Читать книгу All-American Baby - Peg Sutherland - Страница 9
ОглавлениеCHAPTER THREE
“WHERE ARE WE going to sleep?”
Ash hadn’t been thinking of sleeping. He’d been thinking of putting as much distance as possible between him and anyone who might have it in mind to harm Melina. He also had no cash to pay for sleeping anywhere and his credit cards would create a trail leading straight to him—and Melina.
“In the car,” he replied.
“This car?”
“What’s wrong with this car?”
“I get the back seat,” she said.
Figures. “I could look for a van.”
“Something in red, maybe? Brown isn’t my color.”
“Of course not. I wasn’t thinking.”
Now he was. Now he could see the impish quality he’d been drawn to three months earlier for what it really was. She was spoiled, that was all.
“Aren’t you getting sleepy?”
“It’s not even midnight.”
“That’s right. You’re a night owl.”
A spark touched off in him. She’d been a morning person. She’d laughingly suggested they compromise and spend the entire day in bed, getting up from ten at night until ten in the morning to accommodate them both. They’d spent the day in bed, all right, but they hadn’t slept.
“Are we going to get different clothes? Something to sleep in? Something for tomorrow?”
“Of course,” he said.
“When?”
How could a grown woman sound so guileless and so eager? She was good, no question of that. A shame she was so rich; she could be quite a success on stage.
“Soon,” he said brusquely.
But the truth was, he didn’t know where or when or how. He didn’t know what to do with her or who to trust. Worst of all, he was damned if he even knew why any of it mattered. This was her problem, not his.
They passed through a little town that promised to be the last one for quite a few miles. Ash slowed down, studying carefully the narrow, quiet streets, the tidy. little houses with their spring gardens that seemed to speak of trust and safety.
“Are we shopping for a new car again?” she whispered.
He wished she wouldn’t whisper. It stirred him in spite of himself. It reminded him of other whispers, other sighs, other nights alone with her in the dark.
When he didn’t reply, she asked, “Are you casing the joint?”
He was getting grumpier by the minute and he knew it. Her lack of concern for the gravity of their situation wasn’t helping. “You watch too much television.”
“I know.” She sounded pleased with herself.
He was looking for something with legroom, as well as something old enough that it could easily be hot-wired. He found a comfortable-looking van parked in the dark corner of a lot surrounding a stucco condominium. He left the brown sedan in its place and took some satisfaction in knowing that the knitting would be returned to its owner very soon. Ash didn’t like stealing cars; the last one he’d stolen was when he was fifteen, and his father had grounded him for six months. Cars were a necessity and stealing them was for emergency situations only. Bram Thorndyke had been clear on the matter of stolen cars.
Diamonds and rubies, however, were sheer extravagance and therefore fair game.
On the way out of town, Ash spotted a little boutique. He parked in a narrow alley behind the row of pastel-colored shops, hemmed in by a brick wall at the edge of a municipal golf course. “Wait here.”
She was already getting out of the van. “I’m not letting you pick out my clothes.”
He pinned her between the open door and the van.
“Yes, you are.”
She stared at him with those dark eyes and he knew he’d be undone if he didn’t back off. He could almost feel her breath, sweet with chocolate milk shake but no longer cool. Warm. Hot, even. He grew warm himself in the chill northern California night air.
“What if it doesn’t fit?”
“It will fit.”
And that mouth. Soft. Full. Wide. Trouble any way you looked at it.
“What if I hate it?”
“You’ll get over it.”
She looked ready to pout. He supposed that worked a lot when a person was rich and spoiled. “I want to go with you. I’ve never been on a break-and-enter before.”
“And you aren’t coming now.”
“I can help.”
She was wheedling. He was dismayed to find he was susceptible to it. He had to toughen up. “You’ll be in the way. I know what I’m doing. You don’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“Are you a professional criminal?”
“In the car, princess.”
She studied him carefully, but he remained unyielding. She finally relented and backed into the car. As he walked toward the dark back entrance of the shop, she hissed out the window, “Size six. Jeans. I want blue jeans. Boot cut. And sunglasses. Ash, do you hear me?”
He turned and glared at her. “I hear you. Barney Fife hears you. Every neighbor for miles around hears you. Could you please pretend you have some common sense? Just for the next twenty minutes.”
She raised the window and turned away from him, nose in the air. She had the perfect nose for it, too. Narrow, straight, very aristocratic. Along with a very stubborn chin.
Accessing the shop was easy. He did harder jobs every day. But he didn’t like doing it. He wasn’t accustomed to stealing from people who probably couldn’t afford it. He told himself the shop had insurance and the insurance company could certainly afford it. But he also saw the three snapshots taped to the side of the cash register—an attractively plump middle-aged woman and two younger women just past their teens who had to be her daughters. This was who he was robbing, for the sake of a spoiled heiress.
He didn’t like himself.
He loaded two shopping bags. One for him, with a limited selection of unremarkable khakis and polo shirts. Then he started on a second shopping bag. He got jeans, size six. Underwear, cotton and serviceable, size selected by memory. Unwelcome, distracting memory. He selected a very ugly T-shirt with gold sequins in the design of a cat, a flouncy nightshirt in pink and yellow, a floppy-brimmed straw hat and a pair of gaudy sunglasses.
To heck with her if she didn’t like his choices.
He made it out of the shop and back to the red van—its selection had been based purely on availability and had nothing to do with Melina’s color preferences—without incident. Melina took the bags and began rummaging through them as he stuck conscientiously to the speed limit all the way out of the sleeping, unsuspecting town.
“If you’re not a professional, you certainly have an interesting hobby,” Melina said, pulling clothing out of a bag.
The judgment in her tone raised his hackles. “I am not a two-bit thief,” he said, aiming for a tone that wasn’t defensive. He knew he’d failed.
“Aren’t you?”
“No, I certainly am not.”
“You’re right! You’re a very classy thief. This is wonderful. Blue jeans! Movie star sunglasses! A gold-sequined T-shirt! You can steal for me anytime, Ash.”
“You were supposed to hate my choices.”
“That’s because you look at me and see a princess. I’m really just a suburban housewife in disguise.” He heard the click of her seat belt and looked to see her clambering over the seat into the back of the van.
He glanced over at her. “What are you doing?”
“Changing clothes.” She winked at him. “You’re welcome to look, but we’ll probably be better off if you keep your eye on that big truck heading this way.”
He quickly focused front and center. The road ahead was as deserted as it had been moments before. But that was okay. He really had no desire whatsoever to watch her change clothes.
Well, maybe a tiny bit of interest. Idle curiosity. She wasn’t exactly a Baywatch babe. A little on the skinny side, actually. Little-boy hips and lots of rib action. Breasts—
Okay. Eyes and mind on the road.
“If you aren’t a two-bit thief,” she said, her voice momentarily muffled by clothing going over her head, “I don’t suppose you’d like to explain how it is you know how to hot-wire cars and break into clothing stores without even turning a hair.”
He thought of trying to explain his childhood, his upbringing, his family. Not possible. You see, we’ve been thieves and con men for generations. But we only steal from the rich. Probably direct descendants of Robin Hood, don’t you see. With a slight variation. We might steal from the rich, but we definitely do not give to the poor. “No, I would not.”
“Is it a compulsion? An addiction of some kind. I’ll bet they have a twelve-step group for it. You could get help. Lead a normal, productive life.”
“The only way I’m going to lead a normal life is to figure out what to do with you.”
“I’m not your problem, Ash Thorndyke. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” The sound of delighted laughter floated up from the back of the van. “And I am perfectly stunning in my new wardrobe.”
She climbed back into the front seat and Ash noted that she did indeed look stunning. The jeans fit like second skin—had she filled out in the last three months, or was his memory that faulty? The T-shirt looked campy and fun, the 1950s sunglasses went perfectly with her gamine-like grin.
“Mel’s the name,” she said, adopting a familiar midwestern twang.
It was the same voice she’d used in London.
“We’ve met,” he said dryly.
Her enthusiasm wilted. “So we have.”
She lapsed into silence. They drove along the coast until he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. He saw a trail off the highway and followed it to a secluded clearing overlooking the ocean.
“Welcome to the Holiday Inn,” he said gruffly.
She scrambled into the back of the van again, making a little nest of her slightly bedraggled evening gown. For a pampered heiress, she looked not the least perturbed to be preparing for a night on the hard floor of a van in the middle of nowhere. She looked as cheerful as a kid on an adventure.
She’d used that to reel him in before, too.
He yanked off his tie and pitched it onto the floor behind the driver’s seat. The cummerbund followed, then his tuxedo jacket, cuff links, watch and shoes. He contemplated the gym shorts and T-shirt from the boutique and decided there was no way he was disrobing with her in the vehicle.
“Would you roll down the windows?” Her voice had a dreamy quality to it. “So we can hear the surf?”
His first impulse was to say no simply for the sake of saying no. Then he realized there was no good reason to be hard-nosed with her. After all, this had been his decision. Nobody’d said he had to bring her with him. As soon as he’d figured out that the deal he’d agreed to was not what he’d thought, he could’ve walked.
But no. He’d had to play hero. Rescue the woman in jeopardy.
He’d had no idea what he’d been getting himself into.
Thoroughly disgruntled with the way his day had gone, he rolled down the windows so Her Highness could hear the surf, crawled into the back, selected the corner farthest from Melina and stretched out on his back.
“Good night” she whispered.
His reluctant response was gruff.
The full moon spilled in through the front windows. The sound of the surf was mesmerizing, stirring a matching rhythm in his pulse—a little wild, a little fast. And Melina Somerset—his Mel Summersby—lay two feet away.
She was fun to kiss, he remembered that in sharpest detail. She could make him laugh right in the middle of a kiss, then keep right on going without spoiling the rhythm of their lovemaking. She liked to tickle him awake in the mornings when he still had lots of sleeping to do—little tickles, feathery tickles that made him smile.
He’d never laughed and smiled so much in his life as he had those two weeks with her.
And it had all been a lie.
THE OCEAN CALLED to Melina, its sharp scent and steady roar beckoning. She lay curled in the back of the van, head resting on her silky pillow, and thought of slipping out of the van and walking along the rocky shore she’d glimpsed through the trees. Lying here in the dark with no one to talk to wasn’t very relaxing. She kept thinking of her father and his anguish when he discovered she was gone again, and how much worse it would get when he realized he wasn’t going to find her this time. She kept thinking of the new life she was going to make for herself. Her thoughts were a whirlwind of guilt and excitement. And, she had to admit, a little anxiety.
A walk along the coast, surely, would quiet those troublesome thoughts.
She doubted she could get away without waking Ash. Every time she rustled around, his deep breathing stopped and she could almost sense him tensing, waiting to see what she had in mind. He slept like a cat, with one ear alert.
What kind of man could sleep that way? What kind of man knew how to hot-wire cars and break into dress shops?
What kind of man made love to you, then took off in the night without a word of explanation?
Who was Ash Thorndyke, anyway?
That mystery had haunted her for months.
He’d been a mystery from the moment they met. But she’d been naive enough to find that intriguing, alluring, downright exciting.
They met on her first day in London. Despite the constant cold drizzle, Melina had been almost giddy with her freedom. She had managed to elude her father’s people through northern France, then taken the Chunnel to England. Surely in a city the size of London, one could simply vanish.
She had next-to-no money and even less experience. All she possessed was the small valise she’d had at her side when she escaped, containing a few changes of clothes, some toiletries—and her mother’s diamond wedding choker. She was standing at the entrance to the Underground, London’s subway, studying the map that was a confusing maze of colored lines. She had the address of a pawnshop and no clue how to translate the map on the wall.
The voice over her shoulder was friendly and American. “You look like a damsel in distress.”
The voice alone would have been enough to make her fall in love with him instantly. An American. She could barely catch her breath as she turned toward the voice.
“Yes, I guess you could say that’s what I am.”
“Ash Thorndyke.” He’d tipped forward slightly, almost an old-fashioned bow. “At your service.”
His face was kind and his dress impeccable. And his gold-on-green eyes held just a hint of the rogue in them. Oh, yes, she might just be in love. “Mr. Thorndyke, how very kind of you.”
He moved a little closer then, looking over her shoulder at the address she’d written on a slip of paper. He was tall, too. An all-American hero. No doubt about it. Melina’s heart tripped wildly.
“A pawnshop, Miss...?”
Melina opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. Oh, my. What now? The last thing she’d counted on was meeting someone.
Not someone.
Her all-American hero.
How could you be incognito when your all-American hero walked up?
“Mel,” she said. “S-Summersby. Mel Summersby.”
“Mel?”
“Mmm, yes. Melinda, actually. But I’m much more the Mel type, don’t you think?”
His eyes had roamed her up and down. Melina felt the caress of his eyes clear from her toes to the roots of her hair.
“Mel suits you quite well,” he said, smiling. “What doesn’t suit you is a pawnshop, I’m afraid.”
Melina felt herself flush. She lowered her eyes. “Oh. Well, I have this...item. And I’d very much like to be rid of it.” She had to think fast. Wouldn’t do to have him think of her as destitute. “Bad associations, you know.”
“An...item?”
“A bauble, really. It would... It would give me satisfaction to simply be rid of it.”
“Well, then, we’re off to the pawnshop.”
“Oh, really. I couldn’t—”
“Nonsense. I wouldn’t dream of sending you off to such a place on your own.” He took her by the elbow. “But please, allow me to treat us to a taxicab.”
“Oh, no, please. I’d really like to ride the tube. I’ve never ridden the tube, you see. It’s part of the adventure, don’t you think?”
“Adventure is precisely the word I might have chosen, Mel Summersby.”
He’d guided her through the maze of the London underground, teaching her the etiquette of standing to the left on the long, steep escalators so those in a rush could pass on the right. He taught her how to hang on to a pole and plant her feet before the train left the station so she didn’t lurch against others or land on her backside when the train screeched to a halt at the next station. He explained the map to her during the ride and signaled her when it was time to get off.
By the time they reached their destination, Melina was quite hopelessly in love with American Ash Thorndyke.
At his urging, she allowed him to guide her to a different establishment than the one whose name she had been drawn to in the telephone listings. The narrow lane, it turned out, was awash in pawnshops, and Melina felt a thrill at the slightly shabby row of businesses.
She also allowed her new American friend to handle the bartering with the gentleman who operated the place. The negotiations sounded quite civil to Melina, but she could tell that Ash was happier than the elderly shopkeeper when the bargaining was completed.
Melina, too, was quite happy with the neat stack of pound notes he pressed upon her at the end of the transaction.
“Thank you ever so much,” she said. “I would have been hopeless without your help.”
“My pleasure. It would also be my pleasure to have your company for dinner.”
“Oh, that would be lovely. My treat.” She saw him ready to protest. “At a pub. Oh, please say yes. I’ve never been in a pub, you see.”
They found an authentic-looking pub in the neighborhood and ducked in out of the drizzle, which was growing colder still as the sun sank out of sight behind the dingy gray buildings. The bar was dark, infused with the mingled scents of ale and damp umbrellas. They chose a table near the fireplace, where the embers glowed and flickered. He ordered two pints of dark ale and she chose their dinner—shepherd’s pie.
“Tell me this, Mel Summersby,” he said, touching the rim of his mug to hers when the lukewarm ale arrived. “How does it happen that a young woman who’s never ridden the tube or eaten in a pub is running around London alone looking for pawnshops?”
She sniffed the ale and took a tentative sip, buying time. She had the foolish urge to confide in him. He had the face of an honest man, and he had certainly proven himself trustworthy. But she was clearheaded enough to know that she had to be careful. The wrong word from her and she could wind up back with her father, confined to a life that was nothing more than a prison.
Besides, she wanted to know if a man like Ash Thorndyke could possibly like her for herself, and not because she was heiress to one of the world’s largest fortunes. She tamped down the bitter thought that her father would probably attach strings to his will, keeping his ironclad hold on her even from the grave. She would probably inherit only if she took a vow to be a lonely, celibate recluse in Siberia for the rest of her life.
No, she couldn’t tell Ash the truth yet. She wanted nothing to spoil this time, however short it might be.
“I’m a student,” she said. “An American graduate student. I was to visit a...a friend. But when I arrived, things had ... changed.”
“Ah. The friend who made the gift of the item that’s financing our dinner tonight.”
“That’s right.”
She smiled brightly, looking for some sign that he didn’t believe her story. Shadows fell across his golden skin, highlighting his full lips. Raindrops glistened on his slightly rumpled hair. He sat back casually in his seat, loose-limbed and at ease. A man with the confidence to be in command of the world.
She wondered if there was a way to make a man like that fall in love with a woman who knew precious little about the world.
“So I’m on my own, you see. I should probably go home ... to ... Omaha.”
“It seems a shame to go without seeing some of the sights.”
“That’s precisely what I was thinking. Do you ... do you think I can manage it? On my own?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t?”
“I think you need a guide. Someone who knows his way around.”
She longed to believe there was a hint of innuendo in what he said. She tried her best to find an easy, flirty tone. “Where would I find someone like that?”
“I’ll give it some thought while we eat,” he said with a faint smile.
They sat in the soft glow from the fireplace, ate foul-tasting shepherd’s pie and drank a little too much of the dark, bitter ale. He told her about his family back home in the States—a kindly grandfather and an ailing father. Without going into the boring details, he mentioned their investment business, which had brought him to London. And she made up a lovely family, in which she was the oldest of three children living in a large two-story house. Her brother, sister, mother and father looked remarkably like the family in Father Knows Best.
She didn’t make that comparison aloud.
She told him she was studying classical literature in graduate school, the only subject she’d managed to learn much about in the years she’d flitted from one convent school to the next. She confessed that she’d never driven a car before she remembered that revelation might label her as unusual in America.
And when he learned that she didn’t yet have a place to stay, he took her to the home of a friend who operated a bed-and-breakfast out of her home. Mrs. Wentwhistle was a silver-haired lady with a hitch in her walk, and her home was a narrow, three-story Victorian in Parsons Green. It was three flights up to the refurbished attic.
Ash insisted on carrying up her valise for her. “It’s a good thing you’re not staying,” she said as he ducked the sloping ceiling.
He placed her valise in the chair beside the narrow bed tucked beneath a dormer window. “Is it?”
He came back to stand beside her now. He seemed very close. The room was small and he was not.
“Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible. “It’s sized for me, not you.”
“That’s true.”
He looked down at her, his eyes searching her face. She imagined that he knew all her secrets.
“I’ll join you for breakfast, if that’s okay.”
“That would be lovely.”
He stepped back. “Then, until morning ...”
He was leaving. She thought she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he left without touching her. “You really should kiss me good-night.”
“I should?”
“Oh, yes.”
He stepped in her direction. Their bodies brushed. She felt the heat, caught the scent of him—faintly evergreen, like the cypress trees that had dotted the landscape at her favorite convent the year she’d turned sixteen.
“What kind of kiss?” he asked softly.
“What kind?”
He touched her hair where it trickled against her cheek. “A peck-on-the-cheek kiss? A brush-of-the-lips kiss? A lingering, promise-her-anything kiss?”
She closed her eyes as he spoke, contemplated each alternative, mesmerized by his deep, velvet voice and the images he conjured. “Oh. Well. What about the blistering, ravaging, curl-her-toes kiss? You forgot about that one.”
He chuckled, deep in his chest. “I think, with Mrs. Wentwhistle waiting downstairs, I’d better play it safe.”
Then he drew her into his arms and brushed his lips against hers. His were soft and they tasted of ale. He didn’t let her go.
“That’s really quite unsatisfactory,” she said.
He took her face in both his hands. He whispered against her lips. “I know.”
“You could try the lingering variety.”
“Maybe I should.”
“Oh, yes.”
He pressed his lips to hers again, gentle but insistent. She felt all of him pressed to her, as well. He was lean and hard and his hands cupped her head as he tilted her face to deepen the kiss. His tongue touched hers lightly, the promise of more, just as he had said. Had he not been holding her, Melina felt certain she would have melted right into the floor.
“Will that do until morning?” he murmured.
“Not in the least.”
“Then it must have been satisfactory.”
“Quite.”
She hung over the railing and watched as he circled down the stairs to the attic door. “But I’m holding out for blistering.”
“Let me guess. You’ve never done blistering.”
She smiled. So did he. The air between them crackled.
“You know me too well, Ash Thorndyke.”
“Let me assure you, Melinda Summersby, as your guide to London, you won’t leave for Omaha without experiencing all the city has to offer...”
He had delivered on both his promises—both the spoken one and the one in his kiss. By day, he showed her everything that made London charming, unique and memorable. They toured the Tower, rode double-decker buses, marveled over an exhibit of Queen Victoria’s clothing, cried over Romeo and Juliet at the reconstructed Globe Theatre. The changing of the guard, the tolling of Big Ben, the swarming pigeons at Trafalgar Square.
London by day was a magical adventure.
London by night was every woman’s fantasy of how she should be introduced to the ways of love.
Ash became her first lover and, she had been certain at the time, would be her only lover. He was tender and passionate, considerate and thrilling. He taught her everything only guessed at or dreamed of by a girl raised in convents. Ash Thorndyke was the man she’d been hoping for all her life.
When he left her at Mrs. Wentwhistle’s on their fourteenth night, she perched on her knees and watched from the dormer window as he headed for the tube. She loved his loose, easy walk. She loved everything about him.
“I love you,” she whispered to his retreating figure.
The need to tell him so was becoming an impatient ache. But she knew she couldn’t tell him how she felt until she told him the truth about herself. She made up her mind as he turned the corner. She would tell him tomorrow. Then there would be nothing in the way of their love.
Except that he didn’t come the next day.
When she phoned his hotel, he was gone. Checked out. Only then did she realize she knew nothing about him, not the town he was from, not the name of his family business. Nothing.
Except that he was not the man she’d believed him to be.
He was, instead, a rogue. The kind of man who could cavalierly seduce an innocent woman and walk away with no explanation.
Her heart was broken. Bereft, she was almost grateful when her father’s men found her a day later.
On the hard floor of the van, Melina tried not to dwell on the way she’d felt when they made love, on the way she’d trusted him, on the way he’d betrayed her. What irony that he should be her rescuer.
Rescuer he might be, but he was no hero. He’d proven that and she would do well to remember it.
But she would find a hero. America was full of them. Yes, somewhere in this country she would find the perfect all-American town, and the perfect all-American hero to help raise the baby she now carried. A father for her baby.
And no matter what the biological facts were, Ash Thorndyke would not be that man.
