Time After Time (30 page)

They talked in random
snatches about the day, and then Jack said in a surprisingly
fervent voice, "I don't know how to thank you enough. It was —
well, what can I say? It was memorable. Just as you promised it
would be."

Deeply pleased that he was
so pleased, Liz smiled and quipped, "Does that mean I'll be getting
paid the whole amount this time?"

"And then some," he said,
which suggested a handsome gratuity and also pounded home the fact,
as if it needed poundin, that she was a simple working girl and not
one of Newport's Four Hundred.

But it wasn't a socialite
who was walking alongside Jack among the roses and under the stars;
it was Liz. And if he was just now extinguishing the last of the
lamps — if that part of the spell was coming to an end — well, it
wasn't a socialite he was taking in his arms in the bewitching
blindness of the night. It was Liz.

He kissed her then, a
deep, satisfying kiss quite unlike the ones that had left her on
fire the other night. This kiss was filled with gratitude and
something else: the sense, perhaps best left unsaid, that they had
come this far without their attraction for one another having
diminished in any way.

Oh yes,
she told herself as she slid her arms around him
and slipped her hands across his broad back.
I am definitely in love. I am apparently also a fool. So,
Lizzie. Happy now?

She
was
happy. Despite who she was, and
despite who he was, for as long as that kiss lasted — she was
happy.

With a murmur of pleasure,
he held her close and called her "Elizabeth" and buried his face in
the thickness of her hair.

Elizabeth.
She loved to hear him say the name, every single
syllable of it. When she was young she'd longed to be called
something perkier, like Julie or Bonnie or Dawn. But that was
then.

And this,
she thought, closing her eyes to savor the caress
of his lips on her throat,
is
now.

They kissed again, and it
became clear that the moment for feeling grateful had passed. He
kissed her harder now, his tongue probing more deeply, his body
impressing hers with a sense of his urgency. His mouth, searing and
hot, covered hers: again and again he returned to her lips — as if
there were a drug there, and he was hooked. When he finally broke
off, his breathing, like hers, was labored and unsteady.

"This is ... ah ... new,
darlin' ... ho boy ... this is new," he said again with a ragged,
baffled laugh.

He framed her face with
his hands and kissed her, tenderly this time, and said in a half
groan, "You know what comes next ... it
has
to come next — or I'm pretty
sure we'll explode."

All of Liz's resolve, all
of her good intentions, were going by the board. Part of her was
still tracking her pointless descent into the quagmire of passion —
but the other part was wondering,
his
place or mine?

It couldn't be her place —
there simply was no way. It had to be East Gate ... and yet ...
Cornelius? Netta?
Caroline?
It couldn't be his place, either — there simply
was no way.

"I don't see
how—"

The sentence got lost in a
sharp intake of her breath as he skimmed the curve of her ear with
his tongue, nibbling at her earlobe, teasing her, tasting
her.

He solved her agony in
half a dozen words. "The carriage house has an apartment," he
whispered in her ear.

"Ah ... I see."

What Liz also saw,
perversely enough, was a line of beautiful women passing in and
then out of that apartment. She shut her eyes against the vision;
she did not want to know, did not want to see.

He sensed her hesitation
and let go of her, as if he didn't want to be found guilty of
applying undue pressure. But his voice was low and urgent as he
said, "It's going to happen. Sooner or later it's going to
happen."

Sooner. She wanted it to
happen sooner. "But I won't be able to stay long," she said in a
soft wail. "Susy—"

With a hoarse laugh he
said, "I'll take what I can get. If you only—"

Headlights from a car
turning into the circular drive flashed across them, bathing them
in a ghostly white light that blinded Liz and drew a swift curse
from Jack.

The car pulled alongside,
and Pete, the yard foreman, rolled down the window. "Bad news,
Jack," he said glumly. "Do you want to go inside for
it?"

The transformation in Jack
was instantaneous. The hot-blooded lover vaporized and in his place
appeared a two-hundred-pound businessman. He turned to Liz and said
in a distant, formal voice, "If you don't mind waiting a few
minutes, I'll make out that check for you."

Uncertain what signal he
was sending, Liz agreed to come into the house with them. Jack left
her in the smaller of a pair of reception rooms on the first floor,
then took Pete down the paneled hall into the Great Room. Liz heard
the double doors close, and that was all. She took it as a good
sign that she couldn't hear Jack shouting, as she had the first
time she was in the house.

She tiptoed out to the
hall to listen more attentively for the sound of anger. It was
quiet — ominously so, she now thought. Her imagination was all over
the map of possibilities. More dirty tricks? Worse? Why was it that
every time she found herself in Jack's arms, something got in the
way? Were they violating some divine order? Was it ordained
somewhere that she could only mate with the middle of the middle
class?
Damn
it!

She took a few steps
farther down the eerily quiet, dimly lit hall. The longcase clock —
Christopher Eastman's clock — chose that moment to signal the
half-hour with a deep, resonant bong, sending her leaping out of
her skin. Feeling snoopy and guilty she went back to the reception
room to wait for Jack.

The sound of the chime was
still echoing in her ears when Liz was overwhelmed by the vivid
memory of crawling, swarming ants. Shuddering, she closed her eyes,
but still she saw them: horrid things, everywhere! Irrationally
convinced that some of them had gotten inside her dress, she shook
out the fabric of her hem, then began brushing her bare arms
violently, feeling creeping things she could not see.

By the time Jack returned,
Liz had turned on every lamp in the room and was standing in the
one place from which she could keep watch on all three windows and
the door. For ants? For the ghost of Christopher Eastman? She
didn't know, and she hardly cared. All she wanted was to get out of
there.

"Good lord — what's this?"
Jack said, taking hold of one of her arms. It was covered in
self-inflicted welts from her repeated efforts to brush away the
sensation of crawling ants.

She stared at her arm,
aghast at what she'd done. "I don't know," she mumbled. "Poison
ivy?"

"We don't have poison
ivy," he said flatly.

"I know," she said,
reversing herself. "But I felt ... itchy."

"An allergic reaction to
the food?"

"Oh my god — I forgot
about food poisoning."

"Food
allergy,
I said."

"You're
all right?" she asked with sudden concern. "You
don't look good."

"Nothing to do with the
food, I assure you," he said caustically, and then more gently,
"You'd better get some calamine lotion on that arm." He went to the
one open window, shut and locked it, then said with bitter resolve,
"I'm afraid I have to leave. The boat that Pete and Bobby launched
this afternoon sank."

"Sank!"

"Yeah. Sank," he said, his
eyes flashing. "They found a couple of hoses pulled off the head
and engine intakes — and the rest, as they like to say, is history.
Pete accepts all the blame, of course, but I trust him to have
checked the through-hulls when they launched the boat. He always
does."

Liz didn't understand all
the boat jargon, but the word
sank
seemed perfectly clear. "No one noticed it
happen?"

"The boat didn't go down
completely — just enough to take out the engines, the electronics,
the wiring and the furnishings," he said ironically. "Just enough
to slap us with an insurance claim and maybe an emotional-distress
suit. Just enough to make sure our premiums go sky
high."

"How did Pete and Bobby
manage to find out before you did?" Liz thought to ask.

"Netta took the call and
told my father, who decided not to say anything; apparently no one
wanted to spoil the picnic."

"And the
owner?"

"—is furious. Can you
blame him? Christ, one or two more stunts like this, and the
yard'll be a joke up and down the whole damned coast."

His sentiments matched
Liz's earlier feelings so closely that she decided to tell him
about the ant episode.

It came out in a
confusing, nervous jumble. When she was finished, she said, "I
wasn't sure whether it was you or me that someone was trying to
sabotage; but now it seems obvious that the prank was aimed at
you."

If there
was
a connection, Jack
certainly wasn't making it.

He was looking at her as
if she'd just stepped out of a space ship. "So you think whoever
sank the boat rushed back and — what? Filled our best serving bowl
with ants?"

Liz stiffened and said, "I
didn't put it that way. I said
someone
put sticky candy in the bowl
and left it
somewhere
to attract ants before he — or she — put the bowl on the
table. And anyway," she added, rallying,
"you're
the one who thinks your
father's being duped by the mob."

Jack's laugh was harsh and
ironic. "And if I'm right, they sure as hell aren't going to be
rifling through the Meissen in the middle of a picnic. Give them a
little credit, will you?
Ants?"

"Fine," she said, hurt by
Jack's condescending manner. She folded her arms defensively across
her chest. "It was just a theory. Maybe you're right. Maybe the
ants were intended to discredit me after all — in which case, I'd
love to see a list of your suspects. Maybe I'll be able to figure
out who's so determined to sink my career."

"Your
career!
For God's sake — it was a
picnic! A pleasant afternoon; an amusing diversion! I'm talking
about the fate of a hundred-year-old
shipyard!
Never mind its historic
significance. Never mind the Eastman reputation. I have sixty-three
employees, most of them with families to support, who're counting
on me to stay in business. Maybe we're not as big a deal as
AT&T — but
goddammit,
we're a damned sight more critical to society
than a — a party planner!"

His vehemence was like a
pan of ice-cold water over her. Shocked — nd practically sputtering
with rage — she began to say something; stopped; started; stopped;
and then, with a final, furious, wordless gasp, swung around a
hundred and eighty degrees and stormed out of the room.

The signal cannon at the
Ida Lewis Yacht Club boomed across the harbor and up the hill to
Liz's bedroom, rousing her from a sleep as profound as a state of
coma: eight
A.M.
She squinted at her little quartz clock. Damn. The cannon was
right.

She had to drag herself
out of bed despite having slept solidly. It was catching up with
her, she realized: all the unsolved mysteries — little, big, and in
between — were having a cumulative effect. Either that, or being in
love without sex was exhausting. Whatever the reason, Liz went
through her morning routine like a zombie, grateful that Susy was
even more tired from the picnic than she was, and still in
bed.

Why
him?
How could she fall for someone
who considered her frivolous? For that matter, how could he — the
owner of a
yacht
yard, for Pete's sake — consider her frivolous? If the
society column in the
Daily News
was anywhere near the mark, Jack Eastman hadn't
exactly made a career out of dating Nobel prize winners. What a
self-important, condescending ...
pig
the man was.

She brushed her teeth with
vicious abandon and spat out the toothpaste the way she would've
liked to do to the memory of his kisses. Then she took a cold, hard
look at herself in the mirror.

Thirty-six, mother of one,
no pedigree, no fortune, no university, no fertility and — unless
she had her taste buds removed and a pretty impressive makeover
done — no possible hope of being either pencil-thin or blond and
blue-eyed. She frowned, then smiled, then squinted at the mirror,
tipping her chin this way and that. Nope: a Bellevue Wasp, she was
not. Maybe if she sat behind the wheel of a Mercedes convertible?
Would that make her eyes less brown, add inches to her
height?