Snowflakes on the Sea

by Linda Lael Miller

  She was about to get out of the tub again when she noticed the froth of pink chiffon hanging, half-hidden, from a peg on the inside of the open door.

  Do not jump to conclusions, Mallory, she thought. Slowly, she rose from the tub, climbed out and wrapped herself in a thick, thirsty towel. Her feet seemed reluctant to obey her mind as she forced herself toward the door and the bit of pink fluff hanging so naturally upon it.

  It’s probably mine, she assured herself. I probably left it here, like the swimming suit and the teddy and—

  She took the garment down from its peg carefully, frowned as she turned it in her hands. It was a nightgown, short and tiered with lace-trimmed ruffles, and Mallory had never seen it before in her life.

  She swallowed the aching lump that had risen in her throat and read the tiny gold label tucked away in one seam of the gown. The words stitched there made Mallory’s eyes widen, replaced her rage with embarrassment, and caused her to stomp one foot and bellow, “Nathan McKendrick!”

  He appeared as though summoned from a genie’s lamp, peering with comical caution around the framework of the door.

  “This isn’t one bit funny!” she cried, waving the gossamer pink gown at him. “How long did it take poor Mrs. Jeffries to stitch ‘Trust me, Mallory’ onto this label!”

  Nathan’s broad, bare shoulders moved in an idle shrug. “Not long—she’s a whiz with a needle.”

  She was still waving the nightgown. “I thought this was—I thought—”

  “For shame, Mrs. McKendrick.”

  “Rat!”

  He laughed. “Put your clothes on before I ravish you. We’re spending the day in Seattle.”

  Mallory flung the nightgown at him, embarrassment still coloring her cheeks and quickening her breath. She couldn’t have spoken if it had meant her life.

  Nathan dodged the assault of pink ruffles and swatted her playfully on the backside. “Where is your sense of humor, woman?”

  Seething, Mallory swung one foot at him, trying to kick him in the shins. She missed, and her towel slipped unceremoniously to the floor, baring her to his delighted gaze. She went to retrieve the towel, but he was too quick—he grabbed it and waved it as though it were a matador’s cape.

  “Toro!” he yelled.

  Despite her fury and her embarrassment, an involuntary smile tugged at one corner of Mallory’s mouth. She kicked at him again, somewhat halfheartedly this time, and, in an instant, he had dropped the towel and caught both her elbows in his hands, pulling her close to him.

  She wriggled, trying to free herself, but the motion only increased her awareness of Nathan’s hard, masculine frame. “I th-thought we were g-going to Seattle,” she stammered.

  He laughed gruffly, and buried his face in her neck to nibble at the pulsing flesh there. The clean scent of his hair confused Mallory’s senses, so that she no longer knew whether she wanted to be loved or left alone. “We are going to Seattle,” he said. “Later.”

  They caught a midmorning ferry and enjoyed a certain amount of privacy, since the early rush was over. Mallory, publicly visible only on the soap opera, was not generally recognized anyway, but Nathan was known the world over, and keeping a low profile was not so easy for him. He managed it that day, for the most part, having dressed circumspectly in old jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a denim jacket. Though there were the usual questioning stares, not one of the other passengers approached either him or Mallory.

  “I think I’m losing my touch,” he confided to Mallory, with a grin, clasping his gifted hands together on the snack-bar tabletop and leaning forward.

  Mallory giggled. “Not likely, handsome.” She stole a surreptitious glance at two teenage girls sitting in another part of the snack bar. Though they were trying to be subtle, their wide eyes kept straying to Nathan. “They can’t be sure whether you’re you or not. It would be humiliating, after all, to ask for your autograph and then find out that you’re a crane operator from Bremerton.”

  Nathan laughed, softly, and there was something wistful in the sound. “Sometimes I wish I could be.”

  Mallory had been stirring her diet soda with her straw, but the motion stopped at her husband’s words. “Really? Why, Nathan?”

  But he was looking away now, and that wistful note that had sounded in his laugh and in his voice had stilled and risen to haunt his eyes. He watched the gulls soaring alongside the ferry, just a few feet beyond the window, and the muscles beneath the shoulders of his worn denim jacket were oddly slack.

  Saddened for a reason she could not have begun to explain, Mallory reached out to cover one of his hands with her own. “Nathan?”

  He sighed and turned back to her. “What?” he asked.

  “Why do you wish you could be a crane operator from Bremerton?” she insisted.

  He sat back in the unaccommodating plastic chair, and his shoulders were taut again. “I guess because their lives seem so peaceful and ordered to me. They go to work in the morning, come home to cold beer and good sex and the evening news. Some little kid in flannel pajamas tries to run over their feet with a plastic motorcycle that has pedals and—”

  Mallory chuckled, though unaccountable tears were smarting in her eyes. “Do you wish we had children, Nathan?”

  He looked down quickly at his coffee cup. “Maybe,” he muttered after a long, painful pause.

  Mallory looked out at the blue-gray sky, the water, the tree-lined shore in the distance. Inadvertently, she’d touched on a subject she hadn’t meant to broach—children. Her arms ached for a baby of her own, a baby of Nathan’s, but there had never been any time in their hectic lives to seriously consider starting a family.

  Too, thinking of babies made her think, inevitably, of Renee Parker. Much of her pain, she knew now, had originated not so much in the fact of Nathan’s alleged betrayal, but in his having a child that would not be hers.

  With as much subtlety as possible, Mallory took a paper napkin from the table and dried the tears that glistened in her eyelashes. She drew a deep breath and forced a shaky smile to her mouth. “How dare you imply that only crane operators have good sex?” she demanded. “Not an hour ago, Mr. International Rock Star, you were pretty happy yourself.”

  Nathan laughed and made a growling sound, low in his throat, and, after that, they didn’t speak of children again, but of their plans for the day.

  Mallory loved her husband and was happy in this new wealth of time and closeness they were sharing, but she sensed a certain distance between them, too. Renee Parker was like a specter in their midst, unseen but always there.

  After leaving the ferry, the McKendricks drove to a place they both loved—Pike Place.

  The Pike Place Market, with its vegetable stands and open fish markets and craft items of every sort, was a big tourist attraction during the summer, but, now, in winter, it was less crowded.

  After leaving the car, Mallory and Nathan ventured inside the large, aging building that comprised much of the market. Here, exotic parrots squawked in their cages, striking up incoherent arguments with the occasional wino. Shopkeepers sold everything from antiques to scrimshaw, dolls to old movie magazines. One merchant dealt in colorful kites of every size and shape, while another sold specially tinted photographs that made the posers look like fugitives from the distant past.

  Nathan paused in front of this shop, his hand warm and strong over Mallory’s, and studied the sample photographs on display in the windows. The men in the pictures were dressed, like the women, in period costume—some resembled outlaws, some lawmen, some cavalry officers. The women could choose from such nineteenth-century gems as long dresses with high Victorian collars and sweeping feathered-and-flowered hats, the delightfully skimpy garb of a dance-hall girl, or the calico-and-bonnet attire of a pioneer wife.

  Nathan extended a crooked elbow in a gesture of grand invitation, his eyes sparkling. “Shall we, Mrs. McKendrick?” he asked formally, the merest hint of a grin tugging at his lips.

  Mallory t
ook the offered arm with decorum. “Oh, let’s do, Mr. McKendrick,” she replied.

  The coming minutes were a delight of laughter and confusion—the McKendricks inspected costume after costume, before reaching a mutual decision. In the end, the photographer posed them as a lawman and a dance-hall girl—Nathan sitting sternly at a round table, a straight shot of pseudowhiskey in the curve of his gun hand, a remarkably authentic handlebar mustache stuck to his upper lip, a star-shaped badge gleaming on his rough tweed coat. He wore a round-brimmed hat that gave him a sort of menacing appeal, and his Colt .45 lay within easy reach on the tabletop.

  Mallory, wearing a satiny merry widow and fishnet stockings, was posed beside him, one shapely leg resting on the seat of a wooden chair. Her hair, pinned up for effect, was half-hidden by a saucy little hat constructed mainly of satin, feathers and loose morals.

  Both the marshal and the soiled dove had a hard time keeping straight faces until after the picture had been taken.

  8

  The crazy, quiet joy of that day notwithstanding, Mallory was still not well, and, once in her regular clothes again, she felt oddly deflated. Since there would be a twenty-minute wait for the special photograph, she sank gratefully into a chair at one of the tables in the wide hallway outside the shop and sighed.

  Nathan gave her a gentle, discerning look. “Getting tired?”

  She nodded. “I’ll be all right in a minute, though.”

  Still standing, Nathan reached out and touched her face tenderly. “I’ll scare up some coffee, pumpkin. Rest.”

  Coffee was one of Mallory’s favorite vices—Nathan often said that it ran in her veins instead of blood—and a cup of that bracing brew sounded very good to her just then. “You drive a hard bargain, fella. Don’t forget the artificial sweetener.”

  He laughed and turned away and, in only a moment, he had disappeared into the shifting, scattered crowds.

  Mallory sighed and laced her fingers together on the tabletop, watching with interest as a little blond boy came bounding out of the nearby kite shop, clutching a colorful bag and beaming. He turned to look back at someone behind him and blurted, “Let’s get ice cream now, okay? Let’s get ice cream!”

  “No way, Jamie,” a very familiar feminine voice argued. “It’s winter and I’m cold and it’s hot chocolate or nothing!”

  Mallory’s mouth dropped open when Diane Vincent stepped into view. She looked away quickly, hoping that the woman wouldn’t notice her, but she soon learned that she’d been unsuccessful.

  “Hello, Mallory.”

  Mallory forced herself to look up, even to smile. Might as well make the best of it, McKendrick, she thought. “Diane,” she said in greeting.

  “It’s incredible the way we keep running into each other, isn’t it?” Diane asked, as Jamie drifted off to look at a display of space-war books in a nearby window. “Is Nathan with you?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” Mallory replied. Now that the child, Jamie, was otherwise occupied, she saw no reason to be polite. “Did you want to see him?”

  Diane bridled slightly, then recovered herself. She was casual elegance itself in her trim flannel slacks, turtleneck sweater and blazer. “It’s nice to see that you’re putting on such a brave front,” she said, ignoring Mallory’s question.

  Mallory sat back in her chair, pretending to be relaxed, though inwardly she was seething. She let Diane’s remark pass and glanced at Jamie, who was still admiring the bookstore display.

  “He’s my nephew,” Diane offered, without apparent emotion. “When are you going back to the soap, Mallory?”

  Mallory met Diane’s gaze again, shrugged. “I’m in no particular hurry. Right now, I’m more concerned with my marriage.”

  Diane’s pastel blue eyes sparkled with refined malice. “Now there’s a hopeless pursuit, if I’ve ever heard one.”

  Swallowing hard, Mallory clung to her tenuous composure with all her strength. She could have kicked herself for giving Diane the opening she just had. “Speaking of hopeless pursuits, have you found a new job yet?”

  There was a short, chilling silence, and then Diane smiled and tossed her beautiful head. “Oh, I’m in no hurry. Nathan was quite—generous—when we were together. I’ve got plenty of money. And now, plenty to do.”

  Mallory arched one eyebrow. I should get an Emmy for this, she thought. Here I am, so calm and collected, when I’d like nothing better than to tear out this witch’s hair, hank by shimmering hank. “I’ll bite, Diane. Why do you have plenty to do?”

  “I’m planning to write a book—with a little help from a friend.”

  “Splendid.”

  “It’s all about my affair with Nathan.”

  Mallory smiled slowly, acidly. “Oh, a novel. I would have expected nonfiction.”

  A fetching pink color rose in Diane’s cheeks to complement the soft blue of her eyes. “You are so very good at deluding yourself, Mallory. That’s probably how you’re handling the paternity scandal, isn’t it?”

  “That suit is a crock, Diane, and we both know it.”

  Diane shrugged, and her eyes shifted briefly to her nephew before coming back to Mallory’s face. “Maybe it is—she’s a kid, after all. But I’m not, Mallory, and I’ve spent more nights with Nathan than you have. What do you think we were doing in all those hotel suites, all over the world—learning the languages?”

  “Save it for your book, Diane.”

  “What book?” demanded a third voice, and Mallory looked up to see Nathan standing just behind Diane, a cup of coffee in each hand.

  Diane squared her shoulders and faced him with a bravery Mallory couldn’t help admiring. She ran one smartly gloved hand over the breast pocket of Nathan’s denim jacket in an intimate, unpracticed-looking gesture and smiled. “I’m telling all, sugarplum. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Nathan looked, for just a moment, as though he would like to pour the coffee he carried down the front of Diane’s sweater. “Of course not,” he said, after a second or two. “Just make sure you get releases from all those bellhops and stagehands. That should take months.”

  Patches of crimson appeared on Diane’s glamorous cheekbones. “Bastard,” she hissed.

  Nathan lifted one of the coffee cups in an insolent toast. “At your service,” he said.

  Bested, though Mallory suspected the condition was only temporary, Diane whirled away, collected her startled nephew from in front of the book shop and disappeared.

  Mallory’s hand trembled a little as she reached out for the coffee Nathan offered before sitting down at the table with her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked after a moment.

  Unable to look at him, Mallory nodded. “Sometimes I think that woman follows me around, just waiting for a chance to get under my skin.”

  “I should have fired her a long time ago.”

  Before Mallory had to come up with a reply to that, the clerk in the antique-photo shop came out and indicated with a gesture that the picture was ready.

  They were inside the Porsche and well away from the Pike Place Market before either of the McKendricks spoke.

  “Mallory, I’m sorry.”

  Mallory stole a glance at her husband, saw that he was looking straight ahead at the traffic. “For what?”

  Still, he did not look at her; she would have felt his gaze if he had. “About Diane—about the paternity suit. All of it.”

  Mallory swallowed hard and laced her fingers together in her lap. “Do you have some reason to be sorry about Diane?”

  “Nothing like you’re thinking. I’ve never touched her, Mallory.”

  Closing her eyes, Mallory let the back of her head rest against the rich suede car seat. She couldn’t help remembering the way Diane had touched Nathan back at the market. There had been some truth in Diane’s words, too—she had probably spent more time with Nathan than Mallory herself. Could he have been in constant and close proximity with such a stunningly beautiful woman and never taken the pleasures
she had surely offered time and again?

  Weary misery squeezed Mallory’s heart like a strong hand. Now, with her self-confidence at an unusually low ebb, it was so easy to think the worst.

  “Mallory?”

  She opened her eyes, stiffened in the car seat. Nathan was turning into the circular driveway of their apartment complex, shifting down, drawing the Porsche to a smooth stop. She stared at him in question, but said nothing.

  “I think you need to rest for a while,” he informed her, not quite meeting her eyes. “I’ll see you upstairs and run a few errands while you’re sleeping.”

  “What errands?” she retorted, and the words were rife with suspicions she hadn’t meant to reveal.

  Nathan’s hands tightened on the steering wheel for a moment, then relaxed. When he looked at her, his dark eyes were snapping with sardonic fury. “I thought I’d go out and buy off all my former mistresses,” he said coldly, “lest they write books. After that, I’ll probably trip at least one old lady and roll a wino or two.”

  “Very funny!” Mallory shot back in a scathing whisper, as a delighted George rushed toward the car.

  “If you’re so worried about what I’m doing, Mallory,” Nathan bit out, “why don’t you hire a detective to follow me around?”

  “That would make it too hard to keep on kidding myself!”

  Before Nathan could reply to that, the doorman had reached Mallory’s side of the car and opened the door to help her out. Her husband remained behind the wheel, glaring straight ahead, and when Mallory and George were clear of the vehicle, he shifted it into gear again and sped away, tires screeching on the slushy asphalt.

  George cleared his throat but was careful not to let on that he’d noticed the obvious rift between the McKendricks. Graciously, he escorted Mallory all the way to the penthouse and left her only when she was safely inside.

  Once she was alone, Mallory allowed the tears she’d been holding back in the name of dignity to flow unhampered. Damn it, she’d fallen right into Diane’s trap, had allowed the bitch to spoil an otherwise delightful day.