For All Time

by Jude Deveraux

  They hugged for a moment, then Lexie pulled back. “What are you going to do with this prince?”

  “I have no idea,” Toby said. “It’s like being asked to babysit a two-hundred-pound infant.”

  “Infant he is not and I don’t think he’s helpless at all.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Toby, this guy is very smooth, and he’s sexy beyond belief. Roger is pretty, but he doesn’t smolder.”

  “What are you talking about? Smolder? Graydon? What in the world have you been reading? He’s a nice man who dedicates his life to his country. The truth is that I feel a bit sorry for him.”

  “I don’t think he needs anyone’s sympathy. I know you made a vow to wait until you’re married before you get into bed with a man, but things happen.”

  “I still feel the same way,” Toby said. “It’s just a personal choice.”

  “True, but men have a way of changing a woman’s mind. Broken glass and towels that barely close—and ‘barely’ is the key word here—can make a woman rethink any and all vows.”

  “What happened between you two to make you say these things?”

  “Nothing. Not really. It’s just that when it comes to men you’re an innocent.”

  “I’m not as young or as innocent as you think.”

  “Toby, I’m saying that you should have a good time with him. A great time even. In my opinion, it’s okay to forget your self-imposed vow and spend every minute in bed with him. I have a feeling that he would give you a very good time. But don’t—whatever you do—do not fall in love with him.”

  “Of course I won’t. There’s no future for us. And I don’t plan to get into bed with anyone.”

  “I wish I could stay and talk about this but I have to go.” Lexie stood up. “Email me every day?”

  “Yes,” Toby said and got out of bed to hug her friend again. “Now go! I need to get dressed and feed the prince. What do you think he eats? Hummingbird tongues?”

  Lexie didn’t smile. “I think you’re going to be surprised by him. By now he’s probably cleaned up the basement and the attic.”

  “You have to write me about what happened between you two.”

  “I will,” Lexie said, then left the room. She wasn’t surprised to see that her four suitcases were gone. She had no doubt that the prince had carried them downstairs. “Tell me everything that happens!” Lexie said loudly.

  “I will,” Toby called through the doorway. “Every word.”

  Downstairs, Graydon was waiting for Lexie by the front door with her jacket over his arm.

  “Let me guess. My bags are in the car.”

  “They are,” Graydon said.

  “You know, I thought my boss was slick but you’re much worse. Tone down the charm, will you?”

  Graydon didn’t smile but his eyes were twinkling. “I play the lute.”

  Lexie groaned. “I don’t know whether to pity Toby or envy her. Just promise me that when you leave she’ll be smiling.”

  “That I can promise,” Graydon said, and kissed her forehead in a brotherly way. “I’ll take care of her.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Lexie said as she went to the waiting car.

  When Toby got downstairs it was already late. She’d meant to be back at last night’s wedding site by now, as there was a lot to oversee and do. The kitchen smelled very good. Roger probably sent food for Lexie, she thought. Toby looked around for the prince but didn’t see him, but then she glanced through the window and a movement outside caught her eye. He was wandering around in the back garden, looking at the beds of flowers.

  “He probably has a dozen gardeners who work for him,” she said aloud, then went to the stove and helped herself to one of the warm pancakes. They were unusual: small, and they seemed to have oatmeal in them. The flavor was of some fruit that she didn’t recognize. It was truly delicious.

  “Good morning.”

  She turned to see Graydon standing in the doorway, and for the first time she noticed the sunroom. It had been completely cleared out! Only the table and chairs remained and she was surprised to see a built-in seat against the far wall.

  “Wow!” Toby said. “I guess Lexie really was feeling guilty if she cleaned up this room before she left. It looks great, doesn’t it?”

  “It does,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Toby said. “I’ve forgotten my manners. Good morning.” She looked him up and down, and saw that he was dressed as though for a garden party, while she had on an old pair of cotton pants and an even older T-shirt. Whatever was she going to do with him today? And since nearly everyone she knew was off-island, how was she going to find a more permanent place for him to stay?

  “Did you try these pancakes?” she asked. “They’re really good. I’ll have to ask Roger where he got them.”

  “I did have some,” he said. “Are you planning to go to the chapel site this morning?”

  “I have to.”

  “I was wondering because it seems that your car was exchanged.” He pulled back a curtain to show Jared’s old red pickup in the narrow drive beside the house.

  “Oh, no!” Toby said. “I bet Wes did this. He was taking people to the airport and the ferry this morning, so he’d need the extra seats. But he knows I have to clean up. Now what am I supposed to drive?”

  “You weren’t left the keys to the truck?”

  “I’m sure they’re in there, but it’s a standard shift and I can only drive an automatic. Maybe Ken can help.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Graydon said.

  “You? But you said you didn’t know how to drive.”

  “I said I wasn’t cognizant of all the road signs, but I have driven a few larger vehicles. Besides, I told you that I’d help you clean.”

  Toby hesitated. “You’re not exactly dressed for garbage duty.”

  Graydon’s face lost its humor. “This is what I could find in my brother’s luggage.”

  Toby thought about looking for a pair of jeans for him, but she couldn’t spare the time. As for driving, it was either him or spend an hour trying to find someone else. “All right,” she said. “I’ll direct you.”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  Outside, Toby checked in the back of the pickup. All her supplies had been removed from her car and put in the truck bed. Graydon opened the door for her and she stepped up into the old truck. He got in the driver’s seat, took the keys from over the visor, and started the engine.

  “Everybody who drives this truck complains about it,” Toby said. “Except Jared, that is, but then it’s his truck. People say it’s hard to get it into second gear, and I think the clutch sticks sometimes. And this driveway is very narrow. If you don’t back straight out, you can tear off the mirrors. And it’s hard to see into the lane so if anyone’s coming you have to be careful not to get hit. For that matter, the lane is also very narrow and it’s two-way. When I first got to Nantucket, I had a really hard time driving around. I was afraid of hitting people or parked cars, or of crashing into vehicles that were coming toward me and …” She trailed off because he had his arm across the back of the seat, ready to reverse, but he was waiting for her to finish.

  “Anything else I should know?” he asked.

  “I guess not.” As he began to back out of the drive, she held her breath, sure that between the tall fence and the side of the house, he’d at least scrape a mirror. But he didn’t.

  He stopped to let a car pass, then smoothly backed onto the lane.

  “Be careful,” she said. “It’s summer and there are thousands of tourists here who are looking at the scenery and not at the road.” Just then a big black SUV came toward them. A woman was driving, a cell phone plastered to her ear, and she didn’t even seem to see the truck. Toby drew in her breath and grabbed the seat with one hand and the armrest with the other.

  Graydon easily moved to the right, so close to a wall that Toby could have touched it, but he didn’t scrape anything. When she
looked at him, he didn’t seem to be perturbed at all, as though two vehicles passing with only inches between them was an everyday occurrence.

  He stopped at the end of the lane, looked both ways, then took a left onto Main Street. Toby’s hands relaxed as she watched him smoothly slide the old transmission from one gear to another.

  “I thought we’d go down Centre and onto Cliff Road,” he said. “Or do you have another way you’d like to go?”

  “No, that’s fine,” she said, watching him. “Did you memorize a map?”

  “On the flight here, yes, I did look at one.” He turned left onto Centre Street. “I haven’t really had time to look at the island, but this is quite beautiful.”

  Toby glanced around at what was a familiar sight to her. The old houses, so perfectly preserved, the exquisite shops, a feeling in the air of the history of the island, were all there. Past the two candy stores, he knew to go left at the JC House—Jared Coffin—and she glanced down the street at the beautiful whaling museum. Beyond that was the sea. “You’ve done a lot of driving, haven’t you?” she said.

  “A fair bit. Much of it has been on dirt roads, sheep tracks, that sort of terrain. Two of the Lanconian tribes have small towns high up in the mountains along a narrow road with a drop-off on the side. When I go up there I like to drive, although I give my bodyguard Lorcan heart attacks.”

  “I can understand that,” Toby said. “You can do that but you’ve never used a credit card?”

  “Never,” he said, smiling. “I wonder if Rory left me his?”

  “Do you know how to use a computer?”

  “Not very well,” he said, but there was a tiny smile on his lips that made her suspicious.

  “Does that mean you don’t know how to turn one on or that you write programs as a hobby? I got the impression you weren’t good at driving but you seem to do rather well at it.”

  “You sound as though I’ve disappointed you,” he said as he pulled into the driveway where the chapel was.

  She didn’t answer him as she got out, pulled her metal toolbox out of the back, and looked around. There were four trucks at the site. Chairs and tables were being packed away, generators were being loaded onto a flatbed, and the big tent was coming down. Toby started toward the middle of the commotion.

  Graydon moved to stand in front of her. “I seem to have done something wrong,” he said. “Or are you disappointed that I’m not actually a fairy-tale prince who can’t do ordinary things?”

  When he said it like that, Toby saw how ridiculous she was being. But still … “Yeah, I think maybe I am,” she said. “People like their illusions.”

  Graydon looked surprised for a moment, but then he laughed. “Does this mean I can stop trying to impress you? My brother’s valet packed his luggage and there seems to be a system to it, but I can’t figure it out. It took me half an hour to find a shirt and trousers. And what I went through to be able to shave! For a while I thought I was going to spend the day wearing only a towel. When your roommate dropped a drinking glass I had nothing to put on.”

  “ ‘Broken glass and towels that barely close,’ ” she quoted. “I’m beginning to understand some things now. I—” She broke off because there were loud voices and she turned to look. There seemed to be an argument between one of the tent people and a caterer.

  Graydon looked at Toby. “I am rather good with staff, so perhaps I could be allowed to handle this.”

  She remembered how he’d commandeered three people to set up the dinner for them. “It’s yours,” she said. “I’ll be in the chapel.”

  Graydon left to go to the men and for a moment she watched him. Would he be autocratic and order people about? But no, he listened to the problem, then said a few quiet things to the two men and they walked away, seeming to be satisfied with his solution.

  Smiling, Toby went into the chapel. It was a mess! Yesterday there had been over two hundred people at the wedding and most of them had been jammed into the little building. There were scuff marks on the walls, the floors were filthy, and every flat surface had candle wax stuck to it. It wasn’t going to be easy to return it to the pristine state it had been in before the wedding.

  There was a tall water spigot at the front of the property and she was going to have to go there to fill the buckets to start cleaning. But first she needed to get at the wax. As she scraped, she tried to think of a theme for Victoria’s wedding.

  She went through the usual ideas of hydrangeas—they grew magnificently well on Nantucket—and seashells, but she needed something different, an idea that might intrigue Victoria.

  At one point she remembered what Graydon had said about how he wasn’t really a fairy-tale prince. And that thought led her to thinking of the old stories. Cinderella. Snow White. Fairy tales were so in right now!

  The door to the chapel burst open and Graydon stood there, the light behind him.

  “Fairy tales,” he said.

  He didn’t have to explain what he meant; she knew. “Just what I was thinking. Do you know any Lanconian tales?”

  “None that don’t involve the spilling of blood and internal organs. What about something from Victoria’s books?”

  “They’re full of adultery and murder, that sort of thing. They are bestsellers,” Toby said.

  “Hey, Gray!” a man called. “Where do you want this?”

  “I have to go. What’s that glass slipper one?”

  “Cinderella. It was my first choice, but Victoria would probably say it’s too common.”

  He glanced to the side for a moment then back at her. “There’s a truck stuck in the mire and I must pull it out. What about a medieval theme with a great deal of velvet? I could have Rory send me my lute. That would give some atmosphere.” With a wave, he left.

  “Velvet’s too hot for August,” she called after him, but he was gone. She went back to scraping wax. “Your lute?” she said, smiling. At least something he did fit in with his being a fairy-tale prince.

  Graydon and Toby worked to put the whole area back to the way it had been before the wedding. It took her hours to clean up the chapel, while Graydon took care of the outside.

  After all the service people left, the two of them wandered around the acreage carrying plastic trash bags and picked up everything from cigarette butts to a shoe that had been left behind.

  When they finished it was four P.M. For lunch they’d had sandwiches from Something Natural, during which they’d talked only of the work yet to be done. Now they looked at each other, unsure of what to do next.

  “In the back of the truck I saw a canvas bag full of large towels,” Graydon said.

  “Beach towels,” Toby said. “Jared loves to swim, so I guess he stays prepared.”

  Graydon looked toward the ocean, which was just a few feet away. “To me, the sea is a rarity since Lanconia is inland. I don’t want to keep you waiting, but would you be appalled if I stripped to the bare essentials of clothing and swam for a while? Perhaps you would join me?” Toby wasn’t sure what he was leading up to. When she was silent, he turned toward the truck. “I could drive you home and return here.”

  Part of her thought this was probably an attempt to get her in a compromising position, and she should say no. But she didn’t. “I am grimy,” she said, “and I’d love to have a swim.”

  She walked to the water, and before she could change her mind, she started removing her clothes down to her underwear. She couldn’t help thinking that sometimes it seemed that the whole world was leaping into bed with one another. From what she heard, dates nearly always included going to bed together. Toby wanted something deeper in her life. She wanted to experience an emotional relationship as well as a physical one. Lexie said she was missing out on a lot of life, but Toby didn’t think so.

  And the truth was that Toby had never met a man who’d made her forget herself so passionately that she was blind to everything else in her life.

  Whatever her thoughts, with this man she was glad she�
��d worn her lacy blue bra and matching underpants. She hurried into the water. It felt not too cold, not too warm—just perfect after the hot, sweaty work they’d been doing.

  When Graydon showed up, she was up to her neck in the water. “It might be colder than you like,” she said.

  “The climate in my country makes this island seem tropical.”

  As she treaded water, she couldn’t keep from watching him undress. Shoes, socks, shirt. Her eyes widened. The muscles on his upper body showed that he did a lot of physical activity! When he started to unfasten his trousers, Toby dove under the water. When she surfaced, he was at the edge, about to enter. “Boxers” was the answer to the old question.

  “Wonderful,” he said as he slid into the warm water and parted his arms to swim.

  Toby moved back to watch him. He sliced through the water with the ease and grace of an athlete. Long, slow strokes that hardly made a wave. He went so far out that Toby began to be concerned. She meant to call out to him to be careful, but he did a dive and went underwater.

  She waited for him to come up, but he didn’t, and there was no sign of him. No ripple in the water, no movement at all.

  Frowning, she turned around, looking for him, but saw nothing. On her third spin around, his head appeared next to her, his face inches from hers. “You scared me!” she said.

  “Sorry. Guard training. Silent underwater espionage. I think it was made up just for me. A sort of ‘Let’s see if we can terrify our future king.’ ”

  Toby laughed. “Did it work?”

  “Oh, yes. I spent six months shaking in fear. I still have nightmares about underwater battles.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was teasing or telling the truth.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “No battles,” she said as she went onto her back and began to float, her body just on the surface. “Just summers lolling about in a swimming pool.”

  Graydon moved onto his back and seemed to be trying to float, but he sank into the water. “That’s not easy to do.”

  “It’s all in your mind,” Toby said. “Think slow, calming thoughts.” She jackknifed into the water and looked at him.