"There are no motels." The words were crisp. "Try Mrs. Tyler. She runs a boardinghouse just down the street.”
A man's voice called, "Leigh! Darling, are you all right? Helen told me you were nearly hit."
She had taken a step away from him, but at the sound of that name, Ty fought back the feeling of being punched in the solar plexus and covered the ground between them with two quick movements of his long legs. His hand reached out, grasped the velvet-clad arm. "Were you in that blue car? Dammit. I nearly annihilated you."
She shook her arm, clearly inviting him to release his hold on her. He didn't. "I heard your horn and slammed on the brakes. You had the good sense to increase your speed. Not many men would have been thinking so clearly."
He wasn't thinking clearly at the moment. Right now, his thoughts were a muddle. That cool, unwillingly given bit of praise stirred his senses, and that wasn't the only thing about her that disturbed him. Her perfume drifted to his nose, and the closeness of that enticing curve of breast to his fingers invited him to brush his knuckles over the rounded firmness of her. Bluntly, not thinking, only wanting her confirmation, he said, "You're Leigh Carlow."
He saw the emotions flash in her eyes in rapid succession, the disbelief, the withdrawal, and finally, the contempt. She made a sound in her throat and pulled at her arm just as the man who had called ran panting up the hill toward them. Despite his hold on her arm, she had herself in superb control and her voice stayed on that same low, beautifully husky but feminine pitch. "My stepfather warned me you were coming." She took a breath, as if she had been running. "If you write one word about me, I'll sue you for defamation of character and libel, and anything else that comes to mind. Do I make myself clear?"
"As crystal, Miss Carlow." He held her arm for a moment longer, watching temper turn her eyes to molten silver. He wondered what color those eyes were when she was making love. He dropped her arm and gave her a mocking bow of his dark head. They were behind the car now, and he saw how she had propped cement blocks behind each wheel. Where had she got them from? How had she carried them there so quickly? "Thank you for the cement blocks. I'm sure I'll be seeing you again soon."
Her mouth twisted. "That's not possible, Mr. Writer
Producer, whoever you are. As soon as you get your car fixed, you'd better leave Springwater."
His mouth lifted in a mocking smile. "Is that a threat?"
She gave a short, unamused laugh. "It's a simple fact. There's no reason for you to stay."
Before he could reply, the man who had called moments ago huffed up beside them. He was dressed in a hunting outfit, too, but his hair was silver gray, and his body thick with middle age, and he looked more incongruent than ever standing beside the slim woman who wore the same clothes with such style and grace. The pair of half glasses perched on his nose underlined the difference in their ages. He peered over these at Leigh. "Darling, are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Hunt." She extended her hand to him as she had to Ty, and Hunt took it with a proprietorial air. Hell, that man was old enough to be her father.
He gave Ty a curious look, and Ty seized on the man's interest to say, "Leigh."
She turned back, her eyes glacial. "What do you want?"
There was a question. "Where am I going to find this Mrs. Tyler?"
Her companion gave her a half-shocked, half-amused look. "Darling, you're not fobbing him off on Lelia Tyler, are you? The place you stay is much nicer. And Viola Hendricks's second-floor apartment is vacant; you told me that yourself, just the other day."
Leigh Carlow's face was pale, but she said in a careful, controlled tone, "Mrs. Tyler is close."
Hunt turned to Ty. "Don't listen to her," he said expansively. "Viola Hendricks has a nice old house that sits beside the creek, and she's an immaculate housekeeper. Just go up this road and tum where the sign says Springwater Creek Public Fishing. It's a brick house with a glassed-in front porch and green shutters. Sign in front says Rooms for Rent. You can't miss it."
Ty looked at Leigh Carlow and saw the tightening of that attractive mouth. "Thank you, Mr.-"
"Beatty, Hunt Beatty.” The man released Leigh's hand and offered his to Ty. "Ty Rundell," Ty said softly, his eyes flickering over them both, watching the darkening of her pupils at the sound of his name.
"You know Leigh."
"We were just-introducing ourselves," his smile played over her cool face, "when you arrived. I was expressing my gratitude to Miss Carlow for her help."
Hunt Beatty threw a careless arm over Leigh's shoulder, and Ty felt an overwhelming urge to remove it. "Leigh's a very cool-headed woman. Handy to have around."
"I should imagine," Ty drawled.
"What happened?" The groaned words came from inside the car. "What hit me?" Deke Slayton appeared at the edge of the car, holding his head. "I feel as if I've been on a twelve-day drunk." He staggered forward, then leaned back against the car.
Almost at once, Leigh was beside him, a cool hand on his head. "You must have fainted."
Deke groaned and lifted his head to look first at her, then at Ty. "Don't tell anyone back at the lot this happened. I feel as if I've been hit by a ten-ton truck.”
"Shock," Leigh said succinctly. "Some people take things harder than others." She gave Ty an icy look and turned away. "Hunt, we'll be late for the party."
Hunt Beatty's full cheeks filled with color. "It hardly seems in good taste to go away and just leave them like this." He gave Ty a quick, guilty look.
Ty stepped next to Deke and lifted one of Deke’s arms over his own shoulder, facing the other couple, surreptitiously giving Deke a light kidney punch that made him sag against Ty in surprise. "He's all right," Ty said, gripping Deke in warning, keeping his voice expressionless, his face stoic in the best piece of acting he'd done in a long time. "He'll be able to walk…eventually."
Beatty took the bait. "Leigh, they've had a bad scare. We can run them up to Viola's in your car; it’ll only take a minute."
Ty gave her full marks for poise. She didn't betray a thing; not a movement of her mouth or a flicker of her eyes gave her away. "Yes, of course."
She pivoted easily in her riding boots and strode down the hill ahead of them, leaving Beatty to help Ty half carry a dazed Deke down the incline.
Hunt insisted they wait until Ty brought their luggage. Ty propped Deke against Leigh's blue car, made the return trip, collected their bags, and locked the crippled car. Seated in the backseat of Leigh's blue Omni with Deke, Ty heard her say something to Hunt Beatty, but he didn't catch her words. Beside him, Deke muttered, "What the hell is going on? Why the rabbit punch?"
"Just keep quiet and look sick," Ty ordered in a low undertone.
"No problem." Deke groaned and closed his eyes.
Viola Hendricks reminded Ty of a friendly snapping turtle with her hunched shoulders and bright dark eyes. Her snow-white hair was styled in tight little ringlets that seemed to spring up from her head instead of grow out of it, "You can have the one on the second floor," she said after a quick cursory glance over Ty’s jacket and shoes. He had no doubt she could have told him the price of both within five dollars. "Just got the place cleaned today."
Hunt Beatty insisted on helping them carry their luggage in, but now, probably because of that low-voiced remark of Leigh's, he seemed anxious to leave them. Leigh had remained in the car, with the motor running for a quick getaway, Ty thought, his mouth twisting in unconscious reaction.
Mrs. Hendricks gave Ty a quick, assessing look. "Can you climb the stairs?"
"Yeah," he said quickly, knowing that she had reacted to his grimace brought on by the thought of Leigh's dislike for him. Country people watched you too damn closely. They didn't just let their eyes drift over you and quickly look away like people in the city did. He had to remember that. He picked up his bag and followed Deke up the stairs.
By eleven o'clock Leigh was ready to leave the gym with its mass of churning teenage life and go home. Kevin Clark
had spilled his punch on Jennifer Redfern's antebellum dress, sending her weeping into the ladies' room. By the time Leigh managed to sponge off the red stain and return Jennifer to a red-faced Kevin, Leigh was convinced that the music would, in another instant, render her completely deaf. Melting pools of ice cream and cake on flimsy paper plates sat around on the floor under the folding chairs. For something to do, she began to pick them up. Her stomach had been strangely queasy this evening. Maybe it was the close call she'd had. Her eyes darkened as she remembered. Resolutely, she pushed his attractive face from her thoughts,
Had she really believed having a costume party to encourage her students to research different people in history and their clothes a good idea? She ought to have her head looked at. What had seemed like a marvelous idea in September had become an October nightmare.
She sighed and walked across the hall to dump her unsightly collection of soupy paper plates into a plastic barrel. To be fair, some of her students had done a marvelous job of re-creating period pieces of clothing. A pioneer woman danced with a Greek-toga clad senator, who kept losing his sheet off one shoulder; a Scarlett O'Hara danced with a Rhett Butler, who had found a fake mustache from somewhere; and a Native American chief in authentic war paint was doing the Watusi with Cleopatra. There was even a young couple from Star Trek wearing tights, their tunics marked with the insignia of Star Fleet.
"Swell dance, Miss Carlow." Kevin Clark, determined to reinstate himself in her good graces after his earlier faux pas, gyrated around to yell at her above the din. A mollified Jennifer danced in front of him in an approximation of the awkward steps he executed. It was good to see these kids, some of them wearing costumes she’d invented, having a good time. Many of them came from homes where they had next to nothing. No worries about Ipads or Iphones with these kids.
Leigh nodded and smiled, something she seemed to have done so often this evening her mouth was in danger of cracking.
Hunt was out on the floor, dancing. Max, the art teacher, who was also Hunt’s cousin, had a generous amount of patience. Max regarded chaperoning student events as a pleasure rather than a pain. He needed his head looked at as much as she did. He sauntered over to her, a cup of punch in his hand.
"He's in his glory," he said, nodding toward Hunt and then turning, smiling at her. "He can handle things for a while. Come outside and catch some silence with me."
She nodded ruefully. "What a great idea."
Outside, the quiet was a soothing relief, making her feel as if she'd been pushing against a wall for hours and it had given way. The air was cool, and the black velvet jacket that had been far too heavy for the heated air inside was just right for the crispness of the night.
They wandered down the sidewalk, the school a dark shadow behind them, and Leigh knew Max was relishing the silence as much as she was. A breeze tossed a cloud over the three-quarter moon, and the golden maple at the end of the walk rustled silkily.
Max turned slightly to look at her. "Hunt tells me you had a close call today."
A flicker of annoyance touched her. "It was nothing, really.”
"I wouldn't call getting almost killed 'nothing.' Some chap from California, Hunt said.”
Leigh nodded, her face averted, the shadow of a moving leaf tracing patterns over her cheek.
"Was he somebody who knew your mother?"
She shook her head. "No, he’s too young to have known her. I think he’s about my age. Dean sent him here." The puzzled hurt was there for Max to hear.
"That's strange. Doesn't sound like something Dean would do. He must have had a reason."
"He called me to warn me the man was coming."
Max frowned with concern. "If you need any help, Leigh, you know where I am."
"I won't need any help," she shot back. "I can take care of myself."
"Dean would never forgive me if…"
"At the age of twenty-seven, I think I'm finally able to manage my own life, Max."
He shrugged. "And this is how you’re managing, by keeping every moment of your life involved with those kids.”
"Not every moment of my life, Max. Just the spare ones. Please don't tell this producer anything if he comes around to you, will you?''
Max gave her a wry look. "As if I would."
Two hours later, she chided herself for having to reassure herself of Max's reticence, but her encounter with Ty Rundell had disconcerted her, and she was still a little shaken as she worked with Hunt and Max and two other women teachers in the suddenly quiet schoolhouse to clean up the debris of the party. It was after twelve o'clock when the soggy paper plates had all been disposed of and the punch bowl washed and the floor swept, and when she walked out into the cool night again, she felt drained. Hunt seemed not to notice her silence as he walked her to her car.
But he must have noticed something, for when they reached her Omni, he leaned forward, gave her a light peck on the forehead, and said, "Go on home, darling. It's a beautiful night. I'll walk."
"No, Hunt, I can take you."
"Nonsense. It's all of four blocks. I need the exercise to cool down."
With a warm feeling for his understanding, she drove home, knowing that conversation or coffee with Hunt in her apartment would have been impossible to tolerate.
CHAPTER TWO
Leigh climbed the stairs, and when she reached the first landing and saw the sliver of light under the opposite door, she remembered that she was no longer alone on the upper two stories of Viola's house. Did sound carry between the floors? She had never worried about that before, but now she did, and it was an added thorn in her flesh.
Her foot came down on the second to the last step from the top, and the groan of creaking wood echoed through the house like a gunshot, reverberating against the plastered walls. If anyone was awake in that second-floor apartment, they would surely know that she was on her way up to hers. Still faintly annoyed at her own forgetting to step over the noisy one, she took out her key and unlocked her door
She stripped out of her hunting costume with a sense of being set free, and hung the clothes neatly on the hanger. Hunt had said he would return her outfit to the city along with his. She wouldn't have to look at it and remember that dark, cynical face gazing up at her from the car with its slightly dazed expression.
She padded into the bathroom on bare feet, stripped out of her underthings, poked her hair under a yellow flower sprigged cap, and stepped into the shower.
She’d been fool enough to feel sorry for him.
He was probably thinking how lucky he was. Look at the peculiar specimen I've bagged, ladies and gentlemen, the daughter of the sultry sex symbol Claire Foster.
She turned her face up into the spray, letting the water pour over her skin. If only water had the magic power to take away her memories.
The picture of Dean flashed into her mind, tall, solid his red and black lumberman's plaid jacket stretched across wide shoulders. Would you forget the one man your mother married who was worth a damn?
She turned off the water, and stepped out of the shower. What kind of alchemy had this Ty Rundell used on Dean to get him to divulge her whereabouts? Through the years, her stepfather had been the one man she could trust. He was utterly incorruptible. He loved only his cabin in the Adirondacks and his life in the wilderness. Fame, money, meant nothing to him. Dean was cool, logical, observant, and far more intelligent than most people recognized on the first meeting. It hit her then, as she swathed herself in the terry cloth robe, that Dean had to have some reason for putting this man on a direct route to her door. What could it have been?
The soft knock came just as she emerged from the bath room. Her heart kicked up, accelerated. No man was going to reduce her to being afraid to answer her own door. She snatched the shower cap from her head, letting her hair spill over her shoulders, and pulled the terry cloth belt tighter around her middle before she opened the door.
He was there, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his feet bare. "I'm sorry
to bother you," Ty Rundell said, and for some reason she believed him. "Deke woke up with this killer of a headache about twenty minutes ago, and neither of us has any medication. Do you happen to have…"
"I'll get you some ibuprofen." She went back into the bathroom and returned with a bottle of white tablets. She held it out and he took it, his fingers brushing hers briefly at the moment of contact. She fought the urge to stuff her hand into the deep pocket of her terry cloth robe, wished those blue eyes weren't so disturbingly keen, and heard herself saying, "Would you like some ice?"
He hesitated, and then said politely, "Yes, if it isn't too much trouble."
"It's no trouble." She walked across to the kitchenette, which was just a corner of the apartment separated from the rest of the room by a snack bar, fished the small blue ice bag out of the bottom drawer, and, opening the refrigerator, began to fill it with the crushed ice she kept in a tray.
"You seem to be prepared for such emergencies."
The sound of his voice told her he had come closer. The slanted ceilings and peaked roof that had seemed airy closed in on her. "I was a Girl Scout," she said, handing him the bag, averting her eyes from the light dusting of dark curling hairs on his chest, the muscular breadth of his shoulders. His panache didn't depend on his expensive clothes; he was just as dangerous to her senses this way, in faded jeans clinging to lean hips and a snug-fitting dark blue T-shirt with a leather belt accenting the hard, flat stomach.
He moved to her to take the bag. She watched the working of the muscles in his shoulders as he extended his arm. He was obviously a fan of working out.
"Deke will appreciate this," he said softly.
She scrambled mentally, trying to remember he’d come for Deke. "I hope he feels better in the morning."
"He will." Dark lashes flickered down. ''Thanks for these. If you're out and about tomorrow," he lifted the bottle, gesturing with it, “I’ll leave this with Viola."
One Magic Night Page 2