“Well, I’ll just stay out here and enjoy the fresh air with Tia,” Franny said as she dumped herself into a hammock swinging at the other side of the porch.
“That’s fine, Franny, and I’ll be back to pick Tia up after the bachelorette party,” Bianca said. She dropped a light kiss on the baby’s forehead before heading down the porch steps. Neill followed Bianca, who by this time was steaming toward the hotel full speed ahead.
“I was only trying to get the baby to blow her nose,” Neill said as he pulled even with her. He figured that to Bianca’s way of thinking, he had some explaining to do.
“They don’t actually blow their noses when they’re this age,” Bianca said tightly. “You’re supposed to use this little suction thing with a bulb for that.”
“A syringe?”
“I think it’s called an aspirator, and later, when they’re old enough to understand, you hold the tissue for them and they blow their noses into it.”
“Well, how was I to know?” Neill asked plaintively.
“I can’t imagine how you would know that. I can’t imagine why you were even there. On second thought, maybe I can. Tell me, Neill, aren’t you a little old to be playing spy?” Disapproval was inherent in her tone, and perhaps there was a bit of panic, too.
“I wasn’t spying. I happened to be passing by.”
“Right. You happened to be passing by that out-ofthe-way house on the edge of the Swan’s Folly property. I don’t buy it, Neill. Besides, you have no business following me around.”
He hadn’t been following her, but he might have been if he’d known where she was in the first place, so he decided to let this pass. “How else am I going to get to talk to you?” he said.
“Go talk to someone else. You’ll get as much information out of any of the other people in the wedding party.” She forged ahead of him, her hair flying out behind her. It was beautiful hair, shining with golden highlights, fragrant with the scent of expensive shampoo.
“Eric said—”
She inhaled sharply. “You’ve talked to Eric?”
“Briefly,” he acknowledged. She wrapped her arms about herself as if to ward off a chill. The temperature at this hour of the day wasn’t cool but warm, and a light refreshing breeze swept in from the direction of Geneva Lake. It smelled of sun-dried reeds and cool freshwater, scents familiar to him from the weekends he’d spent in Lake Geneva with a friend from prep school when he was a boy.
Bianca tossed back her head, making her highlights shimmer in the light of the dying sun. “I wish you’d get off my case,” she said.
“If you only knew it, Bianca, I’m your best friend here.”
Her wide eyes focused on him, and he noticed for the first time that the deep blue pupils were edged in silver. He also noticed that they shone with pure exasperation.
“The more I think about it, the more certain I am that I have no friends here,” she said vehemently.
“The way you’re acting, it’s no wonder,” he said, trying to inject a note of reason.
“I came because Caroline insisted and because I wanted to be here for Eric on his wedding day. I didn’t come because I wanted to.”
“You didn’t have to bring the baby,” he pointed out. “If it was going to keep you upset all the time.”
The look she shot him was incredulous. “Do you think I wanted to put either of us through this? Gabrielle got sick with mononucleosis at the last minute. Otherwise Tia would be in Paris.”
“Is she—is Tia okay? With her nose running like that?” What if a baby got mono? Was it serious? Or didn’t they get mono? Again, he wished he knew more about babies.
“She’s fine. She’s doing better than I am. Why all the questions?”
You know why, he almost said. She might be my daughter. I have an interest in her welfare. I want to know more about her, what she eats, what she likes, everything.
At that moment, he could hardly bear to think about the more likely possibility that Tia could be the child of Bianca and another man. Neill unclenched his jaw and mentally warned himself not to move too fast. Tia might be his daughter, the child he’d never thought he’d have, but Bianca was skittish and unpredictable. In order to learn the things he longed to know, he’d better handle her with care.
Lots of care. And at that moment, even though she walked as far away from him on the path as possible, even though she kept her face averted and her head down, he cared for Bianca very much.
“Look, couldn’t we sit down somewhere and talk?” he said.
“No. Anyway, I have a horrific headache.”
She looked pale, but he’d attributed that to anger. Perhaps Bianca wasn’t angry as much as she was in pain.
She kept talking nonstop. “I didn’t bring any aspirin. Maybe one of the others has some medicine for headaches, but I hate to bother other people with my trivial problems. Eric never takes medicine for headaches, so he’s no help, and—”
“Bianca, you’re babbling,” he said.
She cast him a blank look. “So?”
“I have some superstrong pain tablets that I use for everything from sprains to hangnails. Come to my cottage and I’ll give you one. Two if you need them.”
Her look was skeptical. “Do you promise this isn’t a ploy to manipulate me into having this conversation you’ve been threatening?”
That was a toughy. They had to talk, yet he was aware that there was no point in trying to get the information he wanted when she was in this mood. “All right,” he conceded. “You can take the pills and go back to your room.” For now, he added in his thoughts.
She followed him silently. When they reached Mulberry Cottage, she hung back on the doorstep.
“Come on in,” he said, holding the door wide to show her that there were no traps, only a small sitting room complete with wing chairs in front of the stone fireplace; the bedroom was out of sight behind a closed door.
“I’ll wait here,” she said firmly.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “I’ll only be a minute, but there’s a bench by the pond if you want to sit down.”
She nodded and he went inside. As luck would have it, he had tossed a packet of the pills into his suitcase at the last minute before leaving his house in Colombia, and he hadn’t unpacked them when he unpacked everything else. Finding them meant hefting his large suitcase off the closet shelf and discovering that he’d snapped the lock earlier, which meant experimenting with half a dozen combinations before he hit on the right one and clicked it open. Then he had to explore all the little pockets inside the suitcase before he finally found the pills stuck between one of the zippered sections and the frame.
He heard the commotion as he was filling a glass with water from the tap, and as soon as he realized what was happening, he ditched the water and the pills before running outside where Bianca was in full retreat near the pond.
“Stop! Go away!” Bianca was saying as she switched her skirt at one of the swans. It was advancing on her with grunts and hisses, its frenzied wings beating the air. The two of them looked so ridiculous that he might have laughed if he’d thought Bianca would laugh with him. He didn’t think she would, though, so he tactfully concealed his amusement.
Bianca jumped up on the small bench where he’d earlier visited with Eric and unleashed a stream of Italian, which affected the swan not one bit. In fact, if anything, the Italian curses, if that’s what they were, infuriated the swan even more.
Welcoming this chance to be regarded as heroic, Neill grabbed a fallen tree limb and rushed toward the swan, flailing the limb as he ran. Never mind that he looked as ridiculous as Bianca; he would protect her. The swan, in full attack, wove its head back and forth and darted its bill at her, lurching ever closer. Bianca, fresh out of curses, uttered a small “Eep!”
“He’s trying to scare you, that’s all,” Neill shouted.
Bianca shouted back, “Well, he’s doing a fine job of it!”
Neill, brandishing the limb, stom
ped his feet sharply on the ground, and the swan, arrested in full attack, stopped flapping and hissing. It uttered one more guttural grunt before grumpily folding its wings to its side and splashing awkwardly into the shallows of the pond. Once there it swam rapidly away without so much as a blink backward. For the first time, Neill saw the other swan gliding serenely at a safe distance.
Bianca, looking ruffled, hopped down from the bench. “Admit it. You put that awful bird up to this.”
“Torture by swan? I don’t think so.” He had to laugh because the idea was so absurd.
Bianca smoothed her skirt, but he could tell by the way she sucked in her cheeks that she was trying not to laugh along with him. “I know you think I must have done something to provoke an attack, but I didn’t. I was standing and watching the other swan in the water, and suddenly the mean one came thrashing toward me out of the reeds.”
“That was the cob, or male swan. He must have thought you were a threat to his mate, the pen.”
“A pen might be a good idea, but only to put him in,” Bianca said ruefully. Neill chuckled, and after a brief moment, she gave in and laughed, too.
“Thank goodness you came along. I was afraid he was going to start nipping at me with that vicious orange bill of his.”
“How’s your headache?” he asked.
“Worse,” she said.
“I’ll go get the pills and the water,” he told her.
When he returned, Bianca was sitting on the bench looking as demure as Bianca could look, which wasn’t very. Wordlessly Neill held out the glass of water before dropping one white pill into her other outstretched hand.
She gulped the pill down. He fought for a handle on this situation, trying to figure how to build on this little bit of goodwill and gratitude while the two of them were together and alone.
“I didn’t know swans could be so mean. They look so peaceful and happy when they’re swimming,” Bianca said.
“Swans can be nasty. There were two pairs in the park near where my mother used to live when I was a kid. I did a fourth-grade science project about them. I remember that once Eric got too close and they raised their wings and hissed and chased him in typical busking behavior. He was pretty young at the time, and he was terrified.”
“What sets them off?”
He shrugged. “The cob is very protective of the pen. Last week I saw the cob chase a dog that wandered onto the property and barked at the pen. The dog went yelping away, and I never saw him again.”
“Perhaps the swans have a nest nearby. What are the babies called? Chicks?”
“Cygnets. As in the Cygnet Club at the hotel.”
“Of course. I should have known that. Do these swans have names?”
“I don’t know. Any suggestions? We could name them after a famous couple, like Romeo and Juliet. Or Arthur and Guinevere.”
“Did Godzilla have a girlfriend?”
He laughed again, but she was still thinking names. “The pen looks kind of prissy, swimming around in circles and acting so aloof. How about Godzilla and Priscilla?”
“That’ll do. Godzilla and Priscilla they are.”
Bianca stood and handed him the empty glass before turning to go. “Thanks again for the remedy. And the water.”
“Maybe we could get together later,” he said on a note of desperation.
“Caroline’s holding me captive at the bachelorette party. You’ll be a hostage at the bachelor party on that boat out in the middle of the lake. What’s the name of it?”
“The Truelove. Corny, isn’t it?”
“Not really. Anyway, it’s going to be a late enough night as it is. Just be glad you’ll be on a boat having fun with the guys and not in the private dining room being annoyed by Gen. Talk about Godzilla! Well, thanks again.” Bianca shot him a quick and wary smile, then tossed her hair back over her shoulders and set off along the path. There was nothing, Neill thought unhappily, that he could do to keep her.
Unbidden, Nana’s words came back to him. Impress upon her the strength of your ardor.
The advice had a hokey ring to it, but it might be sound. The only trouble was that every time he thought he was making headway with Bianca, something happened. He never seemed to be able to get close to her.
It was time to concentrate on a new approach. He’d have to come up with something if he was to win her over. Time was growing short: only two more days left.
And two more glorious and romantic summer nights, including tonight.
THE TRUELOVE, the sixty-foot yacht that the late, great Swanee Lambert had presented to his wife as a gift in the early 1900s, was rocking with the bachelor party by the time night fell. Neill though chafing to do something, anything, to resolve his doubts about Eric and Bianca, waited patiently for the other attendees to be caught up in the merriment and exhilaration brought about by plenty of expensive Scotch and a prize heavyweight fight on closed-circuit television.
Eric stood alone at the bow railing when Neill approached. In the stern of the boat someone howled like a wolf, and a glass shattered as it fell. The elegant mansions on the bluff provided a stately counterpoint to the high jinks on the Truelove, the golden reflections of their lights rippling among the stars on the lake’s surface.
“Just think,” Eric mused without turning around as Neill joined him. “Tomorrow at this time I’ll be married.” He stared into the clean white waves folding back into the boat’s wake, possibly a little drunk.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Look, Eric—”
“Hey, Neill, maybe I got too hot under the collar this afternoon,” Eric said in a troubled tone. He focused slightly bleary eyes on his brother.
“I came to you for answers, and I didn’t get them,” Neill said.
Eric seemed to be trying to pull himself together. “Neill, I told you. You’re asking the wrong questions of the wrong person.”
“Bianca isn’t exactly forthcoming with information.”
“I can’t break a confidence,” Eric said firmly. “Don’t ask me to do that. Bianca means a lot to me.”
“And the baby?” Neill held his breath. He looked to see if Eric’s knuckles where he gripped the railing turned whiter. They didn’t.
“Why are you asking me about this?” Eric said carefully. The words didn’t slur, but they came close to it.
“I should think it would be obvious.”
“Not to me. Nope, a lot of things are obvious in this very interesting situation, but not to the right people.”
“You’ve always had a stubborn streak. I used to have to apply physical force to get you to cry uncle.”
Eric looked startled and then cracked a wry smile. “Very funny,” he said as if enjoying a private joke.
Uncle. If Tia was Eric’s child, Neill was Tia’s uncle. Neill pretended that he didn’t get it.
“I don’t think any of this is funny. And I don’t expect you to own up to everyone here, much less to Caroline and her family, but if you’re the father of that baby, I want to know.”
“You think I’m the father of Bianca’s child?” Eric looked flabbergasted.
“The thought presented itself. I’m merely considering it.”
“Bianca didn’t—?”
“She said only that the baby is hers. She wouldn’t say who the father is.”
Eric ran a shaky hand through his hair, causing it to spring up in little spikes. “Jeez, Neill, I love Bianca, sure. But there’s never been the slightest bit of romantic interest between us. She’s like a sister, a sweet little sister.” Eric took two steps away from the railing and whirled around. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “I’m about to be married to a woman who isn’t speaking to me at the moment. I’ve spent the past year calming her mother down and convincing her that Bianca and I weren’t up to anything when we disappeared together before the engagement party. And now my own brother is accusing me of bothering a child—I mean fathering a child—with a woman I’ve never even kissed except on the chic. Cheek.�
�� His face contorted in anger.
“I wasn’t accusing. I’m merely asking.” Neill moved closer to Eric, meaning to placate him.
He’d misjudged Eric’s mood, that was for sure, and belatedly he recalled that Eric had never been able to tolerate Scotch. Still, he was stunned when Eric, blundering and intense, grabbed him by the lapels of his blazer.
“I’m not the father of Bianca’s baby,” Eric said.
Neill pushed him away. “Chill out, Eric, I’m sorry I mentioned it,” he said, but Eric, who was waxing red in the face, grabbed his arm. A cuff link went flying, but Neill couldn’t tell at the moment whose it was.
“If you had any sense, Neill, you’d know whose baby it is. And you’d know how Bianca has suffered. But no, you’re too high and mighty, too far above it all to see what’s right in front of your face. Let me tell you, I know how hard it is to decide on the right woman, but I don’t know how much longer I can stand aside and let you ignore the truth.”
Neill tried to shake the belligerent Eric off. “That’s what I’m trying to get, Eric. The truth. Which in this family seems like a mighty scarce commodity.”
“Maybe we need to rough up that smooth veneer of yours,” Eric said as Neill tried to sidestep his brother’s long reach. Eric took a wild jab at him and he ducked.
Neill was outraged. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said, dodging another of his brother’s swings. He was relieved to see Kevin and Joe materialize out of the darkness. As Eric lunged toward him again, Kevin collared Eric and Joe grabbed Neill.
“Take it easy, guys,” Kevin interjected in a conciliatory tone.
“Tell that to my brother,” Neill replied in disgust.
“Yeah, tell that to my brother,” Eric repeated, glaring at him.
“Hey, in the interest of family unity, can’t we all go sit down?” Joe asked plaintively. “Maybe smoke a cigar with your dad?”
Neill, released by Joe, brushed lint off his lapels. He considered his options. He could hit Eric, which might mess up his face for the wedding. He could act as if nothing had happened and smoke a cigar, but he hated cigars. Or he could bug out. It wasn’t hard to make up his mind.
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