Every Breath You Take (5 page)

The telephone rang, and she rushed in from the terrace, hoping it would be Evan.

“Kate, it’s Holly. Hold on a second—” Her best friend’s cheerful voice was a balm to Kate’s spirits, as was the familiar sound of barking dogs in the background. Holly was a vet who took in “rescued” dogs while she looked for homes for them. It was almost impossible to have a conversation with her that wasn’t accompanied by a chorus of barking canines. “Sorry about the noise,” Holly said a little breathlessly. “I just took in a rescued Doberman, and he’s stirring up trouble. So, how’s Anguilla?”

“It’s a beautiful island, very pristine.”

“How are you feeling? Have you had any more headaches?”

“Not since the one I had four days ago on the plane from Chicago. It was so bad that when we landed in St. Maarten, Evan made our cabdriver take us to a doctor. The driver took us to his own doctor, a nice old man whose office was in his house and who spoke only French. The cabdriver spoke some English, so he had to act as translator.”

“Thank God you weren’t having gynecological problems!”

Smiling at Holly’s joking remark, Kate said, “Evidently, the cabdriver got the point across, because the doctor decided I was having migraines—that was the only word the doctor said that I completely understood. Anyway, he gave me a prescription for migraine pills that I’m supposed to take every day for the next two weeks. I’ve been taking them, but I think the headaches were probably from stress and they’d have gone away on their own when I got settled in down here.”

“Keep taking them anyway,” Holly ordered sternly; and when Kate promised she would, Holly changed to a lighter topic. “What about the Island Club—what’s it like?”

Carefully keeping her tone upbeat for Holly’s sake,
Kate described the hotel. “There are thirty private villas scattered along the beach, each with its own garden and terrace and a panoramic view of the water. Everything is white: the hotel, the villas, even the floors in the rooms. The bathroom is the size of my living room, and the tub is like a shallow sunken swimming pool. The main hotel where you check in is quite small, but the boutiques inside it are fabulous and the food here is superb.”

“Have you seen anyone famous?”

“A bellboy told me Donald Trump stayed here last week and Julia Roberts was here a month ago. There’s a family staying in one of the villas that has a bodyguard who follows their teenage sons around, but I don’t know who the family is, and I don’t think the staff would tell me if I asked. The staff is very, very discreet and extremely service oriented. In fact, there’s a young waiter here I’d love to have working for us. For me, I mean,” Kate corrected, trying to sound matter-of-fact instead of forlorn.

Holly wasn’t fooled. “Do not think about the restaurant. Put Evan on the phone. I’m going to give him strict orders to make you laugh and make love to you so you can’t think about anything else until you come home.”

Kate hesitated and then reluctantly said, “Evan isn’t here.”

“Is he playing thirty-six holes of golf a day or only twenty-seven?”

“He isn’t playing golf, he’s in Chicago.”

“What?” Holly said angrily.

“His father was supposed to get a continuance on an important case,” Kate explained, “but the judge refused to grant it. Evan had to turn around and go straight back to Chicago to either try the case in court or persuade the judge to continue it.”

“When is he planning to get back to Anguilla?” Holly asked bitterly.

“Tomorrow, possibly. Maybe.”

“Evan is an arrogant, thoughtless jerk, and I don’t care what his excuse is for not being there. He barely made it to your father’s wake before it was over, because he had to attend some rich old man’s birthday party. He knew you didn’t want to go on this trip so soon after your father’s funeral, but he made you feel so guilty that you went with him anyway. And now you’re stuck there alone.”

“There are worse places to be ‘stuck,’” Kate teased, trying to calm Holly down. From the corner of her eye she saw a large dog sneaking out of the woods and trotting across her garden. She tucked the telephone receiver between her shoulder and ear so that she could unwrap the bacon she’d saved for him in a napkin. “Actually, there’s a rather handsome male here that I’ve been seeing a lot of. Max and I have been having our meals together.”

Holly was instantly intrigued. “What’s he like?”

With the phone still cradled on her shoulder, Kate walked onto the terrace and described the dog as he wolfed down each piece of bacon she offered him, then waited patiently for the next one. “He’s extremely tall with light brown hair and very intelligent brown eyes. He’s surprisingly gentle, too, for such a big guy. I call him Max—short for Maximilian.”

Holly heard the trace of wry amusement in Kate’s voice. “What’s wrong with him, Kate?” she said warily.

“He’s much too thin, he needs a bath, and he’s never seen a hairbrush.”

“My God!”

“And he has four legs.”

“Now, that’s a problem you can’t fix,” Holly laughed. “Are we talking about a dog or a cat here?”

“A very big dog,” Kate confirmed, grinning as she gave the dog the last of the bacon and wiped her fingers
on the napkin. “He reminds me of a dog you rescued a long time ago—the one that took us forever to catch. He had short tan hair and a black muzzle. I think you said his breed was originally used to chase tigers and tire them out.”

“Not tigers, lions,” Holly said. “That dog was a Rhodesian ridgeback.”

“Well, Max doesn’t have a ridge on his back and he’s definitely a stray. He has two scruffy girlfriends, much smaller than he is, and they always join us for meals, but Max has started dropping by without them, just to say hello. He’s a bit of a flirt.”

“While we’re on the subject of flirting, will you do me one little favor while you’re stuck there all by yourself, because Evan is ‘too busy’ to get down there?”

“What sort of favor?” Kate asked, instantly wary of Holly’s change in tone.

“Are there any attractive unmarried
human
males staying at the hotel?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, then have you seen a decent-looking doorman? A cute bellboy?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because it would make me deliriously happy if I thought you’d had a fling with one of them while Evan was paying the damned hotel bill,” Holly said spitefully.

Kate smothered a laugh. “Okay.”

The anger in Holly’s voice turned to surprise. “You’ll do it?”

“No,” Kate said with a wayward smile, “but I’ll let you think I did, if that will make you ‘deliriously happy.’”

Bantering with Holly had lifted Kate’s spirits a little, and when she hung up, she tried to decide how best to keep herself occupied. She could go for a swim and then have a late lunch in the Sandbar, a cozy little restaurant
with a covered patio and Moorish arches. It had a splendid view of the bay, and if she didn’t feel like staring at the water, she could read the book she’d bought at O’Hare Airport called
Coping with Grief
.

If she didn’t want to do that, she could start making a list of the tasks she needed to take care of as soon as she got back to Chicago. She had things she needed to handle at the restaurant, now that she was solely responsible for it, and she also had dozens of things to take care of relating to her father’s death and his estate.

Normally, the simple act of writing things down in orderly lists made Kate feel much better and more able to cope. In fact, she made lists all the time when she was under pressure—lists of tasks to handle, in order of importance, and lists of pros and cons when she had a difficult decision to make. Holly teased her about being a compulsive list maker, but it worked for Kate.

Now that she had a plan for the afternoon, Kate felt better and more energized. Before another bout of sadness and helplessness could wear her down, she changed into a yellow bathing suit and wrapped a matching sarong-style cover-up around her waist; then she put her book and a tablet from the desk drawer into a green canvas tote bag she was using as a combination purse and beach bag, and she left for the beach. First an invigorating swim and then a delicious lunch.

A young waiter materialized the instant Kate’s sandal touched the patio outside the Sandbar, but when he started to lead her to the only vacant table, she hesitated. For one thing, she needed to get away from the tropical sunlight before it scorched her fair skin right through her sunscreen. For another, the three teenage boys with the bodyguard were eating at the next table. They’d already tried their youthful, persistent best to flirt with her yesterday, and now they were eyeing her
with renewed hope. “I think I’d rather eat inside,” she told the waiter.

He was truly distressed. “But you would have to eat at the bar, unless you want to wait for a table to become available.”

Kate paused beneath a Moorish arch and looked inside. No one was sitting at the small bar, and the high stools looked comfortable with nice backs to lean against. Eating at the bar would suit her fine. She chose a stool facing the patio so she could look out at the water; then she pulled her book, her notepad, and a pen out of her tote bag. Satisfied that she had everything she needed, she looped the canvas straps of the green bag over the back of her stool and ordered a salad and a glass of tomato juice for lunch.

Towels had been delivered to her on the beach when she walked out of the water, and now a balmy breeze blew through the little restaurant’s open arches, softly drying her damp hair. It was nice to be away from the glaring sunlight, and the conversations at the tables inside were quiet enough not to intrude on her concentration. Kate gazed out at the water, thinking about what list to start on first, tapping the end of the pen on the tablet.

She decided to start with her relationship with Evan. The waiter brought her glass of tomato juice just as she drew a vertical line down the notebook page to make two columns. Above the left column she wrote, “Reasons to Continue;” above the right column she wrote, “Reasons to End.”

She’d been drifting in her relationship with Evan, letting it flounder, because she was unsure whether she truly wanted it to go forward. Holly blamed Evan for many things, especially the fact that he hadn’t put an engagement ring on Kate’s finger after almost four years, but that was mostly Kate’s doing. Whenever she sensed he was thinking about marriage, she did or said something
guaranteed to make him hold off and rethink the issue. Her father had loved Evan, and he would have loved the idea of Kate marrying a Bartlett. He’d wanted Kate to have a beautiful life, with no worries about money, ever. …

“What’s that?” she asked the waiter when he put a second glass of tomato juice next to the one she’d barely touched.

“Compliments of the young gentlemen on the patio,” he replied with a smile. “They asked that you be given a glass of whatever you’re drinking and that the charge for it be put on their parents’ bill.” Kate bit back a smile of her own and looked outside toward their table.

Three teenage faces grinned hopefully at her. The family at the table beside them obviously knew what the boys had done, because they were watching Kate—so was a couple seated near Kate who’d heard the waiter’s announcement when he gave her the glass of tomato juice.

The boys looked as if they ranged in ages from thirteen to sixteen, and Kate debated a moment about the best way to handle the situation without crushing their egos. “Tell them I said thank you. And—tell them I’m working,” she added. That was a little lame, Kate thought, but it would surely keep them from trying to join her at the bar.

By the time the waiter brought her salad, Kate had written several items on both sides of her list, but she realized she was too emotional right now to make objective judgments about Evan and their feelings for each other. She gave up on that list and turned the page to start a new one. At the top she wrote, “Things to Do at the Restaurant.” She glanced up as her waiter put another glass of tomato juice in front of her.

“Compliments of the young gentlemen.” This time he rolled his eyes and grinned.

When Kate looked around, several couples at tables inside were grinning and watching her, and when she glanced outside at the boys, everyone around them was watching her—except a man seated alone at the table she’d declined earlier. Embarrassed for the boys, not herself, Kate looked straight at them and shook her head slowly, but she smiled to take the sting of rejection out of her warning to stop.

She looked down at the title of her new list, and her hand trembled. Donovan’s Restaurant would be forever linked in her mind to her father. Located downtown, Donovan’s had begun as a little Irish pub founded by her father, and over the next thirty years it had repeatedly expanded and transformed until it was now one of Chicago’s most elegant, and most popular, restaurants. Daniel Patrick Donovan had always been a fixture there—a witty, charismatic man who mingled with his special customers while keeping an eye on every minute detail involving food and service. He had been the spirit and life force behind Donovan’s, and now it was up to Kate to try to carry on without him.

Struggling to keep her emotions under control, Kate went to work on her list. According to the maître d’, the restaurant was booked solid with reservations for the next eleven days, and the waiting list was longer than the usual number of cancellations. Kate needed to learn every detail about the restaurant’s operating budget, and she needed to set up safeguards to make sure she stayed within it. … She needed to have weekly meetings with the staff for a while, until they were confident she could actually take her father’s place—and until she was sure of it. She also needed to see if the new menus her father had chosen were on order. He’d liked those padded maroon leather menus with the word
Donovan’s
deeply embossed in gold.

He liked maroon leather chairs with shiny brass nail heads, she remembered achingly. …

And waiters in freshly pressed dinner jackets …

And sparkling cut-crystal glassware …

And gleaming brass foot rails in the bar …

Kate stopped writing and pressed her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose to hold back the tears stinging her eyes. A chorus of laughter rang out from the patio and rippled through the interior of the restaurant. Kate blinked and lifted her head.