Keeping Company

by Tami Hoag

  Being a bachelor could be damned complicated.

  “You don’t have to give up your fishing just to keep me company,” Alaina said, too busy trying to disguise the suspicious thickness in her voice to realize the words she’d used.

  “Part of the deal, isn’t it, Princess?” he said softly, rubbing a finger gently under her down-tilted chin.

  “You’d rather be with your friends.”

  “You’re my friend.”

  He said it with such simplicity of feeling, it brought tears to her eyes. Alaina cursed herself for this latent sentimental streak that was surfacing in her. She couldn’t imagine where it was coming from. She wasn’t sentimental. She didn’t cry in front of people. She didn’t fall for men who played the baritone and wore their hair in queues.

  “In spite of a few minor problems, I think we’ve been very successful today. Chloe seems to have taken the hint,” Dylan said. Poor Chloe. She’d flatten him if she knew the way he’d been taking her name in vain.

  Alaina arched a brow. “Yes,” she said dryly. “Unless you’re overcome by a sudden urge to recline between two slices of bread, I think you’ll be safe.”

  Dylan chuckled, reaching over to flip up the bill on the cap Alaina was still wearing. His expression dropped abruptly and he leaned over to take a closer look at her face. His brows lifted in alarm. His brown eyes rounded in shock.

  “What?” Alaina questioned cautiously.

  “You’re puffing up.”

  “I’m what?”

  “Puffing up. Your face—it’s sort of—” He motioned around his own face, filling his lean, tanned cheeks with air.

  Alaina’s heart went into overdrive. Frantically she dug through her mangled handbag for her compact, relieved to find Scottie hadn’t ingested it. She popped the sterling-silver case open and held up the little mirror.

  Dylan was right. She was puffing up. Her face was swelling before her very eyes. Her normally flawless fair skin was taking on a weird, red-mottled look.

  With a strangled cry of shock she fell back into her deck chair.

  * * *

  “I’m really sorry about that crab salad, Alaina,” Rita said, a look of genuine concern in her eyes as she followed Dylan and Alaina down the gangplank from the Tardis. “I had no idea you were allergic.”

  Alaina waved a puffed-up hand at the petite blond woman. “It’s not your fault, Rita. I should have been paying closer attention to what I was eating.”

  “Dad, do we have to go home?” Sam asked irritably. “It’s not our fault she got sick. Couldn’t you just leave her, and we could go back out?”

  Dylan gave his son a look burning with parental opinions, none of which he voiced. Poor Alaina was miserable enough without having a family fight ensue over her.

  “I’m taking Alaina home. You guys can stay here with Mrs. Pepoon and play video games in the bar if you like.”

  “You don’t have to take me home,” Alaina protested, waddling up the dock. Her feet had swelled so quickly, she couldn’t even begin to get them out of her alligator wingtips.

  Dylan was adamant. “You can’t drive in this condition. Besides, I want to make sure you get home and get that medication into you. Who knows what could happen with this allergy? You could become delirious or pass out or something.”

  Alaina shook her head. “All I do is puff up. I’d rather not have an audience, thank you very much.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes—eyes that had become tiny blue beads staring out between pooched-out cheeks and puffed-up eyelids. All she wanted to do was go home and hide for the rest of her natural life.

  She fumbled in her ruined purse for her keys, but wasn’t able to close her swollen fingers around them. Swearing a blue streak, she hurled the Gucci bag at her BMW and set off the alarm, drawing the eyes of at least a hundred people who were wandering around the marina area.

  “Lovely.” She growled the word between her teeth. “Just lovely.”

  Chapter 6

  “Marlene warned me about this,” Alaina grumbled, fuming.

  Dylan piloted the BMW onto Alaina’s street and turned in at her driveway. Consciously, he was wincing. Alaina was in a rare fine temper, and he couldn’t seem to stop blaming himself for some idiotic reason, as if he’d force-fed her Rita’s crab salad. Subconsciously, he was enjoying the feel of fine German engineering beneath him and telling himself that didn’t make him a materialist.

  “Marlene told me not to go today. She said my moon was in the wrong house. I told her to mind her own moon.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in malarkey.”

  “I don’t. But now I’m going to have to listen to Marlene say ‘I told you so’ for the next thousand years.” She huffed a sigh of pure annoyance. “The woman is insufferable.”

  “Then why do you put up with her?”

  “Because I like her, dammit.”

  Turning off the ignition, Dylan sat back against the plush leather seat and bit back a chuckle. He rubbed a hand across the smile that threatened. This was no time to find the lady amusing.

  Slowly he turned toward her, his eyes tearing up at the effort to keep from laughing. “You’re home now, Princess. You can take the bag off your head.”

  Alaina lifted the edge of the brown paper sack and peeked out at him. “Are you sure the coast is clear?”

  “Alaina, you don’t look that bad—”

  “I look like the Elephant Woman,” she said flatly. “And I want to make this crystal clear—if one neighbor sees me, Dylan Harrison, I will cut out your heart with a penknife.”

  He made a great show of looking all around with his hand raised to his forehead to make a visor. “There isn’t a neighbor in sight.”

  Alaina slipped the grocery bag off her head and folded it with quick efficiency. She felt like a fool. Dylan probably thought she was the vainest creature on Earth. Well, fine. He could just add vanity to her list of faults, which now included being unseaworthy and inept with a fishing pole.

  Depression weighed on her like a millstone as she got out of the car, and she muttered a string of expletives under her breath. Since when had she aspired to become an angler? Lord, the very idea of touching a live fish sent her into the shudders. Until Dylan, the nearest she’d ever cared to get to a fish was the fork side of a plate of grilled fillet of sole.

  They nearly made it into the house. Alaina had just begun to breathe a sigh of relief when Marlene’s front door swung open. Her secretary bolted onto the porch, wild-eyed as she took in Alaina’s bloated appearance. She stared in silence for a long ten seconds, her hands clutching at the voluminous folds of her enormous 49ers jersey. Abruptly she shook off her stunned trance and shook a stubby finger at Alaina, bracelets rattling on her wrist. “I told you your moon was in the wrong house.”

  Alaina narrowed her eyes until they were nearly invisible. “Nip it, Marlene. Just nip it.”

  Undaunted, Marlene planted her fists on her hips. “I’ll bring over some herbal potions.”

  “That’s okay, Marlene,” Dylan said, unlocking Alaina’s front door. “We can handle everything. Thanks anyway.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. She’ll be fine in no time.” He paused as he remembered Alaina’s threat about the penknife. “But if you happen to hear me screaming, dial nine one one.”

  Alaina glared at him as Dylan ushered her through the door into the air-conditioned comfort of her lovely, quiet home.

  “Marlene doesn’t count as a neighbor, does she?”

  “Don’t worry,” Alaina grumbled. “I wouldn’t know a penknife if I stepped on one.”

  “So your bark is worse than your bite, eh, Princess?” Dylan grinned at the venomous look on her face. “Where do you keep your allergy medication?”

  “In the kitchen cupboard, left of the sink.”

  No sooner had the words left her swollen lips than she wished them back. Her kitchen, she remembered too late, looked like the aftermath of a major disaster bec
ause of her aborted attempt at making potato salad. Feeling utterly dejected, she slumped down into a rose-pink chair that was nearly as overstuffed as she was.

  Dylan returned a few minutes later with a prescription bottle, a glass of water, and a pair of kitchen shears. He said not one word about the holocaust he’d found in the kitchen or the big note tacked up by the egg-splattered kitchen phone that read: LIEBOWITZ’S FOURTH STREET DELI HAS POTATO SALAD. THANK GOD! He handed Alaina the pills and water, then knelt at her feet.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, eyeing the scissors he held.

  “I’m cutting these shoes off.”

  Several fat tears spilled over the barrier of her thick lashes. “Those are my favorite shoes,” she murmured sadly. “Real alligator. Three hundred twenty-five dollars. My name is stamped inside them in gold leaf.”

  Dylan scowled. “Would you rather lose your shoes or your feet?”

  Alaina bit her lip, considering.

  “Put it on my tab,” he said. Grumbling something disparaging about the yuppie mentality, Dylan took matters into his own hands. The shoes were dispensed with and disposed of in the kitchen garbage can along with what looked like five gallons of mayonnaise and twenty pounds of overcooked potatoes.

  He shook his head as he stared at the mess, caught between laughing and groaning. Alaina really had tried to make the stuff. She simply wasn’t domestic.

  With a heavy sigh he went back into the living room and pulled Alaina up out of her chair.

  “Where’s your bedroom?”

  “Upstairs.” She gave him a haughty look that was lost in her balloonlike features. “Why?”

  “Because you’re going to bed,” Dylan announced, leading her toward the stairs. “It said on the bottle those pills will make you drowsy. And I’m staying until you fall asleep—just to make sure you don’t go out and try to operate any heavy machinery.”

  “That’s really not necessary,” she protested. “There aren’t any bulldozers in the neighborhood. I wouldn’t be caught dead on one anyway.”

  “All part of the bargain, sweetheart,” Dylan murmured.

  The truth of the matter was, he couldn’t leave her. Seeing the indomitable Alaina Montgomery puffed up and miserable, teary-eyed over a stupid pair of alligator shoes, had him all choked up. All his protective instincts were surfacing full force.

  He sent her into her bathroom with her robe and wandered around her bedroom while he waited for her to come back out.

  This room, like the living room, was immaculate. Like the living room, it was tastefully decorated. The floor was covered with plush rose carpet, the walls papered in a soft blue-and-rose floral pattern with the woodwork painted light blue. Rich, frothy lace draped the bay window where a rose-colored velvet cushion invited a person to curl up on the window seat to read or daydream. It touched his heart to think of Alaina daydreaming there.

  Her bed was very feminine. The headboard and footboard were made of ornately curved, polished black iron with bright brass accents. The mattress was covered with a pristine-white, hand-crocheted spread. A mountain of frilly pillows leaned up against the headboard. It certainly wasn’t difficult for him to picture Alaina there, her expression soft and unguarded as she slept.

  This room told Dylan a lot about the woman he had grown so fond of so quickly. This room told him secrets. Art deco was the style she presented visitors in the rest of her home—spartan and stylish. In her sanctuary she preferred the feminine lines of Queen Anne in her cherry dresser and blue damask wing chair. Bold, dramatic day lilies were displayed in her living room; a small crystal vase in this room held delicate pink snapdragons and fragile violets.

  This wasn’t the room of a tough, cynical attorney. This was the room of a woman who was sensitive, vulnerable, perhaps a little shy. A week ago he wouldn’t have said any of those words applied to Alaina. Now he didn’t question the probability. He’d guessed from the first there was more to Alaina than met the eye. He was seeing it here.

  There was a petite black cat curled up on the window seat, a mystery novel on the table by the bed. The bookmark indicated Alaina was halfway through the paperback, but the book’s cover was smooth, unmarred, uncurled. Beside the book on the lace runner lay the Crystal of Kalamari, the wedge of glass filled with rainbows by the amber light falling through the window. Behind the Crystal stood a photograph in a sterling frame.

  Dylan ran his fingertips over the coveted pin, but he didn’t pick it up. Instead, he lifted the picture frame carefully and studied the photo in the fading light. He recognized Alaina and Jayne and their friend Faith Kincaid. There was a fourth person, a young man he didn’t know. The four stood in graduation caps and gowns, smiling, their expressions wistful. Behind them a rainbow hung in the sky.

  This was the only photograph in the room, the only one he’d seen anywhere in the house. Alaina and her college friends. He hadn’t seen anything anywhere indicating that she had a family someplace. There were no snapshots of brothers or sisters because she had none. There was no portrait of her parents, no picture of the mother who’d had no time for her. It made him sad. He’d grown up in a large, happy family. The walls of his house practically bowed under the weight of all the photographs of the Harrison clan.

  “I look like a blowfish,” Alaina lamented as she emerged from the bathroom wrapped in her gray silk dressing gown, her bloated bare toes peeking out from under the hem.

  Dylan set the photograph down and turned to face her, his heart flipping over. His fiercely proud Princess of the Zanatares looked as close to tears as anyone could come, but she blinked at them furiously in the attempt to keep them from falling.

  “Oh …” He crossed the room to take her puffy hands in his. “It’s not that bad, honey, really it’s not. I think the pills are starting to help already. I can almost see your eyes.”

  That did it. Abruptly Alaina lost her battle. Tears gushed down her cheeks. She felt utterly miserable, rejected, humiliated, lost, and furious about it all. She stamped her foot and muttered a stream of virulent curses.

  “I hate this! I just hate it! I hate being puffy and I hate being allergic and I hate crying and I hate having you see me do it!”

  Dylan pulled her into his arms and held her against him, rubbing her back while she sobbed and swore. “I know, sweetheart. I know you hate it.” If he hadn’t already figured it out for himself, Alaina was telling him now—she didn’t like anyone seeing a weakness in her. Misty-eyed, he smiled and kissed her hair. “I know, honey. You’re a tough cookie.”

  “I am,” Alaina declared, diminishing the effectiveness of her statement with a watery sniffle.

  “Yeah, well, even tough cookies have to crumble every once in a while,” Dylan told her. “You’ve had a hard day, haven’t you, Princess?”

  He didn’t know the half of it, Alaina thought glumly as she nodded against his broad shoulder. Aside from the more obvious catastrophes, she’d gone and fallen in love with him—Dylan Harrison, all-around goofball and proprietor of a bar and bait shop, a man who had sworn to settle for nothing short of a domestic goddess in a woman. He had stayed with her, but every time he did something nice for her he had to remind her it was because he was duty-bound by the deal they had made. All things considered, a day couldn’t get much worse than the one she’d just had.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” Dylan murmured. “What you need is a good night’s sleep.”

  Not bothering with the pillows or bedcovers, he sat on the bed, pulling Alaina down beside him. She let him move her around as if she were a mannequin, simply not possessing the strength of will to fight him. He lifted her feet up and tipped her over so she was lying on her side facing the nightstand and the window, then he settled himself behind her, spoon-style, slipping his arm around her waist.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t agree.

  “Of course I have to do this.” He gave her a hug. “You don’t think I’d pass on the chance to say I slept with t
he Elephant Woman, do you?”

  Alaina couldn’t help but chuckle, although the sound didn’t contain much energy. “You’re a smart-ass, Harrison, and perverse in the extreme.”

  “I’ve just always had a liking for inflatable women.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  A moment of comfortable silence passed between them. Alaina lay there relaxed and savoring the feel of Dylan snuggled behind her, solid and masculine, his arm draped over her waist.

  “Feeling better?” he asked, his voice warm and soft with genuine concern.

  “A little.”

  He really was a sweet guy. Too bad she was all wrong for him, she thought. Too bad for her, because it hurt like hell to think nothing would ever come of this arrangement they’d entered into. It was her own dumb fault. She hadn’t read the fine print, hadn’t considered the possibility that she might just fall in love with Dylan Harrison.

  It had seemed too remote a possibility. She’d never been in love, not really. She had always sort of wondered if she was even capable of falling in love. Too many years of practice had taught her to guard her heart even while she’d still wanted someone to make the effort to win it. The risk that she might find yet another imitation of love had far outweighed the chance of stumbling across the real thing.

  There had been her affair with Clayton, of course, but she had never really loved him. What she had felt for him had been mutual respect—until Mrs. Collier had turned up—and compatibility. As had been pointed out to her incessantly over the course of the last few days by Jayne and Marlene, she and Dylan didn’t rank high in compatibility, but what she felt for him was love nonetheless. Nothing else could have hurt this way in the face of hopelessness.

  “How stupid of me!” Dylan said suddenly.

  Alaina cringed at the thought that he had no doubt been mulling over their situation too. Poor guy. She couldn’t blame him for having regrets about the deal. She’d been an unqualified failure at all the things he’d wanted her to do. Just as she started to apologize, Dylan raised up on one elbow and leaned over her, reaching for something on the nightstand. Alaina’s heart bolted against her ribs at the feel of his lean, hard body pressing against hers. He smelled faintly of the sea, and she wanted to turn and bury her face against his chest and have him hold her as he had earlier. She cursed herself under her breath. This was no time to develop a penchant for chasing rainbows.