The Hellion (23 page)

Immediately she looked at the lake.

"You like it?"

"Yes, very much. Who could help but like it?"

He turned his back to the view and perched a

buttock on the rail, one knee riding wide and the suit jacket gaping open as he swiveled toward her. "I built it for you," he said matter-of-factly.

Her eyes flew to his, and they stared at each other for an endless moment. His new untinted glasses left the expression in his brown eyes open for study, and she saw there a grave sincerity that rocked her senses. Gone were the days when she wanted to turn away from his probing gaze. Now she wanted to immerse herself in it. He looked so different. Younger. Less worry-lined. Head-turningly handsome. She stood riveted before him while he made no move whatever to touch her, yet she felt touched in a wholly wonderful way. She became acutely conscious of his masculine pose, the tailored beige jacket having fallen aside to reveal expertly cut brown trousers stretched between his cocked hips.

At last she found her voice. "Yes I know. I recognized it the moment I walked into it."

"Did you?" His voice was gently gruff.

"It was unmistakable."

"And what did you think?"

Again she gazed out over the lake. "That
  
273 I was married to Owen when you built it."

"So you were." He lifted his glass, watched her over the rim as he took a drink, then dropped the hand to his knee.

"Oh, Tommy Lee, whatever were you thinking, to do a thing like that?" Her eyes were troubled, and the corners of her mouth tipped down as she turned toward him.

He remained silent for a long time, studying the contents of his glass while swirling it distractedly, bumping it against his kneecap. Then he captured her brown eyes with his own and spoke softly. "Remember how we used to dream about it?"

"Yes, I remember. But that was ... years ago."

He went on as if she hadn't spoken, glancing lazily over his left shoulder at the lake. "It's right where we always said we'd like to live." She felt his eyes move back to study her profile. "And it has all the windows you said you wanted, and all the natural wood I said I wanted." He drew deeply on the cigarette. "And the master bedroom with

enormous walk-in closets made of cedar, and the view of the lake, and the fireplace for winter, and the sliding doors and deck for summer." He pointed above their heads with the tip of the cigarette. "That set of steps leads directly down from the bedroom, right to the lake for midnight swims."

Rachel's heart was thundering and her lips dropped open as she resisted the urge to look up at the deck cantilevered over their heads. My God, he remembered everything. She recalled walking in here the first time, noting his choices, adding them up, and wondering what the bedroom looked like. Why should it come as such a shock to know it, too, was designed from secrets whispered in the dark more than two decades ago?

The sliding door rolled back and Georgine asked, "Would you like your salads out here?" At the far end of the deck stood an umbrella table and four cushioned chairs.

"No, thank you, Georgine, we'll come inside." Tommy Lee eased his leg off the rail. "Rachel?" He swept a hand toward the door, and she let her eyes meet his. But they skittered away again from the impact.

The table was simply but elegantly set with

thick slubbed linen placemats and
       
275 matching blue napkins in ivory rings, a centerpiece of blue and brown, and a pair of ink-blue candles, already lit. When Tommy Lee had solicitously settled Rachel into her chair, he took the one directly opposite, reached for his napkin, and glanced up to find their view of each other blocked by the tall tapers. Without a word, he leaned over to push the centerpiece and candles aside, smiled, and settled back into his chair, saying, "There ... that's better."

She busied herself removing her napkin from its ring, but felt tingly in the ensuing silence, and even more unnerved when she looked up to find him relaxedly lounging in his chair, studying her bemusement with a look of total appreciation.

The salad was made of crabmeat, endive, and water chestnuts and was served without wine. Scrambling about in her mind for a subject of conversation, Rachel finally asked, "So ... did you and Darrel make ten?"

His head went back as he laughed, and the movement gave him a look of renewed youth that caught at Rachel's heart.

"Yes, we made ten, and tied Darla. Now the fight is on for eleven."

Their eyes met. Rachel felt a rich closeness to him in that moment as they spoke of things linking them to more than this night. But when the subject died, she sensed him in little hurry to pick up the strings of another. He seemed content to sit there in silence, studying her while the fork trembled in her hand.

When she could stand it no longer she finally insisted, "What are you looking at?"

A grin tugged at his cheek. "Y. Trying to get my fill."

"Well, you're embarrassing me."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to." But still he didn't look away. "I'm trying to grasp the fact that you're really here at last, sitting at my table across from me. Incredible ..."

She didn't know what to say, so she fiddled with the hem of her napkin.

"You know, Rachel, through the years I watched you maturing, and sometimes I'd grow angry with you. I'd want to call you and say, why don't you wither up or get gray or haggard! But instead you just grew more and more beautiful as the years passed."

She braced an elbow on the table,
    
277 dropped her forehead onto her knuckles, and shook her head. "Keep that up and I'll have to leave."

"Is that a blush I see?" he teased, cocking his head as if to see behind her hand.

She propped her chin on the hand and presented him with a tight-lipped grin. "What do you think? I told you, I'm out of practice."

He laughed, sending a flash of white teeth through the growing shadows. "Ah, I love it."

"Could we please change the subject, Mr. Gentry?"

"As you please. Pick one."

She clasped her hands in her lap and said softly, "Beth."

"Which one?" he asked.

She felt herself color again as she answered quietly, "Your Beth. You said she's living with you."

He cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his chair. "Yes, for two weeks now, but she's gone off with some kids to the movies. She met a bunch down at the beach the first week, and already she's saying she wants to register for school

here."

"You must be ecstatic."

"I am." His expression sobered slightly. "But it takes some adjusting."

"I imagine it does. What ... how ...?was Rachel became discomfited and waved an apologetic palm. "I guess it's none of my business."

"Of course it is." He leaned his elbows on the table edge and met her eyes directly. "Nancy and Beth haven't gotten along well at all for a couple of years now. Nancy is what you might call an overprotective mother, unwilling to let her birdling out of the nest for the first time. They have terrible fights, and the result of the last one was that Beth ran away from home. She was gone for three days, and when we found her it was decided it'd be best if she tried living with me for a while. And so it seems, I've been granted a second chance to be a father."

"You mean she might stay? Indefinitely?"

"If things work out right. If she's happier here. If I can keep her on the straight and narrow."

Her dark eyes lifted to his. "And can you?"

she asked in a near whisper.
           
279

He studied her with a loving expression in his eyes. "At this moment, Rachel, I feel as if there's nothing in this world I can't do."

The elation caused by his words lasted through the main course, which was beef Stroganoff. He ate his without any rice, and uncomplainingly drank lime water without so much as a grimace. The wine or champagne she'd expected was nowhere in evidence.

He talked some more about Beth, asked Rachel's advice on buying school clothes, which led to a discussion about her own store. She entertained him with humorous tales of the idiosyncrasies of her various customers, then asked him about his development corporation.

They ran out of things to talk about and found themselves staring at each other. Out of the blue Rachel blurted, "I like your new glasses much better than the old ones."

He grinned, but remained as before, bracing his jaw on one hand. "Oh, do you?" And she knew without being told that he'd changed them because of her.

She felt color washing upward and knew a sense of expanding sexual awareness between them. She

dropped her eyes to the banana cream pie on her plate, but they wandered from it to his coffee cup and the cigarette crooked in dark tapered fingers that toyed with the cup handle while his unwavering gaze rested on her.

"Aren't you having any dessert?" she asked, letting her eyes skip up to his.

He answered simply, "No, not tonight."

And suddenly she realized how serious he was about his reform, and that he had not undertaken it solely because of Beth coming back to live with him. She, Rachel, had laid down parameters and he was striving to fit himself into them. And it was working. A rush of blood thrummed through her body, bringing again that sensual pounding deep in her vitals. As untamed as their longing for each other had been when they were teenagers, it seemed insipid compared to this mature reaction she was feeling for him. Yet he lounged in his chair with all the indolence of a sated maharaja, studying her closely while she fidgeted with the cloth of her skirt and grew hotter beneath his scrutiny.

Then Georgine took away their dessert plates and said if there wasn't anything more she was going to bed, and the gentle bump of her footsteps

sounded up the carpeted stairs before all was
  
281 still.

"She lives here, too?" Rachel asked, wide-eyed.

Tommy Lee fingered the rim of his coffee cup while studying her through the smoke that lifted between them. "Yes, in one of the guest rooms."

"Oh." So, he could no longer bring his women to that sprawling sofa.

"Weekdays," he added, then snuffed out his cigarette.

"Oh," she said again inanely, and wondered if he would ever try to get her onto that sofa with him. She thanked her lucky stars it couldn't possibly happen tonight with Georgine asleep upstairs and Beth probably due back any minute.

"Would you like to take your coffee into the living room?" he asked, as if reading her mind and deciding to tease her.

Rachel twitched and her eyes grew rounder. "Oh ..." She glanced skittishly at a corner of the sofa visible beyond the fireplace. "All right," she added belatedly, but missed the grin on Tommy Lee's face as he watched

her peruse the field of ottomans fit for a harem.

But he pushed the ottomans back, and they took separate places on the sofa with a decorous space between them, and he was everything he'd promised to be: the perfect gentleman.

And Rachel was the slightest bit disappointed.

  
They headed back to town before Beth returned home, and all the way Tommy Lee smoked continuously, the only indication that he might be as tense as she. He had kept his promise all evening, never saying or doing anything untoward. By now it was driving her crazy. She turned to study his face, illuminated by the pale dash lights, which reflected from his lenses and lit his knuckles on the wheel. He glanced her way. Her eyes veered out the side window, then closed on the thought that it had been years and years since she had become this aroused by merely looking at a man.

There could be no question that the most sensible way to end the evening would be with a graceful, polite parting. But being sensible was far from her mind, as she was sure it was from Tommy Lee's. There was no denying he was

tempting, so tempting that these hours with him
  
283 had been a study in control.

They were wheeling slowly through the city streets when Rachel drew a deep breath to ask, "Tommy Lee, who is Bitsy?"

It was some time before he answered, "Bitsy is a woman I was seeing."

"Was?" Afraid to look at him, she trained her eyes on the path of the headlights.

"Yes, was. She keeps calling and suggesting that we get together again, but I seem to have lost my taste for other women lately." He drew deeply on his cigarette before going on. "There's no use denying it, Rachel--there've been a lot of them. I suppose that bothers you."

It did. It made her mentally step back a pace when she wanted to move nearer. But beneath her reservation a disturbing tingle of jealousy made her reply defensively, "Should it?"

"Does it?" he shot back.

The moment sizzled with their acute absorption in each other as their eyes met and clashed; then she forced hers toward the windshield again. "Yes, it does. But it's more a disappointment than anything else."

"I didn't know I had the power to disappoint you."

"Well, you do."

"Why?"

"Because." She searched for a way to express it. "Because we were children together, good friends even before we became lovers, and I wanted you to remain that ... that hero you'd always been for me. When rumors spread about you and yet another woman, I used to get so ... so angry with you, I'd want to rap you on the skull and knock some sense into your head!" He laughed again and immediately she scolded, "Don't you dare laugh. You don't know what you put me through. Somehow I always ended up in a position of having to either defend or blame, and I didn't want to do either."