Like an alarm, there was a sudden piercing sound from the main cabin, a high-pitched shriek that startled Allie out of her almost mesmerized state. Zach’s face broke into a broad grin, a brief laugh escaping his lips. “It’s just the teakettle,” he said wryly. “Maybe the gods are sending us a message.” He went quickly into the galley to turn off the flame beneath the whistling kettle. “We’d better have that cup of coffee now.”
She stood up, the insides of her legs feeling weak and unsteady.
What could she have been thinking? She hardly knew the man!
Zach was pouring the boiling water into the mugs. Then he set the coffee and a shaker of sugar on the table, and Allie sat down at the little table, glad that her knees were returning to their normal state.
She sipped at the hot coffee, unaware that as she did, Zach was taking advantage of the opportunity to continue his sensual examination of her face, enjoying the smooth creaminess of her skin, the soft bangs feathering past her eyebrows. A remnant of paint was on the bridge of her nose and, as she drank from her mug, her long, golden lashes lay like a gentle fringe on her cheek. He was intrigued by those ragged bangs, that smudge of paint. He wanted to reach his hand across the table and brush the hair away from her beautiful hazel eyes. He wanted to feel those golden lashes against his lips. He imagined her lifting those lashes, letting him look into the bright depths of her glowing, mysterious eyes.
For the moment, he closed his mind to the fact that she was living at Adam’s place, that she was working with Adam. Zach let himself enjoy the pleasure of her presence. This woman, he thought, is someone really special. The sight of her, yesterday, coming out of the plane, would have been enough. But now that he’d seen her work, seen her talent, he realized she was not only beautiful and bright. This woman, he realized, was special.
“I’d like to talk to you about your painting of Sea Smoke,” he said, letting his eyes continue to enjoy her intriguing beauty. Over the rim of her mug, Allie raised her eyebrows questioningly. “I was wondering if it might be for sale.” He hesitated, realizing he’d just made an impulsive decision to purchase the watercolor. “Do you mind my asking?”
“Of course not,” she said, putting down her mug. She was surprised that this was turning into a business discussion. “That’s why I paint pictures, so people will buy them.” She laughed, a little ruefully. “That’s how I pay my rent, and buy bread and milk and silly things like that. The thing is”—she paused momentarily, hoping he wouldn’t think she was trying to put him off—“I don’t sell them myself. I have an agent, and he handles all of that for me.”
In a flash, Zach’s eyes hardened. “You mean Adam Talmadge?”
Allie caught the abrupt hostility of his tone and she remembered his ugly insinuations yesterday about her and Adam. Instantly, her fury of the day before returned. She felt herself stiffen, the warmth of a few moments ago disappearing quickly.
“Of course! Adam is my agent. I already told you that. He handles all my business matters.” Suddenly she didn’t care if Zach Eliot never owned a picture of hers. “If you’re thinking of buying the picture, you’re going to have to talk to him,” she said sharply. In her mind, the image appeared of a business negotiation between the small-town Zach Eliot and the urbane Adam Talmadge.
I’d love to be a fly on that wall, she thought caustically. Adam would eat up this simple sailor man in two bites!
“I should have realized,” Zach’s voice was ice cold. “So you’ll be taking all your work to him?”
“Yes.” The frostiness that had come into Zach’s voice did not escape Allie. “I have a show coming up in a couple of weeks at the Whiscombe Gallery and we may want to include some of these pieces.” There was the slightest flicker of reaction in Zach’s face—the barest acknowledging lift of one eyebrow—that told Allie he was impressed. She was surprised that the Whiscombe name meant anything to him. “I’ll be going back to the city to take these to him,” she continued, “next week, probably.”
“And will you be returning to the Cape after that?” Zach was struggling to remember his own advice to himself. A light touch, he was telling himself. Keep it light, damn it.
“Sure. Adam’s got some big project in the works, and he’s going to be needing me up here. He’ll have plenty for me to do. I expect I’ll be back and forth all summer.”
“Of course,” Zach said, his eyes now flashing blackly, his own good advice to himself completely vanished from his thoughts. “Of course you will. I should have realized. I’ll just bet Adam will be keeping you busy!” He couldn’t control his anger any longer. He reached across the little table and took the mug from her hand, setting it roughly onto the galley counter, the remaining coffee splashing over its edge. “Well, I’d hate to get in the way of all that important work you have to do for Adam and his damned project. And I know you need to get back to your busy schedule, so I won’t keep you any longer. Forgive me if I don’t escort you back to your car, but I’m sure you can find your way.”
Allie didn’t need any encouragement to get out of there. She was already on her feet and was climbing the ladder steps, with Zach’s last words rising angrily after her as she reached the deck.
“Thanks for the tour, Zach,” she called back at him sarcastically as she stepped up from the cockpit and over Sea Smoke’s rail, onto the float. “And thanks for the coffee. I’ll be sure to let Adam know how hospitable the natives are.” She was so angry, she didn’t care if the full force of her fury reached him or not.
She needed to get away quickly. In a rage, she packed up her things, thinking as she looked at the painting on the easel that the image on the paper didn’t begin to tell the real story of the beautiful boat and its infuriating owner.
She hauled the painting and her materials quickly up the ramp to the Cherokee, tossed everything into the backseat, and then climbed in behind the wheel. It was only then, after she’d turned on the motor, that she succumbed to the irresistible impulse, and let her glance return to the boat. He was nowhere in sight.
She didn’t understand it. Just mention Adam’s name and the man got crazy. Allie’s small chin came forward, her lips setting in firm resolution. But that doesn’t mean he can act like a clod!
She steeled herself against the memory of his caressing gaze, the intriguing, masculine power that had surrounded her, his gentle touch on her face. Full of righteous fury, she put the car in gear and drove away down the dock, being careful not to let herself look back again.
Even if she had looked back, she would not have been able to see him, inside Sea Smoke’s cabin, leaning back against the galley top, sipping from a mug of coffee. She would not have seen him watching her through the forward porthole as she loaded up her car and drove away. And she would not have seen how he put his mug down on the tabletop in front of him and closed his eyes disgustedly.
“Good going, Zach,” he said aloud, his voice heavy with the sarcasm he was directing against himself. “That was a really good job you just did of keeping your cool with that woman. I’m really impressed by that fine display of interpersonal skill and sophistication.” He covered his eyes with his hand, his black brows drawn together angrily. “Ah, Zach,” he said, more quietly still, “I’ve never known you to be such a fool.”
Chapter Five
Allie was careful to avoid the dock area for the next few days. The last thing in the world she wanted, she told herself, was to run into that insufferable man. The trouble was, no matter how busy she kept herself, her concentration was repeatedly invaded by those deep blue eyes under the black brows, the broad mouth with its easy smile and its hidden sorrow, the scent of a newly washed denim shirt.
Unfortunately, her encounter with Zach had reawakened her old sense that, somehow, she didn’t “belong.” It had been many years since Allie had felt the pain of those early wounds, at least consciously, but Zach’s abrupt dismissal of her, for no good reason that she could understand, and her feeling that she had entered alien—a
nd maybe hostile—territory, stirred old anxieties. Every time she drove off in the Cherokee, exploring the surrounding beaches and wooded places for good painting sites, she was reminded that nothing of her difficult childhood even remotely resembled the beauty and comfort of this affluent and long-established community. Allie had made what peace she could with her youthful losses, but one of her defenses against the pain of rejection was her quick temper, a prickly manner concealing her old vulnerability. Zach’s behavior had opened the door on the vulnerability, forcing her to raise her defenses. Having slammed that door closed again, Allie was determined to keep it closed.
* * *
Several days of good, solid work had passed and Allie was beginning to feel that she had successfully taken control of her life again. She had enough preliminary sketches to put together a portfolio for Adam, and she had already emailed a set of photos to him to give him an advance look at the work she was doing. She had all the seascapes she wanted and was looking forward to driving, next morning, through the hilly, boggy places filled with cranberry and blueberry shrubs, confident that she would find the perfect landscape subject to complement the sketches that were already done. Only a few days remained before she was to fly back to New York for the Whiscombe show and these last few pieces would be all she needed for Adam to gauge her progress on his mysterious project.
* * *
She wakened very early, delighted to find the morning cool and fragrant, the sky brilliantly clear and her own mood one of high good spirits. The sun was not quite risen above the horizon, and she decided to postpone breakfast. Too lovely a day, she thought, to stop, even for coffee. She just pulled on her ragged jeans and a plain white t-shirt and headed right out into the beautiful morning.
She drove only a short distance, choosing a nearby dirt road close to the beach, a road that she had passed almost every day, but had not yet explored. It disappeared into a low-lying valley, but when she drove well into it, she found that it continued on up a fairly steep hill, and near the top the road ended at a broad clearing in the trees, in which, set back at a small distance, a large house was gleaming white and quiet in the thin, chilly light. Surprised and entranced by the beauty and isolation of the house, Allie brought the Cherokee to a stop at the edge of the clearing. In the dense trees that surrounded her, the birds were singing their early-morning song, and the first pale wash of light was just beginning to fill the sky above her.
She sat behind the wheel in amazed silence, stunned by the vividness of a suddenly returned memory. After so many years, there in front of her, a child’s dream was turned into solid reality.
There it is! That’s the house!
A flash from long ago flooded her awareness.
She had been a little girl, not more than nine or ten. Her mother had cut a picture from a magazine and stuck it into the frame of the mirror over her dresser, and one morning, as Allie sat on her mother’s bed, watching her dress to go to her job in the paint factory, Allie asked about the gleaming, sun-bright house in the picture.
“Someday,” her mother had said, “this family is going to live in a house just like that.”
The dream had never come true, of course. And the picture had been gathered up with all the other things that had been disposed of after her mother’s death. Allie hadn’t consciously thought about that house since that time. But now, as she sat in the car, facing the entrance to the curved, graveled driveway, Allie knew this was the house of her mother’s dreams.
By its classic design, she recognized it as a very old, full Cape house, with double windows on either side of the transom door. It had apparently been carefully maintained over many generations, and several wings had been added, extending comfortably beyond the original structure. Chimneys rose up from the various parts of the home, and there were connecting passages between the wings. Through the paned windows, white curtains and plants were visible. The whole compound of buildings looked warm and inviting in the early morning light that was just beginning to fill the clearing.
A large garage formed one of the wings of the main structure and, in the garage, Allie saw two vehicles. One of them was a late-model, bronze-colored Jaguar. Allie was impressed: she didn’t care much about automobiles, but even she recognized this must be one of the sharpest, most expensive models on the market.
But it was the other vehicle in the garage that really surprised her. The other vehicle was Zach’s familiar green Ford pickup truck.
Allie sat behind the wheel of the Cherokee, absolutely stunned.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said aloud.
And then she saw, at the edge of the driveway that circled up to the front of the house, a small wooden sign hanging by chain links from a tree branch. The lettering carved into the wood was neat and simple, and it spelled out ELIOT.
How about that!
She was suddenly nervous. She gripped the steering wheel to steady herself.
I go out of my way to avoid him, and I wind up practically trespassing on his property.
She felt like a fool and she glanced guiltily around her.
I guess I just wasn’t paying attention. This must be a private road. If Zach should see me sitting here—
She knew she ought to get out of there right away but, as if guided by a little devil on her shoulder, she found the opportunity to learn more about Zach Eliot was irresistible.
Maybe, if I’m really quiet and just sort of tiptoe around . . . It’s so early, he’s probably still sleeping . . . I’ll just take a minute or two and look around a little bit ...
Leaving the car door open, Allie got out and, as quietly as she could, walked along the edge of the property, staying close to the trees that surrounded the clearing. Each step of her foot, as silent as she could make it in her deck shoes, seemed to crash through the still morning air.
I can’t believe I’m doing this.
Her heart was thumping.
But it’s so early. Nobody would be awake now. I’ll just take a really quick look around, and then I’ll get out of here. I’m not doing any harm.
Trying to keep her nerves steady, she circled behind the garage and made a wide pass around the broad lawn that extended at least an acre behind the house. Despite her skittishness, her trained eye was taking in a host of details, noting especially that, although the building was well cared for, with fresh white paint on the doors and window frames, the grounds were neglected. The outlines of flower beds were visible, but it was apparent that years had passed since any flowers had grown in them. The trees and shrubbery were ragged, in need of pruning.
She moved quietly past the back of the garage and continued on, staying within the shadow of the trees and shrubbery that marked the beginning of the woods. The big lawn behind the house, like the trees and shrubs, had received only minimal attention. It had been mowed a couple of weeks ago, but now dandelions dotted it brightly here and there, and patches of grass had gone to seed. Garden furniture was stacked up at one side of the flagstone terrace, looking forlorn, obviously not regularly used. A garden hose had been coiled on the terrace but there were no flowers growing in the large terra cotta planters along its border.
As Allie tiptoed through the long grasses at the edge of the clearing, her sense of panic was rising steadily. She knew she’d stepped way over the line and she was already thoroughly ashamed of herself.
“Golly,” she was whispering to herself, finding a bit of reassurance in the quiet sound of her own voice. “If he should catch me here . . . How did I get myself into this?” Her words, if she’d dared speak up, would have been a wail. “This was such a dumb idea!”
So she had seen the outside of Zach Eliot’s house. So what! All she wanted now was to get safely back to the car, undiscovered, and then get herself far away from the place.
She needed only to get around to the far side of the big lawn and through some trees that grew up close against the wall of the building. Staying as silent as she could, Allie rounded the lawn and moved
gently through the trees along the side of the house. The morning air was sweet and still all around her. There was no rustle of the leaves above her head, and even the birds seemed to be holding their breath. She came around the corner and, in the driveway ahead of her, the Cherokee was waiting, its door open. She just had to tiptoe quietly across the open space at the front of the house and then just as quietly get out of there, and no one would be any the wiser.
She had taken only one step out onto the gravel when Zach’s voice made her jump.
“Kind of early in the morning for snooping around, isn’t it, Allie?”
He was leaning against the frame of the open doorway at the front of the house, naked to the waist and shoeless, wearing only his jeans. With a towel, he was wiping shaving cream from his face.
“I wasn’t snooping!” Allie could feel the flush rising in her face, the pounding of her heart now almost choking her. She understood that expression about wishing the earth would swallow her up. She could barely get the words out as she tried her best to sound casual. “I didn’t realize it was a private road. I just drove up here by mistake.”
“You bet it was a mistake!” The expression on Zach’s face was murderous. He stepped back into the house and held the door open. “Come on in, Allie.” His voice was ice cold. “You and I are going to have a little talk.”
Allie followed him meekly into the house, feeling too ashamed and guilty to protest. He slammed the door behind and, as she stood in the little entryway, trying to regain her composure, he finished wiping his face and pointed into the living room, at her left. “Wait in there,” he ordered. “I’m going to get dressed.” Angrily, he threw his towel onto a chair that stood just inside the dining room, to the right, and disappeared, two steps at a time, up the steep stairs that rose from the entryway.
Summer on the Cape Page 5