A Self-Made Man (7 page)

“I—” For the first time in years, she wasn't winning the battle of the blush. “I—”

He laughed softly, a deep throaty sound just under his breath that somehow seemed to take the air neatly from her lungs. Oh, how she had once loved that laugh!

“Go on, Lacy, and take your bath.” His eyes glimmered. “Unless you'd like me to help?”

Cheeks flaming, she fled.

 

S
HE DIDN'T KNOW
whether he'd still be waiting when she finally came downstairs again. She didn't even know whether she wanted him to be.

Though she'd hurried, it had taken her at least twenty minutes to clean up. It was almost eleven-thirty. Quite late for… For what? Why
had
Adam come by tonight?

Perhaps he'd already given up and gone home. Half of her hoped so. However, as she pulled on a pair of gray leggings and an oversize T-shirt that would look presentable now and double as her nightshirt later, she realized that the other half of her was hoping he had stayed. She was suddenly quite curious about why he had chosen to visit her tonight. And, if she were being perfectly honest, she was also eager to know why his dinner with Jennifer Lansing had ended so early. Lacy was sure that Jennifer had expected to stretch dinner out until it ended with a cozy breakfast in bed.

Besides, Lacy told herself, piling rationalization upon rationalization, the champagne fog had finally cleared, and she would love to show him that she had pulled herself together.

Leaving Hamlet curled up in a fluffy towel to sleep off the excitement, she made her way down the curving staircase.

Adam was still there.

He sat in the library, comfortably ensconced in Malcolm's gold-upholstered Queen Anne wing chair. The sight shocked Lacy so thoroughly that she froze on the bottom step. In the five years since Malcolm's death, she'd had very few dates, but all of them had been Pringle Island men who held Malcolm Morgan in such awe that they wouldn't have dreamed of sitting in his chair.

In fact, they had treated this whole house like a shrine to his memory. Mostly they had treated Lacy that way, too.

Adam couldn't have known about that, of course. But even if he had known, Lacy suspected he would laugh out loud at the idea of sanctifying a chair. Besides, he had always resented Malcolm, the way any poor-but-proud teenage boy resented an arrogant, middle-aged millionaire. Malcolm had gone out of his way to demean Adam, and, posturing as the sympathetic employer who had Lacy's best interests at heart, had often advised her to unload the boyfriend who could only drag her down.

No… Adam had more than resented Malcolm. He had
hated
him. He might not realize that this particular chair had been Malcolm's throne, but she knew that Adam would still be quite happy to trample all over the older man's memory any way he could. The only real shock was her reaction to the sight. As she watched Adam sitting there, leafing through her latest copy of
Cuisine,
Lacy discovered that it felt surprisingly good to see the stupid taboo casually broken.

When Adam sat in that chair, it left no room for Malcolm's ghost.

She breathed deeply, letting tension flow out of her on the exhale. Smoothing her tightly banded ponytail and tugging the neckline of her T-shirt into alignment, she hurried across the front foyer, into the library.

“I'm so sorry to keep you waiting,” she said brightly. “It took longer than I'd expected. Hamlet wasn't particularly cooperative.”

“I'll bet.” Adam looked up from the magazine. “But that's okay. I just finished ‘Thirty-seven Ways To Mistake-Proof Your Kitchen.'” He raised one brow. “It didn't mention cats.”

“No,” she agreed politely, trying to meet his smile. “It probably wouldn't.”

He closed the magazine, waiting. But she didn't know what to say. As he had pointed out last night, so many subjects were off-limits between them. And it seemed too ridiculous to try to engage this particular man, this virile, headstrong, exciting apparition from her unburied past, in a discussion about cooking.

He seemed to have decided not to help her, almost as if he preferred her mute discomfort to her smooth control. He just looked at her, smiling that smile.

Trying to escape the last of the champagne cobwebs, Lacy paused beside the large black walnut reading table on which Malcolm had always displayed his bottled-ship collection. She studied the intricate sailing ships, safe inside their glass caskets, as if she'd never seen them before. She suddenly didn't want to look at Adam, whose deepening grin managed to be so familiar and so disturbing at the same time.

“Can I get you anything?” She summoned her company voice. “Coffee?”

He shook his head. “Thanks, no.”

“Brandy? Or…I think we have some fruit left from dinner—”

“No,” he answered, the one-sided grin so deep
now it notched a dimple in his cheek. “Relax, Lacy. If you can. You don't have to wine and dine me. I'm already convinced that you're the consummate hostess.”

She thought of her wrecked kitchen, her maudlin, tipsy crooning over the kitten who had never been lost. “You are?” she asked incredulously.

He nodded. “Apparently you're something of a legend around here. I've been hearing stories about the elegant Mrs. Malcolm Morgan ever since I hit town.”

Stalling, unsettled by the strange, new tone she heard in his voice, she ran her fingers along the curved neck of one of the ship's bottles, a mistake she rarely made, aware that Malcolm despised fingerprints on the glass.

But something in the atmosphere had altered since she went upstairs to wash. Before, Adam had seemed…well, not quite
friendly,
but at least politely neutral. Now a chill lingered in his beautiful blue eyes, and his voice was subtly tight. And she instinctively understood that he called her Mrs. Morgan only when he was displeased.

“That's very flattering,” she said stiltedly, “but ridiculously exaggerated—”

“Don't be modest,” Adam broke in, his syllables clipped. “You should be proud of your accomplishments. Everyone I've met sings your praises. I hear you're a sophisticated chef, an impeccable housekeeper, a charming hostess. And of course, an obedient and devoted consort. In short, the perfect wife for a busy millionaire.”

She felt slightly short of breath, as if each adjective had been a jab she was required to dodge. “Adam—”

“No, it's true.” Adam's voice was still genial, but she heard something, something extremely hard, buried deep beneath the good-humored surface. “I've heard that very expression at least a dozen times in the past two days. Lucky Malcolm, they say. He certainly had the perfect wife.”

“I—”

Adam cut off her protest. He waved a hand toward the formal portrait that Malcolm had commissioned of the two of them, which hung on the wall opposite the gold chair. “Yes.
Perfect.
And if I hadn't quite believed the rumors, I have the proof right here, don't I? What a self-satisfied man I see in that picture, Lacy. He looks like the cat who swallowed the canary, don't you think? And what a lovely canary you are.”

Lacy shut her eyes briefly, her heart dragging with a sudden heaviness.

No wonder Adam's mood had soured. It was a huge, ostentatious, highly idealized portrait. The painter had understood his commission well—and had captured Malcolm's fantasy to the tiniest detail. Lacy, only about nineteen at the time, was dressed in sunshine yellow and propped on a formal chair, hands folded in her lap. Malcolm stood beside her, towering over her, his hand heavy on her shoulder, as if she were a pet trained to heel by that wordless command.

Other than the clasp on her shoulder, Malcolm didn't even seem aware of her, his smugly contented smile aimed confidently forward. But Lacy's face was
seen in profile, upturned toward her husband. The expression of idiot idolatry that simpered there was one she had surely never, ever worn in reality.

Malcolm had loved the portrait. He had hung it opposite his gold chair so that he could admire it often. Miserably, Lacy realized that, sitting in that same spot, Adam had just spent twenty minutes staring at it, too.

Oh, God… Why hadn't she taken it down? So often she had almost decided to do so—only to lose her courage at the last minute. The picture had hung there for ten years. Everyone who visited the house, both before and after Malcolm's death, commented on it, told Lacy how lucky she was to have it. If she had removed the wretched thing, it would have shot a buzz of gossip straight through Pringle Island society.

Still gazing at it, Adam shook his head slowly. “The master,” he said softly. “And his perfect wife.”

She hated the way he said those last two words. As if they were an epithet. It was the same spiteful, condescending tone he had taken with her from their first encounter—the tone that expressed a bottomless disdain for her marriage, her last, desperate grab for security and respectability.

But damn him…what
choice
had she been given? Adam hadn't been willing to stay, hadn't been willing to marry her, hadn't even been willing to wait around long enough to see if she…

Malcolm had. And, whatever else had gone wrong between them, for that she had owed her husband a great debt.

She wouldn't apologize for it now. She gazed at Adam as calmly as she could.

“I wasn't perfect,” she said softly. “But God knows I tried.”

His eyes changed. She didn't see the change so much as she felt it brush along her nerves. “Yes,” he said. “I'll bet you did.”

He held her eyes for a moment, then turned away, letting his gaze drift idly around the room, taking in the dark, walnut paneling, the pictures of sailing ships, the terrestrial globe in the corner, the heavy inkwell and silver ashtray on the writing desk.

“While I was waiting for you to clean up, I acquainted myself fairly well with these few rooms. And you know what? Except for the kitchen, I don't think I see a single thing in this house that belongs to you.” He touched the ugly brass andirons with a long, tanned index finger. “It's a man's house. Malcolm's house. Not one chair, not one candlestick,
nothing
says you live here.”

She knew he was right. But he didn't understand, not really. Malcolm would have let her redecorate. Once she had completed her education, he had informed her that he was ready to trust her taste, at least in selected rooms. No, it was something else that had stopped her—a soul-deep lassitude, a penetrating indifference to her surroundings. A profound inability to consider this place
home.

Something in her simply hadn't cared.

“So it's Malcolm's house.” She acknowledged the point without even looking around. She knew that the only thing in this room that belonged to her was the
cooking magazine Adam held in his hand. “So what?”

He cocked his head. “So…I was wondering. Is that what it means to be the perfect wife? Is the perfect wife a nonentity? An obedient specter? A ghost in her own home?”

“Don't romanticize the situation, Adam,” she said curtly, stung by the uncanny accuracy of his perceptions. “There's no need to wax Gothic about it. I suppose you could say that the perfect wife doesn't fiddle with things that aren't broken. Malcolm's house had been decorated like this for generations, long before he married me. I simply chose to leave things untouched.”

Adam stood slowly. Moving across the heavy Oriental carpet, he joined Lacy at the reading desk, where, she suddenly realized, she was unthinkingly gripping one of the fragile ships bottles in overly tense fingers.

She let go abruptly. The ship clattered dangerously in its tight container. Adam smiled again, looking down at the collection.

“
Untouched.
Yes, that was how Malcolm liked things, wasn't it? Trapped, sealed in glass, and completely untouchable.”

“Look,” she said austerely, “you're making a lot of assumptions—”

“You're damn right I am.” Suddenly Adam pushed past the table, moving fast and reckless, setting the pitiful ships swaying helplessly on a sea of his displeasure. He was so close to her now that she could smell the faint lime scent of his aftershave. “I'll
tell you
what
I'm assuming. I'm assuming that you were just another piece in Malcolm's collection. I'm assuming that he kept you tightly under glass, and that, though he's been dead for years, you haven't found the courage to break out.”

“You're wrong—”

“Oh, no, I'm not.” Adam touched her sleek ponytail, catching it between his thumb and forefinger and running his hand slowly down its heavy length. “I'm assuming he's the one who taught you to wear your hair tugged, tied, braided, knotted and contained. He wanted your skirts tailored and tight, your makeup subtle, your voice low and mellifluous, your education classic.” He touched her hand, where Malcolm's square diamond weighed down her knuckle. “Only your jewelry was allowed to be vulgar.”

She held her breath, unable to speak a word. He was so right. How could he know so much, be so right? Unfairly, she hated him for that.

He put his hands on her shoulders, sending a quick, violent shiver shuddering down her spine. “I'm assuming he wanted your opinions to march in lockstep with his. His friends had to be your friends, his enemies your enemies. He probably told you how to vote.”

She felt tears forming behind her eyes, but she held them back with a painful iron control. She would not do this, not in front of Adam. Not ever.

His voice dropped to a low murmur as his hands began to move on her shoulders. “And I'm assuming,” he said, “that he insisted that your lovemaking
be silent. Your body still. Passive. Unthreatening. He probably wanted you to thank him afterward.”

She twitched under his fingers, her shoulders on fire from his touch, her heart on fire from his words. “How dare you, Adam?” She hardly recognized her voice. “What makes you think you know a damn thing about how…how Malcolm and I…”