The Trouble with Magic (Loveswept) (11 page)

His expression was vapid. “Like ... with a knife?”

“That’s right.” A smile tugged at her lips when he pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and looked as if he were about to create gourmet toast. “If both your parents had housekeepers, should I assume that they were divorced?”

“Terminally divorced. They hated each other,” he said, squinting into the toaster to watch the bread turn golden brown. He was conscious of the ease with which his statement had come, yet he rarely spoke of his family.

“That must have been hard for you,” she said.

“That was the way it was,” he said casually. “My family’s legacy is a little different than yours. Dunsmores are doomed to divorce, you might say.”

“Were you ever married?”

“Sure. And divorced. Luckily, I was quick to get the message.”

“What message?”

“Not to marry again.” The toast popped up, and he glanced at her for approval. The concern in her eyes surprised him. “Relax. It isn’t unheard of for a Dunsmore to think he’s in love again, and to remarry over and over again. As a matter of fact, each of my father’s divorces has resulted in a trip to the Bahamas, and he invariably returns married to someone else. I have a half sister who cleans out her closets, loses twenty pounds, and buys an entirely new wardrobe before she goes husband hunting again. She’s done that three times so far. One of my stepbrothers drank himself stupid after his first divorce and then he eloped with an exotic dancer who was already married to someone else. My mother married twice before she discovered that husbands were more aggravation than pleasure and that disposable lovers were the way to go.”

“And you?”

He’d spent the past ten years devoted to his work, and feeling as hard and cold as his ex-wife accused him of being, but for Harriet’s edification, he said, “I made a life of my own. The only person I trust is me. The only person I care about is me. I don’t own anything I can’t afford to lose, and there’s no one in my life that I’d miss if they were gone tomorrow.”

She had filled two plates with thick slices of Canadian bacon and light, fluffy scrambled eggs but arrested all movement to stare at him.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, sensing he wasn’t quite as cavalier on the subject as he sounded. “You’re not at all like that.”

“How the hell would you know?” he asked, dumbfounded. “And if you tell me your friend DeLuca told you anything different than what I’m telling you, then you were a chump for hiring him, because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about either.”

She put the fry pan in the sink and took up the plates. “I don’t need Mr. DeLuca to tell me that you’re not a very nice man. But I don’t believe you’re as indifferent and heartless as you’d like me to think.”

“Why not?”

Intuition? she speculated, looking at him. She set his plate on the table across from her and reached to pour them both some coffee.

“Your eyes.”

“My eyes?” He handed her two pieces of buttered toast, and sat down with two pieces for himself. “Give me a break.”

“No. It’s true. You’re very good at hiding what you think, but when you’re feeling and
not
thinking, it shows in your eyes. Like, when you think something’s funny or when ...” When he was aroused? Better not bring that up, she decided in a split second. “... actually, it was one of the first things I noticed about you.”

“What else do you think you’ve noticed about me?” he asked, immeasurably curious.

“Well, you like to be in control. You’re bossy and stubborn and lie without conscience, whenever it suits you—a talent I admire, by the way,” she said, pausing to chew her food. “You’re sarcastic and mean, but I don’t think it comes naturally to you. I think you work at being nasty.”

He laughed. “And why would I do that?”

“To survive,” she said. Her eyes met his, deep and knowing.

His smile faded, and he broke eye contact before she could see anything else she wasn’t supposed to see.

“It’s going to rain,” he complained sometime later. “Look at that sky.”

She laughed and handed the coat back to him. “That sky will get a lot darker before the storm breaks. We have plenty of time for a walk.” She opened the kitchen door. “Just suck in some of that clean fresh air.”

“I knew the minute I saw you that you were a nature freak,” he grumbled, hauling on the thick deerskin jacket she’d scrounged up for him. “Breathing the air, saving the fish, picketing furriers. I bet you plant a tree every Arbor Day.”

“Not just on Arbor Day,” she said, tugging on his sleeve to move him out into the brisk wind. “The Wheaton side of my family had traditions too. From the time I was born, my dad added an apple sapling to the orchard every year on my birthday. That tree over there is a red maple they planted to celebrate one of their wedding anniversaries. Every year it was a different kind of tree—but no oaks.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll show you.”

They walked west, toward the cliffs that faced Ontario. She showed him a small clearing in the dense woods where one of the brides had cultivated a private rock garden, where on warm summer days Harriet often came to catch the breezes, relax, and do a little daydreaming on the loveseat beneath a canopy of green leaves.

For a short distance she guided him across the top of the ridge. The jagged rock wall and boulders below, pounded by wave after wave after wave, with no beginning and no end, was one of her most favorite sights on the island. It brought a green cast to Payton’s complexion, however, so she didn’t tarry long.

At last they came to an open space, a clearing, sheltered from the bitter northwest winds by an outcrop of rock twenty or thirty feet high.

“These are oaks. They’re slow growing, very strong, very hardy trees. By the time they outgrow that wall of rock there, they’ll be able to withstand almost anything,” she said, motioning to two sleeping young giants, one several years older and larger than the other. She put the palm of her hand to the trunk of the tree. “My father planted this one when my mother died. They’d agreed on it ahead of time, thinking it would give whoever was left something to do, rather than sitting around feeling sad.”

Payton looked at the smaller tree, several yards away.

“You planted that one when your father died,” he said, knowing it as sure as he knew that if she looked at him in that moment, he’d see tears in her eyes.

She stepped across to the smaller tree and removed a lone dead leaf from its branches. “It was a while before I got a chance to plant it for him. I ... he died while I was still in prison.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling a deep stab of profound sadness. For a man he’d never met? Or for her?

She looked at him, as if from a faraway place, and then she smiled a smile that was sweeter than anything he’d tasted; sharper than anything he’d touched; wiser than anything he’d heard.

“Careful,” she said. “You sound sincere. I’ll start thinking you’re more than half-human and not such a bad guy after all, if you don’t watch your step.”

“Heaven forbid,” he said, suspecting that she felt as awkward accepting his sympathy as he was feeling giving it. “We can’t have that. The mystic forces will think they’ve done it again, if we start talking as if we like each other.”

If, indeed, there were mystic forces on the island, they were no doubt laughing up their sleeves at that moment, Harriet mused. For the truth of the matter was, she walked away from the new oaks laughing; basking in the glow of unquestioned camaraderie, something that couldn’t exist without mutual support and acceptance.

“I
KNOW TEN POLITICIANS
who,
together,
don’t cheat as much as you do,” Payton complained, racking the balls on the pool table for a fifth and last game.

“Name them,” she said, smirking at his testiness.

He gave it a go. “Bob Weaver.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He’s a young councilman, very into education and civil liberties. I met him at one of my mother’s parties last year, and she swears that he’s as straight as a ruler.”

“Your mother’s politically active?”

“Not hardly,” he said, lining up his shot behind the cue-ball.

“Then how can she be a judge of this man’s integrity?”

“Given my mother’s penchant for young men, there are other ways to test a man’s integrity.” He pocketed a solid-colored ball and left the stripes for Harriet.

“Okay. I’ll take your word for it, but that still leaves nine more,” she said smugly, feeling playful.

“Let me think,” he said, considering his next move. After a few seconds he reluctantly admitted to being stymied. “Do you expect me to remember the names of every politician I meet?”

“A big real estate wheeler-dealer like you? Yes,” she said, a challenge in her voice. “You remember all the names. You just can’t connect any of them with an honest man, is all.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and prepared to do battle, then thought better of it. “Politicians were a bad association,
but
if I had my Rolodex, I could list the names of a hundred men who’d rather die than cheat at pool.”

“How can you cheat at pool?” she asked, pooh-poohing his grievance. “I’ve been playing pool since I was a little girl, and short of dropping the balls into the pockets by hand or tilting the table, you can’t cheat at it. Why can’t you admit that you’re intimidated by my
skill
?”

“Skill, hell,” he said, stopping midshot to gape at her. “You took your foot a good six inches off the floor. You were practically laying on the table.”

“I was not. I admit I was stretching for the shot, but I didn’t take my foot off the floor. Frankly, I’ve always thought that when one person is taller than the other, there ought to be a handicap imposed on the game.”

“A handicap.” He was terribly amused. Only a woman would want to handicap a game of pool.

“Yes,” she said vehemently, but grinning. “They do it for other games, like golf and bowling. I think if you’re taller, I should get the difference between us in inches.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said, and before she could blink twice, he had her flat on her back on the pool table and was hoisting his leg up to join her.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked, when a big hand on her chest foiled her attempts to sit up.

“Lay still. I am attempting to calibrate the difference between us in inches,” he said, spanning her body with his, aligning his pelvis to hers.

His weight, his warmth, his musky male odor were overwhelming. His hands on her wrists were scorching. It hurt to breathe.

“But is this really necessary? Couldn’t you simply ask me how tall I am and subtract the difference from your height?”

“I could, but it wouldn’t be as much fun,” he said, making a big to-do of wiggling atop her and looking down the lengths of their bodies for accuracy. Finally, he became very still, looking down into her face with a distinct light in his eyes. “I think the difference between us is a good stiff seven inches or so. And I sure wouldn’t mind handicapping you with that much of the dissimilarity between us.”

She gasped at his double entendre, and then she sputtered into a fit of laughter.

Patiently, and without concealing the effort it was costing him, he held her wrists and waited for her self-control to return.

“It was a serious offer, Harriet,” he said when she’d calmed to titters and giggles. “And I must say that your behavior shows a decided lack of good sportsmanship.”

She snorted once and was howling again while he fought the smile that was threatening to take over his lips. Oddly, he was acquiring a predilection for the sound of her laughter—a happy, joyous sound that seemed to heat cold, empty places in his heart. With his index finger, he gently wiped away a tear escaping from the corner of her eye.

She stiffened.

“Oh, please,” she cried, weak with merriment. “Get off. I’m going to wet my pants.”

“On great-great-grandpa’s pool table?”

“Buckets,” she wailed. “Oh, please.”

Her squirming told him it wasn’t another one of her tricks, and he hastily jumped to the floor. He helped her up and grinned when she skirted away. He called after her, “You cheat at pool. You’re not a good sport. You can’t hold your water, and you have no respect for antiques. These things do not augur a happily-ever-after ending for us, Harriet.”

“Payton?” she called, returning several minutes later to find the billiard room empty. She walked across the hall to the library and discovered him slouched in a chair before the fire they’d started earlier. It was now dying. “That was a real slick trick you pulled to get out of losing another game to me.”

He put on a marvelous mask of dismay. “It was supposed to be a slick seduction.”

Taking the chair next to his, she smiled. “It was that too.”

“So, what do we have to do before we can have sex? Dance naked on the beach? Draw blood? What?” he asked, referring to the island’s mysterious powers.

“Maybe when it becomes more than just sex.”

“Ah. The sexual nomenclature syndrome and the vast gray area between having sex and making love.”

“Don’t you think there’s a difference?”

He rolled his head against the back of the chair to look at her. He studied her long and hard before saying, “There’s a difference.”

“Did you have sex or make love to your wife?” The question was out before she could stop it. “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”

Whether it concerned her or not; whether it was because she was a relative stranger, a temporary entity in his life, or whether it was because he was comfortable with her and didn’t feel threatened by her, he wanted to tell her.

“I made love and she tolerated it,” he said, watching the fading embers of the fire. “Barely.”

Well, in for a penny ...

“She, ah, didn’t like it?” she asked.

“She didn’t like me.” When Harriet remained silent, he glanced at her. He could sense all the questions on her mind and her reluctance to ask them, but more than that he felt not sympathy or pity from her, but an empathy and understanding that made it easier for him to continue. “Do you believe in perfect people, Harri?”

“No.”