“How long have you lived here?”
“Three years. I moved up from New York.”
“Ah…the big city.” Bourbon and water.
“That’s right.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I worked in the pediatric ward of a hospital.”
“You must love children.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t have your own.”
“Nope.”
“Aside from not having married, any other reason?”
Resting her head back against the tree, she grew more reflective. “I’ve got time. I’m just not ready…for either marriage or children. When the time’s right, I’ll know it.”
“What about your fiancé?”
She shot him a fast glance. “He’s not my fiancé.”
“Then…what? You must have some sort of relationship with him—for him to call on the phone and announce himself that way.”
“He’s my boss.”
“Your boss? You’re carrying on an affair with your boss?”
“Not…quite,” she drawled. Then she studied his dark expression and grinned. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were jealous.”
“Damned right I am,” he admitted without hesitation. “You’re a beautiful woman, Abby.”
As his tone grew more husky, she felt her own response. But before it could swell to anything more than a gentle tremor in her limbs, she wrenched her gaze from his and looked off toward the garden house. It seemed unfair that Ben should be able to excite her with no more than a word, a tone, a glance. She’d never felt this deep stirring for Sean. Had she ever felt it before? Or had the fact of sequestration, a kind of contrived captivity in itself, done something to her senses?
“You never told me how the college is managing without you for these three weeks,” she said, drawing on one of the many questions in her mind in an attempt to bank the fire. “Hasn’t the semester just begun?”
Ben indulged her momentarily. “Jury duty is high-priority stuff. My colleagues will cover for me.”
“Particularly if a book is forthcoming from the experience?”
He didn’t answer, simply studied her. Then his indulgence ended. “Why would your…your boss call himself your fiancé?”
“Uh-oh. We’re back to that again?”
“Why not? I have an interesting theory.” He looked toward the horizon and gestured where headlines might be. “Beautiful young nurse chased around examining room by doctor madly and passionately in love with her.”
“That’s absurd, Ben! Sean doesn’t chase me.” Not in the most ludicrous sense, at least.
“Do you date him?”
“Yes…. He’s a nice guy.”
“A ‘nice guy’? Hmmmmm. That’s a poison for passion if there ever was one.” He paused. “But…is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“That he’s in love with you?”
She shrugged. “He says he is.”
“And you’re stringing him along?”
Abby looked up sharply. “I wouldn’t say that. I’ve told him over and over again that I’m not in love with him and that I won’t marry him. I don’t exactly call that ‘stringing him along.’ ”
“But the poor guy may be suffering….”
“That’s not my fault!” she exclaimed with growing indignation. “How much more blunt can I be? Or do you suggest that I agree to marry him”—she snapped her fingers—“just like that?”
Unfazed by her show of irritation, Ben delved further. “He’s a doctor, isn’t he? You could do worse,” he stated with a calmness that irked her all the more.
Abby’s spine stiffened. “I don’t believe you, Ben! You sound like my mother!”
“Maybe she has a point.”
“She’s not the one being pushed into marriage. If I don’t love Sean, I won’t marry him. My Lord, the divorce rate is high enough!”
“But surely there would be something in it for you…even without love. Security…kids…sex…?”
Fully incensed now, she scrambled to her feet and stood before him with her hands on her hips. “It so happens that I have security. I have a good job…and a trust fund left by my father. Furthermore,” she gulped, “I have kids…dozens and dozens of them, all of whom I can send home at the end of the day. And as for sex…” she raged, “as for sex…Sean Hennessy just doesn’t turn me on. Besides,” she added on a note of spite, “these are modern times. If a woman needs a bedmate, she takes one…with or without a wedding band!”
Her hair flew out behind as she whirled on her heel and headed for the inn. Her blood pounded in her ears, her chest heaved. She’d never been as irate in her life. Irate…hurt…disappointed.
Storming up the front steps, she was filled with dismay that Ben could have said what he had. Security…kids…sex…bah! Typically masculine point of view. No love…never love. Was it exclusively a woman’s emotion?
True, Sean believed he loved her…. But he, too, seemed to feel that a marriage could survive without that one element. And what had his love consisted of? He said she was bright, hard-working, and wonderful with kids. The perfect little wife and mother, she fumed as she slammed through the front door and attacked the stairs at a jogger’s pace.
But Sean had never pushed her physically. Now she wondered why. Oh, he’d kissed her and crooned sexy thoughts to her. They’d even indulged in a little petting. But when Abby pulled back, he never complained. Did he too feel that something was missing? Was he reluctant finally to accept the fact that the chemistry was all wrong?
Rounding one flight and loping up the next, she reran Ben’s words. Security…she had it. Kids…perhaps there was more to the issue there. It was one thing to find pleasure in other people’s children, quite another to experience the joy of one’s own. She wasn’t blind to her deep maternal instincts, nor did she doubt that one day she would want a child. But motherhood was no reason to rush into marriage with Sean…particularly when something deep within told her she could have it all….
And sex. The big S. First and foremost on every man’s mind. With an angry scowl and a low-muttered oath, she slammed the door of her room and leaned back against it. There, too, she’d only told half the story. Modern women were freer than ever in satisfying their own desires. And she hadn’t reached the age of twenty-eight a virgin. But she demanded something beyond the purely physical, something to give meaning to those joys of the flesh. Not marriage, nor promises, she mused, but love. Very simply. Love.
Four
Ben gave Abby time to lick her wounds. He saw her at meals, ran with her in the morning, sat beside her in court. But other than a cordial greeting or a brief passing remark, he made no attempt to seek her out personally as he’d done that Thursday night.
It wasn’t that Abby wanted an apology. When she thought about it, Ben had done no more than probe her feelings about marriage in general, and Sean in particular. And he hadn’t actually said that he believed in marriage without love, had he?
With the passage of time her anger eased, and she became more concerned with why it had arisen in the first place. When it came to Ben Wyeth, she reflected, everything about her seemed to react strongly. Even now, despite the subtle barrier between them, she felt his presence every time he came near.
In a way she was grateful for the trial, which demanded her complete concentration. During those hours, and the periods of slow unwinding immediately after, she was preoccupied, thinking neither of Sean, nor her patients, nor her house, her mail, her friends…nor Ben. As fate would have it though, Ben was always the first to reenter her thoughts.
The blame rested, she told herself, on the nature of their bizarre adventure. To be locked away from the rest of the world, with thirteen strangers, several guards, and a handful of inn personnel…it was unusual. Under the circumstances, it would be perfectly normal for a woman like her to be drawn to a man like Ben. When the trial was over and they were all back in the “real w
orld”…that would be something else. She’d go her way, back to her job, her kids, and Sean; he’d go his way, back to the college, his books, and…and…who was that he spoke with on the phone each night? A colleague? A friend? A…a…lover? This was the thought that disturbed her most, and regardless of how she tried, she couldn’t shake a feeling of jealousy.
Annoyed at that and determined to overcome it, she made a concerted effort to get to know the other jurors. Several remained aloof. Several others had formed their own small clique. Several, though, she found to be truly companionable once they’d settled into the routine.
And Patsy continued to be a pleasure. She and Abby grew closer. “Abby?” She knocked softly on the door before breakfast on Saturday morning. “Abby…it’s Patsy. Are you up?”
“Coming,” came the muffled cry as Abby emerged from the bathroom in her slip, towel-drying her hair as she went for the door. “Hi,” she said, stepping back to let Patsy in, then shutting the door behind her. “I’m almost ready.” She’d run earlier with the others and had just showered and put on a light sheen of makeup. “What’s up?”
“Have you heard where we’re going?” Patsy asked, eyes filled with excitement.
“I thought we were going to court,” Abby said, as she vigorously rubbed her hair with the towel. The judge had declared that morning sessions would be held on Saturdays in hopes of thereby ending the trial a day or two earlier.
“We are. But after. This afternoon.”
Abby’s hand stopped in mid-air, her eyes widening in interest. “They’re taking us out?”
Patsy nodded eagerly. “We’re going up to some hunting lodge near Stockbridge. It’s supposed to be really nice. There’s a lake there for swimming and canoeing, beautiful grounds, and I think they’re planning a barbecue.”
“Sounds like fun.” She resumed her toweling. “I hadn’t realized we’d be entertained in the off-hours like that.”
“John said we’ll be going out more as the trial goes on.” John was the court officer who’d originally taken Abby from the courthouse to the inn. Between Ray, Grace, Lorraine, and John, the jurors were covered at all times. “He mentioned the movies and different restaurants. They may even take us mountain climbing.”
“Now that does sound good. I’ve never climbed a real mountain before. But it’s got to be an awful chore for the sheriff,” Abby mused, dropping the towel to the bed and stepping into her skirt. “He has to clear every place we go. All it takes is one crackpot yelling ‘Hang Bradley!’ ”—she’d cupped her mouth and distorted her voice, then returned it to normal—“and the judge’d get very nervous.”
Patsy laughed gaily. “That’s ridiculous. I think we know better than to listen to one fanatic.”
“I hope so,” Abby agreed, buttoning her blouse. They both knew though that it wasn’t the occasional loud-mouth that frightened the judge. It was the fact that Derek Bradley’s father was a prominent and wealthy member of the Burlington community, that he had major banking interests throughout the state, that he also owned large chunks of newspapers in both Rutland and Montpelier. Any juror on the panel would be easy prey for an imaginative blackmailer.
Patsy’s spirits were dampened briefly. “What would happen if someone did that—you know, jumped in front of us and started yelling things?”
“I assume that Ray and John would have him wrestled to the ground and muzzled before he knew what hit him.”
“No…I mean, would there be an automatic mistrial declared?”
“I suppose that would depend on the situation. If the judge felt that we weren’t actually influenced by the person, that we didn’t feel pressured to agree with him, he might let it go. Or if only one or two of us were affected, we might be dismissed. With fourteen of us impaneled, there’d still be the necessary twelve left to deliberate. The state’s made a huge investment in this trial. A new trial would only cost thousands more.”
Patsy remained pensive. “What if someone…harmless…got through the sheriff’s guards?” She flicked her head to the side. “You know, a bystander accidentally walking among us…or something. Would there be any…problem then?”
Plugging in her blow-dryer, Abby turned it on and gently finger-combed the warm air through her hair. “I suppose that depends. If the breach in security were truly accidental, I’m sure the guards would let it go. They’ve got their investment in this thing, too.”
Patsy nodded, but said nothing more. As Abby cast a glance through the mirror at the downcast blond head, she wondered whether her friend mightn’t have had something further in mind. But the head bobbed up with renewed enthusiasm before she could probe.
“Did Sean call again last night?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anything new?”
Abby gave a good-natured grimace. “Oh, yes. He suggested he might talk me into a case of high blood pressure…so that I’d have to be dismissed from the jury and placed under a doctor’s care. He’s incorrigible!”
“That’s very sweet, Abby. He misses you.”
“Now…don’t you start on me too!” Abby exclaimed without thinking.
Patsy grinned mischievously. “Who beat me to it?” Abby’s silence tipped her off. “It was Ben, wasn’t it? See, he likes you enough to be nervous about Sean.”
“I wouldn’t say he’s nervous,” Abby came back quickly, “and it’s got nothing to do with whether he likes me or not. He just…sympathizes with the man, that’s all.”
“How’s it going with him?”
“With Ben?” At Patsy’s nod, she switched off the dryer and turned to lean back against the dresser. “It’s not. He is a very pleasant man who happens to be on this jury.” It sounded so simple.
“He also ‘happens’ to sit beside you every day, to run with you every morning, and to have a room right next to yours.” The complications began to mount.
“And how do you know all that?” Abby eyed her skeptically. To her knowledge, Patsy had neither seen them running nor followed them up the stairs on their return. Patsy’s own room was at the far end of the second floor.
“Oh…I know,” the blonde said with an impish shrug. “I also know that he’s aware of you even when you try to ignore him. Last night after dinner, when you were playing chess with Brian…then later, when we were watching television…” She caught her breath as a new thought intruded. “It’s really a pain, isn’t it…things being monitored like that. Poor Ray…having to jump up at every commercial and turn off the sound so we won’t hear anything if there’s a newsbreak.”
“That’s all part of it,” Abby mused. “Maybe we’ll get used to it after a while….”
“But Ben had his eye on you, Abby.” Patsy flipped the channel of her mind back to her own ongoing program. “He’s very subtle about it…but I can tell. He’s really gorgeous, you know. If I didn’t have my own eyes set on one adorable ski bum…”
“How is he, by the way? Did he call?”
“Three times. Grace wasn’t too thrilled last night.”
Relieved to have shifted the conversation from Ben, Abby engaged a bright-eyed Patsy in discussion of her persistent beau as the two walked down to breakfast.
Unfortunately, though, the bug had been planted in Abby’s ear. She was all the more conscious of Ben through breakfast and the morning in court, wondering as she looked straight ahead whether he was looking at her, thinking of her. It didn’t help that there seemed more sidebar discussions than ever; during those times, when both prosecutor and defender met quietly with the judges at the far side of the bench, the jury had nothing to do but to sit, perhaps talk softly among themselves.
“You’ve heard about this afternoon, haven’t you?” Ben murmured during one of those idle times.
“Uh-huh. The hunting lodge.”
“Have you got a bathing suit with you?”
“I’ve got one…but isn’t it a little too cold?”
“Too cold,” he grinned, “for an athlete like you?” His teasing caused h
er insides to shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Running is one thing, swimming something else. When you run, you wear warm-ups and sneakers and a hat. When you swim, you wear practically nothing…. I mean,” she stumbled in embarrassment and could have strangled herself there and then, “a bathing suit doesn’t do much for warmth.”
Ben didn’t miss the flush on her cheeks. “True,” he said calmly. His eyes were more intense. “But it might be okay this afternoon. Besides, if you swim long enough, you build up a sweat.”
“You’re kidding.”
An Irresistible Impulse Page 7