Читать книгу The Tycoon and the Townie - Elizabeth Lane - Страница 9

“So how long have you been, uh, clowning around?” Jeff realized the question was inane as soon as he’d asked it. First sarcasm, now lame wordplays. Thank goodness he wasn’t trying to impress this lady.

“Doing Jo-Jo, you mean?” She had a cute nose without that silly rubber ball. Small and pert—and was that a tiny freckle on the end, where the paint had rubbed off? He found himself itching for a closer look.

“Uh-huh. I saw your juggling act from the window. Pretty impressive.”

“My grandfather taught me how to juggle when I was ten.” She marched along beside him, picking up each clumsy shoe and putting it down flat to keep from stumbling in the long sea grass. “As for the rest of the act, about five years ago, I sent off for a video course in clowning. After a few months’ practice, I made the costume, bought the wig and makeup, and voilà! Jo-Jo was born!”

She paused to work her way around a thick clump of sedge. Jeff slowed his pace to wait for her, savoring the uneasy truce that had settled between them. Whatever she might look like under that clown getup, she struck him as a plucky little woman, smart and down to earth. And sexy, he conceded—which was damned strange, considering he’d never seen her face, let alone her figure.

“Jo-Jo’s been a good sideline,” she continued, “at least in the summer. If you count church fund-raisers and passing out cheese dip samples at Piggly Wiggly, I do two or three appearances a week. But I lied to you about one thing earlier this afternoon.”

“About my being smug, arrogant and self-satisfied?”

“Hardly.” Her eyes flashed danger.

Jeff faked an indifferent shrug. “All right. I’m waiting to hear your confession.”

“I lied about the money I earn as Jo-Jo. It doesn’t go to pay bills. I put every cent of it into my daughter’s college fund.”

“And you lied about that—for shame! What could have possessed you?” He studied the stubborn outline of her profile, thinking it was extraordinary of her, going through this idiot clown charade for her child’s future. He would have liked to tell her so, but something held him back. This woman was proud, he sensed—too proud to welcome such a compliment.

“It just came out,” she said. “But I don’t like lying. Not even to you.”

“Oh, thanks a lot” Jeff struck up the side of the first dune, feeling the sea wind like the stroke of cool fingers in his hair. From beyond the crest, he could hear the roll and hiss of the incoming tide. Silently he prayed that two venturesome little girls would have the sense to stay back from the waves.

“What do you do the rest of the year?” he asked, shifting the conversation back to neutral ground.

“The rest of the year, I batten down my house against the nor’easters and mostly hole up in my pottery studio,” she answered. “What gave you the idea the girls went to the beach? Was it something Floss told you?”

“Right—careful!” Jeff grabbed her elbow to steady her on the sandy slope. Her arm felt lean and strong. He liked touching her. “It struck me as a bit strange,” he said, “but Floss claimed she overheard them talking about…mermaids.”

“Mermaids!” Her laugh was low and cool, with a delicious little bite to it, like iced Kahlúa on a sweltering summer day. “I should have guessed! My daughter loves mermaids! She’s writing a book about them!”

“A book?” Jeff felt a hillock of sand give way beneath his step, filling his shoe with grit. He cursed mildly under his breath. “I thought we were looking for a youngster.”

“We are.” The glance she flashed him was ripe with mystery. Then she, too, stumbled in the cascade of loose sand. Her big, clown feet splayed in opposite directions, and she went down hard on her padded rump.

Caught between gallantry and amusement, Jeff stretched out a hand. She reached up tentatively, then withdrew, shaking her shaggy, purple mane. “It’s no use! I can’t climb sand dunes in these idiot shoes. I’ll have to get rid of them and catch up with you—go on.”

“Go on? And leave a lady in distress? I’d never live it down. Here…” Jeff slid to the sand at her feet and began tugging at her tightly knotted shoelaces. She sank back against the dune in tacit consent, resting, but far from relaxed.

“Are you sure you should be out here alone with me?” she ventured. “Your mother was upset enough when our daughters disappeared together. If her son vanishes, too…” She broke off, her small, even teeth pressing her lower lip as if she’d said too much.

“I’m a big boy. Even my mother knows that.” Jeff tugged off one of the platter-sized shoes and the thick cotton sweat sock she wore underneath. Her narrow-boned foot was as pink and innocent as a child’s. For a heartbeat, he cradled it like a captive seabird in his big, brown hand, feeling the warmth of her skin against his palm. A subtle electric pulse trickled up his arm, awakening his whole body to a quivering awareness of—

No, this was not a good idea.

“I realize she comes on a little stridently,” he said, reaching for the other shoe, “but don’t misjudge my mother. She never expected to be raising another child at the age of sixty. She does her best, and I know how much she cares for Ellen, but I daresay it hasn’t been an easy adjustment for either of them. Sometimes that shows.”

Her blue-green eyes studied him from their painted circles, their expression as unreadable as a cat’s. Seconds ticked by before she spoke.

“Do you mind my asking what happened to Ellen’s mother?”

“She died over a year ago—in an automobile accident.” Jeff tugged at the stubbornly knotted shoelace. No use going into the ugly details—Meredith’s drinking, her affair with one of his clients, the bitter divorce that would have become final six days after she crashed her Mercedes into an oncoming truck….

“I’m sorry,” said the clown.

“We—were all sorry?” Jeff jerked the knot loose and twisted off the other shoe. The sock came with it. “Come on,” he muttered. “We’d better get moving if we want to find our daughters.”

He gave her a hand up, surprised at the power in her thin fingers. Then he waited while she knotted the ends of her shoelaces and flung the shoes over her shoulder. Her bare feet gripped the sand as they mounted the dune.

Kathryn. Kate. Kate Valera. The name had a nice ring to it. Almost as nice as her voice. And her eyes.

But what was he thinking? He wasn’t ready for another woman in his life, let alone a free-spirited throwback to the seventies, who made pottery, masqueraded as a clown and, for all he knew, could look like a basset hound under that greasepaint.

Oh, sooner or later he planned to remarry—to provide a mother for Ellen, if nothing else. But the few dates he’d tried in recent months had been disasters, underscoring the fact that he was still too raw, too angry for a new relationship.

But why was he being so damned analytical? He had no intention of dating this woman. He was making polite conversation with her, that was all. They would find their little girls, go their separate ways, and if he passed her on the street later, without that crazy clown paint, the odds were he would not even recognize her.

“What about you?” he asked. “You said you were alone.”

“Flannery’s father—he, uh, we separated before she was born.”

“Flannery?” he asked, bringing her back. “As in Flannery O’Connor?”

“Uh-huh. She’s my favorite author. Have you read her?”

“My freshman English professor assigned us a couple of her stories.” Jeff could not remember the titles or what the stories had been about. Now he found himself wishing he’d paid them more attention.

“So your Flannery’s an author, too.”

“Absolutely. She’s already filled up four spiral note-books. Who knows? We may have a bestseller on our hands, in which case, Jo-Jo can retire, and Flannery can put me through college!”

“But mermaids! Lord, why doesn’t she write about something sensible, or at least real?”

Blue lightning sparked in her eyes. “Watch it, mister! Flannery happens to be the world’s foremost authority on mermaids!”

“Then I can’t imagine that she and Ellen would have much in common. Ellen has been raised the way my parents raised me—in the world of truth and reality. No talking teapots. No animals with human personalities. No dragons, no fairy princesses—”

“And only anatomically correct teddy bears, I suppose! Good grief, that poor child—”

“Excuse me.” Jeff had gone rigid. “Are you presuming to tell me how to raise my daughter?”

She turned on him at the top of the dune, the sea wind ruffling her wild, purple hair. “I’m not presuming to tell you anything, you stuffy, pompous—”

“You watch it, lady!”

She faced him. almost toe-to-toe, undaunted by his size and his anger. “You wouldn’t listen if I did tell you! But then, why should I have to tell you anything? Just look at your little girl! Look how unhappy she is—”

“And you’re suggesting that a dose of fantasy will cure that?” He thrust his own steel into her intense blue-green gaze. “Answer me this, then, Kate Valera, or Jo-Jo the Clown, or whoever you think you are! Will fantasy bring back Ellen’s mother? Will fantasy give her a real family again?”

Her eyes held steady, but her lips had begun to tremble in the center of her painted clown smile. “I don’t know how to answer that,” she whispered, “except to say that I—I feel sorry for you!”

She spun away from him and stalked off along the crest of the dune. Jeff glared after the slight, lumpy figure, his mind still hearing the little catch in her voice. If it had been tears, then the woman was an emotional fool, he told himself. The last thing he and Ellen needed was pity, especially from someone who knew so little about her.

Mermaids indeed! No, Ellen didn’t need that kind of nonsense either! According to the therapist, what she needed was to accept the reality of. her mother’s loss, not escape from it. If he could just make that mule-headed little clown person understand—

“Wait up!” he called after her. “You’re not getting away without hearing my side of—”

“I see our daughters,” she said quietly, glancing back over her shoulder as if she hadn’t heard him. “They’re out on the end of the spit. Look…”

Jeff’s gaze followed the direction of her pointing arm, anxiously scanning the long, pale crescent of beach below the dunes. About two hundred yards away, on a rocky spit of land that jutted into the pounding surf, he saw them— two dark specks, perched on the flat top of a high rock, oblivious to the waves that crashed around them.

“Damn!” Jeff’s fear exploded as anger through his clenched teeth. “Look at that tide! Don’t they realize it’ll be over the spit in a minute or two? They’ll be cut off from the beach! And if they try to get back then—” He cupped his hands to his mouth, and was about to shout when he felt her cool, taut fingers on his bare arm.

“They won’t be able to hear you over the surf,” she said. “Come on, we’ve got to get down there!”

Without waiting for him to follow, she bounded down the slope of the dune, half-sliding, half-falling in her tie-off dyed clown suit. Jeff charged after her, each step setting off a small avalanche of sand. He knew this beach well. The girls were safe enough on their high rock, but if they realized their predicament and tried to cross the wave-swept spit, they could be washed into the ocean.

Kate had reached the level beach and was running fullout, her bare feet spattering the edge of the tide foam. Jeff could see the girls clearly now—Ellen, with her dark hair and pale yellow dress; carrot-topped Flannery, wearing shorts and a green T-shirt. They were sitting close together, staring out to sea, oblivious to the danger behind them.

Sheets of water were already whipping over the spit. He didn’t dare shout now or do anything that might draw the girls’ attention. If they saw him and tried to come back on their own, the waves would sweep them away.

Kate was flagging. Jeff saw her stumble, then catch herself and plunge ahead. With a surge of effort, he sprinted past her and raced toward the spit, silently praying the girls would stay put until he could reach them.

Gritty seawater swirled around his ankles as he pounded into the surf. The tide was coming in fast now. Its powerful undertow sucked at Jeff’s legs as he waded deeper. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed Kate. She had plunged recklessly into the waves and was struggling after him. With a scowl, he motioned her back. The water was getting deep. It would be rough going for her in that soggy clown getup, and the last thing he needed was another body to rescue and haul ashore.

The girls had spotted him. Ellen was waving, dancing up and down like an excited jack-in-the-box. Flannery, he noticed, was hanging back with more caution. One hand gripped the skirt of Ellen’s sundress, as if to prevent her from leaping into the sea. The other hand clutched a brown spiral notebook.

“Stay put!” Jeff shouted, but his words were sucked into the roar of exploding surf. Sand dissolved under his feet as he rounded the narrow curve of the spit. The water hissed and clawed at his legs like a demented wildcat.

An eternity seemed to pass before he reached the rock. Looking up, he could see Ellen. She was straining toward him, her gray eyes round with fear. Only Flannery’s terrier grip on her skirt kept her from losing her balance and toppling into the waves.

“Come on!” Jeff held out his arms, and Ellen clambered into them, clinging to his neck like a frightened monkey. Shifting her to a piggyback position, he reached upward for Flannery.

Kate’s daughter hesitated. Her right hand clutched the notebook as her narrow, hazel eyes measured the distance between them. Then, with the fearlessness of an acrobat, she flung herself into space.

Jeff tensed as he caught her against his chest. She was taller than Ellen and lighter, her body all bone and sinew in his arms. Her freckled features were as sharp as an elf’s below the kinky bonfire of her hair. Even now, Jeff could not help wondering how much this rather strange child resembled her mother.

Water churned around his hips, threatening to drag him down with his precious burden. “Hang on,” he muttered, battling for a foothold on the treacherous bottom. “Whatever happens, don’t let go of me!” He staggered toward the beach, each step an adventure in peril. The girls weren’t heavy, but their weight was enough to throw him off balance. One false step, and they would all go down.

Through a curtain of sea spray, he could see Kate. She had left the beach and was toiling toward him through the battering surf. He wanted to shout at her, to warn her to stay back, but Kate Valera was a stubborn woman, and he was carrying her daughter. Even if she could hear him, Jeff knew she wouldn’t listen.

The water grew shallower, but no less violent, as the slope of the beach rose under his feet. Kate had almost reached him. She was stretching out her arms to take Flannery when a wave struck her from the side, knocking her off her feet and flinging her toward him.

Jeff had no free hand to grab her. He fought for balance as she crashed into him and went down. “Hang on to me!” he shouted over the roar of the surf. Her arms clutched his legs as he staggered out of the water, dragging her with him.

It took a moment for Jeff to realize they were safe, all of them, on the warm, dry sand. Still clutching her notebook, Flannery let go of Jeff’s neck and dropped lightly to her feet. Ellen clung, trembling, to his back. He unpeeled her arms and eased her downward.

Kate sprawled on the sand. Her wig was askew, her makeup smeared. The padding under her clown suit drooped with seawater. She looked so pathetic, and so ludicrous, that Jeff might have laughed—except there was nothing funny about the situation.

“Flannery Valera, you come here this minute!” She pushed herself to a sitting position, eyes sparking like flints. Her orange-haired daughter shuffled forward, eyes downcast, notebook clutched to her chest.

“What do you think you were doing, young lady?” Kate demanded. “You were told to stay in the kitchen! When we get home, you and I are going to have a long—”

“Oh, please don’t punish Flannery!” Ellen darted between them like a fragile, yellow butterfly. “It was my fault! I asked her to take me out on the rocks! She said no at first, but I begged her—”

“Why?” Jeff placed a hand on his child’s shoulder and turned her around to face him. “Why on earth would you want to go out on those dangerous rocks, Ellen?”

Ellen’s velvet eyes held an expression Jeff had never seen before—a look of pure, radiant wonder.

“Flannery told me about the mermaids. She said that if you sit on the rocks and listen with all your heart, sometimes you can hear them singing—”

“Ellen!” Jeff groaned in dismay. “That’s nonsense, and you know it! There’s no such thing as—”

“But you’re wrong, Daddy!” Ellen’s small frame quivered with certainty. “They’re real! I heard them out there! I listened with all my heart, and I heard the mermaids singing!”

Kate trudged miserably up the side of the dune. Her sand-caked costume hung like a sack of potatoes on her sweltering body. The saltwater residue on her skin was beginning to itch, and her damp wig had been discovered by a colony of friendly sand flies. All she wanted to do, at this point, was find the Jeep, go home, take a long, cool shower—and nail her daughter’s little freckled hide to the living room wall.

The afternoon had been a string of disasters, but this was the capper. For the most part, she enjoyed Flannery’s creative nature and allowed her youthful imagination free rein. But when Flannery’s imagination overruled good judgment and put her and another child in danger—

“Are you going to make it all right?” Jeff Parrish glanced over his shoulder with a superior scowl—his usual expression, Kate surmised. To avoid his gaze, she had deliberately dropped behind him in their trek up the dune. Her position, however, gave her a mouth-watering view of his rugged shoulders, tapering back and taut, muscular buttocks. Jefferson Parrish III might be a pain in the fanny, but he was also, Kate conceded, a world-class hunk.

“Kate?” He was waiting for an answer to his question.

“I’ll be—fine,” Kate muttered, blowing a sand fly out of her face. “Just get me back to my Jeep so I can drive home and forget this whole wretched afternoon!”

“You didn’t have to go into the water,” he said. “With the heavy surf, and you in all that padding, you should have known what would happen.”

“I wasn’t thinking about myself,” Kate snapped. “I was concerned about my daughter—and yours. And speaking of our daughters, how far ahead of us are they? Can you see them?”

“They’re just over the top of the dune. They’ll be fine.”

“Except that Flannery is probably filling your Ellen’s head with more of that fantasy nonsense—oh, I saw your face when Ellen said she’d heard the mermaids. Your expression was definitely not a pretty sight.”

“Here.” He reached back, caught her hand, and yanked her up to his own level on the dune. “I want to be able to talk to you without getting a kink in my neck,” he explained.

“So talk.” Kate feigned an indifferent shrug, her saltsoaked bra straps chafing her tender flesh. “See if you can tell me anything I haven’t already figured out.”

“I was hoping that chip on your shoulder had washed off in the ocean.”

“No such luck. But at least I’m willing to listen.”

“I’ll take that into account.” He climbed in silence for the next few steps, his fingers still gripping hers. His palm was as smooth as fine Italian leather—but then, Jefferson Parrish III had probably never lifted anything heavier than a cricket bat. Maybe that was how he’d broken that quirkily gorgeous nose of his.

“This probably sounds stuffy, but I don’t know how else to explain it,” he said, his free hand swinging her clown shoes, which he’d gallantly fished out of the surf. “We Parrishes are raised with certain values—ethics, if you will. We take pride in passing those values down from one generation to the next.”

Like congenital arrogance, Kate almost said, but she managed to bite back the words.

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking. But family tradition is a serious matter. I was raised the way my father was raised, and his father and grandfather before him—to value honesty and hard work, to do one’s best in every effort and to shun anything that smacks of falsehood or frivolity—”

“Such as fairy tales. And mermaids.”

“Exactly.”’He sounded so smug that Kate could have punched him.

“But Ellen’s just a little girl—”

“We raise our girls the same way. My older sister is a neurosurgeon. One of my aunts was a civil engineer. Another taught physics at Radcliffe—”

“And what if Ellen doesn’t want to become a surgeon or an engineer or a physicist?”

His penetrating scowl knotted the thick, dark brows above his steely eyes. “You’re missing the point, Kate. Ellen will be free to become whatever she chooses. But as her. father, it’s my duty to see that her choices are based on sound, realistic principles.”

“I see.” Kate wiped a sweat bead off her nose. Overhead a pair of gulls wheeled and cried in a giddy mating dance. “And what if Ellen makes mistakes?” she asked. “What then?”

“If I do my job as a parent, that’s unlikely to happen. Most mistakes, after all, are based on unrealistic expectations.”

“But hasn’t anyone in your family ever made a mistake? For heaven’s sake, haven’t you ever made a mistake?”

She felt his hand go rigid, then withdraw from hers as they rounded the top of the dune. “You ask too many questions, Kate Valera,” he said coldly. “Come on, let’s catch up with our daughters and get you back to your Jeep.”

Kate clung to her silence, keeping a tight rein on her emotions as they trooped down the leeward slope toward the house. Jeff Parrish was the last person who deserved her sympathy, she told herself. The man was too cocksure, too boastful of a family tradition that turned children into little automatons with no freedom to dream and imagine. Worse, he was raising his sensitive daughter to be a copy of his cold, success-driven self. The whole situation was deplorable!

So why, as her gaze outlined the back of his elegantly rugged head, was her mind flitting through visions of cradling that head in the warm furrow between her breasts while her fingers tunneled the rich, dark silver of his hair?…

Merciful heaven, maybe she was the one who needed a healthy dose of reality!

She could see the girls now. They were skipping down the slope of the dune, hand in hand, as if they’d been friends for years. And even that was odd, Kate reflected. Flannery had always been a loner, choosing the world of her own creative imagination over the company of other children. What would draw her to a shy child like Ellen Parrish?

But the answer made no difference, Kate reminded herself bitterly. After today’s fiasco, the two little girls would not be allowed to see each other again.

Mrs. Parrish had come out of the house. She strode across the lawn like a clipper under full sail, her purple dress fluttering in the afternoon breeze. Where the grass lost itself at the foot of the dune, she paused, wringing her hands in a classic portrait of agitation.

“Ellen!” she called. “Where have you been, child? Don’t you realize what bad manners it shows, wandering away from your little guests like that? If you want those nice young ladies to be your friends—”

“It’s all right, Mother.” Jeff had sprinted ahead to catch up with the girls, leaving Kate to trail in at her own pace. “I’ll speak with Ellen alone after she’s had a chance to think about what she did.” He turned on his daughter with an imperious frown. “Upstairs with you now, Ellen. You’re not to come down again until we’ve talked. Understand?”

“Can’t Flannery come with me?” Ellen clung to her new friend’s hand, eyes wide and imploring.

“I’m sorry, Ellen, but Flannery has to go home now.” Kate elected to play the meanie—anything to end this miserable farce and make her getaway.

“But she can come back tomorrow, can’t she?” Ellen persisted. “Oh, please let her come!”

“Go upstairs, Ellen.” Jeff’s eyes were granite slits. “Now.”

With a heartrending sob, Ellen broke her grip on Flannery’s hand and fled toward the house.

“Mom, can’t I—”

“Be still, Flannery, you’ve caused enough trouble for one afternoon.” Kate clasped her daughter’s shoulder. Then, struggling for dignity in her smeared makeup and waterlogged costume, she squared her chin and turned back toward Jefferson Parrish III and his imposing mother.

“We’ll be going now,” she declared. “And please don’t worry about paying the agency for my time, Mrs. Parrish. I’ll make sure they know that this performance was on…me.”

It was all Kate could do to get the words out before the waves of anger and humiliation swept over her. Jeff Parrish held out her shoes. She snatched them out of his hand and spun away, her throat jerking as she led her daughter across the lawn to the road, where the Jeep was parked.

Summer people!