Pillow Talk

by Hailey North

  "A little bitterness there?" Meg murmured the words but she could tell he heard her by the face he made.

  "Are you married?" He wasn't wearing a ring, but Ted never had.

  "Me?" He shook his head. "No. I was engaged once, but as it turned out—to the wrong woman."

  "Ah." She wanted to know more, but it wouldn't be polite to pry.

  "Stick around the Ponthiers for awhile and you'll be glad you're—" He stopped, chagrin overtaking his features. "I am so sorry. I can't believe what I was about to say."

  "Glad that I'm a widow." Meg nodded. "After someone close to us dies, we say things that are true but we don't want to let ourselves acknowledge any truth if it's ugly or detrimental to the person who died. But it's okay to say what you feel. It's better really than pretending.”

  "How'd you get to be so wise about death? It can't be from losing Jules. You only found out today." He narrowed his eyes. "And… you didn't even ask to say good-bye or to see the body."

  Meg stared at her hands. She hadn't even thought of going to see Jules's body. Not once had it entered her mind. She'd been far more concerned with trying to reach her children over the phone. But how out of character that lack of attention was for a brand-new bride. She could feel him staring at her, the earlier suspicion flooding back to fill the space between them.

  She knew she had to say something. Why not tell him the truth? The question whispered in her mind. She opened her mouth, then stopped. He'd despise her. He'd probably head straight to the airport and dump her there. So why not tell him? She should go home, back to Las Vegas, and let the Ponthiers solve their own problems.

  "Or is all that wisdom pure theory?" Parker was gripping the wheel with both hands. "Ever seen a dead man? Ever seen a face that used to laugh and cry and shout with joy that's now a mask? A dead man, Meg, is no longer there. The spirit is gone and it's as if that person never existed because the shell isn't anything at all like the person in his life." He swallowed hard and Meg felt tears steal up behind her eyelids.

  "I know what you're describing," she whispered. "I was married before and that's how Ted looked."

  "You've outlived two husbands?"

  She nodded.

  He moved one hand from the wheel and touched her briefly on her folded hands. "Forgive me for judging you. Once you've seen death, it's nothing you want to see ever again. It must have been too much for you to think of seeing Jules like that."

  Meg nodded, feeling worse than ever. She dabbed at her eyes, thinking that if Parker ever found out the truth he wouldn't just despise her, he'd probably run over her with his Porsche.

  Back and forth until she was really, really flattened. What a skunk she was! "I'm sorry you had to see him like that," she finally managed to say.

  "Me, too. And it was such a waste." He jabbed at the wheel with his right hand. "Just like my father."

  Meg had wondered about this missing member of the family. "What happened to your father?"

  "I think," Parker said in a dry voice, "that story falls into what Mathilde would definitely call the dirty linen."

  Of course that made her even more curious. She wanted to press him but it wasn't polite. Instead she looked out the window. They'd been moving swiftly through the traffic and were now on a bridge that seemed to go on forever. "Where are we?"

  "Lake Pontchartrain. Headed east."

  "Gus's school is a long way out of the city."

  "Actually, it's in Mississippi."

  "Mississippi!" Her voice rose.

  "Perhaps I should have told you just how long of a trip this would be but I was grateful for your help." He flashed that grin that made him look like a young man without a care in the world, rather than the burdened executive he seemed so much of the time.

  "And afraid I'd back out?"

  "Well, I didn't know that you'd want to be locked up in a car with me for two hours each way."

  Meg thought of the way he'd backed her against the armoire and suppressed a shiver. But she couldn't say it sprang from distaste. Far from it. "Well, I can't turn away from a ten-year-old in need," she said, sticking carefully to the legitimate reason for this time spent with Parker.

  "Your parents teach you that?"

  "You're good," she said, laughing. "Are you a lawyer?"

  He made a face and shook his head. "I left that to Jules."

  "And did what instead?"

  "Engineering at MIT. Then an MBA from Tulane."

  "I see." No GED and state college for Parker Ponthier. "Which do you like better?"

  "Both." With a pleased look, he said, "I have the perfect job, running companies that make both products and money."

  Companies. Plural. Meg was impressed. Ted had bungled his one business. Then she thought of Ted's work schedule and how she'd never seen him. "Do you work a lot?"

  He shrugged. "To hear my grandfather tell it, I do. But work makes me happy."

  "How many hours a week?"

  "Tell me about your parents and I'll answer your question."

  She smiled. "You win this round." The smile fading from her face, she admitted, "I'm an orphan. The kind who never knew who her parents were."

  "Left on the doorstep of a foundling home?" He sounded aghast.

  "Pretty much. Just substitute foundling home with Department of Social Services."

  "How could someone do that?"

  "I spent a lot of nights making up reasons," Meg said. "And then I got over it."

  He glanced over at her. "No wonder you put such importance on family."

  Oh, he was not only smart, but sensitive. Meg sighed and wondered how she'd landed up in this dream car with a man who could see right to the heart of the matter. A man to whom she'd already sold a bill of goods and told more fibs than she'd uttered in her previous thirty-two years.

  "So tell me how many hours a week you work."

  "Oh, it depends."

  "Sounds like waffling to me. Are you afraid your grandfather is right?"

  He scowled. "A little too smart for your own good, aren't you?" But he said it in a teasing voice, in a way that showed he appreciated her insight.

  "It must be more than forty," Meg mused.

  He nodded.

  "Fifty?"

  "Maybe."

  "Twelve times five is sixty."

  "Good at math, are you?"

  Meg nodded. She spread her fingers wide. "I always carry my own calculator."

  He grinned. "Okay, Mathematician Meg, I probably work six days a week, ten to twelve hours a day."

  "Hmmm." Meg thought of Ted, always absent from her life and the lives of their children. She thought of the bulging briefcase he'd bring home at night and how he'd sometimes fall asleep over reports. She remembered the evenings she'd tuck the children in, sharing their nightly pillow talk, then wander into the den to curl up with a book.

  "I like my work," Parker said, sounding slightly defensive.

  "That's good, but isn't there more to life than working all the time?"

  "I don't know, you tell me." His mouth had taken on a stubborn line.

  Meg realized she'd hit on a sore spot. Well, it was a sore spot with her, too. Just as well she'd discovered this horrific flaw in Parker. She'd been sitting there feeling pretty cozy and forgiving towards him, a trend in her emotions that would do her no good at all.

  "Oh, you know, there are things you'll miss out on. And one day you'll look up and realize you've made a ton of money and you don't have anyone to leave it to."

  He glared at her. "Rub it in, why don't you?"

  She produced a sweet smile. "Just trying to help." Yeah, help herself not like this man too much.

  "You sound like Grandfather."

  "He does make a valid point once in awhile."

  "True, but he does it in such a crusty way."

  That was for sure. Meg didn't like to think of what the old guy might have to say to her when they returned to the house. She pointed out the window. "Would you look at all these trees! For so
meone who's lived in the desert forever, this is the most amazing sight."

  "So you've lived in Las Vegas all your life?"

  "One of the tiny percentage of natives. Or at least the state assumed I'd been born there, since I was found there."

  "Is it hard, not knowing anything about your family? Your heritage?"

  "Sometimes. And there are times I do silly things as a result of wishing it weren't true." She hesitated, but then decided to tell him. "Like today when you said you knew my parents. I got all excited thinking by some fluke you did know someone who'd been searching for me and just hadn't found me."

  He looked at her with such compassion she had to glance away. "I can't stand it when someone feels sorry for me."

  "You're pretty tough, aren't you?" It sounded more like an exploration of the possibility, rather than a condemnation.

  "I do what I have to do to get by," Meg said, thinking just how true that was. Why, if she hadn't been willing to take the chance on Jules's offer, she'd be home fighting off the barrage of bill collectors. "And it sounds as if working serves that purpose for you."

  "I'm sure you're right," Parker said, still looking a bit stubborn. "And I guess if I ever found the right situation I might not work as much.”

  "Situation?"

  He flashed her that sexy smile again. "Oh, you know," he said lightly, "the woman of my dreams."

  Eight

  The woman of my dreams. Parker mulled over his words as he drove on toward St. Suplicius School. Meg, having warned him that driving always made her drowsy, had indeed given in to sleep, lulled by the rhythm of the road.

  He found himself watching her. Oh, of course he paid attention to the road, but just when he thought, She’s sleeping, there's no need to look again, he'd let his vision take her in. Each time he glanced over, her expression had changed ever so subtly. When she first closed her eyes she hadn't relaxed much.

  He couldn't blame her for being tense, not after losing her husband and meeting the family. All in the same day, and here she was en route to break the news to a stepson he could swear she hadn't known existed.

  Her breathing shifted, slowing its pace, and the line of her mouth softened. He saw her in profile, as she'd half turned away from him. Her hair lay against the line of her cheek, a gleaming dark contrast to her pale skin. For someone who lived in the desert, she didn't spend much time in the sun.

  He wondered why he'd chosen to answer her question about working so much the way he had. At his age he'd had plenty of time to meet such a woman if she really existed. He'd finally concluded that the perfect match for him was as elusive as it had been for every other member of the Ponthier family.

  They were cursed by bad choices and Parker would rather remain alone than mimic any of the mistakes to which he'd borne witness. Parker's earliest memories of his parents were screaming matches. Teensy had claimed to do her best to ignore his father's womanizing, but it had taken its toll on her.

  As an adult, Parker was well aware of his father's infidelities. They were famous in the city. Teensy's, he only suspected. But he couldn't imagine the good doctor, who'd been a fixture in the Ponthier household for years, was paid only in U.S. dollars.

  When Parker's father died in a boating accident, everyone expressed the appropriate sentiments, but Parker felt almost nothing except shame and a guilty sense of relief. The woman who died along with him had been married to one of the Ponthiers' closest business associates. Parker had to smooth over the scandal and mend the business relationship.

  Parker to the rescue, just like today.

  Meg stirred in her sleep and turned. She was curled facing him now, her lips parted softly, her breath coming slowly and evenly. Her dark eyelashes accentuated the creamy skin, almost baby soft. He felt desire mingled with a curious sense of protectiveness stir within him and forced his attention back to the road.

  She didn't look old enough to have been married once, let alone twice. He wondered, with a quick spurt of jealous curiosity, whether either of her husbands had been the man of her dreams.

  Not Jules. No way. Parker shook his head. He mourned his brother but he knew his faults too damn well. So who was the other guy? Not that it mattered one whit, of course.

  His grandfather liked to tell him he had to think of finding a wife the way he would undertake any other business enterprise. But the old man didn't know just how many women Parker had dated before abandoning the quest. He'd been a lot more selective after the disaster of his engagement to Renee, but he'd yet to meet a woman he could picture himself married and faithful to for the rest of his life.

  Parker had sworn long ago that once he married, he'd never become like his father. That was not a vow he took lightly.

  He slowed the car and took the exit for Bay St. Louis. Meg was sleeping so peacefully he hated to wake her, but they were within a few miles of the school.

  Turning his head, he found her watching him, blinking her eyes sleepily. "Are we almost there?" She hadn't moved from her semicurled position.

  "Yes." Funny how she opened her eyes exactly when he was about to wake her. "It's just down this side road." How well he remembered the route, too.

  "Do you come over here often?" She yawned and stretched her arms over her head.

  "Not anymore."

  "Did you go to school here?" She sounded surprised.

  "For a year."

  "How old were you?"

  Parker grimaced, remembering the year he'd turned ten. Jules, two years his senior, had gotten bounced from his school in New Orleans yet again and their father had reacted by sending him to St. Suplicius. And of course he sent Parker along to keep his older brother out of trouble. "Ten."

  "How awful!" She straightened her suit jacket. "That's how old Gus is now. That should help you relate to him. Why did you only stay for a year?"

  "Teensy said she'd take out an ad in the Times-Picayune listing every woman my father had had an affair with if he didn't let her baby come home again."

  "So she wanted you with the family."

  Parker shrugged. "She wanted Jules back. It was a package deal."

  She murmured something, but he couldn't make it out. Probably more sympathy, which he didn't want. He should keep his problems to himself. After all, that's what they'd taught him at St. Suplicius. Stand up straight and act like a man.

  "I take it your father didn't mind having affairs, but he still preserved some level of discretion?"

  "That's the way of the polite world, isn't it? Do whatever you want as long as you dress for dinner." Parker realized in a flash of insight one of the subconscious reasons he'd broken his engagement to Renee. Married to her, he would have ended up like his father. The thought came out of nowhere, but he knew the way he knew a good business deal that his instincts were right.

  "But didn't he care that your mother knew?" Meg sounded troubled.

  "The best advice I can give you, Meg, is don't try to understand my family." He swung the car onto the tree-lined drive leading to the school's main building.

  He spoke without thinking that she'd joined the family. He waited for her to protest his exclusion of her, but even though she wrinkled her brow in thought, she said nothing.

  Funny how she didn't do some of the most natural things one would expect of a newlywed. Like not saying good-bye to her dead husband or crying over his death or assuming she'd be included in the family. Back at the hotel, she'd seemed almost surprised to be invited over to the house. For someone who made such a fuss over family, not plunging herself wholeheartedly into belonging to the Ponthiers was rather odd behavior. He tucked the thought away to pursue later as he parked the car in a visitor's slot.

  Turning off the ignition, he reached for the door handle, eager to get the scene he dreaded over with.

  She reached out and caught his hand. "Please, before we go in. When was the last time Gus saw his father?"

  He let go of the handle, thinking back. "I'm not sure I know." Jules hadn't been present at
Thanksgiving dinner. Lucky him. Parker had stayed at the table for the barest minimum of time required by social rules and regulations. He had no interest in the five couples Teensy had invited to share the meal with the family. The women looked a lot like Teensy, polished but not too happy. The men talked money and business interspersed with golf and sailing. Parker had known them all for years. He'd heard it all, every conquest, every close business call. At similar events in the past, he used to while away the time by trying to pick out which woman his father was screwing.

  "Parker?"

  That dark thought must have chased its way across his face. '"Sorry," he said. "It's been at least since August. I remember that Gus came home for his birthday then."

  "Hmm."

  "Is that good or bad?" For whatever reason, he accepted she'd know what was best for Gus.

  She shook her head and opened the car door. He made it around the car in time to hold the door for her.

  "Thanks," she said, surprised. "That's nice."

  He smiled. "You bring out the best in me."

  She flashed him a look that held as much fright as pleasure, but said nothing in response.

  They walked toward the double doors of the central administration building, Parker kicking himself mentally for scaring her off with his comment.

  "It looks like a fort," Meg said.

  "Actually, it was a monastery. Monks still live here, along with the priests who run the school."

  "Monks and priests. What an odd influence for ten-year-olds."

  "Not for a child from New Orleans. We're probably the most Catholic city in the country."

  "Are you Catholic?" Meg asked.

  Parker stared at her, wondering if she knew what an odd question that was to ask of a Ponthier of New Orleans. He paused before opening the door. But of course she had no way of knowing that. He looked down at her wide-eyed gaze. "I gather Jules didn't mention religion either," he said dryly.

  "Oh!" She looked guilty, as if she'd made some sort of slip.

  Parker reminded himself to take a good look at that marriage license and send an investigator off to Nevada. He also reminded himself he had no business being drawn in by Ms. Meg's surface charm—not until he had all the facts in hand.