Linda Lael Miller Bundle (9 page)

His frustration doubled and redoubled. Was she tormenting him deliberately? Was she making him want her, just so she could exact revenge by denying him when his need was greatest? “Dammit, Shay, I just shanghaied you and you’re standing there talking about showers! Get back in the RV and I’ll take you home.”

The sweet lips made a pout. “I told you,” she said. “I’m covered with sugar. I can’t go home like this.”

It was revenge; Mitch was sure of it. He made a growling sound in his bafflement and started to turn away. She caught his arm in her small, strong hand and urged him back around to face her.

The blanket seemed to waft to the sand in slow motion and Mitch couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

Shay stood on tiptoe, and when her lips touched Mitch’s, he was lost. He groaned and gathered her to him with both hands, her soft flesh warm and gritty beneath his palms. He lowered her to the blanket, taking no time to smooth it, his mouth desperate for hers, his hands stroking her, shaping her for the taking. But he denied himself that possession, denied her, choosing instead to break the kiss and taste Shay’s sugared breasts, her stomach, her thighs.

She writhed in pleasure, tossing her head back and forth, her fingers fierce in his hair. If she was setting him up for a last-second denial, she was doing a damned good job of it; Mitch wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop if she asked that of him. He felt as though he’d stumbled into some jungle river, as though he were being flung along by currents too strong to swim against.

He didn’t remember taking off his clothes, but suddenly he was naked, his flesh pressed against the strange roughness of hers. In silence she commanded his entry, in obedience and passion he complied.

They moved together in a ferocious rhythm, every straining thrust of their bodies increasing the pace until they both cried out, each consumed by the other, their flesh meeting in a final quivering arch. They fell slowly from the heights, gasping, sinking deep into the warm sand.

It took some time for Shay to coerce her lax, passion-sated muscles to lift her from that tangled blanket on the sand. When she managed to stand up, she stumbled toward the surf, into it.

The water was cold, even though it was August, and the chill of it nipped at Shay’s knees and thighs and hips as she waded farther out. Mitch was beside her in a moment and she smiled to think that he might be afraid for her.

Shivering, his lips blue with cold, he caught her upper arms in his hands. “Shay.”

She didn’t want to hear an apology. Nothing could be allowed to spoil the sweet ferocity of the minutes just past. She cupped both hands in the sea and flung salty water into Mitch’s face, laughing as he cursed, lost his balance and came up sputtering with cold and fury.

Shay held her breath and submerged herself, letting the ocean wash away the last of the sugar from her body and came up to be pulled immediately into a breathless kiss.

When that ended, Mitch lifted her into his arms, carried her back onto the shore. He lowered her to the sand, the blanket forgotten, and made slow, sweet love to her. Her cries of pleasure carried high into the blue summer sky, tangling with the coarse calls of the seabirds.

“I really have to go back,” Shay said quietly. She was dressed again, the dream was over. “Todd has a couple of buildings to show me.”

“Buildings?” Mitch, too, was fully dressed, and he sat across the RV’s tiny table from Shay, looking strangely defeated.

“I’ve decided to take the plunge and start my catering business.”

Mitch’s jaw tightened. “Oh.”

“Why does that bother you so much?” Shay asked. “Despite your caveman tactics this afternoon, you don’t give the impression of being a chauvinist.”

“I’m not a chauvinist, dammit!” Mitch snapped, looking for all the world like a wounded and outraged little boy. “We made love, Shay. We worked together. Maybe we haven’t known each other very long, but we’ve shared a lot. It hurt that you didn’t mention something that important.”

Shay shrugged, confused. “Until you gave me that money for helping with the book, it was just a dream, Mitch. I have a child to support and I couldn’t have taken the risks. What would be the point in talking about something I didn’t expect to be able to do?”

There was a short silence while Mitch absorbed the things Shay had said. “I guess I did overreact a little,” he finally admitted. His eyes met hers. “I’m sorry about this morning, too. I had no right to do that.”

“It was pretty crazy,” Shay agreed, but she couldn’t bring herself to be angry. Instead her whole being seemed to resonate with a feeling of contentment. “What made you do it?”

Mitch’s broad shoulders moved in a shrug and he rubbed his beard-stubbled chin with one hand as he thought. “It was a hell of a way to show it, but I love you, Shay.”

Shay swallowed hard. She had really heard the words; this time she wasn’t dreaming or so caught up in the throes of passion that she couldn’t be sure she’d understood them correctly. She tried to speak and failed.

“You don’t believe me?”

Shay swallowed again. “We haven’t known each other very long, Mitch. Oth-other things are so good between us that—well, we could be confusing that with love, couldn’t we?”

“Marry me,” he said.

“No,” she replied. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Oh, that’s a great answer. God, I hate it when I ask someone a simple question and they say ‘because’!”

Shay couldn’t resist a smile, though it was a sad one. “I guess the day is over, huh?”

Mitch was glaring at her. “I guess it is. But we aren’t over. Is that clear, Shay? You and I are not over.”

“For a best-selling writer, you have terrible grammar. Speaking of that, how’s the book going?”

“I’m halfway through the first draft,” Mitch answered in clipped and somewhat grudging tones. “Why won’t you marry me, Shay? Don’t you love me?”

“As crazy as it seems, I think I do love you. If I didn’t, I would have been on the main highway, trying to flag down a state patrolman.”

“But?”

“But I’ve seen my mother fail at marriage over and over. I’ve failed at it myself. I can’t go through that again, Mitch.”

“If you need to prove that you can make it on your own, well, it seems to me that you’ve already done that.”

“Have I, Mitch? Until you came along and offered me a fat fee for my help in writing that book about my mother, I was barely making it from one payday to the next. I haven’t proved anything; I’ve just been lucky.”

Mitch shook his head. “So now it’s the catering business. If you make that fly, you’re a valid person. Is that it, Shay?”

“I guess it is.”

“Then I feel sorry for you.”

The words came as a slap in the face to Shay; she sat back on the narrow bench, her eyes wide, her breath caught in her throat. “What?”

“You’re in a trap, Shay. You’re an intelligent woman, so you must know that the value of a person has nothing to do with what they prove or don’t prove.”

Shay felt distinctly uncomfortable. Next he’d be saying that she was just using her need to succeed at something to avoid taking a chance on marriage. “I suppose if we were married, you’d want me to give up the whole idea of starting a catering service.”

“On the contrary, Shay, I’d help you in any way I could.” He looked grimly smug. “Wriggle your way out of that one.”

Shay was stumped. “Okay, so I’m afraid. It’s human to be afraid when you’ve been hurt.”

“This conversation is getting us nowhere.” Mitch stood up, took the keys to the RV from the pocket of his jeans. “Can we at least agree that we’ll give this relationship or whatever the hell it is a sporting chance?”

Shay could only nod.

“That’s progress, at least. Let’s go.”

They were both settled in the front seat and the RV was jolting up the narrow road to the highway before either of them spoke again.

“I want to read what you’ve written so far, Mitch. About Rosamond, I mean.”

Mitch did not take his eyes from the road. “Buckle your seatbelt. You’re free to read the manuscript whenever you want.”

Shay snapped the belt into place and sighed. “Ivy and Todd are coming over for pizza after I look at those properties. Why don’t you join us?”

“Now that was an enthusiastic invitation if I’ve ever heard one. Are you afraid I’d end up staying the night?”

“I
know
you would end up staying the night.”

Mitch cast a sidelong look at her and shook his head. “Woman, you defy logic. Caution is your middle name, and yet you seem to enjoy walking on thin ice.”

“I’m as confused as you are, if that helps,” Shay admitted ruefully. “Are you coming over for pizza or not?”

“I’m coming over for one hell of a lot more than pizza, lady, and you know it. Am I still invited?”

Shay thought for a long time. “Yes,” she finally answered. “The invitation stands.”

I
f Ivy and Todd were surprised when Shay arrived at Reese Motors promptly at five-thirty, they had the good grace not to show it. Freshly showered and made up, Shay went into her office long enough to check her telephone messages and align her work for the next day.

When she came out, her friends were waiting, Ivy wide-eyed and just a bit pale, Todd blithely unaware that anything was amiss.

Shay gave Ivy a scorching look that warned of an imminent confrontation and said, “Well, let’s look at those buildings. We’ll pick up the pizza on the way to my place, afterward.”

Ivy swallowed visibly and croaked, “Okay.”

Their first stop was the large Victorian house Todd had mentioned. It had been empty for a long time, but Shay could see vast potential in it; if she renovated the place, she would have room not only for her business, but for half a dozen small shops. She wouldn’t run these herself, of course, but rent them to other people.

Todd assured her that the house was basically sound, though it needed a great deal of work. The plaster in most of the rooms was either stained or falling off the walls in hunks, and the ceilings sagged.

Shay liked the house; it had personality. The kitchen, while much in need of repair, was large enough to accommodate the needs of a catering service, and the spacious dining room could be converted to a reception area of sorts. The pantry, almost as big as Shay’s kitchen in her rented house, would make a suitable private office.

“I have some rough estimates on the renovation, if you’d like to see them,” Todd offered.

Shay was pleased by his thoroughness. Here was a man who would go far in the business world. She reviewed the estimates submitted by various construction companies as they drove to the other potential site. The amounts of money involved were staggering.

The second site was a small restaurant overlooking the water. The ceiling had fallen down, coming to rest across a counter still equipped with a cash register. Debris of every sort was scattered on the floor, seeming to pool around the bases of the tattered stools that lined the counter. The smell of mice was potent.

“It does look out over the water,” Ivy ventured. She’d been very quiet all along.

“That’s about all it has going for it,” Shay replied. “If I were going to open a bistro or something, I might be interested, but I don’t think a view is going to be any particular plus for a catering service.”

Todd nodded his agreement.

Suddenly, Shay was very tired. After all, it had been a crazy day. “I’ll need some time to think this over, Todd, but I’m interested in the other place. Do you think I could get back to you in a few days?”

Again, Todd nodded. “You might want to get some other estimates. The ones I gave you were meant to give an idea of what would be required.”

Shay looked down at the sheaf of papers in her hand. “Do you recommend these people, Todd?”

He held the door open and Ivy sort of skulked through, just ahead of Shay. “I’ve dealt with all of them at one time or another and they do fine work. But you should still get other estimates, it’s always good business.”

They stopped at a pizza-to-go place and, as Shay waited at the counter for her order, she happened to glance through the front window. Ivy and Todd appeared to be having some kind of serious consultation in the car. Ivy’s head was bent and Shay found her irritation with her friend fading away.

Ivy was a meddler extraordinaire, but she meant well. She was happy with Todd and she wanted everyone else she knew to be happy, too. Still, Shay thought the young woman deserved the lecture she was probably getting at that moment.

The pizza was ready and Shay was distracted from the scene in the car for a few moments. When she reached it, carrying the pizza, Ivy and Todd were sitting as far from each other as they possibly could. Shay let herself into the back seat, wrestling the huge pizza box as she did so and, of course, made no comment on the chill inside the car.

At Shay’s house, a very subdued Ivy took over the making of the salad. When Mitch arrived she started and looked even more guilty and disconsolate than before.

Mitch gave Shay a quick kiss on the lips and turned to his sister, who tossed him a defiant look and made a face.

Mitch laughed and then reached out to rumple Ivy’s gossamer hair, but he spoke to Shay. “Ivy didn’t know why I wanted to rent that RV until it was too late.”

Ivy startled everyone by bursting into tears and fleeing through the back door. Todd started to follow, but Shay stopped him with a gesture of one hand and a quiet “No. I’ll talk to her.”

She found Ivy sitting at the picnic table, her head resting on her folded arms, her small shoulders shaking.

Shay laid a hand on her friend’s quivering back and said, “Hey. It’s all right, Ivy. I’m not mad at you.”

“I could kill that brother of mine!” Ivy wailed, sniffling intermittently. “Oh, Shay, I never thought he’d do anything like that!”

Shay couldn’t help smiling a little. “No harm was done. Let’s forget it.”

Ivy turned and flung herself into Shay’s arms for a quick hug. After that, she recovered quickly.

During dinner, served on that same picnic table, the conversation centered mostly on the house Shay was thinking of taking for her catering business and her ideas about renting out the other rooms as small shops.

Mitch said very little, but the light in his brown eyes revealed a certain amused respect that told Shay he liked the idea. Ivy, of course, was bursting with suggestions: she knew a woman who made beautiful candles and would be overjoyed to be a part of such a project, was acquainted with another who had been wanting to import Christmas ornaments to sell to the tourists as souvenirs but had had no luck in finding a shop she could afford.

When the pizza and salad were gone and the paper plates had been thrown away, Ivy and Todd made an abrupt, if cheerful, exit.

“Was it something I said?” Shay said with a frown.

Mitch grinned. “Don’t be naive,” he replied.

While Mitch brewed a pot of coffee, seeming as at home in Shay’s kitchen as if it had been his own, she settled onto the couch with the pages of his manuscript. She had never known a writer before, but she had expected a first draft to be a mass of scribbles and cross-outs and have scrawled notes in the margins. Mitch’s pages were remarkably neat and there was something in his style that grabbed Shay’s attention, made her read as someone who had never met Rosamond Dallas might.

Presently, Mitch set a steaming cup on the coffee table in front of her, but she didn’t pause to reach for it. She was fascinated, seeing a side of Rosamond that she hadn’t consciously noticed before.

By the time she’d raced through a hundred and fifty pages of concise, perceptive copy, her coffee was cold in the cup and her view of Rosamond—and Mitch himself—had been broadened by the length of a horizon.

“Wow,” she said.

Mitch took away her coffee cup, refilled it and returned to the living room. “You approve, I take it?”

“I’m not sure if I approve or not, but I’m impressed. The writing is good, Mitch, really good. How could you have learned so much about Rosamond from a few pictures and scrapbooks and a couple of conversations with me?”

Mitch was settled into the overstuffed chair nearest the couch. “I did a lot of research, Shay. For instance, I talked to all six of her ex-husbands by phone. And your grandmother—”

“My grandmother?” Shay felt a quickening inside, one of mingled surprise and alarm. “I don’t have a grandmother.”

Mitch lowered his eyes to his coffee, taking a sip before he answered, “Yes, you do.”

Shay set the pages of the manuscript aside, fearing that she would drop them if she didn’t. “Speaking of things people don’t bother to mention…”

Mitch set aside his cup and raised both hands in a gesture of peace. “I didn’t find out about her until this afternoon, Shay, after I’d dropped you off here. One of my research people had tracked her down and they left her name and phone number on my answering machine.”

Shay swallowed. “You called her?”

“Yes. Her name is Alice Bretton and she lives in Springfield, Missouri. Your father—”

“Is her son,” Shay’s voice was shaky.

“Was her son, I’m afraid. He was a navy pilot, Shay, and he was shot down over Hanoi in 1970.” Mitch was sitting beside Shay on the couch now, holding her gently and not too tightly.

“They’re sure? So many pilots were taken prisoner—”

“He’s dead, Shay. He was positively identified.”

An overwhelming feeling of betrayal and hurt washed over Shay. “I didn’t even know him. Rosamond wouldn’t tell me his name.”

“His name was Robert Bretton.”

“Tell me about him!”

Mitch sighed. “I don’t know the whole story. He and Rosamond were ‘going steady,’ as they called it back then. When things went wrong, your mother bought a bus ticket to Hollywood and from what Mrs. Bretton told me, Robert finished college and then joined the navy.”

Shay was dizzied by the sudden influx of information that had been denied her throughout her life, first by Rosamond’s reluctance to talk, then by her illness. “There are so many things I want to know….”

“Why don’t you get in touch with your grandmother tomorrow? She’ll be able to tell you a lot more than I can.”

“She might not want anything to do with me!”

Mitch shook his head. “She asked me a thousand questions about you, Shay.” He pulled a wry face meant to lighten the mood. “Of course, I didn’t tell her how you taste when you’ve just had a half ton of sugar dumped over your head.”

Shay was making a sound, but she wasn’t sure whether she was laughing or crying or both. She gave Mitch a shove and then allowed her forehead to nestle into his broad shoulder.

“Make love to me, Mitch,” she said after a very long time.

“Here?” he teased in a hoarse voice, but he picked Shay up in his arms and carried her into the room she pointed out to him. The night was a long one, full of tender abandon.

The pit of Shay’s stomach quivered with nervousness as she dialed the number Mitch had given her. What, exactly, was she going to say to this grandmother she had never known, never heard a word about?

Mitch puttered around the kitchen, getting breakfast, while the call went through.

“Mrs. Bretton?” Shay’s voice shook. “My name is Shay Kendall and—”

“Shay!” The name was a soft cry of joy, full of tears and laughter. “Is it really you?”

“It’s really me,” Shay answered, and she made a face at Mitch as he shoved a dishtowel into her hands. Then she dried her eyes with it. “T-tell me about my father. Please.”

“There is so much to tell, darling, and so much to show. Could you possibly come to Springfield for a visit?”

Shay wanted to hop on the next plane, but she had responsibilities to Marvin and Jeannie and she couldn’t go away without letting Hank know. Suppose he got sick and Garrett brought him home and there was no one there to take care of him? “This is a bad time—my job—my son—”

“Then I’ll come there!” Alice Bretton interrupted warmly. “Would that be all right, Shay? I could bring the photo albums and we could talk in person.”

“I’d love to have you, Mrs. Bretton.”

“In that case, I’ll make arrangements and call you right back.”

“That would be wonderful.”

They said goodbye and Shay set the phone receiver back in its cradle as Mitch poured scrambled eggs into a pan of hash browns and chopped onions and bits of crisp bacon.

“I take it she’s flying out for a visit?” Mitch asked moderately, looking back at Shay over one bare shoulder.

Shay nodded. “I can’t make sense of what I feel, Mitch. I’m happy that I’m finally going to meet my grandmother and I’m sad because my father died and I’m furious with Rosamond! Here she is, this poor, sick, wretch of a woman, and I could cheerfully wring her neck!”

“That’s normal, Shay. The important thing is that you wouldn’t really do it.”

“I want to thank you for this, Mitch. F-for my grandmother.”

He turned from the stove, grinning, almost unbearably handsome in just his jeans. His hair was rumpled and his feet were bare and, as always, he needed to shave. “Don’t be too hasty with your gratitude, kid,” he warned. “For all you know, she’s a bag lady with bad breath, bunions and bowling shoes.”

“That was alliterative, in a tacky sort of way,” Shay responded. She slid off the stool near the wall phone and put her arms around Mitch’s lean waist.

He kissed the tip of her nose and gave her bottom a squeeze that brought back memories of the night before. Shay blushed to recall what a greedy wanton she’d been.

“I’m not sure whether you bring out the best in me, or the worst,” she commented.

Mitch’s eyebrows went into brief but rapid motion. “If that was your worst,” he said in a Groucho Marx voice, “I’m all for it.”

Shay tipped her head back and laughed. It was a throaty, gleeful sound, and it felt oh, so good. If she could be sure that life with Mitch Prescott would always be this way, she would have married him in a second. But in her deepest mind, marriage was linked with betrayal, with pain. She sobered, thinking of Eliott’s desertion and the fickle vanity of her mother.

Mitch lifted his index fingers to the corners of Shay’s mouth and stretched her lips into a semblance of a smile. “No sad faces allowed,” he said.

He went to dish up the scrambled egg concoction he’d made for their breakfast, and Shay sat down in a chair at the table. It was strange, having a man not only cook for her, but serve her as well. “I could get used to this,” she said as he set a steaming, fragrant plate in front of her.

“Good. We’ll get married and make it a ritual. I’ll fix your breakfast every morning and then take you back to bed and make wild love to you.”

Shay blushed again, but some vixen hiding deep inside her made her say, “Keep making threats like that, fella, and I’ll accept your proposal.”

Mitch’s eyes were suddenly serious. “Eat,” he ordered in a gruff tone, looking away.

Before Shay could say anything at all, the telephone rang. Alice Bretton had made her flight arrangements and she would be arriving in Seattle the following afternoon at two. Shay wrote down the name of the airline and the flight number and when she turned away from the phone, Mitch was disconsolately scraping their plates.