Patricia Potter (10 page)

She was incredibly instinctive, Michael thought. Even more than he had thought. She was such a mixture of naïveté and wisdom. It was a miracle she hadn’t seen more, but then over the years he had become a chameleon, uniquely able to fit into any situation or any place, be it the roughest Hong Kong bar or a millionaire’s club. It was a questionable ability at best, and it had dragged him into this goddamned situation.

“I won’t,” he said, “but neither do I wish to ruin your reputation or your place with the Connors. He warned me very diplomatically last night that you’re very important to them.”

“They’re very important to me,” she said, confused at his change of subject yet unwilling to do anything that might make him leave. She wanted very much to know more about Michael Fielding, more about the way he made her feel, more about the happiness that danced inside her heart merely because she was with him.

“Why?” he said.

“They paid for my education,” she explained, and she smiled at his obvious surprise. “They hired my mother just after my father died. They’ve really been foster parents in a way, and when I did well in high school they offered to send me to Columbia. Sometimes I feel I’m almost a sister to Peter and Tara.”

“And a friend,” he said softly, remembering Peter’s introduction.

“Oh, yes, that too. The Connors have been bringing me here since I was sixteen to look after Tara and Peter. They know I love it as much as they do.” There was wistfulness in her voice. “Every time I come it’s like a renewal, a rebirth, of something…elemental inside me.”

“And in a few weeks you will return to New York and become a journalist….”

“But I’ll always come back here. Always.”

His hand curled around hers at the emphasis of the last word. She would too. He had little doubt that she would do anything she set her heart on. And hopefully she would forget him, forget what would, must, happen in twelve more days.

It was almost as if she read his thoughts. “We’re so far from the war here…every trouble seems washed away by the rhythm of the water, as if—”

“As if what?” he prompted gently.

“As if evil can never touch here.”

Evil has a way of reaching everywhere, he wanted to warn her. And what was evil? They were enemies, he and she, by mere accident of birth, and that was the way of most wars. The people who fought them rarely had anything to do with their inception, and they seldom fought for ideals or principles but for loyalty to the place of their birth. There was evil in his country; he had seen it, but most of the fighting was waged by people like him, people caught in events, in a certain place and time, and there was no escaping it.

“You’re doing it again,” Meara accused.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a small twist of his lips.

“What were you thinking about?”

“How lovely both you and this island are. You fit together.”

“And you? Where do you fit?”

His eyes suddenly clouded. “Nowhere, Meara. I don’t think I really fit anywhere.” With that enigmatic reply, he stood carefully and, using the cane for support, offered his hand to her.

“Everybody fits someplace.”

“Ah, perhaps I just haven’t found it.”

But even as he said the words, he had the terrible, empty feeling that now he would never find it. Not now. He released her hand and buried that fist in his pocket.

Meara, fearing she had said something wrong, that she had made him remember something he did not wish to recall, tied her hair back again with the ribbon and brushed the sand from her dress. But she couldn’t brush the feel of his lips from her mind. She stopped at the same log he had used to take off his shoes, and she replaced her stockings and shoes while he again looked away across the salt marshes in that distant way he had.

She wanted to touch him. More than anything in the world she wanted that, but his whole bearing warned her away. When she was through and moved next to him, his face was carefully controlled. When he looked at her, there was no hint of the softness he had shown earlier. He was again the warrior from across a continent. A stranger who seemed intent on remaining that way.

Meara determined in that moment to pull down those barriers. And she would. He just didn’t know it yet.

Chapter Five

M
EARA WAS IN
agony for the next two days. Her stomach was queasy, her mind muddled. Everything she had come to expect from herself—common sense, reliability, practicality—had suddenly cracked apart, and all she could think about was the tall Canadian whose smile made her heart melt and whose reserve made it break.

How could anyone, any man, affect her after so few days, so few hours together? But any such reminder of the foolishness of her feelings did nothing to improve an appetite that had failed or give strength to the trembling occasioned merely by the sight of him.

For she did see him. And frequently, although she sensed he was going out of his way to avoid seeing her alone despite a heated intensity that flared in his eyes when they rested on her. She watched him talk to numerous members of the club, to their wives, to the club employees. He seemed to have an insatiable curiosity about everything and a charisma, a reserved charm, that attracted people to him.

Peter was completely captivated, especially after Michael gave him a lesson in skeet shooting, and the Canadian was the main topic of conversation among all the marriageable girls, both staff and members’ daughters alike, on the island. Yet he seemed to pay them no attention other than grave courtesy.

Meara had several free hours every afternoon, time set aside for the Connors to spend with their children, usually at the pool or on horseback, which the children adored.

Michael Fielding had made no further attempt to see her, much less be alone with her. She finally accepted a tennis game with Brad, who also sometimes had the afternoons off. Perhaps, she hoped, the activity would take her mind off Michael.

The club had both inside and outside courts, but the day was lovely and Brad’s employer had reserved one of the outside ones. When she arrived, there was another couple waiting: Kay, the daughter of Brad’s employer, and a man she had seen at the Connors’ barbecue but whom she had not met.

Introductions were quickly made, and Meara instantly liked the newcomer, Sanders Evans. He had quiet, watchful eyes but also an endearing, even shy smile. It seemed out of place on an otherwise rough-hewn face that indicated strength and determination, and even a hint of tragedy. He was not a handsome man, not like Michael. Yet he had a very nice face. He was, Meara perceived immediately, the kind of person you would seek if ever in trouble.

“I saw you the other day at the Connors,” he said with a smile.

She nodded. “How do you like the island?”

“Very much,” he said.

“Vacationing?”

“Partly.”

“And the other part?”

But they were interrupted by Kay. “If you don’t mind, Meara, we thought it might be nice to play doubles.”

“I’m not very good,” Sanders said apologetically.

“Good,” Meara said. “Neither am I, but these two are very good. You should balance us well.”

He did. Sanders played with Kay, and Meara with Brad. Although Meara was quick and had good instincts, she’d never had much time to play and she often lobbed her balls outside the lines. Sanders often committed the same error, and both of them laughed at their own mistakes while Kay and Brad dueled together. The score went back and forth until finally Meara aced her serve, and she and Brad triumphantly called themselves winners.

Afterward, they ordered drinks and sat outside and talked about the game. Or Kay and Brad talked about the game. Sanders Evans, half listening, looked at Meara with interest. But Meara couldn’t concentrate on him or the conversation. She gazed constantly around the grounds of the clubhouse for a tall blond-haired man with a limp.

Kay was talking. “Meara’s going to work for
Life
magazine in a few weeks, and I hope to get a job in Washington when I finish school this summer.”

Sanders looked over at Meara. “You’re a journalist, then?”

“A very beginning one,” she said lightly, a bit embarrassed. She was proud of her job, but it was only an assistant’s position.

“Still,” he said with admiration in his eyes, “they take only the best.”

“The war made it possible,” she said. “Otherwise, I’d probably never have had a chance.”

They all knew what she meant. Jobs mostly reserved for males were now opening to women with so many of the country’s young men enlisting or being netted by the draft. The war was already changing the society in which they lived. Meara knew it would change even more in the future. There was already a freedom today that never would have been possible a year ago. Quickie romances. Quickie marriages. There was a desperation in the air now, particularly around those men being sent to the Pacific, and those in the navy who braved the now deadly Atlantic and Pacific waters. Even she was caught in it.

The four of them were quiet, each locked in thoughts of their own. Meara knew Kay had recently lost a close friend, a pilot on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Brad was debating whether to join one of the services, even though his current job was considered critical to the war effort and he was exempt from the draft.

Meara glanced over at the newcomer, Sanders Evans. His eyes were dark brown and expressive, his hair a dark pecan shade and cut neatly. His clothes were suitable but did not have the elegance of the usual guests at the club. He was tall and looked remarkably fit, his body solid without any trace of excess weight.

He smiled under her examination. “You’re wondering what I do?” he said.

“A little,” she said, half embarrassed by her open scrutiny but more than a little curious.

“I coordinate certain activities in the government,” he answered with an appealing smile that was more than a little self-effacing. He was saying nothing, less than nothing, but he did it with such aplomb that she had to smile. Someone at the bonfire the other night had said an FBI agent was coming. She was suddenly sure it was Sanders Evans. He didn’t really fit any other picture.

But he didn’t fit that one either, she thought. She had always thought of FBI agents with stern faces and hard eyes, and he had neither of those. Her thoughts went immediately to Michael, who radiated danger and even a certain recklessness. Somehow, she could envision Michael with a gun much more readily than she could Sanders Evans.

As if her very thoughts had summoned Michael Fielding, she saw him approach. He was wearing blue again, a color that made his eyes even bluer than usual, and his blond hair richer against skin which was rapidly tanning. Meara knew her body was stiffening against the onslaught of the wildly turbulent emotions he always created in her. He stopped at the chair where Brad was sitting and nodded to her.

“Have you met everyone?” she asked, inwardly scolding herself for the breathless quality she knew was in her voice.

“I think so,” he said. “Kay, isn’t it?” he said, turning first to the girl, and Meara felt her heart contract slightly at the immediate flush on Kay’s face as she nodded. Michael then turned to the two men. “I’ve played billiards with Brad, and…Mr. Evans and I met two days ago.”

“It’s Sanders,” Evans broke in.

“Sanders,” Michael agreed.

“Won’t you join us, Commander,” Sanders said, and Meara wondered at the slight edge to his voice. There was a similar tone in Michael’s. She wondered why.

But the thought didn’t stay long in her mind, not when Michael turned his eyes on hers, and the blue seemed to swallow her up in them.

“Did you win?” he queried, eying the tennis rackets and her tennis dress that showed, even as she sat, long shapely legs.

“Barely, thanks to Brad.”

“Do you play?” Kay asked tactlessly, forgetting about his leg and the cane he had leaned casually against the table.

“When I was a boy, long ago,” he replied diplomatically.

“You said you were Canadian. What part?” Sanders asked.

“Manitoba,” Michael said easily.

“A bit cold for tennis.”

“Not at all,” Michael said. “Especially in the summers. It can be quite pleasant. Where are you from?”

“Washington now. I grew up in Pennsylvania.”

“Washington’s a busy town now, I hear.”

“Not quite as busy as London. Have you been there much?”

“Only hospitals, I’m afraid. My ship was based in Portsmouth.”

“It must be terrible to have strangers firing at you,” Kay observed tightly, and Meara knew she was thinking of the friend who had died.

Michael looked at her carefully, and his voice was sympathetic when he said simply, “Yes, but like anything else you get used to it.”

“I don’t think I ever could,” Kay responded, her hands trembling slightly on the glass she held.

Michael’s voice softened. “Have you lost someone?”

“In the Pacific,” Kay replied softly.

I’m sorry.

Meara heard the regret in Michael’s voice, and she liked him even more than she had before. Kay’s question had been invasive, something he had seemed to shy away from earlier. Yet his reply had been kind. Liked? Dear Lord, it was more than that. She wanted to lean over and touch the strong hand that rested on the table. She wanted his eyes to possess her as they had two days ago on the swing. She wanted the touch of his lips again, and this time she knew she didn’t want to stop there. She took a quick swallow of lemonade, her hands clutching the glass in something akin to desperation. She didn’t want him to notice, to see the need she knew must be shining in her eyes. She looked down at her watch.