She started walking up the beach, toward the path to the house. Frustrated, Pres followed, well aware of the small crowd of photographers and news cameras trailing after them.
"Molly, I'm not trying to buy you."
She stopped walking, glancing quickly toward the cameras before looking up into his eyes. "Are you sure?" she asked quietly.
Then she put her arms around him and gave him the gentlest and sweetest of kisses, all for the benefit of those cameras.
"Don't follow me back to the house," she told him. "And smile. Zander and I will see you tonight."
Pres caught her hand. "I'm not trying to buy you."
She smiled for the cameras as she pulled free, then hurried up the hot sand toward the shaded path.
She didn't say the words again, but they seemed to echo in Pres's head as he watched her go. Are you sure?
TWELVE
Pres knocked twice on the door of the suite next to his. An hour ago he'd sent Lenny, his driver, over to pick up Molly and Zander and bring them to the resort. He'd thought it might be easier for them to get dressed for the party away from the dust and rubble of the Kirk Estate's restorations, and Molly had agreed.
Pres knocked again, louder this time, and Zander opened the door.
The boy was wearing a white dress shirt tucked haphazardly into a pair of tan dress pants. Attached to his collar was a crooked clip-on tie. As usual, his glasses were slightly askew and his hair stood straight up in several places.
"Mom's still in the bedroom, getting dressed." He gazed at Pres, stepping back to let him into the suite. "You look . . . funny."
"Gee, thanks, Z."
"I don't mean fanny ha-ha," Zander explained. "I mean funny weird."
"That's better?" Pres glanced in the entryway mirror and adjusted his tuxedo jacket.
Zander looked at himself in the mirror, too, and futilely tried to comb down his hair. "You look like you come from one of those old movies Mom loves."
That was better. "You want me to help you with that?" Pres offered.
Zander handed him the comb. "I have problem hair."
"You need to wet it down," Pres suggested, trying hard not to smile. One of the bedroom doors was closed, so he led Zander toward the other one. The boy followed him into the bathroom that was attached and stood patiently as Pres wet the comb under the faucet.
"Did you get all your homework done?" Pres asked as he combed Zander's hair.
Zander chewed on his lower lip. "Sort of."
"Sort of? How can you sort of do your homework? Either you do it or you don't."
Zander met Pres's gaze in the mirror, then quickly looked away. "I sort of ... don't have any homework."
Pres set the comb down on the sink counter, watching the boy in the mirror. "I thought fifth graders had homework most schoolnights."
"They do."
"I see. But you don't."
"No."
Silence. It stretched on and on and on.
Pres finally asked, "You want to tell me what's going on?"
Zander hesitated. "School isn't going too well," he finally admitted. "The kids are nice—they're great in fact—but my teacher, Mr. Towne ..."
Pres felt his heart sink. Of course. Stanley Towne was Zander's teacher. He'd heard the man's name many times before, and never connected to anything complimentary. As far as Pres could figure it, Towne had burned out as a teacher years ago. He was unpleasant and grouchy and generally disliked. But because of his tenure in the school system, he couldn't be let go.
"When Mr. Towne writes on the blackboard," Zander told Pres, "he turns his back, and he keeps talking, but I can't read his lips, so I don't know what he's saying. He also talks to the class while he's sitting on the shelf in front of the windows, and because of the glare, I can't see his lips then, either. Sometimes he walks around the room, and . . ." Zander shook his head, his face pinched and anxious. The words came out faster now, a steady stream of information. "He talks so softly and smooshes all his words together with his funny accent. Most of the time I don't know what's going on. The first day, I didn't even know we had a homework assignment. But then yesterday, everyone handed something in—except for me.. I tried to explain to Mr. Towne. I tried to tell him that I couldn't hear him or read his lips the way he moved around the room, and he told me he had no training in special education and he's not going to change his habits now. He told me I shouldn't even be in his class, so I shouldn't bother to do the homework." Zander swallowed. "He told me he doesn't believe in special-education kids coming into a regular classroom, and he wants to have me sent to a school for the deaf that's over on the mainland."
Pres was outraged. "He said all that? To you?"
Zander nodded, tears in his eyes.
"Turn off your hearing aids, Zander, I'm about to use some language your mom probably wouldn't want you to hear."
Zander smiled crookedly, wiping his eyes. "I know all those words. I even know American Sign Language for some of them."
"I know one international sign that I'd like to give Stan Towne," Pres said. "In fact, I ought to take my diving spear and pay him a visit."
Zander giggled, his tears all but forgotten. "Mom would have a cow."
"Speaking of your mom," Pres added. "I'm assuming you haven't mentioned any of this to her."
The boy's wide blue eyes got even wider as he shook his head. "Are you kidding? She'd be so mad, she'd want to punch Mr. Towne in the nose!"
"She'd have to stand in line," Pres muttered. "You've got to tell your mom what you told me," he added, louder.
"But what if she wants to go back to New York? I had a really great teacher in New York, but I don't want to go back there. I like it better here, even if Mr. Towne stinks."
"Still, you have to tell her."
"Maybe he'll get better."
"Do you really think that?"
"Maybe. Or maybe he'll go away and we'll get a new teacher. Nothing's impossible," Zander insisted.
Maybe, just maybe Mr. Towne would go away. "You're right," Pres agreed. "Nothing's impossible."
"Ms. Cassidy, do you have a comment regarding the rumors of Mr. Seaholm's breakup with his first wife, Merrilee Fender, being due to his sexual dysfunction?"
"I most certainly do have a comment," Molly said crisply and quite sternly, unable to turn her head and meet Pres's gaze, "and my comment is to ask you, sir, where you get the audacity to ask such a personal question in the first place?"
"So in other words, no comment?" the reporter persisted.
"Saying 'no comment' is fine," Pres breathed in her ear, his arm tightening around her waist.
"For your information, the rumors are absolutely and completely untrue." She felt Pres kiss her lightly, just beside her ear.
"Thanks," he murmured.
Thank God Zander had already left the party, returning to their hotel suite with Pres's friend Dominic as baby-sitter. She could just imagine the questions Zander would ask, and her attempts to define such things as sexual dysfunction.
"Ms. Cassidy, what does it feel like to be engaged to marry one of the richest men in America?"
This question was one she could answer more easily. "Don't you mean one of the richest, most handsome, and nicest men in America?" she countered. "Do you guys need help spelling the word nice? N-I-C-E. You probably don't have much cause to use that word in your line of work. . . ."
Pres was looking at her with a smile dancing in his hazel eyes. Molly found herself smiling back at him—after all, who wouldn't? Dressed in that hand-tailored, figure-hugging tuxedo, he was quite possibly the best-looking man alive. His shoulders were impossibly broad, his waist and hips trim. For a guy who spent most of his time in Bermuda shorts and faded T-shirts, he wore his tux with an easy confidence and cool authority.
"Actually," Molly said, still gazing into Preston's eyes, "it feels an awful lot like a fairy tale. Here I am at the ball with Prince Delectable—the luckiest one of the hundred and one princesses who have
been imported into his kingdom, hoping to catch his royal eye." She turned to look out at the reporters. "Do you know the story of Prince Delectable? He held the title of most eligible bachelor in his kingdom too."
"I don't know that story," Pres murmured.
"Zander has it in one of his books," she told him.
"Mr. Seaholm! Is it true you're planning to teach Molly's ten-year-old son to skydive?"
"Skydive? No." Pres reluctantly pulled his gaze away from Molly's, leaning forward slightly to speak into the microphones. "I will start teaching the boy how to snorkel, though."
Pres sensed more than felt Molly stiffen alongside him. Damn, he shouldn't have brought this up. "With his mother's permission, of course," he quickly added.
"Mr. Seaholm, have you and Ms. Cassidy set a wedding date?"
"Not yet, no," Pres told the reporter. "Now, if you'll excuse us, I want to dance with my bride-to-be."
The cameras and photographers followed them up to the outdoor deck where the dance band was playing. The dance floor was only sparsely filled, and Pres gently pulled Molly into his arms.
"At dinner the other night I felt as if I were in a goldfish bowl," Molly remarked. "Tonight I feel like I'm in a zoo. Not just any zoo, but one of those really sleazy kinds, where you pay extra to go into the tent to see the two-headed calf."
Pres laughed. "You're much better looking than a two-headed calf." He pulled her closer. "Have I told you how great you look tonight?"
Molly was wearing the dress he'd bought for her. It was a shimmering and ethereal white with a rather modest, high neckline and a low-scooped back. She wore her hair down, and it gleamed around her shoulders. She looked a mystifying combination of angel and girl next door.
"Only five thousand times."
"So did this Prince Delectable and his princess live happily ever after?"
"Actually," Molly said, "the prince ended up with someone else entirely."
"Who?" Pres pulled her close enough so that his cheek brushed the soft silk of her hair.
"He discovered that early on, before the story even starts, he'd already given his heart to the girl who lives next door."
Pres had to smile. The girl next door . . .
"We haven't had a moment to ourselves all evening." He danced Molly away from the cameras, into a shadowy and more secluded corner of the deck.
"Maybe that's good."
"No, it's not good, because I wanted to talk to you," he told her. "I've been thinking about what you said—about trying to buy your affection." He paused, looking down at her, gathering strength from the calm blueness of her eyes. "Maybe you were a little bit right. Maybe part of me was testing you—to see if you could be bought." He shook his head, smiling ruefully. "I don't know, it's kind of complicated. A part of me wants you badly enough to pay any price to have you. And there's this other part that's hoping you'll keep turning my money down."
Molly was holding her breath, aware that she and Pres were entering uncharted territory. He was telling her how he felt. He was sharing a tiny piece of himself with her.
"Can we take a walk on the beach?" he asked, tugging her gently toward the stairs that led down from the deck onto the soft moonlit sand. "I want to tell you about something that happened to me. Maybe then you'll understand."
Intrigued, Molly followed, stopping at the last step to slip off her shoes and leave them next to Preston's along a low concrete seawall. She slipped the narrow strap of her tiny purse over her shoulder and together they stepped barefoot into the cool sand.
Music drifted hauntingly down onto the beach, and Pres took her in his arms, spinning her around on the sand. The moon was nearly full and the ocean seemed to glisten, murmuring softly as the tide continued its rush inward.
They walked down the beach for a while in silence, leaving the lights from the main resort building behind them.
Finally, Pres began to speak. "About two and a half years ago," he told her, pulling her forward so that the cool water lapped over their bare toes, "I met Merrilee Fender."
Molly didn't say a word. She just listened, waiting for him to go on.
"She was working here at the resort at the time, as part of the cleaning staff. I noticed her almost right away. ..." He gave Molly a rueful glance and a somewhat sheepish shrug. "It would have been hard not to—she was strikingly attractive. But we didn't meet at the resort. I ran into her downtown, at the dive shop. She was posting a notice on the bulletin board—looking for a dive buddy. It seemed kind of like fate."
He took a deep breath and let it slowly out. "She was perfect. She was everything I thought I wanted in a woman. Tall, blond, elegant, poised, not too clingy, but not overly independent, either. She was a certified scuba diver and she knew how to windsurf. She knew about investments and the stock market. She could cook Italian food—my favorite—like you wouldn't believe. We'd read all the same books, loved all the same movies. ... I fell for her hard and fast. Every time I turned around, she was even more perfect. So after this incredible, whirlwind, two-week romance, I married her."
The moonlight created shadows across his face as he looked down at her and tried to smile.
"So what went wrong?" she asked softly, trying hard not to feel jealous of perfect Merrilee Fender. Clearly he'd loved the woman. And it was possible, despite his denial, that he loved her still. And why shouldn't he? Merrilee was perfect.
"Everything," he said flatly. "Three weeks after the wedding Merrilee started talking about a movie that was being cast over in Orlando. I knew the producers quite well—we'd done business together a few years back. Merri told me she'd always loved to 'dabble in theater'—I think that was the way she put it. She asked me to call the producers and get her a screen test.
"She really wanted to do it, so I figured what the hell, and I made the call. Her screen test was good, but nothing out of the ordinary. But Merrilee told me that the producers were looking for some outside money, and if I invested, she'd get the part. And she really, really wanted the part. So I invested. And she was cast. And she was sensational. And the offers for other roles started coming in.
"She was excited, but I wasn't. We'd just spent three months in Orlando while she made this movie, and now she wanted to pack up and go out to Hollywood without even taking a break. She had all these contracts lined up, one right after the other for the next two and a half years and ..." He shook his head. "I told her we were going to have to compromise. I needed to spend at least half the year on Sunrise Key, at the resort. I really wanted to be there more often. I love Sunrise Key, it's my home, but I figured I was married now, and to make it work, I'd have to give some of that up. But she looked me in the eye and told me that six months wasn't enough. She told me that she wanted a divorce.
"I was blown away. I didn't see it coming, didn't have a clue. It was crazy—we'd only been married four months."
"But you gave her the divorce," Molly said.
"Yeah. I wanted to go into counseling, to see if we could work this out." He paused, gazing up at the moon as if it held all of the answers. "Until she told me the truth."
"The truth?" Molly echoed softly.
"I've never told anyone this before," he said, turning to look at her. His eyes looked crystal and colorless in the pale light, and shockingly intense. "But I was conned, Molly. Right from the start. Merrilee came after me because of my friendship with these movie producers and my money. She researched me, and became this perfect woman—perfect for me. She learned to dive and wind-surf, she read all my favorite books, learned to cook my favorite food. . . . She was acting. It was all one big, incredible, Academy Award winning act. None of it was real. After she told me the truth, I gave her the divorce. I also made her sign off on all requests for alimony, all financial settlements. Not that she complained. She got what she wanted—the screen test and that initial investment that bought her the part."
"You must've been very badly hurt," Molly said quietly.
"I was devastated." He forced
another smile. "I never told anyone that before either."
"I know I asked you this already, but ... do you still love her?" Molly held her breath, afraid to find out the answer, but needing to know.
"She wasn't real." Pres looked out over the silvery ocean. "I was in love with a fictional character. The person I thought I loved didn't really exist. Even her name was fake, can you believe that? Her real name was Rachel. She changed it because she thought I'd like Merrilee better." He shook his head. "When I found out it was all a lie, it was as if someone I loved had died."
He looked into her eyes. "So, no. I don't still love her. The woman I thought I loved wasn't real."
Sunrise Key 3 - Otherwise Engaged Page 13