Life Guards in the Hamptons (23 page)

“Ah.”

I didn’t like the sound of that one, worse. “I’m okay with both.”

Now he clutched his stomach and reached in his pocket for the antacid tablets.

“See? You should not drink.”

“And you should not tell lies.”

B
Y THE TIME THE CHIEF OF POLICE LEFT, I was too tired to shower, too depressed to get out of the chair. The council expected me to save the world. And all the brownies were gone.

Susan came home while I lay sprawled out, my jeans unsnapped at the waist, shoes on the table next to me so Little Red couldn’t get to them. I didn’t turn around when she called hello.

“You’re early and the brownies were great. I hope you brought leftovers ’cause there’s no food in the fridge and I’m sleeping here tonight because I’d never make it up the stairs.”

“Yeah, everyone’s too tired for anything after last night. We decided to close the kitchen early. The place was half empty anyway, with the whole town drained after the rescue and upset about the robberies and how the Harbor is getting the third degree. I’ve got half a vegetable quiche for lunch tomorrow.”

“Super.” I waved her in the direction of the kitchen to put the food away. “I’ll see you then.”

She laughed, then said, “Oh, and I brought Axel over.”

“Axleover? Like a turnover for the car?”

She laughed again. “No, Axel Vanderman, the guy I told you about who wants a greyhound. Axel, this is Willow. Willy, meet Axel.”

I looked behind her before I screamed, “You brought
a strange man home at ten o’clock at night without calling first?”

I buttoned my pants while I looked at him. He was in his fifties, I’d guess, trim, semi-casual in dress shirt and slacks, loafers, no socks. He had salt-and-pepper hair and sharp features, the best being unusual black-rimmed, silver-gray eyes.

He apologized. “I am sorry, I was so eager to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m sorry, too, Willy,” Susan said. “I needed a ride. Dad had to use the truck.”

“And Axel is so persuasive.”

And twice her age! Good grief.

“Well, you’ve come here for nothing, Mr., uh, Vanderman.”

“Axel, please.”

“Axel. The greyhounds are not here for you to meet.”

He kept staring at me with those amazing silver eyes. I wished I’d changed my shirt, stains and spots, but the turquoise did make my own eyes look bigger and brighter. Maybe he wasn’t so rude after all. I sat up straighter. As if that gave me half the cleavage Susan showed in her floaty v-neck blouse. “All I can do is take your name and number.”

“Oh, I think you can do more.”

I blinked, breaking eye contact. Was he suggesting what I thought? “Come again?”

He chuckled. “I mean you can get to know me, so you can give your mother a good character reference on me. I was hoping to meet her, the famous dog trainer. Not that you aren’t famous in your own field, Willy. That’s the name on your books, isn’t it, Willy Tate? Although Willow is lovely, like you.”

He was looking into my eyes again—not at my chest like a lot of men, and not at the spots. His unwavering expression was full of admiration.

“Oh, you’ve heard of my books?”

“The whole town speaks of you. I had to meet the noted local author.”

Little Red growled, so I looked down to see what he was doing.

Axel cursed. Little Red kept trying to grab his sock, except Axel wasn’t wearing any, so the bad-tempered terror nipped at his ankles. When Axel cursed again, I picked up the dog before Red drew blood or Axel retaliated. I tried to make nice by smiling. “You can tell I don’t exactly have my mother’s knack for teaching dogs their manners.”

Axel didn’t smile back, but he did keep looking at me.

Admiring or not, that fixed gaze was unnerving. “Um, you’re staring.”

Susan giggled. “He does that. It makes you feel like you’re the only woman in the universe, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, but you are,” he told us both. “You are unique, as each of us is. And you are delightful.”

The words were nice; the stare started to give me the creeps. “Well, it’s getting late. It’s been a hard couple of days and nights around here.”

He didn’t move, so I glared at Susan to get rid of him. She brought him, didn’t she? I hoped she didn’t intend to keep him. Something about the man struck me wrong, and not just the fact that he was old enough to be Susan’s father. Little Red hadn’t stopped growling in my arms, and I felt goose bumps on the back of my neck. Most creepy of all, Axel never looked at Buddy or Dobbin. What kind of dog lover came into a house and didn’t try to make friends with the resident canines?

“I’ll be sure to tell my mother about you. Do you have a card?”

He reached into his pants pocket without taking his eyes off me.

Now I felt more than uncomfortable. Maybe threatened, but I wasn’t any telepath, no doom-seer like Dad. And I never had much intuition, either, just a lot of fears. Axel didn’t come near to causing the same dread as electric storms or snakes, but I didn’t want him in my house. I got up and started toward the door. A person couldn’t get more obvious than that without calling the cops.

He got to the door first and turned to face me. Up close, I felt small. Not petite like Peg, but overshadowed, even though Axel only stood maybe three or four inches
taller than me. I had a good view of his Adam’s apple, unappealing in a lot of men, more prominent in this one. When he swallowed, my mind imagined a python digesting a mouse. I shuddered and looked up, into those amazing eyes.

He stepped closer, so I could see the silver glitter in his near-reverent gaze, like a New Year’s Eve party decoration, with champagne and silly hats and laughter.

“I’d like to see you again.”

From snakes to celebrations in the blink of an eye? Literally? Weird. “That’s very kind of you, but I am really busy these days.”

“Oh, but I’d like to show you my house, so you can see what a good home I can provide for one of the unfortunate racetrack dogs. I understand all good adoption services do home inspections.”

His lips smiled. His beautiful eyes did not. “Um, we’re not anything that official. And I have nothing to do with the process. I won’t even be here when my mother gets back. She has her own standards.”

“You could come see my new home anyway. I’ve had the whole house refurbished. I’m quite proud of it.”

I could have looked into those eyes for hours. I ached to try to draw them, to try for that intensity and shine. Maybe if I visited his home I could get to see them in daylight. They might make better eyes for my hero than Matt’s warm but ordinary brown ones.

Matt.

“Um, no, thank you. I am sure your house is lovely, but I’m not much into home decor, and I really am busy these days before I return to Manhattan.”

He took another step closer and tilted his head until his eyes were mere inches from mine.

“Tomorrow?”

I wanted to spend time tomorrow with Matt, who said he worked half days on Saturday. I stepped back, and shook my head, hard, to get that snake image out of my mind. “Sorry, I have plans.” Matt might not know about them, but I did. I wanted to introduce Red to Moses. I rubbed the dog’s ears, hoping to calm him.

“But I insist.”

He insisted? Who the hell did he think he was to insist I do anything? I didn’t want a scene at my front door, so I didn’t kick him in the shin or sic Little Red on him. “I’ll think about it if I’m free.” I waved his card in the air. “I have your number.”

Oh, boy, did I, mister.

I shut and locked the door behind him, feeling his parting glare like a snowball down my back.

Susan started up the stairs slowly, not bothering to hide her yawn.

“You didn’t really want to bring him home, did you?”

“No, all I want is my bed. He’s too old for me. I think it’s you he’s interested in anyway.”

“So why didn’t you tell him to call tomorrow or the next day?”

“It seemed important to him and I guess that look in his eyes persuaded me. You meet his gaze and forget what you were going to say.” She yawned again. “I could drown in that stare of his.”

“Maybe you did.”

“You need some sleep, too, if you’re still thinking of those poor people on the cruise ship.”

“I’m not thinking of them and I’m not kidding. Don’t look in his eyes anymore.”

“Huh? What am I supposed to look at, his mouth? That’s downright suggestive. His crotch? Worse.”

“Just don’t get lost in his gaze, is all. Something doesn’t feel right about it.”

“I got it, cuz. He’s a man, so he’s not to be trusted. I don’t know what’s with you, Willy. Why you turned so gun-shy around men that you find fault with every one you meet.”

“I do not, am not. I trust Matt and I—”

TWEE! TWEE!

“Shit, there’s that frigging bird again. I swear if it keeps me up all night one more time, I’m selling its location to the tabloids myself.” She unlocked the front door, opened it, then opened her mouth to scream at Oey.

“Don’t!”

“Huh? You want to listen to that screeching?”

“I’ll take care of it. Just go to bed. I’ll let the dogs out for their last walk. That’s sure to scare it off.”

I hoped not. I sent mental messages of welcome, comfort, come, need, parrotfish in the willow tree pictures.

“You came!” I closed the dogs in their pen and went to refill the kiddie pool.

Oey had her parrot’s head cocked in the direction of the dogs. “Petth?”

“Yes, Dobbin, Buddy, and Little Red,” who was barking. He hated being in the same enclosure with the big dogs, even though he spent all day in the same house. I couldn’t tell what any of them saw. Red barked at anything, and one of the old dogs couldn’t hear much. The other one couldn’t see much.

“Man?”

“No, Dobbin is a girl dog. A bitch.”

Oey swiveled her whole body toward the dirt road, where dust from the last car still floated in the slight breeze.

“Man.”

“Oh, him. That was a guy who wants a greyhound. Another kind of dog, a pet. His name is Axel.”

“Athole?”

“That, too. Forget about him. Have you seen another man, an older man who was on the boat?”

I didn’t have a picture to project. The chief hadn’t described the missing passenger, so all I had was a stock image of a professor with a beard and thick glasses. Oey sat on the edge of the plastic pool, the fish tail in the water, gurgling happily. Or speaking words I could not understand. I kept trying.

“His name is Harmon. James Everett Harmon. From England.”

Oey splashed and spread her rainbow-colored wings to bathe.

“He stood on the railing when N’fwend came. He shouted at him. Is he still here?”

Oey shrieked, “N’fwend heaw?” then leaped out of the water into my arms. As a fish. Yeck.

He was heavy. Not as heavy as the Newfie pups, but slippery. I didn’t want to grab the tail in case I pulled out feathers, but I didn’t want to drop him either. Shaking, I put him back in the water as gently as I could. “No one is here except the two of us.”

After a few minutes the parrot head peered over the pool’s rim. “Not heaw?”

“No, no wave could come that high, this far from the bay. Could it?”

“Biiig wave. Thunami.”

“It’s tsu—Holy cow, its name is Stu! A tsunami, that’s what my father tried to warn me about.” I’d seen those pictures of devastation, where whole islands got washed away. Big cities got leveled; people got swept out before they could reach higher ground. “I thought earthquakes caused them, not water dragons.”

Oey tried to speak, but the message had to be too complicated. Instead she sent a picture into my head of something enormous bursting from the bowels of the Earth, causing shifts in the fault lines, causing quakes, causing tsunamis. Evil rising, like M’ma said.

“Someone would have seen a monster coming out of the ground!”

“Thee Oey?”

No. Hell, we had to find the professor more than ever.

“Pro-featherth?”

How could I know if he liked birds. “Close enough. Is he close? Can you ask the dolphins to look? If he is alive, he can help us.”

Oey went back to grooming, preening each wing feather with her beak. I watched for a while, then asked, “What’s it doing here anyway? Those rules meant everybody has to stay on their own side. I know you came to help, but the monster is breaking the law.”

“Banithed.”

“You banish a devil and it ends up here, right on my doorstep? That’s not fair!”

I swear Oey shrugged before she disappeared into the night.

So who said life was fair?