Kate nodded. “I quit my job at DCFS so that I could give it my best effort. I worked at the restaurant parttime during high school and college, but I’m not at all sure I know how to run it the way my father did. I’m—” She broke off and looked down at her lap, belatedly realizing that Max’s head was resting on her knee, his eyes fixed worriedly on her face.
Mitchell quietly finished the sentence she’d been unable to complete. “You’re afraid you’re going to fail.”
“I’m terrified,” Kate admitted.
“Have you considered trying to sell it?”
“That’s not as easy to consider doing as it seems. My father loved that restaurant, and he invested his whole life in it. He loved me, too, and because he spent most of his time there, most of my happy memories of being with him are centered right there. The restaurant was a part of both of us. Now, it’s all I have left of him—and it’s also all that’s left of ‘us.’ It’s difficult to explain …”
Surprised by a sudden desire to tell Mitchell about her life with her father, she reached out and stroked Max’s head, trying to resist the impulse. After several moments of indecision, she stole a look at Mitchell, half expecting him to look preoccupied or bored.
Instead, he was watching her intently. “Go on,” he said.
Kate tried to think of a good example of why the restaurant held such cherished memories of her life with her father and settled for the first one that came to mind. “Normally, the restaurant was closed in the afternoons between three o’clock and five o’clock, so when I was young, I used to do my homework sitting beside my father at the bar while he did whatever work he had to do. He sat next to me so he could help me with my homework anytime I needed it. Actually, he sat next to me because that was the only way he could be sure I did my homework. Anyway, he enjoyed math and history and science, but I knew he hated English grammar and he hated drilling me on spelling.” With a rueful smile, Kate finished, “I hated homework, period, so I used to make him help me with English grammar and drill me on spelling, day after day after day, just to get even with him.”
Instead of commenting, Mitchell lifted his brows, silently inviting her to say more. A little surprised that he seemed genuinely interested, Kate tried to think of another example to give him. “When I was in fourth grade,” she said after a moment, “I decided I wanted to take roller-skating lessons at the rink. My father disapproved of the sort of kids who hung around there, so he enrolled me in ballet classes twice a week instead, even though I didn’t really want to take ballet lessons. The ballet school burned down the day after I started my lessons—I had nothing to do with that, in case you’re wondering.”
“The possibility never crossed my mind,” Mitchell said.
Kate realized he was completely serious and bit back a laugh at his apparent belief that she was a little angel, rather than the little brat she had actually been. “When the ballet school burned down, the nearest one was a bus ride away, and I knew he’d never let me take the bus to it, so I went on and on about how bad I felt for the ballet teacher and how disappointed I was not to be able to take ballet lessons any more …”
“And?” Mitchell prompted when Kate drew a laughing breath.
“And so my father invited the ballet teacher to conduct her classes at the restaurant instead. God, it was so funny to see him trying not to grimace while thirty ballerinas in little tutus pirouetted around his dining room twice a week and a three-hundred-pound woman pounded away on his antique piano.”
Kate fell silent, smiling … thinking of the birthday parties her father gave for her at Donovan’s. When Mitchell seemed to be waiting for her to say more, she told him what she was remembering: “Every year on my birthday, he threw a big ‘surprise’ party for me at the restaurant and invited all my classmates from school. He had balloons all over the place and a beautiful cake—always a chocolate cake decorated with pink frosting, because I was a girl. For weeks beforehand, he’d try to fool me into thinking he wasn’t going to have the party. He’d tell me he’d booked the dining room for someone else because we needed the money, or he’d tell me he had to be somewhere else that day. He wanted me to be surprised when I walked into the restaurant after school and saw everyone there.”
“And were you surprised?”
Kate shook her head. “Never. How could he possibly have expected me not to notice a big vat of pink frosting in the kitchen the day before my birthday, or all the extra containers of chocolate ice cream in the freezer, or two hundred balloons and a helium machine in the back room? Besides that, he always asked one or two of my friends to be sure all my classmates were invited, so of course I heard about it from one of them.”
“I see why you were never fooled,” Mitchell said with a grin.
Kate started to return his smile, then she sobered and said, “Actually, I did get fooled once—on my fourteenth birthday.”
“How did he fool you that time?”
“By deciding not to have a party for me at all.” To divert him from asking about that one miserable birthday, Kate ended her reminiscences completely and returned to his original question about whether she’d considered selling the restaurant. “Even if I decide I should sell the place, I’d still have to keep it open in order to do that, so I really have no choice right now except to run it—if I can.”
Rather than offering her empty words of encouragement about her ability to do that, which was what Kate expected him to do, he put his arm around her shoulders and curved his hand around her arm, sliding it slowly up and down in a gesture of comfort. Kate leaned against him, letting the movement of his hand soothe away her qualms about the future, at least for now.
“I’m sorry about your father’s death,” he said after a minute. “I wondered why you had a book about coping with grief with you in the restaurant yesterday.”
Kate shot him a startled look. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”
“Not when I’m concentrating on something. Or someone,” he added, and shifted his gaze meaningfully to her lips.
Kate knew he was deliberately flirting with her in an effort to distract her and cheer her up, and she smiled and went along with his plan. “You were concentrating on your shirt yesterday, not on me.”
“I have a rare gift—I can concentrate on two things at the same time.”
“So can I,” she teased, “which is why I’m aware that the taxi has stopped and the driver is waiting for us to get out.”
Chapter Sixteen
THE VETERINARIAN’S OFFICE WAS IN A NARROW PINK clapboard house, and the waiting room area was obviously the vet’s living room. Mitchell had found the vet’s name in a phone book earlier that morning and phoned for an appointment, but even so, they had to wait nearly forty-five minutes, during which time Kate filled out the vet’s information sheet and Max sniffed every inch of the cramped room, including an indignant cat, a shy poodle, and a terrified yellow canary in a birdcage, all of whom were already there with their owners when Mitchell and Kate arrived.
When the vet finally came out and asked for “Mary Donovan,” Kate left her purse on the chair next to Mitchell so that she’d have both hands free to deal with Max while the vet looked him over.
Mitchell watched her disappear through a doorway; then he picked up a tourist guide written in Dutch because there was nothing else in the waiting room to read. Kate’s cell phone rang shortly afterward, and he let the call go through to her phone’s voice mail system, rather than trying to answer it for her.
A few minutes later, it rang again, and her voice mail picked up that call, too.
Ten minutes later, she received another call. Mitchell frowned at her purse, wondering if the lawyer-boyfriend was trying to reach her. If so, he was either very persistent, Mitchell decided, or else some sixth sense was warning him that his girlfriend was ignoring his calls because she was straying with another man. Gazing at her purse, Mitchell envisioned a prosperous, middle-aged attorney who’d probably been physically attra
ctive when Kate first met him years before, but who was now getting fat and out of shape—and becoming desperate to maintain his hold on a much younger woman—one who, he feared, might be tiring of her role as his “plaything.”
Mitchell had witnessed that scenario often enough in the past to be certain he was right, but this time he reminded himself to feel a little gentlemanly compassion for the lawyer. After all, the poor son of a bitch had spent a small fortune to take her on a vacation at a premier spot in the Caribbean, and while he was stuck in Chicago, Mitchell was about to take her to bed.
He looked up as Kate emerged with the vet, who was repeatedly patting her arm in a way that struck Mitchell as being rather inappropriate. “I’ll take some X-rays of Max’s head and shoulder just to be on the safe side,” the vet promised. “I’ll dip him for fleas and give him all his shots. If you want me to board him again tomorrow night, just give me a call. In the meantime,” he added as Mitchell rose to his feet, “I’ll get all the papers ready so you can take him back to the States.”
Mitchell stared at her in amused disbelief; then he picked up her suitcase from beside his chair and handed her purse to her. “Instead of calling an ambulance for Max last night,” he joked as he held the front door open for her, “I should have bought him a plane ticket.”
Kate accepted the gibe with a quick smile and explained her decision. “I have to take him home with me, or he’ll end up being euthanized.”
“Is that what the vet told you?” Mitchell asked as he stepped off the cracked sidewalk in front of the vet’s house and flagged down a cab turning the corner.
Kate nodded. “He said there’s virtually no chance of finding a good home for him here or on Anguilla. Max is a stray, and because he’s large, he’s expensive to feed.”
A battered gray Chevrolet with the word taxi on the door stopped in the street in front of them, and when they were both inside, Kate elaborated and Mitchell gave the driver instructions. “I phoned my friend, Holly—the vet in Chicago—this morning,” she clarified. “Holly told me the treatment for rabies isn’t a big deal anymore, but on rare occasions, the rabies injection has serious, even fatal side effects for some people. That physician last night was already in a panic even though rabies isn’t a problem on the island. Instead of quarantining Max for the rest of the ten days, the physician can euthanize him and find out immediately if Max had rabies. And I think he’d decide to do exactly that.”
She was probably right, Mitchell knew, so he changed the subject. “You had several phone calls while you were with the vet.”
“Probably from Louis at the restaurant and Holly,” Kate said, already reaching for her purse. Forgetting that she’d turned the volume on her phone up to its maximum, Kate pressed the button to retrieve her voice mail messages while Mitchell politely pulled a tourist booklet from the pocket on the back of the driver’s seat and glanced through it.
The first message wasn’t from Louis; it was from Evan, and he sounded so concerned that Kate felt a stab of guilt. “Kate, why didn’t you return my phone call last night, honey? I called you again at the hotel this morning and left a message, and I still haven’t heard from you. I’m getting worried. Are you feeling ill? Are the headaches back?”
Evan’s second message made Kate feel even worse. “Honey, I just called Holly and she said she talked to you yesterday and this morning, and you’re feeling fine. Evidently you’re so angry with me for not being there that you won’t even take my calls anymore. I miss you terribly, Kate, and I’m tired of having to go away with you so that we can spend all our days and nights together. We should be able to do that right here in Chicago. We’ve been together for years, and we know we make each other happy. We both want the same things—a home, children, and each other. What else matters? I—”
Unable to bear another word, Kate snapped her cell phone closed without listening to the next message. She stole a sidelong glance at Mitchell, relieved that he seemed to be engrossed in reading the tourist pamphlet he was holding, but he was frowning and his jaw looked tense. After a moment of uneasy silence, Kate said brightly, “Everything is fine.”
In response to that he stuffed the pamphlet back into the seat pocket and directed a challenging brow at her. “Your boyfriend seems to think otherwise.”
“You heard?”
“I couldn’t help hearing it. Is he married?”
“No, of course not! Why would you think such a thing?”
“For one thing, you said you’ve been together for years, but from what I heard him say just now, you apparently don’t live together. How old is he?”
“He’s thirty-three. Why do you—” A realization hit Kate and she twisted toward him in the seat. “Are you under the impression I’m some sort of”—she hesitated and then settled for the least awful of the descriptions that came to mind—“a kept woman?”
“I haven’t dwelled on the possibilities, but that was the most likely one, based on what I know of similar situations.”
“Do you have a lot of experience with ‘similar’ situations?”
He leaned back, stretched his legs out, and hesitated; then he looked at her and said bluntly, “Yes.”
Before Kate could recover from that statement, he changed the subject: “Why did the vet call you ‘Mary’?”
“Because I filled out his questionnaire with my legal name, which is Mary Katherine. Until I was a teenager and could make them stop, everyone called me Mary Kate. My father never stopped calling me that.”
“Mary Kate,” he repeated a little grimly. “Very cute. Perfect, in fact, for an Irish choir girl.”
Startled by his tone, Kate said, “I was never a choir girl in the way I think you mean. In fact, I was a wild child.”
“Good,” he said tightly.
Kate turned her head and gazed at the foothills of the mountains on her right while she tried to come up with an explanation for his attitude. Something he’d heard in the last few minutes was bothering him, but she couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.
Chapter Seventeen
AFTER SEVERAL MINUTES, KATE GLANCED SIDEWAYS AND caught him looking at her, his forehead furrowed into a thoughtful frown. Suppressing a self-conscious impulse to smooth her hair, she broke the silence with the first inane subject that came to mind. “The weather here is certainly beautiful this time of year.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I thought it might rain today, but there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“If it rained without a cloud in the sky, it would be surprising,” he agreed solemnly, but he was on the verge of smiling, and Kate was so relieved that she gave him a rueful grin.
Mitchell’s gaze dropped from her bright green eyes to her soft lips, and the impulse to kiss her was so strong that he had to turn his head and look in a different direction. His conscience had suddenly developed a voice after decades of silence on the subject of sexual ethics, and it was in an uproar over the true picture he’d just formed of Mary Kate Donovan. In the taxi, on the way to the veterinarian, she’d told him about her father and their lives together. As she spoke, it had been obvious even to Mitchell—who had little personal knowledge of loving family relationships—that Kate had loved her father deeply and she was grieving over his death. She was also, by her own admission, terrified of the responsibility she now had of trying to run his restaurant in Chicago. The absentee boyfriend, who Mitchell had originally assumed was a wealthy, aging playboy using Kate for a toy, was actually a year younger than Mitchell, and he not only cared about Kate, he wanted to marry her. He’d taken her to a wonderful hotel on a lush, tropical island, undoubtedly to help her recuperate. When he needed to return to Chicago, he’d left behind in that seductive setting a beautiful, grieving, worried Kate who had probably never cheated on him before, but who was so weakened by loneliness and sorrow that she was ready to fall into Mitchell’s arms.
Next week, or next month, she’d start regretting going to bed with him, and then she’d have gui
lt to deal with on top of all her other burdens. She was so tenderhearted that in the midst of her own misery over her father’s death, she was determined to take a stray dog home with her to keep him safe. She’d end up torturing herself for doing anything as “cruel” as betraying her boyfriend.
Mitchell’s conscience pointed out that if he truly liked Kate as much as he felt he did, he’d spare her the ramifications of sleeping with him by telling the cabdriver to turn around and take them back to Philipsburg. He himself wasn’t boyfriend material. Among other things, he had no intention of staying in Chicago longer than a week after he returned. His appearance at Cecil’s birthday party had been noted by the Tribune’s social columnist, and if he continued to be seen in Chicago, someone was going to start digging around, and sooner or later his personal history would become tantalizing gossip among people he wouldn’t voluntarily share an evening with, let alone the sordid story of his life. Furthermore, he felt an inexplicable, intense aversion to acknowledging his relationship to the illustrious Wyatts, but in the city where Kate Donovan lived, he no longer had a choice.
Mitchell’s logic went to battle with his conscience and argued that Kate was old enough to decide for herself what she wanted to do and what was best for her. Moreover, prolonged passionate lovemaking would provide her with an excellent, temporary diversion from her woes. That last part wasn’t logic, it was lust, Mitchell’s irate conscience pointed out.
The cabdriver chose that moment to look over his shoulder and ask Mitchell for instructions. “How much farther ahead is the turn?”
Lost in his thoughts, Mitchell hesitated, and then said, flatly, “Several miles.” Lust and logic had fewer arguments, but louder voices, than his conscience.
Kate expected him to turn to her now and explain where they were going, but he looked out his own window again and said nothing. Baffled by his silence, she reached across him for the tourist pamphlet he’d been looking at earlier. She’d already gotten a similar pamphlet in the lobby of the Island Club, and this pamphlet reiterated much of the same information: St. Maarten was a small island occupying only thirty-seven square miles; it was divided between two governments—the northern section being French, the southern section Dutch.
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