Dawn Stewardson (7 page)

The boys looked at Lauren. She knew they were dying to tell Grace exactly what Sully was suffering from, but they didn’t—which was the first thing she’d had to be glad about in the past five minutes.

“Sully isn’t sick,” she said, deciding that wasn’t a lie, even though he wasn’t in the best of health, either.

Then she realized it would be a good idea if somebody made sure he was all right and glanced at Otis. “I think he might like to talk to you for a minute, though. He’s in his bedroom.

“Actually,” she said, focusing on Grace again, “the lights are on because there’s a phone call for me. I’m just sorry it’s gotten everybody up.”

“It’s her father,” Freckles said. “Sully told us.”

“Well, if the call’s for Lauren, it’s only polite to let her take it privately. So why don’t the rest of us go into the kitchen and I’ll make some hot chocolate. It’ll help us all get back to sleep.”

Lauren shot Grace a grateful glance. Then, as the others started off, she took a deep breath and told herself that no matter what her father said she wouldn’t let it upset her.

Picking up the receiver, she took another deep breath for good measure and said, “Hi, Dad.”

“Lauren, you took forever getting to the phone. Are you all right?”

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She could hear him assuring her mother she was fine, then he got back to her. “Why wouldn’t you be?” he repeated. “Have you forgotten you could be the target of that lunatic criminal of Elliot’s?”

“Of course not,” she said, although she really didn’t think there was much chance of the lunatic targeting
her.

“Then didn’t it occur to you,” her father asked, “that your mother and I would worry when you didn’t phone?”

“When I didn’t phone?” She was supposed to have phoned?

“About dinner,” her father elaborated. “I told you Marisa invited herself, remember?”

Oh, no. Dinner at her parents with her sister. She’d promised to call her mother and confirm. Then Billy and Hoops had shown up and she’d forgotten all about it.

“Oh, Dad, I’m sorry. I really am. It completely slipped my mind.”

“I see,” he said stonily. “Well, we had no way of knowing it had completely slipped your mind. So when you didn’t phone, we started thinking something might have happened to you and called your apartment. Then we started trying your cell phone, but that didn’t get us anywhere, either.”

“It’s not working. I forgot to charge it.”

“She forgot to charge it,” her father muttered to her mother. “Well, we had no way of knowing that, either,” he continued on to Lauren. “So, eventually, I called Rosalie, to see if anything had happened at the office. And when she told me where you’d gone…”

Lauren grimaced, imagining the third degree he must have given Rosalie to make her tell. She’d never have willingly volunteered the information. She’d seen enough of Roger Van Slyke to know he’d think taking off for Eagles Roost was a harebrained idea.

“When she told me,” he was continuing, “that you’d headed off to the middle of nowhere with a couple of that Sullivan man’s criminals-in-training, it certainly did nothing to relieve our minds.”

“Dad, Sully’s kids are
not
criminals-in-training. They’re boys from problem home situations. They’re not problems themselves.”

“No? You must be forgetting about the one who robbed the bank, then, but let’s not get into that at the moment.”

Lauren began massaging the right side of her neck where she always felt tension first. It was supposed to be mothers who were the experts at making their children feel guilty, but that wasn’t the way it worked in her case.

“By the time I finally called information and got this number, your mother and I were sure you were lying in a ditch somewhere,” her father went on, “so I called Sullivan to find out what time you’d left—as a prelude to calling the state police. But what do I find out? That you’re spending the night under the same roof as that ex-con! What on earth possessed you to do that?”

“Dad, I didn’t have much choice. I ran out of gas and the gas station was closed. So what should I have done? Slept in the car?”

“You ran out of gas? Oh, so that’s the real story. Sullivan said you’d had car trouble, but I should have known the car wasn’t to blame.”

Lauren began to massage harder, wishing she hadn’t mentioned the gas and wondering if Sully had intentionally tried to help her save face.

She took a few more deep breaths, sure that if her father said one more word she’d end up yelling that she was thirty years old, not twelve. Then she heard her mother saying, “Roger, for goodness’ sake, give me that phone.”

“Darling,” she said, coming on the line, “you’re absolutely certain you’re all right?”

“Positive,” Lauren assured her, immediately starting to breathe a little more easily. She adored her mother, and there was never the sort of tension between them that seemed so frequent with her father. “And I really am sorry I forgot to call,” she added.

“Don’t worry about it, dear. We all forget things sometimes. And don’t be upset with your father. He only sounded angry because he’s been so worried about you.”

“Yes…yes, I know.” But she also knew he’d only been so worried because he didn’t believe she was a competent adult.

“Lauren, phone us when you get home, will you? Just to check in? You’ll be coming back first thing in the morning?”

“Yes, first thing in the morning.”

“Well, drive safely, darling.”

“I will. Night, Mom.”

Lauren had barely hung up before Otis came walking out of the bedroom wing. She was almost afraid to ask if Sully was all right, but when she did, the nod she got in response sent relief rushing through her.

“I guess I’m hardly his favorite person, though,” she said.

Otis shot her a wry look. “Kneeing a man in the groin isn’t exactly the recommended way to his heart.”

“No…of course not.” And Otis had just confirmed what she’d already been sure of. Sully was back to hating her again—which made her feel worse than she’d have imagined.

“When Grace finishes in the kitchen,” Otis said, heading for the front door, “tell her I’ve gone back to the cottage, huh? If we’re going to be driving all day, I’d like to get a little more sleep first.”

He’d barely left before the kitchen door opened and Grace was herding the boys off to bed again. Then she brought a mug of hot chocolate over to Lauren, saying, “I thought you might like this.”

“Thanks. And Otis asked me to tell you he’s gone back to the cottage.”

“Well, I’m on my way there, too. But is everything okay? No family emergency or anything?”

“No, it was really just a little mix-up, but my parents worked themselves into a panic.”

“Ahh. Well, parents never stop thinking of their children as children, do they.” Grace took a couple of tentative steps toward the door, then stopped. “Lauren, I hope you won’t think I’m sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong, but when we were in the kitchen the boys were telling me about hearing you screaming and finding Sully on the floor.”

“Oh,” she murmured, feeling like an idiot all over again.

“And Freckles said he heard you call Sully the barber of On,” Grace added.

When Lauren looked at her uncertainly, she smiled. “You’ll love hearing the way they figured that one out. They decided On must be a place—like Oz. And that the guy in charge there must be a barber, instead of a wizard. They did think it was a strange thing to be calling Sully, though—couldn’t really come up with an explanation for that. But after I sounded it out in my head a few times, I decided you actually might have been calling him a barbarian. Was I right?”

Lauren simply nodded, wishing she could erase the entire episode.

“So I assume there was some initial confusion about what he was doing in your room?”

“Initial confusion,” she repeated, thinking Grace deserved an award for understatement. “Yes, that would certainly be one way of putting it. I realize now that it was dark and he just startled me, but at the time I…misjudged his intentions.”

“Yes, I can see how you would. I wanted to be sure, though, that you realize those kinds of intentions would never even cross Sully’s mind. He’s a very special man—honest and trustworthy and… Well, Otis and I love him like a son, so I didn’t want you thinking poorly of him when you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t. It was just waking up suddenly, in a strange place, with a man right there. But I guess that only goes to show my father was right. I shouldn’t have stayed here.”

“Of course you should have. Given the situation, it was the only sensible thing to do.”

Lauren managed a weak smile. “That definitely isn’t the way my father saw it.”

“Well, people don’t always see things the same way. But you have to make your own decisions, don’t you. Without worrying too much what other people will think. Because it’s you who has to live with the results of those decisions, and… Well, that’s enough philosophy for tonight, so I’ll see you in the morning.”

Once Lauren was alone, she sat down on a couch and sipped her hot chocolate—wishing again that she could erase what had happened. She couldn’t, though. All she could do was have another try at apologizing to Sully. The only question was when. Should she go and find Sully now, or would it be safer to steer clear until morning?

She’d pretty well decided on the steering clear route when he struck it from her list of options by appearing.

She eyed him uneasily. He was still wearing the navy bathrobe he’d had on earlier. And she could see that Jack Sullivan was a very unhappy camper.

When he started toward her she was relieved to see he wasn’t having difficulty walking. But her relief was short-lived, because the closer he got the more angry he seemed.

Not that she could blame him for being upset. She just wished he didn’t look as if he’d rather have found anyone else in the world sitting in his lounge.

He sat down on the end of the couch, leaving a good three feet between them—undoubtedly because he’d decided she represented a deadly threat to his well-being.

When he opened his mouth to speak, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d ordered her to get out of the lodge right this minute. She certainly wasn’t expecting him to say what he did.

More car trouble

“B
EFORE I GO BACK
to bed,” Sully said, looking warily at Lauren, “I want the answer to a question. Why did you move the floor lamp?” He wasn’t about to lie awake the rest of the night trying to figure out that little mystery.

She cleared her throat, but instead of saying anything she simply took a sip from the mug she was holding.

He waited for her answer. Now that the pain had subsided and he’d put things into perspective, he could see why she’d reacted the way she had. If their roles had been reversed, if he’d woken up to find Lauren standing over him at 3 a.m., what conclusion would he have jumped to?

Of course, he’d have been more inclined to kiss her than to start screaming, but that was beside the point. The point was that if she’d left the lamp where it belonged, he’d have turned it on and never made his blunder. And why she’d moved it was completely beyond him.

“You did have a reason, didn’t you?” he pressed. “It wasn’t just some random senseless act, was it?”

“You’ll think the reason’s crazy,” she said.

Now why,
he silently asked,
doesn’t that surprise me?
“Try me,” he said aloud.

She gave a resigned shrug that for some reason he found absurdly touching. With her honey-gold hair still tousled from sleep, no makeup, and wrapped in Grace’s long pink robe, she seemed more like a little girl than a grown woman.

“I thought it was a man,” she murmured.

“Pardon me?”

“The floor lamp. I thought it was a man.”

“Oh,” he said, managing to stop himself from asking if anything else in the room had taken on human form. But every time he started forgetting what a screwball she was, she either said or did something to remind him.

“I must have rolled over just as I was falling asleep,” she elaborated, “and when I caught a glimpse of its shape standing there in the dark, I almost screamed.”

“Because you thought it was a man.”

“Exactly. I mean, I only thought that for a second, but I didn’t want it to happen again, in case I did scream and wake somebody. So I moved it back behind the chair, where it was out of my line of vision. But then…well, then I ended up screaming and waking everyone, anyway, didn’t I. Sully, I’m awfully sorry about what happened. I truly am. But I’m an incredibly sound sleeper, and I don’t think clearly when I first wake up. Especially not if I’m wakened suddenly. So…well, I really am very sorry.”

He’d have jumped in and stopped her mid-apology, but she’d taken him by surprise. After all, he should never have just groped at her, so he was at least partly to blame. And he’d been thinking she had to figure he was
entirely
to blame.

When she finished and sat gazing at him with those big blue eyes, something in her expression kept him from saying anything right away.

She looked as if it was incredibly important to her that he really believed she was sorry, and that gave him the strangest feeling. There hadn’t been many people in his life who’d ever cared about whether he believed what they told him or not. Usually, you had to care about a person before things like that mattered, and the people who’d cared about him had been few and far between.

Which meant he had to be wrong about the look in Lauren Van Slyke’s eyes, because why would it matter to her if he believed her?

It wouldn’t, he told himself logically. But for some inexplicable reason, he wished it did.

“So?” she said quietly. “Apology accepted?”

“Sure. It was at least half my fault, anyway.”

That made her smile. And Sully suddenly couldn’t help thinking she was extremely beautiful when she smiled.

He knew that was a very dangerous thing to think about, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

T
HE LONGER
L
AUREN
sat on the couch with Sully, the clearer it became that—insane as it seemed—he was thinking of kissing her.

And that idea…well, she certainly didn’t intend to let him. Encounters with strangers just weren’t her style.

She pulled Grace’s robe more tightly around her. Then, deciding that looking at him really wasn’t the best thing to be doing at the moment, she forced her eyes down to the couch—and discovered that the distance between them had shrunk.

She couldn’t remember either of them moving, but one of them must have because that space was no longer nearly large enough for comfort. “Well,” she murmured, “if we don’t go back to bed soon, it’ll hardly be worthwhile.”

“Right,” he agreed.

Neither of them, though, made a move to stand up. Then they both did. At exactly the same instant. Half an instant after that, the top of her head banged the bottom of his chin.

They collided with a solid smacking sound and Sully sat back down. Fast.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, her fingers flying to his jaw. “I’ve hurt you again.”

“No, I’m okay. How about your head?”

“Fine, just fine.” Actually, it was a wonder she was still standing, because she was seeing stars. Sully’s jaw had felt as hard as granite.

Realizing her fingers were resting against it, she tentatively brushed them across his skin…just to check whether his jaw really
was
as hard as granite.

He gazed into her eyes for an eternity of seconds. Her pulse was racing, and she’d just reached the point of wanting to kiss him as much as he seemed to want to kiss her when he took her in his arms.

“Stop,” she said shakily. He might have her head spinning but she hadn’t completely lost her self-control. “Look, Sully,” she managed to say, “we hardly know each other.”

He gave her a lazy smile. “That’s true,” he said softly. “But you seem to have grown on me awfully quickly.”

She eyed him uncertainly, remembering Grace had told her he was honest and trustworthy. And he did sound sincere, as if he really wasn’t just handing her a line.

Then he smiled a second time and said, “You know, in your own peculiar way, you’re quite a woman.”

She wasn’t sure she liked the
peculiar way
part of that remark. But she did like the
quite a woman
part. And she decided she wanted to kiss him a whole lot more than she wanted to debate semantics.

The moment his lips touched hers, she knew it was going to be the kind of kiss dreams are made of.

T
HE LONGER SULLY KISSED
Lauren, the more certain he was that if he were struck dead mid-kiss, he’d die a happy man. She felt so soft and warm he wanted to hold her forever.

The smell of her perfume was wrapping him in a delicious haze, while her kisses were nothing short of incredible. There wasn’t the slightest trace of Ice Princess in her when she kissed. There was nothing but pure, lovely woman, and that was making him positively breathless.

He tried reminding himself that they were as mismatched as two people could possibly be. His self refused to listen, though, so he gave up and went on kissing her—until he came to his senses.

He stopped. It wasn’t easy, but he did. He hadn’t forgotten that knee to the groin and he sure wasn’t risking another one.

Lauren Van Slyke was the kind of woman who deserved to be treated with respect. Even if it killed him.

L
AUREN LAY AWAKE
in Sully’s bed, alone with her thoughts—every last one of which was about Jack Sullivan.

In the darkness of his room, she began wondering, again, why he’d stopped kissing her.

It was extremely fortunate, she told herself sternly, that he had. Because she hadn’t been thinking about the fact that she’d probably never see him again after she went home. To be truthful, she hadn’t been thinking. Period.

She drifted in and out of sleep for the rest of the night, dreaming about Sully, only to wake up and ponder the prospect of never seeing him again. It wasn’t a prospect she fancied.

A man like Jack Sullivan didn’t walk into her life every day. In fact, no man like him had ever walked into it before, so the thought of his walking right back out again wasn’t a happy one.

The more she considered that, the more she realized she’d be a fool to let it happen. Not that she imagined there could ever be anything serious between them, but if they enjoyed each other’s company, what harm would there be in seeing each other now and then?

She was assuming he’d want to, of course, but since he thought she was “quite a woman” it seemed like a pretty safe assumption. Which meant all they’d have to do was discuss the logistics.

I
T WAS
7:00 a.m. before faint sounds drifting into the bedroom told Lauren that other people were up and moving around the lodge. She had a quick shower, then started getting dressed in the clothes Grace had given her.

The blue cotton shirt was a perfect fit, but when she pulled on the faded jeans it was obvious that either Grace was even thinner than she looked or the jeans were from still skinnier years.

She finally managed to wiggle her way into them, got them zipped up by sucking in her breath, then slipped on the deck shoes and headed for the kitchen—where she found the kids already at the table and Sully serving bacon and eggs.

He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt again. A jade green one today. His dark hair was still damp from the shower, and it was curling at the bottom of his neck. She wanted to run her fingers through it.

The boys all said good-morning to her, but it was Sully’s smile that made her heartbeat accelerate and the blood in her veins feel warmer.

“You haven’t missed saying goodbye to Otis and Grace,” he told her. “They’ll be in for breakfast in a minute, so have a seat.”

As she’d discovered at dinner last night, eating a meal with five boys wasn’t a peaceful, well-ordered experience. It was difficult to pay attention to their chatter and think at the same time. Still, all during breakfast, and then while everyone was saying their farewells to the Plavsics, in the back of her mind she was trying to decide on the best way of beginning the conversation with Sully. Should she just come right out and invite him to something in Manhattan? Or should she kind of ease into the topic of seeing him again?

Otis was already in the car when Grace gave her a warm hug and said, “I hope this isn’t the last we’ll see of you, dear.”

Lauren hugged the older woman back, hoping exactly the same thing.

As the Plavsics’s car disappeared from sight, Sully turned to the boys. “Okay, I’m going to take Lauren into North Head to get some gas now, so I want you kids to clean up the kitchen while I’m gone. Terry, you supervise today.”

“Are you coming back, Lauren?” Billy asked. “After you get the gas?”

Before she could open her mouth, Sully said, “No, she’s in a hurry to get home. So you all say goodbye to her now.”

Lauren tried to catch his eye. It was only eight-thirty, so there was no reason she couldn’t stay for a few more hours. He didn’t look her way, though, and the boys had all started talking.

“You should come visit us again sometime,” Freckles told her.

The others all said, “Yeah,” or nodded in agreement. All the others except Sully, she noted uneasily.

One of the twins—she was pretty sure it was Terry—wanted a goodbye hug. When the other four boys didn’t seem quite certain, she just shook hands with them and patted the dog.

Eventually, Sully dragged her away and hustled her into the minivan. While she was rolling down her window to let in some fresh air, he called to the boys that he’d only be about half an hour.

Deciding that ruled out the easing-into-the-topic approach, the minute he put the van into drive she said, “I really
would
like to come back and visit everyone sometime. It’s beautiful up here.”

“Yeah, it is, isn’t it,” he agreed, not taking his eyes off the road.

She waited, but he didn’t say anything more. That made her decidedly uncertain. Surely he wanted to see her again…didn’t he?

No subtle way of asking popped into her head, so as they neared the end of his private road, she said, “Do you come into the city very often?”

Instead of answering, he pulled the van to a stop, shifted into park, then finally looked at her. “Lauren, about last night…”

“Yes?” she murmured, her heart beating double time.

“You’re a very difficult woman to…resist.”

“Yes?” she said again. That had sounded promising, but there was nothing promising in the way Sully was staring straight ahead now, instead of meeting her gaze.

“Look,” he said after an interminable silence, “I knew at the time I was out of line but…well, as I said, you’re very difficult to resist. The thing is though…Lauren, it’s got to be as obvious to you as it is to me that we live in entirely different worlds.”

She simply stared at him. He was giving her the brush-off.

“So there’s no point,” he continued, “in trying to pretend there’s any possible way that… We both know better than to even think about it.”

His words cut surprisingly deeply. She forced her eyes away from him, telling herself it really didn’t matter whether he wanted to see her again or not. She’d only been thinking about some sort of casual friendship, anyway. Deep down, though, she couldn’t help wondering if she’d been thinking about something more.

“It’s not that I don’t like you,” he mumbled at the steering wheel. “I wasn’t lying about that last night, I really wasn’t. it’s just that we’d be dumb to figure…”

“Dumb,” she repeated woodenly. “Well…we definitely wouldn’t want to be dumb.”

Sully nodded. “I knew you’d see it that way, too.”

“Yes. Certainly. What other way is there to see it?”

When he shoved the van back into drive and they started off once more, her emotions began teeter-tottering between hurt and anger—with a large dollop of humiliation thrown in for good measure.

She’d made a total fool of herself with her
dumb
idea, because Sully didn’t like her at all. Telling her he did had been an out-and-out lie.