CHAPTER 4
Kelly let herself into the house smiling. She didn’t know why she felt so much better about things—she just did.
“Jarod!”
He came running down the stairs when he heard her, a pencil stuck behind his ear. That made her feel better, too. He hadn’t forgotten about his schoolwork.
She could even admit that since everything had come out in the open, especially since they’d gone to the Marquettes’ for dinner, Jarod had been doing better then ever in everything. Straight A’s in school, and a note from the coach stating that by the time the season was over, Jarod would be able to attend the college of his choice on an athletic scholarship alone.
“Well?” he asked her anxiously.
She smiled, glad of the absurdly light feeling that had gripped her. Well, why not? Sandy Marquette was pregnant and she was very definitely going to be Sandra McGraw soon enough. It would be foolish, Kelly decided, not to enjoy her only son’s wedding. Especially when Sandy needed her so much! Sandy had called her three times for advice already. Reeves—the “gentleman’s gentleman”—might have been able to keep the house running smoothly, but he didn’t seem to be quite the perfect substitute mother for a young bride.
“Mom?” Jarod prompted impatiently.
Kelly smiled throwing her arms open to him. “The priest says that the first Saturday in June will be fine. I think it’s perfect, don’t you?”
“Super!”
He accepted her embrace, then swept her off her feet to whirl her around the hallway.
“Jarod!” Kelly shrieked breathlessly, but even as she gasped he was setting her down, staring at her worriedly.
“Well, what did he say? Did you tell him that Sandy…I mean did you explain that we, ah—”
“I didn’t lie, Jarod,” Kelly told him quietly. But she couldn’t help grinning. “The man is a Roman Catholic priest, so he was glad that you and Sandra are going to get married.”
“By June…”
“By June Sandy will be about four and a half months along, from what she’s told me. Not necessarily noticeable at all.” Kelly shrugged. “If people know, they know. If they don’t—well, we won’t announce it. Oh, Jarod, come on! You’re both so young. This is a once in a lifetime affair. Sandy should have a beautiful white dress and a mile-long train, the whole nine yards.”
Jarod lowered his eyes, then he looked up at her anxiously. “You think so? You really think so?”
“Definitely.”
He hugged her again, so tightly that she had to fight his embrace. Jarod didn’t always know his own strength.
“You’d better be careful doing that to Sandy!” Kelly remonstrated, but she was glad of his happiness. A little pang tore at her heart, and she realized that half of what hurt her so badly was that she just wasn’t ready to see him grow up. Still, he was her only child. And she was going to do her damnedest to see that his wedding was perfect. If the gossips wanted to talk, they were welcome to do so. She wouldn’t change a thing. She would see that Sandy’s gown was the whitest white imaginable.
Because to her, Sandy remained pure. The more she talked to the girl, the more convinced she became that Sandy loved Jarod with all her heart. And there was nothing in the world more pure, more innocent—more holy!—than a love like that.
“Sandy will be thrilled,” Jarod said.
“Why don’t you call her and tell her?”
“She’s on her way over now.”
“Now? Why?”
“Oh—I forgot. They’re both coming.”
“Both? Who both?”
Kelly knew what he was talking about, of course. She just wasn’t so sure that she wanted to know.
“Sandy and Dan.”
“Dan?” Kelly said disapprovingly.
Jarod grinned. “It’s too early to call him ‘Dad,’ isn’t it? And Mr. Marquette sounds absurd. And Sandy calls you Kelly.”
Kelly had no reply to that. “Why are they coming over?”
“Because we’re all going out,” Jarod said happily.
Kelly shook her head. “Uh-uh! We’re not all going out. You all can go out, but—”
“Mom, I said that you would go. I told him that you loved tubing, that you loved anything to do with the water.”
“Jarod, you can’t run around telling—”
“Mom, please, for my sake, for Sandy’s sake. Come on, they’ve just moved here. From D.C. Going tubing is new and exciting for them.”
“That’s just wonderful. I’m excited for them. And you are more than welcome to go have an exciting time with them. Just don’t run around agreeing to things—”
“Mom, please, just this once.”
“No!”
Jarod hung his shoulders slightly; he seemed to give up. Kelly felt a moment’s satisfaction, but then Jarod started in again.
“You love tubing. And if it were just Sandy and me, you’d come along in a minute. You’re afraid of him, that’s what it is.”
“How dare you!”
“You’re afraid of him!” he said loudly and clearly, staring at her.
“I am not afraid of him!”
“Then why won’t you come?”
“Because. Because—”
The doorbell chose that precise minute to ring. Kelly stared at Jarod; Jarod stared at her.
“Because I’m busy!” Kelly snapped. Then since she was closest to the door, she went to answer it, throwing it open with a vengeance.
Sandy, her beautiful dark eyes bright with pleasure, greeted her. She was in a bathing suit, and she looked so young and lovely that Kelly had to smile, all too aware of how her son could have fallen so head over heels in love.
“Oh! You’re not ready!” Sandy said, disappointed.
Kelly smiled. “I’m not coming, Sandy. I’ve really got an awful lot to do.”
“Oh, come on! Please. You have to come. Dad just got the tubes. And he already dropped off the meat for the barbecue at the cottage. Please! He won’t come if you don’t.”
“Well, I’m sorry—” Kelly began.
“What’s wrong?”
She was interrupted by the man himself, or the devil himself, as she was beginning to think of him. He was in a pair of cutoffs that left very little to the imagination.
How the hell old are you? she wondered a little belligerently, unaware that she was staring at him. At his bare chest. Thickly covered with hair and hard with muscle.
He should have been skinny! Skinny and sickly looking! Weren’t scholars supposed to be pale and scrawny and wear horn-rims and…
“Is something the matter?” he asked.
“No, I’m just a little busy today, that’s all.”
He shrugged, not pressing the point. To her surprise, Kelly was disappointed. I don’t want him to beg! she thought. But she had. She liked seeing him at any disadvantage, because…
Jarod was right, in a way. She wasn’t afraid of Dan Marquette, but he did make her nervous.
“What a shame. The kids had said that you could go. I guess I’ll stay home, too. Third wheel, you know.”
“That’s foolish,” Kelly protested. “Sandy said you’d gotten all kinds of things for a barbecue at some cottage.”
“I bought a little house along the Shenandoah. It’s a shack, nothing more. I’m just fascinated by the river and the white water and everything.”
Kelly kept smiling. “All the more reason why you should go.”
Jarod came up behind Kelly and bent his head to whisper in her ear. “See, Mom, if you don’t go, he won’t go. And Sandy and I will be all alone. At a house. On the river. Half-naked.”
She spun around. “Not amusing, Jarod. You’re in no position to be giving me that kind of grief, young man.”
He grinned, grabbed Sandy’s arm and seemed to melt away.
“We’ll be in the car, Dad!” Sandy called.
Kelly stared after them. “They should be locked in their rooms, the pair of them!”
“The problem, as I see it, was that they were perfectly content to be locked in a room—together.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “What are you going to do? They’re too big to be spanked.” He was silent for a moment. “They’ll be paying enough. No movies, no dances, no fraternities or sororities. Let them enjoy each other now.”
Kelly looked down at the floor. He was right. They were still children, delighting in little things. Harsh reality was already on its way, and if they could stay married in the face of it, they would have created a miracle.
“Are you coming or not?” Marquette asked her very softly. He was still smiling slightly. Ironically, ruefully—challengingly. She returned his gaze, wondering at his thoughts.
Damn him! He knew darn well that he made her uneasy. That she was much more aware of him as a man than she wanted to be. That his bluntness and his honesty and his very male physique were unnerving to her.
He even seemed to know that in many ways she was far more of an innocent than Sandy.
“Can’t handle the big time, huh?” he dared her softly.
She certainly couldn’t let herself retreat after that. “Step inside, Mr. Marquette,” she said smoothly. “I’ll just be a moment.”
He grinned and did so. Inadvertently, Kelly stepped back, and his grin deepened.
“I don’t bite, Mrs. McGraw.”
“I never thought you did.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Really? I don’t frighten you?”
“Not in the least.”
“I’m so glad to hear that. Should I be encouraged? Do you actually like me?”
Kelly smiled sweetly. “I don’t dislike you, Mr. Marquette. But then, I don’t particularly…like you, either. Quite honestly, I don’t really think about you one way or the other. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll run up and change.”
“Please do.”
“Make yourself at home.”
“Thanks. I will.”
Kelly turned regally, leaving him alone in the hallway. She resented the fact that he undoubtedly would make himself completely at home.
“Damn you, Dan Marquette!” she said, seething. “Bursting in here, taking charge. You’ll get yours. I promise.”
She dug through her bottom drawer and stared at her array of three bathing suits. One was a bikini, one a more modest athletic type, and the third, also a one-piece, was a shocking teal blue that drew out the color of her eyes. It had a low-cut front and very high-cut thighs.
“Do I or don’t I?” she murmured. And then she grinned, thinking that two could play his game. She might be short, but all her pieces went together fairly well, and the bathing suit was extremely flattering. One of Jarod’s friends had even tried to get a date with her when she had worn it for a school picnic down along the river.
“All right, Marquette, watch out!” She laughed to her reflection in the mirror as she dressed, and then she paused, startled to find that she was shockingly out of breath, that she felt all hot and trembly, and that she was as excited as a high school kid herself.
She closed her eyes and swallowed painfully, suddenly determined to ignore any challenge—to run. She had come too far, she was too old, she was too stable now, to take any risks. She had survived too much to start over….
“Hey! What are you doing up there?”
“Coming!”
Kelly gave herself a little shake and decided not to change out of her rather risqué bathing suit. She slipped an oversize T-shirt over it instead, then slid into an old pair of sneakers and went back downstairs.
She frowned because he wasn’t in the hallway, but she sensed that he hadn’t left the house. “Marquette?” she demanded sharply.
“In here.”
The voice came from her office. Kelly strode uneasily to the doorway and stared in.
He was perched on top of her work stool, looking down at her drafting board. He had definitely made himself comfortable; he’d been in her refrigerator and was idly cradling a beer in his palm while he stared down at her work.
“What—” Kelly began, but then she broke off, because his eyes met hers and seemed to burn with a diabolical darkness. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or amused, but he was certainly something.
And then she knew. Her idle drawings of Daryl the Devilish Dragon with his face were right on top.
“I should sue you for this,” he murmured lightly. “Isn’t this slander, or something like that?”
“It isn’t anything!” Kelly said heatedly, rushing into the room. She snatched at the top picture, mortified to see that Esmeralda the Fairy Queen was flogging Daryl. And she hadn’t done it on purpose, but Esmeralda did resemble her a bit and, well, Daryl was beyond a doubt the spitting image of Dan Marquette.
His hand landed on the picture when she tried to sweep it away, and his eyes caught hers again. “You don’t think about me at all, huh? Not one way or the other?”
“No! What the hell are you doing in here?”
“You told me to make myself comfortable.”
“I didn’t tell you to snoop.”
“I’m not snooping. I just ambled on in here to take a peek at your work.”
“Well, you’ve peeked! Now get out!”
He grinned very slowly and smugly, releasing the paper and crossing his arms over his chest. He sipped the beer, watching her. “Kind of kinky, don’t you think?” he finally asked.
“Not in the least. You should have been shot, the way you barged in here that first day.”
“Shot. Clean, neat. An execution performed by a firing squad. But what we have here…”
His voiced faded off insinuatingly, and when she crumpled the paper into a ball, he laughed.
“That’s it! You’re living in a fantasy world. ‘Dark of the Moon.’ Evildoers are punished with a flogging, the fairies rule, and daylight always comes. Nothing is real. No true problems—”
“Since you showed up, I’ve had nothing but problems!” Kelly snapped. “Would you get off my stool, please, and out of my office!”
“Certainly, certainly.” He got up, but, maddeningly, he was still grinning. Worse still, he reached for her elbow to escort her out.
“Don’t touch me!”
“What are you going to do? Flog me?”
“I’d like to—”
“What? I’m dying to hear it.”
“I’d like to drown you! Shall we go, please?”
“‘Please,’ I love it! Yes, let’s go. Before you chicken out and realize that I’m not a fantasy.”
“What?”
Kelly stopped to stare up at him. He gripped her arm more tightly and gave it a little tug. “Come on, will you? The kids will be baked out there in the truck.”
“Oh!”
Kelly groaned, but followed him. It was true—they’d been in the house for what seemed like forever, and the kids would surely be anxious, or worse, wondering what their parents were up to.
But when they reached Dan Marquette’s truck neither Sandy nor Jarod seemed to have missed them in the least. Jarod—with all his size and length—was perched in the little well in back of the single seat to leave the other three room. Sandy was in the center, turned around on her knees, and together they were poring over a social sciences book. Dan left Kelly at the passenger door to walk around to the driver’s side, and as she stood there, Kelly bit her lip, feeling another pang of regret assail her. They seemed so normal, Jarod and Sandy, so…young! Too young to drink legally, too young to vote, too young…
And Sandy looked much too chaste. So slim in her bathing suit. So innocent. They couldn’t possibly be about to become parents.
“Are you getting in?”
Dan Marquette reached across his daughter to open the door. “Need a stepladder?” he teased.
“I can make it,” Kelly shot back.
“Dad, you could have helped her!” Sandy complained.
“But she’s so independent, Sandy. She likes to prove that she can make it on her own.”
“He can be so rude,” Sandy apologized to Kelly.
Kelly smiled. Jarod—oblivious to the entire conversation—warned Sandy that “Old Man Kruger” would be quizzing them on Monday on all points of the Constitution.
Dan Marquette ground the truck into gear and headed east, toward the river.
Kelly closed her eyes and leaned back in the seat, wondering what she was doing with them. Sandy turned on the radio, and something soft and soothing came on. Kelly opened her eyes and noticed that it was a beautiful day. The sky was a soft blue, adorned with the slightest puffs of cloud, and the sun was strong and sure. It would be warm all day, no chance of rain. The river would still be cool, and it would be a perfect day for tubing.
Kelly smiled. It wasn’t such a bad idea, after all. She couldn’t remember the last time that she had been out just to have fun.
Eventually Dan pulled the truck off the road, and they piled out. He had five tubes in the back, big fat black tubes. Kelly watched as Dan and Jarod dug them out of the truck. She would just love to see Dan’s blow a hole!
Not that it would stop him. He had that fifth tube. And the fifth tube, she discovered, was there so they could tow an ice chest along behind them. Not a bad idea, actually, she thought.
A few minutes later they were in the river. Kelly noticed that Jarod and Sandy were drifting along behind them—their hands entwined. Dan Marquette was quite relaxed, as if he’d been tubing all his life. His head was back, his feet were dangling in the water, and the extra tube was tied to his. Kelly shrugged and leaned back.
Dan took a look at the kids, then smiled at Kelly. “See! Isn’t this better than sitting in your house and sulking?”
“I never sulk, Mr. Marquette,” Kelly said serenely.
“Oh.”
He didn’t argue with her. He just pulled his second tube closer and dug into the ice chest.
“Beer, Mrs. McGraw?”
“Thank you, Mr. Marquette.”
She accepted the cold beer and smiled as she sipped it, then leaned back and rested her head against her tube. The river was easy here; the current was slow, and they just drifted along in the coolness of the water, with the sun beating down upon them.
She grinned to herself. Washington city dweller. Wait until they hit the rapids! The water was a little bit low, and maneuvering over the rocks might turn out to be tricky. She couldn’t wait to see how he did.
She opened her eyes and asked him sweetly, “Just what do you do for a living, Mr. Marquette?”
He shrugged. “I write: historical pieces, non-fiction.”
Kelly lifted an eyebrow. “You seem to do rather well at it. I wouldn’t have imagined…”
He laughed. “No, I’ve never had anything on the New York Times’ bestseller list. No million sellers. But what I write doesn’t change. Universities order so many a year. Most of my stuff is available in the national parks.”
Kelly digested that information for a moment. “So what are you doing here?” she asked him. “For some reason, I got the impression you had been working for the Smithsonian.”
He sipped his beer, and went on to tell her that he had been doing a book on early American life in Washington. He liked this area because it offered easy access to so many of the places where he had to go for his research. “I’m working on arms right now.”
“Arms?”
“Weapons. There was a factory right outside of town, you know. And I’m researching the arsenal that brought on the whole John Brown thing. There’s a gold mine of history here, you know.”
Kelly didn’t answer him. She had never thought of it that way. The Harpers Ferry/Bolivar area was just home, and home had always come with fun and fascinating legends.
She suddenly found herself warming to the subject, telling him how things had changed since she’d been little, how the National Park Service had really saved the area after the numerous floods that had almost destroyed it. She told him that he would have to go on the “ghost tour,” that it was wonderful, and she started to list some of the books the local small press had issued that he could buy.
“You know quite a bit about the region, don’t you?” he asked her.
“West Virginia, born and bred.” She laughed.
“Want to help me?”
“Help you what?”
“Do research. While I’m studying weapons, I might as well get into history and folklore, too.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kelly murmured, shying back. He reached over suddenly, and she almost gasped; he was only grabbing her empty beer can so he could toss it back into the cooler.
“Want another?”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“Well, it’s really not fair if you don’t pretend to get a bit drunk. I mean, where is the challenge if you’re stone-cold sober?”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
He grinned. His devil’s grin. A perfect grin for Daryl. “Nothing, really.”
She didn’t say anything else, but she suddenly had another beer in her hand.
Laughter from behind roused her, and she turned to see a group of people on a raft passing by them. They were all throwing water at each other. Someone missed and hit Sandy, who shrieked with laughter; Jarod responded by dousing the group on the raft.
Watching it all, Kelly smiled, then rested her head against the tube again. It really was fun. The beer had made her feel light—not drunk, certainly, not even tipsy, just light and able to smile easily.
Had it really been almost eighteen years since she had felt like laughing this way? With everything so easy, no pressure…
Eighteen years…
Since she and David had been like Jarod and Sandy—so young, and so in love with being in love! But they hadn’t gotten much help. Her mother had been dead, and David’s parents had been furious. She and David had started out with nothing, and she’d spent almost five years rushing from work to pick up Jarod and back to work. No eating out—they couldn’t afford it.
Not too much time for love, either. They had both been too tired. David from his schoolwork and his part-time job; she from her nine-to-five job during the day and trying to be a loving parent in the hours that she had left. And then David had gotten out of school, and it had been her turn to start studying art.
Hard… That was all she could remember. Everything had been so hard. And then, ironically, as soon as she had finished school—another five-year span, because she hadn’t been able to take as many courses each year as she should have—David had gotten into that stupid hang-gliding club and…died.
Years ago now. Almost seven years. Seven years in which everything had gone on being hard. Raising Jarod alone, worrying about the bills, wishing she had majored in something more practical than art. She’d had the talent to survive and keep them comfortable, just not quite enough to make them rich…
“A penny for them. A dime. A quarter. Hell, I’d even give you a dollar.”
Kelly’s eyes few open, and she found Dan Marquette staring at her intently. A flood of heat washed over her body at his look. She knew that he could see her mind, her thoughts. Could see the way her wet T-shirt clung to her body…
“They wouldn’t be worth it,” she told him. And then she grinned suddenly, looking past him. The current was picking up, and they were approaching a category four rapid—one that was nice and tricky—and very likely to spill him head over heels.
“Rapid coming up,” she said lightly.
He turned, saw it and nodded.
“Yes, it is.”
“Hey!” Jarod called out from behind. “We’re coming up on a rough one.”
Kelly smiled serenely as her tube began to pick up speed. The people on the raft, she noticed, had stopped for lunch on the rocks. They had a little audience up there, an audience who had just gone over the rapids and knew how rough they were. An audience just waiting to see who would flip over!
Kelly maneuvered her tube skillfully past the rocks, loving the cool spray against her face, inhaling the fresh air. She was rocked and jolted, then rocked and jolted all over again, but she went with the flow, and eased back into the rushing current as she left the rocks behind. She heard a shriek behind her and, turning, saw that Jarod had just saved Sandy from capsizing. They were both laughing and waving to the audience up on the rocks.
Kelly looked back to Dan Marquette. He was still there, serenely sipping his beer, apparently undaunted by the rapids.
He laughed. “What’s the matter, Mrs. McGraw?” he called to her. “Was I supposed to have been dashed to bits?”
“Of course not!” she retorted. “I’d hate to see you really hurt!”
“Just flogged and humiliated, huh?”
She didn’t respond. She laid her head back again and let the water carry her along. It felt good. It felt so, so good! The fresh, cool, clean water, the sun against her face. The gurgle of the river and the laughter in the distance…
Suddenly her tube got snagged on a submerged branch, and she was plunged face downward into the river, with her tube flying off into the distance.
Coughing and sputtering, she came to the surface. The water wasn’t deep, no more than four feet, and she ended up sprawling across a rock.
And she wasn’t alone.
He was leaning over her. Tall, dark—and diabolical. His hands were resting on either side of her face, and she could feel the heat of his body.
He leaned closer, laughing. “West Virginian, born and bred, huh? You missed that branch, Mrs. McGraw.”
There was really no other choice. She made a frenzied swish with her hand and sent a wall of water flying up into his handsome face.
He coughed; he sputtered. And then she was lifted off the rock and dragged beneath the water. In defense she grabbed at his legs. Legs like tree trunks, muscled, wonderfully masculine, with a bevy of short, coarse dark hairs that pricked her flesh…
“Oh!”
She came up for air, only to find herself dragged below again, then back up, gasping. Finally she was dragged to shore and laid out flat, with the trees overhead and the sun shining through the branches and Dan Marquette stretched above her.
She was smiling, she realized. Smiling and laughing and staring into his dark eyes.
She was dying to touch him. Dying to run her fingers through his drenched dark hair, trace his bronzed features with the pads of her fingers, run her thumb over the full sensuality of his lower lip.
She inhaled sharply, and held her breath, then realized that he was staring down at her, his breath held, too. The dark flame in his eyes was the flame of desire, and the heat that emanated from his boy was something like…wanting… Something like need.
“Kelly…”
He reached out and touched her, running his thumb over her lower lip, brushing his knuckles over her throat. And, God help her, she couldn’t move. Couldn’t protest. Didn’t want to.
Not at all. Something was growing in her. A sweet throbbing, an excitement. His breath caressed her cheek like the touch of his hand. Like his flesh against hers.
Oh, no! she thought. It was like…magic. She wanted it to go on forever, like her fantasies in Dark of the Moon. She wasn’t of the earth, not anymore. She was on a cloud, and all she could see or feel was Dan Marquette, calling to her on levels that she had forgotten existed.
She wanted to wrap her arms around him. She wanted to press her body against him. She wanted…
“Mom! Dan! You two okay? Where are you?”
Jarod’s voice broke the spell. Deftly, with an athlete’s superb agility, Dan Marquette sprang to his feet and reached a hand down to Kelly. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. Kelly felt herself flush in embarrassment. “We’re fine,” Dan called out, exhaling raggedly.
“We’re fine. We’re right here.”
He looked at Kelly, who tried to look away. He caught her chin and spoke quickly, huskily. “Don’t! Don’t you dare try to deny it!”
“Deny what?”
His features hardened, and her heart skipped a beat. But then he smiled slowly, very slowly. “I simply won’t let you,” he said.
Again she couldn’t reply, because Sandy and Jarod were hurrying over, and they were both laughing and acting as if nothing, absolutely nothing, was wrong.
As if the world would remain—normal.
Which it couldn’t, of course. Kelly knew that her world would never, ever be the same again.