Ragged Rainbows

New York Times Bestselling Author

Linda Lael Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Mitch Prescott was Shay Kendall’s savior. He’d bought her mother’s mansion on the Washington coast, a financial albatross that Shay couldn’t handle. And now he offered her true financial independence—a dream as seductive as Mitch himself. All she had to do was help him write an exposé on her mother, a former Hollywood star.

It felt disloyal, even though her mother would never know the difference. Once a legend, Rosamond now wasted away in a long-term care facility, clutching a doll she thought was her baby. It would be painful, recalling her mother’s fickle love and the worst moments of Shay’s life. But it could be the one thing that finally allowed Shay to move forward. And find her own love.

For Mary Ann and Stevie,

my cousins and my first friends. I love you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Marvin’s toupee was slightly off-center and he was wearing his standard smile, one that promised low mileage to the public in general and headaches to Shay Kendall in particular. She sat up a little straighter in her chair and looked across the wide polished plains of her employer’s desk to the view outside the window behind him. Thousands of red, yellow and blue triangular flags were snapping in the wind, a merry contrast to the cloudy coastal sky.

“I’m an office manager, Marvin,” Shay said with a sigh, bringing wide hazel eyes back to his friendly face, “not an actress. While I enjoy helping plan commercials, I don’t see myself in front of the camera.”

“I’ve been promising Jeannie this trip to Europe for years,” Marvin said pointedly.

Richard Barrett, a representative of an advertising agency in nearby Seattle, was leaning back against a burgeoning bookshelf, his arms folded across his chest. He was tall, with nicely cut brown hair, and would have been handsome if not for the old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses he wore. “You’re Rosamond Dallas’s daughter,” he put in. “Besides, I know a hundred women who would give anything for a chance like this.”

Shay pushed back a lock of long, layer-cut brown hair to rub one temple with her fingers, then lifted her head, giving Mr. Barrett an ironic look. “A chance like what, Richard? You make this sound as though it’s a remake of The Ten Commandments instead of a thirty-second TV spot where I get a dump-truck load of sugar poured over me and say, ‘We’ve got a sweet deal for you at Reese Motors in Skyler Beach!’ Furthermore, I fail to see what my being Rosamond’s daughter has to do with anything.”

Marvin was sitting back in his leather chair and smiling, probably at the image of Shay being buried under a half ton of white sugar. “There would be a sizable bonus involved, of course,” he reflected aloud.

He hadn’t mentioned a bonus on Friday afternoon, when he’d first presented Shay with a storyboard for a commercial starring herself rather than the infamous “Low-Margin Marvin.”

Shay sighed, thinking of all the new clothes her six-year-old son, Hank, would need before school started and of the retirement savings account she wanted to open but couldn’t afford. “How much of a bonus?” she asked, disliking Richard Barrett for the smug look that flickered briefly in his blue eyes.

Marvin named a figure that would cover the savings and deposit payment and any amount of jeans, sneakers, jackets and T-shirts for Hank, with money left over.

“Just for one commercial? That’s all I’d have to do?” Shay hated herself for wavering, but she was in no position to turn her back on so much money. While she earned a good salary working as Reese Motors’s office manager and general all-around troubleshooter, it took all she could scrape together to support herself and her small son and meet the property taxes on her mother’s enormous, empty house. Lord in heaven, she thought, if only someone would come along and buy that house.…

Marvin and Richard exchanged indulgent looks. “If you hadn’t stomped out of here on Friday,” Richard said smoothly, “I would have gone on to explain that we’re discussing a series of four spots, thirty seconds each. That’s a lot of money for two minutes’ work, Shay.”

Two minutes’ work. Shay was annoyed and insulted. Nobody knew better than she did that a thirty-second commercial could take days to perfect; she’d fetched enough antacid tablets for Marvin and made enough conciliatory telephone calls to his wife to know. “I’m an office manager,” she repeated, somewhat piteously this time.

“And a damned good one!” Marvin thundered. “I don’t know what we’d have done without you all this time!”

Shay looked back over the half dozen years since she’d come to work for Marvin Reese. She had started as a receptionist and the job had been so important to her that she’d made any number of mistakes in her attempts to do it well. Marvin had been kind and his wife, Jeannie, had been a real friend, taking Shay out to lunch on occasion, helping her to find a trustworthy babysitter for Hank, reassuring her.

In many ways, Jeannie Reese had been a mother to Shay during those harried, scary days of new independence. Rosamond—nobody had suspected that her sudden tendency toward forgetfulness and fits of temper was the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease—had been living on a rancho in Mexico then, with her sixth and final husband, blissfully unconcerned with her daughter’s problems.

Now, sitting there in Marvin’s spacious, well-appointed office, Shay felt a sting at the memory. She had telephoned her mother right after her ex-husband, Eliott, then principal of a high school in a small town in Oregon, had absconded with the school’s sizable athletic fund and left his young and decidedly pregnant wife to deal with the consequences. Rosamond had said that she’d warned Shay not to marry an older man, hadn’t she, and that she would love to send money to help out but that that was impossible, since Eduardo had just bought a Thoroughbred racehorse and transporting the beast all the way from Kentucky to the Yucatan peninsula had cost so much.

“Shay?”

Shay wrenched herself back to the present moment and met Marvin’s fatherly gaze. She knew then that, even without the bonus check, she would have agreed to be in his commercials. He had believed in her when she had jumbled important files and spilled coffee all over his desk and made all the salesmen on the floor screaming mad by botching up their telephone messages. He had paid for the business courses she’d taken at the junior college and given her regular raises and promotions.

He was her friend.

“It’s an offer I can’t refuse,” she said softly. It was no use asking for approval of the storyboards; Marvin’s style, which had made him a virtual legend among car dealers, left no room for temperament. Three years before, at Thanksgiving, he’d dressed up as a turkey and announced to the viewing public that Reese Motors was gobbling up good trade-ins.

Marvin unearthed his telephone from underneath a mountain of paper and dialed a number. “Jeannie? Shay’s going to take over the commercials for me. Dust off your passport, honey—we’re going on the trip!”

Shay rose from her chair and left Marvin’s office for the sanctity of her own smaller one, only to be followed by a quietly delighted Richard.

“I have three of the four storyboards ready, if you’d like to look them over,” he offered.

“Why does Marvin want me to do this?” Shay complained belatedly. “Why not one of the salesmen or some actor? Your agency has access to dozens of people.…”

Richard grinned. “You know that Marvin believes in the personal touch, Shay. That’s what’s made him so successful. You should be proud; he must regard you as practically a member of his family.”

There was some truth in Richard’s words—Jeannie and Marvin had no children of their own, and they had included her and Hank in many of their holiday celebrations and summer camping trips over the past six years. What would she have done without the Reeses?

She eyed the stacks of paperwork teetering in her in-basket and drew a deep breath. “I have a lot to do, Richard. If you’ll excuse me—”

The intercom buzzed and Shay picked up her telephone receiver. “Yes, Ivy? What is it?”

Ivy Prescott’s voice came over the line. “Shay, that new salesman Mike hired last Tuesday is…well, he’s doing something very weird.”

Shay closed her eyes tightly, opened them again. With one hand, she opened the top drawer of her desk and rummaged for a bottle of aspirin, and failed to find it. “What, exactly, is he doing?”

“He’s standing in the front seat of that ’65 Corvette we got in last month, making a speech.”

“Standing—”

“It’s a convertible,” Ivy broke in helpfully.

Shay made note of the fact that Richard was still loitering inside her office door and her irritation redoubled. “Good Lord. Where is Mike? He’s the floor manager and this is his problem!”

“He’s out sick today,” Ivy answered, and there was a note of panic in her normally bright voice. “Shay, what do I do? I don’t think we should bother Mr. Reese with this, his heart, you know. Oh, I wish Todd were here!”

“I’ll handle it,” Shay said shortly, hanging up the receiver and striding out of the office, with Richard right behind her. As she passed Ivy’s desk, she gave the young receptionist a look that, judging by the heightened color in her face, conveyed what Shay thought of the idea of hiding behind Todd Simmons, Ivy’s fiancé, just because he was a man.

Shay was wearing slacks and a blue cotton blouse that day, and her heels made a staccato sound on the metal steps leading down into the showrooms. She smiled faintly at the customers browsing among glistening new cars as she crossed the display floor and stepped out onto the lot. Sure enough, there was a crowd gathered around the recently acquired Corvette.

She pushed her way between two of the newer salesmen, drew a deep breath and addressed the wild-eyed young man standing in the driver’s seat of the sports car. “Get down from there immediately,” she said in a clear voice, having no idea in the world what she would do if he refused.

Remarkably, the orator ceased his discourse and got out of the car to stand facing Shay. He was red with conviction and at least one coffee-break cocktail, and there was a blue stain on the pocket of his short-sleeved white shirt where his pen had leaked. “I was only—” he began.

Shay cut him off swiftly. “My office. Now.”

The errant salesman followed along behind Shay as she walked back into the building, through the showroom and up the stairs. Once they were inside her office, he became petulant and not a little rebellious. “No woman orders me around,” he muttered. Shay sat down in her chair, folded her hands in her lap so that—she glanced subtly at his name tag—Ray Metcalf wouldn’t see that they were trembling just a little. “This woman, Mr. Metcalf, is ordering you out, not around. If you have any commissions coming, they will be mailed to you.”

“You’re firing me?” Metcalf looked stunned. He was young and uncertain of himself and it was obvious, of course, that he had a problem. Did he have a family to support?

“Yes,” Shay answered firmly.

“You can’t do that!”

“I can and I have. Good day, Mr. Metcalf, and good luck.”

Metcalf flushed and, for a moment, the look in his eyes was ominous. Shay was a little scared, but she refused to be intimidated, meeting the man’s contemptuous glare with a level gaze of her own. He turned and left the office, slamming the door behind him, and Shay let out a long breath in relief. When Ivy bounced in, moments later, she was going over sales figures for the month before on her computer.

Despite the difference in their ages—Ivy was only twenty while Shay was nine years older—the two women were good friends. Ivy was going to marry Todd Simmons, an up-and-coming young real-estate broker, at Christmas, and Shay would be her maid of honor.

“Todd’s taking me out to lunch,” Ivy said, and her chin-length blond hair glistened even in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the office. “You’re welcome to come along if you’d like.”

“How romantic,” Shay replied, with a wry twist of her lips, and went on working. “Just the three of us.”

Ivy persisted. “Actually, there wouldn’t be three of us. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Shay laid down her pen and gave her friend a look. “Are you matchmaking again? Ivy, I’ve told you time and time again—”

“But this man is different.”

Shay pretended to assess Ivy’s dress size, which, because she was so tiny, would be petite. “I wonder if Marvin still has that turkey suit at home. With a few alterations, it might fit you. Why didn’t I think of this before?” She paused for effect. “I could pull rank on you. How would you like to appear in four television commercials?”

Ivy rolled her blue-green eyes and backed out of the office, closing the door on a number of very interesting possibilities. Shay smiled to herself and went back to work.

The house was a sprawling Tudor mansion perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, and it was too damned big for one single, solitary man.

The dining room was formal, lit by two shimmering crystal chandeliers, and there were French doors opening onto a garden filled with pink, white, scarlet and lavender rhododendrons. The walls of the massive library were lined with handcrafted shelves and the fireplaces on the first floor were all large enough for a man to stand upright inside. The master bedroom boasted a checkerboard of tinted and clear skylights, its own hot tub lined with exquisitely painted tiles and a broad terrace. Yes, the place was definitely too big and too fancy.

“I’ll take it,” Mitch Prescott said, leaning against the redwood railing of the upstairs terrace. The salt breeze rippled gently through his dark blond hair and the sound of the incoming tide, far below, was a soothing song.

Todd Simmons, soon to be Mitch’s brother-in-law, looked pleased, as well he might, considering the commission his fledgling real-estate firm would collect on the sale. Mitch noticed that Todd’s hand trembled a little as he extended it to seal the agreement.

Inwardly, Mitch was wondering what had possessed him to meet the outrageous asking price on this monster of a house within fifteen minutes of walking through the front door. He decided that he’d done it for Ivy, his half sister. Since she was going to marry Simmons, the sale would benefit her, too.

“When can I move in?” Mitch asked, resting against the railing again and gazing far out to sea. His hotel room was comfortable, but he had spent too much of his life in places like it; he wanted to live in a real house.

“Now, if you’d like,” Simmons answered promptly. He seemed to vibrate with suppressed excitement, as though he’d like to jump up in the air and kick his heels together. “In this case, the closing will be little more than a formality. I don’t mind telling you that Rosamond Dallas’s daughter is anxious to unload the place.”

The famous name dropped on Mitch’s weary mind with all the grace of a boxcar tumbling into a ravine. “I thought Miss Dallas was dead,” he ventured.

A sad expression moved in Todd’s eyes as he shook his head and drew a package of gum from the pocket of his blue sports jacket. He was good-looking, with dark hair and a solid build; he and Ivy would have beautiful children.

“Rosamond has Alzheimer’s disease,” he said, and he gave a long sigh before going on. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? She made all those great movies, married all those men, bought this house and half a dozen others just as impressive all over the United States, and she winds up staring at the walls over at Seaview Convalescent, with the whole world thinking she’s dead. The hell of it is, she’s only forty-seven.”

“My God,” Mitch whispered. He was thirty-seven himself; it was sobering to imagine having just ten good years left. Rosamond, at his age, had been at the height of her powers.

Todd ran a hand through his dark hair and worked up a grin. “Things change,” he said philosophically. “Time moves on. Rosamond doesn’t have any use for a house like this now, and the taxes have been a nightmare for her daughter.”

Mitch was already thinking like a journalist, even though he’d sworn that he wouldn’t write again for at least a year. He was in the beginning stages of burnout, he had told his agent just that morning. He’d asked Ivan to get him an extension on his current contract, in fact. Now, six hours later, here he was thinking in terms of outlines and research material. “Rosamond Dallas must have earned millions, Todd. She was a star in every sense of the word. Why would the taxes on this place put a strain on anybody in her family?”

Todd unwrapped the stick of gum, folded it, accordion-fashion, into his mouth and tucked the papers into his pocket. “Rosamond had six husbands,” he answered after a moment or two of sad reflection. “Except for Riley Thompson—he’s a country and western singer and pays for her care over at Seaview—they were all jerks with a talent for picking the worst investments and the slowest horses.”

“But the profit from selling this house—”

“That will go to clear up the last of Rosamond’s personal debts. Shay won’t see a dime of it.”

“Shay. The daughter?”

Todd nodded. “You’ll meet her tonight. She’s Ivy’s best friend, works for Marvin Reese.”

Mitch couldn’t help smiling at the mention of Reese, even though he was depressed that someone could make a mark on the world the way Rosamond Dallas had and have nothing more to pass on to her daughter than a pile of debts. Ivy had written him often about her employer, who was something of a local celebrity and the owner of one of the largest new-and-used car operations in the state of Washington. Television commercials were Reese’s claim to fame; he had a real gift for the ridiculous.

Mitch’s smile faded away. “Did Shay grow up in this house, by any chance?” he asked. He couldn’t think why the answer should interest him, but it did.

“Like a lot of show people, Rosamond was something of a vagabond. Shay lived here when she was a little girl, on and off. Later, she spent a lot of time in Swiss boarding schools. Went to college for a couple of years, somewhere in Oregon, and that’s when she met—” Todd paused and looked sheepish. “Damn, I’ve said too much and probably bored you to death in the process. I should be talking about the house. I can have the papers ready by tonight, and I’ll leave my keys with you.”

He removed several labeled keys from a ring choked with similar ones and they clinked as they fell into Mitch’s palm. “Ivy mentioned dinner, didn’t she? You’ll be our guest, of course.”

Mitch nodded. Todd thanked him, shook his hand again and left.

When he was alone, Mitch went outside to explore the grounds, wondering at himself. He hadn’t intended to settle down. Certainly he hadn’t intended to buy a house. He had come to town to see Ivy and meet her future husband, to relax and maybe fish and sail a little, and he’d agreed to look at this house only because he’d been intrigued by his sister’s descriptions of it.

Out back he discovered an old-fashioned gazebo, almost hidden in tangles of climbing rosebushes. Pungently fragrant pink and yellow blossoms nodded in the dull, late morning sunshine, serenaded by bees. The realization that he would have to hire a gardener as well as a housekeeper made Mitch shake his head.

He rounded the gazebo and found another surprise, a little girl’s playhouse, painted white. The miniature structure was perfectly proportioned, with real cedar shingles on the roof and green shutters at the windows. Mitch Prescott, hunter of war criminals, infiltrator of half a dozen chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, trusted confidant of Colombian cocaine dealers, was enchanted.

He stepped nearer the playhouse. The paint was peeling and the shingles were loose and there were, he could see through the lilliputian front window, repairs to be made on the inside as well. Still, he smiled to imagine how Kelly, his seven-year-old daughter, would love to play here, in this strangely magical place, spinning the dreams and fantasies that came so easily to children.

Shay stormed out of Marvin’s office muttering, barely noticing Ivy, who sat at her computer terminal in the center of the reception room. “Bees…a half ton of sugar…that could kill me.…”

“Todd sold the house!” Ivy blurted as Shay fumbled for the knob on her office door.

She stopped cold, the storyboards for the outrageous commercials under one arm, and stared at Ivy, at once alarmed and hopeful. “Which house?” she asked in a voice just above a whisper.

Ivy’s aquamarine eyes were shining and her elegant cheekbones were tinted pink. “Yours—I mean, your mother’s. Oh, Shay, isn’t it wonderful? You’ll be able to clear up all those bills and Todd will make the biggest commission ever!”

Shay forgot her intention to lock herself up in her office and wallow in remorse for the rest of the afternoon. She set the storyboards aside and groped with a tremulous hand for a chair to draw up to Ivy’s desk. Of course she had been anxious to see that wonderful, magnificent burden of a house sold, but the reality filled her with a curious sense of sadness and loss. “Who bought it? Who could have come up with that kind of money?” she asked, speaking more to the cosmos than to Ivy.

Her friend sat up very straight in her chair and beamed proudly. “My brother, Mitch.”

Shay had a headache. She pulled in a steadying breath and tried to remember all that Ivy had told her, over the years, about her brother. He and Ivy did not share the same mother; in fact, Mitch and his stepmother avoided each other as much as possible. Shay had had the impression that Mitch Prescott was very successful, in some nebulous and unconventional way, and she remembered that he had once been married and had a child, a little girl if she remembered correctly. Probably because of the rift between himself and Ivy’s mother, he had rarely been to Skyler Beach.

Ivy looked as though she would burst. “I knew Mitch would want that house, if I could just get him to look at it,” she confided happily. But then she peered at Shay, her eyes wide and a bit worried. “Shay, are you all right? You look awful!”

Shay stood up and moved like a sleepwalker toward the privacy of her office.

“Shay?” Ivy called after her. “I thought you’d be pleased. I thought—”

Shay turned in the doorway, clutching the storyboards to her pale blue blouse. She smiled shakily and ran the fingers of her left hand through her hair, hoping the lie didn’t show in her eyes.

“I am happy,” she said. And then she went into the office, closed the door and hurled the storyboards across the room.

“Dinner?”

Ivy was clearly going to stand fast. “Don’t you dare say no, Shay Kendall. You wanted to be free of that house and Todd sold it for you and the least you can do is let us treat you to dinner to celebrate.”

Shay gathered up the last of the invoices she had been checking and put them into the basket on her desk. It had been a difficult day, what with the planning of the commercials and that salesman making his speech on the front lot. Of course, it was a blessing that the house had been sold and she was relieved to be free of the financial burden it had represented, but parting with the place was something of an emotional shock all the same. She would have preferred to spend the evening at home, lounging about with a good book and maybe feeling a little sorry for herself. “Your brother will be there, I suppose.”

“Of course,” Ivy replied with a shrug. “After all, he’s the buyer.”

Shay felt a nip of envy. What would it be like to be able to buy a house like that? For a very long time, she had nursed a secret dream of starting her own catering business and being such a smashing success that she could afford to keep the place for herself and Hank. “I have to stop by Seaview to see Rosamond on my way home,” she said, hoping to avoid having dinner out. “And then, of course, there’s Hank.…”

“Shay.”

She sighed and pushed back her desk chair to stand up. “All right, all right. I’ll spend a few minutes at Seaview and get a sitter for the evening.”

Ivy’s lovely face was alight again. “Great!” she chimed, turning to leave Shay’s office.

“Wait,” Shay said firmly, stopping her friend in the doorway.

Ivy looked back over one shoulder, her pretty hair following the turn of her head in a rhythmic flow of fine gold. “What?”

“Don’t get any ideas about fixing me up with your brother, Ivy, because I’m not interested. Is that clear?”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “Oh, for pity’s sake!” she cried dramatically.

“I mean it, Ivy.”

“Meet us at the Wharf at eight,” Ivy said, and then she waltzed out, closing Shay’s door behind her.

Shay locked her desk, picked up her purse and cast one last disdainful look at the storyboards propped along the back of her bookshelf before leaving. She tried to be happy about the assignment and the money it would bring in, tried to be glad that the elegant house high above the beach was no longer her responsibility, tried to look forward to a marvelous dinner at Skyler Beach’s finest restaurant. But, as she drove toward Seaview Convalescent Home, it was all Shay could do to keep from pulling over to the side of road, dropping her forehead to the steering wheel and crying.

Chapter Two

Shay Kendall looked nothing like her illustrious mother, Mitch thought as he watched her enter the restaurant. No, she was far more beautiful: tall with lush brown hair that fell past her shoulders in gentle tumbles of curl, and her eyes were a blend of green and brown, flecked with gold.

She wore a simple white cotton sundress and high-heeled sandals and when Ivy introduced her and she extended her hand to Mitch, something in her touch crackled up his arm and elbowed his heart. It was a sudden, painful jolt, a Sunday punch, and Mitch was off balance. To cover this, he made a subtle production of drawing back her chair and took his time rounding the table to sit down across from her.

Ivy and Todd, having greeted Shay, were now standing in front of the lobster tank, which ran the length of one wall, eagerly choosing their dinner. Their easy laughter drifted over the muted chatter of the other guests to the table beside the window.

Shay was looking out through the glass; beyond it, spatters of fading daylight danced on an ocean tinted with the pinks and golds and deep lavenders of sunset. Her eyes followed the gulls as they swooped and dived over the water, giving their raucous cries, and a slight smile curved her lips. An overwhelming feeling of tenderness filled Mitch as he watched her.

He had to say something, start a conversation. He sliced one irate glance in Ivy’s direction, feeling deserted, and then plunged in with, “Ivy tells me that the house I bought belonged to your mother.”

The moderation with which Mitch spoke surprised him, considering that he could see the merest hint of rosy nipples through the whispery fabric of Shay’s dress. He took a steadying gulp of the white wine Todd had ordered earlier.

The hazel eyes came reluctantly to his, flickered with pain and then inward laughter at some memory. Mitch imagined Shay as a little girl, playing in that miniature house behind the gazebo, and the picture slowed down his respiration rate.

“Yes.” Her voice was soft and she tossed a wistful glance toward Ivy and Todd, who were still studying their unsuspecting prey at the lobster tanks. In that instant Shay was a woman again, however vulnerable, and Mitch was rocked by the quicksilver change in her.

He tried to transform her back into the child. “That little house in back, was that yours?”

Shay smiled and nodded. “I used to spend hours there. At the time, it was completely furnished, right down to china dishes—” She fell silent and her beautiful eyes strayed again to the water beyond the window. “I only lived there for a few years,” she finished quietly.

Mitch began to wish that he had never seen Rosamond Dallas’s house, let alone bought it. He felt as though he had stolen something precious from this woman and he supposed that, in a way, he had. He was relieved when Ivy and Todd came back to the table, laughing between themselves and holding hands.

He was so handsome.

Nothing Ivy had ever said about Mitch Prescott had prepared Shay for the first jarring sight of him. He was a few inches taller than she was, with broad shoulders and hair of a toasted caramel shade, but it was his eyes that unsettled her the most. They were a deep brown, quick and brazen and tender, all at once. His hands looked strong, and they were dusted with butternut-gold hair, as was the generous expanse of chest revealed by his open-throated white shirt. He had just the suggestion of a beard and the effect was one of quiet, inexorable masculinity.

Here was a man, Shay decided uneasily, who had no self-doubts at all. He was probably arrogant.

She sat up a little straighter and tried to ignore him. His vitality stirred her in a most disturbing way. What would it be like to be caressed by those deft, confident hands?

Shay’s arm trembled a little as she reached out for her wineglass. Fantasies sprang, scary and delicious, into her mind, and she battled them fiercely. God knew, she reminded herself, Eliott Kendall had taught her all she needed or wanted to know about men.

Ivy was chattering as she sat down, her eyes bright with the love she bore Todd Simmons and the excitement of having her adored brother nearby. “Aren’t you going to pick out which lobster you want?” she demanded, looking from Shay to Mitch with good-natured impatience.

“I make it a point,” Mitch said flatly, “never to eat anything I’ve seen groveling on the bottom of a fish tank. I’ll have steak.”

Ivy’s lower lip jutted out prettily and she turned to Shay. “What about you? You’re having lobster, aren’t you?”

Shay grabbed for her menu and hid behind it. Why hadn’t she followed her instincts and stayed home? She should have known she wouldn’t be able to handle this evening, not after the day she’d had. Not after losing—selling the house.

“Shay?” Ivy prodded.

“I’ll have lobster,” Shay conceded, mostly because she couldn’t make sense of the menu. She felt silly. Good Lord, she was twenty-nine years old, self-supporting, the mother of a six-year-old son, and here she was, cowering behind a hunk of plastic-covered paper.

“Well, go choose one then!”

Shay shook her head. “I’ll let the waiter do that,” she said lamely. I’m in no mood to sign a death warrant, she thought. Or the papers that will release that very special house to a stranger.

She lowered the menu and her eyes locked with Mitch Prescott’s thoughtful gaze. She felt as though he’d bared her breasts or something, even though there was nothing objectionable in his regard. Beneath her dress her nipples tightened in response, and she felt a hot flush pool on her cheekbones.

Mitch smiled then, almost imperceptibly, and his eyes—God, she had to be imagining it, she thought—transmitted a quietly confident acknowledgment, not to mention a promise.

A wave of heat passed over Shay, so dizzying that she had to drop her eyes and grip the arms of her chair for a moment. Stop it, she said to herself. You don’t even know this man.

A waiter appeared and, vaguely, Shay heard Todd ordering dinner.

Ivy startled her back to full alertness by announcing, “Shay’s going to be a star. I’ll bet she’ll be so good that Marvin will want her to do all the commercials.”

“Ivy!” Shay protested, embarrassed beyond bearing. Out of the corner of one eye she saw Mitch Prescott’s mouth twitch slightly.

“What’s the big secret?” Ivy complained. “Everybody in western Washington is going to see you anyway. You’ll be famous.”

“Or infamous,” Todd teased, but his eyes were gentle. “How is your mother, Shay?”

Shay didn’t like to discuss Rosamond, but the subject was infinitely preferable to having Ivy leap into a full and mortifying description of the commercials Shay would begin filming the following week, after Marvin and Jeannie departed for faraway places. “She’s about the same,” she said miserably.

The salads arrived and Shay pretended to be ravenous, since no one would expect her to talk with her mouth full of lettuce and house dressing. Mercifully, the conversation shifted to Todd’s dream of building a series of condominiums on a stretch of property south of Skyler Beach.

Throughout dinner, Ivy chattered about her Christmas wedding, and when the plates had been removed, Todd brought out the papers that would transfer ownership of Rosamond’s last grand house to Mitch. Shay signed them with a burning lump in her throat and, when Ivy and Todd went off to the lounge to dance, she moved to make her escape.

“Wait,” Mitch said with gruff tenderness, and though he didn’t touch Shay in any physical way, he restrained her with that one word.

She sank back into her chair, near tears. “I know I haven’t been very good company. I’m sorry.…”

His hand came across the table and his fingers were warm and gentle on Shay’s wrist. A tingling tremor moved through her and she wanted to die because she knew Mitch had felt it and possibly guessed its meaning. “Let me take you home,” he said.

For a moment Shay was tempted to accept, even though she was terrified at the thought of being alone with this particular man. “I have my car,” she managed to say, and inwardly she despaired because she knew she must seem colorless and tongue-tied to Mitch and a part of her wanted very much to impress him.

He rose and pulled back her chair for her, escorted her as far as her elderly brown Toyota on the far side of the parking lot. There were deep grooves in his cheeks when he smiled at Shay’s nervous efforts to open the car door. When she was finally settled behind the steering wheel, Mitch lingered, bending slightly to look through the open window, and there was an expression of bafflement in his eyes. He probably wondered why there were three arthritic French fries, a fast-food carton and one worn-out sneaker resting on the opposite seat.

“I’m sorry, Shay,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“About the house. About the hard time Ivy gave you.”

Shay was surprised to find herself smiling. She started the car and shifted into Reverse; there was hope, after all, of making a dignified exit. “No problem,” she said brightly. “I’m used to Ivy. Enjoy the house.”

Mitch nodded and Shay backed up with a flourish, feeling oddly relieved and even a bit dashing. Oh, for an Isadora Duncan–style scarf to flow dramatically behind her as she swept away! She was her mother’s daughter after all.

She waved at Mitch Prescott and started into the light evening traffic just as the muffler fell off her car, clattering on the asphalt.

Mitch was there instantly, doing his best not to grin. Shay went from wanting to impress him to wanting to slap him across the face. The roar of the engine was deafening; she backed into the parking lot and turned off the ignition.

Without a word, Mitch opened the door and when Shay got out, he took her arm and escorted her toward a shiny foreign status symbol with a sliding sunroof and spoked wheels. The muffler wouldn’t dare fall off this car.

“Where do you live?” Mitch asked reasonably.

Shay muttered directions, unable to look at him. Damn. First he’d seen her old car virtually fall apart before his eyes and now he was going to see her rented house with its sagging stoop and peeling paint. The grass out front needed cutting and the mailbox leaned to one side and the picture windows, out of keeping with the pre–World War II design, gave the place a look of wide-eyed surprise.

By the time Mitch’s sleek car came to a stop in front of Shay’s house, it was dark enough to cover major flaws. The screen door flew open and Hank burst into the glow of the porchlight, his teenage babysitter, Sally, behind him.

“Mom!” he whooped, bounding down the front walk on bare feet. “Wow! That’s some awesome car!”

Shay was smiling again; her son had a way of putting things into perspective. Sagging stoop be damned. She was rich because she had Hank.

She turned to Mitch, opening her own door as she did so, and put down a foolish urge to invite him inside. “Good night, Mr. Prescott, and thank you.”

He inclined his head slightly in answer and Shay felt an incomprehensible yearning to be kissed. She got out of the car and cut Hank off at the gate.

“Who was that?” the little boy wanted to know.

Shay ruffled his red-brown hair with one hand and ushered him back down the walk. “The man who bought Rosamond’s house.”

“Uncle Garrett called,” Hank announced when they were inside.

Shay paid the babysitter, kicked off her high-heeled sandals and sank onto her scratchy garage-sale couch. Garrett Thompson had been her stepbrother, during Rosamond’s Nashville phase, and though Shay rarely saw him, their relationship was a close one.

Hank was dancing from one foot to the other, obviously ready to burst. “Uncle Garrett called!” he repeated.

“Did he want me to call him back?” Shay asked, resting her feet on the coffee table with a sigh of relief.

Hank shook his head. “He’s coming here. He bought a house you can drive and he’s going fishing and he wants me to go, too!”

Shay frowned. “A house—oh. You mean a motor home.”

“Yeah. Can I go with him, Mom? Please?”

“That depends, tiger. Maggie and the kids will be going, too, I suppose?”

Hank nodded and Shay felt a pang at his eagerness, even though she understood. He was a little boy, after all, and he needed masculine companionship. He adored Garrett and the feeling appeared to be mutual. “We’d be gone a whole month.”

Shay closed her eyes. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Hank,” she said. “I’ve had a long day and I’m too tired to make any decisions.”

Anxious to stay in his mother’s good graces, Hank got ready for bed without being told. Shay went into his room and gave his freckled forehead a kiss. When he protested, she tickled him into a spate of sleepy giggles.

“I love you,” she said moments later, from his doorway.

“Ah, Mom,” he complained.

Smiling, Shay closed the door and went into her own room for baby-doll pajamas and a robe. After taking a quick bath and brushing her teeth, she was ready for bed.

She was not, however, ready for the heated fantasies that awaited her there, in that empty expanse of smooth sheets. She fell asleep imagining the weight of Mitch Prescott’s body resting upon her own.

The next day was calm compared to the one before it. Shay’s car had been brought to Reese Motors and repaired and she left work early in order to spend an hour with her mother before going home.

Rosamond sat near a broad window overlooking much of Skyler Beach, her thin, graceful hands folded in her lap, her long hair a stream of glistening, gray-marbled ebony tumbling down her back. On her lap she held the large rag doll Shay had bought for her six months before, when Rosamond had taken to wandering the halls of the convalescent home, day and night, sobbing that she’d lost her baby—couldn’t someone please help her find her baby?

She had seemed content with the doll and even now she would clutch it close if anyone so much as glanced at it with interest, but Rosamond no longer cried or questioned or walked the halls. She was trapped inside herself forever, and there was no knowing whether or not she understood anything that happened around her.

On the off chance that some part of Rosamond was still aware, Shay visited often and talked to her mother as though nothing had changed between them. She told funny stories about Marvin and his crazy commercials and about the salesmen and about Hank.

Today there were no stories Shay wanted to tell, and she couldn’t bring herself to mention that the beautiful house beside the sea, with its playhouse and its gazebo and its gardens of pastel rhododendrons, had been sold.

She stepped over the threshold of her mother’s pleasant room and let the door whisk shut behind her, blessing Garrett’s father, Riley Thompson, for being willing to pay Seaview’s hefty rates. It was generous of him, considering that he and Rosamond had been divorced for some fifteen years.

“Hello, Mother,” she said quietly.

Rosamond looked up with a familiar expression of bafflement in her wide eyes and held the doll close. She began to rock in her small cushioned chair.

Shay crossed the room and sank into another chair, facing Rosamond’s. There was no resemblance between the two women; Rosamond’s hair was raven-black, though streaked with gray now, and her eyes were violet, while Shay’s were hazel and her hair was merely brown. As a child Shay had longed to be transformed into a mirror image of her mother.

“Mother?” she prompted, hating the silence.

Rosamond hugged the doll and rocked faster.

Shay worked up a shaky smile and her voice had a falsely bright note when she spoke again. “It’s almost dinnertime. Are you getting hungry?”

There was no answer, of course. There never was. Shay talked until she could bear the sound of her own voice no longer and then kissed her mother’s papery forehead and left.

The box, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk in front of Shay Kendall’s house, was enormous. The name of a local appliance store was imprinted on one side and, as Mitch approached, he saw the crooked coin slot and the intriguing words, Lemmonad, Ten Sens, finger-painted above a square opening. He grinned and produced two nickels from the pocket of his jeans, dropping them through the slot.

They clinked on the sidewalk. The box jiggled a bit, curious sounds came from inside, and then a small freckled hand jutted out through the larger opening, clutching a grubby paper cup filled with lemonade.

Mitch chuckled, crouching as he accepted the cup. “How’s business?”

“Vending machines don’t talk, mister,” replied the box.

Some poor mosquito had met his fate in the lemonade and Mitch tried to be subtle about pouring the stuff into the gutter behind him. “Is your mother home?” he asked.

“No,” came the cardboard-muffled answer. “But my babysitter is here. She’s putting gunk on her toenails.”

“I see.”

A face appeared where the cup of lemonade had been dispensed. “Are you the guy who brought my mom home last night?”

“Yep.” Mitch extended a hand, which was immediately clasped by a smaller, stickier one. “My name is Mitch Prescott. What’s yours?”

“Hank Kendall. Really, my name is Henry. Who’d want people callin’ ’em Henry?”

“Who indeed?” Mitch countered, biting back another grin. “Think your mom will be home soon?”

The face filling the gap in the cardboard moved in a nod. “She visits Rosamond after work sometimes. Rosamond is weird.”

“Oh? How so?”

“You’re not a kidnapper or anything, are you? Mom says I’m not supposed to talk to strangers. Not ever.”

“And she’s right. In this case, it’s safe, because I’m not a kidnapper, but, as a general rule—”

The box jiggled again and then toppled to one side, revealing a skinny little boy dressed in blue shorts and a T-shirt, along with a pitcher of lemonade and a stack of paper cups. “Rosamond doesn’t talk or anything, and sometimes she sits on my mom’s lap, just like I used to do when I was a little kid.”

Mitch was touched. He sighed as he stood upright again. Before he could think of anything to say in reply, the screen door snapped open and the babysitter was mincing down the walk, trying not to spoil her mulberry toenails. At almost the same moment, Shay’s Toyota wheezed to a stop behind Mitch’s car.

He wished he had an excuse for being there. What the hell was he going to say to explain it? That he’d been awake all night and miserable all day because he wanted Shay Kendall in a way he had never before wanted any woman?

Mitch was wearing jeans and a dark blue sports shirt and the sight of him almost made Shay drop the bucket of take-out chicken she carried in the curve of one arm. Go away, go away, she thought. “Would you like to stay to dinner?” she asked aloud.

He looked inordinately relieved. “Sounds good,” he said.

Sally wobbled, toes upturned, over to stand beside Shay. “Who’s the hunk?” she asked in a stage whisper that sent color pulsing into her employer’s face.

Shay stumbled through an introduction and was glad when Sally left for the day. Mitch watched her move down the sidewalk to her own gate with a grin. “I hope her toenails dry before the bones in her feet are permanently affected,” he said.

“Dumb girl,” Hank added, who secretly adored Sally.

The telephone was ringing as Shay led the way up the walk; Hank surged around her and bounded into the house to grab the receiver and shout, “Hello!”

“Why are you here?” Shay asked softly as Mitch opened the screen door for her.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

Hank was literally jumping up and down, holding the receiver out to Shay. “It’s Uncle Garrett! It’s Uncle Garrett!”

Shay smiled at the exuberance in her son’s face, though it stung just a little, and handed the bucket of chicken to Mitch so that she could accept the call.

“Hi, Amazon,” Garrett greeted her. “What’s the latest?”

Shay was reassured by the familiar voice, even if it was coming from hundreds of miles away. The teasing nickname, conferred upon Shay during the adolescent years when she had been taller than Garrett, was welcome, too. “You don’t want to know,” she answered, thinking of the upcoming commercials and the attraction she felt toward the man standing behind her with a bucket of chicken in his arms.

Garrett laughed. “Yes, I do, but I’ll get it out of you later. Right now, I want to find out if Maggie and I can borrow Hank for a month.”

Shay swallowed hard. “A month?”

“Come on, mother hen. He needs to spend time with me, and you know it.”

“But…a month.”

“We’ve got big stuff planned, Shay. Camping. Fishing.” There was a brief pause. “And two weeks at Dad’s ranch.”

Shay was fond of Riley Thompson; of all her six stepfathers, he had been the only one who hadn’t seemed to regard her as an intruder. “How is Riley?”

“Great,” Garrett answered. “You’ve heard his new hit, I assume. He’s got a string of concerts booked and there’s talk that he’ll be nominated for another Grammy this year. You wouldn’t mind, would you, Shay, our taking Hank to his place, I mean? Dad wants to get to know him.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s your kid, Amazon.”

Shay felt sad, remembering how empty that big beautiful house overlooking the sea had been after Riley and Garrett had moved out. Everyone knew that the divorce had nearly destroyed Riley; he’d loved Rosamond and chances were that he loved her still. “I want you to tell him, for me, how much I appreciate all he’s done for my mother. God knows what kind of place she’d have to stay in if he weren’t paying the bills.”

“Shay, if you need money—”

Shay could hear Hank and Mitch in the kitchen. It sounded as though they were setting the table, and Hank was chattering about his beloved Uncle Garrett, who had a house that could be “drived” just like a car.

“I don’t need money,” she whispered into the phone. “Don’t you dare offer!”

Garrett sighed. “All right, all right. Maggie wants to talk to you.”

Garrett’s wife came on the line then; she was an Australian and Shay loved the sound of her voice. By the time the conversation was over, she had agreed to let Hank spend the next four weeks with the Thompsons and their two children.

She hung up, dashed away tears she could not have explained, and wandered into the kitchen, expecting to find Mitch and Hank waiting for her. The small table was clear.

“Out here, Mom!” Hank called.

Shay followed the voice onto the small patio in back. The chicken and potato salad and coleslaw had been set out on the sturdy little picnic table left behind by the last tenant, along with plates and silverware and glasses of milk.

“Do I get to go?” Hank’s voice was small and breathless with hope.

Shay took her seat on the bench beside Mitch, because that was the way the table had been set, and smiled at her son. “Yes, you get to go,” she answered, and the words came out hoarsely.

Hank gave a whoop of delight and then was too excited to eat. He begged to be excused so that he could go and tell his best friend, Louie, all about the forthcoming adventure.

The moment he was gone, Shay dissolved in tears. She was amazed at herself—she had not expected to cry—and still more amazed that Mitch Prescott drew her so easily into his arms and held her. There she was, blubbering all over his fancy blue sports shirt like a fool, and all he did was tangle one gentle hand in her hair and rock her back and forth.

It had been a very long time since Shay had had a shoulder to cry on, and humiliating as it was, silly as it was, it was a sweet indulgence.

Chapter Three

“Tell me about Shay Kendall,” Mitch said evenly, and his hand trembled a little as he poured coffee from the restaurant carafe into Ivy’s cup.

Ivy grinned and lifted the steaming brew to her lips. “Are you this subtle with stool pigeons and talkative members of the Klan?”

“Dammit,” Mitch retorted with terse impatience, “don’t say things like that.”

“Sorry,” Ivy whispered, her eyes sparkling.

Mitch sat back in the vinyl booth. The small downtown restaurant was full of office workers and housewives with loud little kids demanding ice cream; after a second night in that cavernous house of his, he found the hubbub refreshing. “I asked about Ms. Kendall.”

Ivy shrugged. “Very nice person. Terrific mother. Good office manager. Didn’t you find out anything last night? You said you had dinner with Shay.”

Mitch’s jaw tightened, relaxed again. “She was married,” he prompted.

Ivy looked very uncomfortable. “That was a long time ago. I’ve never met the guy.”

Mitch sipped his coffee in a leisurely way and took his time before saying, “But you know all about him, don’t you? You’re Shay’s friend.”

“Her best friend,” Ivy confirmed with an element of pride that said a great deal about Shay all by itself. A second later her blue eyes shifted from Mitch’s face to the sidewalk just on the other side of the window and her shoulders slumped a little. “I don’t like talking about Shay’s private life. It seems…it seems disloyal.”

He sighed. “I suppose it is,” he agreed.

Ivy’s eyes widened as a waitress arrived with club sandwiches, set the plates down and left. “Mitch, you wouldn’t—you’re not planning to write a book about Rosamond Dallas, are you?”

Mitch recalled his telephone conversation with his agent that morning and sorely regretted mentioning that the house he’d just bought had once belonged to the movie star. Ivan had jumped right on that bit of information, reminding Mitch that he was under contract for one more book and pointing out that a biography of Ms. Dallas, authorized or not, would sell faster than the presses could turn out new copies.

He braced both arms against the edge of the table and leaned toward his sister, glaring. “Why would I, a mild-mannered venture capitalist, want to write a book?”

Ivy was subdued by the reprimand, but her eyes were suspicious. “Okay, okay, I shouldn’t have put it quite that way.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Are you writing about Shay’s mother or not?”

Mitch rolled his eyes. “Dammit, I don’t know,” he lied. The truth was that he had already agreed to do the book. Rosamond Dallas’s whereabouts, long a mystery to the world in general, were now known, thanks to the thoughtless remark he’d made to Ivan. Mitch knew without being told that if he didn’t undertake the project, his agent would send another writer to do it, and unless he missed his guess, that writer would be Lucetta White, a barracuda in Gucci.

Lucetta was no lover of truth, and she made it a practice to ruin at least three careers and a marriage every day before breakfast, just to stay in top form. If she got hold of Rosamond’s story, the result would be a vicious disaster of a book that would ride the major best-seller lists for months.

“Shay’s husband was a coach or a teacher or something,” Ivy said, jolting Mitch back to reality. “He was a lot older than she was, too. Anyway, he embezzled a small fortune from a high school in Cedar Landing, that’s a little place just over the state line, in Oregon.”

“And?”

“And Shay was pregnant at the time. She found out at her baby shower, if you can believe it. Somebody just walked in and said, ‘guess what?’”

“My God.”

“There was another woman involved, naturally.”

Mitch was making mental notes; he would wait until later to ask his sister what had prompted her to divulge all this information. For the moment, he didn’t want to chance breaking the flow. “Does anybody know where they are, Shay’s ex-husband and this woman, I mean?”

Ivy shrugged. “Nobody cares except the police. Shay received divorce papers from somewhere in Mexico a few weeks after he left, but that was over six years ago. The creep could be anyplace by now.”

“Who was the other woman?”

“Are you ready for this? It was the local librarian. Everybody thought she was so prim and proper and she turned out to be a mud wrestler at heart.”

If it hadn’t been for an aching sense of the humiliation Shay must have suffered over the incident, Mitch would have laughed at Ivy’s description of the librarian. “Appearances are deceiving,” he said.

“Are they, Mitch?” Ivy countered immediately. “I hope not, because when I look at you, I see a person I can trust.”

“Why did you tell me about Shay’s past, Ivy? You were dead set against it a minute ago.”

Ivy lifted her chin and began methodically removing frilled toothpicks from the sections of her sandwich. “I just thought you should know why she’s…why she’s shy.”

Mitch wondered if “shy” was the proper word to describe Shay Kendall. Even though she’d wept in his arms the night before, on the bench of a rickety backyard picnic table, he sensed that she had a steel core. She was clearly a survivor. Hadn’t she picked herself up after what must have been a devastating blow, found herself a good job, supported herself and her son? “Didn’t Rosamond do anything to help Shay after Kendall took off with his mud wrestler?”

Ivy stopped chewing and swallowed, her eyes snapping. “She didn’t lift a finger. Shay makes excuses for her, but I think the illustrious Ms. Dallas must have been an egotistical, self-centered bitch.”

Mitch considered that a distinct possibility, but he decided to reserve judgment until he had the facts.

After they had eaten their club sandwiches, Mitch drove his sister back to Reese Motors and her job. One hand on the inside handle of the car door, she gazed at her brother with wide, frightened eyes. “All those things in your books, Mitch—did you really know all those terrible people?”

He had hedged enough for one day, he decided. “Yes. And unless you want all those ‘terrible people’ to find out who and where I am, you’d better learn to be a little more discreet.”

Tears sparkled in Ivy’s eyes and shimmered on her lower lashes. “If anything happened to you—”

“Nothing is going to happen to me.” How many times had he said that to Reba, his ex-wife? In the end, words hadn’t been enough; she hadn’t been able to live with the fears that haunted her. The divorce had at least been amicable; Reba was married again now, to a chiropractor with a flourishing practice and a suitably predictable lifestyle. He made a mental note to call and ask her to let Kelly come to visit for a few weeks.

Ivy didn’t look reassured, but she did reach over and plant a hasty kiss on Mitch’s cheek. A moment later she was scampering toward the entrance to the main showroom.

Mitch went shopping. He bought extra telephones in one store, pencils and spiral notebooks in another, steak and the makings of a salad in still another. He reflected, on his way home, that it might be time to get married again. He didn’t mind cooking, but he sure as hell hated eating alone.

Shay carried a bag of groceries and several sacks containing new clothes for Hank’s trip with Garrett and Maggie. She resisted an urge to kiss the top of her son’s head after setting her purchases down on the kitchen table.

“How was work?” he asked, crawling onto a stool beside the breakfast bar that had, like the picture windows in the living room, been something of an architectural afterthought.

Shay groaned and rolled her eyes. “I spent most of it being fitted for costumes.”

Hank was swinging his bare feet back and forth and there was an angry-looking mosquito bite on his right knee. “Costumes? What do you need costumes for? Halloween?”

Shay brought a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon and other miscellaneous items from the grocery bag. “Something similar, I’m afraid,” she said ruefully. “I’m going to be doing four commercials.”

Hank’s feet stopped swinging and his brown eyes grew very wide. “You mean the kind of commercials Mr. Reese does? On TV?”

“Of course, on TV,” Shay answered somewhat shortly. “Mr. and Mrs. Reese are going to be away, so I’ll have to take Mr. Reese’s place.”

“Wow,” Hank crowed, drawing the word out, his eyes shining with admiration. “Everybody will see you and know you’re my mom! I betcha I could get a quarter for your autograph!”

A feeling of sadness washed over Shay; she recalled how people had waited for hours to ask Rosamond for her autograph. She had signed with a loopy flourish, Rosamond had, so friendly, so full of life, so certain of her place in a bright constellation of stars. Did that same vibrant woman exist somewhere inside the Rosamond of today?

“You’re thinking about your mom, aren’t you?” Hank wanted to know.

“Yes.”

“Sally’s mother says you should write a book about Rosamond. If you did, we’d be rich.”

Shay took a casserole prepared on one of her marathon cooking days from the small chest freezer in one corner of the kitchen and slid it into the oven. She’d been approached with the idea of a book before, and she hated it. Telling Rosamond’s most intimate secrets to the world would be a betrayal of sorts, a form of exploitation, and besides, she was no writer. “Scratch that plan, tiger,” she said tightly. “There isn’t going to be a book and we’re not going to be rich.”

“Uncle Garrett is rich.”

“Uncle Garrett is the son of a world-famous country and western singer and a successful businessman in his own right,” Shay pointed out.

“Rosamond was famous. How come you’re not rich?”

“Because I’m not. Set the table, please.”

“Sally’s mother says she had a whole lot of husbands. Which one was your dad, Mom? You never talk about your dad.”

Shay made a production of washing her hands at the sink, keeping her back to Hank. How could she explain that her father had never been Rosamond’s husband at all, that he’d been the proverbial boy back home, left behind when stardom beckoned? “I didn’t know my father,” she said over the sound of running water. In point of fact, she didn’t even know his name.

Hank was busily setting out plates and silverware and plastic tumblers. “I guess we’re alike that way, huh, Mom?”

Shay’s eyes burned with sudden tears and she cursed Eliott Kendall for never caring enough to call or write and ask about his own son. “I guess so.”

“I like that guy with the blue car.”

Mitch. Shay found herself smiling. She sniffled and turned to face Hank. “I like him, too.”

“Are you going to go out with him, on dates and stuff?”

“I don’t know,” Shay said, unsettled again. “Hey, it’ll be a while until dinner is ready. How about trying on some of this stuff I bought for your camping trip? Maggie and Garrett will be here Saturday, so if I have to make any exchanges, I’d like to take care of it tonight.”

The telephone rang as Shay was slicing cucumbers for a salad, and there was a peculiar jiggling in the pit of her stomach as she reached out one hand for the receiver. She hoped that the caller would be Mitch Prescott and then, at the nervous catching of her breath in her throat, hoped not.

“Shay?” The feminine voice rang like crystal chimes over the wires. “This is Jeannie Reese.”

Mingled relief and disappointment made Shay’s knees weak; she reached out with one foot for a stool and drew it near enough to sit upon. With the telephone receiver wedged between her ear and her shoulder, she went on slicing. “All ready for the big trip?” she asked, and her voice was as tremulous as her hands. If she didn’t watch it, she’d cut herself.

“Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. We couldn’t get away if it weren’t for you. Shay, I’m so grateful.”

“It was the least I could do,” Shay replied, thinking of how frightened and alone she’d been when she had come back to Skyler Beach hoping to take refuge in her childhood home and found herself completely on her own. The Reeses had made all the difference. “What’s up?”

“I know it’s gauche, but I’m throwing my own going-away party. It’ll be at our beach house, this Saturday night. Can I count on you to be there?”

By Saturday night, Hank would be gone. The house would be entirely too quiet and the first television commercial would be looming directly ahead. A distraction, especially one of the Reeses’ elegant parties, would be welcome. “Is it formal?”

“Dress to the teeth, my dear.”

Shay tossed the last of the cucumber slices into the salad bowl and started in on the scallions. Her wardrobe consisted mostly of work or casual clothing; she was either going to have to buy a new outfit or drag the sewing machine out of the back of her closet and make one. “What time?”

“Eight,” Jeannie sang. “Ciao, darling. I’ve got fifty-six more people to call.”

Shay grinned. “Ciao,” she said, hanging up.

Almost instantly, the telephone rang again. This time the caller was Ivy. “You’ve heard about the party, I suppose?”

“Only seconds ago. How did you find out so fast?”

“Mrs. Reese appointed me to make some of the calls. Shay, what are you going to wear?”

“I don’t know.” The answer was sighed rather than spoken.

“We could hit the mall tomorrow, after work.”

“No chance. I’ve got too much to do. It’s tonight or nothing.”

Ivy loved to shop and her voice was a disappointed wail. “Oh, damn! I can’t turn a wheel tonight! I’ve got to sit right here in my apartment, calling all the Reeses’ friends. Promise me you’ll splurge, buy something really spectacular!”

Shay scraped a pile of chopped scallions into one hand with the blade of her knife and frowned suspiciously. “Ivy, what are you up to?”

“Up to?” Ivy echoed, all innocence.

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re awfully concerned, it seems to me, about how I plan to dress for the Reese party.”

“I just want you to look good.”

“For your brother, perhaps?”

“Shay Kendall!”

“Come on, Ivy. Come clean. He’s going to be there, isn’t he?”

“Well, I did suggest…”

Shay laughed, even though the pit of her stomach was jumping again and her heart was beating too fast. “That’s what I thought. Has it occurred to you, dear, that if Mitch wanted to see me again he would call me himself?”

“He did drop in for chicken last night,” Ivy reminded her friend.

Shay blushed to remember the way she had sobbed in Mitch’s arms like a shattered child. She’d probably scared him off for good. “That didn’t go too well. Don’t get your hopes up, Ivy.”

“Buy something fabulous,” insisted the irrepressible Ivy. And then she rang off.

By the time Hank had paraded through the kitchen in each of his new outfits—by some miracle, only one pair of jeans would have to be returned—the casserole was finished. Mother and son sat down to eat and then, after clearing the table and leaving the dishes to soak, they went off to the mall.

Exchanging the jeans took only minutes, but Shay spent a full hour in the fabric store, checking out patterns and material. Finally, after much deliberation, she selected a material that would make a nice floaty black skirt. In a boutique across the way, she bought a daring silver and black top, holding her breath the whole while. The shirt, while gorgeous, was heavy and impractical and far too expensive. Would she even have the nerve to wear it?

Twice, on the way back to her car, Shay stopped in her tracks. What was she doing, spending this kind of money for one party? She had to return the shirt.

It was Hank who stopped her from doing just that. “You’ll look real pretty in that shiny shirt, Mom,” he said.

Shay drew a deep breath and marched onward to the car. Every woman needed to wear something wickedly glamorous, at least once in her life. Rosamond had owned closetfuls of such things.

The telephone was ringing when Shay entered the house, and Hank leaped for the living room extension. He was a born positive-thinker, expecting every call to bring momentous news.

“Yeah, she’s here. Mom!”

Shay dropped her purchases on the couch and crossed the room to take the call. She was completely unprepared for the voice on the other end of the line, much as she’d hoped and dreaded to hear it earlier.

“You’ve heard about the party, I presume?” Mitch Prescott asked with that quiet gruffness that put everything feminine within Shay on instant red alert.

“Yes,” she managed to answer.

“I don’t think I can face it alone. How about lending me moral support?”

Shay couldn’t imagine Mitch shrinking from anything, or needing moral support, but she felt a certain terrified gladness at the prospect of being asked to go to the party with him. “Being a sworn humanitarian,” she teased, “I couldn’t possibly refuse such a request.”

His sigh of relief was an exaggerated one. “Thank you.”

Shay laughed. “Were you really that afraid of a simple party?”

“No. I was afraid you’d say no. That, of course, would have been devastating to my masculine ego.”

“We can’t have that,” Shay responded airily, glad that he couldn’t see her and know that she was blushing like a high-schooler looking forward to her first prom. “The Reeses’ beach house is quite a distance from town. We’d better leave at least a half an hour early.”

“Seven?”

“Seven,” Shay confirmed. The party, something of an obligation before, was suddenly the focal point of her existence; she was dizzy with excitement and a certain amount of chagrin that such an event could be so important to her. Shouldn’t she be dreading her son’s imminent departure instead of looking past it to a drive along miles and miles of moon-washed shore?

While Hank was taking his bath, under protest, Shay washed the dishes she’d left to soak and then got out her sewing machine. She was up long after midnight, adjusting the pattern and cutting out her silky skirt. Finally she stumbled off to bed.

The next day was what Hank would have called “hairy.” Three salesmen quit, Ivy went home sick and the people at Seaview called to say that Rosamond seemed to be in some kind of state.

“What kind of ‘state’?” a harried Shay barked into the receiver of the telephone in her office.

“She’s curled up in her bed,” answered the young and obviously inexperienced nurse. “She’s crying and calling for the baby.”

“Have you called her doctor?”

“He’s playing golf today.”

“Oh, at his rates, that’s just terrific!” Shay snapped. “You get him over there if you have to drag him off the course. Does Mother have her doll?”

“What doll?”

“The rag doll. The one she won’t be without.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Find it!”

“I’ll call you back in a few minutes, Mrs. Kendall.”

“See that you do,” Shay replied in clipped tones just as Richard Barrett waltzed, unannounced, into her office.

“Bad day?”

Shay ran one hand through her already tousled hair and sank into the chair behind her desk. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

Richard held up both hands in a concessionary gesture. “I’m sorry.”

Shay sighed. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you that way. How can I help you?”

“I just wanted to remind you that we’re going to shoot the first commercial Monday morning. You’ve memorized the script, I assume?”

The script. If Shay hadn’t had a pounding headache, she would have laughed. “I say my line and then read off this week’s special used-car deals. That isn’t too tough, Richard.”

“I thought we might have a rehearsal tonight.”

Shay shook her head. “No chance. My mother is in bad shape and I have to go straight to the convalescent home as soon as I leave here.”

“After that—”

“My son is leaving on a camping trip with his uncle, Richard, and he’ll be gone a month. I want to spend the evening with him.”

“Shay—”

Now Shay held up her hands. “No more, Richard. You and Marvin insisted that I take this assignment and I agreed. But it will be done on my terms or not at all.”

A look of annoyance flickered behind Richard’s glasses. “Temperament rears its ugly head. I was mistaken about you, Shay. You’re more like your mother than I thought.”

The telephone began to jangle, and Ivy wasn’t out front to screen the calls. Shay dismissed Richard with a hurried wave of one hand and snapped “Hello?”

A customer began listing, in irate and very voluble terms, all the things that were wrong with the used car he’d bought the week before. While Shay tried to address the complaint, the other lines on her telephone lit up, all blinking at once.

It was nearly seven o’clock when Shay finally got home, and she had such a headache that she gave Hank an emergency TV dinner for supper, swallowed two aspirin and collapsed into bed.

Bright and early on Saturday morning, Garrett and his family arrived in a motor home more luxuriously appointed than many houses. While Maggie stayed behind with her own children and Hank, Shay and Garrett drove to Seaview to visit Rosamond.

Because the doll had been recovered, Rosamond was no longer curled up in her bed weeping piteously for her “baby.” Still, Garrett’s shock at seeing a woman he undoubtedly remembered as glamorous and flippant staring vacantly off into space showed in his darkly handsome face and the widening of his steel-gray eyes.

“My God,” he whispered.

Rosamond lifted her chin—she was sitting, as always, in the chair beside the window, the rag doll in her lap—at the sound of his voice. Her once-magical violet eyes widened and she surprised both her visitors by muttering, “Riley?”

Shay sank back against the wall beside the door. “No, Mother. This is—”

Garrett silenced her with a gesture of one hand, approached Rosamond and crouched before her chair. Shay realized then how much he actually resembled his father, the Riley Thompson Rosamond would remember and recognize. He stretched to kiss a faded alabaster forehead and smiled. “Hello, Roz,” he said.

The bewildered joy in Rosamond’s face made Shay ache inside. “Riley,” she said again.

Garrett nodded and caught both his former stepmother’s hands in his own strong, sun-browned ones. “How are you?” he asked softly.

Tears were stinging Shay’s eyes, half blinding her. Through them, she saw Rosamond hold out the doll for Garrett to see and touch. “Baby,” she said proudly.

As Garrett acknowledged the doll with a nod and a smile, Shay whirled away, unable to bear the scene any longer. She fled the room for the small bathroom adjoining it and stood there, trembling and pale, battling the false hopes that Rosamond’s rare moments of lucidity always stirred in her.

When she was composed enough to come out, Rosamond had retreated back into herself; she was rocking in her chair, her lips curved into a secretive smile, the doll in her arms. Garrett wrapped a supportive arm around Shay’s waist and led her out of the room into the hallway, where he gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead.

“Poor baby,” he said, and then he held Shay close and rocked her back and forth in his arms. She didn’t notice the man standing at the reception desk, watching with a frown on his face.

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