This Heart of Mine (18 page)

"Hey, Daphne! You want to go into town with me to pick up some supplies?"

She smiled to hear him call her Daphne again. "We have a new guest."

"That's great," he said unenthusiastically. "Just what we need."

The rocker banged against the wall, and she turned to see Lilly stand up. The diva had disappeared, and in her place was a vulnerable, ashen-faced woman. Molly set down the iced tea tumbler. "Are you all right?"

In a barely perceptible motion she shook her head.

Kevin's foot hit the bottom porch step, and he looked up. "I thought we might—" He froze.

They'd had a love affair. Now Molly was certain of it. Despite the age disparity, Lilly was a beautiful woman—her hair, those green eyes, that voluptuous body. She'd come to find Kevin because she wanted him back. And Molly wasn't ready to give him away. The idea shocked her. Was her old crush sneaking back?

He stayed where he was. "What are you doing here?"

Lilly didn't flinch from his rudeness. She almost seemed to be expecting it. "Hello, Kevin." Her arm fluttered at her side, as if she wanted to touch him but couldn't. Her eyes drank in his face.

"I'm here on vacation." Her throaty voice sounded breathless and very uncertain.

"Forget it."

Molly watched as Lilly pulled herself together. "I have a reservation. I'm staying."

Kevin turned on his heel and stalked from the house.

Lilly pressed her fingers to her mouth, smearing her soft taupe lipstick. Her eyes shimmered with tears. Pity stirred inside Molly, but Lilly wouldn't tolerate it, and she rounded on her with a hiss. "I'm staying!"

Molly gazed uncertainly toward the Common, but Kevin had disappeared. "All right." She had to know if they'd been lovers, but she couldn't just blurt out something like that. "You and Kevin seem to have a history."

Lilly sank back down in the rocker, and the cat jumped into her lap. "I'm his aunt."

Molly's relief was followed almost immediately by a weird sense of protectiveness toward Kevin. "Your relationship seems to leave something to be desired."

"He hates me." Lilly suddenly looked too fragile to be a star. "He hates me, and I love him more than anyone on earth." She seemed to pick up the iced tea tumbler as a distraction. "His mother, Maida, was my older sister."

The intensity in her voice made the small of Molly's back tingle. "Kevin told me his parents were elderly."

"Yes. Maida married John Tucker the same year I was born."

"A big age difference."

"She was like a second mother to me. We lived in the same town when I was growing up, practically next door."

Molly had the sense that Lilly was telling her this not because she wanted Molly to know but simply to keep from falling apart. Her curiosity made her take advantage of it. "I remember reading you were very young when you went to Hollywood."

"Maida moved when John was assigned to a church in Grand Rapids. My mother and I didn't get along, and things went downhill fast, so I ran away and ended up in Hollywood."

She fell silent.

Molly had to know more. "You did very well for yourself."

"It took a while. I was wild, and I made a lot of mistakes." She leaned back in the rocker. "Some of them can't be undone."

"My older sister raised me, too, but she didn't come into my life until I was fifteen."

"Maybe it would have been better for me that way. I don't know. I guess some of us were just born to raise hell."

Molly wanted to know why Kevin was so hostile, but Lilly had turned her head away, and just then Amy popped out onto the porch. She was either too young or too self-absorbed to recognize their celebrity guest. "The room's ready."

"I'll show you upstairs. Amy, would you get Miss Sherman's suitcase from her car?"

When Molly let Lilly into the attic, she expected her to object to such humble quarters, but Lilly said nothing. Molly pointed out the general direction of the beach from the window. "There's a nice walk along the lake, but maybe you know all this. Have you been here before?"

Lilly set her purse on the bed. "I wasn't invited."

The uncomfortable prickling Molly had been feeling at the back of her neck intensified. As soon as Amy appeared with the suitcase, Molly excused herself.

Instead of heading back to the cottage for a nap, she wandered into the music room. She touched the old fountain pen at the desk, then the ink bottle, then the ivory and rose stationery with WIND LAKE BED & BREAKFAST engraved at the top. Finally she stopped fidgeting and sat down to think.

By the time the small gold anniversary clock chimed the hour, she'd made up her mind to find Kevin.

She started her search at the beach, where she found Troy repairing some boards that had come loose on the dock. When she asked him about Kevin, he shook his head and adopted the same pitiful expression Roo had just used when Molly had left the house without him. "He hasn't been around for a while. Have you seen Amy?"

"She's finishing the bedrooms."

"We're, uh, trying to get everything done so we can go home early."

Where you'll rip off each other's clothes and fall into bed
. "I'm sure that'll be fine."

Troy looked as grateful as if she'd scratched him under the chin.

Molly headed for the Common, then followed the sound of an angry hammer to the rear of a cottage named Paradise. Kevin was crouched on the roof taking out his frustration on a new set of shingles.

She tucked her thumbs in the back pockets of her shorts and tried to figure out how to go about this. "Are you still planning a trip into town?"

"Maybe later." He stopped hammering. "Did she leave?"

"No."

His hammer thwacked the shingles. "She can't stay here."

"She had a reservation. I couldn't really kick her out."

"Damn it, Molly!"
Thwack
! "I want you to…"
Thwack
! "… get rid of her!"
Thwack
!

She didn't appreciate being thwacked at, but she still had enough warm feelings left over from last night to treat him gently. "Would you come down for a minute?"

Thwack
! "Why?"

"Because it's hurting my neck to look up at you, and I'd like to talk."

"Don't look up!"
Thwack! Thwack! "Or
don't talk!"

She sat on a stack of shingles, letting him know she wasn't going anywhere. He tried to ignore her, but he finally blasted out an obscenity and put aside his hammer.

She watched him come down the ladder. Lean, muscular legs. Great butt. What was it about men and their butts that was so enticing? He glared at her when he reached the ground, but it was more annoyance than hostility. "Well?"

"Would you tell me about Lilly?"

He narrowed those green eyes. "I don't like her."

"So I gathered." The suspicion that had been eating at her wouldn't go away. "Did she forget to send you a Christmas present when you were growing up?"

"I don't want her here, that's all."

"She doesn't look like she's going anywhere."

He braced his hands on his hips, his elbows jutting out in angry wings. "That's her problem."

"Since you don't want her here, it seems to be yours, too."

He headed back to the ladder. "Can you handle that damned tea by yourself today?"

Once again the base of her neck prickled. Something was very wrong. "Kevin, wait."

He turned to look at her, his expression impatient.

She told herself this wasn't any of her business, but she couldn't let it go. "Lilly said she's your aunt."

"Yeah, so what?"

"When she looked at you, I got this strange feeling."

"Spit it out, Molly. I've got things to do."

"Her heart was in her eyes."

"I seriously doubt that."

"She loves you."

"She doesn't even know me."

"I've got this weird feeling about why you're so upset." She bit her lip and wished she hadn't started this, but some powerful instinct wouldn't let her back off. "I don't think Lilly's your aunt, Kevin. I think she's your mother."

"Fudge!" Benny smacked his lips. "I love fudge!"

Daphne Says Hello

Kevin looked as though she'd punched him. "How did you know?
Nobody
knows that!"

"I guessed."

"I don't believe you. She told you. Damn her!"

"She didn't say a thing. But the only other person I've seen with eyes that exact color of green is you."

"You knew just by looking at her eyes?"

"There were a couple of other things." The longing Molly had witnessed on Lilly's face when she gazed at Kevin had been too intense for an aunt. And Lilly had given her clues.

"She told me how young she was when she left home, and she said she'd gotten into trouble. I knew your parents were older. It was just a hunch."

"A damn good hunch."

"I'm a writer. Or at least I used to be. We tend to be fairly intuitive."

He flung down his hammer. "I'm getting out of here."

And she was going with him. He hadn't abandoned her last night, and she wouldn't abandon him now. "Let's go cliff diving," she blurted out.

He stopped and stared at her. "You want to go cliff diving?"

No,
I don't want to go cliff diving! Do you think I'm an id
iot? "Why not?"

He gazed at her for a long moment. "Okay, you're on."

Exactly what she'd been afraid of, but it was too late to back out now. If she tried, he'd just call her "bunny lady" again. That was what the kindergarten children called her when she read them her stories, but, from him, it didn't sound as innocent.

An hour and a half later she lay on a flat rock near the edge of the bluff trying to catch her breath. As the heat from the rocks seeped through her wet clothes, she decided the diving hadn't been the worst part. She was a good diver, and it had even been sort of fun. The worst part was hauling her body back up that path so she could throw herself off again.

She heard him coming up the path, but unlike her, he wasn't breathing hard. She shut her eyes. If she opened them, she'd just see what she already knew, that he'd stripped down to a pair of navy blue boxers before his first dive. It was painful to look at him—all those ripples, planes, and smooth long muscles. She'd been terrified—hopeful?—the boxers would come off in the dive, but he'd somehow managed to keep them on.

She reined in her imagination. This was exactly the kind of fantasizing that had gotten her in such terrible trouble. And maybe it was time she reminded herself that Kevin hadn't exactly been the most memorable lover. In point of fact, he'd been a dud.

That wasn't fair. He'd been operating under a double disadvantage. He'd been sound asleep, and he wasn't attracted to her.

Some things hadn't changed. Although he seemed to have worked past his contempt for her, he hadn't sent out any signals that he found her sexually irresistible—or even remotely appealing.

The fact that she could think about sex was upsetting but also encouraging. The first crocus seemed to have popped up in the dark winter of her soul.

He flopped down next to her and stretched out on his back. She smelled heat, lake, and devil man.

"No more somersaults, Molly. I mean it. You were too close to the rocks."

"I only did one, and I knew exactly where the edge was."

"You heard me."

"Jeez, you sound like Dan."

"I'm not even going to think about what he'd say if he saw you do that."

They lay there for a while in silence that was surprisingly companionable.
Every one of her muscles felt achy but relaxed.

Daphne lay sunning herself on a rock when Benny came racing up the path. He was crying.

"What's the matter, Benny?"

"Nothing. Go away!"

Her eyes flicked open. It had been nearly four months since Daphne and Benny had held an imaginary conversation in her head. Probably just a fluke. She rolled toward Kevin. Although she didn't want to ruin the good time they'd been having, he needed help dealing with Lilly just as she needed help dealing with the loss of Sarah.

His eyes were closed. She noticed that his lashes were darker than his hair, which was already drying at the temples. She rested her chin on her hand. "Did you always know that Lilly was your birth mother?"

He didn't open his eyes. "My parents told me when I was six."

"They did the right thing not trying to keep it a secret." She waited, but he didn't say anything more. "She must have been very young. She hardly looks forty now."

"She's fifty."

"Wow."

"She's a Hollywood type. A ton of plastic surgery."

"Did you get to see her a lot when you were young?"

"On television."

"But not in person?" A woodpecker drummed not far away, and a hawk soared above the lake. She watched the rise and fall of his chest.

"She showed up once when I was sixteen. Must have been a slow time in Tinsel Town." He opened his eyes and sat up. Molly expected him to get up and walk away, but he gazed out at the lake. "As far as I'm concerned, I had one mother, Maida Tucker. I don't know what game the bimbo queen thinks she's playing by coming here, but I'm not playing it with her."

The word "bimbo" stirred old memories inside Molly. That used to be what people thought of Phoebe. Molly remembered what her sister had told her years ago.
Sometimes I think "bimbo" is a word men made up so they could feel superior to women who are better at survival than they are
.

"The best thing might be to talk to her," Molly said now. "Then you can find out what she wants."

"I don't care." He rose, grabbed his jeans, and shoved his legs in. "What a shitty week this is turning out to be."

Maybe for him, but not for her. This was turning out to be the best week she'd had in months.

He pushed his fingers through his damp hair and spoke more gently. "Do you still want to go into town?"

"Sure."

"If we go now, we can make it back by five o'clock. You'll take care of tea for me, won't you?"

"Yes, but you know you'll have to deal with her sooner or later."

She watched the play of hard emotion over his face. "I'll deal with her, but I'm choosing the time and the place."

Lilly stood at the attic window and watched Kevin drive away with the football heiress. Her throat tightened as she remembered his contempt. Her baby boy… The child she'd given birth to when she was barely more than a child herself. The son she'd handed over to her sister to raise as her own.

She knew it had been the right thing to do—the unselfish thing—and the success he'd made of his life proved that. What chance would he have had as the child of an undereducated, screwed-up seventeen-year-old who dreamed of being a star?

She let go of the curtain and sat on the edge of the bed. She'd met the boy the same day she'd gotten off the bus in L.A. He was a teenager fresh from an Oklahoma ranch and looking for stunt work. They'd shared a room in a fleabag hotel to save money. They'd been young and randy, hiding their fear of a dangerous city behind fumbling sex and tough talk. He'd disappeared before he knew she was pregnant.

She'd been lucky to find work waiting tables. One of the older waitresses, a woman named Becky, had taken pity on her and let her sleep on her couch. Becky had been a single mother with no patience left at the end of a long workday for the demands of her three-year-old child. Watching the little girl cringe from her mother's harsh words and occasional slaps had been a cold dose of reality. Two weeks before Kevin was born, Lilly had called Maida and told her about the baby. Her sister and John Tucker immediately drove to L.A.

They'd stayed with her through Kevin's birth and even told her she could return to Michigan with them. But she couldn't go back, and she knew by the way they looked at each other that they didn't want her to.

At the hospital, Lilly held her baby boy every chance she got and tried to whisper a lifetime of love to him. She watched the love blossoming on her sister's face whenever she picked him up, and saw John's expression soften with longing. Their absolute worthiness to raise her child couldn't have been more apparent, and she'd loved and hated them for it. Watching them drive away with her baby boy had been the worst moment of her life. Two weeks later, she'd met Craig.

Lilly knew she'd done the right thing by giving Kevin up, but the price had still been too high. For thirty-two years she'd lived with a gaping hole in her heart that neither her career nor her marriage could fill. Even if she'd been able to have more children, that hole would still have been there. Now she wanted to heal it.

When she'd been seventeen, the only way she could fight for her son was to give him up. But she wasn't seventeen anymore, and it was time to find out, once and for all, if she could ever have a place in his life. She'd take whatever he'd give her. A Christmas card once a year. A smile. Something to tell her he'd stopped hating her. The fact that he didn't want her near him had been brutally apparent each time she'd tried to contact him since Maida's death, and it had been even more apparent today. But maybe she just hadn't tried hard enough.

She thought of Molly and felt a chill. Lilly had no respect for females who preyed on famous men. She'd seen it happen dozens of times in Hollywood. Bored, wealthy young things with no life of their own tried to define themselves by snaring famous men. Molly had trapped him with her pregnancy and her position as the sister of Phoebe Calebow.

Lilly got up from the bed. During Kevin's growing up years, she hadn't been able to protect him when he needed it, but now she had a chance to make up for that.

Wind Lake was a typical resort village—quaint at its center and a bit shabby at the edges. The main street ran along the lake and featured a few restaurants and gift shops, a marina, an upscale clothing boutique for the tourists, and the Wind Lake Inn.

Kevin parked and Molly got out of the car. Before they'd left the campground, she'd showered, conditioned her hair, used a little eye makeup and her M.A.C. Spice lipstick. Since she only had sneakers, her sundress wasn't an option, so she'd slipped into light gray drawstring shorts and a black cropped top, then consoled herself by noticing that she'd lost enough weight to let the shorts ride below her belly button.

As he came around the front of the car, his eyes skimmed over her, then studied her more closely. She felt an unwelcome tingle and wondered if he liked what he saw, or if he was making an unfavorable comparison with his United Nations companions.

So what if he was? She liked her body and her face. They might not be memorable to him, but she was happy with them. Besides, she didn't care what he thought.

He gestured toward the boutique. "They should have sandals in there if you want to replace the ones you lost in the lake."

Boutique sandals were way out of her price range. "I'll try the beach shop instead."

"Their stuff is pretty cheap."

She pushed her sunglasses higher on her nose. Unlike his Revos, hers had cost nine dollars at Marshall's. "I have simple tastes."

He regarded her curiously. "You're not one of those penny-pinching multimillionaires, are you?"

She thought for a moment, then decided not to play any more games with him about this. It was time for him to see who she was, insanity and all. "I'm not actually a multimillionaire."

"It's fairly common knowledge that you're an heiress."

"Yes, well… "She bit her lip.

He sighed. "Why do I think I'm going to hear something really wacky?"

"I guess that depends on your perspective."

"Go on. I'm still listening."

"I'm broke, okay?"

"Broke?"

"Never mind. You wouldn't understand in a million years." She walked away from him.

As she crossed the street toward the beach shop, he came up next to her. It irritated her to see that he looked disapproving, although she should have expected it from Mr. I'll-Take-the-High-Road, who could be the poster boy for grown-up preachers' kids, even though he was in denial about it.

"You blew all that money the first chance you got, didn't you? That's why you live in such a small place."

She turned on him in the middle of the street. "No, I didn't blow it. I splurged a little the first year, but believe me, there was plenty left."

He took her arm and pulled her out of the traffic onto the curb. "Then what happened?"

"Don't you have something better to do than harass me?"

"Not really. Bad investments? Did you put everything you had in vegetarian crocodile meat?"

"Very funny."

"You cornered the market in bunny slippers?"

"How about this?" She stopped in front of the beach shop. "I bet everything I had on the Stars in the last game, and some dickhead threw into double coverage."

"That was low."

She took a deep breath and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. "Actually, I gave it all away a few years ago. And I'm not sorry."

He blinked, then laughed. "You gave it away?"

"Having trouble with your hearing?"

"No, really. Tell me the truth."

She glared at him and went inside the shop.

"I don't believe this. You really did." He came up behind her. "How much was there?"

"A lot more than you have in your portfolio, sonny boy."

He grinned. "Come on. You can tell me."

She headed for a bin of footwear, then wished she hadn't, since it was filled with neon plastic sandals.

"More than three million?"

She ignored him and reached for the plainest ones, a disgusting pair with silver glitter imbedded in the vamp.

"Less than three?"

"I'm not saying. Now, go away and don't bother me."

"If you tell me, I'll take you over to that boutique, and you can put whatever you want on my credit card."

"You're on." She threw down the silver glitter sandals and made for the door.

He moved ahead of her to open it. "Don't you want me to twist your arm a little so you can hold on to your pride?"

"Did you see how ugly those sandals were? Besides, I know how much you earned last season."

"I'm glad we signed that prenuptial agreement. Here I thought we were protecting your fortune, but son of a gun, in one of those ironic twists life sometimes throws at you, it turns out we were really protecting mine." His grin grew bigger. "Who'd have figured?"

He was enjoying himself way too much, so she picked up her stride. "I'll bet I can max out your credit card in half an hour."

"Was it more than three million?"

"I'll tell you
after
I've finished shopping." She smiled at an elderly couple.

"If you lie, I'm taking everything back."

"Isn't there a mirror someplace where you can go admire yourself?"

"I never knew a woman so hung up on my good looks."

"
All
your women are hung up on your good looks. They just
pretend
it's your personality."

"I swear, somebody needs to spank you."

"You are, like, so not the man to do it."

"You are, like, such a damned brat."

She smiled and headed into the boutique. Fifteen minutes later she emerged with two pairs of sandals. Only as she put her sunglasses back on did she notice that Kevin also carried a shopping bag. "What did you buy?"

"You need a bathing suit."

"You bought me one?"

"I guessed at the size."

"What kind of bathing suit?"

"Jeez, if somebody bought me a present, I'd be happy about it instead of acting so suspicious."

"If it's a thong, it goes back."

"Now, would I insult you that way?" They began wandering down the street.

"A thong is probably the only kind of suit you know exists. I'm sure that's what all your girlfriends wear."

"You think you can distract me, but it's not going to work." They passed a sweet shop called Say Fudge. Next to it was a tiny public garden, little more than a few hydrangea bushes and a pair of benches. "It's reckoning time, Daphne." He indicated one of the benches, then settled beside her. His arm brushed her shoulder as he propped it along the back. "Tell me all about the money. Didn't you have to wait till you were twenty-one to get your hands on it?"

"Yes, but I was still in school, and Phoebe wouldn't let me touch a penny. She said if I wanted into the accounts before I graduated, I'd have to sue her."

"Smart lady."

"She and Dan kept me on a pretty tight leash, so once I graduated and she finally handed it over, I did everything you'd expect. I bought a car, moved into a luxury apartment, bought loads of clothes—I do miss those clothes. But after a while the life of a trust-fund baby lost its luster."