Night Music (6 page)

He remembered all too well when he and Lettice had acted similarly. The thought left him feeling ill.

“They make a handsome couple, don’t you think?”

Lettice’s voice plunged through him like a shock of cold water. He hadn’t heard her come up. Maybe it was time for a hearing aid.

Somehow, though, a part of him wasn’t surprised by her presence. A vague expectation was now satisfied.

“No,” he said, looking straight at her.

“Liar,” she replied softly.

Not much ever fooled her, he thought. She looked very beautiful in a lavender lace coat with a matching dress underneath. Silver hair peeked out from beneath her picture hat. The color was still a shock for him.

“You must be proud of the turnout today,” she added, when he didn’t respond to her barb. “After all, this is your wing.”

“The hospital’s wing, not mine.”

“You started it, I understand.”

He shrugged. “I’m surprised you don’t have all the dirt. You used to.”

“I still hear a thing or two. You look well after all these years,” she said. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you that the other day. You were too busy being the outraged grandfather.”

“I still am,” he told her. “But I know when I’ve been outmaneuvered, and I’m just not going to kick up a fuss in front of others.”

“You can’t stop them or what they feel, Marsh.”

“
You
stopped fast enough,” he snapped. “You turned it off the moment I lost everything … and then turned it right back on with Kitteridge.”

She stared at him for one long, endless moment, then walked away.

“I didn’t think you really meant it,” Hilary said.

Dev grinned as he poured champagne into two plastic glasses. He’d casually filched the bottle out of the ice tub when the bartender had been busy. He didn’t bother to tell Hilary he’d left more than enough money in its place. “How else did you think we were going to get a whole bottle of the stuff?”

“Ask?”

He chuckled. “That’s no fun.”

She leaned back against the trunk of the huge oak tree they were sitting under. The small, crowded-together wrought-iron tables hadn’t appealed
to them, so they’d strolled farther out into the meadow.

To Dev’s own surprise, he’d been a gentleman and spread his coat out for her to sit on. Lucky coat, he thought, eyeing the way her slim thighs melded into the material. Her dress was a soft and filmy cotton that clung in all the right places, with a low-cut scoop neckline and a white collar. She looked like a modern Gibson Girl.

She held her stemmed glass up and eyed it. “It’s a sacrilege to put champagne in plastic.”

He held up the bottle. “It’s cheap champagne.”

“Oh. Well, that’s okay, then.” She swallowed it down in one gulp, then shivered. “Lord. It’s like drinking vinegar and bad tonic water.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do you always drink champagne like that?”

“Only the cheap stuff.”

“I see.” He poured her another glass. It would be interesting to see Ms. Prim a little tipsy, he thought as he took a careful sip of his own. She was right on the money about the taste.

“I’m surprised you’re not on your boat today,” she said. “What happened? No charter?”

“There’s always a charter.” He rested his arms on his bent knees, his glass dangling precariously in his hands. “Billy took the
Madeline Jo
today.” He frowned darkly. “And he damn well better bring her in without a scratch.”

“I take it Billy is your first mate?”

“And general swabbie.” Dev shrugged off the worry. There was no sense to it while he was stuck here. Unfortunately sitting there with Hilary didn’t feel like “stuck.”

“Billy sounds young,” she said.

Dev chuckled. “Billy’s a retired accountant. This
fills the days, I guess. I’m grateful for him, but I wish he was more forceful at times.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have one rule for my charters. No booze, no drugs, and no women unless they’re wives. All three are trouble I don’t need. Billy hates to be the bad guy by telling them no.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Why make an exception for wives? I would think a machismo captain like you wouldn’t want
any
women on board.”

“Wives, dear lady, are the only women who are serious about the fishing when they’re with the men, so I allow them. Other women are too busy turning on the sex appeal in front of the men, and the men are too busy paying attention to them instead of the fish. They can do the same thing in the lobby of the Taj Mahal. I’m not a floating hotel.”

She grinned. “But you are a male chauvinist.”

“Thank you.”

“You sound like you love your boat very much.”

He smiled. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Ahh, I see.” She nodded knowingly. “Far more than a boat, slightly less than a mistress.”

He laughed at her description. “Close. I also have a silent partnership in a cruise ferry for gamblers between Wildwood and Atlantic City. That one I leave to my partner. But I love being on the water. You never know what will pop up—”

“Such as Jaws,” she broke in.

“Or a pod of whales or a school of dolphins or a sudden squall.” He gazed at her. “Anything can be out there, and you’re in something that’s about the size of a peanut, challenging it.”

She glanced down at her glass. “Your boat has a pretty name.”

He looked away. “Yes.”

She said nothing more, and he wondered if she knew about the accident. He couldn’t imagine that she didn’t. Nobody let a scandal lie sleeping as it should, but he was grateful she hadn’t mentioned it or asked about it. Hilary Rayburn went up a few points in his estimation. He glanced at her glass. It was still full. “Aren’t you drinking?”

She grinned at him. “Not if I can help it.”

“I could try to steal a better brand this time.”

“Maybe later.”

He swallowed the last of his champagne and poured himself some more. “So, why aren’t you attached to anyone?”

“I’ve got you,” she reminded him.

“Thrill of thrills, I’m sure. I meant a real man.”

She smothered a laugh. “Makes me wonder what you are, then.” Before he could respond, she shrugged and said, “I lived with a man for a while.”

It was his turn to raise his eyebrows. Prim and proper Hilary Rayburn had lived in sin? “What happened to him? Did he ‘do you wrong’?”

“No. I done him wrong.” She looked away.

Dev gaped. “You cheated on him?”

She turned back. “Of course not! Whatever gave you that ridiculous idea?”

One look at her honey-brown hair and the lush curves that made a man ache to touch her and Dev knew it wasn’t a ridiculous idea at all. “You said you done him wrong. Don’t you ever listen to Billie Holiday or Bessie Smith?”

“I’m more Harry Connick, Jr., and The Moody Blues.”

“Harry’s got potential, but The Moody Blues are the wrong kind. I’ll lend you some of my
real
blues albums. So, what did you do?”

“I …” She took a deep breath, and he nearly choked at the way her breasts pressed against the sheer fabric of her bodice. “I didn’t love him.”

Her words confirmed his first impressions of her: cold as ice and about as emotional as a robot. Somehow it pained him to realize it was true. At least she knew it about herself, he admitted.

“I was too young, really,” she went on, twirling the stem of her glass. “Sometimes we do things when we’re young on an impulse or because we think it’s a good idea, and then we realize afterward it’s not.”

Dev looked out over the green grass. “I know.”

“He deserved someone who did love him, wonderfully and with her whole heart. I wasn’t that person, so I told him he should go find her. It seemed only right.” A ripple chased down her body, as if she were shaking cobwebs out of an old blanket. Then she smiled. “Well, anyway, I still have you. Thrill of thrills.”

He grinned as she tossed his own words back at him. This day had started out as a torture, until this enlightening conversation. Just when he thought there were no surprises left, she surprised him. There was a lot of Hilary under the social mask she always had on. How could she be this warm and teasing and yet be so cold inside? Or was she?

An urge rose up in him, gentle but overwhelming. He leaned toward her, his gaze never wavering. Neither did hers. Their lips met. The kiss was sweet and tender, their mouths caressing each other’s. Everything inside him went gray, a soft kaleidoscope of gray. He pressed slightly, and her lips parted under his touch. Their tongues swirled leisurely together. He was afraid to touch her
anywhere else, afraid of what he would find. Her mouth tasted of the finest champagne, yet more heady and more sensual. His body had no air, nothing to breathe but her. He felt as if he were falling into a warm abyss, from which he never wanted to emerge.

They pulled away at the same time, as if she felt that final plunge into the nothingness exactly when he did. He stared at her in shock. She stared back, her eyes wide. He wanted to deny the tender, alien sensations running through him. He didn’t want soft, or sweet, or intimate from her.

He turned and again looked out over the meadow, trying to regain his equilibrium. He was conscious that she did the same. He wanted to say something cynical or witty or even obnoxious, but he couldn’t find words. His mind was too filled with only one thought.

If Hilary Rayburn was a cold woman, where had that kiss come from?

Seated at one of the tables, Lettice watched her grandson kiss Hilary. Clearly things were going on that Devlin hadn’t planned. She smiled to herself. It served her grandson right.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Marsh striding toward the younger couple. She immediately rose from her chair and started on a collision course toward him. Things might not be going quite so well with him, but she wasn’t about to allow him to ruin Devlin and Hilary.

She cut him off before he reached the couple and planted herself directly in his path. “Some of the hospital people are looking for you, Marsh.”

He pulled up short and blinked. She took him by
the elbow, intending to turn him back toward the pavilion tent. Instead she received a jolt of long-lost sensuality. She wanted to take her hand away from the searing heat, but all her energy had been sapped. She swallowed and said lamely, “They’re looking for you.”

“Who?” His voice seemed far away.

“The hospital people … the administrator.”

“Oh …” He blinked, then looked behind her to Devlin and Hilary. “Excuse me, Lettice.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I think not.”

“Don’t give me that damned look of yours, woman,” he snapped. “Just move out of the way.”

“No. And I am not giving you that damned look.” She didn’t move her hand, even though her control was returning. “You have something else to do, now go and do it.”

“You bet your backside I do.” He pulled abruptly away and began to go around her.

Lettice put herself between him and the grandchildren again.

“Get out of the way, woman!”

“In a pig’s eye!”

They were beginning to make a scene, and she almost didn’t care. There was an excitement here, one she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“You listen to me, Lettice Biddle,” Marsh said. He looked ready to erupt as he shook his finger at her. “I am not going to allow your grandson to do to my granddaughter what you did to me.”

“Give it a rest, Marsh,” she said, impatient with his obtuseness. “I was nineteen and underage. Women were not allowed the freedoms they are now, if you’ll remember.”

His eyes narrowed. “I remember a little better
than you’d like me to. I remember an engagement less than three months later—”

“Be careful, Marsh.” Lettice smiled slyly. “You’ll make me think you still care.”

“The hell I do!” he bellowed.

Lettice smothered her amusement at his burst of outrage. Things could be going better than she thought. “I just wanted to make sure,” she said calmly.

Under the tree Hilary turned around at the sound of raised voices. One voice actually.

“I thought so,” she murmured, seeing her grandfather towering over Lettice. His face was red with fury.

“What?” Devlin asked, coming out of his own reverie.

She glanced at him, but, still shaken and confused by the kiss, immediately looked away. She pointed to the makings of a grand scene behind her. “The grandparents are fighting.”

He sighed. “You can dress them up, but you sure can’t take them anywhere.”

“I guess we’d better go put them in separate sandboxes.”

“Agreed.”

Despite the easy words, the tension between them was unbearable. Hilary rose to her feet before he could help her. She didn’t want to feel his touch. She was afraid to. She had had a glimpse beyond the bad boy. She couldn’t afford another.

He picked up his coat and stood. They walked together, side by side, leaving a good foot between them. She tried to ignore the odd pain wending its way through her at the realization that he didn’t want to touch her either.

“At the rate they’re going,” she said, “we ought to
have them on the honeymoon before the week is out”

“Very probably.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “Back there … that was for show, you understand.”

“Absolutely,” she replied, then ground her teeth together. She was getting sick of the “show.”

“Children, children,” Devlin said, when they reached their grandparents. “Are we having fun yet?”

“Barrels of it,” Marsh snapped, but he visibly relaxed. “I was just coming to get you, Hilary, before this … woman put herself in my way. Can we go home now?”

“Running?” Lettice asked.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Marsh said.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, there’s nothing to get flattered about.”

“Listen, old woman—”

“Old woman!” Lettice yelped. “Old woman! Why, you old far—”

“I think we’d better get them to their corners,” Hilary said to Devlin. People were looking now, recognizing that something untoward was happening.

“Round’s over, Grandmother,” Devlin said. He took his grandmother’s arm and led her away.

Hilary did the same. Her grandfather resisted, but she tugged hard and he finally moved. He was stiff at first and muttering something under his breath about old women, but his walk eventually loosened as they made their way toward the car. To her surprise it actually became jaunty, as if he were thoroughly enjoying himself.