“Well, they’re going to have to compromise.”
“Yes, they are.”
“And they probably should—” Kelly broke off, hesitating.
“Should what?”
“Well, I was thinking that Georgetown would be the better choice. Don’t you think that it would be smart for them to be near us?”
Kelly drew her fingers back, watching as his lashes quickly hid the thoughts that might have been betrayed in his eyes. What was he thinking? she wondered. That she was on Jarod’s side—and against Sandy?
“You might be right,” he said lightly.
“And they’re both going to have to work,” Kelly said sharply.
He shrugged. “It might not be necessary.”
“What! Not necessary!”
“Kelly, damn it, I can help them.”
“You’ll wind up helping them straight into the ground! Dan, I want to help them, too, but they can’t shirk everything. Jarod was going to have to work one way or another, and work isn’t a bad thing!”
“No, it’s not, but I’ll be damned if Sandra is going to work for four years to put Jarod through college so he can start making a great income and divorce her!”
Kelly stared at him indignantly, then burst into laugher. “There’s got to be a compromise here. Really.”
“There probably is,” Dan murmured, and he moved his thumb over her palm in such a way that Kelly caught her breath.
“We can’t live for them—” he began, but before he could go any further, they were suddenly interrupted by a sweet, feminine voice.
“Kelly! Kelly McGraw! How good to see you, darling!”
Kelly swung around, feeling only the slightest dismay. The woman coming toward them was a very pretty natural redhead. She was exactly Kelly’s own age—and in fact had known her—though not always liked her—since high school.
She was also sophisticated and elegant—and tall. Kelly wasn’t at all sure that this was a night when she wanted to see her, no matter how long they had known each other.
Dan was already politely on his feet. Kelly stood, too, then wished that she had remained sitting. She felt ridiculously short. She quickly introduced her friend to Dan.
“Dan Marquette, June DeMarco. June, Dan Marq—”
“Marquette, yes, I know,” June said serenely, smiling brilliantly and pulling up a chair to join them, even before Dan had a chance to help her.
June grinned at Kelly. “Mr. Marquette is the talk of the town, Kelly, you didn’t know?”
“I haven’t been in town enough lately, I guess,” Kelly replied.
“And you know each other?”
“Our children are engaged,” Dan supplied.
June’s eyebrows shot up. “Kelly! You didn’t tell me!”
“June, honestly, I haven’t had a chance,” Kelly said helplessly, but June wasn’t really listening anyway. She had linked a long arm through Dan’s and was telling him that she ran a simply wonderful antique shop down in the historic section. “Just a hop, a skip and a jump from the Park, where I understand you spend an awful lot of time. You really must come by!”
“I’m sure I will,” Dan said noncommittally, furrowing his brows at Kelly over the rim of his cup.
Kelly laughed. “Down, June! Down. Dan, forgive her. She’s only been divorced for two years, and we’re still trying to teach her proper behavior.”
“Oh, nuts to you, Kelly McGraw!” June teased back. She smiled at Dan. “We’ve been trying to teach Kelly that widowhood does not mean instant membership in the nunnery!”
Dan choked on his coffee. Kelly reddened and quickly asked June how her daughter was doing with her ballet classes.
A minute later June admitted that she had come with a date. She beckoned him over and introduced him as Donald Milligan, an insurance broker from Sharpsburg. Donald sat down, and their waitress brought them another round of drinks.
They talked for a while about casual things; then June suddenly frowned and asked Dan, “Your daughter isn’t home alone, is she?”
Dan shook his head. “No. Jarod is over there, for one,” he laughed wryly. “And we have a man named Reeves—sort of a butler, sort of an old friend—who lives with us. Why?”
“Why?” June sounded concerned, and she stared at Kelly uneasily. “Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“The police, the sheriff’s office and even the FBI are after an escaped Tennessee convict. He’s called the Peeper. He was convicted of thirteen assaults! You haven’t heard? You didn’t watch the news?”
Kelly gasped and stared at Dan, ashen and dismayed. “The Peeper!” she nearly shrieked.
“Calm down, Kelly, you don’t know for sure. It might have been a raccoon or a—”
“What might have been a raccoon?” June demanded.
“Kelly thought that someone was watching her tonight,” Dan said carefully.
“Thought!” Kelly exclaimed. “I didn’t ‘think’ anything! I saw those eyes staring at me!”
“My, my,” Donald Milligan said unhappily. “What a shame that you didn’t call the police.”
“Thank goodness Dan was with you,” June purred.
“Yes, thank goodness,” Dan murmured.
Donald said that Kelly should call the police anyway, and she did, from the inn. Dan spoke to them, too, and then, since the dining room had closed, they all walked out to look at the view. After a little more conversation they split up and went to their respective cars.
Kelly hugged her arms to her chest uneasily.
“You’re not staying home tonight,” Dan said bluntly.
“What?” She looked up at him, confused.
“You’re not staying home alone.”
“But I won’t be alone! I have a son who’s barely an inch shorter than you are!”
“Kelly, the police made it sound as if this man is really dangerous. Kelly, to think that it might have been him, right outside your house…”
She shuddered, willing to rest against him. “Thank God you were there. And to think, we were so mesmerized by each other that we didn’t even worry… Oh, my God! If you hadn’t been there…! Jarod wasn’t there then, either!”
“That does it!” Dan stated flatly, gripping her elbow and pulling her along. “You are staying at my house.”
“I can’t! What—”
“You’ll stay, and Jarod will stay.”
“Oh, that’s just great! The kids will adore that!” Kelly blurted out sarcastically.
“Kelly!” Exasperatedly Dan pushed back a straying lock of hair from his forehead. “Not together. You can have your own room, and so can he. My house is enormous. We’ll tell the kids what happened—”
“We will not!” Kelly yelped.
“Not that!” Dan retorted. “We’ll tell them about the Peeper, and the eyes staring in at you. That’s all. Hey, they’ll get to see what they look like when they wake up in the morning. That knowledge just might help make their marriage work.”
“Cynic!” Kelly charged.
“I have a right to be,” he told her dryly.
“I don’t know, Dan,” Kelly began.
“I do,” he said, and he said it in such a superior tone that she was tempted to argue.
But she was a little frightened, too, so she didn’t. She stared straight ahead and thought of his face plastered on her mythical dragon.
He started laughing suddenly, glancing her way.
“What?” she demanded.
“We get to see each other first thing in the morning, too.”
“I’m absolutely glamorous,” she retorted.
To her amazement, he reached out and dragged her close to his side. “I’ll bet you are, darling. I’ll just bet you are.”
“Still short, though.”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you? The best things always come in small packages.”
CHAPTER 7
Jarod stared at the two of them blankly, and Sandy gave a little cry of
unease.
“I heard all about that guy. It was on the news. They said he escaped from some prison in Tennessee. That he’s considered armed and dangerous.”
“And he was staring into our bathroom window?” Jarod demanded.
They were all sitting in Dan’s living room, near the fireplace and the beautiful floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows. Reeves instantly went to pull the drapes; Sandy shivered, and Jarod continued to frown.
“I don’t know if it was him or not, Jarod,” Kelly tried to explain. “I saw something—”
“And I went outside,” Dan told him patiently. “But whoever or whatever your mother saw was already gone. But if this guy is running around, it just seems safer if we stick together, huh?”
Jarod appeared to be a bit put out. “I can take care of her, you know,” he told Dan indignantly.
Dan didn’t take offense. He just smiled at Jarod easily. “I thought you might want to be near Sandy.”
“Oh. Oh!” Jarod said.
“Should I make cocoa and more popcorn, Mr. Marquette?” Reeves asked smoothly.
‘Sure, why not?” Dan replied. “Except that we’ll have to take a quick run over to the McGraw house so Kelly and Jarod can get a few things for the night.”
They all decided to go, except for Reeves, who intended to “repair the guest quarters” for the evening. Jarod started up again as soon as they were in the car, staring at his mother skeptically in the glow of the few streetlights they passed.
“I don’t understand this. You saw these eyes. Dan went out, but nothing was there. And you didn’t call the police for hours and hours? What were you doing in between?”
“Jarod!” Kelly exclaimed with exasperation. “I didn’t know anything about this escaped convict until we got to dinner. We ran into June, and she told us about him. I hadn’t seen the news. We called the police from the inn, and I assume they went out to look around.”
Kelly twisted around in the seat. She saw that Jarod was staring at Sandy and that she was staring back at him—and that they seemed to be sharing a very knowing smile.
Well, she didn’t owe those wayward teenagers any explanations, and she wasn’t going to give them any.
Dan was gazing straight ahead, watching the road. “We don’t know that it was the Peeper your mom saw, Jarod. It might just have been an animal.”
Sandy shivered in the back. “From what they say, the man is an animal.”
Jarod whispered something to her; Kelly heard a bit of it. Something about Sandy loving the animal in him. Sandy laughed, and Dan’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
“That’s enough, you two!” he announced brusquely, and his voice was so stern that they both fell instantly silent. Kelly sank deeply into the seat and watched Dan, amused. Hmm. There was a double standard here. He might be a big boy and consider an affair of his choosing entirely proper—but though Sandy was pregnant and planning her wedding, Dan still wanted her to behave like a prim little girl.
Kelly shrugged and closed her eyes, still smiling. That was all right; she wasn’t quite used to the situation yet, either. Sandy and Jarod were still kids, still dependent. She and Dan were neither.
They drove into her driveway. Jarod hopped out with Dan, determined to check the back of the house and study the tree and window area. Sandy and Kelly followed more slowly. Sandy was silhouetted by the streetlight, and Kelly found herself scrutinizing the girl anew.
She was so pretty. Tall, slim and very attractive. She had her father’s coloring—including those dark eyes that could seduce like the devil’s own. Her hair, too, was her father’s. Longer, of course, falling down her back, but the same deep dark red, rich and luxurious.
There the similarities ended, because Sandy’s features were delicate, unlike Dan’s. Her face was a little heart, while his was an oval with a squared chin, broad cheekbones and a high forehead. Dan wasn’t just tall, he was heavily muscular, and Sandy was far more fragile.
What was her mother like? Kelly wondered. And what woman could have walked away from the beautiful baby that Sandy must have been?
Sandy will never do that, Kelly thought, watching the girl. Somehow, she had grown up being very loving; the hurt that she must have endured hadn’t made her bitter. Kelly bit her lower lip, thinking that Dan had done something very right with the girl. Oh, as people might say, Sandy had “gotten into trouble.” But it was probably true that she had been doing what everyone else her age was doing—she and Jarod had simply been caught.
That didn’t change the fact that she was a lovely girl. Quick to smile, polite, charming, eager to please. Dan had given her lots of love, enough for two parents, and it showed in everything about the girl.
She turned around suddenly, catching Kelly’s intense scrutiny. “What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.
Kelly grinned, shook her head and slipped her arm around Sandy’s waist, then headed toward the house. “Nothing is wrong, Sandy, nothing at all. Come on, let’s go in. You can help me get a few things.”
It wasn’t until they actually reached the house that Kelly remembered what an absolute mess everything was. Well, not everything, but her bedroom, certainly. They’d been running so late that the last thing in the world she’d been thinking of was the state of the bedroom. And if Jarod saw her bedroom…
If Sandy saw the bedroom…
“Sandy!”
“What?” Sandy asked, startled.
“Uh, run down to the basement for me, will you, please? There’s a game tomorrow. Jarod’s shoulder pads are down there, I think. Will you look for me, please?”
“Of course, Kelly, I’ll be glad to.”
Kelly stood there with a forced smile plastered to her features until Sandy started toward the kitchen and the cellar stairs.
As soon as she was gone, Kelly spun around and raced up the stairs to her bedroom. The sheets weren’t even attached to the bed anymore!
Desperately she made the bed, plumped the pillows and fixed the comforter. She was out of breath and gasping when she heard a voice behind her.
“Mom, why did you send Sandy down to the basement? My shoulder pads are in my locker.”
“In your locker?” Kelly smiled and sat down on the bed. “In your locker. I didn’t know.”
“Kelly?”
Dan was suddenly at the door, staring at her anxiously. She saw that he, too, had remembered the state of her bedroom as soon as he entered the house.
She saw him stare a little incredulously at her fix-it job, relax and grin. “Uh, are we ready?”
“Just about.”
“Okay. Sandy and I will be downstairs.”
He disappeared, but Jarod stayed, staring suspiciously at Kelly. “Just what were you up to?”
“Just what are you talking about?”
“You two seem kind of chummy.”
“Do we really?”
“Mom?” He moved into the room threateningly, all six-foot-two of him. “Mom, you’re not…?”
“I’m not what?” she demanded indignantly.
To her chagrin, Jarod laughed and sat down beside her. Then he fell back to lie staring up at the ceiling in amazement, still laughing. “Oh, my! You two are on our cases, and you’re up to the same thing!”
“Jarod! Who the hell told you I was up to anything?” Kelly was on her feet, staring at him coldly.
“Well, I don’t see the difference—”
“I sure do, young man,” Kelly said coolly. “I supported you; I raised you; I’m still trying to get you through college. In short, Jarod, you’re still a kid, and you had no right getting that sweet young girl pregnant. Don’t ever question me, Jarod McGraw. I’m the parent and you’re not. And it’s just that simple!”
Furious, she turned her back on him and started out of the room, ignoring him.
“Mom!”
She heard him bolt from the bed; he caught up to her, placing his hands on her shoulders, whirling her around. She was about to snap at him, but she n
oticed that his eyes had the sheen of tears on them, that he wasn’t being a wise guy anymore.
“I just want you to be careful,” he whispered to her.
Her anger died. “Jarod…”
“Mom, face it, please, and don’t get mad at me, but you’re just a babe in the woods! He’s been around. A lot. Sandy has told me that he’s had, well, half a dozen affairs. She thinks that when her mother left he became very bitter. That he’ll never trust a woman enough to really—to ready fall in love again.”
Kelly wondered at the truth of his words. She lowered her lashes, determined not to give anything away to him. “Jarod, Dan and I are just friends—a situation forced upon us by your situation. That’s it. I’m fine. Okay?”
He nodded.
She smiled. “You’re making me forget everything! Go and get your stuff for tonight and tomorrow.”
He stared walking down the hallway to his room. Kelly frowned, realizing that the light in his room was already on. Her heart suddenly started to flutter. She remembered that there was a lunatic loose in town. She didn’t stop to think that her son was a foot taller than she was and over a hundred muscular pounds heavier.
At that moment she remembered only that he was her child, her baby. She went dashing after him and pushed by him, determined to meet the danger first, if the light signified danger.
It didn’t. She dashed to his doorway, her heart pounding, to find Sandy sitting on his bed, serenely folding a pair of Jarod’s underwear.
“Sandy!” Kelly rasped out. “What are you doing?”
“Packing for Jarod,” Sandy replied.
Kelly suddenly thought that Dan wouldn’t appreciate this sight at all. After all, it was one thing to know that his daughter was pregnant. It even seemed okay that he liked Jarod—after all, the two kids were going to get married. As of old, the situation was going to be honorably rectified. But this domesticity…
“Sandy! Go downstairs, please! Before your father comes up!”
Sandy rose gracefully and swept by Kelly, hurt and indignant. “I’ve seen his underwear before,” she murmured.
“Sandy!” Jarod begged from behind Kelly.
Sandy disappeared. Kelly turned around to size up her son. He sized her up in return, and suddenly they both started to laugh.
All in the Family Page 10