Summer Pleasures

by Nora Roberts

  “That’s because she’s had a couple of embarrassingly flattering write-ups.”

  “Write-ups?” Lee watched Bonnie dust her flour-covered hands on her cutoffs.

  Hunter smiled as he watched his sister reach for a tin of tea and send others clattering to the counter. “Professionally she’s known as B. B. Smithers.”

  The name rang a bell. For years, B. B. Smithers had been considered the queen of avant-garde jewelry. The elite, the wealthy and the trendy flocked to her for personal designs. They paid, and paid well, for her talent, her creativity, and the tiny B’s etched into the finished product. Lee stared at the thin, somewhat clumsy woman with something close to wonder. “I’ve admired your work.”

  “But you wouldn’t wear it,” Bonnie put in with a smile as she shoved tumbled boxes and tins out of her way. “No, it’s the classics for you. What a fabulous face. Do you want lemon in your tea? Do we have any lemons, Hunter?”

  “Probably not.”

  Taking this in stride, Bonnie set the teapot on the table to let the tea steep. “Tell me, Lenore, how did you talk the hermit into coming out of his cave?”

  “By making him furious, I believe.”

  “That might work.” She sat down across from Lee as Sarah walked to her father’s side. Her eyes were softer than her brother’s, less intense, but not, Lee thought, less perceptive. “Did the two weeks playing pioneer in the canyon give you the insight to write an article on him?”

  “Yes.” Lee smiled because there was humor in Bonnie’s eyes. “Plus I gained a growing affection for box springs and mattresses.”

  The quick, stunning smile flashed again. “My husband takes the children camping once a year. That’s when I go to Elizabeth Arden’s for the works. When we come home, both of us feel we’ve accomplished several small miracles.”

  “Camping’s not so bad,” Sarah commented in her father’s defense.

  “Is that so?” He patted her bottom as he drew her closer. “Why is it that you always have this all-consuming desire to visit Bonnie in Phoenix whenever I start packing gear?”

  She giggled, and her arm went easily around his shoulder. “Must be coincidence,” she said in a dry tone that echoed his. “Did he make you go fishing?” Sarah wanted to know. “And sit around for just hours?”

  Lee watched Hunter’s brow lift before she answered. “Actually, he did, ah, suggest fishing several days running.”

  “Ugh” was Sarah’s only comment.

  “But I caught a bigger fish than he did.”

  Unimpressed, Sarah shook her head. “It’s awfully boring.” She sent her father an apologetic glance. “I guess somebody’s got to do it.” Leaning her head against her father’s, she smiled at Lee. “Mostly he’s never boring, he just likes some weird stuff. Like fishing and beer.”

  “Sarah doesn’t consider Hunter’s shrunken-head collection at all unusual.” Bonnie picked up the teapot. “Are you having some?” she asked her brother.

  “I’ll pass. Sarah and I’ll go and break camp.”

  “Take your wolf with you,” Bonnie told him as she poured tea into Lee’s cup. “He’s still on my hit list. By the way, a couple of calls from New York came in for you yesterday.”

  “They’ll keep.” As he rose, he ran a careless hand down Lee’s hair, a gesture not lost on either of the other females in the room. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  She started to offer her help, but it was so comfortable in the sunny, cluttered kitchen and the tea smelled like heaven. “All right.” She saw the proprietary hand Sarah put on her father’s arm and thought it just as well to stay where she was.

  Together, father and daughter walked to the back door. Hunter whistled for the dog, then they were gone.

  Bonnie stirred her tea. “Sarah adores her father.”

  “Yes.” Lee thought of the way they’d looked, side by side.

  “And so do you.”

  Lee had started to lift her cup; now it only rattled in the saucer. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re in love with Hunter,” Bonnie said mildly. “I thinks it’s marvelous.”

  She could’ve denied it—vehemently, icily, laughingly, but hearing it said aloud seemed to put her in some kind of trance. “I don’t—that is, it doesn’t…” Lee stopped, realizing she was running the spoon handle through her hands. “I’m not sure how I feel.”

  “A definite symptom. Does being in love worry you?”

  “I didn’t say I was.” Again, Lee stopped. Could anyone make evasions with those soft doe eyes watching? “Yes, it worries me a lot.”

  “Only natural. I used to fall in and out of love like some people change clothes. Then I met Fred.” Bonnie laughed into her tea before she sipped. “I went around with a queasy stomach for weeks.”

  Lee pressed a hand to her own before she rose. Tea wasn’t going to help. She had to move. “I have no illusions about Hunter and myself,” she said, more firmly than she’d expected to. “We have different priorities, different tastes.” She looked through the kitchen window to the high, red walls far beyond the clustering trees. “Different lives. I have to get back to L.A.”

  Bonnie calmly continued to drink tea. “Of course.” If Lee heard the irony, she didn’t respond to it. “There are people who have it fixed in their heads that in order to have a relationship, the two parties involved must be on the same wavelength. If one adores sixteenth-century French poetry and the other detests it, there’s no hope.” She noticed Lee’s frown but continued, lightly. “Fred’s an accountant who gets a primal thrill out of interest rates.” She wiped absently at a smudge of flour on the table. “Statistically, I suppose we should’ve divorced years ago.”

  Lee turned back, unable to be angry, unable to smile. “You’re a great deal like Hunter, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose. Is your mother Adreanne Radcliffe?”

  Though she no longer wanted it, Lee came back to the table for her tea. “Yes.”

  “I met her at a party in Palm Springs two, no, must’ve been three years ago. Yes, three,” Bonnie said decisively, “because I was still nursing Carter, my youngest, and he’s currently terrorizing everyone at nursery school. Just last week he tried to cook a goldfish in a toy oven. You’re not at all like your mother, are you?”

  It took a moment for Lee to catch up. She set down her tea again, untasted. “Aren’t I?”

  “Do you think you are?” Bonnie tossed her tousled, streaked hair behind her shoulder. “I don’t mean any offense, but she wouldn’t know what to say to anyone not born to the blue, so to speak. I’d’ve considered her a very sheltered woman. She’s very lovely; you certainly appear to’ve inherited her looks. But that seems to be all.”

  Lee stared down at her tea. How could she explain that, because of the strong physical resemblance between her and her mother, she’d always figured there were other resemblances. Hadn’t she spent her childhood and adolescence trying to find them, and all of her adult life trying to repress them? A sheltered woman. She found it a terrifying phrase, and too close to what she herself could have become.

  “My mother has standards,” she answered, at length. “She never seems to have any trouble living up to them.”

  “Oh well, everyone should do what they do best.” Bonnie propped her elbows on the table, lacing her fingers so that the three rings on her right hand gleamed and winked. “According to Hunter, the thing you do best is write. He mentioned your novel to me.”

  The irritation came so quickly Lee hadn’t the chance to mask it. “He’s the kind of man who can’t admit when he’s made a mistake. I’m a reporter, not a novelist.”

  “I see.” Still smiling blandly, Bonnie dropped her chin onto her laced fingers. “So, what are you going to report about Hunter?”

  Was there a challenge under the smile? A trace of mockery? Whatever there was at the edges, Lee couldn’t help but respond to it. Yes, she thought again, Bonnie Smithers was a great deal like her brother.

  “That he’s
a man who considers writing both a sacred duty and a skilled profession. That he has a sense of humor that’s often so subtle it takes you hours to catch up. That he believes in choices and luck with the same stubbornness that he believes in fate.” Pausing, she lifted her cup. “He values the written word, whether it’s in comic books or Chaucer, and he works desperately hard to do what he considers his job: to tell the story.”

  “I like you.”

  Cautiously, Lee smiled. “Thank you.”

  “I love my brother,” Bonnie went on easily. “More than that, I admire him for personal and professional reasons. You understand him. Not everyone would.”

  “Understand him?” Lee shook her head. “It seems to me that the more I find out about him, the less I understand. He’s shown me more beauty in a pile of rocks than I’d ever have found for myself, yet he writes about horror and fears.”

  “And you consider that a contradiction?” Bonnie shrugged as she leaned back in her chair. “It’s just that Hunter sees both sides of life very clearly. He writes about the dark side because it’s the most intriguing.”

  “Yet he lives…” Lee gestured as she glanced around the kitchen.

  “In a cozy little house nestled in the woods.”

  The laugh came naturally. “I wouldn’t precisely call it cozy, but it’s certainly not what you’d expect from the country’s leading author of horror and occult fiction.”

  “The country’s leading author of horror and occult fiction has a child to raise.”

  “Yes.” Lee’s smile faded. “Yes, Sarah. She’s lovely.”

  “Will she be in your article?”

  “No.” Again, she lifted her gaze to Bonnie’s. “No, Hunter made it clear he objected to that.”

  “She’s the focal point of his life. If he seems a bit overprotective in certain ways, believe me, it’s a completely unselfish act.” When Lee merely nodded, Bonnie felt a stirring of sympathy. “He hasn’t told you about her?”

  “No, nothing.”

  There were times Bonnie’s love and admiration for Hunter became clouded with frustration. A great many times. This woman was in love with him, was one step away from being irrevocably committed to him. Any fool could see it, Bonnie mused. Any fool except Hunter. “As I said, there are times he’s overly protective. He has his reasons, Lenore.”

  “And will you tell me what they are?” She was tempted. It was time Hunter opened that part of his life, and she was certain this was the woman he should open it to. “The story’s Hunter’s,” Bonnie said at length. “You should hear it from him.” She glanced around idly as she heard the Jeep pull up in the drive. “They’re back.”

  “I guess I’m glad you brought her back,” Sarah commented as they drove the last mile toward home.

  “You guess?” Hunter turned his head, to see his daughter looking pensively through the windshield.

  “She’s beautiful, like a princess.” For the first time in months, Sarah worried her braces with her tongue. “You like her a lot, I can tell.”

  “Yes, I like her a lot.” He knew every nuance of his daughter’s voice, every expression, every gesture. “That doesn’t mean I like you any less.”

  Sarah gave him one long look. She needed no other words from him to reaffirm love. “I guess you have to like me,” she decided, half teasing, “ ‘cause we’re stuck with each other. But I don’t think she does.”

  “Why shouldn’t Lenore like you?” Hunter countered, able to follow her winding statement without any trouble.

  “She doesn’t smile much.”

  Not enough, he silently agreed, but more each day. “When she relaxes, she does.”

  Sarah shrugged, unconvinced. “Well, she looked at me awful funny.”

  “Your grammar’s deteriorating.”

  “She did.”

  Hunter frowned a bit as he turned into the dirt drive to their house. “It’s only that she was surprised. I hadn’t mentioned you to her.”

  Sarah stared at him a moment, then put her scuffed sneakers on the dash. “That wasn’t very nice of you.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “You’d better apologize.”

  He sent his daughter a mild glance. “Really?”

  She patted Santanas’s head when he leaned over the back of her seat and dropped it on her shoulder. “Really. You always make me apologize when I’m rude.”

  “I didn’t consider that you were any of her business.” At first, Hunter amended silently. Things changed. Everything changed.

  “You always make me apologize even when I make up excuses,” Sarah pointed out unmercifully. When they pulled up by the house, she grinned at him. “And even when I hate apologizing.”

  “Brat,” he mumbled, setting the brake.

  With a squeal of laughter, Sarah launched herself at him. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  He held her close a moment, absorbing her scent—youthful sweat, grass and flowery shampoo. It seemed impossible that ten years had passed since he’d first held her. Then she’d smelled of powder and fragility and fresh linen. It seemed impossible that she was half-grown and the time had been so short.

  “I love you, Sarah.”

  Content, she cuddled against him a moment, then lifting her head, she grinned. “Enough to make pizza for dinner?”

  He pinched her subtly pointed chin. “Maybe just enough for that.”

  Chapter 11

  When Lee thought of family dinners, she thought of quiet meals at a glossy mahogany table laid with heavy Georgian silver, meals where conversation was subdued and polite. It had always been that way for her.

  Not this dinner.

  The already confused kitchen became chaotic while Sarah dashed around, half dancing, half bobbing, as she filled her father in on every detail of the past two weeks. Oblivious to the noise, Bonnie used the kitchen phone to call home and check in with her husband and children. Santanas, forgiven, lay sprawled on the floor, dozing. Hunter stood at the counter, preparing what Sarah claimed was the best pizza in the stratosphere. Somehow he managed to keep up with his daughter’s disjointed conversation, answer the questions Bonnie tossed at him and cook at the same time.

  Feeling like oil poured heedlessly on a rub of churning water, Lee began to clear the table. If she didn’t do something, she decided she’d end up standing in the middle of the room with her head swiveling back and forth, like a fan at tennis match.

  “I’m supposed to do that.”

  Awkwardly, Lee set down the teapot she’d just lifted and looked at Sarah. “Oh.” Stupid, she berated herself. Haven’t you any conversation for a child?

  “You can help, I guess,” Sarah said after a moment. “But if I don’t do my chores, I don’t get my allowance.” Her gaze slid to her father then back again. “There’s this album I want to buy. You know, the Total Wrecks.”

  “I see.” Lee searched her mind for even a wispy knowledge of the group but came up blank.

  “They’re actually not as bad as the name makes them sound,” Bonnie commented on her way out to the kitchen. “Anyway, Hunter won’t dock your pay if you take on an assistant, Sarah. It’s considered good business sense.”

  Turning his head, Hunter caught his sister’s quick grin before she waltzed out of the room. “I suppose Lee should earn her supper as well,” he said easily. “Even if it isn’t red meat.”

  The smile made it difficult for her to casually lift the teapot again.

  “You’ll like the pizza better,” Sarah stated confidently. “He puts everything on it. Anytime I have friends over for dinner, they always want Dad’s pizza.” As she continued to clear the table, Lee tried to imagine Hunter competently preparing meals for several young, chattering girls. She simply couldn’t. “I think he was a cook in another life.”

  Good Lord, Lee thought, did the child already have views on reincarnation?

  “The same way you were a gladiator,” Hunter said dryly.

  Sarah laughed, childlike again. “Aunt Bonnie was a s
lave sold at an Arabian auction for thousands and thousands of drachmas.”

  “Bonnie has a very fluid ego.”

  With a clatter, Sarah set the cups in the sink. “I think Lenore must’ve been a princess.”

  With a damp cloth in her hands, Lee looked up, not certain if she should smile.

  “A medieval princess,” Sarah went on. “Like with King Arthur.”

  Hunter seemed to consider the idea a moment, while he studied his daughter and the woman under discussion. “It’s a possibility. One of those delicate jeweled crowns and filmy veils would suit her.”

  “And dragons.” Obviously enjoying the game, Sarah leaned back against the counter, the better to imagine Lee in a flowing pastel gown. “A knight would have to kill at least one full-grown male dragon before he could ask for her hand.”

  “True enough,” Hunter murmured, thinking that dragons came in many forms.

  “Dragons aren’t easy to kill.” Though she spoke lightly, Lee wondered why her stomach was quivering. It was entirely too easy to imagine herself in a great torch-lit hall, with jewels winking from her hair and from the bodice of a rich silk gown.

  “It’s the best way to prove valor,” Sarah told her, nibbling on a slice of green pepper she’d snitched from her father. “A princess can’t marry just anyone, you know. The king would either giver her to a worthy knight, or marry her off to a neighboring prince so he could have more land with peace and prosperity.”

  Incredibly, Lee pictured her father, staff in hand, decreeing that she would marry Jonathan of Willoby.

  “I bet you never had to wear braces.”

  Cast from one century to another in the blink of an eye, Lee merely stared. Sarah was frowning at her with the absorbed, absorbing concentration she could have inherited only from Hunter. It was all so foolish, Lee thought. Knights, princesses, dragons. For the first time, she was able to smile naturally at the slim, dark girl who was a part of the man she loved.

  “Two years.”

  “You did?” Interest sprang into Sarah’s solemn face. She stepped forward, obviously to get a better look at Lee’s teeth. “It worked good,” she decided. “Did you hate them?”