Linda Lael Miller Bundle (10 page)

Standing behind him, Shay wrapped her arms around his middle and rubbed his stomach with tantalizing motions of both hands. “I seem to remember something about a threat,” she said softly, her lips moving against the taut flesh of his back as she spoke.

Shay was late for work that morning.

Just talking to Alan Roget over the telephone gave Mitch a creepy feeling, as though a massive spiderweb had settled over him or something. He frowned as he listened to the first accounts of the murderer’s childhood, entering notes on the screen of his computer throughout the conversation.

The night with Shay had been magical, and so had the morning. Life was so damned ironic: one minute, a man could be eating scrambled eggs or making love to a woman, the next, talking to someone who personified evil. Like most psychotics, Roget exhibited no remorse at all, from what Mitch could tell. He seemed to feel that civil and moral laws applied only to other people and not to him.

By the time Mitch hung up the telephone, he was a little sick. He immediately dialed Reba’s number in California, and when she answered, he asked to talk to Kelly.

“You’re in luck, big fella,” Reba responded warmly. “The munchkin happens to be home from school today.”

Mitch sat up a little straighter in his desk chair. “Is she sick?”

“Nothing serious,” his ex-wife assured him promptly. “Just the sniffles. So, how have you been, Mitch?”

Mitch couldn’t help smiling. Reba definitely wasn’t your standard ex-wife. She was happy with her new husband and that happiness warmed her entire personality. “I’m in love,” he confided, without really expecting to.

“Oh, Mitch, that’s great!” Worry displaced a little of the buoyancy in her voice. “It
is
great, isn’t it? Maybe great enough to keep you out of jungles and hotbeds of political unrest?”

“No more jungles, Reba,” he said solemnly. He’d made changes in his life recently that he had refused to consider while he and Reba were married, and he wondered if she would resent that.

Not Reba. He should have known. “We’ll all breathe a sigh of relief,” she chimed. “On the count of three, now. One, two—”

Mitch laughed. He remembered the good times with Reba and, for a fleeting moment, mourned them.

When Kelly’s piping voice came on the line, he forget about Roget and all the other ugliness in the world. But the house seemed even bigger than it was after he’d talked to his daughter, and even emptier.

He threw himself into his work, concentrating on Rosamond Dallas and what had made her tick.

The need to throttle Rosamond was gone by the time Shay visited her that afternoon; in its place was a certain sad acceptance of the fact that mothers are women, human and fallible.

She approached her mother’s chair, kissed her forehead. “How can I hate you?” she whispered.

Rosamond rocked and clutched the ever-present doll. It seemed to Shay that she was retreating deeper and deeper into herself and growing smaller with every passing day.

Tired because of a most delicious lack of sleep the night before, a day of work and telephone conversations with half a dozen contractors, Shay sighed and sank into the chair facing her mother’s. “I’m going to meet my grandmother tomorrow,” she said, hardly able to believe such a thing could be possible and expecting no reaction at all from Rosamond.

But the woman sat stiffly in her chair, her famous eyes widening.

Shay was incredulous. “Mother?”

The fleeting moment of lucidity was over. Rosamond stared blankly again, crooning a wordless song to her doll.

Shay looked at the doll and, for the first time ever, wondered if that raggedy lump of cloth and yarn could, in Rosamond’s mind, represent herself as a baby. It was a jarring thought, but oddly comforting, too. Maybe, Shay thought, she loved me as well as she was able to love anyone. Maybe she did the best she could.

On her way home from the convalescent home, Shay stopped at the Skyler Beach mall and went into a bookstore, looking for the four titles Ivy had written down for her. Mitch’s work was published under the odd code name of Zebulon, with no surname of any kind given and, of course, with no photograph on the back or inside flap of the book jackets.

Shay felt a little shiver of fear as she looked at the covers and thought of all the dangerous people who must hate Mitch Prescott enough to kill him. She was trembling a little as she laid the books on the counter and paid for them.

At home, she did housework, ate a light supper and took a bath, then curled up on the couch with one of Mitch’s books. The one she’d selected to read first was an account of the capture of a famous Nazi war criminal, set mostly in Brazil. It was harrowing, reading that book, and yet Shay was riveted to it, turning page after page. In the morning, she awakened to find herself still on the couch, the open book under her cheek. Groaning, she raised herself to a sitting position and ran her fingers through her hair.

This was the day that she would meet Alice Bretton, her grandmother, for the first time. She was determined to think of that and not the horrors Mitch had to have faced in order to write that book.

After showering and dressing, she wolfed down a cup of coffee and half an English muffin and drove to work to find the usual chaos awaiting her. At least Richard Barrett wasn’t around, wanting to film the last commercial. That was a comfort.

Shay delved into her work and the hours passed quickly. Soon it was time to drive to the airport and meet Mrs. Bretton’s plane.

She wondered how she would recognize her grandmother and what she would say to her first. There were so many things to tell and so many questions to ask.

As it happened, it was Alice Bretton who recognized Shay. A tiny, Helen Hayes-type, with snow-white hair done up in a bun and quick, sparkling eyes, Mrs. Bretton came right up to her granddaughter and said, “Why, dear, you look just like Robert!”

Shay was inordinately glad that she resembled someone; Lord knew, she looked nothing like Rosamond and never had. It was that gladness that broke the ice and allowed her to hug the small woman standing before her. “I’m so happy to see you,” she said, and then she had to laugh because, looking down through a mist of tears, she could see that Alice was wearing bowling shoes with her trim, tasteful suit.

“They’re so comfortable, don’t you know!” Alice cried in good-natured self-defense.

Shay looked forward to telling Mitch that Mrs. Bretton did indeed wear bowling shoes, though she obviously wasn’t a bag lady and it was doubtful that she had bunions.

Talking with her grandmother proved remarkably easy, considering all the years and all the heartaches that might have separated them. The two women chattered nonstop all the way back to Skyler Beach, Shay asking questions, Alice answering them.

Shay’s eyes were hazel because hazel eyes ran in the Bretton family, she was told, and yes, Robert had wanted to marry Rosamond, but she’d refused. He had tried to see Shay many times, but she had always been away in some school, out of his reach. Rosamond had never allowed any of his letters or phone calls to Shay to get through.

Alice patted her sensible, high-quality purse. “But I have most of those letters right here. When they came back, Robert saved them.”

Shay worked at keeping her mind on her driving, and it was hard. She wanted to pull over to the side of the freeway and read all of her father’s letters, one after another. “Why didn’t Rosamond want him to see me or even talk to me?”

Alice sighed, and if she bore Rosamond Dallas any ill-will, it wasn’t visible in the sweet lines of her face. “Lord only knows. She wasn’t very happy as a child, you know, and I guess she didn’t want anything to do with anyone from Springfield. Not even her own baby’s father.”

Rosamond had said very little about her life in Springfield, only that her mother drank too much and her father, a railroad worker, had died in an accident when she was four years old. “Did you know Rosamond as a girl?”

Alice shook her head. “I only met her after she’d started to date Robert. She was beautiful, but I—well, I had my misgivings about her. She was rather wild, you know.”

Shay could imagine her mother as a young girl, looking for approbation and love even in those pre-fame days. It was strange that the search had never stopped, that Rosamond had gone from man to man all her life. “I wish I’d known about you and about my father.”

Alice reached across the car seat to pat Shay’s knee. “You’ll know me, and I’ve brought along things to help you know your father, too.” Suddenly the elderly woman looked alarmed. “I do hope I’m not keeping you from your work, dear!”

Shay thought of the commercials and the irate customers and the stacks of contracts and factory invoices she had left behind at Reese Motors. “My work will definitely keep until tomorrow. You can stay for a while, can’t you?”

“Oh, yes. Nobody waiting at home but my parakeet, my cat and my bridge club. Now tell me all about this boy of yours. Hank, isn’t it? You know, it’s a funny thing, but your great-grandfather’s name was Henry and they called him Hank, don’t you know….”

S
hay bit her lower lip as the ringing began on the other end of the line. It was just plain unconscionable to awaken someone at that hour of the night, but after reading her father’s gentle, innocuous letters, she felt a deep need to touch base.

On the third ring, Mitch answered with an unintelligible grumble.

“She wears bowling shoes,” Shay said.

“You woke me up to tell me that?” He didn’t sound angry, just baffled.

“I thought you’d want to know.” She paused, drew a deep breath. “Oh, Mitch, Alice is a wonderful woman.”

“She’s your grandmother. What else could she be besides wonderful?”

“Flatterer.”

“You love it.”

I love you, Shay thought. “Good night, Mitch,” she said.

He laughed, a wonderful rumbling, sleepy sound. “Good night, princess.”

Shay was glad that no one could see her, there in the darkness of her kitchen. She kissed the telephone receiver before she put it back in place.

Alice was still sleeping the next morning when Shay left for work. Rather than disturb her grandmother, she scribbled a note that included her office telephone number and crept out. Alice had made it very clear, the night before, that she didn’t want to disrupt Shay’s life in any way.

On the way to Reese Motors, Shay marveled that life could follow the same dull and rocky road for so many years, and then suddenly take a series of crazy turns. She’d met Mitch, she’d found her grandmother, she was about to start the business she had only dreamed of—and all this had taken place in a period of a few weeks.

When Shay arrived at work, she found Richard waiting in her office with the fourth and final storyboard. She was relieved; after this, she would never have to make a fool of herself on camera again.

“It’s a giant, hairy hand,” Richard said with amazing enthusiasm.

“I can see that, Richard,” Shay replied dryly, frowning at the storyboard. “When are we filming this one?”

“Tomorrow, I hope. We had to special order that hand, you know.”

Shay sighed inwardly. “It won’t collapse or anything, will it?”

“Absolutely not. Would I risk your life that way?”

Shay shrugged philosophically. “I don’t know, Richard. You almost smothered me in sugar the other day, so I thought I’d ask.”

“Marvin’s going to be pleased with these commercials, Shay,” Richard said on an unexpectedly charitable note. “You’ve done a great job. The first spot aired late last night. You looked great, even in a bee suit.”

Shay grinned, unable to resist saying, “I’ll bet people are buzzing about it.”

Richard laughed and left the office, taking the storyboard with him.

At noon, Alice arrived at Reese Motors by taxi, all dressed up for the lunch date she and Shay had made the night before. Shay proudly introduced her to Ivy, all the salesmen and even the mechanics in the repair section.

“I saw you on television today, dear,” the elderly woman announced moderately over a chef’s salad. “You were dressed as a bee, of all things.” Alice looked puzzled, as though she thought Shay might say she was mistaken.

Briefly, Shay explained about Marvin’s penchant for creative advertising.

“We have a car dealer like that in Springfield,” Alice said seriously, and there was an endearing look of bafflement in her eyes. “He let a mouthful of water run down his chin and said he was liquidating last year’s models.”

“Oh, Lord,” Shay groaned. “Do me a favor and don’t mention that around Reese Motors. Marvin would probably get wind of it and come up with some version of his own.”

“Is there a young man in your life, dear?”

The abrupt change in subject matter caught Shay off guard. “I—well—yes, sort of—”

Alice smiled. “Good. They’re not all wasters like that Eliott person, you know.”

Shay wondered what Alice would think of Mitch if she knew how he had hijacked her granddaughter to a private beach and made love to her in the sand. The memory of her own responses brought throbbing color to Shay’s cheeks.

“What is his name, dear? What does he do?”

“His name is Mitch Prescott. He’s the man who found you for me,” Shay said, somewhat hesitantly.

Alice did not pursue the matter. “My, but you do look like your father,” she said in a faraway voice.

That evening, after work, Shay drove to the Victorian house she hoped to restore and parked at the curb. The place was derelict, and yet, in her mind’s eye, she could see so many possibilities for it. Suddenly she wanted that disreputable old white elephant with a consuming ache.

She drove home to find Alice happily cooking dinner and Mitch helping. The way the two of them were chattering, they might have known each other for ten years instead of ten minutes. It was crazy, but Shay was just a little jealous of both of them.

“Sit down, dear, sit down,” Alice ordered, gesturing toward a chair at the kitchen table. “You look all worn out.”

Over Alice’s neatly coiffed and blue-rinsed head, Mitch gave Shay an evil wink.

Shay sighed and sat down, grateful for the coffee that was immediately set before her. “You two are going to spoil me if you keep this up. What will I do without you?”

The question, so innocently presented, caused a stiff silence. Mitch gazed off through the window over the sink, but Alice recovered quickly. “I was just telling your young man that I might sell my house and move out here for good. I could get a little apartment, don’t you know.”

Shay’s eyes widened. “You would do that? You would actually move here, just to be near Hank and me?”

“You’re my family,” Alice said softly. “All I have in the world. Of course I’d move to be near you. That’s if you’d want—if I wouldn’t be in the way—”

“Never.” Shay rose from her chair and embraced this woman who had come to mean so much to her in such a short time. “You could never be in the way.”

“Our Mr. Prescott might have a thing or two to say about that,” Alice pointed out with a misty wryness as she and Shay drew apart. “He has plans for you, you know.”

Mitch was no longer looking out the window, and a grin tilted one side of his mouth and lit his eyes. His entire demeanor said that he did indeed have plans for Shay, and none of them could be mentioned in front of her grandmother.

Shay waited until Alice wasn’t looking and gave Mitch a slow, saucy wink.

Color surged up from the neck of his dark blue T-shirt and he tossed Shay a mock scowl in return. “Actually,” he said, “I think Shay needs a grandmother around to keep her in line. I’ve tried, but the job is too big for me.”

Alice chuckled and gave him a slight shove. “Step aside, handsome,” she said. “I’ve got to get these biscuits in the oven or they won’t be ready in time for supper.”

Mitch caught Shay by the hand as he passed her, pulling her out of her chair and into the living room, where he promptly drew her close and kissed her. It was a thorough kiss that left Shay unsteady on her feet and just a bit flushed in the face.

Holding her close, Mitch whispered against the bridge of her nose, “If your grandmother wasn’t in the next room, lady…”

Shay trembled with the delicious feeling of wanting him. In a low, teasing voice, she retorted, “You shameless rascal, how can you say such a thing when you’ve been flirting with another woman under my very nose?”

Mitch grinned. “What can I say? I took one look at Alice and I was smitten.”

“Smitten?”

He pulled her toward the couch, sat down, positioned her on his lap. His hand moved beneath her skirt to stroke her thigh. “Smitten,” he confirmed.

Shay’s breath had quickened and her blood felt warm enough to melt her veins. She slapped away his hand and it returned, unerringly, to create sweet havoc on the flesh of her upper leg.

“So,” he said, as though he weren’t driving her wild with the brazen motion of his fingers. “Have you decided whether or not to take the house Todd showed you?”

Shay could barely breathe. “I’m…waiting for…estimates.”

“I see.”

Again, Shay removed his hand; again it returned. “Rat,” she muttered.

Alice was humming in the kitchen, happy in her work, probably pleased with herself for giving the young lovers some time alone. Mitch continued to caress Shay, slowly, rhythmically, skillfully.

She buried her mouth in the warmth of his neck to muffle the soft moan his attentions forced her to utter.

“You look a bit flushed, dear,” Alice commented, minutes later, over a dinner of chicken, green beans and biscuits, her gentle eyes revealing worry. “I hope you aren’t coming down with something.”

“She’s perfectly healthy,” Mitch replied with an air of authority.

Beneath the surface of the table, Shay’s foot moved and her heel made solid contact with Mitch’s shin. He didn’t even flinch.

After dinner, he and Shay did the dishes together while Alice rested on Hank’s bed. She’d closed the door behind her, but Shay still felt compelled to keep her voice down.

“If you ever do a thing like that again, Mitch Prescott…”

He wrapped the dishtowel around Shay’s waist, turned slightly and pulled her against him. “You can be sure that I’ll do it again,” he muttered. “And you’ll react just the same way.”

Shay knew that he was right and flushed, furious that he had such power over her and yet glad of it, too. Her body was still reverberating with the force of her response to those stolen moments of pleasure. “You are vain and arrogant!” she whispered.

He put one hand inside her blouse to cup her breast, his thumb moving her bra out of place and then caressing her nipple. “I’m going to forget that copy of my manuscript when I leave here tonight,” he said, his lips barely touching Shay’s. “You, of course, will throw up your hands in dismay and tell your grandmother that you’ve got to return it to me immediately.”

Shay shuddered with desire, still held close to solid proof of his masculinity by the dishtowel. His fingers were plucking gently at her nipple and she couldn’t reason, let alone argue. “B-bastard,” she said, and that was the extent of her rebellion.

Mitch slid the top of her blouse aside and bent his head to taste her now-throbbing nipple with an utterly brazen lack of haste. In fact, he satisfied himself at leisure before tugging her bra back into place and straightening her blouse. And then he left.

Shay finished the dishes and then, hating herself, tapped at the door of Hank’s room. “Alice?”

The answer was a sleepy, “Yes, dear?”

“Mitch forgot something here, and I’ve got to take it to him. I’ll be back soon.”

Two hours later Shay returned, hair and clothes slightly rumpled, lips swollen with Mitch’s kisses. Alice was knitting, the television tuned to a mystery program, and even in the dim light of the living room, Shay could see the sparkle in her grandmother’s eyes. The lady was clearly nobody’s fool.

“Did you have a nice time, dear?”

Every part of Shay was pulsing with the “nice time” she’d had in Mitch Prescott’s arms. “Yes,” she said, in classic understatement, and then she excused herself to take a bath and get ready for bed.

Because the last commercial was being taped the next morning and Alice wanted to watch, Shay arrived at work with her grandmother in tow.

The enormous hairy hand towered in the middle of the main showroom, and Shay shook her head as she looked at it. She was given a flowing white dress to put on in the rest room, and Richard’s assistant applied her makeup.

At least the showroom had been closed for whatever length of time it would take to get the spot on videotape, Shay noted with relief. Using a stepladder, she climbed into the palm of that hand and stretched out on her side, trying to keep the dress from riding up. Richard followed her up and carefully closed the huge fingers of the hand around her.

Before going back down the stepladder he winked at Shay and told her again that Marvin was going to be proud of her.

“This is really the way Faye Raye got her start, huh?” Shay muttered, trying to be a good sport about the whole thing. After all, this was the last commercial she would ever appear in.

Looking down, Shay saw her grandmother talking with Ivy, but there was no sign of Mitch. Her feelings about that were mixed. On the one hand, she hated to have him see her in such a ridiculous position. On the other, it was always comforting to know that he was there somewhere.

This time the cameras were above her, on the mezzanine, along with an enormous fan. A microphone had been hidden in the neckline of Shay’s chiffon dress.

“Ready?” Richard called from his place between the two cameramen.

Shay nodded; she was as ready as she was ever going to get.

The fan started up and Shay’s dress and hair moved in the flow of air. She practiced her smile and mentally rehearsed her line as the cameras panned over the selection of cars available in the showroom. When she saw them swing in her direction, she beamed, even though the fan was buffeting the air from her lungs, and gasped, “You’ll go ape when you see the deals we’re making at Reese Motors! Come on down and talk to us at 6832 Discount Way, right here in Skyler Beach!”

“Perfect!” Richard exulted, and Shay’s relief was such that for a moment she sank into the hollow of that giant ape hand and closed her eyes. One of the salesmen came to help her out from under the hairy fingers and down the ladder.

“You were magnificent!” Alice said when Shay came to stand before her, but there was an expression of profound relief in her eyes.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Shay answered, wondering if Alice would tell her friends back home that her granddaughter earned her living by dressing up as a bee or lying in a huge and hairy hand.

“Well,” Alice announced brightly, “I’m off to look at apartments with Ivy’s young man. I may be late, so I took the liberty of setting out one of the casseroles you had in your freezer.” The older woman’s eyes shifted from Shay to Ivy, and they sparkled with pride. “My granddaughter is a very organized young woman, don’t you know. She’ll make a fine caterer.”

The vote of confidence uplifted Shay; she said goodbye to Alice and went into the rest room to put on her normal clothes and redo her makeup. Within twenty minutes, she was so involved in her work that she’d forgotten all about her brief stint as the captive of a mythical ape.