“Enough,” he declared finally. “Molly probably has dinner ready by now.”
“You wish,” Abby taunted. “One more hand, winner take all.”
“You have a smart mouth, young lady,” he retorted. “And I’m not throwing one more penny into the pot.”
She grinned unrepentantly. “I thought you wanted me to grow up smart.”
“Brain smart, not sassy.”
“Leave the child alone,” Aunt Delia told him. “She won that money fair and square.”
“Maybe she did,” he conceded, gathering up the cards and feigning a count. “You, I’m not so sure about. Maybe I ought to check to see how many cards you’ve got tucked up those sleeves of yours.”
“That’s a fine way to talk to your elders,” Aunt Delia chided. “Abby, pay no attention to your uncle. He’s setting a very bad example.”
Abby giggled. “You two are so funny. I wish I could come here all the time.”
“You can come here anytime you want to, darling child,” Aunt Delia declared, hugging her. “You just call and Kevin will come for you. Isn’t that right, Kevin?”
“Anytime,” he agreed.
An hour and a half later, after a dinner of Abby’s favorite chicken and dumplings, he dropped her off at home, declining Marianne’s invitation to come in for coffee.
“I’ve still got a couple of places to stop tonight,” he told her, avoiding any specific mention of Bobby Ray.
“I really appreciate you rescuing Abby this afternoon.”
“Not a problem. If it happens again, she knows she’s to call me. She’s probably safe enough at Bobby Ray’s by herself, but I don’t like it.”
“He called here a little while ago to apologize for forgetting.”
“Too little, too late,” Kevin declared, then dropped a kiss on Marianne’s forehead. “You’re doing a great job with her. She’s a terrific kid.”
Marianne smiled. “Yeah, she is, isn’t she? I wish her dad could see it. I wish…”
She shook her head. “Never mind what I wish,” she said.
She turned away, but not before Kevin detected the sheen of tears in her eyes. He regarded her worriedly. “You don’t still have a thing for him, do you, Marianne?”
“Of course not,” she said with an obviously forced smile. “What kind of fool do you take me for?”
“Never a fool, sweetheart. But sometimes Cupid takes lousy aim.”
She didn’t have a snappy comeback for that, so Kevin decided to leave well enough alone. He waved and took off once more for Bobby Ray’s.
Again, though, his cousin wasn’t home. He’d probably guessed that Kevin would be gunning for him and decided to lay low until his cousin’s temper cooled. He couldn’t stay out of sight that long, Kevin thought grimly.
An image of Bobby Ray hitting on Gracie to make a deal behind his back fueled his black mood. He debated paying a visit to Gracie, but concluded she didn’t deserve to have to put up with his lousy company. Besides, she might actually cheer him up and then Bobby Ray wouldn’t get the full effect of his anger. Nope, better to let it simmer overnight and take his cousin on first thing in the morning, when he was still mad enough to strangle Bobby Ray with is bare hands.
“Max, how many times do I have to tell you? I am not coming back,” Gracie declared wearily. It was just past dawn in France and nearly midnight in Virginia. Not that she’d been asleep when he called. She was once again in the middle of a kitchen that looked like a war zone. “Fill my job. Eliminate it. Do whatever you want with it.”
“You are needed here.”
“There are other hotel executives who would kill to work for Worldwide and the legendary Max Devereaux.”
“I need you,” he repeated emphatically. “I am at a loss without you.”
“Only because you have no idea how to deal with the tradesmen in town or the staff. I’m sorry that the asparagus farmer refuses to deliver any longer, but there’s not a thing I can do about it from here.”
“Actually, there is one thing,” he suggested meekly. “You could call him.”
The meek tone was a nice touch, but she wasn’t
moved. “Pierre refuses to install a phone. He uses the public one at the end of his lane when he needs to make a call.”
“What if there were an emergency?” Max demanded, clearly bewildered.
“I’m sure he’s taken that possibility into account. I never questioned him about it. He’s a very private man. You would know that, if you’d ever bothered to get to know him.”
“That’s true. I confess it. We made the perfect team, you and I. You know exactly how to handle everyone to keep the hotel running smoothly. I know how to keep it operating in the black. Things are falling apart without you here.”
There was a distinct note of panic in his voice that she’d never heard before. “Are you groveling, Max?”
The question silenced him for a full minute, before he sighed heavily. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“Good,” she said happily. “It suits you.”
“Gracie, if begging will get you back here, I’ll beg.”
“It won’t, but thanks for trying.”
“Why not? What are you doing in Virginia that is so all-fired important?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“Okay. For once in my life, I’m doing exactly what I want to do.”
“What the devil does that mean?”
“I told you you wouldn’t understand. Bye, Max. Good luck with Pierre.”
He was still blustering—begging, she thought cheerfully—when she hung up. It made the fact that she had just ruined her fourth straight souffle almost bearable.
9
“W
ell, well, well, look what the wind blew in,” Jessie said as she was pouring Gracie a second cup of coffee at breakfast the next morning.
Gracie glanced up from her plate just in time to see Kevin coming through the door, the scowl on his face changing to a brilliant smile at Jessie’s greeting.
“Hey, doll, how’re you doing?” he asked, planting an enthusiastic kiss on her cheek. He ignored Gracie. “Any sign of Bobby Ray in here this morning?”
“Not today,” Jessie said. “Are you staying? Shall I bring you a cup of coffee? Maybe some scrambled eggs and grits?”
“Coffee sounds good, but I’ve already had breakfast.” He glanced at Gracie for the first time. “I’ll just slide in here and torment Ms. MacDougal for a while.”
“Thanks so much,” Gracie said when the waitress had gone. “Am I supposed to be honored that you’ve taken notice of little old me?”
He grinned. “Uh-oh, what has your drawers in a knot this morning, darlin’? You jealous because I kissed Jessie?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I could rectify the situation,” he offered, beckoning to her. “Lean across the table and meet me halfway. I’ve got plenty left over for you, if you’re interested.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, ignoring the little flare of excitement his taunt aroused. One of these days the flirting was going to end and he was going to follow through. She prayed she had the kind of resistance it would take to keep from falling for him.
“What brings you in here at this hour anyway?” she asked in an attempt to get the conversation onto safer turf. “Shouldn’t you be crawling into your hammock about now?”
“Not quite yet. I have a little business to take care of, as soon as I catch up with Bobby Ray. I thought he might be in here again.”
“Sneaking around behind your back, trying to finalize that deal with me?” she guessed.
“Exactly.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. I told you I had no intention of dealing with him.”
“And I know you meant it. I just want to be absolutely sure he got the message. I also have another message to deliver to him regarding his daughter.”
His expression was so fierce that Gracie was intrigued. “His daughter? What do you have to do with his relationship with his child?”
He gave her a terse and appalling summary of his cousin’s neglect. “He doesn’t figure he has to answer to Marianne or to Abby. I want to make sure he knows he has to answer to me,” he concluded.
“Won’t a confrontation with you in a public place just make things worse?” Gracie asked. “Apparently he already thinks you humiliate him every chance you get.”
“Don’t worry, darlin’. I have no intention of making a scene in here. I’ll drag him outside before I beat him to a pulp.”
“That’ll be helpful,” she said dryly. “Maybe if you just tried to look at things from his perspective once in a while, you could get through to him.”
He stared at her, his expression incredulous. “You’re taking his side?”
“I’m not taking anybody’s side, especially that of a man who virtually abandoned his daughter,” she said. “But you’re not going to solve anything your way. You’ll just make matters worse.” She shrugged. “Of course, it’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s not.”
They sat glaring at each other for a full minute before Kevin sighed. “Okay, let’s hear it. How would you handle this?”
Gracie realized belatedly that she’d stumbled into a quagmire. The bad blood between these two men obviously went back a long way. Who was she to think she could waltz in and offer an easy solution? Obviously Max’s high praise for her tact and diplomacy the night before had gone to her head.
“Maybe I should stay out of this,” she said.
“Oh, no, darlin’. Don’t go all shy on me now. You have something to say, say it.”
“Okay, here goes.” She leaned forward and gave him a penetrating look. “Have you ever really sat down with him and listened to what he’s feeling? It sounds as if his father put you both in an untenable position. It doesn’t help that you throw that in his face every chance you get. How many times have you quoted the terms of that blasted will to him?”
Kevin squirmed, looking vaguely uncomfortable. It was answer enough.
“Too many, right?”
“I suppose,” he muttered.
“Maybe you should try sympathizing with his position once in a while. Try to figure out a way to make it work so that he has a little more control of his own destiny. Surely there are ways to bend the rules.”
“There are, and I’ve been tempted to bend them a few times, but each time he manages to prove once again why his daddy wanted the will drawn up that way. If Bobby Ray knew how to exercise any control over his own destiny, he wouldn’t be married to a woman who was cheating on him before the ink was dry on the wedding license.”
“Could be that love blinded him to her faults,” she suggested. “Have you ever been so crazy in love that you wouldn’t listen to anything anybody said?”
“No,” Kevin conceded, then regarded her intently. “Have you?”
“Well, no, but that’s beside the point. We’re not talking about me.”
“Let’s change the subject and talk about you,” he challenged. “You’ve mentioned this Max guy a couple of times. Tell me about him.”
“He was my boss. End of story.”
“And that’s all?”
“Absolutely.”
He appeared unconvinced. “Talked to him since you left France?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“How many times?”
“I don’t know. A few, I guess. But it was always about business,” she added defensively.
“Such as?”
“Look, why are you interested in this?”
“Because everything about you fascinates me. Come on, tell me. Why does Max call?”
“Last night he called because the asparagus farmer refused to deliver.”
Kevin stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I am not kidding. If you knew how much asparagus we served, you wouldn’t think it was such an insignificant little problem.”
“So it was a really important crisis?” Kevin said, his expression skeptical.
“Yes.”
“Did you solve it?”
Now it was Gracie’s turn to squirm. “Not exactly.”
“You didn’t jump in and help him out of this terrible business jam?”
“No, but—”
“Tsk, tsk, Gracie. I’m surprised at you. Where’s your compassion? Your sense of duty?” He grinned. “I’ll bet you told him where he could stick those asparagus, didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t amusing to Max,” she said, smiling despite herself.
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t.” His expression sobered. “Gracie, does Max have a car?”
“Of course.”
“Then he could have driven to the farmer’s and picked up the asparagus, correct?”
The image of Max’s impeccable Mercedes filled with vegetables was so outrageous that Gracie chuckled. “You don’t know Max.”
“No, but my point is, he didn’t need to call you to
handle this crisis. It was an excuse, Gracie. How many others has he dreamed up since you took off?”
She refused to answer. She’d been so pleased with the evidence of her indispensability that she’d never questioned whether Max might have ulterior motives for those calls.
“That many, huh? He must really have it bad.”
“Max is not interested in me,” she protested, “except as the manger of his hotel in Cannes.” Now who was bending the truth? she thought guiltily.
“We could make a bet on that, but it would be easy money,” Kevin said. “I’ll let it pass.”
“How noble of you.”
He glanced over at her half-eaten, congealing breakfast. “Are you finished?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
He gave her a lazy once-over that left her head spinning.
“It’s a beautiful day,” he responded. “I feel like taking my boat out, maybe doing a little fishing.”
The prospect of being alone all day with Kevin rattled her. He was far more disconcerting than Max would ever be. She was way too susceptible to this man she’d just met. Maybe all his attention would be on fishing, maybe it wouldn’t. She concluded it wouldn’t be smart to take any chances.
“I don’t think so.”
“We can talk about the house,” he said, dangling the possibility before her.
The tactic was totally unfair. Downright sneaky, in fact. Naturally, she bit at once, throwing caution to the wind. “You have life preservers on board?”
“Of course.”
“An extra fishing pole?”
“Absolutely.”
“Let’s go.”
He kept his boat at the Colonial Beach Yacht Center. He picked up bait on the way. Gracie decided she didn’t want to know exactly what kind.
Within minutes he was guiding the surprisingly modest twenty-foot boat away from the dock, through the calm waters of Monroe Bay and into the Potomac. With the wind mussing his hair and his hands steady on the wheel, there was a quiet confidence about him that Gracie found intriguing. He was usually all bluster and wit, but at the helm of the boat he seemed more at peace with himself and with nature.