The Second Time (17 page)

“Let’s fix some breakfast,” she said.

Neither of them spoke as they walked to the kitchen. While Dawn put sausage links in the skillet to fry, Randy set the table. She took down the pancake flour to whip up a batch.

“Would you bring me the milk from the refrigerator—and an egg?” she asked.

The door opened and shut behind her while she measured out the mix. Randy appeared at her elbow, holding an egg. “There’s no milk.”

“I used the last of it last night,” she remembered with a disgruntled sigh. “Bring me my purse. It’s on the counter over there. You can ride your bike to the corner store and buy a quart.” Randy started over to the side counter. “Wait,” Dawn called him back. “I used the last of my cash to pay the paperboy. I’ll get it from your father. Watch the sausage for me.”

Wiping the pancake dust from her hands with a towel, Dawn walked swiftly into the front room. Slater was still engrossed in the paper.

“We’re out of milk. I need to send Randy to the store to get some,” she explained. “Will you give me some money? I’m broke.”

There was a long, cool look from his gray eyes. Something like contempt touched his mouth as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of bills. When she started toward his chair, he tossed them to her. They separated and drifted to the floor like green leaves settling to the ground.

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Slater challenged.

When she finally ripped her gaze away from the money at her feet, she glared at him. She made no move to touch it or pick it up.

“Hey, Mom! Should I—” Randy came running in from the kitchen.

“Go outside and play, Randy,” she ordered.

“But—what about the milk?” He saw the bills scattered on the floor. “What’s all that money doing there?”

“I said go outside and play!” Dawn repeated herself more sharply.

Randy backed up a step, looking from his mother to his father, finally sensing the explosive tension in the room. Then he wheeled, and headed for the front door. It slammed shut behind him. Dawn had a glimpse of him out the window, his arm hooked around a veranda pillar, his head hanging low as if his world had come to an end.

Her temper was trembling on the edge of fury as she knelt down and began picking up the money with false calm. “Would you mind explaining to me what
this
is all about?” She held up a wad of bills to indicate what she meant.

The newspaper was shoved aside, all pretense of reading it abandoned as Slater pushed to his feet. The hard angles of his features were whitened at the edges with barely controlled rage.

“No more games, Dawn,” he snapped. “Don’t pretend that isn’t what you wanted when you know very well it is! Now you’ve got it.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“I’m talking about you. You’re probably going to turn out to be the most expensive lay in the country,” he charged viciously. “Well, there’s your money. Payment in full for your services. And enjoyable they were, too.”

She straightened to stand erect, her head high
and hot tears stinging her eyes. “Just exactly what do you think I’ve done?” Her voice was strained with the effort to keep it level.

“I can’t keep up this farce any longer,” he sighed heavily. He was angry, but it was a tired kind of anger. Dawn could see the haggard and worn lines etched in his features from too many nights with too little sleep, but she couldn’t feel sorry for him. “You married me for money. Well, now you’ve got it.” Slater flung a gesturing hand in the direction of the money she held. “Sorry it isn’t more than that, but I don’t carry a lot of cash on me.”

“Is that really what you believe?” Dawn asked with a hurt and incredulous frown. She breathed out a short laugh as she looked down at the money, her eyes blinking aside the tears. Events were becoming clear to her. “All this started that last night on the beach when I told you Simpson hadn’t left me any money. I knew you had changed toward me, but I didn’t know why.”

“It was clever of you to wait until
after
we were married to mention that
little
detail,” Slater said with dry sarcasm that seemed to mask his pain.

“The irony of this is that I was beginning to wonder if you were upset because you had married me for the money,” she admitted her brief suspicion. “And you were angry because you hadn’t allied yourself with wealth. I kept telling myself it was absurd, but I never dreamed you would come to this ridiculous conclusion.”

“Is it so ridiculous?” he challenged. “Don’t forget I know how much you wanted money. You
threw
us
away to get your hands on it. When I think what a fool I’ve been, believing all that garbage about marrying again for love.” He swung at right angles from her, running a hand over his hair and gripping the back of his neck. “I’m the one who’s been saying it, then letting myself believe that it came from you.”

“Love is the reason I married you,” Dawn insisted.

“Love for me or love for money?” countered Slater.

“How can you even ask that question?” she demanded with the wad of money crumpled in her rigidly clenched fist. “We honeymooned together. Every minute of it was wonderful. Surely you could tell how much I love you.”

“You’ve had so much practice faking your feelings that you probably wouldn’t know a real emotion when it came your way.” He shook his head in disgust, unimpressed by her show of evidence. “You played the loving wife for so long with Simpson, you probably don’t know how to act any other way. He may have preferred the pretense, but I don’t.”

“Slater, don’t you know that I never stopped loving you?” Dawn was at a loss as to how to convince him. There was a part of her that rebelled at the idea she had to try.

“Maybe I have trouble believing you ever loved me in the beginning,” he replied with weary flatness. “If you loved me, how could you marry someone else?”

“What I did was wrong. I learned that very
quickly, but the damage had already been done.” She struggled with the unpleasant memories. “I suppose it was wrong to stay married to Simpson after I realized what a mistake I’d made. But I’d made my bed and I thought I had to stay in it.”

“It must have been a low blow when he didn’t leave you anything,” Slater taunted.

“I didn’t want anything!” Dawn flared.

“Contesting the will would have meant a long, legal court fight, not to mention a very expensive one. How much easier it was just to find yourself a new sucker—me.” His laughing breath was loaded with self-derision. “I swore I wouldn’t let myself be fooled by you again. But you had me all set up just right, didn’t you? You had a hook waiting for me no matter which way I went.”

“No—”

But he didn’t allow her to finish. “When Simpson died and you found out you were broke again, you must have looked around for the most likely candidate. And there was good ole MacBride. You knew he had been crazy about you—and there just might be some smouldering coals left in him. He had become something of a success—not filthy rich but on his way up. And the
coup de grâce,
you had borne him a son, a little secret you’d kept all this time.”

“I should have told you. I’ve already admitted that,” she reminded him angrily. “I came back here so the two of you could get to know one another. And that’s the only reason I came back! It wasn’t to trick you into marrying me so I could get my hands on your money.”

“You made me believe that once, but I won’t be persuaded again,” Slater declared with a long, heavy look. “If it means anything, I have finally come to terms with who and what you are. A leopard can’t change her spots—and you are a cat of the first order.” His gaze flicked to her flaming hair.

“How do you know she can’t?” Dawn challenged. “Did you ever ask a leopard?”

“It’s no use, Dawn.” There was a hard finality in his voice. “You were right when you said a couple couldn’t stay together because of a child. And I can’t live your lie anymore.”

“It isn’t a lie,” she insisted with cold anger. “But if you don’t believe that, then you can’t love me.”

“It seems we’ve reached a fork in the road.” He sounded calm, painfully so as far as Dawn was concerned.

“It seems we have.” She tried to match him and strained for a cool nonchalance that kept wavering on bitterness. “You claimed to have urgent business to attend to, so why don’t you go take care of it. I’ll pack your things and have them sent to the boat this afternoon.”

“Fine.” There was a rigidness to his jaw.

“And I shan’t be asking for any financial settlement from you,” Dawn asserted. “If you feel you should contribute something to Randy’s support, then follow your conscience and pay whatever you feel is fair.”

“You’re fighting right down to the last second, aren’t you?” Slater accused tightly, a glint of
reluctant admiration in his gray eyes. “It’s a great gesture to subtly make me wonder whether I’ve been wrong about you all along.”

That was too much for Dawn. She was shaking with rage. “Do you want another gesture?” she hurled. “Try this!” She pointed a rigid finger in the direction of the front door while she glared at him. “Get out!”

His long strides carried him past her and out the door. The glass rattled in the window panes from the force behind the slamming of the door. Dawn glared after him, hating him at that moment as passionately as she had ever loved him.

The roar of the sportscar reversing out of the drive finally broke her anger-stiffened stance. She turned away from the door and started to lift a hand to her forehead in angry despair. Her glance fell on the paper money of various denominations in her hand. Her fingers tightened on it, crushing it more.

“You think it’s your money I want,” she caustically informed an absent Slater. “I’ll show you what I think of your money!”

Driven by an anger that cloaked a pain too excruciating to be exposed, Dawn swept across the room to the cypress-topped coffee table. She dumped the bills into the large glass ashtray sitting on it. She grabbed a matchbook and ripped out a cardboard match, striking it and holding the flame to the money.

It licked greedily at a corner, then jumped quickly from one paper bill to another. Soon the whole crumpled mass of wadded bills was consumed
by fire. Dawn sank onto the edge of the couch to watch it burn with bitter satisfaction.

“That, Slater MacBride, is the grandest gesture of them all,” she murmured with a twisted slant to her mouth.

As quickly as the fire had taken hold, it burned itself out. All that remained of the money were black strips of brittle ash. Yet a distinctly smoky smell continued to taint the air she breathed—like something scorched.

“The sausage!” She bolted for the kitchen.

She waved a hand at the smoke-filled air as she entered the room and hurried to the stove, coughing and choking from the smoke invading her lungs. Her eyes smarted. She had to keep blinking as she turned the burner off and slapped a lid on the smoking skillet. After switching on the overhead exhaust fan, Dawn ran around opening all the windows and fanning the air to hurry the smoke’s departure.

With disjointed logic, she blamed it all on Slater. Of all times to start an argument, he had chosen when she was fixing Randy’s breakfast. She would never have burned the sausages if it weren’t for him. She went back to the stove to survey the damage.

“Gee, Mom.” Randy came in the back door and stopped, wrinkling his nose at the burnt smell and wispy bits of smoke in the air. “What are you trying to do? Burn the place down?”

Dawn was too upset and angry to answer, but it was a question that didn’t need an answer. When she lifted the lid of the skillet, there were four
charred-black sticks encrusted in a sticky black mess of burned grease and sausage juice. She poked at the hard stuff with a spatula as Randy came over to take a look.

“Where’d Dad go in such a hurry?” Uncertainly, he peered sideways at her.

“He had business.” The words were clipped short as she moved away from him to carry the skillet to the sink. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed he’d left the back door standing open. “You forgot to close the door.” It was an absent reprimand, too preoccupied with her own private turmoil.

“Did you and Dad have an argument?” Randy trailed after her to the sink, pausing just a little bit behind her.

“We disagreed on certain matters,” Dawn replied stiffly, preferring to keep from her son how bitter the quarrel had been.

“You had a fight,” he concluded with a sinking look. “Are you going to make up?”

“I don’t know.” She ran water in the skillet and stabbed viciously at the black crust.

“Is he coming back?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice became more clipped and more emphatic as she repeated the same answer.

“Are you going to get a divorce?”

“I don’t know!” The word scraped over her strained nerves.

Dawn swung around to face him, angry with his hurting questions until she saw the frightened and lost expression on his young face.
Something crumpled inside her, letting all the pain and remorse through. The skillet and spatula were dropped in the sink as she reached for him.

“Randy, I’m sorry. I’m upset, but not with you,” she assured him. “You aren’t to blame for what’s happened. You had nothing to do with it.”

His head drooped, and she knew he was trying to hide his tears. “I wish I could help. I wish—” His emotionally taut voice didn’t finish the sentence as he compressed his lips together to hold back a sob.

“Oh, Randy, you do help.” Dawn cupped his cheek in her hand and turned his face up so she could see it. The loving stroke of her thumb wiped away the tear that had been squeezed out of his lashes. “You don’t know how much I need you just to be with me. I hate to think what kind of selfish and self-centered person I might have become if you hadn’t come into my life so I could finally learn the responsibilities that go along with loving someone,” she explained. “You’ve been more help to me than you’ll ever know. And even if you can’t help solve the problems your father and I are having, just having you here makes it a little easier. Okay?” Her voice wavered on an emotional note as she forced an encouraging smile on her lips. Randy nodded a hesitant understanding and scrubbed a tear from his other cheek. “Then go close the door before you let in all the flies,” she urged in an attempt to instill some reassuring normality to the scene.