Читать книгу That Summer In Maine - Muriel Jensen - Страница 13

The flight to the States the following afternoon seemed interminable, and was made even longer by the knowledge that she had only seventeen dollars in a purse she hated. According to the bank manager she’d spoken to that morning, her accounts had been frozen because Eduard had escaped capture and had apparently used one of her credit cards somewhere in Spain. In an effort to track him down, they wanted to stop any other activity on her accounts. They regretted the inconvenience. Not enough, she was sure.

She’d spent the next two hours scouring clothing and old purses for money left in pockets or coin compartments. Then, to add insult to injury, she had to put what she found in a brown leather pouch purse she’d never liked because everything sank to the bottom in it. Someday she was going to pummel Eduard herself for tossing her favorite ergonomic bag into a crevasse.

“I can’t believe it,” she grumbled, not for the first time. “Twenty-two years an actress, high-yield stocks and bonds, carefully acquired real estate, and I have seventeen dollars to my name.”

That sounded like a pouty princess talking—or possibly, Lady Bellows. Good. She wasn’t having to reach to stay in character.

Duffy wasn’t sure what that was all about—residual stress from her ordeal, maybe. As a girl, she’d never been one to flaunt her beauty, her intelligence, her family’s comfortable situation or her popularity. She’d been very real and able to lower herself to the level of a child who needed her friendship.

“I’ll give you my American Express,” he offered, “if you’re reluctant to take money from your father.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why would I be more willing to take money from you than from him?”

“Because we broke the ice when I bought your ticket,” he replied, knowing he was annoying her. He suspected that her life, her determination to live it onstage, was wobbling, and he was going to do all he could to topple it. “It’ll be easier the second time.” He was going to give her a week with her father in Arlington, then he was going to invite them to Lamplight Harbor to visit. He wanted her to see where he lived, get to know his boys, relax.

Then he was going to do his damnedest to seduce her.

She closed her eyes against his candor and shook her head. “I’m going to be happy to say goodbye to you when we reach Kennedy,” she said. “You were much sweeter as a boy than you are as a man.”

“A man has too much to do to be sweet,” he countered. “And sweetness is generally not a favorable trait in a bodyguard, anyway.”

She smiled reluctantly at that, then leaned back in her seat and studied him as though she was seeing the child and not the man. He didn’t particularly like that. But having her attention in any way was a plus.

“You must have gotten over the asthma,” she said. “All your efforts at bodybuilding certainly paid off.”

He watched her eyes scan his shoulders, but inclined his head modestly and pretended not to notice. “Thank you. I stayed with it, then learned a lot in the Army. I did outgrow the asthma and am now disgustingly healthy.”

“And a little overconfident.”

“A bodyguard—like a cop—has to have presence. This time you wouldn’t have to save me from the burning vaporizer. I could rescue you.”

Her eyes widened and she turned toward him with a slight smile at that memory, forgetting that he annoyed her.

“I’d forgotten that!” she said, her eyes losing focus as she thought back.

He’d been eight years old and just getting over a cold, so his asthma had been very active. His parents were at a dinner meeting with a client, and his mother had placed a vaporizer at his bedside to ease his breathing.

Maggie had been in the kitchen downstairs, preparing dinner, when a short in the vaporizer had caused it to catch fire. It had ignited the decorative quilt that hung over his bed, and he’d barely found the air in his lungs to shout Maggie’s name.

She’d appeared in an instant, hesitated only a second before unplugging the vaporizer, draping it with his blanket, and carrying the now smoking device into the bathroom where she dropped it in the tub and poured water on it. Then she ran back to yank the burning quilt off the wall and submerged it in the bathtub, too.

He always looked back on that as the moment he fell in love with her. She’d then put him in his parents’ bed, brought him dinner, then cleaned up the mess while he ate.

“Of course, I killed the vaporizer, your blanket and that beautiful quilt,” she remembered with a nostalgic smile.

“Maybe, but my father paid you with a hundred-dollar bill that night. You averted what might have been a real disaster.”

She nodded, accepting praise with a light laugh. “If I hadn’t saved you, you couldn’t have grown up to be such a smart aleck.”

“There, see. I knew it was all your fault.”

The flight attendant arrived with a cell phone. “Miss Lawton?”

Maggie blinked in surprise. “Yes.”

“The airport radioed the pilot with a call from your father. We have him on the pilot’s cell phone.”

She listened, looking surprised, then disappointed.

“What?” she exclaimed. “What about your heart? What about…?” She stopped abruptly, apparently forced to listen again.

“Dad, I’m sorry, too,” she said finally, “but I’ll be fine at the house. I don’t want to…no, I know you worry, but you shouldn’t. I’m fine. I can’t impose on him like that.”

She said placatingly, “Okay, fine. I’ll put him on. But I’m telling you now, I’m staying in Arlington.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and fixed Duffy with a fierce expression. “My father’s been called overseas—some problem setting up a new government—and he wants me to go home with you rather than stay alone in Arlington. I’m not doing that. You will tell him that you’re very busy and you don’t have time to entertain a houseguest. Have I made myself clear?”

“Very,” he said amiably and took the phone she held out. “Hi, Elliott.”

“Duff!” Elliott said, his voice urgent. “I’m so sorry to do this to you, but I’ve been called overseas. They’re sending a chopper for me in twenty minutes. Would you mind very much taking Maggie home with you? I don’t want her to be alone.”

“I wouldn’t mind at all,” he replied.

Her expression darkened, though she obviously wasn’t sure what he and her father were saying. She threatened him with a pointing finger to his chest. “No!” she whispered. “Say, no!”

“Yes, of course,” he said into her glower. “I’ll be happy to take her home with me. Don’t worry. Just do your job and know that she’ll be safe and sound.”

Maggie put both hands to her face and fell back into her chair.

Duffy hung up the phone and handed it back to the flight attendant with a smug “Thank you!”

“You’ll like Lamplight Harbor.” He held up Maggie’s seat belt as the light went on.

“I’m going to Arlington,” she said, lowering her hands to put her belt together with an angry snap.

“With what?” he asked. “I’m holding your ticket.”

She threatened him with a look. “I’m going, anyway.”

“How are you going to get there?”

“Rent a car.” She wasn’t seeing the problem.

“And what are you going to pay for it with?”

“With…” she began, then remembered that all she had was seventeen dollars and no credit cards. That wasn’t going to get her a car.

She straightened in her seat and firmed her lips. She looked magnificent but not as confident as she probably imagined. “You’re going to rent it for me. Or let me have my ticket.”

He smiled. “Guess again, Lady Bellows.” When she looked surprised that he knew the name of her current role, he explained, “Eponine told me you’ve played her for so many performances that you take on some of her qualities when you’re stressed.”

“Look,” she said, clearly clutching her temper in both hands, “I came to the States to see my father, not to visit Lightbulb…what is it?”

“Lamplight Harbor,” he provided.

“Lamplight Harbor,” she repeated, “so that you can get some kind of payback for all the years you had to do what I said, by bullying me. I’m forty years old, Duffy,” she said with a sigh as though it were eighty. “And while some women love the forceful male, I’ve never been a fan. So, please. Lend me money to rent a car.”

“I have no intention of bullying you,” he said. “The deal I made with your father was to deliver you safely, and I…”

“I’m not a girl!” she said a little too loudly. Several nearby passengers turned to look at her. She lowered her voice. “I’m an adult woman,” she said. “Almost middle-aged. No one has to deliver me from one man’s hands to another’s!”

He caught the hand with which she gestured emphatically. “You’re thirty-nine,” he corrected, “not forty. That’s hardly middle-aged, and your father wants to know you’re being looked after, not because he thinks you’re not capable of caring for yourself, but because he loves you and you’ll always be his little girl. So let a man with heart trouble have a little peace about the situation.”

That last statement distracted her as he’d hoped it would. “He does have heart trouble?” she asked worriedly.

“I’m not sure,” he replied, “but do we want to risk worrying him further when he’s in a tight spot as it is?”

She finally fell against her seat back with a groan. “If you hadn’t butted into my life,” she said, “I could be in my bathtub right now, listening to Russell Watson and planning to go to Le Caprice for dinner.”

“What were you going to buy dinner with?”

“Oh, shut up.”

HE CANCELED MAGGIE’S TICKET for the connecting flight to Virginia, then pushed the luggage cart toward the little blue American-made sedan rental at the end of an aisle. She carried his cappuccino and her caramel latte. He always preferred to drive home from New York, enjoying the beauty and peace and quiet. It gave him time to readjust from his work life to his life as a parent.

“I thought you intended to stay only for a week,” he said, indicating her three large bags and train case. “There must be enough clothes in there for a four-hour fashion show.”

“Ha, ha,” she said, holding the cart handle while he unlocked the trunk. “Nice clothes is one of the perks of being in the public eye. Designers court you.”

“Well, they’ll certainly be able to find you. I’ll probably have to rent a horse trailer to get it all home.”

“Or to hold all the horse stuff you’re shoveling.”

He gave her a challenging look over his shoulder as he rearranged her bags several times before making them fit. The cart empty, she handed him the drinks, then pushed it toward a cart rack at a midway point in the aisle and hurried back to the car.

In the front seat he placed their drinks in a caddy between the seats, then backed out of the lot and onto the road that would lead them to northbound traffic.

“How far?” she asked when they were firmly ensconced in rush hour traffic.

“A little over four hundred miles,” he replied.

“So, we’re not going to make it tonight.”

“No. I thought we’d stay over in New Hampshire.”

She didn’t applaud the plan, but she didn’t dispute it, either, so Duffy just drove. She fell asleep outside of Connecticut and he watched the traffic as he reached behind him for his jacket to drop it across her.

She looked troubled, even in sleep, he thought, and hoped he had what it took to pull her out of the past and into a future with him. He’d thought he would have to play it cool, give her time, invite her and her father to his home. But Elliott’s sudden mission had been a fateful intervention forcing her into his path. He had to take advantage of it.

She awoke in northern Massachusetts. It was dusk.

She sat up guiltily and stretched, a gesture he was grateful he couldn’t watch because of the thinning but steady traffic.

“Where are we?” she asked on a yawn.

“Almost to the New Hampshire border. You ready for dinner?”

“I’m starved,” she admitted.

“Okay.” He pointed to a highway sign that promised Good Food and Cozy Cabins. “Looks like a good place to spend the night.”

The cabins were small and rustic, but each boasted a tidy bathroom and a television set. That was all Duffy needed, but after having seen Maggie’s town house, he wondered if she considered the cabins adequate.

He dropped her bag on her bed and watched her perusal of the pine-paneled, plaid-curtained room. She sat on the edge of the bed that was covered in a spread that matched the curtains, and bounced a little.

“It’s been such a long day,” she said. “This feels comfortable.”

He winced at the bold decorating. “The rooms are a little…plaid.”

She nodded. “They’re going for cozy. After all, their highway sign makes the claim. I like it.”

So, Lady Bellows was not offended by her surroundings. He was relieved to know that—and pleased.

She lay her upper body back against the mattress and closed her eyes with a contented sigh. “I should skip dinner,” she said, wriggling comfortably. “I didn’t get any exercise at all today except when we ran across the terminal to catch the plane.”

“Lunch was a long time ago,” he said, glancing at his watch. “And it’s almost seven. You should eat something, then you can sleep.”

She gave him a mildly scolding glance as she sat up. “Tell me you’re not going to try to police my food intake as well as everything else.”

“I’m not policing anything,” he insisted, offering her a hand up. “But if you’ve been given a month off to restore yourself after your ordeal in the mountains, you should take advantage of the opportunity. Good food and lots of rest.”

“Food doesn’t appeal to me. I haven’t expended any energy.”

She’d taken the hand he offered but still sat there, arguing, and he had to concentrate on her words one at a time to distract himself from the feel of her small, cool hand in his.

“The sign says they serve breakfast all day,” he remembered, privately congratulating himself on thinking clearly. “You could have an omelette or fruit.”

She considered those possibilities and used his hand to pull herself up. He had to apply almost no counterweight.

“Maybe I’ll just have dessert,” she said, snatching up her purse and heading for the door.

They talked companionably for an hour over the fruit salad she finally decided upon and the steak and salad that was his reward for a trying day.

They talked about their fathers, about people in the neighborhood both remembered, and encapsulated the past twenty years for each other.

Maggie spoke mostly about her career, about the roles she’d enjoyed and those she’d agonized over, the casts that had been fun to work with and those that had been difficult.

“Did you ever expect,” he asked, fascinated by her stories, “that you’d achieve such success?”

“It’s funny.” She shrugged, studying a section of mandarin orange on the tip of her fork. “I’ve loved the work, and there’s such an excitement in really finding the character and giving it all you’ve got. So I was about ten years into it when I realized that I was a respected actress. People recognized me on the street or in the market. It was flattering.”