Angela's Affair (Pacific Waterfront Romances, #13)

by Vanessa Grant

  A married woman, with a child. Yet he had to go back, perhaps needed to see her with the man she had married. To see—what? Her eyes lit with love for another man? That might be just the thing to kill this ridiculous haunting. He had woken in a heated sweat too many times in the last three weeks, alone in his apartment. Last week, he had called Sheila and taken her to dinner, then back to his apartment, but the dreams hadn’t stopped.

  Thirty-five. Wasn’t that the age for some kind of crisis in a man’s life? Insanity, he suspected, because there was no reason for it. He knew almost nothing about her. She had wild, soft hair and hot green eyes. She sewed things and she did not like to leave a job unfinished. She did not hesitate to speak her mind. She walked as if she did not know what the swing of her hips did to a man. She wore a wedding ring.

  Her eyes turned tender when she looked at the boy.

  It would make as much sense for him to be obsessed by a picture of a woman in a magazine. If he wanted an affair, why not pick a woman closer, in Vancouver or on the North Shore, a woman without a husband. A woman who was interested, because even if he wanted her, Angela Dalton was the kind of woman who would be loyal to her husband forever, and damn it, he was not a man who went after other men’s wives! Never!

  At the Port Townsend airport, he found that the rental car Patricia had ordered was not available. He took a taxi to the agency and even there had to wait another thirty minutes for a car. He spent the time going over the pro forma statements his accountant had delivered to the office earlier. When he finally got the car, it was the Chevette again. Next time he would drive down, bring the Chrysler and...

  Next time?

  Dalton Welding and Canvas was in the midst of a chaotic flurry of activity. The giant framework of one of those motorized boat-lifting devices loomed outside the front door. There was no way he could get through the press of people and machinery, so Kent sat in the car and watched as the Travelift drove up to the boat, its blue arms sliding along either side. Three men worked with the straps that hung from those big arms, slipping them under the green sailboat that was blocked up just outside the door.

  Once the slings were in place, the Travelift’s motor roared and the slings came tight under the belly of the sailboat, taking its weight. Then the men pulled the wooden blocks away from under the boat and Kent got out of the rental car.

  The man standing under the bow of the boat looked like a younger edition of Harvey Dalton. Brown hair, thick arms and muscular shoulders, brown eyes when he turned to stare at Kent. Perhaps thirty years old.

  My son Barney, Harvey had said. A good boy. So this was her husband. Kent remembered the feel of her wrist under his grasp, the sharp desire he had felt to have her in his arms, at the mercy of his touch, his lips, his body. He remembered, too, the sick feeling in his gut when he saw that gold band around her finger.

  Barney moved toward Kent, smiling wryly at all the chaos around him. “This’ll be clear in five minutes. What can I do for you?” His eyes took in Kent’s suit and he asked, “Have you come about the lease?”

  “No. I’m looking for Harvey Dalton. Is he around?”

  Barney pointed to a door halfway along the building. “He’s in the shop, welding.”

  Kent felt a bad taste in his mouth. No point in pretending. He had come for Angela, but staring at Barney, he knew it was impossible. He felt guilty, as if the betrayal had been real, not fantasized in dreams.

  Jake was sitting on the floor with Angela’s oldest scissors in his hands, cutting up a storm with her scraps. “Aunt Angie, how long do mothers stay in the hospital?”

  “A few days,” answered Angela absently. She was sewing an order for a dozen fisherman’s shirts. Three smalls. Six mediums. Three larges. Assorted colors of trim.

  Jake snipped his way through a small green piece of Herculite. “Are babies always so small?”

  “Always,” she agreed, grinning as she stretched the red trim along the neckline and snapped the pressure foot down. “She’ll grow bigger, though.”

  “But our new baby’s got no hair. She’s not supposed to be bald.”

  Angela tried not to laugh. “Don’t worry, the hair will come.” She pressed the foot pedal, and the surger hummed and performed its complex stitch.

  The noise from the shop flowed in briefly as someone opened the connecting door. She glanced back, but it was only Harvey, not a customer. She pushed the foot lever to raise the pressure foot, pulled the fabric around and lined up the last of the red trim, then lowered the foot again.

  Jake probed curiously, “My daddy says it takes a mummy and a daddy to make a baby.”

  “That’s right,” she agreed absently.

  “So why didn’t you and Uncle Ben have babies, too?”

  “Jake!” Harvey’s voice snapped across the shop.

  Angela bit her lip and stared at the fabric.

  Jake frowned. “Was it because Uncle Ben died that you didn’t have babies? Because there wasn’t time?”

  Angela could hear Harvey’s indrawn breath behind her, although it didn’t sound like Harvey at all.

  Jake stared up at Harvey with his brown eyes widening. Uneasy, Angela twisted around just as Jake asked, “You’re the man my Aunt Angie doesn’t like, aren’t you?”

  Oh, lord! Kent Ferguson. Why had he come back? She stared at him, saw his blue eyes glaring back at her. She got up abruptly, leaving the shirt in the sewing machine.

  “Hello.” She gulped and focused on Harvey, Jake’s words echoing in her ears. “I’m going to see if Barney’s ready to come down and help me with that estimate.”

  She grabbed the canvas bag that held her measuring tape and notebook, rushed toward the shop door, avoiding those accusing blue eyes. Damn! She didn’t have to like the man, did she? When he didn’t move out of her way, she swerved, dodged around Harvey and yanked open the door, muttering, “Dad, you’ll stick around and keep an eye on Jake and the phone while we’re gone?”

  The telephone rang just as Angela got through the door, but she kept going. Harvey would have to answer it. There was no way she was going back into that shop while he was there. She spotted Barney just disappearing through the workshop door.

  “Hey, Barney! I need you to come down to that power boat.”

  “The guy from Alaska? I—”

  “Barney! We told him today!” She rammed her hands into the pockets of her slacks.

  He grimaced and grumbled, “Well, okay, but give me an hour to—“

  “Barney!” She did not want to go back inside. “Barney, that man’s inside—Charlotte’s brother. I—I really don’t want to be around. I don’t like him.” As Jake had so bluntly announced! “If we go now, he’ll be gone by the time we’re back.”

  Barney sighed. “What does he want?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. Just come, would you! Please!”

  They spent an hour with the Alaskan couple, Angela making notes of the skipper’s complex requirements while Barney figured out the structural problem. Barney would make the stainless steel bows to support the fabric walls and plastic windows Angela would sew. They worked together on estimates, often arguing with each other about what was best. Usually, the outcome of their arguments was a tight, attractive canopy or dodger. In this case, the customer wanted a complete canvas enclosure for his flying bridge, but he wanted so many openings in it that Barney had to protest.

  “You can’t have everything open like that, not unless you’re willing to have me put an extra bow here.”

  Angela added, “You see, if everything opens, there’s nothing left to hold the fabric tight.”

  “But we need a window back there.” The skipper, a big muscular man, had a habit of dropping his hand onto his tiny wife’s neck, his fingers curved around to collar her. The gesture irritated Angela, although the wife seemed as indifferent to it as she was to the enclosure they were discussing.

  Angela suggested, “You can have a window without it actually opening,” and they finall
y worked out a plan for the enclosure that was agreeable to everyone. Angela glanced at her watch. It was almost time for the shop to close. If they were delayed a few more minutes, she could go straight home, avoiding Kent Ferguson.

  He wouldn’t be there anyway. He would be gone, back to his empire in Canada. Good, she told herself, forcing her mind onto the big Alaskan skipper and his tiny wife. She did not care why he had come, so long as he was gone.

  “Look,” she suggested, “why don’t we take a walk around the docks? I’ll show you a Sunbrella dodger. It’s about four years old. You’ll see how well it stands up.”

  Barney shifted restlessly. “You do that with them, Angie, and I’ll go on up to the hospital to visit Sally.”

  They walked around the floats, Angela leading the way, the skipper guiding his wife with that hand around the back of her neck. By the time they had looked at several different boats, it was after six.

  Barney had taken his truck, so Angela walked back to the shop, stopping as she turned the corner, making sure Kent Ferguson’s rented Chevette was gone. It was, and the van was still there, so Harvey hadn’t left yet. They would drive back to the house, taking Jake with them. She’d make supper for the three of them, and by then she would have stopped feeling that imbalance that the Canadian man seemed to bring into her life. No wonder Charlotte had trouble dealing with him. Kent Ferguson was upsetting, just standing there staring at her he made her feel uneasy.

  She got to the shop, but found it locked. Damn! Where had Harvey gone at this time of day, without the van? The workshop door was locked, too. The whole place was dark, the “Closed” sign in the window, and the van sitting there. Harvey must have left it for her and gone home with Jake, perhaps catching a ride with a customer. The only problem was that her keys were locked inside with her driver’s license and wallet.

  Barney up at the hospital, Harvey at home. She looked into the van, but he hadn’t left the keys in the ignition. Oh, well, she would just have to walk.

  She told herself the exercise was good for her, and after a few blocks she started feeling calmer. This was what she needed, walking alone, looking out over the waters of Puget Sound as she climbed the big hill up toward the post office.

  A car pulled up beside her just as she was passing the old stone building that housed the post office. “Angie! Hop in, I’ll give you a ride.”

  It was Charles, the young chiropractor she had dated last year. He was smiling, pushing the door of his sports car open for her.

  It would mean fending off a date with Charles, but her legs were starting to cramp after climbing that hill. She slipped into the leather seat, shut the door and felt the car moving smoothly away.

  Charles glanced at her, then back at the road ahead as he turned left. “What have you been doing lately, Angie?”

  “Not enough,” she said wryly. “I’m wiped out, just climbing that hill. I’d better get more exercise.”

  “How about Sunday?” he offered, “We could hike out the beach to Point Wilson.”

  “I don’t think so.” She should have kept walking. Charles was good company, but what he wanted was marriage and a family.

  Not that she wouldn’t like that, too. With the right man. But if she ever got married again, it would be to a man who wanted the same life style she did. Charles wasn’t that man. He had ambitions to buy a practice in Seattle and she knew she was not a city girl, any more than she had been a wandering girl, which was what Ben had wanted.

  She had loved Ben, a hot, tempestuous emotion that was too unsettling for her own good. She’d rushed into marriage, eloping when her parents refused their consent. Looking back, she knew her parents had been right to try to stop her. She had been too young, too naive to see Ben for the irresponsible and erratic person he had been.

  In the beginning it had been all magic, Angela dreaming her dreams, not knowing they weren’t Ben’s dreams. Always moving, never staying long enough to gather roots. At first it was exciting, but she came to dread the next move, losing friends she hardly had time to make, always heading for the next construction job, the next town, from state to state across the country, living in a trailer that was the only permanence in their life.

  Ben hadn’t wanted a family. That had been Angela’s dream. When she finally became pregnant after five years of their footloose, wandering marriage, she learned just how serious Ben was about not wanting to share his life with children.

  She shivered, remembering that horrible day when she had found herself alone on the other side of the continent. Then she felt the blast of heat and realized that Charles had turned the heater on, making the sports car unbearably stuffy. He was talking and she nodded, not wanting to tell him that she hadn’t heard a word he said.

  “I’ll pick you up in half an hour, then, shall I?”

  “What?” She’d better pay attention, or she’d end up married to Charles. She could have agreed to anything just now. He turned into her driveway and she protested, “I don’t know if I feel up to going out tonight, Charles.”

  “You’d enjoy it.” She had forgotten how his voice could be so gently persuasive. “You love theater, and the play is supposed to be very funny. One of my patients was saying today that she and her husband went, and they laughed themselves silly.”

  Someone had parked a red Chevette in Harvey’s driveway.

  Kent Ferguson.

  Harvey was so open-handed, he’d probably invited him to stay the night. Oh, lord! A whole evening of that man, staring at her. She hated the way he always seemed to be watching her. It made her nervous, and now, after Jake’s outrageous statement that Angela didn’t like him, it would be even worse.

  Charles was still talking. She remembered now that his habit of gently talking until he got his own way was what had made her stop seeing him last year. She had been afraid that one day she might nod agreement at the wrong moment and end up married to Charles. Then she would spend the rest of her life in a three-bedroom condominium in Seattle, living with a very nice, slightly boring man.

  But an evening with Kent Ferguson staring at her...

  “All right,” she agreed abruptly. “Yes, Charles, I’ll go to the play with you. An hour, you said? I’ll be ready.”

  She heard Kent Ferguson’s voice as soon as she opened the door. It was almost the opposite of Charles’ voice. Forceful, determined. He didn’t do a lot of gentle persuasion. He just rode roughshod over everyone else’s wishes. She hung her canvas bag up in the closet and followed the voices. She may as well get this meeting over with as soon as she could.

  Jake was sitting in front of the television set with earphones on. Angela glanced at the screen and saw that he was playing the videotape of Cinderella again. He must have every line of dialogue memorized by now. Kent was sitting in the big easy chair that Harvey usually took for himself, while Harvey perched on the sofa across from him, leaned forward, his face showing excitement.

  Just what was going on?

  Kent was saying, “...at dawn. You should be there by nine. She’s at the Sheraton.”

  Angela moved into the room. “Are you talking about Charlotte?”

  Kent’s body jerked. She hated the way he watched her all the time, but irrationally it bothered her now that he would not look at her.

  Deliberately, she demanded, “How’s Charlotte’s boat?”

  “Still floating.” He shrugged. She wondered who did his laundry. The shirt he was wearing now was a subtle shade of off-white, the collar pressed to perfection. His hand was lying on his knee, the perfect trouser crease sharp underneath his tapping finger.

  “Where?” she persisted.

  “Tied up at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club.”

  “Sounds a bit stuffy for Charlotte.” It suited him, though. Nothing but the best, the most expensive. His women would be expensive, too, immaculate and polite and...willing.

  Harvey said, “She’s in San Francisco, Angie. Kent’s going to take me down there in his plane in the morning.”
>
  “Does Charlotte know?” She could see from their faces that she didn’t. “You’re just going to burst in on her? Without warning?”

  “I’ve got to talk to her, honey.”

  She nodded, knowing Harvey would not rest until Charlotte told him no to his face. But why was this man helping? As much as she liked Charlotte, Angela had had time to think since the older woman’s disappearance. It was quite possible that Charlotte had done the best thing for both herself and Harvey, running away. Harvey wanted to marry her, and Charlotte didn’t think it would work. Angela wasn’t sure it would work, either. What really bothered her was why Kent Ferguson should go out of his way to be a matchmaker. It seemed totally out of character.

  “Could you pack for me?” Harvey asked.

  “Gladly. I’ll do it now. By the way, Barney’s gone to the hospital.”

  “I figured. Do you think he’ll stay up there through dinner again?”

  “Probably. He’ll come pick Jake up when he’s done.”

  Kent Ferguson was listening to every word. She knew why. She could feel his awareness of her, could almost hear his voice telling her why he had really come into her house. Because he had heard Jake’s words, and he knew now that she was not married.

  Harvey stood up and prowled to the window. “Kent’s staying here for the night. I thought he could have the room across from yours.”

  Angela knew when Kent turned. She was not looking at him, but she felt his eyes on her face and knew she was flushing. The room across from yours.

  “I’ll make up the bed.” She turned away, glad of one more excuse to escape them. “And I’ll pack your bag, Dad. The gray suit? You can wear the brown, and I’ll pack the gray. You’ll have to get supper for yourselves tonight, though. I’m going out with Charles.”

  “Charles?” Harvey had always liked Charles. He smiled and offered, “Look, Angie, you go ahead and get ready. I’ll pack for myself.”

  “There’s time.” After she made the bed and packed for Harvey, she would have just enough time to get ready. That was how she wanted it. She did not want to come back down here and sit trying to pretend she didn’t feel uneasy.