Stranger in the Moonlight

by Jude Deveraux

  “This area needs one,” Reede said. “What do you plan to carry?”

  “Things for sports,” Kim said quickly, wanting to get away from her brother as soon as possible. “Is that one of your nurses waving at you?”

  “Yeah,” Reede said. “I left two exam rooms and the waiting room full. Let’s get together for dinner.” He started to walk away but turned back to Travis. “I look forward to hearing about what you’ve been doing since you were first in Edilean.”

  As soon as she was alone with Travis she said, “What was that all about?”

  “I, uh, I do believe I may have seen your brother somewhere.”

  When it didn’t seem as though he was going to say anything else, she turned and started walking toward her shop.

  Travis caught up with her. “What are you doing?”

  “If you aren’t going to be honest with me I might as well go back to work. I have a new necklace I’m designing right now. I’d planned to use Australian opals in it, but maybe I should get more aquamarines since they go so well with brown eyes.”

  “All right,” he said. “How about if we go somewhere and talk? Maybe you can help me figure out what to do about my mother.”

  An hour later they were sitting at a picnic table in the preserve. They’d stopped at the grocery and bought sandwiches, salads, and drinks, but it was still too early to eat.

  “This is beautiful,” Travis said as he looked out over the lake. “You live in a nice place.”

  “I like it,” Kim said. It was so peaceful there that she could barely remember what had made her so angry. Something about Reede. But then lately everything about her brother seemed to make her angry. He didn’t want to be a doctor in his little hometown and he complained often—and she was tired of hearing about it.

  “I’ve never actually met your brother before but I nearly killed him,” Travis said, then briefly told the story, including that he’d replenished Reede’s supplies.

  “Reede never mentioned the incident in his letters,” Kim said. She could imagine how angry her brother would have been. “Reede thinks everyone should forgo frivolities such as car races and dedicate himself to worthy causes.”

  Travis was watching her. “Doesn’t know how to have fun, does he?” he asked softly.

  “Hazards of growing up,” she said. “What have you done since I met you?”

  “Lived by what you taught me,” he said, smiling.

  Kim didn’t smile back. She was noticing that he evaded her questions, skirted around them. Today she sensed that something was bothering him. He’d been quite flippant about what had gone on between him and his mother, but she was beginning to think there was a great deal more to it than he’d told her. “Tell me more about your talk with your mother. What exactly did she say?”

  Travis turned away but not before Kim saw his dark brows furrow into a deep frown. It looked like whatever had been said between him and his mother was too unpleasant for him to talk about.

  When he looked back at her he was smiling. “She assured me that Joe Layton was a good man and that he loves her. He doesn’t know my mother has any money and she doesn’t know how he financed the remodeling of that old building.”

  Kim could tell that he was concealing something from her, and she had an idea that he wasn’t going to tell her what it was. All right, she thought, if he could keep secrets, so can I. “When do you want to visit Mr. Layton?”

  Travis could tell that Kim had closed down on him and he knew why. The truth was that he’d love to tell her about his talk with his mother, but he couldn’t because the worst of it had been about Kim.

  Last night he’d met his mother in the garden of Mrs. Wingate’s house, and after several minutes of hugging and tears of joy at seeing each other again, Travis had taken on the task of trying to find out about Joe Layton. But from his first word, she had been different from the way he remembered her. She wasn’t the quiet, browbeaten little woman he’d grown up with. She thanked Travis for coming to her rescue but she’d made it clear that this was a battle she needed to fight for herself.

  Travis had used his best lawyer voice to point out the error of her thinking. He thought he’d made his side clear until she told him he was sounding like his father. That had so completely taken the air out of him that he’d slumped in the chair and stared at her.

  In the next second she’d asked him what he was doing with Kim and why hadn’t Travis told her the full truth about his father. “Does Kim even know your last name?”

  Her words made them settle back into the roles they’d always played, that of mother and son.

  “I just . . . I’d like a woman to care about me, not be dazzled by the Maxwell name,” Travis said. “And you know what, Mom? I’d like to know if I can handle being normal. My isolated childhood didn’t exactly prepare me for an ordinary adult life.”

  Lucy winced, but Travis kept on. “And since then the women—”

  “Please don’t elaborate.”

  “I didn’t plan to,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve not had the possibility of . . . well, love.”

  “So what if you do make Kim fall in love with you?” Lucy asked. “What then?”

  “What if I fall for her?” He was teasing, trying to lighten the mood.

  But Lucy was serious. “Travis, you have been in love with that girl since you were twelve years old. What I want to know is what happens if she falls for you. Will you look into her eyes, say, ‘Wait for me,’ then go skiing down some mountain? Will you expect her to be like me and spend every day in fear that I’ll receive a call saying you’ve been paralyzed or dismembered or killed? Will you expect her to share your vagabond life and never settle anywhere?”

  “I don’t know!” Travis said in frustration. “My life—”

  “Hasn’t been normal,” Lucy said. “I know that better than anyone.”

  “I went to work for my father to protect—”

  “You cannot put that burden onto me,” Lucy said loudly. “Travis, you have thrived working for Randall. The excitement, the money, the . . . the power. You’ve blossomed in it.”

  Travis fell back against the chair hard. “Are you saying that I’m becoming my father?” he asked softly.

  “No, of course not. But I’m afraid . . .”

  “Of what?”

  “That you could be.”

  He took his time before speaking. “That’s my worry too,” he said at last. “Sometimes I see things in myself that I don’t like. Whenever I please him I displease myself—and I worry that my displeasure is as strong as his pleasure.” He looked at her. “But I’m not sure how to get away from the part of him that’s inside me.”

  Lucy took her son’s hand in hers. “Spend time with Kim. Forget about Joe and me. We’re fine. He’s not after my money and wouldn’t be if he knew I had any. He loves me.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Absolutely and positively.”

  “But didn’t you once love Dad?”

  “I was a girl from a very sheltered upbringing and your father went after me just as he does those companies he buys.”

  “I’d like to go after Kim like that,” he said under his breath.

  “Well, don’t!” Lucy half shouted. “Don’t do it to her! Don’t use the Maxwell charm and money and all you’ve learned with those awful women you date on Kim. Don’t dazzle her. Don’t fly her off to Paris to wine and dine her so she’s swooning over you. She doesn’t deserve treatment like that.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Yours!” she said, then made herself calm down. “Travis, I love you much more than life. I’d die for you, but I want what’s real for you. Don’t just take this girl to bed and show her what you learned from some ambitious starlet. Find out about her. See if you really do love her. Or is it just gratitude that she showed you how to ride a bicycle? Get to know her now. And let her know you—the real you. Not the slick, smooth lawyer who can outtalk anyone. Let her see that boy
who was awed by a little girl who put a string of beads around his neck.”

  “I’m not sure I know how to do that.”

  He looked at Kim. She was staring out at the lake, and he didn’t know that he’d ever seen anyone as pretty—or more desirable. If she were any other girl he’d be making a pass at her and using anything he could to get her into bed. But then, as his mother had said, he’d leave her. It seemed that all his life he’d had to rush off to somewhere else. If it wasn’t to some business meeting for his father, it was to some race or to a climb, or to do some other thing that could possibly, as his mother said, dismember him.

  “I guess we should go,” Kim said into the silence, startling Travis back into the present.

  He didn’t move. “I don’t mean to be so secretive.”

  “Then tell me what’s bothering you!” she said. “Are you concealing some horrible thing you’ve done? You couldn’t be a wanted criminal, because by now I’m sure Colin has looked you up. If you have a record he knows about it and he would have warned me.”

  Since neither the sheriff—nor Kim—knew Travis’s real last name, nothing would be found, he thought. “No criminal record,” he said, and smiled at her. “The truth is that I’m not proud of some of the things I’ve done in my life.”

  “Does that mean being a stuntman or running down doctors in Morocco?”

  He laughed. “Morocco for sure. But why the hell was your brother leading a donkey across an area that had been marked off for a car race?”

  “My guess is that Reede thought everyone should stop for him. His work is important; yours is not.”

  “I have to agree with him on that. Kim . . . ?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have some big decisions to make in my life right now.”

  “About what?”

  “What I’m going to do with the rest of it. In three weeks I’m going to stop working for my father.”

  “What do you do for him now?”

  “Put people out of work,” Travis said.

  Kim looked at him sharply.

  “It’s not as bad as I’m making it sound. The businesses were going under and all the employees were going to be fired. My father buys the company and fires a mere two-thirds of them.” He looked out at the lake. “I’m tired of it and I need some changes. You have any openings in your jewelry store? I think I could sell things.”

  “By flirting with the customers? No thanks. What do you want my help with?”

  He wanted to say, To run away with me, but his mother’s words rang in his head. Get to know her now. And let her know you—the real you. “To be my friend,” he said. “We were friends as children, so maybe we can be again.”

  “Right,” Kim said as she looked back at the lake. Friends. Story of her life, it seemed. Her last two boyfriends had broken off with her because she was more successful than they were. Whenever Kim got a new contract from a company that wanted to sell her jewelry, there would be a fight. She’d calculated that it took just three major arguments to end a relationship. She was sure that the only reason she and Dave had lasted for six whole months was because she hadn’t told him that Neiman Marcus wanted a trial run of a display of her jewelry.

  “Now you’re the one being silent.”

  “I need a friend too,” she said. “In the last couple of years every friend I have has married and most of them are pregnant.”

  “Why aren’t you?” he asked solemnly.

  She knew that if she told him the truth it would sound like self-pity and she couldn’t bear that. “Because my doctor brother refuses to tell me how a woman gets pregnant. I don’t think it’s from swallowing a watermelon seed, which is what he told me when I was nine. After he said that I refused to eat anything with big seeds in it for two years. My mother threatened to force-feed me. But then I found out that French kissing—which I thought meant kissing in France—made a person pregnant.”

  Travis was smiling. “And who told you the truth?”

  “I’ve held on to the French idea, since I’ve never been there and never been pregnant.”

  “How about if you and I—” He cut himself off as he’d been about to suggest that they fly to Paris for a few days.

  “If we what?”

  “Eat our sandwiches?”

  She knew that yet again he’d held back from telling her something. She handed him a sandwich and began unwrapping hers. It seemed that Travis’s idea of friendship was a lot different from hers.

  Six

  When Joe Layton saw Kim and the young man get out of the car, he knew two things. One, the man was related to Lucy, and two, he was in love with Kim. The first one made him frown and the second one made him smile.

  Since Joe had met Lucy he’d tried to get her to tell him about her past, but she would say nothing. If he were a different kind of man he would have enjoyed her attempts to redirect his inquiries. But he didn’t like her discomfort, so he was careful not to ask.

  But it was easy to see that this young man was connected to Lucy. Her son? he wondered. They had the same eyes, only his were darker. The way his hair curled around his neck was just like hers, and the way he held his hand as he closed the car door was pure Lucy.

  So she had a son, he thought. The real question was, Who was the father?

  As for the second observation, Joe had felt bad for Kim as all her friends got married and moved on to a different life. She and Jecca had kept in close touch over the years, and Joe had heard how, one by one, all Kim’s friends and cousins got married. Even Jecca had left. She’d gone to Edilean to visit Kim but had ended up spending all her time with Dr. Tris.

  Now, it was good to see some man in love with Kim. She deserved all the best life had to offer.

  Joe cleared his throat and put his shoulders back. It wouldn’t do to let his sentimentality show. He opened the front door. “You here for the job?”

  “What job?” Kim asked as she kissed Joe’s cheek. She’d known him for many years, had spent several nights at his house in New Jersey. One night when she was in college he’d stayed up listening to Kim cry over what some fraternity guy had done to her.

  “To help me get this place set up. I had to fire the first one I hired.”

  Travis was looking hard at the man. He was short and solidly built, and he seemed to be scowling.

  “This is my friend Travis”—she hesitated—“Merritt, and I was telling him about your new store. Is that big room you were going to use for Jecca still empty?”

  Joe was looking at Travis. His father must be tall, he thought, as the boy was, but his resemblance to Lucy was uncanny. It was a moment before Joe realized that Travis was holding out his hand to shake. Joe took it and kept looking in the boy’s eyes. When Travis pulled his hand away, Joe felt the calluses. “You in construction?”

  “No,” Travis said. “Just a misspent life.”

  “He was a Hollywood stuntman,” Kim said.

  “That right? What tricks can you do?”

  “Get shot, mostly,” Travis said. “I’m the guy in the police uniform who gets killed by the bad guy. I’ve been killed four times in the same movie. Low budget.”

  “You’d think that as pretty as you are that you’d be the star of the picture,” Joe said.

  Travis laughed. “I agree. I even suggested that to a director, so he gave me a screen test. The verdict was that I have no acting talent at all.”

  “Why would that stop you from being a star?” Joe asked, his face serious.

  “Beats me,” Travis said. “But anyway, I never liked sitting around in a trailer doing nothing. What’s this job you need done?”

  “Manager,” Joe said. “I need someone to look after the place so I have time to spend with my girls.”

  “Girls?” Travis asked and his smile disappeared.

  “Maybe we could—” Kim began.

  “My daughter and my intended,” Joe said. “You think you could handle the job? You need to know a lot about tools.”

&
nbsp; “Travis knows about . . .” Kim began but hesitated. “Balloons,” she said at last.

  Both men looked at her.

  “You the guy that got that kid’s balloon out of the tree?”

  “Yes,” Travis said, “but I didn’t think it would be known all over town so fast.”

  “The sheriff stopped by.” Joe nodded toward the doorway to the other side of the building. “You want to see Jecca’s studio?”

  “Yes, we would,” Kim said, and they followed Joe.

  “What do you think?” Kim asked Travis. They were in a booth in a little restaurant off the road into Williamsburg, eating dinner.

  “About what?” he asked as he toyed with his fork.

  “Opening a sporting goods store?”

  Travis took his time answering. “I liked him.”

  “Mr. Layton? Of course. He’s a nice man. And he was certainly taken with you. I couldn’t believe he was asking your opinion about his finances.”

  “Me neither. You don’t think he knows . . .”

  “That you’re Lucy’s son? How could he?”

  “I’ve been told that I look like my mother, so maybe he recognized me.”

  “Since I’ve never seen your mother, at least not clearly anyway, I wouldn’t know.” Kim looked at him, at his dark brows like gull wings over his eyes, at his jawline with its dark whiskers just under the skin. She couldn’t imagine that anyone as masculine-looking as he was could resemble any female.

  What Travis saw in her eyes made him want to reach across the table and drag her to him. She had a pretty mouth that he’d very much like to kiss. When his mother’s words rang in his head, he looked away. He didn’t know where his life was going and it wasn’t fair of him to pull Kim in with him.

  Kim had seen the glow in his eyes, had felt the spark between them—but then he’d turned away. For some reason she didn’t understand, he wasn’t allowing the attraction between them. The normal, sexual pull that men and women felt for each other was being stomped down by him.