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

by Vanessa Grant

“I got that, but what are you going to—” She stopped abruptly, said tightly, “Just be careful, will you. I don’t want either of you hurt.”

  Angela tried to look away from Kent’s eyes, couldn’t. Charlotte said, “I’ll take coffee up to Harvey.”

  When she was gone, Angela shivered and stared into her coffee. “I don’t want to be hurt either.”

  Kent said, “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you,” which proved he did not really know the full effect he had on her. Then he said huskily, “I want to kiss you good morning, but I’m not sure I’d be able to control what happened next.”

  She thought of last night, Kent groaning her name and taking her body with wild need. And that other time, in the living room of this house, when a fleeting touch, a kiss, had somehow burst into passion.

  He picked up his cup, put it down again and said unsteadily, “I see you know what I mean.”

  She needed time to get her balance. She had to find the strength to do this thing right. He must never know that it was not just passion and liking. It was loving, the kind of need and desire that went forever. She wanted Vancouver next weekend, and she wanted the days between. Everything. His problems, his frowns...his babies. She had been crazy thinking it mattered where a man lived, how much money he had. Somehow she would manage, so long as...

  The horrible thing was that she kept remembering his saying they could get married. Not love, he hadn’t said a word about love. He’d made the offer after he pressured her into telling him about Ben and the baby, and he’d felt somehow responsible for her pain then. Natural, because he was the man who looked after everyone else’s problems. His mother in the big house. Charlotte, strewing problems around like a dog shaking water after a swim.

  The moment had passed and the offer was gone. A good thing, because it would be a disaster when she felt like this. She might be insane enough to agree, even though he didn’t love her. Didn’t she knew enough to learn from her one disastrous marriage?

  Harvey came down in his bathrobe, carrying his coffee and holding Charlotte’s hand. Charlotte looked quiet and happy.

  In the end, Angela made breakfast while Kent set the table and Charlotte and Harvey discussed turning the two back bedrooms upstairs into a big sunroom with a patio. Harvey thought they might as well, because why would they ever need five bedrooms. Angela thought she would move into the carriage house soon, because they should have the freedom of their own house.

  Barney and Sally arrived with Jake and Wendy. Everyone ended up in the big kitchen, with coffee and the remnants of breakfast, Wendy fussing gently in Angela’s arms and Jake asking Kent endless questions about Canada and the Mounties.

  Sally made an exasperated sound, said to Kent, “He thinks the Mounties are the greatest thing ever since he saw that movie last week.”

  Kent did not seem to mind. He looked bemused and a bit overwhelmed by this noisy confusion, but he answered Jake’s questions patiently while Barney and Harvey argued about Barney’s design of a sailboat pulpit and Sally announced that Wendy was sleeping through her two o’clock feeding now.

  The men eventually adjourned to the living room, leaving the women with the mess. “You notice, Jake went with them,” Angela pointed out to Sally.

  “Oh, yes. My son’s turning into a real little chauvinist.” Sally sounded proud rather than irritated and Angela laughed.

  All day she was aware of Kent. Through the talking and the preparations for a late lunch, through taking Wendy upstairs to change her diaper and sitting on the living room floor playing marbles with Jake. They hardly said a word to each other, but she noticed when he played a game of chess with Barney. Then, later, he went out to look at the old gas barbecue with Harvey. Jake went with him, holding his hand rather fiercely.

  Charlotte was standing beside Angela as Jake and Kent walked through the patio doors together. She said oddly, “He’s part of the family. Just like that. All these years I’ve felt like he was a stranger.”

  Angela turned to her and saw unshed tears in Charlotte’s eyes. If Kent wove his way into every part of Angela’s life, what would there be for her when it was over?

  He left in the late afternoon, saying goodbye to them all, then catching Angela’s hand and demanding, “Come with me to my car.”

  It was not going to be a secret from her family, this affair with Kent. She went with him. Outside, on the veranda, he took her in his arms and with one kiss he turned the memories to flames. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, his neck, her fingers though his hair, holding him closer.

  When he released her, they were both trembling.

  “That’s how I’ll dream of you,” he said. “Looking like this.”

  She stared up at him, wanting to pull him back into her arms, but seeing his eyes changing from heat to something that was almost ice. His mouth hardened into a straight line and he said, “I’ll pick you up on Friday at six,” and she wondered what made him look so grim as he turned away from her.

  There was an uncomfortable silence in the house when she went back. She knew what they were thinking. Angela going away for a weekend with a man. She had never done that before.

  Jake was the only one who said anything, though. He was on the floor with a book of pictures open in front of him. He looked up when the others fell silent. “I guess you got over not liking Kent, didn’t you, Aunt Angie? Can I come with you to see the Mounties?”

  On Tuesday Barney told her she was crazy.

  “What do you think he wants of you?” he demanded angrily, pacing back and forth in front of her cutting table. “Where do you think it can lead?”

  Nowhere.

  Barney banged the cutting table with his fist. “Angie, have some sense! He’s a money man. He’s rich, for crying out loud, and he lives in a different world than you do! The only place it’s going to go is straight into his bed.”

  She swallowed and stared at the window material on her table. Had she cut that window out backwards? She tried to figure it out, but her mind got lost in mentally turning the piece over, matching it to the fabric.

  “Angie!”

  “Don’t shout at me, Barney.” She dropped her scissors and met his eyes. “It’s too late. We’re having an affair and...and that’s the way it is.”

  He thumped the table again. “Are you crazy?”

  “Barney, I don’t need big brother protection.” She could feel the sick knowledge inside that Barney’s warning was probably every bit as valid as back when he’d tried to keep her away from Ben.

  “You need something! He’s going to hurt you, Angie!”

  Of course he was right. “I thought you liked him.”

  “He’s going to eat you alive. What do you think you’re going to get out of this? He might offer to keep you in an apartment somewhere, but you can be bloody sure he’s not taking you to meet his mother.”

  “His grandmother,” she corrected automatically. “Charlotte’s his mother. And Charlotte married your dad.” If she had grabbed when he suggested they could get married, she would have met his mother, seen the big house he grew up in. But she would always know she’d trapped him. It would not work without loving.

  Barney said, “Charlotte’s a misfit anyway, a fifty-one-year-old who hasn’t ever quite grown up. Do you think he’s going to marry you? A canvas worker?”

  “Barney, please stop.” She grabbed the scissors to stop her hands trembling, gritted her teeth and said rigidly, “It was too late the first time I saw him. So don’t make it any harder for me—please.”

  A customer came in at that moment, carrying a black, oily hunk of metal, frowning and muttering, “Can you get this slug out for me? Without disturbing the other one?”

  Barney and the customer went into the back to wrestle with the problem and Angela cut out a new windshield for the dodger she was making, this time getting it the right way around. Her pile of scraps was getting monstrous and she was only two days into the week. She’d be making sheet bags for weeks out of the
remnants if she didn’t smarten up and get her mind on her job.

  On Wednesday a store in Bellingham called and asked if she had a catalogue for her Sailing Rags. She said she was putting one together, and the buyer asked for an assortment of the clothes. “A variety of sizes, colors,” the woman said. “Let’s say two dozen pieces. Do you have slacks that match those shirts? Good. And put us down for a copy of that catalogue when it’s ready. Two copies, and I’ll send one on to our store in Portland.”

  Angela packed Thursday night. She would take her bag to work with her on Friday. Six, Kent had said, and she needed every minute until then to work on cutting out the garments for the new order. After packing she went over to Barney’s, because Sally had asked her to come, but what Sally really wanted was to be sure that Angela had herself on some kind of birth control.

  Harvey did not say anything, but Angela sensed he also was unhappy about her weekend away. He was more of a father to her than the man who lived in England. It hurt her that he was worried, that she was the cause. She didn’t know what to say to him and found herself avoiding being alone with him.

  On Friday, Charlotte drove to the shop in the middle of the morning and asked Angela to come to lunch with her. Angela was in the middle of the last series of cuttings.

  “I can’t, Charlotte. I’ve got to get this done. I want to have at least the small shirts done today. I promised that order would go out next Thursday.”

  Charlotte circled the cutting table uneasily. “Can I help?”

  Angela had an idea that Charlotte at a sewing machine would be a disaster. Her new mother-in-law tended to do most things with more energy than care. “No, I’ve got to do it myself.” She cut the last pair of large pants, stuck a label on the bundle with a piece of masking tape. Pants. Large. Women’s. “What about Monday,” she suggested to Charlotte.

  “Monday?”

  “Lunch. You wanted to go to lunch.” She was the one who was going nuts, simultaneously dreading and yearning for six o’clock. “We could go to lunch on Monday.”

  Charlotte picked up a scrap of material, folded it in half, then folded it again. “Angie, this thing with Kent...”

  If one more person told her she was making a mistake, she was going to start screaming and throwing things. She looked at Charlotte, knew that she could not scream at her. You could scram at Barney, but Charlotte was somehow too fragile.

  “Angela, don’t...don’t play with him, will you?”

  She gasped. “What?”

  “I mean, he’s not a Charles or a Saul. You go out with them and all along you know it’s not going anywhere. If they get too close you shut them off.” Charlotte was talking quickly, avoiding Angela’s eyes. “You won’t do that with Kent, will you? He’s—You see, he isn’t a person who’s ever been able to take things lightly.”

  Charlotte was afraid she would hurt Kent. Charlotte who had been telling her only a week ago that Kent was cold. It would have been funny, except Angela felt more like crying.

  He came at five minutes to six, driving his Chrysler. Everyone was there, Barney and Harvey and Jake. Even Sally had just happened to stop by, on her way back from the supermarket with Wendy.

  Kent shook hands with Harvey, nodded to Barney who frowned back at him. He kissed Charlotte on the cheek and said hello to Sally as he touched the baby’s head lightly. He ended up standing beside Angela’s machine. She pulled out the pair of slacks she was sewing and snapped the thread.

  “Are you ready?” Not hello, or something about how nice she looked, just that gruff question.

  She nodded, switched the machine off and folded the half-finished pants on top of a stack of cut-out clothing. Her overnight bag was under the counter that held the coffee. She got it and he took it out of her hand. Everyone was standing there, watching, and she didn’t know what to say to them all. One way or another, they all disapproved, except Jake.

  She went to her nephew, promised, “I’ll bring you back a postcard of a Mountie.”

  Kent stood behind her, not touching her. She wished he would take her arm or her hand, or even smile. It would give her the courage to think of something to say to them all.

  Sally said, “Enjoy yourself,” then flushed a deep red when she realized the implications of telling Angela to have fun on a weekend away with a man.

  Angela said abruptly, “I’ll see you all Sunday night.” Kent was holding the door and she went out quickly.

  He was not looking particularly happy either. Maybe he had decided this was a bad idea, too, although she would have thought he could have called with some excuse, a sudden business meeting or an attack of appendicitis.

  Inside his car, she did not know where to look. She could feel him beside her, could see him out of the corner of her eye when she stared through the window. He drove silently to the intersection, turned and headed the Chrysler toward the ferry terminal.

  She said brightly, “You brought your car. I thought you might have come in the jet.”

  He shifted lanes and turned off into the ferry terminal. There were three cars ahead of him at the tollbooth. He said grimly, “The Lear is having its hundred hour maintenance.” After a minute of uncomfortable silence, he added, “It should be out of the hangar tomorrow. You can go back that way on Sunday if you want.”

  Sunday. Forty-eight hours. She stared at her hands lying inert on her slacks. She had wanted to go shopping this week, to find something elegant and irresistible to wear for him, but there had been no time. Instead, she had raided her cupboard last night for the best she could find to wear to work. She couldn’t wear a skirt, not when she would be crawling all over cutting tables. So she had worn rust-colored slacks that were cut elegantly enough for a dinner out, and a matching jacket over a peach-colored silk blouse.

  Maybe he would have preferred her in a skirt. Or perhaps after a week to think it over, he was wondering why he had been insane enough to invite her for a whole weekend.

  Forty-eight hours, and already they had nothing to say. She picked up the road map on the seat between them and stared at the colored lines, forcing herself to figure out the maze of border crossings and wonder if he would go north on I5. As if it mattered which highway he took.

  When their turn came at the tollbooth, he had his wallet out and ready. She watched him putting the change back in, the green American bills along with the brightly colored Canadian money. They didn’t even live in the same country. Different money. Different political systems. Different lives. He made money and she made clothes and did canvas work for boats. He wore a three piece suit to work and she didn’t even own an evening gown, hadn’t been to a social event where she would need one since the summer she was sixteen when her parents had taken her with them to San Francisco.

  He pulled into the lane the toll attendant directed him to. The ferry hadn’t arrived yet. She supposed it would be about half an hour before the next one came. Thirty minutes in silence, in a car with a stranger. That was almost as long as forever.

  He turned toward her, his eyes somber and his lips that thin line. “I take it no one back there approves of your going away with me this weekend?”

  She shrugged and pleated the crease of her slacks with her thumb and forefinger. “Barney thinks you’re up to no good with me, and Harvey’s worried. But Charlotte thinks I’m the one who’s up to no good with you.” Her voice sounded as nervous as she felt. Twenty-nine years old, and she didn’t know how to make small talk in a situation like this. An affair, and she had no idea how to handle any of it.

  “What about you?” He was looking for the answer in her face. “Do you want to back out?”

  She swallowed. “Do you?”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  She dropped her eyes from his. “So am I.”

  “Despite the opposition?” She nodded. “I’m glad,” he said softly. She looked and found his eyes had lost the coolness.

  “It must have been awkward for you back there,”
she said.

  “They were all surrounding you like a protective army.” He touched her nose, stroked his finger along the short slope. “I thought I might have to fight for you.”

  “Barney might have been willing,” she said wryly. “He’s always been willing to come to blows for me.”

  “He probably broke their noses,” murmured Kent. “I thought about that too. If he was willing to get a broken nose to protect you from his own brother, I figured I could be in for trouble.”

  She laughed, but knew that he was not about to come to blows for her. A minute ago she could have told him she had second thoughts and he would have driven her back to the family who wanted to protect her.

  She knew it was all supposed to be a joke when he said, “I figured that with Barney’s muscles, I’d probably come out of the battle the worse. It’s just as well it didn’t come to fighting to get you away, because you might not find me so attractive with a broken nose.”

  “You’d get blood all over your car.”

  He laughed, then he took something wrapped in tissue out of his breast pocket. “I was going to give these to you later, in suitably romantic surroundings, but—”

  She stared at the tiny scraps of gold lying in tissue in his hand. Earrings. He had said he wanted to see bits of gold dangling against her throat.

  She touched the tiny golden seagulls. “They’re beautiful.”

  He cleared his throat. “Will you wear them?”

  “Yes.” It was only a whisper. Could she ever say no to him, about anything? She fumbled with the fasteners for the hoops in her ears and took them off. “Will you put them in for me?” she asked, afraid that her own hands would be shaking too much.

  He swallowed and she had the strangest feeling that he was afraid. Of what? He put the tissue down on the seat between them, picked up one of the tiny charms hanging from a golden stud, said, “I’ve never done this before. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  I love you. She almost said it. Her lips were parted and she could feel tears behind her eyes. “Just...just put the post through the little hole in my ear,” she whispered. “It won’t hurt if you’re gentle with it.”