Tangled Vines

by Janet Dailey

  “If you would care to serve yourself,” she said stiffly, then added, “there are croissants in the basket on the table and an assortment of preserves. Madam has already breakfasted. Would you like something more? An omelet, perhaps? Coddled eggs?”

  “Some dry toast, thank you.”

  “Dry toast,” she repeated.

  “Whole wheat, if you have it.”

  “Of course.”

  Alone in the room, Kelly walked over to the sideboard and filled a glass with juice. She set it on the glass-topped table and went back for coffee. She was standing at the sideboard when Sam walked in. He paused to look at her, tall and slender in her slacks of hunter green and a ribbed cotton sweater, clothes that accented her long legs, slim hips, and slimmer waist. He noted with mild annoyance the gold clasp that caught her glossy hair together at the nape of her neck. Just for a moment, Sam let himself imagine that the only reason she was there – the only reason she had come to the valley – was to be with him.

  Then she turned and he swept off his hat, giving it a toss onto the woven-rush seat of a chair as he walked the rest of the way into the room. “Good morning.” He flicked a glance at her sleep-softened features as he crossed to the sideboard and the silver coffee urn. “Just get up?”

  “Guilty.” Chair legs scraped the floor under the pull of her hand. Kelly sank into it and looked at Sam when he dragged another chair away from the table, steam rising from the thick coffee mug in his hand. “I can’t say the same about you though, can I?” There was a look about him, a kind of quiet vigor, that said he’d spent the morning outdoors. And a sense that, if she was closer, he would smell of sunlight and fresh air. “You’ve been up awhile, I think.”

  “Since about dawn,” he admitted and sat down, leaning his arms on the table and wrapping his big hands around the mug. His posture was all loose-limbed and lazy, relaxing with an ease she envied. “I’ve been out in the vineyards. They’re forecasting rain and I wanted to make sure enough leaves have been cut away from the grape clusters to allow air to circulate and dry them out in case it does rain. Otherwise mold can form and ruin half the bunch. Which means, come crush, we’ll be faced with the time-consuming task of picking through each cluster of moldy grapes to remove only the good ones. We had to do that a couple years ago and, believe me, it wasn’t fun.”

  “Didn’t anybody tell you today is Sunday? It’s supposed to be a day of rest,” Kelly chided lightly.

  “Ah, but the grapes don’t know that, and Mother Nature doesn’t pay attention to it.” He lifted his mug, holding her gaze over the rim of it, a gleam of amusement in his golden brown eyes.

  “I suppose not.” She smiled faintly and saw the immediate shift of his gaze to her lips. When it lingered on them, the sensation was almost physical. She felt her pulse scrambling in response. She tried but she couldn’t seem to steady it, not even when he raised his glance to her eyes.

  “You look rested. Did you sleep well?”

  “Very.”

  “I’m glad one of us did.” His eyes were on her, making it clear she was the reason he had lost sleep. And making it equally clear that he wasn’t through with her yet.

  The attraction was there, undeniable, potent on both sides. But that’s all it was. Attraction. Right now there was too much ahead of her, too many problems, too many uncertainties. This was a complication she didn’t need in her life, so Kelly chose to ignore both messages.

  “Yes, Katherine mentioned last night at dinner that some of the press had gotten on the property and that you’d probably be tied up until late.” She noticed the sections of the Sunday newspaper loosely stacked on the table near his elbow. The front page of the top one carried her photograph, and another she couldn’t recognize from this distance. “Anything in the Sunday paper?” She stared at it as she sipped her coffee, wanting to know what had been written yet afraid to read it.

  “Just what you’d expect.” He scooped it up and tossed it out of her sight onto an empty chair seat. “If you insist on reading it, leave it until after we’ve had coffee together.”

  There was a slight hardening of his features. Kelly understood the cause for it. Sam didn’t want anything about the baron’s death intruding on this moment. But putting the paper out of sight didn’t put any of it out of mind. Unlike Sam, she recognized the futility of his gesture, but she let it pass.

  “Yes sir,” she said and started to snap him a mock military salute as the housekeeper returned to the morning room with Kelly’s wheat toast. She let her hand fall.

  “That looks nourishing,” Sam mocked lightly when Kelly picked up a diagonally cut slice.

  “It is.” But she nibbled disinterestedly on a corner, listening to the faint squish of the thick rubber soles on the housekeeper’s feet as she exited the room.

  “So, anything special on your agenda today?” Sam’s question seemed to be an attempt to make things sound normal. Her world was far from normal.

  “What agenda?” She looked idly at the dark toast in her hand and tore off a small bite from the corner, letting her fingers toy with it. “Two days ago, every waking minute would have been crammed with things to do. Now I have nothing but free time, and not much to fill it.” Unconsciously she began crumbling the small piece of toast. “I’ve already retained a lawyer, a man named John MacSwayne. He’s supposed to be a good defense attorney.”

  “I’ve heard that.” Sam nodded, his displeasure at the turn of the conversation evident in the tightness around his mouth.

  “He still has to visit the jail to make it official. He planned to do that as soon as he could. Definitely before I meet with him on Tuesday,” she added, talking out her thoughts, only half aware of the things she was saying, and to whom. “After I talked to him, and told him the little I knew, he was convinced he could get the charges lowered. He said he didn’t think Ollie could prove premeditation.” Kelly saw the pile of crumbs on her plate and self-consciously brushed off the few dry particles still clinging to her fingers. “After I meet with him, there really isn’t any reason for me to stay. Everything else can be handled by phone.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “Back to New York.”

  His gaze stayed on her while he lifted the mug to his mouth, saying against it, “What will you do there?”

  “A lot of things.”

  “Name two.” He softened the challenge with a smile.

  “For one, I can lobby to keep my job,” Kelly replied, then paused, smiling with a slightly grim humor. “In television, absence rarely ‘makes the heart grow fonder.’ More often it’s ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ At least if I’m there, I can argue my case. Trying to do that long distance would be difficult, if not impossible.”

  “Okay, now what’s the second?” Sam asked, unable to refute the logic of the first.

  “Ever since I moved to New York, I’ve been active in a local child-abuse program, helping them whenever I could to raise funds and public awareness. I could devote more time to it now, become more involved. Lord knows those kids deserve everyone’s help.” Hearing her voice thickening with emotion, she stopped and threw a quick glance at Sam to see if he had noticed it.

  His eyes were dark, almost black with anger, but when he spoke, his voice was softer, its tone gentler than she had ever heard it. “They do. Just as you did.”

  His quiet understanding was almost her undoing. Kelly had to fight to keep back the tears. “I guess that’s why if I can help just one,” she said huskily, “if I can keep just one child from suffering the physical and psychological abuse that I did, it will be enough.”

  “One won’t be enough. I think we both know that. It’s too personal.”

  And it was a subject she still wasn’t comfortable talking about because of that. “Anyway,” she said and took a deep, sobering breath, releasing it and forcing a smile. “Besides those two things, I have anoth
er: a Brentwood rocker I picked up at a flea market. It must have about twenty coats of paint and I’ve only managed to strip off half of them.”

  “It can wait. All of it can wait a few days. You don’t need to leave yet.”

  She shook her head. “I need to work.” Not wanting Sam to misinterpret that, she added quickly, “It isn’t a question of money. I’ve managed to save quite a bit, enough to keep me going for a while and still pay the legal bills.”

  “Pretend this is a vacation,” Sam reasoned. “Lie around. Give things a chance to die down.”

  He made it all sound very logical; still, Kelly hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “I want you to stay, Kelly.”

  He wanted more than that from her. She could hear it in his voice. She was disturbed by it – by the things it made her want.

  “I’m not ready for this, Sam,” she said, then realized she was being only half honest. “I’m not ready for you.”

  “I don’t think I’m ready for you either. But what does that change? Nothing.”

  “But it should.”

  “Maybe. And maybe some things can’t be changed. Maybe they just have to be accepted.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Don’t you? Then believe this: right now I need you here with me. And I think you need to be with me.”

  “No.” Her protest was swift and insistent.

  “Deny it all you want, Kelly. But with you and me, it’s not a matter of if. It’s a case of when.” He pushed the coffee mug away and got to his feet. “As much as I would like to continue this discussion, I have to get back out and see how the guys are doing.” Pausing by her chair, he trailed the tip of his finger across her cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Right,” Kelly murmured, unnerved by the certainty in his voice.

  Not until his footsteps had faded was she able to shake it off, retrieve the newspaper from the chair seat, and begin to read.

  The baron’s death had not only rated front page, but it also stretched over two full pages on the inside. In all there were three related stories. The first, a factual account of the circumstances of his death and the subsequent arrest of her father for the crime. A second story was basically background on Baron Emile Fougere with quotes from various dignitaries and fellow vintners on the man and his contribution to the wine industry, including one from Gil Rutledge stating: “The world has lost a great vintner and a gentle man.”

  A photograph of Kelly headed the last story, although the article focused mainly on her father and relegated a recap of her career in television news to three small paragraphs. Some of the information on her father read like a police report, the dry facts fleshed out with interviews from people who knew him and vaguely remembered her, and gave a fairly comprehensive recount of his past misdeeds, proving again that small towns have long memories.

  Sighing, Kelly pushed it away from her. Sam had been right; it was just about what she expected. There was consolation in knowing that by tomorrow’s edition, the story would be little more than a short column, buried somewhere in the inside pages.

  Her coffee was cold when she tasted it. Kelly made a face and got up to add more hot coffee to it from the urn. A set of light footsteps approached the morning room at a subdued pace. Kelly glanced at the archway, smiling in anticipation that it would be Katherine.

  But it was Baroness Fougere who walked into the morning room and paused uncertainly. She wore a simple black sheath, no jewelry except her wedding rings. Her dark hair was drawn back in a smooth chignon. There had been a valiant attempt to mask her pallor with makeup and disguise the puffiness around her eyes, but nothing could hide the tortured look of grief in her eyes. They grew wide in their regard of Kelly, surprise and dismay in their haunted depths.

  “You are the television reporter.” Her voice was pained in its accusation.

  “I was,” she began, only to be cut off.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “I’m staying here. Sam invited me.” Kelly couldn’t go on letting the woman think she was only a television reporter. “Forgive me, Baroness, but you must know that I’m Leonard Dougherty’s daughter.”

  Her frown had a blankness to it. “I do not understand.”

  Guilt. Kelly felt it, and try as she might, she couldn’t rationalize it away. “He has been accused of killing your husband.”

  There was a paling of her face as Natalie half turned her head away. “I knew a man had been arrested. If I was told his name....”

  There was no hysteria, no raging storm of accusations, no fit of weeping, just a deep, silent anguish that Kelly found unbearable. That half-formed conviction that it was a mistake to stay here crystallized into a certainty.

  “I’m sorry, Baroness. My being here will only upset you. I’ll go at once.” Leaving her cup on the sideboard, Kelly moved quickly toward the door.

  Before she’d taken three steps, the baroness raised a hand to stop her. “No, please.”

  Katherine walked in, her sharp eyes quickly taking in the scene. “Natalie. How good of you to join us. You remember Kelly Douglas, of course.”

  “Formerly Dougherty,” Kelly insisted firmly. “I told her who I am.”

  Katherine smiled smoothly, showing no surprise. “Kelly has become the unfortunate victim of a great deal of media attention due to the actions of her father. Sam suggested she take refuge with us, and I agreed.”

  “And I’m grateful, but I think, under the circumstances, it would be best if I left.”

  “Nonsense.” Katherine reacted strongly and would have said more, but Natalie Fougere’s soft voice interposed.

  “There is no need for you to go.”

  Kelly shook her head. “That’s very kind of you , but my being here can only be a constant and unpleasant reminder of all that’s happened.”

  The baroness seemed surprised by that. “How can you remind me of something I cannot forget? With each breath I draw, the pain of Emile’s death is with me. Your presence cannot make it worse, but it would hurt me to know I am the cause if you would leave here.”

  Kelly tried to argue, but Katherine stepped in. “Natalie is right. You will stay, and we will hear no more of this talk about leaving.”

  Trapped, Kelly could think of no argument to make. She gave in, as graciously as she could, and made an excuse to go to her room on the pretext of penning a letter to a nonexistent friend. In her room, she felt even more confined and restlessly prowled its limits until she was summoned for the noon meal.

  An ominous bank of clouds loomed on the western horizon, a foreshadowing of rain in their darkness. The sun rode high in the sky, blithely ignoring them as it blazed over a valley of vineyards.

  From the French doors in the main salon, Katherine gazed at the threatening clouds, their blackness matching her troubled mood. They were far off yet, always with the chance they would miss the valley altogether. It was true of other things as well, but that thought failed to comfort her.

  She was getting old, she told herself. She’d started seeing things that weren’t there. Seeing ghosts. And perhaps Natalie would see ghosts now. She thought of Emile’s widow in the library, making all those distressing calls, handling so many tiresome details, dealing with various important matters that seemed so unimportant, just as she herself had once done so very long ago.

  The air in the room suddenly seemed close, suffocating. Katherine threw open the doors and stepped onto the terrace. The splashing of water pulled her attention from the dark line of clouds beyond the Mayacamas. Following the sound to its source, she saw the slender shape of Kelly Douglas slicing through the water in the swimming pool, her long legs kicking, the powerful, reaching strokes of her arms driving her across the length of the pool. In a race with demons, Katherine suspected, and exhaustion the trophy. Once she too had worked until she was too tired to think, t
o feel.

  She watched as Kelly made three more laps of the pool at the same killing pace before she stopped and hauled herself out of the water. A tall, wand-slim woman, her arms and legs glistening with moisture, her shoulders and chest heaving from the exertion, the gold swimsuit, one of several Katherine kept for guests, gleaming brighter than the sun. She slicked back her long hair and let it hang down her back in a dark curtain, faintly glinting with red.

  Distantly came the chime of the doorbell, Katherine turned with a frown. No one was expected this afternoon. Who would arrive unannounced?

  Her curiosity aroused, Katherine went back in the main salon and through to the marbled hall, arriving as Mrs. Vargas opened the front door. Katherine stiffened when she saw the distinctive silver-gray mane of hair that could belong only to her son Gil. A second later it was confirmed when she heard his voice inquiring after Natalie. His son, Clay, it appeared, was with him.

  “Show them in, Mrs. Vargas,” she instructed and walked the length of the marbled hall to the front door, her cane tapping the floor with each step.

  She nodded to the housekeeper in dismissal and faced her son, noting his guarded expression and the watchfulness in his eyes. “You came to see Natalie. Is that wise?”

  An eyebrow lifted smoothly. “Courteous, I believe. We came to offer our condolences, and our assistance.”

  “Of course.” She accepted the excuse he gave, recognizing it for what it was.

  “How is the baroness?” Clay inquired, his handsome face wearing an expression of appropriate concern.

  “She has recovered from the initial shock of Emile’s death,” Katherine replied. “Time will take care of the rest.”

  “Will you let her know we’re here?” Gil requested, his eyes silently challenging, his hostility carefully banked. Katherine longed to tell him it was wasted, but he wouldn’t believe her, just as he had not believed her at the party the other night.