“What is it?”
“Power steering’s gone,” he muttered. The muscle in his forearms tightened as he wrestled the wheel around, steering from another kind of power.
A drive, blessedly straight, ended in a paved rectangle with a half dozen or so cars. Beyond stood a solid two-story farmhouse, built to accommodate an era when families and furniture were big. It wouldn’t be as posh as the accommodations Grady’d arranged in Charlottesville, but Leslie found it much more appealing at the moment.
Grady brought the car to a stop, flipped off the lights, wipers and engine and clasped the top of the wheel with both hands as he turned to her.
He looked tired, but his eyes glittered a little. Perhaps with the challenge of battling the elements.
“Ready for a bath, or you want to sit it out here?”
“We might end up floating it out if we stay here, so I’ll take my chances on a bath.”
“Okay.” He twisted to lean over the seat to reach their bags. The roiled-back sleeve of his shirt brushed along her arm, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “You want to try to protect yourself from the rain?”
She shook her head, her voice momentarily unreliable. Taking her bag from him so he could grab his own, she swallowed and said in a moderately normal tone, “There’s no way to avoid getting soaked in a gully-washer like this, so it’s best to save the dry clothes for when we get inside and can change.”
“Shoes, too?” He nodded to where she was unstrapping her sandals.
“Definitely shoes, too.”
She put hers inside the bag, slipped her bracelet watch off her arm and inside a pocket.
He grinned, and she grinned back, exhilaration replacing the tension of those final minutes on the road, and a warm glow of affection covering feelings less comfortable to consider.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
The doors sprung open, slamming closed behind them as they sprinted through the dousing rain. The water was chilled, but couldn’t defeat the accumulated heat of the past few weeks, so the air steamed around them. They zigzagged around parked cars, meeting where a curved path of paving stones led from the parking to the front steps.
“C’mon!”
Grady grabbed her hand and kept her sprinting through rain so thick it seemed like solid matter instead of liquid. Panting and laughing, they splashed barefoot up the wooden steps and skidded to a halt in the relative protection of the two-story porch’s deep overhang.
“More towels, Marty!” The screened door opened to a woman whose short brown-and-gray hair curled tightly all around her face. She shook her head at them, but smiled warmly. “Two more drowned rats on the doorstep. Towels’ll be here in a shake.”
Thanks and exclamations on the weather were interrupted by the arrival of a thin, middle-aged man with a fringe of straight black hair around a balding dome and an armful of fluffy green towels. The woman’s introductions were hurried.
“I’m Karen Tanner, and this is my husband, Marty. Welcome to Tanner’s Inn. I see you were smart enough to bring a change of clothes. Soon as you dry off enough so you don’t leave a river on the wood floors, you can take turns in the powder room down the hall. We’ll be serving dinner in an hour or so. We usually have menu choices, but we’ve got such a full house, it’s family style tonight.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Leslie said gratefully.
Grady flashed her a look, but said nothing. Surely he couldn’t mean for them to go on now, she thought as Karen Tanner, talking all the while, led her through two antique-filled parlors and a hallway to the powder room.
Before too long, she was sitting on a cushioned glider watching the power of the storm from the protection of the deeply recessed porch and contemplating the wonder of being dry, off the road and in possession of a glass of fine Virginia chardonnay wine. That’s how Grady found her.
He stood a moment, looking out through the porch’s screen at the rain lashing the ground in a straight torrent, and Leslie found herself studying him.
His skin showed bronze against the white of his shirt at the collar and rolled-back sleeves. His legs looked long and lean in trim jeans. Light from the room behind them streamed through the window, making his hair, still sleeked to his skull, gleam like something collectors would covet. Lamplight carved his profile as perfect angles and curves against the deepening dark of the storm blending into night.
“It has to let up some time,” he said, then looked at her as if gauging if she were prepared for that eventuality.
She wasn’t. Why was he so all-fired set on getting to Charlottesville?
“But you said the steering . . .”
She couldn’t see his face well in the shadow, but he was shaking his head. “Temporary. Must have gotten wet from going through all that standing water.”
“It’s not likely to dry out in this.”
“It’s not the rain coming down that messes it up, it’s the water coming up from underneath.”
She tried a different tack. “I’m hungry.”
She had the impression he smiled. “Me, too. We’ll see how it’s steering after dinner.”
“Mmm.” She made a noncommittal noise. “Want some wine?”
“Sure.” He accepted the glass Karen Tanner had left for him, and sat down beside Leslie.
They didn’t touch, not the slightest brush of fabric on fabric, but she could feel the warmth of his body next to her. Without any need for conversation, they sat in the growing dark, watching the storm, gently rocking the glider and sipping their wine.
And for no reason at all, Leslie was reminded of what a dangerous man Grady Roberts could be.
* * * *
Along with dessert, Karen Tanner brought the news that flash flooding had hit the district, with rain-glutted streams washing out two bridges and covering several stretches of road.
The family-style meal she’d promised was delicious, though not quite as family style as Leslie expected. Besides a large table in the middle of the room, there were three tables for two set around the corners. Marty Tanner had seated a young couple whose abstracted manner screamed honeymooners at one of those tables, a silver-haired couple who held hands across the table at another and escorted Grady and Leslie to the third.
She cast a quick glance at the jumble of people at the main table but, meeting Grady’s look of blended amusement and challenge, didn’t say anything.
Instead, she’d devoted herself to making their conversation lively, interesting, humorous . . . and as far from her reaction to the prospect of going to Charlottesville as humanly possible until Karen Tanner’s news.
“So we can’t go on,” Leslie said to Grady. No relief, no triumph, leaked through in her voice. “It would be foolhardy.”
He raised one eyebrow at her. “Equally foolhardy to go back, then.”
What an idiot! She’d been so focused on not wanting to go to Charlottesville, she hadn’t thought this out. Worse, she had the sudden impression geography wasn’t the only issue in this conversation of going on and going back.
She broke the look, mildly surprised to find chocolate cake blanketed with raspberry sauce sitting in front of her. She’d forgotten about dessert, and she’d forgotten about the woman who’d brought it. But Karen still stood next to the table, watching them with unabashed interest.
“Guess we’ll have to stay,” Grady said evenly. “If you can put us up for the night. Karen.”
“Well, we can, but . . . It’s a shame the small cottage by the stream’s already taken by that couple.” She gestured to the honeymooners, and Leslie shifted uneasily under the knowledge that this sharp-eyed woman put her and Grady in that category. “It’s lovely, if I do say so myself. And it’s very private. But with the weather, we’ve only got one room left, and it’s a single. It’s got a private bath, but just the one bed—a twin.”
“Oh.”
Leslie was aware of the woman looking from her to Grady, and wondered what she read in their faces—but not enough to meet the woman’s eyes or look at Grady herself.
“There’s a couch in the room,” the woman added. “Good sized, too. It was our son’s room before he went in the Air Force. We only use it for emergencies like this.”
“Thank you. We’ll take the room.”
Grady sounded as unflappable as he had on the phone with his office this morning. She hadn’t listened, and she’d tried not to hear, yet she couldn’t miss the calm tenor of his response to a situation that clearly had rattled the man who’d called.
It was a timely reminder of another facet of Grady. He’d shown her the lighthearted charmer from the first. Lately he’d been a relaxed friend, the person she suspected not many beyond the Paul-Bette-Michael-Tris group saw. And she’d caught glimpses of another layer beneath that, carrying vestiges of a lonely child.
In all of this, though, she mustn’t forget that Grady had made himself a very successful businessman, accustomed to complex negotiations that transferred whole businesses and were worth thousands—millions of dollars. That did not happen by accident; it derived from strength, intelligence and determination.
He’d be a valuable ally. Or a formidable opponent.
“Good. I’d really hate to think of anybody trying to get around out there tonight.” Karen moved off, leaving a silence unfilled by the drumming of the rain.
“Grady—”
“I said we’d take the room, Leslie. I didn’t say we’d share it. I can sleep down here somewhere. But it would be stupid to risk driving strange roads on a night like this. It would—”
“It would be stupid to risk driving unfamiliar roads on a night like this,” she agreed, surprising him, judging by the way his bead jerked up. “I was going to say I thought it was a good idea to take the room. As for your sleeping down here,” she continued briskly, with a thought to the antique furniture’s deficiencies in both padding and length, “it’s silly to waste a perfectly comfortable couch.”
His blue eyes studied her a long moment, stretching her ability to return the look with total blandness.
“Okay.” She released a breath at his acceptance, her lips curving as he continued, “If the couch is under six feet, you get it. If it’s over, we’ll toss for it.”
Chapter Eight
“It looks comfortable enough.” Leslie bounced the sofa cushions with her hand.
“Safe for you to say, it’s over six feet long.”
She grinned at his morose tone. This would work out fine. The room was long and narrow, with the single bed in one corner and the sofa at the opposite end, facing French doors that opened to a small deck and with its back to the bed. For being in the same room, they were as private and as far apart as possible.
On top of that, Grady had been casual almost to the point of offhandedness about the situation.
And best of all, they weren’t in Charlottesville.
“Have a seat,” he invited. “Unless you’re tired and want to go right to bed.”
She groaned. “If I went to bed after that huge meal, I think I’d sink through the mattress to the floor.”
They’d lingered over their coffee so long that they’d been the only ones left in the dining room. To make amends for keeping Karen and Marty so late, they’d insisted on helping with the dishes and ended up hearing all about the inn’s history. Two hours later the four of them had been sitting around the kitchen table, enjoying a nightcap poured by Marty and a “sliver” of cake insisted on by Karen.
For an instant after Karen used the word, Leslie met Grady’s eyes and allowed herself to recall that moment on the back steps of the beach house, the sensations of his strong hands holding hers, his teeth and lips, his touch.
Then Marty started an anecdote about the great-aunt who’d willed him the inn, and Leslie escaped the memory.
That had been the only lapse, and it had been hers, not his. So there could be no harm in talking for a little longer.
Besides, there were things she wanted to know.
“Unless you’re too tired,” she offered out of fairness. “You were the one doing all that driving.”
“Tired, yes. Sleepy. no.” He sat, slipping off his shoes, then stretching his long legs across the scarred coffee table. “So have a seat.” She complied. “It sounds like Marty’s aunt has a thing or two in common with your Grandma Beatrice.”
“They do sound like sisters beneath the skin, don’t they? Growing up, I thought every family was required to have at least one member like that. The grande dame requirement.” He said nothing, so she made it more direct. “Doesn’t your family have anyone like that?”
“Not really.”
Not direct enough, apparently. “What’s your family like?”
He shrugged. “I told you, we’re not real close.” She waited, and was rewarded when he finally added, “I don’t think they really wanted a kid. Maybe I was an experiment that convinced them they weren’t cut out to be parents. Maybe I was a mistake. Either way, they sure didn’t know what to do with me.”
“What do you mean?”
He frowned, quick, impatient. “Sometimes my mother would come into my room, at the house or some hotel, and look at me like a piece of modern sculpture she couldn’t quite fathom. The nanny’d make some fatuous remark about how nice that Mommy came to tuck me in, and then she’d get this hunted look. She’d come to the bed and fiddle with the covers, air kiss my pillow and get the hell out of there.”
Grady Roberts wouldn’t know what to do with sympathy. His parents had never gotten close enough to give it; he didn’t let the world close enough to see when it was needed. Curbing her instincts, she asked lightly, “So nannies cared for you."
“Mostly. I got pretty good at taking care of myself. Sometimes I’d watch old movies and pretend Greer Garson from
Mrs. Miniver
or Donna Reed from
It’s a Wonderful Life
was my mother.” He gave her a look she couldn’t decipher. “But never Katharine Hepburn.”
“And your father?”
“He never came in.”
The anger and pain she’d felt when he first talked about his parents surged back, but she held it in check. To help him, she first had to understand. “And when you got older?”
Another shrug. “I guess they would have been willing enough to have me around, although—” His grin grew sardonic. “Having a thirty-three-year-old son makes it difficult to maintain the fiction that they’re in their early forties. But by the time I was old enough to join in their pursuits, I had different tastes.” A more genuine smile reached his lips. “I still prefer Mrs. M.’s cookies to four-star restaurants.”