A Self-Made Man (9 page)

Oh, no… Gwen. Gwen, be careful.

Lacy put her forehead against the heel of her hand and shut her eyes. “Fine, Jennifer,” she said, suddenly tired though it wasn't yet noon. “We'll both ask him.”

 

G
WEN FELL BACK AGAINST
the mattress, sweaty, exhausted and smiling. She was going to have to take another shower, but it was worth it. She hadn't had this much fun in months.

Teddy was still going at it, though. He stood on her other twin bed, shaking his head so fast his hair whipped around wildly, jumping up and down so hard the springs were probably going to pop, playing air guitar like a madman. He actually looked more like the Tazmanian Devil than Eric Clapton, but that was okay. He was pretty darn cute, when he stopped trying to be a Don Juan and remembered to be a normal person for a while.

Finally he collapsed, too. He lay on the other bed, breathing heavily, his hair plastered to his flushed cheeks. He turned his face toward her and grinned. “You're a pretty good dancer. Next let's put on one of the rappers or something. Do you have any of that cool guy's CDs? The one with that song?”

Gwen peeled up her leather pants an inch at a time. She should have worn shorts for this kind of workout, but who would have thought Teddy Kilgore could be so much fun? She had expected to take him for a ride on the motorcycle and then spend the rest of the day fending off his slobbery kisses.

“I don't listen to rap.” She raised herself on one elbow. “Hey—I'm dry as dust from all that dancing. Go get me a Coke, would you?”

He snorted. “It's your house. You get it.”

She eyed him scornfully. “Chicken. What, are you afraid the Stepwitch will bite you?”

He looked incredulous. “You mean Lacy? Heck, no. Nobody's afraid of Lacy. She's sweet as hell. She's always nice to everybody.”

“Sweet?” Gwen threw her forearm over her eyes. “God. Spare me.”

“Well, she is. Everybody loves her. She—”

“I said spare me.” Gwen flipped, turning onto her stomach. “I mean it, Teddy. Go get me a Coke, or go home.”

With a great deal of grumbling about bitchy chicks, Teddy made his barefoot way out of the room. Gwen didn't move. She just lay on the bed, her face in the pillow. Her euphoric mood had sunk, dropping out of the clouds like a popped balloon. She should have known better than to mention Lacy's name. It was always the kiss of death.

Even Teddy idolized her. God, what a joke. Wasn't there a single person on this stupid island who could see that the woman wasn't even human? Robo Wife, that's what she'd been. She had been programmed to make straight A's at grad school, cook Cordon Bleu dishes for dinner every night, and suck up to her husband's business partners. She had
not
been programmed to make mistakes, even little ones like buying a gross color of lipstick or letting a button fall off a blouse. She had
not
been programmed for warmth, or to kiss or hug or whisper funny stories at bedtime. She had not been programmed, in fact, to even notice any disappointing adolescent stepdaughters hanging around, blatantly hungry for attention.

Yep. Lacy had always been the perfect Robo Wife. And now she was just Robo Widow. Nothing had changed.

Teddy was back, carrying an aluminum can of
Coke in each hand. Gwen took hers eagerly and knocked back a long gulp. “That's better,” she said. “Thanks.”

Teddy was quiet. Too quiet. Now that she looked at him, Gwen could see that he was acting kind of funny. He sat on the edge of the bed, his hair all mussed and his bare feet sticking out from his jeans like big white fish. He was frowning down at his Coke.

“What's wrong?” Gwen swung her foot over the bed and nudged his. “Don't pout. I'll find some rap music on the radio if you want.”

“I'm not pouting.” Teddy rubbed at the condensation on his can, still scowling. “It's just that… Something kind of funny happened…. When I passed the parlor just now, Lacy was on the telephone.”

Gwen rolled her eyes. “Nothing funny about that. The woman lives on the telephone. She's a professional kiss-up, always trying to raise money for things. That's her job.”

“Yeah, well, this time she was talking to a private detective.”

Gwen sat up slowly, looking to see if Teddy was kidding. “A what?”

Teddy looked miserable, and suddenly Gwen remembered that he was really very young, at least two years younger than she was. It made him a lot of fun to play with, but it didn't leave him able to handle anything very dramatic.

“A private detective. Really. I mean it. I heard her
say so.” He turned his big brown gaze on her. “I think she was hiring someone to look into you.”

Gwen grimaced skeptically, but something weird and uncomfortable twisted inside her. “Well, that's quite a leap. Why me?”

“Because. Didn't you live in Boston? You know, when you were doing that nanny thing?”

Gwen nodded. “So what?”

“That's where Lacy was telling him to go. She said, ‘I think Boston is the place to look. But be sure to be discreet. I wouldn't want her to get wind of our investigation.'” He had been doing a fairly good impression of Lacy's snotty tones, but he gave up and sighed. “Or something like that.”

The twisting feeling tightened into something that felt a lot like anger. She knew Teddy wasn't making it up. It sounded just like Lacy. So. The Stepwitch was having her investigated? Why? Did she think she could make some kind of trouble for Gwen—maybe have her trust fund cut down or something? What a bitch! How could her father have been so stupid as to make Lacy the trustee of Gwen's inheritance?

But she didn't want Teddy to know how angry she was. “She's wasting her money, that's all I can say. I worked my butt off the year I was in Boston, and that's all she's going to find out. I spent the whole time changing diapers and playing patty-cake, and while it may have been boring as hell, last time I looked it wasn't illegal.”

“You really don't care?” Teddy looked incredulous.

“I really don't care.” She put down her Coke and stood up. She wasn't going to waste her time getting mad. It would be much more fun, as they said, to get even. She just had to think of the perfect way.

She tossed her curls defiantly and slicked her hands across her leather pants, brushing away any wrinkles. “What are you waiting for, Kilgore? Find me a rap station, and let's get this party going.”

G
AMBLER'S
E
ND
L
IGHTHOUSE
had guarded the northeast edge of Pringle Island since 1858, withstanding a century and a half of hurricanes and ice storms, vandals and erosion and neglect. So, Adam decided as he watched a hundred or so islanders clambering across the rocky promontory, it could probably survive the Pringle Island Historical Society, too.

But the scene before him really was a zoo. Jennifer Lansing had tried to create an event that included something for everyone. The result was one part elegant turn-of-the-century picnic, one part Spring Break, one part science class field trip.

And one part—one very small part—actual work on the lighthouse itself.

He wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten into this. Two calls had been waiting for him at the Cartwright when he went back to his room from the golf course last night. The first had been a long, sugarcoated confection from Jennifer, begging flirtatiously, hinting that without his expertise—expertise in what, she didn't specify—her day would be a professional failure and a personal tragedy. The second had been from Lacy, a clipped, monotone sentence that had carried all the warmth and sincerity of a message delivered
by someone with a gun pointed at her head.
There will be a work day at the lighthouse tomorrow—Jennifer hopes you'll come.

Neither invitation had been particularly tempting. But somehow, when the morning came, he'd found himself climbing into blue jeans and polo shirt and dragging a bewildered Travis along with him out to Gambler's End.

“So which one is the lovely Lacy?” Travis showed no interest at all in the lighthouse, a two-story granite keeper's dwelling with a forty-five-foot granite tower rising from the roof. “Where is Heaven's Sexiest Angel?”

“Damn it, Travis.” Adam slammed his car door. “That joke's ten years old now. Get some new material.”

Travis grinned. “I never retire a joke until it stops working. And that one never fails to get a rise out of you, bro. Works just like a machine. I push here, you jump there.”

Adam growled under his breath. Travis knew him too well. They had met ten years ago, in Adam's first week away from Pringle Island, when the two of them had found jobs training for hazardous repair work at a refinery in the Virgin Islands. They'd both been eighteen, both eager to get rich quick. And late one hot, exhausted night, Adam had told Travis about the girl he'd left behind. The girl he had believed was waiting for him. “She's like an angel,” he had rhapsodized, beer and youth and loneliness making him ridiculous. “Only sexier.”

Travis had never let him forget it.

“She's here somewhere,” Adam said, scanning the busy scene without enthusiasm. “This is one of those snobby noblesse oblige days, where the rich put on expensive blue jeans and pretend to work like real folk. Just her kind of thing.”

“Well, unless the Dow fell about a thousand points overnight, we're rich, too, remember?” Travis slid his fingers into the pockets of his jeans and grinned. “Rich boys. You and me. Still kind of a kick, isn't it?”

“Still kind of a joke, you mean.”

“Yeah. That, too. But it sure makes it easier to pick up chicks. Sorry—I mean
angels.
” Adam growled again, but Travis was already walking toward the lighthouse. “Look. There's Gwen Morgan!”

Sure enough, even Gwen was out here today. Adam looked over toward the keeper's house, where Gwen was kneeling on a small scaffold, scrubbing at the second-story windows.

She stood out in this understated, uptight crowd like a peacock at a convention of crows. Travis was moving faster now, grinning stupidly, as if caught in a magnetic field. “If you should suddenly feel the urge to get lost, Adam, I wouldn't mind a bit,” he said over his shoulder.

Adam shook his head in amused resignation and obligingly slowed down. Actually, he was happy to yield the field to Travis on this one. Gwen was a knockout, all right, but her compulsive flirtations suggested a lot of unresolved baggage. She needed a counselor, a friend, far more than she needed a lover,
and Travis, the professional brother, was perfect for the job.

In no hurry to reach the crowd at the lighthouse, Adam walked slowly, letting himself absorb the sights and smells of the island, which were at once both strange and hauntingly familiar. It was a hot, cloudless day, and the air out here next to the water was humid and briny. It was a unique New England beach smell. It was a smell that, against his will, against his better judgment, took him back.

Back ten long summers. Back to one July afternoon a decade ago, when he and Lacy had romped on the sandy beach of Pringle Cove, a mere two miles south of here. Under the yellow sun, they had pawed one another like tumbling puppies. They had splashed, and kissed, and wrestled in the water for the sheer joy of touching one another.

He had teased her, he remembered. He had unhooked her bikini top and held it away from her grabbing hands, but then lost it in the pounding surf. Lacy had been mortified, and he had scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the car, pressing her nakedness against his chest so that no one could see. And he had spent four days' salary buying her a new bathing suit, so that Aunt Flora wouldn't know.

Aunt Flora!
Adam hadn't thought about that dried up old martinet in years. Aunt Flora the Enforcer, they had called her. Aunt Flora, who was parenting the orphaned Lacy as an act of martyred duty and hadn't approved of Adam Kendall.

He had heard that Flora had died a few years ago, but she'd lived long enough to see Lacy married to
Malcolm Morgan. She'd probably approved of Malcolm, Adam thought with a sudden upsurge of bitterness. Malcolm had been just her type. Cold, controlling, smug and repressive. And, of course, rich.

“Adam! Stop daydreaming and give me that strong arm to lean on.”

Adam came back from the past with a start. Tilly Barnhardt stood beside him, and he immediately realized that under her elaborate white wig her face looked pale, her gaze slightly unfocused. He recognized the signs—she was having an insulin reaction, and she needed an infusion of sugar right away.

Quickly he held out his forearm. She gripped it with both hands, her fingers weak and trembling slightly. “Take me up to the keeper's house, will you? I need to sit down.”

“You need more than that,” he said. “You need something sweet. Some juice, maybe, or—”

“Lacy will have some up at the house.”

“Are you sure? If we go all the way up and there's no juice—”

“Lacy
always
keeps juice nearby for me,” Tilly broke in impatiently. “She's been taking care of me for ten years, Adam, while you were gallivanting around the world. So hush up and just do as I say.”

Adam didn't argue further. Slowly he led Tilly toward the square granite structure, noticing as they made their way carefully over the rocky ground that she seemed much more frail than he had remembered.

He looked up and saw Lacy coming toward them, hurrying down the path with a small paper cup in her hand. Her face was as perfectly composed as ever,
and in her eyes Adam could find none of the anxiety he was feeling.

“Here you go,” she said gently, putting the cup into the older woman's hands and bracing it with her own. “Come on now, Tilly. Take a sip.”

Almost childlike in her unquestioning trust, Tilly drank. Lacy watched calmly—so calmly, in fact, that Adam began to wonder whether he'd imagined that Tilly was in any danger. When half the orange juice was gone, Lacy eased the cup away, situated herself on the old woman's other side, and took her arm.

“Why don't we get in out of the heat,” she suggested smoothly.

Ten minutes later, it was as if it had never happened. Tilly was ensconced in a chair in the front room, her blood sugar back to normal. Her color had returned, and her temper along with it. She was grumbling mightily, fussing at Lacy, asserting at the top of her voice that she was perfectly well enough to go back to painting the wooden fence along the lighthouse path.

“They need me out there,” she insisted. “That jackass Silas Jared thinks he's in charge, and he's doing it all wrong. Up, down, sideways—he's got the brush going every which way. I told him, but he wouldn't listen.” She sniffed and reached up to adjust her wig.

Silas Jared… Oh, yes. Adam remembered the silver-haired curmudgeon, Lacy's next door neighbor. The one with the gun. And the knife. He smiled at the thought of Tilly and Silas Jared competing for the job of head fence painter.

Lacy, however, was obviously unamused. “Your blood sugar took a dive because you had your insulin this morning, and then you didn't eat any breakfast.”

Tilly glared at her, but Lacy stared back steadily, undaunted. Adam couldn't help noticing how impeccably groomed she was, even on a hot, dirty workday like this. She looked elegant, cool, utterly collected. She looked almost nothing like the sandy, tousled, sunburned and blushing teenager he had carried half-naked from the ocean ten years ago.

“Isn't that right, Tilly?” Lacy tapped her foot. “You forgot to eat breakfast, didn't you?”

“Lacy,” Adam broke in, feeling sorry for Tilly, who looked guilty and cross. “Does it really matter now exactly what happened?”

Lacy didn't even look at him. “Yes,” she said curtly. “It does. And Tilly knows that it does. If Tilly ate normally, and still had this reaction, it might mean she's getting too much insulin. Did you skip breakfast, Tilly?”

The staring match continued for several tense seconds. To Adam's amazement, Tilly backed down first.

“Perhaps I did forget,” the older woman answered huffily, looking down and pretending to flick an imaginary speck of lint from her white slacks. “If you say so. I guess
you
know everything. I'm sure I don't remember.”

Lacy sighed, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. She looked tense. Adam would have said she looked angry if he hadn't already learned she didn't indulge in emotions anymore.

“Stay in that chair, Tilly,” she ordered, her voice
low, her syllables tight. “I'll bring you something to eat. Adam, everything is under control here. There's no need for you to stay. I'm sure Jennifer would love to see you.”

And then she was gone without another word. Adam watched her disappear with a strange sense of anger and disappointment. But why? She had handled the crisis capably. What more had he wanted from her? Had he wanted her to weep, to worry and wring her hands over her old friend?

He tried to be honest with himself. Was he just insulted because she had dismissed him? No. He had just wanted her to care. About Tilly. Or maybe, just a little, about him. He just wanted her to be human. They had a past, damn it, whether she wanted to admit it or not. And she definitely didn't want to admit it. He remembered her cold eyes at the auction, her stiff body when he had put his hands on her there in Malcolm's parlor. Her icy voice on the answering machine last night.

Impulsively, he turned to Tilly. “She's changed,” he said roughly.

Tilly frowned. “Of course she has. She's grown up.”

“Grown up?” He shook his head. “No. What she's grown is cold. Cold and hard as a rock.”

Tilly waved her hand irritably, and he knew he had annoyed her. She would undoubtedly scold him now for daring to speak ill of her darling Lacy.

“Is that what you think? You think she's cold?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. That's exactly what I think.”

He was prepared for a blistering denial. But when Tilly spoke, she surprised him.

“Well, then, Adam Kendall, maybe you should ask yourself two things. One—what made her that way?” She pointed her fragile forefinger at him. “And two—what are you going to do about it?”

 

B
Y NOON THE SUN
, which in the morning had been sweetly warm, was a fireball of punishing heat. All but the hardiest lighthouse volunteers had given up any pretense of working and had gathered inside the keeper's house to gossip or take siesta in the cool shade of its thick walls.

Lacy chose to keep going. No one had trekked out to the point yet to pick up trash, so she decided to do that. Lacy didn't mind that it wasn't very glamorous. She would rather be covered in mud, then broiled like a lobster in the noonday sun than join any indoor party that included Adam Kendall.

She grabbed a trash bag and trotted out to the rocky spit of land that jutted into the sound. At least she'd be alone, which she needed. She had almost broken down in front of Adam once today already—something she had vowed she'd never do. But the sight of Tilly so weak, having one of the insulin reactions, had almost undone her. The doctor had warned that it was becoming difficult to regulate Tilly's blood sugar.

Clearly, Tilly wasn't taking his advice seriously. Lacy did, though. She was tough. She prided herself on it. But she wasn't tough enough to do without Tilly.

Somehow, she was going to have to monitor Tilly's
meals. And her injections. If only they weren't in the thick of the fund-raising campaign. And if only Gwen hadn't decided to come home right now, bringing her nasty little thundercloud of hostility with her.

And Adam… Lacy sighed as she picked up a shiny, feather-tipped fishing lure and dumped it into her bag. Actually, it wouldn't have mattered
when
Adam had decided to show up. Any week, any day, any minute during the last ten years, it still would have been like throwing a bomb squarely into the center of her life.

Climbing carefully, she made her way across the black rocks. She paused often, looking for abandoned fishing line, or those treacherous plastic rings that drunken boaters tossed into the water so carelessly. She found them easily, and far too often. Her bag began to fill.

When she reached the tip of the rocky finger, she sat for a moment, catching her breath. The water was a deep, mossy green that winked in the open sunlight.