That Boy From Trash Town (6 page)

* * *

Whitney passed Sweet House and headed for the hedge. When she reached it, she stooped and pushed through the low gap without pausing. She crossed the realtor's parking lot and automatically turned onto Adam Street.

Her father was alive!

Where the hell had truth been for the past twenty years? The question had been playing over and over in her mind, driving her crazy.

Why hadn't she known it was all a lie? Why hadn't she felt her father's presence in the world? Why hadn't she, even once, questioned her mother about Lloyd Grant's death?

But she knew the answer. Whitney hadn't asked questions because she trusted her mother. No matter how flaky Anne Grant was, Whitney had always believed her mother loved her. Until now.

No, she told herself, that part wasn't a lie. Her mother loved her, and Whitney returned that love. Even now. But the ties between them were only those of blood. There would never be—could never be-deeper bonds between them. They were too different.

By the time Whitney turned down the alley behind Dean's house she was running again. She needed him now. Just seeing him would show her that not everything about her life was a lie. Dean would help her make sense of it all. Dean would make it stop hurting.

She entered his house through the back door, calling "Dean!", then louder, "Dean!"

He wasn't in the kitchen or the office. He wasn't anywhere on the lower floor.

Taking the steps two at a time, she ran up the stairs, down the hall to his bedroom and threw open the door. "Dean, where are—"

It was at that exact moment that Dean stepped out of the bathroom. He was drying his hair with a towel. And he was naked.

The sun streaming through the curtains turned his body to gold, highlighting every muscle, every tendon.

All thought left Whitney's head as they stood and stared at each other. She couldn't take her eyes off him. She had always known he would look incredible without clothes, but nothing in her imagination could have prepared her for the reality.

The energy that, a short time ago, had been wasted in anger and confusion was suddenly channeled into wanting him. Needing him. She had felt a small particle of this urgency before, in dreams. But now, when she could actually see him, when all her emotions were heightened by what she had just learned, it overwhelmed her.

"My God, your body is beautiful," she said in a breathless whisper. "More beautiful than anything I've ever seen."

Across the room, Dean closed his eyes tightly. He had to shut her out. He had to shut out the sight of Whitney looking at him with those hungry blue eyes. He couldn't handle the desire that blazed in her— openly, guilelessly, right there for anyone to see.

Didn't she know that kind of openness could get her hurt?

Whitney didn't know that she had moved until she was a step away from him. She seemed to have no will of her own, and her body was acting of its own accord. She saw her hand move, reach out to him. She felt his chest, warm and damp from the shower, beneath her trembling fingers.

"Beautiful," she repeated, but it didn't sound like her voice. It was lower, huskier. It was shaking with the strength of her desire.

Raising her gaze slowly to his face, she met his eyes. An instant later she jerked her hand away from him and took a step back.

His dark eyes were blazing with anger. Violent anger he was making no attempt to disguise.

He threw the towel savagely on the floor. "Damn you, Whitney!" Reaching around her, he picked up a pair of Levi's and began to pull them on. "What in hell do you think you're doing? When are you going to grow up? For heaven's sake, just grow up!" He threw the harsh words at her, his hands shaking as he fastened the jeans. "Don't I have enough on my plate without you pulling these stupid little tricks all the time? Judas priest, I can't turn around without tripping over you."

He pushed a hand through his damp hair. "I have a right to my privacy. Do you understand? You— It's about time you accepted the fact that I have a life of my own, and that I don't have time to play games with a spoiled Harcourt brat." His breathing was ragged now, his lips tight and white. "Get out of here. Just get the hell out of here!"

With his first words, Whitney had felt the blood drain from her face, from her heart. She had heard Dean speak in anger before, but never in her wildest imaginings had she ever thought that anger would be turned on her.

Backing away from him, she began to shake her head in denial. She tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come, and when she reached the door, she turned away from him.

"Whitney... wait!"

The low, pleading command served to spur her into action. She stumbled on the stairs and had to grab the banister to regain her balance, but she didn't stop. She heard Dean calling her name again and knew he was following her, but that only made her run even faster.

As Dean ran down the stairs after Whitney, he swore under his breath, cursing himself for overreacting. He had to catch her. He had to make her understand.

Just as he reached the kitchen the telephone there began to ring, and although he ignored it, it pulled him back to reality long enough for him to stop and think about what he was doing.

He moved to sit at the small wooden table, dropping his head to his hands. He couldn't afford to see Whitney again right now, he told himself. She needed time to calm down, and he needed time to get his act together. Emotions were running too high on both sides and another encounter might be even more disastrous.

He could have handled the whole thing better. He would have handled it better if he'd had any warning, but she had taken him by surprise.

The understatement of the year, he thought as he drew in a rough breath.

Dean had always known Whitney had a crush on him, but he had been certain that was all there was to it. A simple little schoolgirl crush. What he'd seen on her face a few minutes ago, however, left that theory in the dust. That was more than a crush. Much more. He had seen blazing, blatant desire in her blue eyes. Sweet heaven, he had felt the heat of it, even from across the room.

Whitney wanted him. And when he'd acknowledged that fact, it had taken more strength than he knew he possessed to ignore the wild images her desire conjured up. Images that shocked and tantalized him. Images that took his breath away.

He had been forced to channel the fire she had built in him into fury. It had been necessary for her well-being. It had been necessary for his own sanity.

Dean knew very well that if his own feelings hadn't been so strong, he would have handled her differently. He would have dampened the fires in a way that would have left her pride intact. Damn it, he couldn't stand the thought of Whitney in pain. But at the time he had seen no alternative.

Now, after the fact, he realized that he could have turned the whole episode into a joke. Whitney had a keen sense of humor and would have responded to that kind of thing. He could have gentled her over the moment, and when the mood had been broken, he could have eased her into the idea of letting go of him and getting on with her life.

Exhaling a shuddering breath, he told himself that, it was too late to change what had happened. It was too late to take back the things he'd said.

He knew Whitney wouldn't hold a grudge against him for what had occurred, for his rash words. That wasn't her style. She would simply find a way to bridge the gap that had suddenly sprung up between them.

And maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all, he told himself after a while. Hadn't he been trying to ease some distance between them for years now? In the past nothing he'd tried worked. Maybe something more drastic—and the scene in his bedroom definitely qualified as drastic—was needed to start her thinking in the right direction. A direction that, for her own good, had to lead away from Dean.

Leaning his head back against the wall, he reminded himself that Whitney wasn't used to people shouting at her. She had been pampered and protected all her life, but she couldn't stay wrapped up in cotton forever.

It was time for her to wake up and see that the world was a hard place. It was time for her to understand that you have to be tough to survive.

So why did he feel like such a jerk for being the one to push her into reality?

* * *

Whitney entered the house through the back door. It was going to be a while before she could look her mother in the face. And now that Dean—

She stopped the thought before it was fully formed, and by the time she reached her bedroom and locked the door behind her, she had successfully pushed the scene in Dean's bedroom out of her mind.

As she sat in the window seat, hugging a cushion close to her chest, she found that her mind was a complete blank. She couldn't feel anything now. Curious. There was no anger, no love, no pain. Very curious.

A fearsome drowsiness took over, and she wasn't sure how much time passed before she heard a knock on her bedroom door.

"Darling... Whitney, your door is locked."

"There's news," she muttered, then sank her teeth into the cushion as bitter laughter rose in her chest and throat.

"Doris Louise Pfeiffer called while you were out. She can't remember if the committee decided on green tablecloths or white. I told her, as firmly as I could without being rude, that you couldn't possibly have voted on green. But you know how she is. Of course I wouldn't say this to anyone other than you, but this is not the first time I've wondered about Doris's taste. When she was only a child, she—"

The laugh was growing out of control, choking Whitney as she buried her face in the cushion. She knew she should thank her mother for providing a distraction. Anne was after all, helping Whitney push the debilitating numbness away.

As energy returned, so, too, did the memory of everything that had happened to her today. Her father, her mother, Dean...

No. She still wasn't ready to think about Dean. Someday she would be able to come to grips with what had happened between them, but not now. If she thought about it now, it would kill her.

Drawing in a deep breath, she leaned her head against the cool glass. It certainly had been an interesting day. Her fluffy little mother had finally slipped away from her for good. And just as she had feared, Whitney was left with a handful of nothing. She didn't even have De— Couldn't she even think a single thought without having him intrude? she wondered peevishly. Other things had happened today. Why did Dean keep taking control of her thoughts?

But of course, Whitney knew why. She'd lost him. This was what an earthquake must feel like. This was what it was like when the most solid thing in life shifted beneath your feet. Where did one go, how did one keep standing, when the ground below began to buckle?

Her father was alive, and Dean didn't want her around. Down was up and up was down.

Whitney knew what Anne wanted her to do. Her mother would prefer Whitney pretend nothing had happened. She wanted Whitney to forget that her father, her wonderful loving father, was still alive somewhere in the world.

She moved restlessly on the window seat, finally managing to center her attention on the astounding fact that her father was still alive. Did he know about the lies? Did he know that his daughter thought he was dead? Was he a part of the intolerable deception?

"No," she denied in a hoarse whisper.

He couldn't have known. Lloyd Grant had loved her. There was no doubt in her mind about that. She wouldn't still feel the solid strength of his love after all these years if it had been a lie.

But why hadn't he ever gotten in touch with her? And why had he left in the first place? Even if Anne had driven him away, even if the marriage had gone wrong, why had he disappeared from his daughter's life?

It simply didn't make sense. Nothing made sense anymore, she told herself as she steadfastly ignored her mother, who continued to talk to her through the door.

Fifteen minutes later Anne finally got tired of talking without getting a response and left. Suddenly there was nothing to distract Whitney from her thoughts. There was nothing to keep her from pulling up her stock of memories of her father.

"Where is my Maid Mary going with flowers in her hair?"

"To see the Queen, Daddy. And that's not flowers, it's jewels. You have to wear lots of jewels when you visit the Queen. It's a rule."

"Queen Elizabeth would think you're beautiful, even without flowers."

"Not her, silly. The Queen of Hearts."

"Oh, in that case, you 'd better keep the jewels."

"Mother taught me to curtsy. Do you want to see? I can do it without falling now. Come with me, Daddy. You don't have to go to work today. Come with me to see the Queen."

For hours Whitney sat in the window seat, unmoving, as silence and darkness spread across her bedroom. It was a little before midnight when she finally stood up and stretched her stiff back.

There were no answers here, she told herself. Not in this room, not in this town. Dean was right. It was time for her to grow up.

* * *

It took Whitney nearly an hour to pack and three trips downstairs to transfer all her luggage to her car. She didn't worry about waking her mother—Anne Grant always slept like a log.

Tonight Whitney resented that. She resented the ease with which her mother had blocked out the day's events. Anne should have been up worrying. Guilt and shame should have kept her awake.

But Whitney knew that her mother had already shoved their confrontation into a cubbyhole in her mind, a cubbyhole marked Don't Look. If Whitney stayed here, her mother would never mention it again. It would be as though nothing had ever happened, and maybe, after a while, Whitney would begin to believe that, as well.

She wouldn't let it happen, she told herself as she tossed her makeup case into the back seat of her white Jaguar. She wouldn't turn into a Harcourt and start ignoring what she didn't want to see.

She stood for a moment, looking at the house. During her college years Whitney had lived in a dorm, then in a sorority house, followed by an apartment shared with several friends, but she had always thought of this as home. Not the Harcourt estate, but this house. Sweet House. Here she had been able to watch out for her mother. Here she had been close to Dean.

But the house was just another part of the lies. It wasn't her home, had never been her home. Home was still ahead, she told herself. Home was somewhere in the future.

It shouldn't hurt so much to leave a lie.

Sliding into the driver's seat, Whitney closed the door and started the car, but when she reached the stables, she stopped again, put the car in park and stepped out, staring over the top of the car at the low, dark buildings.

One more time, she thought. One more goodbye. One last midnight ride.

Ten minutes later she was on Heracles' back, headed toward open land. The horse seemed to sense that tonight was different from all the other nights they had ridden together. The wildness and pain that was in Whitney was somehow transmitted to the horse, and they tore across the land as if chased by demons.

Whitney almost laughed when she realized the horse understood her better than her mother did. But she didn't. Instead, she cried. The wind rushed by her, first cooling her tears, then drying them.

When she reached the knoll, Whitney pulled Heracles up sharply. He reared twice, then twitched and snorted, shifting his feet restlessly as though he weren't ready to stop.

"We won't stay long," she murmured, looking out toward West Edge.

Now she would think of Dean.

The lights were still on in his house, and she knew his inability to sleep should have been some small comfort, but the comfort couldn't reach her.

As she sat in the dark, Whitney allowed more memories to wash over her, memories that had nothing to do with her father. Eighteen years' worth of memories.

There were so many pictures of him in her mind. Dean handing her a battered street sign on that first day. Dean roaring with laughter at her outrageous 'nutation of the first girl Tad brought home to meet the family. Dean carefully explaining how she should behave on a date, telling her openly and frankly about what happened between men and women, something her mother refused to talk about. Dean holding Whitney when she cried.

And finally, after reliving the best of their past together, Whitney knew that what had happened today wouldn't ever cancel any of the good memories.

She wouldn't do as her mother had done and push what she had seen in Dean's face—the anger and contempt—into a Don't Look cubbyhole. It had happened and Whitney would face up to that. Weighed against the love he had given her for eighteen years, it no longer felt quite so devastating.

Almost against her will, Whitney felt better. She felt stronger.

Dean had taught her to use what God had given her. He'd taught her to call upon her inner strength, grab a problem by the throat and wrestle with it until it was resolved. That was what she would do now. She would find her father and get the answers she needed. And when she knew the truth, she would build a new life for herself. She would find a new home.

Reaching down, she patted Heracles' neck. "Okay, boy, I'm ready to leave now." Digging in her heels, she pulled Heracles' head away from the past, toward the future.

Then, turning in the saddle, she gave Dean's house one last long look. "Goodbye, Dean," she whispered. "Take care."