"Eighty-seven hundwed," Janey said. "Mommy says we could fix the porch and the woof and about a hundwed other things with that kind of money – if we had it."
"What a tragedy to have to make that choice," Dean said.
"Not having food to eat or a roof over our heads would be a tragedy," Laura corrected. "Not having a sailboat I can live with."
"But why should you have to?"
"Now it comes." Laura sat back, crossing her arms. "This is why you came here, isn't it? To try and force me into taking that money."
"No."
Laura regarded him dubiously.
"You told me you wouldn't take it." Dean calmly drained his orange juice. "I believe you."
Janey and Kay, who had brightened at the prospect of his forcing her to take the money, both seemed to deflate just a little.
"Then what are you doing here?" Laura asked.
He shrugged his big shoulders. "To tell you the truth, it does get just a little claustrophobic, spending all winter in that boat. During your visit the other day…" His mouth quirked. "I'm sorry, can I call it that? I know you hadn't intended it to be a visit."
Laura glared at him.
"Anyway," Dean continued with a mild smile, "you mentioned this friend of yours who'd turned the old Sullivan Place into a B and B called the Blue Mist. I kinda liked the name. It's … I don't know. Evocative. Inviting."
Kay perked up. "Yeah?"
"Oh, please," Laura muttered into her coffee.
"So I arranged for someone to take care of the Lorelei," Dean said, "and rented a Jeep and drove on down."
"Any idea how long you'll be staying?" Kay asked as she reached behind her for the vitamin chest she kept on the sideboard.
"I'm not much for plans and schedules." Leaning back in his chair with his coffee cup, Dean said, "A few weeks, maybe longer."
"Longer?" Laura exclaimed.
"I don't really have to be back in Portsmouth till the end of May, when it's time to set off for Bermuda. That gives me a couple of months to burn off any old way I want." Setting his coffee cup down, Dean pulled his cigarettes from the back pocket of his jeans and shook one out
Janey actually gasped. "You smoke cigawettes?"
"Not in my B and B, he doesn't," Kay proclaimed as she sorted through the tablets and capsules in her vitamin chest, plucking some out to add to a little particolored heap beside her juice glass. "Sorry, Dean, but the Blue Mist is a stink-free zone. You'll have to take it outside."
"You shouldn't smoke." Janey eyed the rumpled pack of Marlboros as if it were a rusty hypodermic filled with heroin. Laura realized this might be the first time her daughter had ever seen a pack of cigarettes, since they didn't know anyone else who smoked. "Smoking is bad for you. Mrs. Doyle said cigawettes kill people."
"Mrs. Doyle is her teacher at preschool," Laura explained. "Janey, finish your juice – remember what I said about drinking what you pour. And don't be lecturing grown-ups about what they do."
"No, that's okay," Dean said as he pocketed the cigarettes. "I can take it. Mrs. Doyle is right, Janey. Smoking is a terrible habit."
"Then why do you do it?" Janey asked in seemingly genuine bewilderment.
Dean emitted a cross between a sigh and a chuckle. "I've been smoking since I was thirteen. When you've been doing a certain thing for a long time, it can be hard to stop."
"I know." Janey nodded sympathetically. "I sucked my thumb ever since I was a baby. But it was making my teeth come in cwooked, so I had to stop. It dwove me cwazy! But after a while it got better, and now I never even want to put my thumb in my mouth." She frowned thoughtfully. "Almost never."
"That's very admirable," Dean praised. "I'm proud of you."
"You could quit smoking," Janey said. "And then I could be pwoud of you!"
"If only it were that easy." Dean rubbed his cleanly-shaved jaw. "I've been smoking most of my life."
"I sucked my thumb all of my life! Even when I was in Mommy's tummy – she saw it on the ultwasound!"
"She's got you there." Grinning, Kay tossed a handful of pills in her mouth and washed them down with a swallow of orange juice.
"You should twy to quit," Janey counseled solemnly. "Just twy it. Take it a day at a time," she added, echoing Laura's advice to her when it was time for her little twelve-step lose-the-thumb program.
Dean laughed softly, looking years younger than he had when Laura had confronted him in Portsmouth Friday. "All right. I'll try."
"Weally?"
"Weally. Now, finish your juice."
"So, Dean." Kay snapped her vitamin chest shut. "Were you serious when you said that about staying here till the end of May?"
"Yep." Dean reached for his coffee cup.
"You're going to stay here for two months?" Laura asked.
"Maybe." Dean took a slow sip of coffee, his gaze trained on Laura. "Is that a problem?"
Laura's gaze snapped automatically to Janey; her stomach clenched. Pushing her chair back, she said, "Dean, can I talk to you alone?"
After a moment's hesitation, Dean lowered his coffee cup and rose. "Sure. How about a walk on the beach?"
*
"Dean, why did you come here?" Laura asked when they were about a hundred yards down the beach, which was flecked with patches of snow that became sparser near the erupting waves.
"Haven't you already asked me that, like, a dozen times?" Dean glanced at her as they walked. She'd donned sunglasses in addition to that big green parka of hers and those utilitarian duck boots, so he couldn't see her eyes.
"Every time I ask it," she said, looking straight ahead, her gloved hands jammed in the pockets of her parka, "you either put me off or feed me a line of bull."
"When did I—"
"You know and I know you didn't come all the way down here – to stay for two months—"
"Maybe."
"—because you like the name of Kay's B and B. You've got an agenda."
"Me? An agenda?"
"Dean, just please—"
"She's great," he said.
Laura exhaled a giant cloud of vapor. "You're changing the subject."
"My newest bad habit, like I said. She is, though – she's a hoot."
Turning to look at Dean, Laura said, "That's why Kay and I became such good friends, I think. She's so—"
"Not Kay. Janey."
Laura looked abruptly away from him, staring straight ahead. He couldn't make out her expression because of those damned shades.
"She's a live one." Dean paused, yanking off his right glove to extract his cigarettes from his back jeans pocket. "Stubborn and opinionated, just like her old man."
Laura stopped walking as well, and turned to confront him, hands on hips. "What are you doing?"
"Uh … lighting a cigarette?"
"Didn't you just tell Janey you were going to quit?"
A little huff of laughter rose in Dean's throat. "Yeah, well, you know … that was…"
"Was what? A lie?"
He wished he could see her eyes. Was she actually ticked off at him? "I told her I'd quit to … you know … be polite."
"You mean to placate her. You lied to shut her up."
"Come on, Laura. Be real."
"I don't like having my child lied to. About anything. Nothing could be more real."
Reaching out, Dean plucked Laura's sunglasses off before she could stop him. Her eyes were fiercely gold in the early afternoon sun.
"You're serious," he said quietly. "I should have known. You've always been such a nut for honesty."
For some reason Laura's cheeks, already ruddy from the cold, grew even pinker.
"All right, you've shamed me into it. Here." Dean handed her his cigarettes. "Do me a favor and flush those, okay?"
"Really?" She looked down at the crumpled pack of Marlboros and back up at him. "You're really quitting?"
He smiled. "I wouldn't want to be guilty of deceiving an innocent child."
Shoving the pack in a pocket of he
r parka, Laura asked, "So, why did you come here? I'm going to keep asking till I get a credible answer."
Pulling his glove back on, Dean said, "Why did you come to Portsmouth two days ago?"
Laura regarded him in silence for a few seconds, the color in her cheeks deepening even further. Interesting… Averting her gaze, she said, "I went to Portsmouth to return your money." She held out her hand. "Can I have my sunglasses back?"
"No. Not yet." He knew why she wanted them back. She was trying to shield her thoughts and feelings from him, to conceal whatever it was she was hiding from him, as contrary to her nature as such deception might be.
She crossed her arms, her jaw set, bronzed tendrils of hair dancing in the breeze off the ocean. "What are you going to do with the money, now that I won't take it?"
"Put it in the bank, I guess."
"Then what?" she asked, her voice tinged with suspicion.
He turned her sunglasses over in his hands, catching his own smiling reflection in the green-tinted lenses.
"You're planning something," she said.
"Me? Make plans?" He slid her sunglasses on over his own eyes and adjusted them. "I'm a creature of impulse, remember? I do whatever moves me at the moment."
She reached up and grabbed the glasses off him. "How could I forget?"
As she was about to put the glasses back on, he clamped a hand around her wrist. "You don't always tell the truth. You said Janey had Will's eyes."
"I never said that."
"You said she didn't have yours. Which would imply that she has Will's. Only she doesn't."
Laura stared at him unblinkingly as he lifted her chin, the better to study those astonishing eyes – amber imbedded with flecks of gold leaf.
"No one in the world has eyes like these," he murmured. "No one but you."
He wanted to kiss her. He ached to kiss her. She lured him as the moon lured the tides; she always had, always would.
I'll leave you alone, he'd told her in Portsmouth. Take the money and I'll never bother you again.
But she hadn't taken the money, wouldn't take it. By rights he should feel no compunction about acting on the irresistible force of nature that drew them together.
And it was irresistible. Six years ago, when he drove away from here in the middle of the night, he'd resolved, for her sake, never to contact her again. But he'd violated that resolution by sending her the money, and then…
The moment he'd seen her standing on that dock, shivering with the cold and maybe something else, he'd felt it again, the old longing, the hunger for her that would never be sated. He'd never wanted anything or anyone as much as he wanted Laura, had always wanted her, would always want her. He ached with it, right down to his bones.
What would she do if he took her in his arms, lowered his mouth to hers?
Dean bent his head just slightly, his gaze on her mouth, those exquisitely formed lips that always looked berry stained even without lipstick. They would feel hot against his, and soft.
She hitched in a breath, something like panic glittering in her eyes – although she made no move to pull back; she just stared at him, like a lamb facing the ax.
Through an effort of will, Dean drew away from her, released her wrist. Taking the sunglasses out of her hand, he opened them and slid them over her eyes. She was freaked out enough simply by the fact that he'd shown up here so unexpectedly. Even he knew when to lay off.
"Want to head back?" he asked.
She nodded.
Best to let her get used to his being around, he reflected as they walked in silence back to Kay's place. Laura was wary of him, frightened even – understandable in light of what had transpired the last time they were together.
Pouncing on her would only make her more apprehensive, more guarded. The way to get her to lower her defenses was to take his time, make her trust him, keep his distance.
For now. Dean didn't kid himself into thinking he could keep away from her forever. Sooner or later, his yearning for her would get to be too much, and he would act on it. Which would, of course, be a monumental mistake.
Not that that had ever stopped him before.
* * *
Chapter 7
«^»
"By the way," Laura told Kay the next morning as she squeezed a dab of zinc white onto the big enameled butcher tray that served as her palette, "don't think for a minute that I've forgiven you for springing Dean on me yesterday."
"I didn't spring him on you. Not on purpose, anyway." Kay refilled both of their mugs from the paint-spattered coffeemaker nestled among the various jars, cans and tubes on the worktable in Laura's studio, stirring just the right amount of sugar and powdered creamer into Laura's. "I rented him a room. So sue me."
"Sue you? I'm gonna kill you, remember?" Working just a touch of alizarin crimson into the white with her palette knife, Laura yelled, "Janey! Are you almost ready? You've got—" she consulted her watch, which said it was twenty to nine "—ten minutes till you have to leave. You don't want to be late today – you've got the field trip to the firehouse." And Mrs. Doyle had made a special point of begging Laura to get Janey there on time today, because they were supposed to leave at nine sharp. If Janey was late, as she often was, it would hold everybody up and throw them off schedule for the whole morning.
"I'm weady!" Janey's voice came from the direction of the living room. "I'm tyin' my sneakers."
"You were tying your sneakers five minutes ago. Are your teeth brushed?"
There was a telltale silence.
"Did you at least comb your hair and wash your face?"
"I'll do it now."
"This is all your fault," Laura muttered to Kay, who had suggested that Janey might become more self-sufficient if Laura didn't hover quite so closely while she was getting ready in the mornings. Only problem was, it now took Janey about three times longer to get out of the house than it used to when Laura had followed her around, guiding her every step of the way.
"Patience." Kay settled with a contented sigh into the tattered old easy chair Laura kept in a corner of the studio for breaks. "It takes time to develop good habits. You'll thank me later."
"Get those shoes tied now," Laura called out in her most commanding bellow, "and then go up to the bathroom, where you will brush your teeth, wash your face and comb your hair – fast fast fast – or Aunt Kay will leave without you!" She gulped down some coffee and said to Kay, "Listen, thanks for offering to drop her off on your way to the library."
"No problem. I know how it is when you're really cooking on a painting. Taking time out breaks the spell."
They both turned to look at Laura's current project, propped on an easel – a large, just-begun painting of Janey, which she'd been working on since five that morning. It was based on drawings Laura had made a couple of weeks ago after Janey had fallen asleep on the living room couch in her dinosaur jammies, clutching her raggedy stuffed stegosaurus, arms and legs at preposterous but oddly endearing angles. Laura had gotten a lot accomplished in just four hours, sketching the composition onto the primed canvas in airy brush strokes and blocking in most of the colors. The alizarin crimson was for Janey's cheeks, which blossomed with hot color when she slept.
Laura heard the stairs creak swiftly under Janey's sneakered feet, followed by the groaning of antiquated plumbing as the child turned on the water in the bathroom sink. Good girl, Laura thought, although considering how long it could take her daughter to wash her face, brush her teeth and comb her hair, it was still doubtful that she'd be ready in – Laura gave her watch another quick glance – eight minutes.
Turning back to her worktable, she dipped the tip of her palette knife into a baby food jar she'd filled with linseed oil, and added two drops to the pale pink she'd concocted. Kneading the oil into the pigment, she said, "I just about stroked out when I saw Dean standing there next to Janey in your kitchen yesterday. I can't believe you went ahead and rented him a room just like that. Why didn't you call me?"
&n
bsp; "Because you would have told me to turn him away."
"Damn straight."
"I figured it'd be easier to go ahead and rent him the room and incur your wrath than to try and talk you into okaying it, which you wouldn't have, but I would have done it anyway, and you would have ended up even more aggravated."
"You know, Kay, you really are a world-class pain in the butt sometimes."
"You love me, anyway," Kay said smugly.
"Except when I hate you." Laura grabbed a paint-smeared coffee can full of turpentine, stuck her palette knife into it and dripped a bit of its contents into the crimson-cheeked pink From somewhere outside came a dull thwack, and then another, and another, which conjured up a mental picture of Lizzie Borden executing her own unique brand of pain-in-the-butt control.
"A penny for your thoughts," Kay ventured with feigned timidity.
"I'm thinking it's a shame the ground's too frozen to bury a body right now, or I might be tempted to give that shiny new ax of mine quite a workout."
"Yeah, well … I think it's getting enough of a workout already." Kay nodded toward the floor-to-ceiling mullioned windows that formed the south wall of Laura's solarium turned studio.
Pivoting, Laura followed Kay's line of sight, squinting at the sun reflecting off the icy patches of partially melted snow in the side yard. The cordwood she'd had delivered last week rose in a disorderly heap higher than a tall man – higher, at any rate, than the tall man who now hefted a sizable chunk of oak off of it one-handed, the other being wrapped around the handle of Laura's ax.
Dean. Laura spat out the sort of epithet she would never in a million years want Janey to hear coming out of her mouth.
Dean's hair was unbound this morning, and fluttered in the chilly breeze off the Sound as he turned his back to them, slammed the chunk of wood onto the chopping block and raised the ax. He had on the same blue Shetland sweater and raggedy scarf he'd been wearing in Portsmouth the other day. Now, as then, his sleeves were pushed up, displaying forearms cabled with muscle. The sweater looked worn and hung slackly on him, except across the solid breadth of his shoulders, which bulged and shifted as he brought the ax down with a crack.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY Page 8