The Sea Star (9 page)

     
But Ford, older and perhaps wiser in this instance, thought otherwise.

Seven

     
It was a glorious autumn, a shining season of sapphire skies, dazzling sunlight, and a crystal-clear sea. Everywhere on the island there was a flowering of yellow and crimson zinnias, violet gayfeathers, orange-red lion’s ears, and pure blue hydrangea that mirrored the azure heavens.

     
Ordinarily, Susanna disliked the fall. It was a melancholy period, the harbinger of winter. But this year she reveled in it, in the chill bracing mornings, the warm afternoons, the soft golden twilights that preceded the argent splendor of star-brilliant nights. This year there was Jay. She had never been so happy. He had filled the empty places in her hungry young heart.

     
Jay’s first order of business was the safety of the Sea Star. He arranged to have the electrical wiring system completely updated, and he ordered the addition of fire escapes where needed. As well, the hotel’s balloon-frame construction was structurally sound, but because of the air pockets in the stud spaces of that type of construction, if a fire should start in the basement, it would reach the top floor in no time. To remedy the situation, Jay ordered the installation of firestops, pieces of wood hammered over the open spaces at each floor. This eliminated the problem, giving the Sea Star a measure of safety it had previously not had.

     
Each step he took was first discussed at length with Susanna. If she was less knowledgeable than he in certain areas, he was never condescending. He was more than patient in explaining to her the differences between post-and-beam construction, wood trusses, hewn joints, and the like. He invariably gave her the impression that she was his equal in a profession they both loved. Susanna was both pleased and flattered by his thoughtfulness.

     
Working with Jay, Susanna discovered, was even more exciting and satisfying than working with her father. Matthew had been an excellent hotelier, but he had been cautious, predictable, very set in his ways. Jay was a never-ending surprise to Susanna. Always impeccably attired, faultlessly groomed, his aristocratic good looks turned heads wherever he went. And yet he was totally without vanity, unaware of the stir he created among the hotel guests and staff.

     
If the occasion called for it, he thought nothing of rolling up his shirtsleeves and taking a wrench to a balky boiler, or demonstrating to a nervous tyro bootblack how to coax the glossiest shine from a pair of leather boots. “In my lean years,” he told Susanna, “I had every job imaginable, from shining shoes to sweeping out stables. I even worked for a time in the morgue, but I won’t tell you what I did there. The school of hard knocks has served me well,” he added with a grin. “Far better than Harvard or Yale would have done.”

     
There was no phase of the business in which he refused to involve himself. He enjoyed poking around the kitchen, sampling a sauce, seasoning a salad. In the laundry room one day, another of his favorite haunts, he disconcerted a young laundress by taking a soapy tablecloth out of her hands and saying, “Bring me some melted tallow. I’ll show you how to get the ink stain out of this piece.”

     
One morning in the restaurant, he inspected the style of the menus and found them unappealing. Before noon, he had completely designed a new one, petal pink paper, flowing magenta script, with a single rose adorning the cover. This gave him the idea of changing all the lamp shades in the restaurant and lobby. “Let’s make them pink, too,” he suggested to Susanna. “They’ll be wonderfully flattering to the ladies’ complexions.”

     
The entire staff adored him, from the lowliest linen maid to George Watkins, the concierge. George said to Susanna in an awed tone that amused her, “He’s a marvel, isn’t he, miss? Why, it’s just like working with your father again.”

     
Susanna demurely agreed, but in her heart she thought differently. Working with Jay was like living in a dream world from which she wished never to awaken. Just being with him, working side-by-side with him, was enough to send the blood dancing merrily through her veins. He was tireless. He never stopped. Susanna had thought she was a compulsive worker, but Jay and his ceaseless energy easily put her to shame.

     
Sometimes, in her office, he would be bent over the ledgers for hours on end. Susanna, busy with some task of her own, would stop what she was doing and watch him as if mesmerized, his dark brush of lashes, the provocative line of his stern handsome mouth. Once, he caught her watching him.

     
“What’s the matter?” he asked, curious. “Why are you looking at me?”

     
“It gives me pleasure,” she said, too honest, too inexperienced, to play the coquette.

     
Jay’s lids lowered lazily, and he gave her that special smile that always weakened her knees. “Come here,” he said.

     
Heart thudding dimly, Susanna obeyed his sensuous command. As she approached him, he rose from the desk like a drowsy cat uncoiling, then he took her in his arms and just held her, saying nothing, for a very long time. Susanna’s head was on his chest. She could hear his heart beating, she could feel the heat of his body diffusing a languorous warmth through hers.

     
“You’re very special,” he said, his low voice enveloping her like a gentle summer breeze. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

     
“Nor I you,” she murmured. “I’ve never felt like this before.” She gazed up at him solemnly. “I think I may be falling in love with you.” And as she gave voice to the thought she’d been nurturing for weeks, she knew that she did love him, more than she had ever thought it possible to love anyone.

     
She had no chance to explore this astounding thought, for Jay’s eyes took on a shadowed, troubled look, a look Susanna had glimpsed once before but which now, as then, she couldn’t decipher.

     
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Then, in sudden embarrassment: “Didn’t you want to know what I feel for you? Don’t you feel the same way toward me?”

     
“I do,” he said in a low intense voice. “I love you more than you can even begin to fathom.”

     
“You love me?” Her heart swelled with joy.

     
“How could I not love you, you little sea-witch? But I’m years older than you, Susanna. Are you sure that you’re not just casting me in your father’s mold? Wouldn’t you be happier with a man your age, a man who thinks and feels as you do?”

     
“
You
think and feel as I do,” she insisted. “Hotels are your life, as they are mine. Perhaps you’re the one who isn’t sure what he wants. Perhaps an older, wiser, sophisticated man such as yourself couldn’t possibly love a country mouse like me.”

     
He pulled her abruptly into his arms and kissed her so long and so passionately that any doubt Susanna may have harbored about his feelings for her died an instantaneous death.

     
She loved him! And he loved her. If she’d been happy before, she was a hundred times more so now. She wanted to sing with joy, shout her news to the world. But like a pauper turned suddenly wealthy, she hugged the secret to her breast, fearful that common knowledge might diminish her newfound riches.

     
She said nothing to Dallas or her mother about her feelings. In fact, Susanna had hardly seen
Augusta
since Jay’s return to
Atlantic City
. This suited Susanna perfectly.
Augusta
went out a great deal, to where, Susanna neither knew nor cared. And like her son,
Augusta
had no interest in the operation of the Sea Star. This, too, suited Susanna. She wanted as little as possible to do with that woman. She hadn’t even told Jay that her mother had come home. And now that her heart was filled with her wondrous love for Jay, there wasn’t room there for anything else.

     
Each morning, Jay arrived at the Sea Star promptly at eight in the morning. At six in the evening, he would return to the
Brighton
, where he was registered as a guest. Some days he would spend a few hours at the site of his new hotel on the Boardwalk, supervising construction (he had once worked as a hod carrier), and generally bedeviling the construction boss and crew. One day he took Susanna with him to watch the work. She was astonished at the size of the frame, which had already been raised.

     
“I never saw anything so huge!” she exclaimed. “How big is this place going to be?”

     
“Six stories high,” Jay said, leaning back against the Boardwalk railing, “with enough rooms to house five hundred guests. I have great plans for this hotel. Some of the guest rooms will have balconies overlooking the ocean. The carpets in the lobby and public rooms will all be Persian. There will be three restaurants, the principal one with a domed skylight. The grand staircase is to be of Numidian marble.”

     
“How much is all this going to cost?” Susanna asked, her mind reeling.

     
“A fortune,” he said, amused by the question. “But don’t worry, I’ll still have enough money left over to make improvements on the Sea Star.”

     
“I wasn’t worried about that.” She was slightly wounded that he should think her so self-absorbed.

     
“Forgive me,” he said at once, realizing he had hurt her. He gave her a quick hug, right there on the Boardwalk, in full sight of the construction boss, who tactfully averted his eyes. “Sometimes you take me too literally, Susanna. I was only teasing you.”

     
“I know that now,” she said, chagrined. “It’s just that you once told me you always mean what you say.”

     
“Yes.” He looked away from her. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

     
There it was again, that curious troubled look Susanna couldn’t identify. She was about to ask him about it when he said, “I haven’t seen your brother for a while. Where has he been keeping himself?”

     
Caught off guard by the change of topic, Susanna answered, “He’s been spending most of his time with our mother.” And then could have bitten her tongue for having said it.

     
“Your mother?” Jay looked puzzled. “I thought—”

     
“She came back,” Susanna said in a tone of voice she might have used to say “She died.”

     
“You don’t seem pleased about it,” Jay observed.

     
“I’m not,” she said frankly. “She should have stayed where she was—wherever that was.”

     
“I don’t understand.”

     
“My mother won’t say where she’s been or what she’s been doing for the past eleven years. I find that suspect, don’t you?”

     
“I can’t answer that question, Susanna. I’d have to know your mother personally before formulating an opinion.”

     
“How diplomatic of you,” Susanna retorted. “A woman deserts her children without even a by-your-leave, and then, more than a decade later, she turns up on their doorstep like the proverbial bad penny. What more do you need to form an opinion?”

     
“Quite a bit more than that,” Jay answered, surmising that Susanna’s sarcasm concealed a heart too sore to judge fairly. “Have you talked to your mother about this? Have you asked her why she left you?”

     
Susanna was sorry she had brought up the subject. “She skirts the issue,” she explained unwillingly. “She keeps hinting that my father was at fault, then she conveniently retreats behind a pseudo-saintly reluctance to speak ill of him. As to what she’s been doing for the past eleven years, your guess is as good as mine. She says it’s a period of her life she prefers to forget. I say she’s too ashamed to tell me the truth.”

     
“Perhaps,” Jay said carefully, “the truth would be painful to you, and your mother wants to spare you.”

     
“If she were concerned about my feelings, she would never have left in the first place.” Susanna’s voice was cold, but her mouth trembled.

     
Jay took her hand in his and pressed it gently to his lips. “I’d like to meet her,” he said.

     
“Why?” She snatched her hand away. “What possible interest could you have in her?”

     
Jay thought for a moment, as if asking himself the same question. Then: “She’s your mother, Susanna. Everything about you is of interest to me.”