By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs (11 page)

"You're
so
majestic," she interrupted
with heat, "and you weren't even there at the time."

"Precisely. I wasn't even there at the time.
And that was the whole problem. Cindy tells me—from the grave, from
her hiding place, what does it matter?—that I'm not a caring
person. And she must be right."

"Of
course
she's dead, Mavis
answered.

He looked up at that. "Is that to make me
feel better? So that I don't have to wonder, ever after, is she or
isn't she? So that, the question resolved, I can slip behind the
helm of the
Shadow,
win the race, and keep America great?
Forget it, Mave. I'm not going back."

"Because the Aussies have you running
scared, skipper?" she asked caustically.

"Because I'm not going back." He held the
steaming mug between his large hands, his forearms resting on his
thighs. He stared into the cup, she thought, as though he wished it
were a deep, deep lake.

"Then sell me
Shadow.
" She had no
idea who said it, but obviously her lips moved.

He looked up at her, both alert and
intrigued. "For your husband's syndicate?"

It was an evasion; she thrust it aside
impatiently. "How much would you ask? For the boat, the entire sail
inventory, all the gear, everything."

"Life jackets too? Gee, I'd have to think
about it." He crossed his legs, Buddha-fashion—the robe slipped a
bit; he tucked it demurely in place—and put on a thoughtful
look.

Stalling again. "Dammit, Alan. Make up your
mind. Either you're in or you're out. Let someone else have a
chance. And it's not as though you can go cruising to Europe in
Shadow.
And I should add that the market for used 12-meter
yachts is both limited and suffering from a glut."

"Ah, now you're trying to knock the price
down." He drew out a small cigar and a pack of matches which he'd
thought to tuck into a pocket of the spa robe, obviously enjoying
himself.

"How much, Alan?" Suddenly Mavis knew what
it was she wanted to do: head an America's Cup syndicate on her
own. She was not naive enough to consider picking up the whole tab
herself; only enough, the major part, to give her the final word in
everything. It was the obvious way. Alan—if he stayed in, and she
thought he might—Alan would then be free to do what he did best, to
steer
Shadow
to victory. She believed in
Shadow,
even
more than she believed in Alan Seton. She pressed him. "How
much?"

"Three million bucks," he said serenely.

She fell back into the soft cushions of her
sofa, genuinely stunned. "You're nuts."

"Some say that." He puffed contentedly on
his cigar, a cheerful study in repose. And yet five minutes ago he
had been an equally convincing study in tragedy.

"You're a fake," Mavis said, feeling oddly
wounded. "I don't believe a word of what you've said tonight, and I
wish," she added wearily, "that you'd just go home." She stood up.
"Good night."

He yawned what seemed to be a spontaneous,
wide yawn and said sleepily, "You're right, of course. I'm a bum.
Good night, Mavis." And he plumped up one of the silk-covered
pillows, reclined full-length on the couch, and sighed deeply.

She stood there, amazed at his presumption
and, though she never would have admitted it, mesmerized by the
movie star lines of his tanned profile against the pale cushion.
She stared at him, studied him. But no; he wouldn't do. Mavis
prized consistency above all else. She needed to be able to predict
behavior, because that allowed her to stay one step ahead of the
opposition. Barring that, and if she were matched equally to her
opponent, she needed a consistent set of rules to play by. But Alan
Seton was a dilettante who ignored the rules. A typical aristocrat:
nothing, apparently, was worth the effort. Not even the Cup. The
little man at the press conference was right. Alan Seton, grandson
of a peer, wasn't patriotic enough to keep going when the going got
tough.

He was asleep. She hadn't even decided her
next move, and he was asleep. He couldn't possibly be faking it,
she thought; no one slept that unself-consciously except the
totally exhausted. His mouth was open a little, and he was snoring,
not really gently. Pale white squint lines showed through his tan,
and lines from his straight nose to his square jaw. His five
o'clock shadow was eight hours old, and his black hair had reverted
to the shape it liked best—undisciplined curls. His brow was
slightly furrowed, as though sleep had caught him unawares and
knocked him down in the middle of some weighty pondering.

She declined to wake him, not because she
felt sorry for him but because she refused to feel that he made a
difference in her life. She would let him sleep it off the way she
would let a visiting child nap: because it was best for him.
Because she decided that it was best for him.

In her room, in her bed, Mavis discovered
that her eyes, too, were lined with lead; she could not keep them
open. For her, too, the day had been interminable. The amazing
thing was that she was falling asleep despite the fact that Alan
Seton was under the same roof. Or was it, she wondered in a rapid
slide into sleep, because of it?

The first knock was absorbed into her dream.
She was dreaming that she was a little girl again, riding her pony
along the beach, and she became lost, and it was nearly dark. So
she knocked on the door of a cottage—a little teahouse, actually,
Mandarin style—and someone tall and handsome and very famous, but
whose name escaped her, answered the door. She was thrilled but too
shy to ask the stranger's name, so she contrived to run back to her
pony to get her little writing pad; she would ask the famous man
for his autograph and solve the mystery of his identity. But when
she ran back to where she'd tethered her pony, the animal was gone,
and he was there instead. She screamed, "What have you done with
Jezebel?" and flew at him, enraged. Only now she was a woman, tall
and strong, but not strong enough to push him into the sea. He held
her, blocking her assault, and she knew she could not overpower
him.

The second knock woke her and Mavis bolted
up, fearful and disoriented. Against the dim background light of a
distant room she saw Alan, leaning against the door jamb to her
room, his body a silhouette of dejection. His head was bowed, his
gaze aimed at the floor, his right arm stretched to the opposite
side of the jamb. With his free hand he knocked again on her
bedroom wall, outrageously courteous.

"Yes? What?"

"Mavis." His voice was low, determined. "Let
me come to you."

She said nothing, but she was aware, as she
never had been in her life, of sexual desire. The sheet fell away
from her as with one hand she swept the auburn strands from her
damp, flushed face. She wanted someone, that she knew. Whether it
was the man in her doorway or the stranger in her dreams or the
first damn man off the street—it had been too long since her
husband's death. She wanted someone to wrap around; she wanted
someone to hold her.

Now Alan was standing beside her, pensively,
she thought. Still without a word from her, he unbelted his robe
and tossed it across the bed. The room was dark. They were two
shadows, reflections of one another's desire. What Mavis wanted was
a man; what Alan needed was a woman. Their longing could not be
spoken of aloud. What could they say that hadn't already been said
by generations of warring men and women who somehow found
themselves in bed together?

She was still sitting up, her hands folded
almost demurely in her lap. Silently he sat on the bed, supporting
himself on one arm alongside her. With his free hand he drew aside,
with hesitant precision, the remaining strands of hair that clung
damply to her neck. The gentleness of his touch was itself a
question; the low sigh that emerged from Mavis was his answer.

With light, skimming kisses he traced a path
along the nape of her neck to a secret place just below her ear,
and there he stayed, tormenting her with tiny nips and caresses,
until with a moan of desperation she turned his face to hers and
kissed him deeply. It was an evasion tactic on her part, an attempt
to reverse the sudden meltdown in the core of her self.

But Alan had other ideas. He began a slow
perusal of her body, and his touch was unerring. She had had lovers
with distractingly busy hands, and lovers with clumsy, heavy hands.
Invariably she had had to guide them, train them practically. It
had become a challenge to get satisfaction, and she had felt always
in charge.

But this was new. It was impossible for her
to avoid feeling that she was being handled as expertly as any
12-meter yacht. His sense of timing was superb. In the split
millisecond when she might have thought, "Too long," he moved on to
another flashpoint, fine-tuning her, bringing her to her full
potential for arousal.

Mavis knew what was being done to her and
she considered whether she should say,
Stop, I don't want any
more.
She thought it would be good discipline to say,
Stop.
She thought it would certainly preserve her sanity if
she said,
Stop.
But she only moaned more deeply, intensely
aware of every part of her that he touched. And then he was inside
her and, lying still, said his first words since coming to her bed.
"Mavis … quitting hurt more than I thought."

"I know," she whispered. "I know."

And then, "
Mavis
," again, with a
groan, and suddenly she was like
Shadow,
off with him on a
flying reach, tearing for the mark, ecstatic, hell-bent on winning
after all.

It was over quickly. But whether she won, or
he did, she didn't know or care.

They lay in one another's arms for a long
while in the near dark and near silence. Idly Mavis wished that she
had a remote control to turn off the dim light in the other room,
and to silence the crickets. She wanted completeness: all dark, all
quiet, all satisfied. Alan's breathing had become slow and easy,
and Mavis, the woman who almost never stopped planning ahead, was
lulled into sleep with no thought of the morning.

Still, the dawn did come, and though the sun
was not yet on her lawn, the neighbor's spaniel was; its cheerful,
wide-awake yap roused Mavis and her lover from equally deep
slumbers. Mavis heard a muffled groan in the softness of her own
pillow, where Alan had burrowed in the predawn coolness.

"God in heaven, what's that noise?" he
muttered, half asleep.

"A rabbit."

There was a pause. "You're joking."

"I mean: the barking is coming from a
springer spaniel who's undoubtedly chasing a rabbit across my
lawn." There was sleepy affection in her voice, something she
didn't want to admit to.

He pulled the sheet over his head. "It's
going to be stew in another minute."

"The rabbit?" Her eyes were still
closed.

"Him too."

She sighed and stretched luxuriously,
refusing to open her eyes, dragging out the anonymity of the night.
If she opened her eyes and saw who he was, they would be at war
again, she felt sure of it. Still, give the man credit. "You were
masterful last night," she admitted.

"Thank you, mum," he said with a yawn. "I
try to please."

He slid his hand around her front, though he
was still half asleep. The gesture seemed instinctive, mindless,
all too male. For some reason it bothered her, and she became
awake.
"But,"
she said crisply, throwing the sheet off them
both, "I have lots and lots of things to do today. I do think it's
time we tracked down your runaway clothes."

She had overreacted, of course, but what
surprised her was the look on his face when she glanced at him.
There was no resentment; it was almost a grateful look. Out of bed
he leaped.

"I owe you, Mavis," he said seriously,
slipping back into the spa robe. "I was a basket case last night, I
know. You were good to take me in."

"Anytime," she answered dryly, reaching for
her dressing gown and feeling surprisingly used, despite the fact
that she had used him as well.

He sensed her hurt anger—only the very
dimmest could have missed it—and he paused in his getaway to make
things right. Propping one foot on a little needlework footstool,
he leaned toward her, arms folded over one knee—the lawyer in
everybody's courtroom—and delivered his cross-examination.

"It wouldn't work, would it," he said in a
matter-of-fact way.

Still sitting on the edge of her bed, she
declined to give him the answer he wanted. She pulled her robe
partly around her. "Are you asking me or telling me?" she said.

"You're a high visibility object; I might as
well take the Statue of Liberty out on a date." He tried a rueful
grin.

Mavis had no idea why, but she was curious
to see how he was going to talk his way out of it. She said
nothing.

"It really wouldn't bother you?" he went on.
"A rich heiress being seen in the dubious company of an
impoverished quitter and only recently widowed husband? Or a
still-married man, as the case may be?"

"I don't bother about scandal sheets," she
said, although she did. "Anyway, what about the boat?" she added,
suddenly tired of all the rest of it.

"Ah,
Shadow.
That darling, expensive
jade of mine." He stood up and rumpled his hair with a squint-eyed
grimace that showed all of his teeth. He sucked in, then dropped, a
frustrated sigh in the air between them. "I lied at the press
conference, you know. The well's running
just
a tad dry.
Cash-flow issues." He considered a moment and then asked, "What's
your best offer?"

She wanted the boat; she could afford to be
generous. "Eight hundred thousand."