Stranger in the Moonlight (18 page)

“Yeah,” Joe said as he bit into a pound of meat that dripped juice—a.k.a. grease—down to his wrists. “Travis here said you were going to do some work. How can you do that if you’re fooling around with your boyfriend? Take Travis and he can do all the work.”

Travis gave Joe a look that was half thanks, half murder.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Kim said as she used her fork to move around what was Al’s idea of a salad. Lots of fried chicken, not much lettuce. “I’ll think about it,” she said and didn’t dare look at Travis. She had an idea he was smiling much too broadly.

As the morning
sunlight came through the windows, Travis was sitting in Kim’s living room and trying to concentrate on the newspaper, but he couldn’t. She’d left for work an hour ago, and since then he’d been waiting for Penny’s son to show up.

Yesterday after lunch at Al’s with Kim and Joe, Travis had gone to see his mother. As he entered Mrs. Wingate’s house, the hum of his mother’s sewing machine reached him, and the familiarity of the sound felt good. When he got upstairs, it was easy for him to fall into place with her and begin cutting out a pattern. Sewing was something they’d done together when he was a child. They never talked about it, but it reminded them of their time in Edilean, a time of peace for both of them. Those two weeks had changed both their lives.

Travis had been a bit concerned about what his mother knew about him and Joe, but she soon made him relax. They’d always been close and nearly always in agreement. At first he’d been afraid she’d again lecture him about Kim, but the anger she’d displayed on their first meeting was no longer there.

Instead they easily fell into talking about Joe. Travis told her everything—except that Joe knew Travis was Lucy’s son. But all the rest of it, from unpacking to being told sawponies were sawhorses, to having to attach steel shelves to a brick wall, was there.

When Lucy began laughing at Travis’s stories, he got her away from the machines—she worked too much—and down to the kitchen. As they’d done when he was growing up, Travis made tea while she made the sandwiches. When they were ready, Lucy led him into the conservatory. For a while he walked around, admiring the orchids that filled the room. When he sat down, Lucy asked him about Kim.

Travis hesitated.

“You can tell me,” she said softly. “Are you still in love with her?”

“Yes,” he said, then looked at his mother with eyes that showed the depth of his feeling. “More than ever. More than I thought possible.”

For a moment tears gathered in Lucy’s eyes. She was a mother who hoped her child would find love.

“She’s funny and perceptive,” Travis said as he picked up a sandwich wedge. When he was little his mother had cut off the crusts and sliced the bread diagonally into four pieces. As he grew up, she’d continued. “And very smart. And you should see the jewelry in her store. It’s all beautiful!”

“I have seen it,” Lucy said. “Whenever I heard that Kim was out of town, I visited her shop. I like the olive leaves.”

“So do I,” Travis said. He stood up and fiddled with a long orchid leaf for a moment before turning back. “I feel comfortable with her. I don’t feel like I have to impress her. Although I do work at that.”

“Joe said you drove down the back road and he couldn’t see how you’d done it.”

Travis shrugged. “Stunt work. It wasn’t difficult.”

“And something about a balloon?” Lucy asked.

“I couldn’t stand to hear the kid cry, so I climbed up a tree and got it down for him.”

“You always have had a soft heart.”

“No one in New York would say that,” Travis said.

“No, I guess not. You have both your father and me inside you. What are you going to do now?”

Travis sat back down. “Joe fixed it so I’m going to spend the weekend with Kim. I’ll be in a connecting room, and she might be with her boyfriend. But still . . . I’ll be near her.”

“He told me,” she said as she smiled at her son. She’d never seen him this way, and it did her heart good.

“Did he? What other of my secrets did that nosy old man blab to you?”

Lucy smiled. Since the two of them had met, all she’d heard from Joe was “Travis.” What Travis said, did, his worries, his deep love for Kim, Travis’s suggestions about the hardware store. Every word of it, Joe repeated to Lucy.

“You should have seen him with Kim,” Joe’d said when he’d called her after their lunch at Al’s. “The poor guy can’t take his eyes off her.”

“What about
her
?” Lucy’d asked. “What does Kim think of my . . . of Travis?” If Joe heard her slip, he didn’t seem to register it.

“She acts like she pays no attention to him, that he’s just another guy, but if he moves, she sees it. When I suggested that she take young Travis with her to Maryland, her face lit up like a New Year’s spotlight.”

Lucy looked at her son. “Joe likes you a lot.”

“You’d never know it from what he says,” Travis said, but he was smiling. “According to Joe Layton, any man who can’t use a handsaw properly isn’t worth much. I told him I was a lawyer and you know what he said?”

Lucy had heard the story from Joe but she wanted to hear it again from Travis. “I can’t imagine.”

“He said . . .”

Now, with the newspaper in front of him, Travis couldn’t help smiling. Last night had been the way he remembered with his mother, her kindness, her humor, her sweetness. He was glad he hadn’t had to endure another session where she bawled him out.

On the other hand,
that
woman might be able to handle Randall Maxwell in a courtroom.

That evening when Travis had returned home—as he’d begun to think of wherever Kim was—she’d been about to throw a couple of frozen dinners into the microwave. When Travis was going through school he’d spent more than one summer crewing on private yachts. One year, to his horror, he was assigned the position of “chef.” He didn’t know how to boil water.

He put the dinners back in the freezer and looked to see what else was in there as he told Kim the story. “So there I was, not knowing an egg from a watermelon, and I was supposed to spend six weeks cooking three meals a day for the rich old man and his young wife.”

Kim crunched on the carrot stick he’d cut for her. “So what did you do?”

“I put on my most helpless look”—he demonstrated—“and asked the wife to help out.”

“Did she?”

“Oh yes,” Travis said as he put chicken breasts in the microwave to thaw. He was glad his back was to Kim as he thought about that trip. He didn’t want her to see his face.

But she’d understood. “What else did she teach you?”

Travis started laughing. “A little bit here and there.” Moonlight, stars, the old man snoring below. He’d been nineteen years old and innocent. Not so innocent when they got back to the U.S.

He and Kim had a dinner that he’d never wanted to end. She told him more about her jewelry and what she hoped to do. “I have a big commission coming up and I need some new inspiration.”

“This trip to Maryland will be good for you.”

“That was my idea when I let Joce talk me into going.”

“You didn’t originally plan to go with this guy, did you?”

“Dave? No, I didn’t.”

“He invited himself?” Travis asked.

“More or less,” Kim said, “but I do think he has something important to say to me. Between him and Carla I’ve been given enough hints.”

A lot of things came into Travis’s mind that he wanted to say, but he thought he’d better keep his opinions to himself. Penny’s son, Russell, was on a date with Carla and the plan was for him to meet Travis in the morning and report on what he found out.

But it was now midmorning and Russell still hadn’t shown up. At that thought, Travis had to smile. The small town mind-set was getting to him. In New York he often didn’t get up until this time. But then he’d usually been out late the night before. Clients loved to be entertained and shown New York nightlife.

When the doorbell rang, Travis put down the paper and went to the door in a few long strides. He was curious to see this man Kim had described as “gorgeous,” and he wanted to meet the son of the woman who his father had described as his “most trusted employee.” She’d worked for Randall Maxwell since she was young, and when Travis had been coerced into working for him, Randall had released Penny to Travis to “take care of him.”

Travis opened the door to find himself staring into the angriest eyes he’d ever looked into. Considering all the things his father had had him do, that was a lot.

The two men were almost exactly the same height, appeared to be the same age, and they were both handsome. But Travis’s face showed a lifetime of struggle, a life of loneliness. Every time he’d faced death in his extreme sports was in his eyes, and the war between his parents showed on him.

Russell’s eyes were angry. He’d grown up in the shadow of the powerful Maxwell family, and he’d come to hate the name because whatever that family wanted came first. This week he hadn’t been surprised when his mother asked him to help Travis Maxwell. It was a name he’d known before his own. He hadn’t even been shocked to be told that Travis had never heard of Russell, didn’t know he existed. The anger he’d felt was on his face, in the way he stood, as though he’d just love for Travis to say something that would allow him to fight.

“You’re Penny’s son,” Travis said as they stood at the door. “I didn’t know she . . .” He trailed off at the look in the man’s angry eyes. “Please come in,” he said formally, then stepped back as Russell entered the house and went into Kim’s blue and white living room.

“A bit of a downsize for you, isn’t it?”

Behind him, Travis let out his breath. The Maxwell name! Being in Edilean and especially being around Joe, had nearly made him forget the preconceived ideas people had about him. All his life he’d heard, “He’s Randall Maxwell’s son so he is—” Fill in the blank.

It seemed that Penny’s son had already decided that Travis was a clone of his father.

Travis’s face went from the friendly one he’d adopted in the last week to the one he wore in New York. No one could get to him, so no one could hurt him.

Russell took the big chair and Travis saw it for what it was: establishing that he was in charge.

Travis sat on the couch. “What did you find out?” he asked, his voice cool.

“David Borman wants control of Kimberly Aldredge’s business.”

Travis grimaced. “I was afraid of that. Damn! I was hoping—” He looked back at Russell and thought, the hell with it! This was Penny’s son, and this was about Kim. It had nothing to do with the Maxwell name. “You want some coffee? Tea? A shot of tequila?”

Russell stared at Travis as though he were trying to figure him out—and whether or not to take him up on his offer. “Coffee would be fine.”

Travis started toward the kitchen but Russell didn’t follow. “I need to make it. You want to come in here and talk while I do?”

The ordinariness of the invitation seemed to take some of the anger out of Russell’s eyes as he got up and went to the kitchen. He sat down on a stool and watched Travis get a bag of beans out of the refrigerator and pour some into an electric grinder.

“I guess I was hoping,” Travis said loudly over the noise, “that I was going to have to fight him over Kim. A duel, I guess.” He lifted his hand off the top of the machine and the noise stopped. “It’s going to hurt Kim to find this out.”

Russell’s eyes were wide as he watched Travis put the grounds into a filter and drop it into a machine. He didn’t seem to be able to grasp the concept that a Maxwell could do something so mundane as make coffee. Where were the servants? The butler? “He’s the third one.”

“Third one what?”

“He’s the third man who was more concerned with her success than with her.”

“What does that mean?”

“According to Carla . . .” Russell paused as he ran his hand over the back of his neck.

“Was the date bad?” Travis asked.

“She’s an aggressive young woman.”

Travis snorted. “Seemed to be. Keep you out late?”

“Till three,” Russell said. “I barely escaped with . . .”

“Your honor intact?” Travis gave a half smile.

“Exactly,” Russell said.

“Have you had breakfast? I make a mean omelet.”

“No. That is . . .” Russell was still staring at Travis as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“It’s the best I can do for Penny’s son after all she’s put up with from
me
.”

“All right,” Russell said slowly.

Travis began getting things out of the fridge. “Tell me everything from the beginning.”

“Do you mean Carla’s complete sex history that she delighted in telling me in detail, or what I could dredge out of her about Miss Aldredge?”

Travis laughed. “No Carla, but lots of Kim.”

“It seems that small town men can’t handle a woman who earns more than they do.”

Travis would have liked to think that he could deal with that, but he’d always had the opposite problem. “So they dumped her?”

“Yes,” Russell said as he watched Travis pour him a cup of freshly brewed coffee and set it on the counter along with containers of milk and sugar. He wasn’t surprised that the coffee was excellent. “St. Helena?”