Until then, she didn’t dare let the possibility that he might have a bastard half brother occur to Trey. He might very well want to throw his arms open and welcome the man. That would be just like Trey. He wouldn’t realize until later that Paul Bouvet could be legally entitled to a hefty portion of the money Trey and Sue-sue spent so cavalierly. He might also realize that he would become a laughingstock, having a father who’d dishonored him.
Dammit, her husband had dishonored her, never mind Trey.
If she was right about Bouvet, he must be stopped before he could damage Trey or her grandchildren. He must be stopped before the revelation of her husband’s affair could destroy her.
He must be sent politely away.
And if not sent, then driven away before he could open his foul French mouth.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“ARE YOU COMING to dinner Sunday?” Nancy Jenkins asked her daughter when she called that evening.
“At Gram’s or at home?”
Nancy sniffed. “You act like I can’t cook. Your grandmother has kindly invited everyone after church.”
“Then sure, but I don’t think I’ll go to church. I’m behind on refinishing the trim on those bookcases at the mansion.”
“I have an idea. Why don’t you bring that nice young man with you? He’s all alone and the café is closed Sundays. I’m sure he’d appreciate a home-cooked meal.”
“I’ve barely seen him to speak to in more than a week,” Ann told her mother. “He’s either flying that plane of his or off doing research of some kind.”
“Really? What? Why?”
“How would I know?”
“Your grandmother says he’s nice as pie. And a hunk.”
“My grandmother is a lecherous old biddy, and you can tell her I said so.”
“You tell her yourself. Is he a hunk?”
“I suppose so.”
“Buddy likes him, too. Bring him to dinner Sunday so I can check him out.”
“Mother, I’m not interested in another relationship. Certainly not with a hunk. I had a hunk. They make lousy husbands.”
“Not all of them do. Just because you had a bad experience—”
“Mother, stop it. I didn’t have a bad experience. I had a six-year train wreck of a marriage.”
“This man apparently has money. He’s not going to ask you to support him the way Travis did.”
“He is definitely not going to because I’m not going to marry him. Or anybody else. Not for a long, long time.”
“I want grandchildren.”
“Then adopt.”
“Ann, sometimes I could throttle you.”
“Then we’re even. Bye, Mother dear.”
“Wait. What about Sunday dinner?”
“Oh, Lord. All right.”
“Fix yourself up a little. You might even consider wearing a dress. The last time I checked, you had legs, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen them I’m really not sure. You haven’t developed thick ankles, have you?”
Ann took a deep breath. “My ankles are fine, Mother, thank you for asking. I don’t think I own a dress, but if you promise never to mention the subject again, I will dig out a skirt. And if I see Paul, I’ll invite him.”
“Good, because if you don’t, I’ll have Buddy do it.”
With that parting shot, her mother hung up.
In the minds of most of the women of Rossiter, a woman needed a husband even if she had a career of her own. Almost any husband was better than none. Ann’s mother and grandmother had changed their minds on that score after Ann eloped with Travis Corrigan and moved to Washington so that he could become a theater director.
Ann’s master’s degree in art history wasn’t enough to get her an assistant-assistant-curator position at any of the myriad museums and galleries. But her schooling in art restoration got her a job cleaning and restoring paintings and art objects for a chic gallery in Foggy Bottom. The work was tedious and painstaking. But she didn’t mind devoting herself to a six-inch square at the corner of some giant sixteenth-century landscape. The painter might be unknown, but he deserved as much care as she’d take with a Rembrandt.
She occasionally made a major discovery when the layers of grime came off. The gallery owner paid her a handsome commission for uncovering a missing hand that had been painted over in a seventeenth-century Spanish madonna.
She spent most of her nights helping to build sets and create furnishings and props for her husband’s theater. She’d fall into bed at night completely exhausted, but happy.
Until she discovered Travis’s first infidelity. Travis denied anything was going on at first. Then he said that he’d gone hunting for another source of sex because his wife was never home, always working, and when had she gotten a new hairstyle or put on eye shadow lately, anyway?
He was right, of course. She hadn’t been seductive enough or inventive enough in bed. She and Travis both ended up in tears, protestations of love and bed in that order. The greatest sex they’d ever had.
Each time it happened, Ann withdrew into herself a little further, became a little quieter, buried herself even more in her work.
After he was fired for messing around with the producer’s wife, Ann missed the theater. It didn’t seem fair that she should be kicked out when she was the best set painter and designer they had.
Then one day he met her at the door, waltzed her into their galley kitchen and kissed her fiercely. “We’ve moving to New York!” he said gaily. “We’ll sublet this apartment, get a place in the Village or Soho or somewhere. I’ll get a job as a stage manager on Broadway and do some directing off-off Broadway.”
She was too stunned to answer.
“I thought I’d take some acting lessons. At the Actors’ Studio or somewhere. I’ve got the face for it, you have to admit, and I was great in Hedda Gabler in college.
She started to tell him that the male roles in Hedda Gabler weren’t exactly showcases.
“It’ll be great, babe! Just like honeymooners!” He grabbed her around the waist and danced her around the tiny living room.
When she finally managed to free herself, she asked, “What about me?”
“You can do what you do anywhere. With the references they’ll give you, you can probably go to work restoring stuff for the Frick Gallery or someplace.”
“So I quit my job—which is paying the bills, by the way—pack up and move to New York with no prospects for either of us?”
He frowned down at her from his six foot three. “All right, so you’re paying the bills right now. Throw that in my face, why don’t you?” He whipped away from her, his hands in the air. “God, I thought you’d be thrilled! Talk about your selfish…”
She fell in love with New York just as she’d fallen in love with Washington. She found a job quickly with a big firm that did full restorations—furniture, houses, sculpture—anything that was broken or needed attention. She spent six months learning more techniques. She became the most expert restorer the company had. She did jobs in the Hamptons, Vermont, Philadelphia and country houses in between. Clients began asking specifically for her.
With Travis usually either rehearsing or playing in some avant-garde thing in some church basement, she was on her own most nights. And, if the truth be known, she enjoyed having the apartment to herself.
When she felt like some company, she sought out her four co-workers. They made a team that was unbeatable. Marti, two hundred pounds of wild Barnard graduate who did kick-ass wood carving, became the sister Ann had never had. Marti’s mother even taught Ann to make liver knishes and gefilte fish.
Then there was Zabo, a transplant from Benin, who knew how to work metal with as much skill and art as his sixteenth-century ancestors. Next came Sebastian, tall, thin, gay, with eloquent hands. He knew everything there was to know about period architecture.
The last of the group, Tonio, was whipcord thin with flashing dark eyes and a smile that melted female (and male) hearts in every direct
ion when he turned it on. He was the marble expert, having been born and raised in Carrara.
Zabo taught Ann to use a lathe to re-create missing wood pieces. Marti taught her to carve. Sebastian taught her the wonders of plaster, and Tonio tried to take her to bed.
She and Travis lived like roommates.
Then one afternoon Travis burst into the apartment with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other.
“Babe! Pack your bags! We’re off to L.A.!”
Half-asleep over a new detective story, Ann jerked awake. “Huh? What?”
“The big H., babe! Holl-y-wooood.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“It’s the promised land, babe. I got the face for it, I got the body for it, I got the star quality for it.”
What could she say to that?
“I’m flying to the Coast—God, how great that sounds—on the red-eye tomorrow night. Sid’s got me two auditions and one commercial already.” He turned to her with a puzzled expression on his face. “Hey, babe, what’s the matter? This is what we’ve been working for. Two years and we’ll be living in a mansion in Malibu.”
“No.” She was as stunned as Travis when the word came out of her mouth.
“What?”
“I’m not going.”
“Sure, not right away. I got to find us a decent place to live first, get a few residual checks under my belt.”
“I don’t want to leave my job.”
“What job? That glorified carpentry work you do down in Soho? This is what we’ve always wanted.”
“Not what I wanted, and until a year ago, it wasn’t what you wanted, either.”
“I always wanted to be in theater.”
“Not as an actor.”
He dropped the roses on the battered coffee table. “You’ve always resented my aspirations. You’re the one who’s been holding me back.”
She sat down so hard she felt the broken spring in the sofa poke her rear end. “I’m responsible for the women, too, am I?”
“The truth is I’ve outgrown you. I understand why all those guys in Hollywood dump their wives when they get to be stars. You think I’d want to be seen walking down the red carpet with you on my arm?”
“You’re right. You’ve outgrown me.” She began to giggle. “How about we crack the champagne and drink to our pending divorce?”
“What?” He looked stunned. He’d obviously not expected things to go this far. He would need the money from her paycheck for acting classes and a new portfolio and a pleasant apartment. “One remark and you want a divorce?”
“You’re much better off divorcing me in New York before you get rich, you know. California is a community-property state. Once you establish residency there and make your first million, I can really take you to the cleaners with alimony.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not joking.”
“You’re angry.”
“I’ll call Marti tomorrow morning and get the name of a cheap divorce lawyer. We can split the CDs. You can have the furniture. Thank God we sold the car when we moved up here. We can pay the lawyer and split what’s left, I suppose. Is that agreeable to you?”
Travis really didn’t want a divorce. Did he feel safer not being able to continue an affair for very long because he had a wife?
“Come on, babe, let’s go to bed.” He held out his hand. She took it and let him lead her to the bedroom.
The next day he left for L.A., and she convened a meeting of her colleagues at her apartment to tell them what had happened.
The consensus was that it had taken her long enough to kick the bastard out.
Ann realized she wanted to go home.
They were all horrified when she told them. They didn’t want to lose her friendship. “And we damned well don’t want to lose your skill at crown molding,” said Sebastian.
“Maybe we won’t have to,” Marti said.
When Ann talked to her boss about moving home and taking commissions from him and any other restoration jobs as a freelancer, he hated the idea. Two days later he agreed. “But only if I get first crack at you,” he said.
She hugged him.
When she called her parents to say she wanted to come home to work for her father on restoration, her mother merely said, “It’s about time,” and burst into tears.
So here she was divorced from a man who so far hadn’t shown up in any major motion pictures, living in a pair of lofts, spending half her time in hotel rooms while she worked on jobs out of town and sharing her life with a big dog who, unlike her ex-husband, was loyal.
PAUL CLIMBED OUT of the Stearman biplane with a real sense of accomplishment. He’d forgotten how touchy the old tail-dragger could get in a crosswind. His Cessna practically flew itself. A very forgiving aircraft but not nearly as much fun to fly.
“You better not try them barrel rolls with weed killer in the tanks, son.”
Paul looked up from his logbook and grinned at Hack Morrison, the man who owned the Stearman, the man who’d be employing him part-time as a crop duster. Hack also owned a pair of Air Tractors and the local airfield.
“You’re the one who took me up and damn near made me toss my cookies,” Paul said.
He’d been horrified by Hack’s appearance the first time he’d met him. Hack walked with a slight limp he said he’d gotten from a piece of shrapnel in 1944. He wore filthy coveralls over a ragged white undershirt that exposed ropy sunburned arms and a barrel chest.
His disreputable cap featured the logo of one of the high-priced cotton fertilizers. Oil and grime were deeply imbedded in his hands.
He wore boots that had been brown once, but were now permanently dirt-colored and would never take a shine. He lived in an aging trailer behind the first of six hangars where owners kept their private planes. To top off this country-bumpkin act, he always had the stub of an unlit cigar in his mouth.
After he and Hack landed from Paul’s ride in the Stearman, Paul turned to him. “You’re an old fraud, Hack Morrison. What’d you do? See an old geezer in some World War Two movie and decide you could out-character him?”
“I got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I checked up on you before I parked my plane here. You graduated from West Point, you retired a bird colonel, and if I had as many hours in the air as you do, I could probably fly without a plane.”
“Now you listen, son. Don’t you go talking. I don’t want another soul in on the facts.”
“Sure, but why?”
Hack sighed. “I had twenty-five years of spit and polish. I got sick of it. After my wife died I decided I’d spend my declining years as an eccentric.” He grinned at Paul. “Most of the time it works.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
“Good. Keep it that way. Now, we’re gonna start pre-emerge spraying in two weeks. You gotta be able to stroke that Stearman like a beautiful woman, or you’re gonna wind up wearing a couple of utility wires. When you gonna come do some more flying?”
“Do I have to take you with me?”
“Not necessarily. You’re a pretty fair pilot all told. The Stearman’s a hell of a lot of fun to fly. Bring your girlfriend. Pay for the gas is all.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Then get one.” Hack walked off with his dirty hands in his dirty pockets.
Paul knew he’d been dismissed.
CHAPTER NINE
THE DAY HE STARTED dusting crops for Hack Morrison, Paul lost all contact with the work at his house. He came home only to shower, sleep, shave and change clothes. Hack flew with him the first couple of days before turning him loose with his precious Stearman.
What was supposed to be a part-time job quickly turned into dawn till dusk seven days a week. If Paul had missed flying, he was certainly making up for it now.
“Won’t last long,” Hack assured him. “Once they start plantin’, we’ll have six weeks before we start spraying for i
nsects.”
One late afternoon as he climbed down from the Stearman so tired his legs were shaky, he finally asked Hank, “When are you going to come up and join me in one of your Air Tractors?”
Hack hemmed and hawed and dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his dirty coveralls. “Well, see, it’s like this. Reflexes aren’t what they were. Eyes, either, although I can still pass a flight physical. Since you’re a young pup and you need the experience, I thought I’d just let you handle it.”
“I see. You conned me.”
“Maybe. I’ve sort of been looking for somebody to take over the business. It makes good money, and I’d stay as a pilot as long as I could, plus keep the place up, but I’m really sick of being tied down so much. I’d like to revisit a few of the places Virginia and I lived in before I die.”
“Oh, no, you don’t, you old devil. I am not buying a crop-dusting business, and I’m certainly not buying a private airport.”
Hack’s face was open and guileless. His blue eyes, however, were shrewd. “Never asked you, did I?”
“I’m not even certain I approve of the effect all the dusting has on the environment.”
“You’d rather starve, I suppose.”
“I don’t eat cotton.”
“Lot of folks wouldn’t eat without it. Besides, the EPA’s put so many restrictions on us it’s a miracle we can even lift off. They’ve tested the stuff we use six ways to Sunday. Won’t affect anything but the weeds and the boll weevils. Can’t fly when there’s even a hint of breeze, can’t allow spillover into adjacent fields. Never mind that a man could stall out and kill himself trying to bank too sharp.”
“Frankly, Hack, I’m tired. I could use a day off.”
“Then pray for rain. Can’t spray in the rain, either.”
HE AWOKE next morning to the swish of the trees against the screens on the porch and the patter of heavy rain on his new roof. “Thank God,” he said, and rolled out of bed.
The work on the house seemed to go on and on with no discernible progress. He now had heating and air-conditioning and plenty of hot water. He was grateful for all three, but they didn’t show. The house still looked as though it were caught in a time warp, not certain whether to allow itself to be resurrected or simply give up and fall down.
House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 12