Linda Lael Miller Bundle (8 page)

Another woman came to look at the horse. “Wouldn’t that make a marvelous planter, Harold?” she was saying. “We could strip off the paint and then varnish it….”

Shay put down an urge to slap the woman away and glanced back over one shoulder at Ivy, who was inspecting a sterling-silver butter dish, one of hundreds of items set out on portable display tables.

The carousel horse, like the playhouse, had been a gift from Riley, before his divorce from Rosamond, and Shay had cherished it. The piece was valuable, and, after shipping Shay off to a summer camp, Rosamond had sold it on a whim.

The anger came back to Shay—or maybe it had never left. In any case, it was all she could do not to fling one arm over the neck of that battered, beloved old horse and cling to it, fending off all prospective buyers with her purse.

“That’s nice,” Ivy said suddenly from beside Shay, her eyes moving over the hand-carved and painted relic. “Are you going to bid on it?”

The woman and Harold were still standing nearby, pondering their plans to make a planter of Shay’s horse. “I might,” she said through tight lips, shrugging to give her words an air of indifference and nonchalance.

By the time the bidding finally began, Shay was in a state of anxiety, though she managed to appear calm. When Clydesdale—Garrett and Shay had considered a multitude of names for the horse before coming up with that one—came on the docket, she waited until the auctioneer had gotten a number of bids before entering one of her own.

Harold and the missus drove the price well beyond what Riley had paid for the piece originally, and it had been expensive then, but Shay didn’t care. When the competition fell away and hers was the highest bid, she had to choke back a shout of triumph.

“What are you going to do with that, Shay?” Ivy whispered, sounding honestly puzzled.

It was a reasonable question. While Hank would consider the horse an interesting addition to their hodge-podge decorating scheme, he would not see it as a spinner of magic. “I’ll explain later,” Shay whispered back.

Ivy shrugged and jumped into the bidding for the silver butter dish. Later, after Shay had written a check and arranged for the horse to be delivered, she posed her original question.

Settled into the passenger seat of Ivy’s car, Shay shrugged self-consciously. “He was mine, once. One of my mother’s husbands gave him to me when I was a little girl. I’d just had my tonsils out, and Riley wanted to spoil me.”

“Oh,” said Ivy, in a fondly sentimental tone. “That’s sweet.”

They stopped for a late lunch and Shay was ravenous, but she was also anxious to get home. The horse would be delivered around six o’clock that evening, and she wanted to have sandpaper and fresh paints ready.

In fact, she did. She had newspapers spread out on her living room floor, too, and the deliverymen made jokes about that as they set the beloved old toy on the paper and unwrapped the blankets that had protected it.

Shay smiled wanly at their attempt at humor and had to restrain herself from shooing them out so that she could begin the restoration project. Once they’d been given their tip, they left.

Gently, Shay applied a special paint-stripping compound to the horse, removing as much of the scratched and faded finish as she could. Then she sanded. And sanded. And sanded.

It was therapy, she said to herself. She would restore Clydesdale to his former glory and when she opened her catering service, he would stand in the office, where customers could admire him. Maybe he would even become her personal insignia, his image emblazoned on her letterhead….

Letterhead. Shay smiled and shook her head. Before there could be letterhead, there had to be a business, didn’t there?

As she knelt beside the carousel horse, sanding away what remained of the silver paint on one hoof, Shay felt real trepidation. It wouldn’t be easy to hand in her resignation; while she could go no further in her job at Reese Motors, it was a secure position and it paid decently. The work might be trying sometimes, but it was never dull, and Marvin and Jeannie had been so kind to her.

On the other hand, Shay had money now, and a chance to follow her dreams. How many people got an opportunity like this? she asked herself. How many?

Shay sanded more vigorously, so intent on her task and her quandary that, when the doorbell rang, she was startled. Rubbing her hands down the front of an old cotton work shirt that Eliott had left behind, she got to her feet and hurried to answer the persistent ringing.

Mitch Prescott was standing on the worn doormat, looking both exasperated and contrite. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, his hands wedged into his hip pockets.

Shay’s heart slid over one beat and then steadied. She was painfully conscious of her rumpled hair and solvent-scented clothes. “Yes?” she said with remarkable calm.

“Dammit, Shay,” he grumbled. “Let me in.”

Shay stepped back and Mitch opened the screen door and came inside the now-cluttered living room. His dark eyes touched on the carousel horse, now stripped nearly to bare wood, but he made no comment.

Remembering his coolness on the telephone, Shay was determined to keep a hold on her composure, such as it was. She wasn’t about to let Mitch know how his disinterest had hurt her. “May I help you?” she asked stiffly.

He looked patently annoyed. “I came here to apologize,” he snapped. “Though I’m not exactly sure what it was that I did wrong.”

Coolness be damned. Shay simmered, and her voice came out in a furious hiss. “You made love to me, Mitch Prescott. You laughed with me and you held me and you listened to my deepest secrets! Then, when you’d found out all you wanted to know about my mother, when you’d paid me for my trouble—”

Mitch’s strong, beard-stubbled jawline tensed, and his coffee-colored eyes snapped. “That’s not fair, Shay,” he broke in. “The deal we made has nothing to do with what’s going on between us.”

“Doesn’t it? Strange, but I noticed a definite decrease in your interest level once I’d told you about my mother and shared your bed a couple of times!”

“You think that’s why I slept with you? To get the inside skinny on your mother?” He paused, made an angry sound low in his throat, and then ran one hand through his hair in frustration. “Good God, Shay, don’t you see how neurotic that is?”

“Neurotic? You’re calling me
neurotic?
”

His expression, in fact his whole demeanor, softened. “No. No, sweetheart. I’m not. You’re probably the sanest person I know. But when it comes to intimate relationships, you’ve got some problems.” Mitch sighed and spread his hands. “Little wonder, considering your mother’s exploits and that bastard you married.”

Shay wavered, not sure whether to be angry or comforted. There was something inside her that needed to believe Mitch, no matter what he said, and down that path lay risks that she couldn’t take. She’d believed Eliott, after all, and she’d believed Rosamond’s promises that each marriage would be the one that would last. “Don’t you dare slander my mother,” she whispered.

“Rosamond hurt you, Shay. You’re angry. Why can’t you admit that?”

“She’s a poor, sick woman!” Shay cried. “How could I be angry at her? How?”

“You couldn’t—not at the Rosamond of today, anyway. But that other Rosamond, the young, vital one who didn’t have time for her own daughter—”

Shay whirled away, furious and afraid. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you pushing me, pestering me? Why?”

He caught her upper arms in his hands and gently turned her to face him. “Shay, get mad. Admit that the woman hurt you, disappointed you. You’re not going to be able to let go of that part of your life unless you face what you really feel.”

Shay’s chin quivered, but her eyes flashed as she looked up into Mitch’s face. “How do you know what I feel?” she choked out. “How could anybody know what it’s like to mean less than the latest tennis pro in your mother’s life? Less than a racehorse, for God’s sake?”

“Tell me what it’s like, Shay. I’ll listen.”

Shay trembled. “Making mental notes for your book all the while, I’m sure! Get out of here, Mitch, leave me alone. I’ve told you all I can.”

He gave her a slight shake. “Will you forget that damned book? I’m not talking about Rosamond, I’m talking about you, about us!”

“What about us, Mitch?” The question was a challenge, a mockery, an attempt to drive this man away before he could become important enough to Shay to hurt her. He already had become just that, of course, but there was such a thing as cutting one’s losses and making a run for it. God knew, she thought frantically, Rosamond had taught her that if nothing else.

Mitch’s hands fell slowly from Shay’s shoulders and, once again, he looked toward the carousel horse. She sensed that he knew all about Clydesdale.

After a long time, Mitch sighed and started toward the door. In the opening, he paused, his eyes searching Shay’s face for a moment and then shifting away. “You know, I really thought we’d be able to communicate, you and I. I really thought we had a chance.”

Shay’s throat tightened and tears burned in her eyes. She turned away from Mitch and took up her sandpaper.

“You can’t bring back your childhood, Shay,” he said, and then the door closed quietly behind him.

Shay wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her work shirt and sanded harder.

S
hay stood back from the carousel horse, her hands on her hips, her head tilted to one side. She had been working on the project every night for a week and now it was done: Clydesdale was restored to his former pink, silver and pale blue glory. He looked fabulous.

She sighed, wiping her hands on her shirt. Now what was she going to do to keep herself from going mad? Hank wouldn’t be home for another ten days and Shay couldn’t stand the thought of reading another book on the management of a small business. She’d reached her saturation point when it came to studying. Besides, she had learned the rudiments of free enterprise by working for Marvin Reese; it was time to take real action.

Shay glanced at the clock on the wall above the
TV
and grimaced. It was nearly two in the morning, and the third commercial was scheduled for nine-fifteen. If she didn’t get some sleep, she would never get through it.

Though Shay kept herself as busy as she possibly could, teetering always on the brink of utter exhaustion, she dreaded lying down in bed and closing her eyes. When she did, she always saw Mitch on the inner screen of her mind, heard him saying that she couldn’t bring back her childhood.

She turned her gaze to the beautiful wooden horse and wondered why anyone would want to bring back a childhood like hers. There had been so many disappointments, so many tears; she’d lived in luxurious neglect, having about as much access to Rosamond as any other adoring fan.

Shay bit her lower lip and shook her head in an effort to curtail that train of thought. No, Mitch Prescott had been wrong: she had no desire to relive those little-girl days. Clydesdale was merely a pleasant reminder that there had been happy, whimsical times, as well as painful ones.

With one hand, Shay tried to rub away the crick in her neck and started off toward the bathroom, looking forward to a hot, soothing shower. But she paused and looked back and it occurred to her that Clydesdale might not be just a memento—he might be a sort of emotional Trojan horse.

“May I say that you look absolutely dreadful?” Richard Barrett asked as Shay riffled through the mail on her office desk and picked out a postcard from Jeannie and Marvin. There was a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the front of the card, and Shay felt a pang at the thought of telling the Reeses about her decision to resign and start her own business.

“You have bags under your eyes, for God’s sake!” Richard persisted.

Shay smiled ruefully and reread the almost illegible script on the back of the postcard. The Reeses would be home in another week and a half; she would break the news to them once they’d had time to get over their jet lag and settle in. “That gives me an idea,” she teased, enjoying Richard’s annoyance over the smudges that betrayed her lack of sleep. “For a commercial, I mean. You could show me, close up, and I could say, ‘Come down to Reese Motors and bag yourself a good deal!’ Get it, Richard?
Bag
yourself a good deal?”

“You’re not only exhausted, you’re insane. Shay, what’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing a half ton of sugar wouldn’t cure. This is Sugar Day, isn’t it, Richard?”

Richard had the good grace to look just a little shamefaced. “Yes. Shay, it’s safe, really. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything dangerous.”

“By all means, let’s confine ourselves to the merely ridiculous.”

Mr. Barrett sighed dramatically and flung up his hands. “You knew what doing these commercials entailed, Shay, and you agreed to it all!”

“At the time, I needed the money.”

“Are you trying to back out of the deal?” Richard’s voice was a growl.

Shay shook her head. “No. When I make a promise, I keep it. Even when it means making a fool of myself.” Her association with Mitch Prescott and his stupid book, she added, to herself, was a case in point.

“Well, let’s get this over with before it rains or something. I’ve got a dump-truck load of sugar down there waiting.” Richard looked truly beleaguered. “I’ll be just as glad when that last commercial is in the can as you will, you know!” he barked.

“Nobody could possibly be that glad, Richard,” Shay replied tartly. “Now get out of my office, will you please? I need some time to prepare for my big scene.”

Richard muttered a single word as he left. It might have been “witch,” but Shay wasn’t betting on it.

The moment she was alone, she punched the button on her intercom. “Ivy? Would you get Todd on the phone, please?”

Instead of giving her answer over the wire, Ivy dashed into the office to demand in person, “Why? Shay, what are you planning to do?”

Shay sank into her desk chair with a sigh. Because she didn’t have the strength to spar with Ivy, she answered readily. “I’ve decided that it’s time to step out on my own, Ivy. I’m going to open my catering business and I’ll need a place to work from.”

Ivy’s expression revealed two distinct and very different emotions: admiration and disappointment. “Wow,” she said.

“Make the call, Ivy,” Shay replied briskly, shuffling papers around on her desk in a pretense of being too busy to talk.

Five minutes later Todd was on the line. He listened to Shay’s comments on the sort of building she needed and, bless him, asked no personal questions whatsoever. He had two good prospects, in fact: a Victorian house on Hill Street and a small restaurant overlooking the ocean. Both were available for lease with options to buy, and both had been abandoned for a considerable length of time.

Shay smiled into the telephone receiver. “You’re telling me that they’re fixer-uppers, aren’t you, Todd?”

Todd laughed. “Yes, but the prices are right. Do you want to look at them?”

“Oh, yes, and as soon as possible.”

“How about tonight, after you get off work?”

Despite her weariness, Shay felt a thrill of excitement. After all, she was doing something she had only dreamed about before: she was starting her own business. “That will be great. Why don’t we make an evening of it? I’ll order a pizza and throw together a salad and you and Ivy can have dinner with me.”

“Sounds terrific,” Todd agreed warmly. “See you at five.”

“Five-thirty would be better. I’ve got a commercial to do this morning, and that always makes me fall behind on everything else.”

“Five-thirty, then,” Todd confirmed.

To save Ivy the trouble of an inquisition, Shay went out to her desk and relayed the plan. Ivy, who loved any sort of get-together no matter how casual or how highbrow, was delighted.

Chuckling, Shay started toward the stairs, ready for the third commercial. On the top step, she paused and turned to look back at her friend. “Don’t you dare call your brother, either!”

Ivy beamed, sitting up very straight behind her computer terminal. “Too late!” she sang back.

Shay’s hopeful mood faded instantly. She glared at her friend and stomped down the metal stairs to meet her singular and ignoble fate.

The dump truck was parked in the rear lot, as Richard had said, and the camera people were checking angles. Surreptitiously, Shay looked around as she walked toward the RV allotted for her use. If Mitch was there, she didn’t see him.

This time her makeup was simple; merely a heavier version of what she normally wore. She shooed Richard’s chattering assistant out of the RV and got ready, leaving the coveralls she would wear for last.

Outside—thank heaven, there was still no sign of Mitch—she read off the list of special car deals Marvin had authorized before his departure for Europe and then braced herself as the clapboard snapped and the cameras focused on her and on the dump truck parked nearby.

Smiling brightly, she announced, “Come on down to Reese Motors, folks! We guarantee you a sweet deal!”

On cue, the back of the dump truck ground upward and an avalanche of white sugar cascaded down onto Shay, burying her completely. She fought her way to the surface, sputtering and coughing, silently vowing that she would kill Richard Barrett if he wasn’t satisfied with the first take.

“It’s a wrap!” Richard shouted joyously and a laughing cheer went up from the salesmen, who had, as usual, gathered to watch.

Shay’s hair and eyelashes were full of sugar. It filled her shoes, like sand, and even made its way under her clothes to chafe against her skin. She vowed she’d never put the stuff in her coffee again as she hurried back toward the RV, desperate to shower and change her clothes.

She began ripping them off the moment she’d closed the door behind her, flinging them in every direction. When the RV’s engine suddenly whirred to life and the vehicle lurched into motion, she was stark naked.

Her first thought was that the salesmen were playing some kind of prank. Half amused and half furious, she wrenched a blanket from the bed above the RV’s cab and wrapped it around herself.

“Stop!” she yelled.

The RV stopped, but only for a second. It was soon swinging into mid-morning traffic. Just when Shay would have screamed, a familiar masculine voice called from the front, “Don’t worry, it’s all arranged! You have the day off!”

Too furious to think about the fact that she was crusted with white sugar and wrapped in a blanket, Shay flung aside the little curtain that separated the cab of the RV from the living quarters and raged, “Mitch Prescott, you stop this thing right now! I’m getting out!”

He looked back at her, his mouth serious, his eyes laughing. “In this traffic? Woman, are you mad? You’d make the six o’clock news, and if you think the commercials were embarrassing…”

“You’ll be the one who makes the news, bucko!” Shay screamed, outraged. “This is not only kidnapping, it’s grand theft auto!”

“I’ll have you know that I rented this rig,” he answered calmly.

“Well, you didn’t rent me! Turn this thing around, now!”

“I’d need a football field to do that, sweets,” came the happily resigned reply. “We’re in this for twenty-four hours, plus mileage, I’m afraid.”

“You idiot! You—you
caveman
—” Shay paused, breathless, and looked around for something to throw.

“I like the idea of dragging you off to a cave, I must admit,” Mitch reflected good-naturedly. “It’s the whacking you over the head with a club and hauling you off by the hair that I can’t quite deal with.”

“You’d never prove that by me!”

Mitch laughed and someone honked as he switched lanes to fly up a freeway ramp. Shay gave a choked little cry and slumped down on the floor in a bundle of sugared synthetic wool. There, she considered her options.

Jumping out of a vehicle traveling at fifty-five miles per hour was definitely out. So was putting her clothes back on without showering first, and she couldn’t face the thought of taking a shower with this maniac at the wheel.

A sweet, throbbing warmth moved beneath Shay’s skin as she reviewed her situation. There were worse things than being alone with Mitch Prescott, whatever their differences. “Was Ivy in on this?”

“I’m pleading the fifth on that one, sugar plum.”

Just the mention of sugar made Shay itch all over. She squirmed in her blanket and wailed, “When I get my hands on her—”

There was, for the first time since that crazy ride had begun, a serious note in Mitch’s voice. “We have to talk, Shay.”

“You didn’t have to kidnap me for that!”

“Didn’t I? The last time I tried, you were something less than receptive.”

Shay yawned. It was crazy, but all her sleepless nights seemed to be catching up to her, demanding their due. Now, of all times! She curled up in her blanket and closed her eyes. The swaying, jostling motion of the RV lulled her into a languorous state of half slumber. “Why…are you…doing this?” she asked again.

She could have sworn he said it was because he loved her….

Nah. She’d only dreamed that.

Mitch paced the length of the secluded beach, his hands pushed into the hip pockets of his jeans. What had he done? Was he losing his reason? For all his exploits, he’d never stooped to anything like this. Never.

He looked back at the RV he’d taken such pains to rent and sighed a raspy sigh that grated in his throat. Shay was still asleep, he supposed. When she woke up, she was going to fly into his face like a mother eagle defending her nest. He bent and grasped a piece of driftwood in one hand, and flung it into the surf.

Maybe it was that week of twenty-hour workdays. Maybe that had shorted out his brain or something.

The door of the RV creaked open and Mitch braced himself. Shay was going to give him hell, and the knowledge that he deserved whatever she might say didn’t make the scenario any easier to prepare for.

She was still wearing the blanket, and little grains of sugar glimmered like bits of crystal in her hair, in her eyebrows, on her skin. Barefoot, she made her way toward him through the clean brown sand.

“I’m sorry, Shay,” he said gruffly when she finally stood facing him, her wide hazel eyes unreadable. “I don’t believe I did this—”

She raised the fingers of one hand to his lips, silencing him. Hidden birds chirped in the towering pine trees that edged the beach; gulls squawked in the distance; the tide made whispery music against the shore. It was a poetic interlude where only the earth and the waters spoke.

A primitive, grinding need possessed Mitch; he wanted Shay, craved her. But he didn’t dare touch her, or even speak. How was he going to explain this?

Her fingers moved from his lips to caress his jawline and then trace the length of his neck. He shuddered with the aching need of her.

“They forgot to fill the water tank,” she announced.

Mitch had been expecting a glorious, violent rage, expecting anything but this inane remark. He gaped at her, and his breath sawed at his lungs as it moved in and out. “What?”

“There isn’t any water for the shower,” Shay answered, holding the blanket in place with one hand and stroking Mitch’s neck with the other. “In the RV, I mean.”

She was a constant surprise to Mitch; just when he expected her to be furious, she was quiet. Or was this just the calm before the storm? “A shower?” he echoed stupidly.

Shay’s lush lips curved into a smile. “If you’d just had a half ton of sugar dumped on you, you’d want a shower, too.”