A Self-Made Man (5 page)

But even that didn't ruffle her. God, she was good. Or maybe, he thought, it wasn't an act. Maybe she didn't even remember why he had smashed Biff Prescher's nose after basketball practice, out behind
the gym with the entire basketball team standing around, watching.

“Biff's doing well,” she said smoothly. “He lives in Seattle, with his wife and four children. I haven't seen his nose in years. It's Biff's father, actually, who was the architect here. You may remember old Mr. Prescher?”

His fingers twitched slightly as he followed the curving lines of the little parking lot. “Sorry, never met him. Somehow I guess our paths just never crossed at the University Club. And I don't think he ever showed up at my office behind the gymnasium for a nose job.”

She raised her eyebrows gently. To his surprise, she reached out and touched the back of his hand with the silky pad of one forefinger. More proof of how impervious she was, no doubt. He waited.

“Really, Adam,” she said chidingly, hitting a sophisticated note of well-meaning detachment with her well-modulated voice. Deliberately casting herself as a distant friend, a sympathetic stranger… Anything but what she was, a old lover with burning embers strewn at her feet.

“Really what, Lacy?” His eyes met hers.

“It's just that… This bad-boy-redux act is a bit much, don't you think?” She tapped his knuckles one at a time. “See? No bruises. No torn, swollen skin. I'd say these hands haven't broken any noses in a long, long time.”

He grinned. “Or maybe I'm just much better at it these days.”

She shook her head. “In that suit? I doubt it. We're past that now, Ad—”

He flipped his hand over so fast she didn't have time to gasp, and he caught her wrist in his palm. She looked shocked, as if she'd been carelessly touching a branch that turned out to be a snake.

“Don't kid yourself, Lacy,” he said, bending across Prescher Senior's toy-block kingdom, not caring if he crushed a tower or two. “We're not past anything. I told you—this is just a uniform. Pockets full or empty, I'm still the same man, and I still don't care much for snobs. Or hypocrites, no matter how slick and pretty they are.”

She was rallying, but the effort was costing her. He watched the column of her throat adjust as she swallowed her natural reactions of both fear and anger. Her blue eyes lost their strain, rounding instead in an artificially mild enquiry.

“Dear me,” she said softly. “How frighteningly macho…. Should I look into acquiring a helmet and face mask—to protect my own nose?”

He considered for a moment, studying the perfectly shaped nose in question. “No need,” he said finally, letting his words stretch and grow uncomfortably warm and familiar. “If I decide to tackle you, Lacy, I'll be targeting a spot considerably father south.”

She was going to slap him. He saw the spark flare like silver fire in her eyes, and he caught her free hand just as it began its flinching backswing. He stopped it midair, leeched the willful fury out of it with a slow relentless pressure, and then began to guide it in, toward the soft swell of her breast.

She resisted until the very last moment, and then she finally surrendered, letting him place her hand, palm down, against the blue silk of her blouse.

“There,” he said quietly, letting his hand rest atop hers, letting her deep, irregular breathing rock both palms in unison. “If I wanted you, Lacy, this is where I'd attack. Right here, where your heart used to be.”

A
FTER
A
DAM'S VISIT
,
Lacy's workday was shot. She found it difficult to concentrate on even the simplest tasks. She summoned all her tried-and-true tricks for blocking out disturbing thoughts, but nothing worked. Over and over, even in the middle of a business lunch, even while she cuddled the babies in the nursery, even while she reviewed the auction figures with Tilly, her mind kept returning to Adam.

She kept remembering the way his hand had felt against her breast, the hard look in his eyes when he called her a hypocrite. She replayed again and again, like a broken recording, the derision in his voice when he told her she no longer possessed a heart.

Well, maybe he was right. She
hoped
he was right. Hearts hurt. Hearts broke, and the broken pieces cut you to shreds from the inside.

“Lacy! Come back from whatever planet you're on and add these figures up for me. You know I don't do numbers.”

Lacy roused herself guiltily and smiled over at Tilly, who was clearly already bored with the auction accounting. Tilly hated red tape. The government, she always predicted tartly, was going to regulate charity right out of existence.

“Sorry,” Lacy said, taking the computer printout from Tilly's hand. “I'll do that.” She didn't guarantee accurate results—not with Adam's face popping up where columns of numbers ought to be—but she'd try.

Tilly tapped her fingers on the desk while Lacy entered figures into the calculator. After about a minute, the older woman stood up and started to prowl the room, stopping in front of the mirror to fidget with her towering white wig. She muttered something under her breath, then dropped onto the couch and began flipping through a magazine noisily.

Lacy knew it couldn't last, but she keyed in numbers doggedly, trying to get as far as she could before Tilly's patience erupted.

“I'm hungry,” the older woman broke in less than five minutes later, plopping herself onto the chair in front of Lacy's desk again. “And we've got that fund-raiser dinner tonight, so you know we won't eat until absurdly late.” She pointed to the calculator accusingly. “Can't we do this nonsense tomorrow? Let's go to the cafeteria. Kara told me they had a sinfully delicious chocolate pie today.”

Lacy didn't look up. “You can't have chocolate pie,” she said firmly. “Blood sugar.” She wasn't worried—they had been through this a million times. Tilly had no intention of eating the pie. She just wanted to pretend she was going to—a tiny act of pseudodefiance toward the diabetes that she'd lived with—and resented—for the past sixty years. When she'd been diagnosed, Tilly had been twenty-three, a wild young beauty who had just received her pilot's
license, something that had been unheard of for young women in her social set at the time. The diabetes had grounded her for life. Typical, Tilly observed irritably whenever she talked about it. Fate hated to see anyone having too much fun.

“Well, they should make sugar-free chocolate pie,” Tilly said, tapping a pencil indignantly on the edge of Lacy's desk. “They can't just act as if only you young people matter.
Lots
of people can't eat sugar! Why, do you know what the statistics are on diabetes in this country today?”

“No. And neither do you. You don't do numbers, remember?” With a tolerant sigh, Lacy flipped the rocker switch at the back of her calculator. Now that the neonatal campaign had heated up, she and Tilly rarely had quiet moments alone together, so she might as well take advantage of this one.

She watched the older woman, trying to gauge her mood. She didn't want to cause an explosion. Tilly had spent a lifetime cultivating an image as an out-spoken eccentric, and she'd lost the ability to rein in her emotions—if indeed she'd ever possessed it.

“You know, Tilly,” Lacy said carefully, “we're going to have to talk about the private detective sooner or later.”

Tilly gave her a mulish look—the same look she'd given Lacy every time the subject had been brought up over the past three weeks. “No, we're not.”

“Yes, we are. He's been waiting nearly a month to hear from me on how to proceed.”

“Well, let him wait.” Tilly tugged at the hairline of her wig irritably. “He has my retainer. And I
haven't made up my mind yet. I might just want to let the whole thing drop.”

“Tilly.” Lacy leaned forward. “You know that's not true. A month ago you said finding your daughter was the most important thing in the world to you.”

Tilly harrumphed eloquently and waved her hand in the air. “That's just because my blood sugar went up so high that day, and I thought I was going to die. I've changed my mind about that, too. I don't believe I will die after all. So there's no need to rush into airing my dirty laundry in front of any private detective, is there?”

Lacy shut her eyes briefly, praying that her patience would hold out. She hardly knew where to begin refuting an argument as illogical and convoluted as this one.

“First of all, Tilly, you don't have to be on your deathbed to want to reconnect with your daughter. It's a perfectly normal urge. I've been doing some research, and believe me, the statistics are overwhelming. Almost every woman who has given up a child for adoption someday feels the desire to find that child. And secondly, being single and pregnant may have constituted ‘dirty laundry' sixty years ago, Tilly, but it doesn't today.”

“Well, society here on Pringle Is—”

“To heck with Pringle Island society,” Lacy broke in emphatically. “You're the queen around here. They think what you tell them to think. And besides, since when have you given a fig what other people think?”

Tilly smiled reluctantly. “Well, now that you mention it, I figure it's been about sixty years.”

Lacy nodded. “Exactly. So what do you say? Shall I tell the detective to start hunting?”

“No. Yes. I mean, I—” Tilly hesitated, her blustery defiance dissipating suddenly, leaving a strange uncertainty in its place. “Lacy, I just…”

For the first time Lacy could ever remember, Tilly seemed at a loss for words. Her eyes glimmered with the hint of tears, and her face appeared to crumple, the animated spunk that was her hallmark slowly draining away. Lacy's heart faltered, as she looked at her dear friend and saw something she had never seen before: an old woman.

“Tilly, it's all right,” she said quickly. “We don't have to do anything that—”

“I'm afraid, Lacy.” Tilly put one delicate, blue-veined hand to her chest as if something were hurting there. “It's as simple as that. I'm afraid of what we might find out. Maybe it's better just to have my dreams.” She sighed brokenly, and her hand dropped to her lap. “But then I think…what if this damned diabetes gets me after all, and I lose my chance to say…to tell her…”

Lacy shoved her chair back from the desk and went to her friend, kneeling in front of her. “Don't,” she said, taking Tilly's hands in her own. “Don't upset yourself. We can talk about this more later. There's plenty of time to decide—”

“There may not be—”

“And stop this foolish talk about dying, do you hear me?” Lacy was appalled to hear her own voice
trembling. She firmed her resolve and offered Tilly a reassuring smile. “You're not going to die, because Dr. Blexrud and I have decided we simply aren't going to let you.”

Tilly gazed down at her for a long moment, her eyes misty and unfocused. Then she reached out and touched the tips of her wrinkled fingers to Lacy's temple gently.

“Thank you, sweetheart.” As she stroked Lacy's hair, Tilly began to smile, the slow warmth brightening her face and making it beautiful. “You're a dear girl, did you know that?”

Lacy smiled back. “I'm glad you think so. Today, anyway.”

Tilly chuckled, and Lacy's heart eased as she watched the twinkling mischief return to her friend's eyes.

“Yes, a very dear girl. But if you think this means you're going to stop me from eating that chocolate pie, missy, you've got another think coming.”

 

T
HE HOSPITAL CAFETERIA
was crowded, as usual. Tilly and Lacy each grabbed a piece of fruit and a cup of coffee and headed for their favorite spot, a small cluster of picnic tables near the pediatric playground. Though Tilly grumbled, the balmy early summer afternoon was perfect for eating outdoors, and Lacy longed for fresh air to clear her head.

Apparently she wasn't the only one. The tables were almost as crowded as the cafeteria had been, and Lacy felt lucky to snag an empty one. Tilly saw an old friend and went over for a chat, but Lacy stayed
put, shutting her eyes to bask in the warmth of the sun.

She sincerely hoped there wasn't anyone she knew among the other diners—she didn't feel up to socializing. She needed to gather her poise before tonight's dinner. It didn't look as if Adam Kendall would be contributing any money to the hospital now, so she would have to treat tonight's guests doubly well. If she could only find time for a short nap….

No such luck. She had just taken a large, sloppy bite of her pear when a shadow fell over her plate. Pressing her napkin carefully against her chin, she looked up, somehow managing a polite smile without opening her lips.

Oh, great. It
would
be Jennifer Lansing, the chairman of the Pringle Island Historical Society. Lacy didn't enjoy Jennifer's company at the best of times— Jennifer's conversation consisted mainly of snobbishly chronicling the family trees of everyone she knew, which naturally made Lacy uncomfortable. To Jennifer, Lacy's family tree barely qualified as a shrub…and a common shrub, at that.

Things were particularly tense between the two women right now. The historical society hoped to build a museum, and Jennifer was busy soliciting donations from the very same people Lacy needed for the neonatal wing. Though extremely civilized, it was the most intense rivalry in town, and Lacy knew it was providing juicy dinner-table gossip all over Pringle Island.

“Lacy, darling!” Jennifer waited for Lacy to clean up her chin, then kissed the air around her cheek.
“What wonderful good luck that I should run into you now! There's something I simply must know!”

Lacy smiled. So Jennifer wanted something. That was no surprise. She raised her brows in polite inquiry but didn't hurry her chewing. Jennifer was rather like a diesel engine. She hardly needed a push from Lacy to get where she wanted to go.

“It's about Adam Kendall,” Jennifer said, lowering her voice dramatically. “He's right over there, playing basketball with Jason. Good heavens, Lacy,
don't look now!
”

But it was too late. Lacy's gaze had jerked automatically toward the central play area, where a basketball hoop had been sunk into the concrete for recovering pediatric patients—as well as visiting youngsters. Adam? Here?

She swallowed her pear half-chewed. Yes. Here. Adam, stripped to his T-shirt and slacks, had just stolen the orange ball from Jennifer's fifteen-year-old son, Jason. As she watched, he arced his torso elegantly, arms extended over his head, to toss the ball toward the basket. It sank with only a whisper of net, and even Jason whooped with delight, high-fiving Adam with genuine admiration.

For a breathless moment Lacy wondered if she'd entered a time warp. She'd spent so many hours, long, long ago, watching him play this game he loved so much. It had been cruel that the coach had kept him off the team—but at six-three Adam hadn't been quite tall enough to overcome the liability of being poor. Had he been six-ten, the coach would have happily
bought his uniforms for him, overlooking the fact that he had no parents to contribute to the program.

His exclusion from the team had been a bitter pill to swallow—one of many he had been forced to endure as the only child of an out-of-work alcoholic.

No trace of that bitterness was left now, even though the golden-haired, silver-spooned Jason Lansing proudly sported the blue-and-white uniform Adam had once so longed to wear. As the two male bodies battled, fighting muscle on muscle toward the basket, both of them were laughing, jiving, obviously loving every rigorous moment.

And Adam— She felt her heart kick at the wall of her chest. Adam looked so young, so virile…so happy. His body was as lithely powerful as it had been ten years ago, his pectoral muscles straining at the cotton T-shirt, his well-defined biceps curving and flexing, his tight hips shifting neatly as he ducked and dodged with an unconscious grace. His eyes were lit with pleasure. Laughter had smoothed the harsh edges from his face.

He didn't look much older than Jason. He was almost too beautiful to bear.

Lacy swallowed again, as if the pear wouldn't quite go down, and somehow forced her gaze back to Jennifer. “Yes, I see him. What about him?”

The other woman patted her perfectly coiffed blond page-boy and took one long last look at Adam, like a nicotine addict taking one last drag of a cigarette. Narrowing her eyes, she unconsciously licked her lips. Lacy could almost hear the internal purr of appreciation.

“Well, I hear you took him on the hospital tour this morning.” Jennifer eyed Lacy carefully. Though few people in their social set today had any clue that Lacy and Adam had once dated in high school, of course Jennifer knew. Jennifer was a pro—she made it her business to know everything about everyone. “So. Did the tour go well?”

Lacy chuckled, then took a slow sip of coffee. “He didn't commit to the neonatal unit, if that's what you're asking,” she said comfortably. She knew how to deal with the Jennifer Lansings of the world. Let them know you're on to them, but do it with the most cordial of smiles. “You're perfectly free to approach him about the museum. The word is he's loaded these days, although I'm sure you've already heard that.”

Jennifer smoothed her skirt, a stalling technique that surprised Lacy. Since when did Jennifer need to buy time in one of these elementary-level verbal duels?