She could have called, could have warned us. After he tried to see to her welfare—" She broke off, too agitated to go on.

"I could have warned you too. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. Maybe it's not anybody's fault." She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips; Annie thought of slipping her tissue but decided she'd better not. Cynthia Linwood wasn't a woman who'd want attention called to her tears. "It comes as a surprise to people, but John and I really do love each other. And I'm very protective of him. He's gone through so much. It's been such an ordeal. He's finally come to the point where he can think about the present again, never mind the future. He's been so haunted by the past. I don't know if you can understand."

"I've never lost anyone to murder. Is there something you want me to do?"

Her shoulders slumped. "No, there's nothing. I just came in to yell at you and make myself feel better. We're all just going to have to learn to live with Sarah back in our lives. Have the police had any luck finding whoever broke into your apartment?"

Annie shook her head. Otto stirred under her feet at all the commotion, but he didn't get up, probably just as well, given his appearance.

Cynthia's mouth curved, the result not exactly a smile. "Maybe we'll be lucky this time, and it won't have anything to do with the rest of this mess."

"If I hear anything, I'll let you know."

"Yes. That would be nice." There was a trace of bitterness in her tone.

After Cynthia left, Otto got up and paced, fidgety and uncomfortable. Annie assumed either his head hurt or he'd picked up on her frustration. Before she could decide to call it quits and close up shop early, Zoe sent her part-timer over, as a favor, with instructions for Annie and Otto to go home, put their feet up, and bathe in lavender. Annie was only too glad to comply. Otto seemed likewise delighted, although she doubted lavender would do much for him.