Windstar (2 page)

“Behave!” she said, shoving him away. “You are incorrigible.”

“I can’t be something I can’t spell,” he countered, crunching the candy noisily.

Angie shook her head at him. She knew he’d graduated with honors from Glasgow University, so his self-deprecating comments were comical.

“I like Chinese food,” he said. “Mexican, Italian, some Indian, and barbeque ribs.” He twisted around in the seat to face her. “How ‘bout sharing a poo-poo plate?”

She pursed her lips, not about to let him get that one past her. “I don’t share my poo-poo with anyone, mister. I want my own.”

He grinned. “You got it!” Snaking out a hand, he gripped the driver’s shoulder. “You know that place we went a few weeks ago?” At the driver’s nod, Rory told him to head over there. “Will you go in for us?”

“I think I’d better this time,” the driver said.

Angie looked at Rory as he sat back in the seat. “What happened last time?”

Rory shrugged. “I practically got raped,” he said. “Walked funny for a week.”

The driver laughed. “I’ve never seen anybody run as fast as he did and dive into my backseat!”

“Damned women nearly tore me clothes off!” Rory complained.

He kept up a constant barrage of silliness, asking questions about her that she felt uncomfortable answering while the driver went in and ordered their supper.

“How old
are
you?” he asked at one point when she reminded him she was old enough to be his mother.

“Twenty years older than you,” she answered.

He gawked at her, eyes wide. “God, that
is
old! Should we stop and get you a walker on the way home? Do you need an oxygen tank or something? How ‘bout a new pair of support hose?”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Did you buy some fiber ‘cause I ran out when me own Granny was here last?” he queried. “Oh, oh, oh … and did you remember to get some Depends? We can’t have you pissing all over the place and …”

“Will you shut up?” she asked and dug her elbow into his ribs.

He shot out an arm to capture her shoulders, bringing her beneath his arm to plant his chiseled chin on the top of her head. “Don’t worry, Granny. I’ll take good care of you in your declining years.” He placed a kiss on her hair.

All the way home, all the way up in the elevator, he kept cracking her up with his antics. In the lobby of his building, he acutely embarrassed her as his driver and a bellman took possession of their purchases and brought them up in the elevator. He had a tight grip on Angela’s hand, swinging it like a child would.

“Me Granny’s gonna cook me supper and we’re gonna eat it on the floor!” he told the bellman who was apparently used to his famous resident’s quirky nature.

“Is that so?” the man asked. “And just what is your Granny gonna cook you, young sir?”

“Anything I want!” Rory stated, bumping his hip against Angela.

“Will you behave?” she whispered out the side of her mouth.

“Your Granny’s gonna take a switch to you if you don’t,” the bellman said with a twitch of his lips.

The sexy actor put his head on Angela’s shoulder. “I’ll be a good boy, Granny!”

“Stop it!” she laughed, pushing him away.

Once inside the apartment, he let go of her hand but ushered her with a gentle push on her back into the kitchen.

“I’m a growing boy and I’m starving,” he announced.

“I thought you only wanted a glass of tea,” she complained as the bellman and driver placed the purchases on the counters.

“I’m hungry!” her new boss said with a pout of his world-famous lips. He stomped his foot. “I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry!”

“Better feed him, miss,” the driver suggested dryly. “He can be a real corker when he’s like this.”

“Well, he could get down on the floor and kick his heels but I won’t ….”

And the award-winning matinee idol whose sexy body and soulful eyes haunted the dreams of women throughout the world did just that, stretching out on his back and kicking his heels, bawling like a baby, fists to his eyes.

“I’m hungry! I’m hungry! I’m
hungry
!” he repeated. “I ain’t never had no fried potatoes and salmon croquettes!”

“Will you stop?” she gasped, laughing so hard tears had come into her eyes. “I’ll cook the darn food, okay?”

He shot up from the floor with a ridiculous grin plastered on his chiseled features and wrapped his arms around her and nudged his chin into the hollow at the side of her neck. “You’re such a good Granny. You’re so good to little Rory John.”

“I’m gonna spank little Rory John’s fanny if he doesn’t stop pestering me,” she told him.

His hands went to her shoulders. He pulled her against him and with his lips to her ear whispered in a sensuous voice, “Can I hold you to that?”

She wriggled out of his light grip and swatted at him. “Out! Out of my kitchen right now or you’ll end up with takeout tonight!”

He held his hands up in surrender. “I’m going. I’m going!”

As she prepared their supper she could hear him in the living area. He was running dialogue with the bellman. It must have been something the two did often, for they seemed very comfortable in the roles they were playing. Only once did Rory venture back into the kitchen to check on her and she ran him out of the kitchen, with a snap of a dish towel.

By the time she brought the crisply fried croquettes, chunky fried potatoes smothered in diced onion and green pepper, sliced tomato and cucumber salad and piping hot slabs of Texas toast slathered with garlic butter, Rory was stretched out before the fire on a plaid blanket, propped up on a mound of pillows.

“Where’s me sweetened tea, wench?” he demanded.

“Hold your horses, Attila,” she quipped. “Here, take this.” She handed him the tray then went back in the kitchen for the tea.

“It’s Mr. Attila to you, you saucy girl!” he called out.

He was sitting tailor fashion on the blanket when she came back, a plate of food already in his lap, another he’d prepared for her sitting beside him.

“I can’t eat all that!” she protested as she dropped to her knees. She eyed the mound of potatoes and the three croquettes.

“I can,” he stated and plucked two of the croquettes from her plate and dropped them onto his. He was about to scoop up some of the potatoes but she slapped at his hand.

“Touch my taters and die, bagpipe boy!”

Rory Keith laughed like a school boy. He watched her pick up her plate. “Want me to say Grace?” he asked.

She looked at him with surprise. “Would you?”

“Sure,” he said. He closed his eyes, bowed his head and in a soft, gentle voice said, “Grace.” He wedged one eye open, looked at her and then grinned.

“You’re incorrigible!” she pronounced.

“Don’t know what that means and can’t spell it,” he said, then proceeded to say the Catholic blessing over the meal, surprising her even more. When he made the sign of the cross, she echoed the action.

“You a Papist, too, wench?” he asked, digging into the potatoes.

“I am.”

“Good. I need somebody to remind me about Holy Days.”

She glanced down at the blanket. “Is this your tartan pattern?”

He made a rude sound. “Hell, no! I wouldn’t eat on me own colors, wench.” His mouth crooked into a smirk. “This is the heathen Ferguson plaid, Protestants as they be.”

“I see,” she said, knowing his best friend was the late-night talk show host who was part of that heathen clan.

She took a bite of her croquette. “Do you have a kilt?”

“And a ghillie shirt, a jabot, Balmoral hat, flashes, sporran and all the other stuff,” he said and then explained what each was.

“I’d like to see you in full highland dress,” she said, thinking that would be quite the sight.

He picked up the croquette and chomped off a large piece, his eyes lighting up with pleasure. “There are onions in there!”

“Only way to cook them,” she replied.

He munched away, eyes rolling with pleasure, and then swallowed loudly. She knew he was about to say something irreverent and adorable when his eyes widened and his expressive lips arched. “I don’t wear highland dresses, by the way. The long skirts get in the way of me running and the bodice is too tight on me chest.” He grinned nastily. “That’s why I wear me kiltie although ...”

She cocked a brow. “Although what?”

“I’m at me best when I’m wearing nothing at all,” he said with a wink.

It was that way the rest of the evening as they ate in front of the fire on the bear skin rug. He kept her in stitches and when she told him she needed to go home, he seemed reluctant to allow her to leave.

“You can stay here tonight and we’ll go get your stuff in the morning,” he suggested.

“I don’t have anything to sleep in,” she said and realized as soon as she’d said it that she’d played right into his game.

“I sleep in the buff, so you can too,” he said and when she would have chastised him, he held up a hand. “Or you can borrow one of my shirts.” He wagged his brows. “There are women the world over who’d love to get in my shirt.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she said and gave him an arch look. “Your pants, too.”

“Damned straight,” he said with a smirk.

They took the remains of their supper into the kitchen and disposed of the Styrofoam plates.

“You know what you didn’t do?” she asked.

“Have wild monkey sex?”

“Show me where I’ll be staying,” she said.

He took her hand, pulled her toward the back of the loft. “Bad Rory,” he labeled himself, slapping the palm of his other hand against his forehead. “Bad, bad Rory.”

The room to which he took her had a lovely queen-size bed, a large armoire, a dresser, two night tables and a wall-hung plasma TV next to a very comfortable sitting area with a sofa, loveseat, two chairs, a desk with a credenza and occasional tables. The room had its own bath and a little balcony that faced north.

“If you don’t like the colors, you can paint it whatever you like. Don’t like the furniture, you can change it. Don’t like the room period, tough shit. Unless, of course, you want to bunk with me.”

“This will do nicely, thank you,” she said. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

He walked her to the door, scuffing his bare feet on the polished parquet flooring. “I wish you’d stay,” he said and she finally understood that he didn’t want to be alone.

“I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” she said. “What time do you get up?”

“Whenever I wake up,” he replied, then held up a finger. “Wait a minute.”

She watched him jog over to a credenza in the dining area of the loft. He came back with a key.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed and for the first time he didn’t smile.

“And we’ll have a very healthy breakfast.”

He nodded and reached behind her to open the door for her. As she went out, he stood in the doorway and watched her until the elevator door opened and she was inside. There was such loneliness on his face, she was almost inclined to stay, when the doors slid shut.

* * * *

Rory closed the door and leaned his back against it, his head down, hands behind him on the doorknob. He hated being alone and avoided it every chance he got. Not for the first time, he thought of getting a pet but with his erratic schedule, he hadn’t felt it would be fair to the animal. But when the night closed in and the walls seem to shrink it around him, he longed for someone to talk to. It was the nights that were the longest for him and that was the time he’d spent years drinking himself into a stupor to blot out the loneliness.

The youngest of nine children, he had never spent a day or his life without tons of relatives surrounding him until he had graduated from the university and took a job he had hated with a passion. They’d stuck him in an office without a window and he had developed an acute case of claustrophobia. Had he not been dating a girl who insisted he try out for a play in which she’d been given the lead, he would not have discovered his love of performing, and the world would never have known he existed.

Sighing, he pushed away from the door and went into the living area, turning the CD player on as loud as his ears could stand it. There were scripts his agent had sent over but he wasn’t in the mood for reading. He stared at the TV for a moment then decided he preferred the sound of rock and roll blaring at him. Flopping down on the sofa, he stretched out with an arm over his eyes, bringing one knee up so he could tap out a rhythm to the beat.

“I like her,” he said aloud, thinking of the overweight woman with the short salt-and- pepper hair who the agency had sent to him. She had a sweet smile, a wicked grin and she gave as good as she got.

“I don’t want a beauty queen or someone who’ll get notions,” he’d instructed the woman at the agency. “I want a middle-aged lady who will be hard working and honest and sensible. She has to know how to make fried okra.”

Angela Evans had been that and more. She had a sense of humor and he desperately needed that. His personal assistant, Bobby, had been born with a stick up his ass and rarely smiled, much less joked.

“She can’t be encumbered ‘cause she’ll be traveling with me,” he’d demanded. “She has to be really organized because she’ll be taking care of four different houses on two continents.”

Angie could handle that, he decided, and not break a sweat.

He wished she’d stayed, for the evening was beginning to close in on him despite the loud noise of U-2 in the background. Letting his arm fall behind his head, he stared up at the loft’s ceiling, tracing the pipes that had been turned into a form of artwork by his decorator. With a hiss of irritation, he got up and headed for the pack of cigarettes he’d tried desperately to stay away from all day.

“Mind over matter,” he heard Angie—and that was how he thought of her—saying and his hand trembled over the pack. He closed his hand, flexed it, running his fingers up and down the palm, and then snarled before turning around and heading for the bag of lemon drops.

For almost an hour he sat there with his legs crossed on the cocktail table, his ass nearly falling off the edge of the sofa, slumped with the candy bags in his lap until he had consumed enough lemon drops to give himself a royal belly ache. Z-2 became the Korrs and he mellowed out to the Celtic music, closing his eyes to concentrate on the words. His breathing slowed and he drifted off, his overly active mind taking him into a dream world he hadn’t planned on entering. ...