This Heart Of Mine

by Susan Elizabeth Philips

  Her hand flew to her throat.

  Behind her the chair splashed into the creek.

  “Damn it!” The man jumped to his feet.

  He was huge, with shoulders as wide as twelve lanes of L.A. freeway and a scowling, rough-hewn face that belonged on the villain in an old B Western. I got ways of makin’ a woman like you talk. The only thing missing was a week’s worth of stubble on that grim jaw.

  His hair was a Hollywood stylist’s nightmare or daydream, she wasn’t sure which. Thick and graying at the temples, it grew too long at the collar, where it looked as if he might have swiped at it with the knife he undoubtedly kept in his boot. Except he wore a pair of battered running shoes instead, with socks that slouched around his ankles. And his eyes—mysteriously dark in that deeply tanned, dangerously lined face.

  Every casting agent in Hollywood would salivate over him.

  All those thoughts were scrambling through Lilly’s head instead of the one thought that should have been there: Run!

  He strode toward her. Beneath his khaki shorts his legs were brown and strong. He wore an old blue denim work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms dusted with dark hair. “Do you know how long it took me to get that chair right where I wanted it?”

  She backed away from him. “Maybe you have too much leisure time.”

  “Do you think that’s funny?”

  “Oh, no.” She kept backing. “Not funny. Definitely not.”

  “Does it amuse you to spoil a whole day’s work?”

  “Work?”

  His eyebrows shot together. “What are you doing?”

  “Doing?”

  “Stand still, damn it, and stop cowering!”

  “I’m not cowering!”

  “For God’s sake, I’m not going to hurt you!” Grumbling under his breath, he stalked back to where he’d been sitting and picked up something off the ground. She took advantage of his distraction to edge closer to the path.

  “I told you not to move!”

  He was holding some kind of notebook, and he no longer seemed sinister, just incredibly impolite. She regarded him with all the imperiousness of Hollywood royalty. “Someone’s forgotten his manners.”

  “Waste of energy. I come here for privacy. Is that too much to ask?”

  “Not at all. I’m leaving right now.”

  “Over there!” He pointed an angry finger toward the creek.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Sit over there.”

  She was no longer frightened, just annoyed. “I don’t think so.”

  “You ruined an afternoon’s work. Sitting for me is the least you can do to make up for it.”

  He was holding a sketch pad, she realized, not a notebook. He was an artist. “Why don’t I just leave instead?”

  “I told you to sit!”

  “Has anyone ever mentioned that you’re rude?”

  “I work hard at it. Sit on that boulder and face the sun.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t do sun. Bad for the complexion.”

  “Just once I’d like to meet a beautiful woman who isn’t vain.”

  “I appreciate the compliment,” she said dryly, “but I passed the beautiful woman mark a good ten years and forty pounds ago.”

  “Don’t be infantile.” He whipped a pencil from his shirt pocket and began to sketch, not bothering to argue with her any longer, or even to sit down on the small camp stool she spotted a few feet away. “Tilt your chin. God, you really are beautiful.”

  He uttered the compliment so dispassionately that it didn’t seem flattering. She resisted the urge to tell him he should have seen her in her prime. “You’re right about my vanity,” she said, just to needle him. “Which is why I’m not going to stand here in the sun any longer.”

  The pencil continued to fly over his sketch pad. “I don’t like models talking when I’m working.”

  “I’m not your model.”

  Just as she was about to turn away for the last time, he jabbed his pencil in the pocket of his work shirt. “How do you expect me to concentrate when you won’t stand still?”

  “Pay attention: I don’t care whether you concentrate or not.”

  His brow furrowed, and she had the feeling he was trying to make up his mind whether he could bully her into staying. Finally he flipped his sketch pad shut. “We’ll meet here tomorrow morning then. Let’s say seven. That way the sun won’t be too hot for you.”

  Her irritation turned to amusement. “Why not make it six-thirty?”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re patronizing me, aren’t you?”

  “Rude and astute. A fascinating combination.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “You couldn’t afford me.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  She smiled and turned onto the path.

  “Do you know who I am?” he called out.

  She glanced back. His expression couldn’t have been more threatening. “Should I?”

  “I’m Liam Jenner, damn it!”

  She sucked in her breath. Liam Jenner. The J. D. Salinger of American painters. My God… What was he doing here?

  He could see that she knew exactly who he was, and his scowl turned smug. “We’ll compromise on seven then.”

  “I—” Liam Jenner! “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that.”

  What an obnoxious man! He’d done the world a favor by being so reclusive. But still…

  Liam Jenner, one of the most famous painters in America, wanted her to sit for him. If only she were twenty and beautiful again.

  Chapter 13

  Daphne put down her hammer and hopped back to admire the sign she’d nailed to her front door.

  It read NO BADGERS ALLOWED (and this means vous!). She’d painted it herself just that morning.

  Daphne’s Lonesome Day

  “Use the stepstool to check that top shelf, will you, Amy?” Kevin said from the pantry. “I’m going to move these boxes out of the way.”

  As soon as they’d returned from town, Kevin had enlisted Amy’s help taking inventory of their food supplies. For the past ten minutes she’d been darting assessing glances between the pantry where he was working and the kitchen counter where Molly was preparing for the tea. Finally, she couldn’t hold back any longer.

  “It’s sort of interesting, isn’t it, that you and Molly got married about the same time as me and Troy.”

  Molly set the first slice of Bundt cake on the Victorian cake platter and listened to Kevin dodge. “Molly said she was going to need more brown sugar. Anything up there?”

  “I see two bags. There’s this book I read about marriage…”

  “What else?”

  “Some raisin boxes and a thingy of baking powder. Anyway, this book said that sometimes couples who, like, have just got married have a hard time adjusting and everything. Because it’s such a big change.”

  “Is there any oatmeal? She said she needed that, too.”

  “There’s a box, but it’s not a big one. Troy, like, thinks being married is awesome.”

  “What else?”

  “Pans and stuff. No more food. But if you’re having trouble adjusting or anything, I mean, you could talk to Troy.”

  Molly smiled at the long silence that followed. Eventually, Kevin said, “Maybe you’d better see what’s left in the freezer.”

  Amy emerged from the pantry and gave Molly a pitying glance. There was something about the teenager’s sympathy and those hickeys that was getting under her skin.

  Tea wasn’t nearly as much fun without Kevin. Mrs. Chet—actually Gwen—didn’t try to hide her disappointment when Molly said he had another commitment. She might have cheered up if she’d known that Lilly Sherman was staying there, but Lilly didn’t appear, and Molly wasn’t going to announce her presence.

  She was setting out the pottery mixing bowls so she’d be ready for breakfast the next morning when Kevin came in through the back carrying groceries. He d
odged Roo, who was trying to make a meal of his ankles, and set the bags on the counter. “Why are you doing that? Where’s Amy?”

  “Stop it, Roo. I just let her go. She was starting to whimper from Troy-deprivation.”

  No sooner had she said it than she spotted Amy flying across the yard toward her husband, who must have sniffed her on the wind, because he’d appeared out of nowhere.

  “There they go again,” Kevin said.

  Their reunion was more passionate than a perfume commercial. Molly watched Troy dip his mouth to the top of Amy’s exposed breast. She threw back her head. Arched her neck.

  Another hickey.

  Molly smacked a Tupperware lid back on its container. “She’s going to end up needing a blood transfusion if he doesn’t stop that.”

  “She doesn’t seem to mind it too much. Some women like it when a man puts his mark on them.”

  Something in the way he looked at her made her breasts prickle. She didn’t like her reaction. “And some women see it for what it is—the pathetic attempt of an insecure man to dominate a woman.”

  “Yeah, there’s always that.” He gave her a lazy smile and headed back out the side door for the rest of the groceries.

  While he unloaded, he asked Molly if she wanted to go into town for dinner, but she declined. There was only so much Kevin temptation she wanted to expose herself to at one time. She headed back to the cottage, feeling good about her self-discipline.

  The sun looked like a big lemon cookie in the sky, which made Daphne hungry. Green beans! she thought. With a nice topping of dandelion leaves. And strawberry cheesecake for dessert.

  This was the second time today the critters had popped into her head. Maybe she was finally ready to get back to work—if not to write, then at least to do the drawings Helen wanted and free up the rest of her advance.

  She let herself into the cottage and found a well-stocked refrigerator and a cupboard stacked with supplies. She had to give Kevin credit. He was doing his best to be considerate. She wasn’t crazy about the fact that she was starting to like him so much, and she tried to work up some anger by reminding herself he was a shallow, egotistical, overpriced, Ferrari-driving, kidnapping, poodle-hating womanizer. Except she hadn’t seen any evidence of womanizing. None at all.

  Because he didn’t find her attractive.

  She grabbed her hair and let out a muffled scream at her own utter patheticness. Then she fixed a huge dinner and ate every bite.

  That evening she sat on the porch gazing down at the pad of paper she’d found in a drawer. Would it hurt to move Daphne and Melissa just a little farther apart? After all, it was only a children’s book. It wasn’t as if America’s civil liberties rested on how close Daphne and Melissa were standing to each other.

  Her pencil began to move, at first hesitantly, and then more quickly. But the sketch that appeared wasn’t the one she’d planned. Instead, she found herself drawing Benny in the water, fur dripping into his eyes, his mouth agape, as he looked up at Daphne, who was diving off the top of a cliff. Her ears streamed behind her, the beaded collar of her denim jacket flapped open, and a pair of very stylish Manolo Blahniks flew from her paws.

  She frowned and thought of all the accounts she’d read of young people being permanently paralyzed from diving into unfamiliar water. What kind of safety message would this send small children?

  She ripped the paper from the pad and crumpled it. This was the sort of problem all those people who wanted to write a children’s book never considered.

  Her brain had dried up again. Instead of thinking about Daphne and Benny, she found herself thinking about Kevin and the campground. This was his heritage, and he should never sell it. He said he’d been bored here as a child, but he didn’t have to be bored now. Maybe he just needed a playmate. Her brain skittered away from thinking about exactly what playing with Kevin would involve.

  She decided to walk to the Common. Maybe she’d sketch some of the cottages just for fun. On the way there, Roo trotted over to greet Charlotte Long and impress her with his dead dog imitation. Although fewer than half the cottages were occupied, most of the residents seemed to be out for an evening stroll, and long, cool shadows fell like whispers across the grass. Life passed more slowly here in Nightingale Woods…

  The gazebo caught Molly’s attention.

  I’ll have a tea party! I’ll invite my friends, and we’ll wear fabulous hats and eat chocolate frosting and say, “Ma chère, have you ever seen such a bee-you-tee-ful day?”

  She settled cross-legged on the beach towel she’d brought with her and began to sketch. Several couples strolled by and stopped to observe, but they were members of the last generation with manners, and they didn’t interrupt her. As she drew, she found herself thinking about all her years at summer camp. The frailest thread of an idea began to form in her mind, not about a tea party but about—

  She closed her notebook. What was the use of thinking so far ahead? Birdcage had contractual rights to two more Daphne books, neither of which they’d accept until she’d made the revisions they’d demanded of Daphne Takes a Tumble.

  The lights were on when she returned to the cottage. She hadn’t left them that way, but she wasn’t too worried.

  Roo immediately started barking and made a dash for the bathroom door. It wasn’t latched, and the dog bumped it open a few inches with his head.

  “Calm down, poochy.” Molly pushed it open the rest of the way and saw Kevin, all bare-naked beautiful, stretched out in the old-fashioned tub, legs crossed and propped on the rim, a book in his hands, and a small cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth.

  “What are you doing in my bathtub?” Although the water came all the way to the top, there weren’t any soap bubbles to hide him, so she didn’t go closer.

  He pulled the cigar from the corner of his mouth. No smoke curled from it, and she realized it wasn’t a cigar but a stick of candy—chocolate or root beer.

  He had the gall to sound irritated. “Now, what do you think I’m doing? And would you mind knocking before you barge in?”

  “Roo barged in, not me.” The dog ambled out, his job done, and headed for his water bowl. “Why aren’t you using your own tub?”

  “I don’t like sharing a bathroom.”

  She didn’t point out what had to be obvious—that he seemed to be sharing this one with her. She noticed that his chest looked just as good wet as it did dry. Even better. Something about the way he was watching her made her feel edgy. “Where did you get that candy?”

  “In town. And I only bought one.”

  “Nice going.”

  “All you had to do was ask.”

  “Like I knew you were going to buy candy? And I’ll just bet there’s a box of the beautiful fraulein’s fudge tucked away somewhere.”

  “Close the door on your way out. Unless you want to get naked and climb in here with me?”

  “Thanks so much, but it looks a little small.”

  “Small? I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

  “Oh, grow up!”

  His chuckle followed her as she spun around and slammed the door. Slytherin! She headed for the small bedroom. Sure enough, his suitcase was there. She sighed and pressed her fingers to her temple. Her old headache was coming back.

  Daphne put down her electric guitar and opened her door.

  Benny stood on the other side.

  “Can I use your bathtub, Daphne?”

  “Why do you want to?”

  He looked scared. “I just do.”

  She poured herself a glass of sauvignon blanc from the bottle she found chilling in the refrigerator, then carried it out to the porch. Her black cropped top wasn’t warm enough for the evening chill, but she didn’t bother going inside to get a sweater.

  She was rocking in the glider when he appeared. He wore a pair of gray sweat socks with a silky-looking robe that had dark maroon and black vertical stripes. It was the kind of robe a woman would buy for a man she loved sleeping with
. Molly hated it.

  “Let’s host a tea in the gazebo before we leave,” she said. “We’ll make an event of it and invite everyone in the cottages.”

  “Why would we want to do that?”

  “For fun.”

  “Sounds like a real thrill ride.” He sat on the chair next to her and stretched his legs. The hair on his calves lay damp against his skin. He smelled like Safeguard and something expensive—a Brinks truckload of broken female hearts.

  “I’d rather you didn’t stay here, Kevin.”

  “I’d rather I did.” He took a sip of wine from the glass he’d brought out with him.

  “Can I sleep at your house, Daphne?”

  “I guess. But why do you want to?”

  “Because mine has a ghost.”

  “You can’t hide from Lilly forever,” she said.

  “I’m not hiding. Just picking my own time.”

  “I don’t know much about getting annulments, but it seems as though this might compromise ours.”

  “It was compromised from the beginning,” he said. “The way my attorney explained it, the grounds for a legal annulment are misrepresentation or duress. I figured you could claim duress. I sure wasn’t going to argue.”

  “But the fact that we’re together now makes that doubtful.”

  “Big deal. We’ll get a divorce instead. It might take a little longer, but it’ll accomplish the same thing.”

  She rose from the glider. “I still don’t want you to stay here.”

  “It’s my cottage.”

  “I have renter’s rights.”

  His voice slid over her, soft and sexy. “I think being around me just makes you nervous.”

  “Yeah, right.” She managed a yawn.

  Amused, he nodded toward her wineglass. “You’re drinking. Aren’t you afraid you’ll attack me again in my sleep?”

  “Oops. Relapse. And I didn’t even realize it.”

  “Or maybe you’re afraid I’ll attack you.”

  Something licked at her deep inside, but she played Ms. Cool, wandering over to the table to wipe up a few bread crumbs with the napkin she’d left there. “Why should I be? You’re not attracted to me.”