Читать книгу Spencer's Child - Joan Kilby - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

“MORNING,” Spencer said. He’d forgotten how great her tanned legs and shapely hips looked in shorts. His body responded to memories of its own, and he jammed his hands into his pockets. “Ready?”

She tugged nervously on her long braid. “My kayak’s in the garage. Can you give me a hand?”

He started walking over. “How are your folks?”

“Fine. Mother’s got her garden club thing today.”

“And your dad doesn’t want to breathe the same air as me.”

Meg stopped short. “That’s not—”

“I saw him high-tail it into the house.”

“He—”

“Forget it. It doesn’t matter.” Spencer moved under the open garage door. “Who’s the boy?”

“The boy?” Her voice sounded strangled.

He glanced at her. “Yeah. Is he one of your brother’s kids?”

“What? Oh. Yes. That’s right.” She hurried past him to the far end of the kayak.

“It’s Nick who’s married, isn’t it?” He’d liked her brothers, Nick more than the other two, but maybe that was because Nick was a geologist and not a lawyer or a banker. Her parents were another matter altogether.

“All three are married now.” Meg moved to the far end of the kayak. “You don’t have to be married to have a child.”

“Ever the nitpicker.” Spencer bent to pick up his end. “We’d better move if we’re going to catch that ferry.”

They loaded the Orca onto his roof rack and tied it down. Spencer lifted the trunk so Meg could put her backpack inside. He glanced up at the house and saw the living room curtain twitch. Some things never changed. With a mocking salute at the window, he slid into the driver’s seat. Then he gunned the engine and with a roar spun around the circular drive and back out to the road.

Meg shook her head. “What are you, Jimmy Dean?”

Spencer laughed. “Your father would be disappointed if I didn’t put on a show.” He glanced at her T-shirt. “Are you going to be warm enough? It can get cool on the water, especially if you get wet.”

“You mean when you get wet Don’t worry, I’ve got a sweatshirt in my backpack.” She glanced around the interior. “From the outside this car looks like it belongs in a Mad Max movie, but inside it’s immaculate.”

Spencer shrugged. “The inside is what I see. Didn’t know you were so easily impressed.”

She grinned. “Cleanliness is always impressive where least expected.”

“Very funny.” He scowled to hide the pleasure he felt at simply being with her. “Put on a CD if you like.”

She flipped through the disks. “Hey, this is your dad’s band. ‘Ray and the Brass Monkeys, Live.’ Remember the time you took me backstage at his concert? Gosh, he was good. Where is he these days?”

Spencer frowned. He’d forgotten Meg had heard his dad play. And met him. And liked him. Hopefully he could keep the two apart. He’d hate Meg to see his father in his current state. Hate for her to pity him. Hey, what was he thinking? This was Ray! He was just in a slump. Back up in no time.

“He’s, ah, he’s at the cottage.”

“Really?” Meg glanced up. “Is he in town for a concert?”

“He’s...taking a breather. He probably won’t be around long. You know him—here today, gone tomorrow.”

“Like father, like son,” Meg murmured, and put the disk into the state-of-the-art CD player.

The opening bars of Ray’s upbeat brassy style of blues-rock fusion drowned out some of the muffler noise. Then the gravelly voice of Ray Valiella came on, and the background noise just seemed to blend in. Spencer began to tap his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Are you going to get your muffler fixed?”

He had it booked into a local garage, but he couldn’t resist teasing her. “It’s supposed to sound that way.”

She threw him a look. When are you going to grow up?

“I like your hair long,” he said. Now this was the understatement of the year. Her hair fascinated him. Thick and fine and heavy, like braided corn silk, it hung over her shoulder and down her blue cotton-clad breast. His gaze lingered where it shouldn’t. Then met hers.

She turned to look straight ahead. “What happens once I decide on a project?”

Damn. For a few minutes they’d slipped into their old way of talking—but then her cool wariness had brought him back to reality. He might not have changed, but the situation sure as hell had. Get used to it, Valiella. “You’ll need to write up your experimental design using proper scientific method. But you know that.”

“I think I do, but it’s been so long. I’m afraid I may have forgotten things.”

Spencer glanced at her. That straight little nose didn’t ride quite as high as it used to. He wondered why. “Then you’ll just learn it over again,” he said. “Or ask me—I might know.”

She smiled at that. He’d forgotten the way her smile could warm him deep down inside. There’d been other women, before and since, though right now he couldn’t recall a single one. But who had Meg McKenzie become? One minute she wore her maturity like she used to wear silk blouses, with confidence and style. The next minute she was a mass of nerves, as jumpy as a spooked cat.

They cruised down the highway to Swartz Bay, hitting every green light from Elk Lake on. “It’s times like this you’ve just gotta believe in a supreme being,” Spencer said, one hand draped across the top of the wheel.

“Oh?” Meg replied with a sarcastic grin. “You mean, he’s turning the lights green so Spencer Valiella won’t have to slow down?”

He grinned. “She is making sure Meg McKenzie catches her ferry.” He paused. “It is still McKenzie, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” She frowned at him. “I told you I wasn’t married.”

“Right.” Then who was the guy who’d answered her phone this morning when Spencer had called to let her know which ferry he was aiming to catch? He’d sounded sleepy, as though he’d reached over to the bedside table to pick up the receiver. “Got a boyfriend?”

“Is that any of your business?”

“Guess not.”

They came over the rise and into the vast paved area comprising row upon row of lanes filling with cars lining up for the ferries. Spencer curved off into the one leading to the ticket booth for Fulford Harbor on Saltspring Island. As the attendant handed over their tickets, she expressed some doubt as to whether they would make this sailing.

“We’ll make it,” Spencer assured her. He sped down the appropriate lane, careered around a curve and zipped over the ramp even as the warning buzzer was sounding for the seamen to cast off. The Camaro hit the steel deck with a deafening ka-thunk. The muffler sounded like thunder in the echo chamber of the car deck until he cut the engine. The ferry gave three short and one long blasts of the horn, and they were under way.

Spencer turned to Meg with a self-satisfied grin.

She rolled her eyes. “I need a coffee.”

They went upstairs to the cafeteria and got coffee to go.

“Outside,” Spencer said, and led the way to the bow where the wind blew their hair straight back and the green shapes of the Gulf Islands were spread out before them. Blue water, blue sky, glaucous-winged gulls wheeling overhead, and the majestic white prow of the Queen of Nanaimo as she came around the point.

Spencer leaned against the rail and drank in the fresh salt air. Being on the water always put him in a more mellow mood. “I’d forgotten how beautiful it is up here.”

“You never would have known if you hadn’t come back.”

He glanced at Meg. She’d spoken lightly, yet he sensed a change in her mood, too, only she’d gotten serious. Still, there was history between them and her words meant something whether he acknowledged them or not. “I shouldn’t have left without saying goodbye.”

A swift glance, as blue as the sky. And then she was clutching her foam cup so hard it bent. “You hurt me,” she said quietly. “I thought we were friends.”

“We were friends.” The sudden tensing of her mouth told him he’d hurt her again, unwittingly. God, he was inadequate when it came to the spoken word. He tried to catch her eye and communicate his caring. But she wouldn’t look at him.

“Were you happy at all when you lived here before, Spencer?”

He was surprised at the question. Surprised at himself for not knowing the answer. “Sometimes you can’t tell if you’re happy until you go back to a place and see what feelings it evokes.”

“That is the statement of someone completely out of touch with their emotions.” A loose strand of hair blew across her face and she brushed it away. “So, what feelings does Victoria evoke in you?”

She hadn’t asked about Saltspring, although they were nearing the island. That would have been too loaded a question. But the edge to her voice told him she meant what feelings did she evoke. He’d repressed those feelings for so long he wasn’t sure he could define them. He only knew she shouldn’t expect too much from him. “I don’t know. Guess I’m still out of touch.”

She was silent, watching the timber-and-glass houses perched on the island’s steep shoreline slip past.

He didn’t want her to want something he couldn’t give her. But to say so would be presumptuous. “I’ve applied to Bergen for a research position.”

“Bergen? You mean in Norway?”

“Yes, at the marine research institute there. The position may come up before the year is over.”

She nodded. “I thought it would be something like that.”

When the announcement telling passengers to return to their vehicles came on, Spencer was relieved. He tossed his empty cup into a bin and held the door open for Meg. Her hair whipped around his bare elbow, anchoring her to him for a moment. Their eyes met as she pulled it away. There was sadness in her gaze.

Spencer hated himself for putting it there.

THE DEEP BLUE WATER off the north end of Saltspring Island sparkled invitingly. Meg stood on the edge of the cobble beach while her kayak rocked gently in the shallows at her feet. In spite of the warmth of the sun, a cool breeze blew over the water and she was glad of her fleece pullover.