She withdrew her hand and wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the biting breezes more than ever.
Dean swore softly under his breath. "Sorry."
"For what?" She hugged herself, shivering. "For mentioning Will? He meant a lot to both of us. Why shouldn't we talk about him?"
"Because you're still too raw."
"No, I'm not."
"That painting says you are."
"You read too much into things. I'm fine."
He stroked her face, his fingers hot and rough against her cheek. "You're shivering."
"I'm just cold." She slid off the rock and stood facing him. "Maybe we should go back."
Dean whipped off his denim jacket and draped it over her shoulders. It had absorbed his body heat and was imbued, just faintly, with a scent that made her think of warm skin and hot breath and the weight of another body against hers.
He chafed her arms with both hands, drew her close and rubbed her back through the jacket. Warmth seeped through her, quickening her heart, just a little, enough to make her slightly breathless.
Dean cradled her head against his shoulder, his woolen sweater scratchy-soft against her cheek, his chest rising and falling in rapid counterpoint to the steady cadence of the waves.
His hands stilled. He stopped rubbing her, just gathered her to him and held her.
She returned the embrace, her arms encircling him instinctively, needfully.
He threaded his fingers through her hair, nuzzled her with his jaw. She felt his breath against her temple and a soft hot tickle that could only be one thing – a kiss.
A chaste kiss. Friendly. Brotherly, even. Still…
A little unsteadily she said, "We should really go back, Dean. It's late, and…"
"And you're cold." He sighed. "Yeah, I know." His arms tightened around her momentarily, and then he released her and turned around. She grabbed the wine bottle.
They walked back to the house in silence.
*
Laura lay awake until well after midnight, listening to Dean walking around on century-old floors, first in his room across the hall, then downstairs.
When she heard the back door open and close, she got up and parted the curtains over the rear window. By the light of the full moon, she saw Dean walking away from her across the backyard. At the drop-off to the beach, he paused. Presently a tiny orange dot materialized, and she knew he had lit a cigarette. He descended the stairs, and she lost sight of him.
It was close to one when she heard him reenter the house. His footsteps creaked through the kitchen and up the stairs to his room. Sounds traveled in this old house at night. Lying motionless, she heard the soft scrape of a drawer opening, the grind of rusty hinges on the door of the closet in his room, a clatter of coat hangers.
His footsteps paused in the hallway outside her room, and then she heard them groaning down the old stairs. She shoved the quilt down and got out of bed, threw her robe over her flannel nightgown and opened her bedroom door.
Dean, halfway down the stairs, turned to look at her, his eyes scaldingly blue in the semidarkness, the only light being what came from his room. He had on his denim jacket and jeans. In one hand he held his duffel bag; in the other, his uniform on a hanger, thrown over a shoulder.
Even in the near darkness, she could see the remorse in his eyes, along with a hint of that remoteness she'd come to know – and hate – so well over the years.
Steadying herself with a hand on the doorknob, she said, "You weren't going to say goodbye?"
He looked away, then met her eyes again. "I didn't want to wake you."
"And of course, you don't believe in notes, so I would have just awakened in the morning and found you gone."
His jaw clenched. "Laura…"
"You say you want to change, you want to straighten out, and then you up and bolt in the middle of the night with no—"
"I can't stay here, Laura."
"Why?"
His eyes closed briefly. When they opened, they held a look of grim resolve that made her shiver. He stalked up the stairs two at a time, his gaze locked on her.
She backed up into her room until she felt the foot of her bed against her legs.
He dropped his duffel and uniform on the landing, crossed to her in three long strides, wrapped his hands around her head and kissed her.
On the mouth this time, and hard. Too hard. It hurt. It shocked her, made her heart hammer wildly, every nerve in her body tighten with alarm…
And need.
She clutched at his jacket, not knowing whether to push him away or pull him close, horrified, thrilled, overwhelmed.
His hands gripped her skull like a vise as his mouth plundered hers, took it savagely, hungrily.
He released her and backed away, his chest pumping, his eyes mirroring the fierce panic rioting through her.
"Okay?" he rasped. "Now do you see why I have to go?"
"No, Dean," she found herself saying as he wheeled around and walked away. "You don't."
She thought he hadn't heard her, half hoped he hadn't heard her. But in the doorway he stilled, his hands fisted at his sides, and she knew he had.
A weighty moment passed, Laura knowing she should take it back, but too desperate, too filled with need, to say anything.
Dean turned and came to her.
* * *
Chapter 3
«^»
"Working Girl, Sabrina or Six Days Seven Nights?" Kay tossed the three videocassettes on the sofa next to Laura – the quaint burgundy velvet sofa in the front parlor of the big old gingerbread Victorian that served as Kay's home and livelihood. The Blue Mist Bed and Breakfast, which provided the only accommodations in Port Liv aside from a fairly cheesy motel on the edge of town, was always filled to capacity in the summer. During the winter, on the other hand, it was generally, as now, devoid of guests.
Every Thursday night from November through May was Chick Flick Night at the Blue Mist. At nine o'clock, Laura would tuck Janey into the high, canopied feather bed in the Rose Room – Janey's favorite among the B and B's five guest rooms – and then she and Kay would make up a bowl of popcorn, uncork a bottle of wine and select a film from the prodigious collection of videotapes Kay kept on hand for guests. Laura used to wake Janey up and bring her home afterward, but that had proved troublesome and ultimately pointless. Now she just spent the night and had breakfast with her aunt Kay in the morning, after which Laura came to collect her for preschool, which she attended on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
"Laura?" Kay prompted. "You were the one who asked for Harrison Ford tonight, so what'll it be?"
"How do I send something by Federal Express?"
"Either that's a complete non sequitur or Harrison Ford made some romantic comedy about a FedEx guy that I never heard of."
"Complete non sequitur. Tomorrow I'm going to return that million dollar check to the lawyer who sent it to—"
"No, no, no, no, no!" Kay shoved the cassettes aside and sat next to Laura on the sofa.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." Leaning forward, Laura grabbed the bottle of merlot off the coffee table and refilled her glass. "It's the only right thing to do." And the only smart thing to do.
"Look Laura…" Kay squeezed her friend's hand. "I know you've got mysterious issues where this guy is concerned, and I know you think it's wrong for some reason to take this money. But it only just arrived this morning. You haven't really had time to think about it—"
"Yes, I have." Laura gulped down some wine.
"Or to digest what it would mean for Janey."
"Bringing Janey into it is a cheap shot, Kay. And not as clever a strategy as you might think I'm returning the check."
"Why so hasty? Don't you want to talk to this Dean Kettering and find out why he sent it? I mean, if he doesn't expect anything in return, and it's just money out of the clear blue—"
"I couldn't talk to Dean even if I wanted to. I haven't got the slightest idea where he lives."
/> Kay shrugged. "Newport, Rhode Island, most likely. He used a Newport lawyer to send the money to you."
"Newport, Rhode Island – well, that narrows it down."
"You could call that lawyer on Monday and try to sweet-talk him into giving you the guy's address."
"Which he wouldn't do, especially if Dean is a client of his, but it's all academic, because first thing tomorrow morning I'm going to send that check right back to—"
"Look, Laura, I can get on my computer and find this Dean Kettering right now in about five minutes if you want."
"I don't want."
"Aren't you just the tiniest bit curious as to his whereabouts? I mean, he knows where you live."
"Yeah, well, he knows all about this house. He used to come here with Will and me all the time while we were in college, back when it was still Grandma Jane's summer place."
"Yeah, but how does he know it's your permanent home now? Apparently he's done some snooping. Now it's your turn." Standing up, Kay crossed the room and took a seat at the massive old oak desk that housed her computer, printer and fax machine. She pressed a button on the monitor and the screen crackled on; she hit a few keys and the computer produced a series of beeps and hisses that meant it was going online.
It was one of Laura's more shameful secrets that she did not so much as know how to turn a computer on, much less tap into or negotiate that enigmatic entity known as the Internet. Whenever she watched Kay do it, she was consumed by awe and bewilderment. Kay's fingers fluttered over the keys and whole worlds of information flickered past. She received and sent e-mail. She talked to people in chat rooms. She had even created, all by herself, a Web site for her bed and breakfast!
"Okay, this is a search engine for finding people," Kay said as keys rattled beneath her fingertips. "There are a couple of ways to locate them. Let's start by looking for his phone number." She punched a key and waited, then shook her head. "It's drawing a blank. Probably he's unlisted."
"Or maybe he doesn't have a phone." Laura found herself rising off the couch and wandering over to Kay's corner, grudgingly intrigued.
"Everyone has a phone."
"Dean Kettering's not 'everyone.' He's…" Laura took a pensive sip of wine.
"He's what?" Kay asked, amusement in her eyes.
Laura dragged another chair over to the desk and sat down. "No phone number. So, now what do you look for?"
Kay turned and grinned at her. "Ah, so you are curious."
"Maybe – but wanting to know what became of him doesn't mean I intend to get in touch with him."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I'm looking for now is an e-mail address." Kay entered some more keystrokes, but came up empty again. "Hmph. Maybe he's as computer-phobic as you are."
"I'm not phobic, just ignorant. There's a difference."
After trying three more people-search engines with no success, Kay pulled up a Web page with a banner that read Folkfinder. "Let's try this one. It's a last resort, because they charge a fee, but if he's got a street address within the United States, I guarantee you they'll come up with it."
"How much of a fee?" Laura asked fretfully.
"My treat." Kay entered Dean's name and probable state of residence. The machine mulled it over for about ten seconds, only to announce No Results Found.
Kay shook her head. "He's got to have a street address. Doesn't he?"
"Maybe he doesn't live in the U.S.," Laura offered.
"Then why did he use a lawyer from Newport? Does he come from there?"
"No," Laura said. "He grew up on Long Island – out in the Hamptons."
"The Hamptons." Kay's eyebrows shot up. "No wonder he can afford to throw million-dollar checks around."
"No, it wasn't like that. More of a riches to rags kind of scene. Dean's father blew all the money and then split when Dean was just a kid. He never would have been able to afford college if it weren't for his ROTC scholarship and this part-time job he had doing home repairs for a local contractor. Only reason he was able to learn how to sail was because friends took him out on their boats."
"He sails?"
"Oh, yeah, he's totally into it. Or was."
"That's something you two have in common, then," Kay observed, "that sailing bug."
"The only thing." What was it he'd said about genetics? Underneath it all, I'm just like my old man – aimless, self-indulgent.
Laura pictured Janey, fast asleep upstairs, her cheeks the color of the cabbage roses on the down comforter tucked around her, and felt a surge of maternal protectiveness that went bone deep. She was all Janey had. Sometimes the magnitude of that responsibility daunted her, and occasionally she wondered if Janey didn't suffer from not having a father around to provide a stabilizing male influence. Then she would remind herself that not all fathers fostered equilibrium in their children's lives. Some, like Dean's father – and Dean himself – were forces of turmoil in the lives of those who cared for them, especially when the time came for their big disappearing act.
There were, Laura reflected, some very compelling reasons she couldn't accept that million dollars.
"What do you think?" Kay pointed to the screen, where she'd pulled up a Web site called Newport Sailing Tours And Corporate Charters. Links for about a dozen charter outfits were listed on the site. "If he likes to sail, he might be running charters."
"Not impossible," Laura said, but as Kay methodically clicked on each link, scanning the pages for Dean's name – a long and laborious process – it became increasingly clear that this was just another dead end.
Kay sat back and flexed her fingers. "He's a hard man to track down, your Dean Kettering."
"This is a waste of time," Laura said. "Let's watch a movie. How about Working Girl? I could use a good Cinderella story." Ah, the fortifying power of fantasy.
"You kidding?" Sitting forward, Kay rubbed her hands together and attacked the keyboard again. "I'm just getting warmed up."
"Kay…" Laura groaned.
"This is the Internet, for crying out loud," Kay said as she typed. "There's not a human being alive who hasn't left his footprint somewhere on the Net. I am going to find him."
"Kay, you're really a pain in the butt when you get a fire in your belly – you know that, don't you?"
"Okay, what I'm going to do is just surf through Newport and see what materializes." Kay pulled up one site after another – Newport International Boat Show, Newport Real Estate, Newport County Chamber Of Commerce, Historic Mansions Of Newport… There were Web sites for lighthouses, marinas, vineyards, sailing schools, music festivals, and a ton of B and B sites, all of which Kay had to glance at, "just to see what the competition is doing."
Dean Kettering's footprint was nowhere to be seen.
Laura drained her wineglass. "I have mentioned that this is a total waste of time, haven't I?"
"Okay, it says here that Newport has, like, one newspaper, and it's a weekly. Let's check it out." Kay scrolled down the home page for Newport This Week. "Forget it. Can't do a search, and I'm not gonna read every article in the archives looking for 'Dean Kettering.' Lemme back out of here and try something else."
"Have I mentioned that this is way boring, too?"
With a weary sigh, Laura got up, went over to the coffee table and refilled her glass from the bottle there.
"I'm gonna go into your kitchen and make some popcorn, and then I'm gonna boot up Working Girl and watch it all by my lonesome."
"Uh … Laura?"
"You can join me or you can just play computer geek all night. It's your—"
"Laura, you might want to come look at this." Kay aimed a self-satisfied smile over her shoulder. Laura regarded her in silence for a moment, then returned to her seat in front of the computer.
"This is the Web site for the Providence Journal," Kay explained. "It looks to be the major daily in Rhode Island, and they let you do word searches of their local articles, only the past couple of days' worth, but—" she gestured toward the screen " – as y
ou can see, we struck pay dirt. This appeared in the edition that hit the stands the day before yesterday – March 19."
A message on the screen read: 1 stories containing Dean Kettering. That was followed by the headline of the article Kay had found, underlined to show that it was a hyperlink to the article itself. Portsmouth's Publicity-Shy Hero. There was a subheading beneath that. Air Force vet pulls two Newport boys from icy water.
"This is why I couldn't find him by surfing the Newport links," Kay said as she clicked on the link for the article. "He doesn't live in Newport – he lives in Portsmouth." Frowning, she added, "Only I thought Portsmouth was in New Hampshire."
"There's a Portsmouth in Rhode Island, too, small but with a bunch of marinas," Laura said, her gaze riveted on the screen as the text of the article appeared, along with a picture that materialized all too slowly, from top to bottom.
As the picture came into focus – a photograph of someone turning away from the camera with a hand held up – Laura at first thought it was a woman, because of the long, breeze-riffled hair. Then she noticed the width of the shoulders, the masculine way he held himself, and realized it was a man … but it couldn't be Dean.
"Is that him?" Kay asked.
"No." Laura sat forward to squint at the image as it coalesced, her gaze on the man's face – what little of it she could see through the unruly strands of dark hair blowing across it. It was a face both virile and aristocratic, with sharply hewn, almost too handsome features – a high-bridged nose, sculpted cheekbones, neon eyes – saved from cover-model perfection by that who-gives-a-damn hair and a remoteness in his gaze that said this was a man who'd been places and done things. "Oh, my God." Laura's heart jerked in her chest. "Yes. That's him."
"Yeah?" Kay whistled softly. "Kind of hunky … if you're into brooding, bad-boy derelict types, but they've never been my cup of tea."
"Mine, neither," Laura said a bit too quickly.
Kay glanced at her, a smile flirting with the corners of her mouth. Scrolling down the page, she said, "So, uh, this Dean Kettering was an old college pal of yours, huh?"
"Of mine and Will's."
"Uh-huh." Kay returned her attention to the screen, where a second picture had appeared below the first – Dean's official air force portrait, complete with military razor cut and beribboned uniform. "Whoa, is that the same guy?"
MILLION DOLLAR BABY Page 4