Ghost Moon (18 page)

CHAPTER 26

ARCHERS AND THEIR GUESTS WERE SPREAD out all along the veranda, some seated, some perched on the rail, some standing. All had one thing in common, however: They watched Olivia with interest as she came up the steps and onto the porch.

Muddy, sweaty, and angry, dressed in grubby denim cutoffs and a dirt-smeared yellow T-shirt that probably clung more than it should have, with a mosquito bite on her thigh and drying mud caked midway up her calves, Olivia was definitely not prepared to be the cynosure of all eyes.

There was no help for it, however.

‘‘Olivia! Just in time for supper!’’ Keith, perched on the rail nearby, greeted her first with a jovial tip of the half-filled glass he held. Leaning against the rail beside him, David eyed her thoughtfully and tipped his own glass toward her in greeting. Beyond them, Charlie and Ira were seated in chairs carried out from the house. They broke off their conversation to glance at Olivia. Charlie waved. Ira smiled.

Out on the lawn, four wiry, fair-haired children in shorts and T-shirts whooped gleefully as they burst out from behind the house, taking turns kicking a soccer ball across the grass. A glance back told Olivia that their ages ranged from about two to six. These had to be Phillip’s children, she thought. Funny to think of him as married with four little ones.

‘‘Pipe down, guys!’’ Phillip cupped a hand around his mouth to yell after his children, with no discernible effect on the volume level. ‘‘Can’t you quiet them down a little?’’ he asked a plump woman of approximately thirty with a light brown boy cut and a sweet smile. Olivia assumed the woman was Phillip’s wife, Connie, whom she had not yet met. With Phillip standing over her, Connie was sitting in the rocking chair next to Callie, who was at that moment getting to her feet, her eyes on Olivia.

‘‘Oh, let them play,’’ Connie replied comfortably, smiling at Olivia. Olivia smiled back. Phillip’s reply to this was lost as Olivia’s attention shifted to Callie, who was moving toward her with obvious purpose.

‘‘Chloe came back about fifteen minutes ago. I sent her to her room,’’ Callie whispered as she reached her. ‘‘I think Sara’s up there with her. Oh, dear, was Seth very mad?’’

Olivia answered this with a nod.

‘‘Can I get you a drink, Olivia?’’ Smiling, Carl came toward her from his place beside his brother. Olivia shook her head, smiling back. Carl was clearly interested in her as something other than a cousin. It was a pity, all things considered, but she was not interested back, and the sooner he realized that the more comfortable things would be for both of them. At the moment, especially, all she wanted was to go upstairs.

‘‘Why, you’re covered with mud! You ought to go in the back way.’’ Shouldering through the screen door bearing a tray piled high with crackers and grapes and chunks of yellow cheese, Belinda stopped to look Olivia over with disapproval.

‘‘She’s fine, Belinda,’’ Callie reproved, her voice low so that the others wouldn’t overhear.

‘‘I really need to go in and take a shower . . .’’ Olivia began, edging forward in hopes that Belinda would move away from the door.

‘‘Oh, look, Mama, there’s Seth! I told you he wouldn’t be long!’’ Mallory had been sitting on the swing beside an older, look-alike blond woman who Olivia guessed was her mother. She jumped up, moving to the rail and waving, presumably at Seth. Grasping the edge of the screen that Belinda still held ajar, Olivia refused to look around to make sure. She could only hope that the mark on his cheek had faded by this time. What the present company would make of that she didn’t even want to guess.

‘‘Why, he’s covered with mud, too!’’ Belinda said loudly, the placement of her body in the doorway preventing Olivia from edging past her. Her gaze, sharp with malice, swung back to Olivia. ‘‘Whatever have you two been doing together?’’

All eyes turned toward Olivia. Mallory’s and her mother’s went round as they weighed the evidence on Olivia’s legs. Carl, who had almost reached the bottleneck at the door, looked at her mud-covered calves and frowned.

‘‘Making mud pies,’’ Olivia said, smiling sweetly at the gathered company. Then, to Belinda, she said with just the barest hint of bite, ‘‘I really
do
need to take a shower. If you’ll just let me by . . .’’

There was nothing else Belinda could do but step aside. Let Seth explain, Olivia thought, and made her escape.

He must have come up with something reasonable, because later, when she was fresh out of the bath and headed toward her bedroom, Olivia heard him laughing as though he hadn’t a care in the world. The sound floated to her ears from the dining room, where the company had gathered for dinner.

Not for anything—not even chicken in sauce piquante, which, from the smell, was what they were having—was Olivia going back downstairs. When Martha came in search of her, she pleaded a headache. Kind Martha brought her up a plate. Sara put in an appearance around tenish, having had supper with Chloe in her room. After Sara’s bath, and the obligatory bedtime story, Olivia finally went to her room and crawled into bed. She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Of course, given the way her day had gone, she dreamed about the lake. She could hear the voices calling to her—
Run. Run away!
—as she stood on the shore, just as she had that afternoon. But in her dream she was able to identify the source of the voice: It belonged to her mother, a tiny, barely glimpsed figure desperately flailing in the center of the turbulent water. As Olivia watched in horror, her mother called out a warning one more time and then disappeared from view. Olivia knew, without knowing how she knew, that Selena had been pulled beneath the surface by some unseen force.

At that point Olivia woke up in a cold sweat. For several minutes she lay without moving, heart pounding, as she convinced herself that she was safe in bed. The dream had seemed so
real
—but then, it was based on reality, she told herself. She had been standing beside the lake that day, she had imagined voices, and she had been looking at a long-forgotten picture of her mother.

Was it any wonder that all those elements had combined into a truly terrifying nightmare? The wonder would be if they hadn’t.

Although the logic of that was irrefutable, the residual fear was stubborn. It lingered long after she knew it was ridiculous, and thus it was quite some time before Olivia fell back to sleep.

By morning, Olivia had recovered from the dream, and was pretty much over her anger at Seth as well. In fact, what she felt most strongly when thinking back over their quarrel was shame at her own behavior. She’d fought with him just like she had as a teenager. Hadn’t she grown up one bit?

She and Sara were leaving for home the next morning, Olivia reflected, as she and her child spent the afternoon in a last, largely fruitless search for peacock feathers. She needed to smooth things over with Seth before she left. But he was gone all day, frustrating her good intentions. Since Chloe was confined to her room, with no TV and no playmates allowed, it was clear that he hadn’t taken to heart what she’d told him about his daughter feeling unloved and needing his attention.

Why should she care whether or not they parted on an angry note? Olivia asked herself. There was certainly nothing new about that.

But she cared nonetheless.

It was almost eleven o’clock and Sara was already asleep next door when a soft knock sounded at one of the pair of French windows in Olivia’s room. At the sound, a little frisson of unease stirred inside her. She tensed, her hands stilling on the blouse she was folding, tempted not to answer the knock. She didn’t like knowing that anybody could get to her room just by walking along the gallery. It made her nervous.

But that was silly. Who would be knocking at her window but family? Moving to the window, pulling the curtain aside, Olivia was rewarded for her fortitude by seeing Seth. Any vestige of fear vanished, to be replaced by a small spurt of pleasure that he had cared enough to make up their quarrel before she left.

‘‘Come outside. I want to talk to you,’’ he said softly when she pushed open the window.

With only a single glance behind her for the halffilled suitcases that lay open on the bed, she did as he asked. She could always finish packing later.

Seth said nothing after she stepped through the long French window into the soft warmth of the night. He closed the window behind her without a word, then stood for a moment with his back to it looking at her with such a pensive air that she was immediately alarmed.

Maybe he had not come to apologize, but to bring her bad news.

‘‘What’s the matter?’’ Olivia asked, tensing. She had known Seth a long time, basically all her life in fact, and she could tell that he had something besides making up their quarrel on his mind.

His face relaxed into a wry smile. ‘‘You see me, and you immediately assume something’s the matter? What am I, the official bearer of bad tidings?’’

‘‘Something like that.’’

‘‘Come and sit down, Olivia. I want to talk to you.’’

She followed him to the pair of rockers and the swing at the far end of the gallery, and when he stopped in front of one chair and indicated with a gesture that she should sit, she did so. Instead of sitting in the other one, he leaned a hip against the rail.

By the soft glow seeping from behind the curtained windows, she could see that he had changed from his muddy suit to rumpled khakis and a white T-shirt. A healthy growth of five o’clock shadow darkened his cheeks and chin, and his short hair was mussed, as if someone (Mallory?) had been running her fingers through it. Olivia realized that she didn’t much like that idea. Then she realized that she didn’t like not liking it. Feeling jealous of Mallory was, to all intents and purposes, the same as feeling attracted to Seth.

She just wasn’t going to go there.

Anyway, she thought he looked tired.

Well, of course he was. It was late, and she was tired herself.

‘‘Been busy packing?’’ He took a sip of the gold-colored drink he held in one hand. The muted light from the window shone through the glass, throwing a golden rectangle onto the white-painted rail on which he leaned.

‘‘Yes.’’ Olivia felt herself begin to relax, beguiled by the beauty of the night. She breathed in the sweet scents of honeysuckle and magnolia, listened to the chorus of insects, and admired the magnificent vista just beyond the colonnade of a thousand twinkly white stars strewn over a navy-blue sky. Seth was in her line of vision, a comforting presence against the glittery backdrop. If she was honest, she would have to admit that having him there relaxed her, too. Her gaze moved over him despite her best efforts to keep her eyes focused anywhere else. It touched on his short fair hair, brightened to platinum by the moon; on the smooth plane of his forehead, his high cheekbones and straight nose, and the slight smile playing around the corners of his mouth; on the firm lines of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders and the solid length of his body, all outlined by the night. Colorless in this light, his eyes gleamed at her, and as she met their gaze she felt the now familiar flutter of attraction he roused in her stir anew.

And she realized to her dismay that she was helpless to do anything about it.

This time, when leaving LaAngelle Plantation, the thing she was going to miss most of all was Seth.

His eyes narrowed as he watched her. He knew her so well, Olivia was afraid that he might somehow be able to read her thoughts. She hurried into speech, reaching for something, anything, to distract him.

‘‘I’m sorry I slapped you,’’ she said abruptly, leaning back in the chair and transferring her gaze to the stars that winked and blinked behind him. ‘‘I apologize.’’

‘‘That’s a first, coming from you,’’ he said with a laugh, moving to sink down in the other rocking chair. The rocking chair creaked under his weight. His hands—one cradling the glass, both bronzed and strong-looking—rested on the chair arms, and his legs—long and muscular, ending in sockless feet thrust into boat shoes—stretched out in front of him. Olivia registered those details, and the length and breadth of his body sprawled in the delicate, lacey chair, with a single glance, and determinedly returned her attention to the stars.

‘‘You’re not going to apologize, are you?’’ she asked, nettled. Focusing on his shortcomings—such as his really world-class ability to make her angry—might keep her from focusing on how aware of him she was.

‘‘What makes you think that?’’ The question was lazy, teasing almost.

She glanced sideways at him, smiling a little. ‘‘I know you, Seth Archer.’’

‘‘I know you, too, Olivia Chenier—’’ The tenor of his voice changed, hardening just enough to be noticeable, as he added, ‘‘Morrison.’’

His opinion of her married name was apparent from his tone. Olivia sighed.

‘‘All right, let’s get this over with. You were right and I was wrong, okay?’’

‘‘About what?’’

‘‘You know about what. About Newall. I was a fool to run off and marry him like I did. I know it. You don’t have to keep rubbing my nose in it.’’

Seth was silent. Still doggedly watching the heavens, Olivia could feel the weight of his gaze on her.

‘‘If you thought I was rubbing your nose in it, then I do apologize. I didn’t mean to. We all make mistakes, God knows.’’ After another long moment of silence in which she could feel his gaze on her face, he asked quietly, ‘‘Was it bad, Livvy? Being married to him?’’

Absurdly, the gentleness in his tone made Olivia want to cry.

‘‘Pretty bad,’’ she said in as light a tone as she could muster. ‘‘Try to picture never-ending groupies, no money for anything that wasn’t something he wanted or needed, and constant travel from one cheap motel to another while he followed the rodeo circuit. By the time he left me for another starry-eyed teenager, I had certainly learned my lesson about eloping with strange men, believe me.’’

‘‘Want to talk about it?’’ Seth’s tone was still very gentle.

Careful not to look at him, Olivia shook her head. ‘‘Nope. It’s water under the bridge.’’

‘‘It’s not where you’ve been, it’s where you’re going that counts?’’ he suggested with a smile in his voice. That was one of Big John’s favorite axioms, known to everyone who knew him well, and Seth’s use of it coaxed a smile from Olivia.