The Trouble with Magic (Loveswept)

by McComas, Mary Kay

  She had filled two plates with thick slices of Canadian bacon and light, fluffy scrambled eggs but arrested all movement to stare at him.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, sensing he wasn’t quite as cavalier on the subject as he sounded. “You’re not at all like that.”

  “How the hell would you know?” he asked, dumbfounded. “And if you tell me your friend DeLuca told you anything different than what I’m telling you, then you were a chump for hiring him, because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about either.”

  She put the fry pan in the sink and took up the plates. “I don’t need Mr. DeLuca to tell me that you’re not a very nice man. But I don’t believe you’re as indifferent and heartless as you’d like me to think.”

  “Why not?”

  Intuition? she speculated, looking at him. She set his plate on the table across from her and reached to pour them both some coffee.

  “Your eyes.”

  “My eyes?” He handed her two pieces of buttered toast, and sat down with two pieces for himself. “Give me a break.”

  “No. It’s true. You’re very good at hiding what you think, but when you’re feeling and not thinking, it shows in your eyes. Like, when you think something’s funny or when ...” When he was aroused? Better not bring that up, she decided in a split second. “... actually, it was one of the first things I noticed about you.”

  “What else do you think you’ve noticed about me?” he asked, immeasurably curious.

  “Well, you like to be in control. You’re bossy and stubborn and lie without conscience, whenever it suits you—a talent I admire, by the way,” she said, pausing to chew her food. “You’re sarcastic and mean, but I don’t think it comes naturally to you. I think you work at being nasty.”

  He laughed. “And why would I do that?”

  “To survive,” she said. Her eyes met his, deep and knowing.

  His smile faded, and he broke eye contact before she could see anything else she wasn’t supposed to see.

  “It’s going to rain,” he complained sometime later. “Look at that sky.”

  She laughed and handed the coat back to him. “That sky will get a lot darker before the storm breaks. We have plenty of time for a walk.” She opened the kitchen door. “Just suck in some of that clean fresh air.”

  “I knew the minute I saw you that you were a nature freak,” he grumbled, hauling on the thick deerskin jacket she’d scrounged up for him. “Breathing the air, saving the fish, picketing furriers. I bet you plant a tree every Arbor Day.”

  “Not just on Arbor Day,” she said, tugging on his sleeve to move him out into the brisk wind. “The Wheaton side of my family had traditions too. From the time I was born, my dad added an apple sapling to the orchard every year on my birthday. That tree over there is a red maple they planted to celebrate one of their wedding anniversaries. Every year it was a different kind of tree—but no oaks.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  They walked west, toward the cliffs that faced Ontario. She showed him a small clearing in the dense woods where one of the brides had cultivated a private rock garden, where on warm summer days Harriet often came to catch the breezes, relax, and do a little daydreaming on the loveseat beneath a canopy of green leaves.

  For a short distance she guided him across the top of the ridge. The jagged rock wall and boulders below, pounded by wave after wave after wave, with no beginning and no end, was one of her most favorite sights on the island. It brought a green cast to Payton’s complexion, however, so she didn’t tarry long.

  At last they came to an open space, a clearing, sheltered from the bitter northwest winds by an outcrop of rock twenty or thirty feet high.

  “These are oaks. They’re slow growing, very strong, very hardy trees. By the time they outgrow that wall of rock there, they’ll be able to withstand almost anything,” she said, motioning to two sleeping young giants, one several years older and larger than the other. She put the palm of her hand to the trunk of the tree. “My father planted this one when my mother died. They’d agreed on it ahead of time, thinking it would give whoever was left something to do, rather than sitting around feeling sad.”

  Payton looked at the smaller tree, several yards away.

  “You planted that one when your father died,” he said, knowing it as sure as he knew that if she looked at him in that moment, he’d see tears in her eyes.

  She stepped across to the smaller tree and removed a lone dead leaf from its branches. “It was a while before I got a chance to plant it for him. I ... he died while I was still in prison.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling a deep stab of profound sadness. For a man he’d never met? Or for her?

  She looked at him, as if from a faraway place, and then she smiled a smile that was sweeter than anything he’d tasted; sharper than anything he’d touched; wiser than anything he’d heard.

  “Careful,” she said. “You sound sincere. I’ll start thinking you’re more than half-human and not such a bad guy after all, if you don’t watch your step.”

  “Heaven forbid,” he said, suspecting that she felt as awkward accepting his sympathy as he was feeling giving it. “We can’t have that. The mystic forces will think they’ve done it again, if we start talking as if we like each other.”

  If, indeed, there were mystic forces on the island, they were no doubt laughing up their sleeves at that moment, Harriet mused. For the truth of the matter was, she walked away from the new oaks laughing; basking in the glow of unquestioned camaraderie, something that couldn’t exist without mutual support and acceptance.

  Seven

  “I KNOW TEN POLITICIANS who, together, don’t cheat as much as you do,” Payton complained, racking the balls on the pool table for a fifth and last game.

  “Name them,” she said, smirking at his testiness.

  He gave it a go. “Bob Weaver.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s a young councilman, very into education and civil liberties. I met him at one of my mother’s parties last year, and she swears that he’s as straight as a ruler.”

  “Your mother’s politically active?”

  “Not hardly,” he said, lining up his shot behind the cue-ball.

  “Then how can she be a judge of this man’s integrity?”

  “Given my mother’s penchant for young men, there are other ways to test a man’s integrity.” He pocketed a solid-colored ball and left the stripes for Harriet.

  “Okay. I’ll take your word for it, but that still leaves nine more,” she said smugly, feeling playful.

  “Let me think,” he said, considering his next move. After a few seconds he reluctantly admitted to being stymied. “Do you expect me to remember the names of every politician I meet?”

  “A big real estate wheeler-dealer like you? Yes,” she said, a challenge in her voice. “You remember all the names. You just can’t connect any of them with an honest man, is all.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her and prepared to do battle, then thought better of it. “Politicians were a bad association, but if I had my Rolodex, I could list the names of a hundred men who’d rather die than cheat at pool.”

  “How can you cheat at pool?” she asked, pooh-poohing his grievance. “I’ve been playing pool since I was a little girl, and short of dropping the balls into the pockets by hand or tilting the table, you can’t cheat at it. Why can’t you admit that you’re intimidated by my skill?”

  “Skill, hell,” he said, stopping midshot to gape at her. “You took your foot a good six inches off the floor. You were practically laying on the table.”

  “I was not. I admit I was stretching for the shot, but I didn’t take my foot off the floor. Frankly, I’ve always thought that when one person is taller than the other, there ought to be a handicap imposed on the game.”

  “A handicap.” He was terribly amused. Only a woman would want to handicap a game of pool.

  “Yes,”
she said vehemently, but grinning. “They do it for other games, like golf and bowling. I think if you’re taller, I should get the difference between us in inches.”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said, and before she could blink twice, he had her flat on her back on the pool table and was hoisting his leg up to join her.

  “What are you doing?” she shrieked, when a big hand on her chest foiled her attempts to sit up.

  “Lay still. I am attempting to calibrate the difference between us in inches,” he said, spanning her body with his, aligning his pelvis to hers.

  His weight, his warmth, his musky male odor were overwhelming. His hands on her wrists were scorching. It hurt to breathe.

  “But is this really necessary? Couldn’t you simply ask me how tall I am and subtract the difference from your height?”

  “I could, but it wouldn’t be as much fun,” he said, making a big to-do of wiggling atop her and looking down the lengths of their bodies for accuracy. Finally, he became very still, looking down into her face with a distinct light in his eyes. “I think the difference between us is a good stiff seven inches or so. And I sure wouldn’t mind handicapping you with that much of the dissimilarity between us.”

  She gasped at his double entendre, and then she sputtered into a fit of laughter.

  Patiently, and without concealing the effort it was costing him, he held her wrists and waited for her self-control to return.

  “It was a serious offer, Harriet,” he said when she’d calmed to titters and giggles. “And I must say that your behavior shows a decided lack of good sportsmanship.”

  She snorted once and was howling again while he fought the smile that was threatening to take over his lips. Oddly, he was acquiring a predilection for the sound of her laughter—a happy, joyous sound that seemed to heat cold, empty places in his heart. With his index finger, he gently wiped away a tear escaping from the corner of her eye.

  She stiffened.

  “Oh, please,” she cried, weak with merriment. “Get off. I’m going to wet my pants.”

  “On great-great-grandpa’s pool table?”

  “Buckets,” she wailed. “Oh, please.”

  Her squirming told him it wasn’t another one of her tricks, and he hastily jumped to the floor. He helped her up and grinned when she skirted away. He called after her, “You cheat at pool. You’re not a good sport. You can’t hold your water, and you have no respect for antiques. These things do not augur a happily-ever-after ending for us, Harriet.”

  “Payton?” she called, returning several minutes later to find the billiard room empty. She walked across the hall to the library and discovered him slouched in a chair before the fire they’d started earlier. It was now dying. “That was a real slick trick you pulled to get out of losing another game to me.”

  He put on a marvelous mask of dismay. “It was supposed to be a slick seduction.”

  Taking the chair next to his, she smiled. “It was that too.”

  “So, what do we have to do before we can have sex? Dance naked on the beach? Draw blood? What?” he asked, referring to the island’s mysterious powers.

  “Maybe when it becomes more than just sex.”

  “Ah. The sexual nomenclature syndrome and the vast gray area between having sex and making love.”

  “Don’t you think there’s a difference?”

  He rolled his head against the back of the chair to look at her. He studied her long and hard before saying, “There’s a difference.”

  “Did you have sex or make love to your wife?” The question was out before she could stop it. “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”

  Whether it concerned her or not; whether it was because she was a relative stranger, a temporary entity in his life, or whether it was because he was comfortable with her and didn’t feel threatened by her, he wanted to tell her.

  “I made love and she tolerated it,” he said, watching the fading embers of the fire. “Barely.”

  Well, in for a penny ...

  “She, ah, didn’t like it?” she asked.

  “She didn’t like me.” When Harriet remained silent, he glanced at her. He could sense all the questions on her mind and her reluctance to ask them, but more than that he felt not sympathy or pity from her, but an empathy and understanding that made it easier for him to continue. “Do you believe in perfect people, Harri?”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “Good. I knew you wouldn’t. But there are people who do, you know. My parents, the people I grew up with, the exclusive society I was brought up in.” He looked away. “I believed. I was Payton Augustus Dunsmore IV, and the spoon in my mouth wasn’t silver, it was gold. I grew up with all the privileges and advantages; the perfect parents, the perfect schools, never questioning, never rocking the boat. I knew all the right people and did all the right things because it was expected of me, the perfect boy.

  “Only ... I wasn’t the perfect boy. I believed in perfect, and I worked hard at being perfect. I got good at convincing other people that I was perfect, and that everything around me was perfect. Sometimes I could even fool myself. But I didn’t feel perfect. Not the way I thought I should feel.” He paused, frowning. “I mean, here I had these perfect parents. They were divorced, but they both had big, fine homes I could sleep in, they both left money with the housekeepers for me. All I had to do was ask for it. My parents paid to send me to the best schools, and in the summertime I went to the best camps. They introduced me to the children of all their best friends. I had the best clothes, the best toys, the best of everything. I was heir to their perfect world, and I hated them ... for everything.”

  He stood, bent to throw a few stray wood chips into the fire, then braced one arm on the mantel. “Actually, I didn’t always hate them. I don’t hate them now. I resent them and I feel sorry for them, but ... I used to think it was me. I used to think that if my parents were perfect and the world I lived in was perfect, then I was the imperfection. Because I was scared and lonely at school. I didn’t enjoy camp. I felt sick inside when no one showed up to see anything I did. I was hurt when no one came on parents’ day, and I was angry when the chauffeur picked me up on the last day of school, with packed suitcases, and took me straight to camp. If I were as perfect as I should have been, I wouldn’t have felt like that. I wouldn’t have minded the fact that the only time I saw my father was to meet a new stepmother or that I saw my mother once a day on the rare occasions I was home. If I were perfect, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Still,” he held up a finger and glanced at her, “knowing I was basically imperfect, flawed to the bone, it didn’t stop me from striving for perfection. I never told anyone how I felt or showed it in any way. I got good grades, played a variety of sports, made friends, went to parties, grew up. And when the time, the perfect time came for me to marry, I dutifully fell in love with a girl who everyone said was perfect for me.”

  “But you didn’t really love her,” Harriet surmised, her voice soft and discerning.

  He looked at her, frowning as he recalled his feelings at the time. “No. I think I really did love her,” he said, sitting in his chair, half-turned toward her. “I had feelings for her, but maybe it was only hope. I think I hoped it was love; hoped she’d be whatever was missing in me to make my life as perfect as it was supposed to be. I hoped she’d be someone I could talk to, someone I could be with, someone of my own and I wouldn’t be lonely anymore.” He half laughed. “I even hoped we’d have children together. Only I was going to raise them the way I’d heard other children were raised. They were going to come home after school every day, and they could only go to camp for a week in the summer, and then only if they wanted to. And they ... well, their perfect world was going to be different than mine was.”

  “But you didn’t have children?” she asked.

  “Ha. I hardly had a marriage.” He looked away. “We were married two years before I found out she was having affairs. I didn’t even ask when they’d started, it was
enough to know that they existed and that she wasn’t mine alone.” He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. She said everyone had affairs and was surprised to learn that I hadn’t. She said I was naive and possessive and completely out of touch with the rest of the world. She couldn’t figure out who I thought I was that I could ask for that kind of devotion and fidelity from her, when if it hadn’t been for my money—my family’s money really—she wouldn’t have married me in the first place. She said I was boring and coldhearted.”

  Harriet waited, but apparently there was no more story to tell. She guessed the rest from what he’d already told her and felt a crushing pressure in her chest, squeezing her heart painfully. She wanted to reach out and touch him. She wanted to kiss away his pain, the way she would a child with a boo-boo, and make everything right for him.

  “No comment?” he asked from a distance greater than the few feet that separated them physically.

  “No,” she replied, intuitively knowing that anything she said would have been wrong, that he’d wanted her to know his history but that he didn’t want or need her opinion of it.

  He looked away, and she watched the tension ease from his shoulders. Her heart smiled. Telling her had cost him. It was a gift she would treasure all her life, whether she saw him again after Sunday or not. She was touched and humbled that he’d felt safe enough in her presence to expose his secrets.

  Abruptly, he stood and positioned the wire screen before the fireplace. “Do we at least get to kiss good night at this stage of our enchantment?”

  “We’ve kissed before and nothing happened,” she said, anticipating the pleasure of kissing him again.

  “What do you mean, nothing happened? You didn’t feel the earth shake? You didn’t hear the angels singing? I could have sworn you were experiencing something.”

  “I did ... I mean, I ...,” she stammered, growing red in the face. “I mean, we kissed, and we weren’t struck by lightning or anything. I ... it seems like an okay thing for us to do. ... Kissing.”