Shattered (29 page)

"Get lost?" Scott couldn't help it. The gibe, muttered half under his breath and directed squarely at Lisa, came out before he could stop it.

Her eyes held his as Peyton settled into the chair beside her.

There were eight of the deeply cushioned chairs around each of the sixty or so tables ringing the pool. Another layer of tables for eight were positioned around the outer layer of the pool deck. A third section of larger, family-style tables circled the nearby kiddie pool. All were full, with tuxedoed waiters and black-dress-and-white-apron-clad waitresses weaving deftly between them. A tented buffet and bar had been set up between the two pools, and a line of women in cocktail dresses and men in suits snaked away from both. The smell of grilling meat mixed with the faint scents of citronella and chlorine. Laughter and the sounds of many voices all talking at once filled the air. Another vast white tent covered the brick patio directly behind the antebellum mansion that served as the clubhouse. The patio had been converted for the night into a dance floor. It was lit by thousands of twinkly white lights that covered the interior ceiling of the tent, swirled around the tall support poles, and wrapped the nearby trees and shrubbery. More white lights festooned all the outdoor seating areas, including just above where they sat. A live band played "Margaritaville" with verve, and a few couples already danced energetically to it. Beyond the tent, the golf course stretched, black as velvet in the darkness. According to the card on the table, at eleven-thirty p.m., which was still an hour and a half away, it would be the site of a fireworks display. As befitted the ultra-exclusive nature of the establishment, it was billed as the largest in the region.

"I stopped by the hospital to show my mother my dress. I always wear pants, and I knew she'd like to see me in it."

In contrast to his, Lisa's voice wasn't lowered. Or edgy. Her eyes met his blandly. That very blandness--so un-Lisa--told him that she hadn't missed that he was in a piss-poor mood. He was also aware that she undoubtedly had a good idea of the cause.

They knew each other too damned well, was the problem.

"I knew that color would look great on you." Nola beamed at Lisa. Her gaze slid to Scott. "Doesn't she look great?"

"Beautiful." He spoke the truth without inflection. His eyes switched to Nola, who was, after all, his date, and he dredged up a smile. "So do you, in case I forgot to mention it."

"You did, but I forgive you." Nola crinkled her nose coquettishly, and he smiled at her again. He liked Nola, found her attractive, was amused by her forwardness, but he already knew that nothing was going to come of this night except this one date. So, he suspected, did she.

Hell, the sad truth was that he'd accepted only to needle Lisa, because of the horrified look on Lisa's face when Nola had invited him. If he had not been fairly certain that Nola had pretty much known the score going in, he would have been feeling ashamed of himself about now.

"Anyone else want a drink?" Peyton looked around the table as he signaled a waitress. "Lise, the usual?"

Scott discovered that he didn't enjoy learning that Peyton called her "Lise." Or that he knew her "usual," whatever the hell it was. When she was with him, she pretty much stuck to iced tea. Or a soda or coffee. Something nonalcoholic.

Because she knew him.

"Sounds good. Thanks," Lisa replied. As the waitress arrived and took their drink order, Lisa looked at Scott again and frowned.

"What happened to your face?" she mouthed.

She was referring to the fresh, two-inch-long scrape just below his left eye, he knew.

"Ran into a door." Without bothering to lower his voice particularly, he told her the same lie he'd told Nola and everyone else who'd asked, because the truth wasn't something he wanted getting all over this small, gossipy, next-door-to-inbred town. The truth was ugly, and there was no room for ugly in the glittery never-never land he was at that moment pretending to be a part of.

"A door?" Lisa looked skeptical, but then her attention was claimed by Macy at the far end of the table, asking about her mother. Lisa answered and then amplified her answer in response to another question, and the conversation turned general as the drinks arrived. Lisa's "usual" was a cosmopolitan, Scott noted with a glance. As she picked up her glass, her eyes slid to his face.

I've got no problem with anyone who's
of age
drinking. It just doesn't do it for me.

He'd said that to her a long time ago, when he'd come across her and Nola and a number of their girlfriends--he didn't think Macy or Alexis had been part of the group, but he wasn't a hundred percent sure, as all the hot chicks who hung with Lisa had started to look alike to him by then--guzzling beer in one of the barns at about age seventeen. He'd been obviously disapproving, Lisa had laughed at him and offered him a beer, he'd turned her down flat, and she had called him uptight, among other things. Then he'd taken the booze away from them and dumped it out.

From the way she watched him as she took that first sip of her cosmopolitan, he had a feeling she was remembering that long-ago night, too.

"Lisa tells me you've been keeping her pretty busy lately." Peyton was talking to him, making a stab at casual conversation, although the two of them had always had about as much use for each other as a cat and a dog.

Quashing his instinct to give the guy a hard time, Scott searched for what he considered to be a relatively pleasant tone and found it.

"Office is jumping."

"You're lucky to have the work." Peyton shook his head. "Our business is way down."

"Is it?" Scott deliberately relaxed back in his chair and settled in for what he could tell already was going to be a long night. Through the table's glass top, he watched with slightly sour appreciation as Lisa crossed long, slim legs. Then Peyton's hand settled on her knee, and Scott found himself gritting his teeth.

"Off about fifty percent, if we're lucky."

"Damned recession." Nola said it cheerfully. Beneath the table, Lisa's legs shifted, Peyton's hand dropped, and Scott was once again able to look at the guy without wanting to deck him.

"Crime's the one thing that's pretty much recession-proof," he drawled, and Nola laughed.

"Hey, Joel, you all ever get that shopping center you were building out in Versailles finished?" one of the men--Ben, he thought--spoke from the other end of the table.

Joel nodded. "Now we're working on getting it all rented out."

"My company's a tenant. We just opened an interior design store in there named Ruffles." Nola grinned at Joel. "Now, if we could just get the developer to give us a break on the rent . . ."

Joel replied, Nola said something else, and suddenly everybody was talking. Under the cover of the general conversation, Lisa leaned toward Scott. His eyes flicked over her. Her hair was sliding over one shoulder, resting against her tawny skin and the vibrant red of her dress like a swathe of shiny black satin. Because she was leaning toward him, he could just see the first gentle slopes of her breasts and the suggestion of cleavage between them. Instead of being red to match the dress, as he would have expected, her lipstick was some barely there color that shimmered in the torchlight and made her parted lips look sexy as hell. The dark fringes of her lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. Her eyes gleamed gold at him.

Beautiful didn't begin to cover it.

"So, did you get your dad settled?" she asked in a voice meant for his ears alone. There was so much talk and laughter around them that she was confident of not being overheard.

Still moodily studying her, he wasn't feeling much like chatting, but he answered: "Yeah."

"Is he what happened to your face?"

Again, they knew each other too well. She'd been witness to a lot of his physical scars over the years, most all of them from the same source. Once upon a time, he'd found it embarrassing.

His shrug was an admission. "He changed his mind about going about halfway there, and when I wouldn't turn the car around, he punched me. With a set of car keys."

Lisa eyes widened. She drew in a breath. "He barely missed your eye."

"He's getting old. His aim's going."

"That's not funny! The mean old bastard ought to be put away for the rest of his life."

She looked so indignant on his behalf that Scott smiled at her.

"What mean old bastard?" Peyton turned back to ask.

Scott didn't say anything. Lisa looked momentarily flustered. Even though she'd raised her voice at the end, he knew she'd meant their conversation to be private, that she hadn't intended to be overheard. He waited to see if his unfortunate family situation was now going to become the subject of general dinner-table conversation.

"A guy in the system." Lisa's vague answer was dismissive. Her gaze slid to Nola, who was now listening in again, too. She gave her friend a quick, rallying smile. "Did you persuade this cheapskate to lower the rent?"

The sudden gaiety in her voice was meant to start a whole new round of conversation, Scott realized. He was glad to have confirmed that she considered the private things they knew about each other private. Not that he had really doubted it, or her, in that regard.

"No." Nola gave Peyton a mock-indignant glance, to which he threw up his hands.

"It's not up to me," he protested. "It's my dad's company. He's here somewhere. Talk to him."

Nola replied, but Scott missed it because Peyton's hand was riding Lisa's knee again.

"How about we all head for the buffet?" Macy--or maybe it was Alexis--suggested. He was having trouble keeping them straight, although one was a blonde and the other was a redhead. He kind of vaguely remembered them as part of Lisa's wild teenage crowd, but beyond that less than solid fragment of recollection, they were attractive strangers whom he was perfectly willing to let remain that way.

"I'm starving. Aren't you?" Rising with a supple undulation that was meant to make him take notice of her curves, as Scott was perfectly aware, Nola latched on to his arm with a smile when he stood up with the rest. As she leaned into him, all warm, willing flesh draped in bright turquoise silk, he managed to smile back--it wasn't that hard, he discovered, as long as he kept his attention fixed strictly on Nola--while coming up with a suitably agreeable reply. Summoning his inner gentleman, reminding himself that by accepting her invitation he'd made Nola his responsibility for the evening, he set himself to showing her as good a time as possible while ignoring everything that might have bugged him if he'd let it. Which wasn't easy: Peyton held Lisa's hand, slid his arm around her waist, dropped a kiss on her shoulder.

And that was just while they were walking to the buffet line. Once inside the tent, Scott found that he knew a surprising number of people--Lexington's wheelers and dealers tended to be members of the country club--and was distracted enough by the conviviality he had no choice but to engage in to lose track of Lisa. When he and Nola returned to the table, though, she was already there, with Peyton, of course, beside her. Sitting down, he discovered that Peyton's hand was on her knee again.

Hostile
didn't even approach how he felt as he worked to keep his eyes off Lisa's legs, hold up his end of the conversation, and eat his way through whatever tasteless food he had piled on his plate.

Without reaching under the table, grabbing Peyton's hand, and breaking his damned wrist.

Unlike himself, Lisa was downright animated. Merry, even. Talking and laughing all through dinner. Leaning into Peyton, letting her head brush his shoulder, offering him tidbits from her plate. By the time they were finishing after-dinner drinks, Scott felt as though every word he said was being forced out through clenched teeth.

Being dragged away by Nola to the dance floor was almost a r elief.

He could handle having Nola plaster herself against him, handle having his earlobe nibbled and the back of his neck stroked, handle the smoldering looks she gave him and the way her cheek nuzzled his jaw. All that was par for the course, and he didn't have any real trouble keeping the fun from going any further than he wanted it to go. At any other time, he might even have found himself getting into the spirit of things: Nola was luscious enough to make any man in his right mind salivate.

Unfortunately, at the moment he didn't seem to be in his right mind. He danced with Nola, and he danced with Macy and Alexis, and with a number of other women, too, some of whom he even knew, slow dances, fast dances, dirty dances, plus everything in between, and barely registered a lick of it. He was a good enough dancer, having made a deliberate decision to master the basics, just like he 'd mastered golf and tennis, too, because they were upper-crust skills that might prove useful to him in what he had made up his mind a long time ago was going to be his climb to the top. But except for the occasional mild turn-on it afforded if the woman in his arms was hot enough, he didn't particularly enjoy dancing at the best of times, and tonight he didn't enjoy it at all.

Because of Lisa.

She and Peyton were practically necking on the dance floor. She danced with other men, too. There was a lot of partner swapping going on, and she seemed to get pretty friendly with everyone she was with. But it was Peyton who really got his goat.

It was Peyton whose neck she wrapped her arms around. Peyton she was going pelvis to pelvis with. Peyton who let his hands slide down to her ass.

Seeing that, Scott felt a spurt of pure rage. It was primitive and illogical and stupid as hell, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He had come tonight primarily to irk Lisa, had ended up being tortured himself instead, and was now fed up to his back teeth with the whole situation.

"Excuse me a minute, will you?" he asked his partner. Who happened to be Nola, although she could have been a Keebler elf for all the awareness he'd had of her. When he escaped, he headed for the men's room, which was in the lower level of the clubhouse, and when he left there he lingered in the darkness outside the tent for a minute, just to get a few perspective-enhancing breaths of fresh air.