He’d meant what he said, he didn’t want her addressing him formally anymore—though why he gave a damn what she called him was totally beyond him.
His burst of temper, her passiveness, the unexpected storm of confusion and turmoil inside him, the soft scent of lilac, and an unfamiliar sensation of frustration grated his nerves raw.
He punched the pillow next to his face and squelched an urge to scream. What was happening? He didn’t know the name of the game he was playing, but he knew he didn’t like it. He always played for high stakes, but he sensed that they were dangerously too high this time. He never played games unless he was sure to win. He felt lost.
A chuckle gathered at the back of his throat, and a smile twisted his lips despite his furrowed brow. Dammit. Teasing and heckling Harriet Wheaton was more soul-tickling fun than anything he’d done in years. Lord! She was gullible and sweet and gentle and giving and caring and nice to look at and heaven to smell, and her kisses were like sweet, warm wine and ...
“Payton?” came a soft, tentative whisper.
“Hmm?” He was glad she’d come back. Elated.
“I’m leaving a little bell here beside the bed,” she said timidly. “In case you need anything. And some fruit, in case you get hungry.”
Aw, hell. The apprehension in her voice was like a kick in his gut. He wanted to leap up, take her into his arms, kiss her, and beg for her forgiveness. He cursed his rude tongue, and then wondered if he was losing his mind.
“You’re very kind, Harriet. Thank you,” he said, caught between a rock and a hard place. He wanted to hurt her again and send her away; he wanted to apologize and hold her close.
“Not at all. Please don’t hesitate to call me,” she said.
Then he was alone in the room once more. He sat up. She’d left the door to the walkway slightly ajar and the door to the hidden hall that led to her room wide open. He knew an odd, brief ache in his chest as he got to his feet and began to pace the room, troubled and restless.
Six
HARRIET YAWNED AND CLOSED the last of a stack of books she’d taken from the library. She tossed it to the floor with the others beside her bed and stretched her muscles, long and leisurely. Half the night had slipped away while she fretted about Mr—.
“Payton. Payton. Payton,” she muttered, determined to make the name come readily to her lips. It had been Mr. Dunsmore, her adversary, for so long that Payton, her cocastaway, seemed like an entirely different person.
Anyway, she’d brooded about him most of the night. About him, his illness, his kiss ...
Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, she’d made an excursion to the library. Every medical book she could find agreed that sudden, intense head pain and severe mood swings could be symptoms of a hundred nasty brain ailments—and they all needed immediate attention.
She shouldn’t have waited, and she wasn’t going to put it off any longer, she firmly resolved. She’d get him back to St. Peter’s Bay and the care he needed first thing that morning. Risking her future was one thing, risking his was something else entirely.
Her head lifted to the distant tinkle of a bell.
“Hi,” she said, peering into Payton’s room a minute later, having sprinted down the hidden hall from her room, tying on her robe as she went. She smiled and he smiled back. “Are you feeling better?”
Please. Please. Please, she pleaded, walking into the room to get a better look at him.
“A bit.” He looked as tired as she felt. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you. I ... knocked the bell over.”
“That’s okay. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Are you hungry?”
“A bit.” He was sleepy-faced and scary-haired and undeniably cute. His mother must have loved him very much, she mused.
“Good. I’ll get you something. I’ll be right back.”
“Harriet?” She turned back at the door. “What time is it?”
“About six-thirty. Has your watch stopped?”
“My ...” He looked at the watch on his wrist as if he’d never seen it before. “Oh, I forgot.”
Pain. Mood swings. Memory loss. Ah, jeez. Her heart dropped through the floor. A kiss. That was all it had been. She shouldn’t have let it affect her so. She should have taken the kiss in stride and sent him back to the mainland the night before.
“Six-thirty in the morning?” he said, glancing at the windows in dismay. Couldn’t he tell it was morning? she wondered and added vision disturbances to her list. “I thought it was later than that. I’m going back to sleep. You should too. It’s too early to be up cooking breakfast.” He burrowed into the covers, saying, “Lord, I’m tired.”
Acute fatigue. Loss of appetite.
“Payton,” she said, approaching the bed, hoping she hadn’t waited too long; praying his condition wouldn’t deteriorate any further before she could get him to a hospital. “I have an idea. I’ve been thinking ...”
“Me too,” he said, bracing himself on one elbow to look at her. “I was awake most of the night thinking I should apologize to you, but then I decided not to. I wanted to kiss you, I liked kissing you, and I won’t say I’m sorry I did it.”
“Oh, well, um,” she stammered nervously, wanting to giggle despite the fact that she thought the kiss had been a side effect of his illness. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, there’s no need to apologize. I ... it happened, and now I think—”
“You liked it too, right?” he said, rudely assuming he knew her mind and terribly pleased with his insights.
“Yes, of course,” she said, patting his arm, placating and consoling. “And now I think—”
“It’s time for more,” he said, grinning, reaching out to pull her down on top of him. “Great idea.”
“No. Uh-ah. No,” she said, struggling. “You’re putting words in my mouth. This isn’t what I had in mind.”
He stopped. His brows lifted in interest. He smiled licentiously and nodded.
“You’re right, that’s a better idea,” he said, reaching for the buttons on the front of her silky pajamas.
“No,” she cried. “No. That’s not it either.”
“What did you have in mind, Harri?” His voice was like century-old whiskey. Rough, potent, intoxicating. Offhand, she couldn’t recall what she’d been thinking.
“Stop that,” she said, pulling his hands out from under her robe and nightshirt. “What is the matter with you?”
Not one of the books had mentioned crazed sexual advances.
“I don’t know,” he muttered, his lips doing brain-boggling things on her neck. “Maybe I’m enchanted. Bewitched. Spellbound. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen to us here?”
She looked down into his face. “You’re feeling a whole lot more than a bit better, aren’t you?”
“Right now, I feel downright frisky.”
“You’re not ill anymore?”
He rolled over on top of her and took her hands in his.
“I never was ill,” he said, and when she began to fight her way out from under him, he held tight and refused to move. “I thought that if you thought I was sick enough, you’d get us rescued.”
“Well, you gave up your act too soon,” she said, seething, recalling his every sickly complaint and whining request. “You’d won. I was going to send you back this morning.”
“You were?”
“Yes.”
“That’s strange,” he said. “I can usually read people pretty well. I was sure you’d wait till my head popped wide open before you called for help.”
She gasped. “What a horrible thing to think of me.”
“You’re angry.”
“Hell, yes, I’m angry. I don’t like being played for a fool any more than you do,” she said. “Get off of me.”
“No. Not until you ask me why I changed my mind about staying and why I just told you the truth.”
“Okay. Why?”
“Lay still and I’ll tell you.”
“Stop me and tel
l me,” she said, though she did stop squirming.
He scanned her face before he spoke. “The acoustics in that hallway are incredible. I heard you every time you came across to check on me last night; when you left to go downstairs; when you returned. I even snuck down the hall to see what you were reading.”
“So?”
“Were you worried about me because you thought I’d die and you’d go to jail again or were you really worried about me?”
“Both.”
“And you’re honest to a fault, aren’t you?”
“I don’t lie very well, so I either tell the truth or say nothing at all.”
“What would you say if I told you that I wanted to try your ... experiment, see if it really works.”
“I’d ask why.”
“And if I said my reasons were personal?”
“Then I’d only wonder why and hope that you’d tell me someday.”
“That’s it?” He looked surprised. “You wouldn’t nag me to tell you?”
“No. You’re entitled to your privacy.”
His tongue played with his back teeth as he contemplated her. He pinched the lapel of her shirt, pulled it slowly away from her skin, and craned his neck to peek underneath.
“What else am I entitled to?” he asked, meeting her gaze with a playful smile.
“Not me,” she said, slapping her hands to her chest.
“I thought that was the whole point, for me to want you.”
“And vice versa,” she pointed out.
“And vice versa,” he agreed.
“It is. But not sexually.”
“Not sexually?” He looked as if he’d just chewed and swallowed a lemon.
“Sexually, too, but later, when we know if we like each other well enough to spend more time together,” she said. “Get off.”
He did and watched her scramble off the bed.
“So, how do we go about this ... this falling in love stuff? Do we have to do something special or does the island take care of everything?”
She shrugged.
“I thought you knew all about the magic.”
“All I know is the history of it. If I’d experienced it firsthand already, I wouldn’t be testing it now,” she said.
“True.”
“And always before, it worked with chance meetings. I believe I’m the first to actually manufacture a situation in which to tempt the Fates. And we didn’t really meet on the island. I’m not sure it’ll work at all.”
He considered these departures from the tradition. “You know, you took an incredible gamble on this. Is it really so important to you?”
She flung her braid back where it belonged and nodded.
“Why?”
Why. How could she explain intangibles such as faith and hope without sounding like a dreamjunkie? Looking away, she wrapped her arms around her waist and moved aimlessly about the room.
“What happened to me? The worst part of it? Was the disillusionment,” she said haltingly. “I fought to prove my innocence with everything I could, and still I lost. It destroyed so many things that were very basic in me. Such as my faith in justice, in right and wrong, in love, in people ... in me. I wasn’t even too sure about God anymore. And if He did exist, I couldn’t understand why He’d turned his back on me. It was hard for me to believe in anything anymore.”
“You want to believe in the magic,” he said, knowing disillusionment, familiar with the need to believe. He couldn’t help but admire her perseverance, though it was probably still too early for her to realize that it would be best to simply give up and stop looking for something that didn’t exist. He’d given up believing years ago.
“I do want to believe,” she said, looking at him. “It sounds crazy, I know, wanting to believe in magic. But without it, I can’t see any hope for my future, and without that I ...” She shrugged and left her words hanging ominously in the air.
Payton knew the road she was on, and a twinge of protectiveness seized him. He wasn’t a do-gooder, but he wanted to travel the road once more with her. He could show her the shortcuts and the pitfalls and make the inevitable destination a little less painful.
“Well,” he said, taking control of the situation. “We need a place to start. As I see it, we can A: Go back to the beach and pretend to start all over. B: Continue on from here with more philosophical discussions. Or C: Jump back in the sack together—my personal choice—giving us a common base on which to build a relationship, if the magic works.”
“Do you always talk like that?”
“Like what? Logically?”
“Like everything is cut-and-dried, right or left, up or down. Period. Is everything a multiple choice question to you?”
“Pretty much. Yes.”
“Okay,” she said, having a somewhat analytical mind herself. “You forgot D.”
“D?”
“D: We separate now to shower and dress, and we meet in the kitchen in thirty minutes to start all over again with breakfast. We’ll have philosophical discussions and common conversations.” She grinned the grin of a siren. “And fantasize about jumping into the sack together while we’re getting acquainted.”
Payton released a resigned sigh and frowned his disapproval.
“You’re one of those women who do everything the hard way, aren’t you?”
She laughed as she walked to the door. “It seems like it, doesn’t it?”
Payton took longer than the allotted thirty minutes to get to the kitchen. The suitcase of clothes turned out to be an amazingly well-thought-out project, that was one surprise after another. Aside from the pajamas, it was a tasteful collection of casual clothes and a cache of male essentials from his favorite cologne to multiple vitamins. She and her friend DeLuca had left no stone unturned and no prospect neglected.
One of the first things he planned to do when he got off the island was to have a long talk with Mr. DeLuca—after that, he might consider putting the man on his payroll.
He remained uncertain of his impulse to join Harriet in her impossible quest. And he wasn’t sure why he was looking forward to the undertaking. To him, love and happily ever after were like pablum for babies, filling their bellies, luring them into a false sense of security that would later be shattered when they discovered that the true way of the world was uncertain and fraught with hunger and starvation.
Still, the idea of looking for love intrigued him. It wasn’t as though he believed in the existence of such a fine human emotion, but Harriet’s antics appealed to him the way some people were enthralled by psychic phenomena. Could she be real or was she a fascinating hoax?
“My stomach is an extremely vulnerable part of my anatomy,” he said, entering the kitchen, fairly bowled over by the breakfast aroma that met him. “If what you’re cooking tastes half as good as it smells, I’ll declare defeat and marry you this afternoon.”
“Declare defeat?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Listen mister, I happen to be a great cook. And if you’re very, very nice to me, I might let you beg me to make lunch for you later.”
“Oh, great,” he said with a groan, swinging a leg over a stool at the work island. “A libber.”
“No. Not really. Just a woman who wants a little respect.”
He smirked at the back of her head, his eyes automatically lowering to the tight, round curves of her denim-covered bottom.
“I hope we’re not about to have our first philosophical discussion,” he said. “Philosophy bores me.”
“Then behave,” she said, her tone light. “Do you know how to make toast?”
“Sure. Order it from room service.”
“Is that a joke?”
“Nope,” he said, standing to join her on the other side of the work bar. “Both my parents had housekeepers to cook toast. At school we got it in the cafeteria, and now I either eat out or order room service. Educate me.”
She looked at him, a thousand questions crowding her mind.
“See that little boxlike thing over there, with the slits in the top?” He walked over to scrutinize the toaster with much ado. “Drop a piece of bread in each slot, push the lever on the side down until it sticks, and when the bread pops up, butter it. You can butter bread, can’t you?”
His expression was vapid. “Like ... with a knife?”
“That’s right.” A smile tugged at her lips when he pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and looked as if he were about to create gourmet toast. “If both your parents had housekeepers, should I assume that they were divorced?”
“Terminally divorced. They hated each other,” he said, squinting into the toaster to watch the bread turn golden brown. He was conscious of the ease with which his statement had come, yet he rarely spoke of his family.
“That must have been hard for you,” she said.
“That was the way it was,” he said casually. “My family’s legacy is a little different than yours. Dunsmores are doomed to divorce, you might say.”
“Were you ever married?”
“Sure. And divorced. Luckily, I was quick to get the message.”
“What message?”
“Not to marry again.” The toast popped up, and he glanced at her for approval. The concern in her eyes surprised him. “Relax. It isn’t unheard of for a Dunsmore to think he’s in love again, and to remarry over and over again. As a matter of fact, each of my father’s divorces has resulted in a trip to the Bahamas, and he invariably returns married to someone else. I have a half sister who cleans out her closets, loses twenty pounds, and buys an entirely new wardrobe before she goes husband hunting again. She’s done that three times so far. One of my stepbrothers drank himself stupid after his first divorce and then he eloped with an exotic dancer who was already married to someone else. My mother married twice before she discovered that husbands were more aggravation than pleasure and that disposable lovers were the way to go.”
“And you?”
He’d spent the past ten years devoted to his work, and feeling as hard and cold as his ex-wife accused him of being, but for Harriet’s edification, he said, “I made a life of my own. The only person I trust is me. The only person I care about is me. I don’t own anything I can’t afford to lose, and there’s no one in my life that I’d miss if they were gone tomorrow.”
The Trouble with Magic (Loveswept) Page 8