By The Sea, Book One: Tess (24 page)

A dizzying thought occurred to her. If she
tried it on? If she liked it? If she charged it? She lifted the
hanger carefully off the rack. It took three seconds, the exact
same length of time it took for her brain to begin functioning
normally again.
Not for you, Cinderella. Put it back.

She did, with a sigh, and was about to leave
when the salesgirl—so slim, so chic, so pitying—said, "There are a
few things on sale in that armoire, if you'd like to look at
them."

More to oblige the salesgirl than any
uncontrollable urge of her own, Quinta went through the rack of
ensembles, almost not looking at the items, just checking
shamelessly through the price tags: $400, $360, $500, $400,
$200—wait, two hundred! Was it possible? Sure it was: the bottom
half of the ensemble was missing. The part that remained was a
lovely white top with a neckline of bugle beads fanning into a
flower-motif over the bodice. Not very many beads, but some. Enough
to gain entry to an upper-crust ball. As for the fact that she
would be naked from the waist down—well, she could sew a silky
polyester floor-length skirt in a couple of hours.

She tried on the top, liked it, put it on
her Visa card and flew out of the shop: she had material to buy,
and a pattern.

****

Quinta sat nervously inside the Cozy Cab as
it approached Ocean Court. Would she have to get the door herself?
No. That was what valets were for. Did she have her invitation with
her? Yes. In her purse. Was her lipstick on straight? She thought
so, but there was no time to look. So far so good, but ahead of
her, lined up like indoor palms on the yellow Siena marble floor of
the entrance hall, stood the receiving line: half a dozen people,
only two of whom she recognized.

She took her place in the slow-moving queue
of guests and introduced herself to each member of the receiving
line: a short fat man from Dexter Paint Company, and a tall thin
one from North Sea Weathergear. A friendly young woman from the
something-Industrial Corporation, and a grouchy old man from the
Sleptell Hotel Chain. It was a Dow-Jones receiving line of
America's Cup Race sponsors, no doubt about it.

Except for the handsome couple at the
end.

"Hello... Alan," Quinta said, shaking his
hand.

"You were able to come."

"Yes."

Alan Seton turned to the incredibly
beautiful redhead, nearly as tall as he was, who stood next to him.
"Mavis Moran, this is Quinta Powers, a writer for
Cup
Quotes."

Mavis smiled. "Quinta Powers? Aren't you the
one who wrote that pretty little tribute to Alan?" She shook
Quinta's hand lightly.

"I think I might have," replied Quinta, as
if she really couldn't keep track of the thousands of pretty little
tributes she'd written that summer.

Mavis smiled a second time, a knowing,
perfect, green-eyed smile. "It was
so
sweet."

With that, Quinta was bumped by the next
arriving guest into a French-style ballroom floored in parquet and
paneled in a subdued gray that was edged in gilt and silver. Unlike
the great Gilded Age monsters that were built after it, Ocean Court
was not quite palatial, but by the electrified light of the gilded
bronze sconces, it all looked pretty spectacular.

Especially to Quinta Powers. She was aware
that she was a fraud, a neighborhood urchin who'd scrambled over a
high brick wall to see how the other half partied, but that didn't
diminish the pleasure she got from watching all the glitter, all
the gold. In a way she was grateful to them for putting on such a
show. To her the guests were actors and actresses hired by some
mysterious Newport public relations manager to keep up Newport's
image. If she squinted, which she did, she could see a hundred
years in the past.

She meandered through a quick tour of the
disco tent on the grounds, as well as the few rooms in Ocean Court
that were actually open to guests: the somber wainscoted library,
the exquisite music room, the east-facing breakfast room, the
his-and-hers reception rooms. All in all, she preferred the
simplicity and logic of twentieth-century living, not to mention
her Mac computer. It was fun to imagine a life of extravagance, but
living it seemed like an awful lot of work. Besides, look at what a
fascination with the good life had done for her poor father. No: it
was better not to pine.

Nonetheless, steeped in extravagance and
Strauss waltzes as she was tonight, Quinta discovered that she was
pining like crazy. When Alan Seton took Mavis Moran in his arms and
whirled her around the dance floor, Quinta felt decidedly crummy.
When someone cut in for Mavis and Alan retired to the sidelines,
Quinta still felt bad: Alan was staring at the auburn-haired woman
far too intently. Then he and Mavis danced together again, and
Quinta felt her spirits sink still more.

After that, a young man who wrote for
Yachting Magazine
recognized fellow-journalist Quinta and
asked her to dance. That made her feel even worse, because she
didn't know how to dance very well. It never occurred to her, as
she disentangled her feet from her partner's, that maybe it was the
young man who was making a botch of it.

After the waltz was over, Quinta excused
herself to go to the powder room. She took up her place in a line
of gowned and jeweled beauties and thought,
At last, the great
equalizer—the line to the john.
It made her feel better.
Looking back over the evening so far, Quinta decided that her
discomfort had begun when she stopped being a nicely dressed member
of the audience and tried to join the troupe on stage. She never
should've stepped out on that parquet floor. This was not the
Regency period, and she was not a character in Jane Austen.
Absolutely, positively, she had danced her last dance. There was
only one thing to do: find the host, thank him for having invited
her, and get the heck out. Enough was enough.

After Quinta emerged from the powder room,
she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and steamed full
speed ahead for Alan Seton, who was standing off to one side of the
dance floor, talking with someone commodore-ish. He saw her
coming.

"I was looking for you," Alan said with a
smile she hadn't seen for three years. "Are you free for the next
dance?"

Free? To make a fool of herself? To set her
heart on its ear for nothing? To tear out another strap of a
brand-new pair of shoes?

"Free as a butterfly," she answered
instantly.

As it happened, the gods conspired to
prevent Quinta from having anything so rational as a second
thought. The orchestra struck up a waltz, and she found herself
being led gently but very firmly toward her personal Armageddon.
She knew without looking that every eye was naturally focused on
the star of the show, Alan Seton. And tomorrow over brunch they'd
all rehash the ball and speculate about the bimbo in the polyester
skirt.

But that was tomorrow. Right now she was
dancing! Dancing well! Never mind Alan's knock-down nearness; never
mind the society photographer who stuck a large camera in their
faces and flashed. Suddenly she was dancing, getting neither
underfoot nor overfoot, gliding in three-quarter time to heavenly
strains with the handsomest man in the ballroom. Suddenly it was
all coming together for her: the rainbow swirls of long gowns, the
flowers, the music, the lighting, the laughter. Suddenly she
understood; and—polyester or no polyester—she belonged.

The waltz was nearly over and they hadn't
exchanged a word. Quinta wondered whether Alan was always this
way—so concentrated, so intense. Maybe that was how America's Cup
skippers were. But no: she'd seen him murmuring pleasantly with
Mavis Moran as he danced with her, and with the young woman in the
receiving line from the something-Industrial Corporation. So it
must be Quinta's fault: he was assuming she couldn't walk and chew
gum at the same time.

Well,
she thought happily,
he's
right.
She wanted the moment to stay perfect, and who knew
where chit-chat might lead them.

When the dance was over he gave her a light
and courtly bow, a replica of the one he'd bestowed on her three
years earlier. Was he making fun of the article she'd written about
him? She muttered, in some confusion, "What's new with you, Alan?
Has the pizza man struck again?"

He looked surprised. "Yesterday, as a matter
of fact. If you don't mind my saying so, you sound like an obvious
suspect." He was smiling as he said it, but his blue eyes looked
puzzled.

"I'm innocent, honest," she said quickly. "I
must have practical jokers on the brain; we've had one hard on our
trail lately." She added, "I didn't mean to pry."

The orchestra struck up another dance, a
tango this time. The ballroom floor began immediately to empty.
Alan said, "This isn't my cup of tea. Do you mind if we sit this
one out?"

She was about to ask,
Together?
but
stopped herself in time.

He led her through French doors which opened
out onto a modest terrace, not so small that it would be considered
intimate, not so large that it invited curious onlookers. The night
was deeply starry; a breeze lifted the folds of her long skirt and
ruffled the jeweled sleeves of her top, sending pinpoints of
starlight shimmering from her neckline. The setting was impossibly
romantic. Quinta took it all in, the mathematician in her
calculating the odds of something like this ever happening to her
again.

Alan Seton, like the rest of the
Pegasus
sailing crew, wore cream-colored flannels and a blue
blazer, the more easily to stand out from the black-tie guests. The
night was warm. He took off his jacket and threw it on the stone
balustrade, then loosened his tie.

"I suppose I should be grateful that I don't
have to wear a monkey suit," he said with a sigh. "You look
extremely fetching, by the way. I found myself staring at you
before I knew who you were."

"And after you found out?" she asked, not at
all coyly.

"I did a double-take."

"Because?"

"Because you're a kid, or supposed to be,
and you're not anymore, that's all." He laughed softly, more to
himself than to her. "I don't think you understand how deeply
ingrained a certain picture of you is in my mind. In my mind you'll
always be wearing ratty jeans and have your hair in ... in bangs, I
think," he said, struggling to translate his vision of her into
words. "You symbolized something to me that night of the accident,
something very special—a kind of life-must-go-on-attitude that
carried me through some hard decisions. I think you still have
whatever it was I saw in you, except that the wrapping is fancier
now."

He reached up and with the lightest possible
touch lifted a strand of her hair and let it fall over her
forehead, the way she let it do years ago. "There. You wore it
something like that, he said softly. "Not so pulled back."

"I was a child," she whispered, faint with
pleasure.

"And now you're not. I know." He swept her
face with a searching look, as if he were making sure of it; and
then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her on her lips, in a
gentle, almost melancholy acknowledgment of her womanliness.

To be kissed on a starry balcony at a ball
is not the same as being kissed on the steps of your front porch.
She held her breath, afraid to move, afraid to think. If God were
in His heaven, Alan Seton would never let go.

Instead, he drew from her and said murmured,
"Why did I do that?" He was as much amazed as she was. "What a dumb
thing to do."

"It wasn't
that
bad," she whispered,
suddenly crestfallen.

"Ah, Quinta ... this isn't the time;
certainly not the place." He looked around quickly. "I have no
right to take your life out of your hands and pass it on to the
media. Forgive me."

"I passed a piece of
your
life on to
the media," she reminded him promptly. "And I'm not sorry."

"My life's fair game," he said with a
crooked smile. "But yours—yours is precious to me."

"If it's so precious, why didn't you ever
call or write?" she blurted out.

"I did write."

"To my father."

He laughed a short, bemused, frustrated
laugh. "What was my relationship to
you
then
?
Friendly Dutch uncle?"

"Friend.
Period," she shot back.

He repeated the word after her: "'Friend.' I
don't think I have any of those."

"You mean you don't have
time
for any
of those."

He grinned. "What a little scold you
are."

She colored, then replied, "It comes from
living with my father." It was her greatest fear: that she'd live
out her years as an unmarried nag.

"I think you're the best thing that could
happen to your father. He'd be crazy to ease you out," Alan added,
lifting his hand and tracing her lips with a feather-light touch of
his forefinger.

"Who says he's—?"

"
Darling
," came a voice behind
Quinta. "People are beginning to grumble. I hate to tear you away,
but the dog-and-pony show really must go on."

Quinta turned guiltily away from Alan and to
see Mavis Moran, an iceberg on fire, smiling at them. There was no
question in Quinta's mind that her father's gossipy speculations
about the two were right on the money. So: she
was
in the
wrong place at the wrong time. Feeling very much like Cinderella at
11:59 P.M., she mumbled a flustered good night and left them on the
terrace.

Wonderful, witty, humorous writing

--The Romance Reader

KEEPSAKE ... a postcard-perfect town in
Connecticut. When stonemason Quinn Leary returns after seventeen
years, he has one desire: to prove his father's innocence of a
terrible crime committed when Quinn and Olivia Bennett, town
princess, were high-school rivals. Class doesn't matter now but
family loyalties do, and they're fierce enough to threaten the
newfound passion between two equals.