Doing the best she could with what was at hand—plums and a couple of ripe pears from the trees out back, cheddar cheese, watercress from the creek running along the edge of the property, and the biscuits she’d had the foresight to bake—she piled everything on the rickety wooden tea trolley her grandfather had made years before, and trundled the lot outside.
Liam lounged on the porch swing, idly fondling Bounder’s ears, but did the gentlemanly thing when she appeared. “Here,” he said, grabbing his cane and levering himself to his feet, “let me give you a hand.”
“It’s not necessary, really.”
“Don’t spoil my one moment of gallantry, Jane. It’s been a long time since I was in a position to be the one offering to help someone else.”
“Heaven forfend I should deny you, then! Take a plate and dig in.” The careless little laugh she’d intended emerged as painfully self-conscious as a teenager’s giggle. Get a grip, Jane! she ordered sternly.
“Considering you weren’t expecting company, you’ve put on quite a spread,” he said, sampling one of the biscuits. “I haven’t tasted anything as good as this since I was a kid.”
“Your ex-wife didn’t like baking?”
“My ex-wife wouldn’t know one end of a rolling pin from the other. The only time I ever saw her use an oven was to heat up something that she’d bought ready-made at the nearest deli. My grandmother, on the other hand, lived to cook. The way she saw it, if a boy wasn’t permanently hungry, he was coming down with something. If she were alive now, she’d be stuffing me with food from morning to night in the fixed belief that fattening me up would perform miracles with my leg.”
No mention of a mother or father, she noticed, but she daren’t ask him about them for fear of spoiling the mood.
Instead, she said easily, “My grandmother’s the one who taught me to enjoy cooking. I baked my first loaf of bread here when I was about seven. I suspect it turned out hard as a brick, but I remember my grandfather chewing his way through it and praising every mouthful.”
And so the afternoon slipped past unnoticed, the way time does when two people start exchanging tidbits of personal history to expose the make-up of their separate identities. He’d grown up in Metchosin, on southern Vancouver Island, she learned, and spent his early boyhood roaming the nearby coast and countryside. He’d been something of a loner, had been hauled up before the school principal for skipping classes when he was ten.
“Couldn’t see the point of spending the day in a stuffy classroom, when the sun was shining outside and there were trails to explore and fish to be caught,” he said.
But he loved to read and play piano. “No TV at my grandmother’s house. She didn’t believe in it—was convinced it was a way for space aliens to spy on people. So I had to find other ways to keep myself entertained on long winter evenings, at least until I got to high school and team sports took up all my spare time.”
She listened to him, enthralled by the play of expression on his face, the snippets of information that made up his past.
“Never did plan on getting married,” he said at one point. “It just didn’t fit in with the overall scheme of things. Should have listened to my instincts, instead of my hormones.”
“Probably,” she said, unnerved by the chill of disappointment his remark induced. What did she care about his views on marriage? It wasn’t as if she had any interest in dragging him to the altar.
The conviction which would once have sustained the thought just wasn’t there anymore, though. A kind of aching had taken its place; a pang of something horribly akin to desire, not simply for someone with whom to share her life but, appallingly, for this particular man, faults and all.
It’s because he’s here and I’ve got no one else for company, she rationalized. If we’d met in the city, he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd.
But he would. She didn’t need him to draw pictures of his romantic past. His marriage might have failed, but he didn’t lack for female companionship. What woman could remain immune to that direct blue-green stare of his, that rare, disarming smile?
“This is about as good as it gets,” he remarked at one point, cradling his head in his hands and staring out at the brilliant afternoon. “Perfect weather, great view, good food, good company—for once, I’m content with what I’ve got.”
I’m not! The thought swam into her mind with shocking clarity, and another right behind it. I want more. I want to live again, to feel!
Abruptly, he turned his head and pinned her in a gaze that missed nothing. “I’m doing all the talking. What about you, Jane? Is this place working the magic you’d hoped for?”
CHAPTER SIX
SHE smoothed her thumb over the fingers of her other hand. “I’d say so, yes. I’m ready to move forward with my life.”
“What about children? I take it there aren’t any?”
“No,” she said. “We discussed the possibility but because of Derek’s illness, we decided against it. Later, as his condition deteriorated, I was glad there was no one else needing my attention and I could make him the focus of my life.”
“What about now? You ever regret that decision?”
Blindly, she tried to spin her thoughts back, to the memory of Derek; to recall every feature of his dear face, the love in his eyes, his last whispered words to her—anything to eclipse the outrageous thoughts suddenly filling her mind.
But Derek was part of the past, a fading ghost. He was—God help her, it hurt to admit it but there was no denying the truth!—he was not relevant to today and he played no part in tomorrow.
Liam, however…oh, Liam was vibrant and dynamic and here! He made her sparkle inside; made her want to grab hold of life with both hands, and reach out to a future she’d never envisioned.
Sighing, she scrambled to collect herself. She could never admit to him the thoughts she entertained, or tell him how desperately she longed for a baby. He’d misunderstand, just as he would if she told him how his coming to her the way he had that day had sent her heart soaring. “Children were never really an option. I knew that and I accepted it.”
At least it wasn’t an outright lie. But that hadn’t stopped her yearning. And now, because of this vital, charismatic man, the longing rose up again. She saw them so clearly she could have drawn their pictures: a daughter with Liam’s aquamarine eyes, a son tall and strong like his father…!
“What about you?” Desperate to divert the curiosity in his gaze, she turned the question back on him. “Do you and your ex-wife have children?”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t an option for us, either, though for different reasons. My work took me away too much and she wasn’t interested in raising a family. Reason enough to make sure you don’t start one, as far as I’m concerned. Kids deserve to be wanted by both parents—and I should know.”
Even if his words hadn’t signaled that the conversation had touched a nerve, the sudden vehemence in his voice did. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to rake up unpleasant—”
“You weren’t to know.” Scowling, he fixed his attention on some spot far out to sea. “It’s not something I talk about as a rule but since the subject’s come up, you might as well know. I was one of those one-nightstand products, a baby no one planned, with a guy whose name my mother didn’t even know. She ditched me as soon as I was born and left my grandmother to raise me.”
“Oh, Liam!”
“Stop feeling sorry for me,” he said harshly. “I was luckier than a lot of other kids who don’t have anyone else to pick up the unwanted pieces. My grandmother died when I was nineteen, but by then I’d finished the first year of my engineering degree and done well enough to qualify for scholarships to see me through the rest of university. My mother might not have thought I was worth a second thought, but my grandmother knew better. She went to her grave a proud and contented woman.”
“And your mother—did she ever…have you never…?”
“Never,” he said flatly. �
�I’m not interested in knowing anything more about her than I already do, which is that she’s a cheap, heartless bitch who thought nothing of dumping a two-day-old baby on someone else’s doorstep.” He grimaced. “Maybe that’s the kind of woman I deserve. At least, that’s the pattern I see emerging when I look back on my marriage.”
Jane had no recollection of getting up from the Adirondack chair, no knowledge at all of how she came to be next to him on the porch swing, stroking his face and whispering urgently, “You’re wrong, Liam. You deserve much better than that. You’re a good man, a wonderful man. Your mother missed out on the best thing that ever happened to her when she gave you up. As for your wife, she must be mad to have left you for someone else.”
His hand came up and covered hers. “Careful, Janie,” he warned, his fingers so warm and supple that it was all she could do not to curl her own around them and bring them to her mouth and kiss them. “Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me you like me.”
I could love you!
Quickly, before the thought took shape in words, she pulled away from him. “Let’s not get carried away just because we’ve managed to spend a couple of hours together without it turning into a free-for-all!”
“You’re right.” He picked up his cane and got up from the swing. “Better not push our luck, I guess. Thanks for lunch.”
Wishing she’d kept her mouth shut, or if she had to speak that it could have been something to touch his heart the way he so easily touched hers, she stood up, also, and tucked her top into the waistband of her shorts. “I’ll walk with you to the back path.”
“Stay put and enjoy what’s left of the afternoon. I made it over here under my own steam. I can make it back again.”
“It’s no bother. I have to bring in the laundry anyway.”
“Suit yourself.”
If I were to suit myself, I’d find a way to make you want to stay….
She turned her face away before he read the wanting in her eyes, and led the way through the house and out to the patch of lawn in the back. As she passed the clothesline, she caught at the fabric of her sundress. It felt soft as the rainwater in which she’d rinsed it, and smelled of the sweet, fresh air of summer.
Watching her, Liam said, “I’ve never seen you in a skirt.”
“There isn’t much occasion to wear one out here, but I enjoy dressing up a bit, once in a while.” Self-conscious under his scrutiny, she swung the dress away from her and started unpinning the towels hanging next to it. “Silly of me, I suppose, considering I’m only dressing up for myself.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m beginning to get an itch for something a cut above the bucolic, too.” Thoughtfully, he prodded at the dry grass with the tip of his cane. “You ever been to that place on the other side of the island?”
“Bell Island Resort and Golf Club, you mean? Yes, occasionally.”
“Is the dining room any good?”
“It’s excellent.”
“Want to go there for dinner tomorrow?”
An elegant evening out with Liam McGuire? Her pulse leaped at the prospect. “We can’t,” she said, flattening the surge of pleasure invoked by his suggestion before it ran amok. “The club’s privately owned. You have either to be a member or an invited guest.”
He gave her the kind of look one might turn on a singularly backward child. “I didn’t ask if they’d let us in, Janie. I asked if you wanted to have dinner there with me.”
More than anything! her foolish heart cried. “I…if you can arrange it then, yes, that would be very nice,” she said primly.
“Then quit quibbling and meet me at the boat tomorrow at seven.”
She’d received more courtly and certainly more enthusiastic invitations, but none that inspired quite such a reaction. What point in deriding herself for skewing the whole affair out of proportion, when her entire being hummed with anticipation. Liam McGuire had asked her out, and this time not because he’d caught more crab than he could eat but presumably because he’d enjoyed her company enough that afternoon that he was willing to repeat the experience. In public, yet!
And she didn’t have a thing to wear!
Oh, the sundress fit her well enough, but it was plain to the point of dull. Like her life of late, it lacked excitement and suddenly she was tired of it. A kind of expectation sang in her blood, a kind of hope she hadn’t experienced in years. She wanted to look pretty again; desirable, the way she had when she and Derek first fell in love. It had been so long since she’d had reason to look glamorous for a man.
At least she’d thought to pack a pair of heeled sandals, her legs were evenly tanned, and she’d stuffed a manicure kit in with her measly supply of cosmetics. If only she’d had the foresight to include a few pieces of jewelry, or a wrap to throw around her shoulders to protect her from the weather, should it turn cool. Somehow, her grandfather’s yellow oilskins didn’t quite fit the image she hoped to present.
She wasn’t entirely without resources, though. There was a storage closet tucked under one of the bedroom eaves and at the back, an old trunk, stuffed with treasures that went back to her great-grandmother’s time: long, flowing skirts and blouses with lace jabots; old-fashioned button boots, and exotic Japanese sunshades; costume jewelry studded with crystal and jet and mother-of-pearl; lengths of chiffon and velvet which had transformed Jane from princess to gypsy to fairy queen on rainy summer afternoons when she was a child.
They were all still there, smelling faintly of lavender and patchouli and must.
She might as well have shown up in prison garb the next night, for all the impact she made on Liam.
“You look different,” he said, after he’d ordered a bottle of Shiraz to go with their Chateaubriand. “You’re wearing stuff on your eyes.”
Stuff? The hours she’d spent laboring over her appearance—airing out the gauzy, silk-fringed shawl, pinning her hair in a sleek coil and anchoring it in place with a silver comb, pinching her earlobes with lapis lazuli earrings as heavy as pigeon’s eggs—all that amounted to nothing more than stuff on her eyes? “It’s called mascara and eye shadow,” she informed stonily.
“Uh-oh! I said something wrong?”
“Not at all.”
“Why the fishy-eyed glare, then?”
“You’re imagining things, Liam,” she said, affecting nonchalance. “I’m perfectly delighted to be here and having a wonderful time. And just for the record, you look different, too. Positively clean, for a change.”
In fact, in black slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt, he looked more handsome than the law allowed. Every woman in the place was eyeing him as if he were the star attraction on the menu, and she herself…oh, she was having difficulty not drooling!
He grinned. “Gee, thanks—I think!”
“I can only suppose your improved appearance is what persuaded them to let us in here tonight.”
“They’d have let me in if I’d been in my birthday suit, Janie,” he said smugly. “I have connections in high places. All that was required was a phone call to the right party, a small detail I took care of this morning. I never for a moment doubted we’d be allowed in.” With a superbly negligent gesture, he indicated their table, wedged snugly between the dance floor and a window overlooking the sea. “Or that we’d be given one of the best spots in the house.”
“How nice to be so sure of one’s welcome,” she said, the image of him wearing nothing but his smile nibbling great holes in her composure. “And how wonderful that you managed to get your cell phone working again. One wonders how one ever managed without such modern miracles.”
“One does, indeed!” Deriving great entertainment at her expense, he grinned sunnily. Then, when the attempt to charm her fell on stony ground, he reared back in his seat and said, “Does one have a lemon in one’s mouth perchance? Or a bee up one’s—?”
“Don’t be vulgar, Liam.”
“My apologies. Let me try to rephrase the question in such a way as not to offen
d your sensibilities.” Smile fading, he tapped his altogether beautiful front teeth with his fingernail a moment, then said, “Something’s got you badly bent out of shape. Is it the company you’re keeping? Having second thoughts about being seen in public with me?”
“The idea has crossed my mind.”
“How so? You seemed to think it was a good idea when I first mentioned it.”
“It still could be,” she burst out, furious with him because he was so obtuse, and with herself because she was ready to cry with frustration and disappointment. The evening was going down the tubes before it had properly begun! “Everything would be just fine if you weren’t so…!”
“What? So clearly not your type?”
“No!” she exclaimed, throwing caution to the winds. “If you weren’t so self-involved. I went to a lot of trouble to look special for you tonight, but do you even notice? Do you have the grace or wherewithal to offer a compliment? No! All you can come up with is that I’ve got ‘stuff on my eyes’!”
“Would it make you feel more appreciated if I got up and started thumping my chest with pride at having you as my date for the evening?”
“I’m not your date. Admit it, Liam, I’m just a convenient body living next door, and could just as well be bow-legged and cross-eyed for all you care.”
“Not quite,” he said. “I enjoy your company well enough, in small doses, and as long as you don’t go overboard in your expectations of what our spending time together implies.”
“Well, don’t worry that I’m getting ahead of myself! I don’t interpret tonight to be the prelude to a proposal of marriage, if that’s what concerns you.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Especially since all I had in mind was sharing a bottle of wine, a good meal, and a little adult conversation—the latter of which seems to be in rather short supply, I might add.”
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