"Okay, smart-boy; next time you drive," she said, grinning. She did love the sound of that darlin'.
They got out of the car and Sam retrieved his duffel from his latest Corolla. Technically, Holly should have handed him the key to the loft apartment and gone on her way, but ...
"The T.V. reception is a little quirky; I'd better show you," she said, accompanying him up the outside stairs. "You've got to smack the box a certain way. The thing is pretty old."
She saw him look at her curiously, but she pretended not to notice. She was attaching herself to him like ivy to a tree; she knew it, loathed herself for it, and was helpless to do a damn thing about it.
I want to be with him; just him. It's as simple as that.
But only for comfort and reassurance, she insisted to herself—which didn't explain why her heart was knocking around so wildly in her chest as she watched him slide the retrieved key into the lock. They stepped inside, and immediately she marched up to the beat-up television and began to babble.
"Okay, here's the thing; you have to turn it on with these pliers because the knob fell off somewhere and it's a little tricky. My mother says someone will electrocute himself, but so far so good. And then you wait until you get this black-and-white snow on the screen—the color comes later—and then you hit it on the side, not too high, though, or the picture just disappears, just hit it down here, like this, and, oh, shit, it's not working, okay, then you have whack it a little harder," she said, giving it a sound and desperate thump. "There! See how eas—?"
She turned around straight into his arms, and he kissed her full on the lips in a way that left her reeling. She hadn't been expecting it—or, rather, she had, which made it all the more surprising—and the sound that came from deep in her throat was one part pleasure, nine parts thrill. She returned the kiss with a passion that equalled his own, and all the while, a single triumphant refrain was scrolling through her mind:
No troopers!
No troopers!
No troopers!
This was between him and her and the barn, and she was, oh, so ready for it to happen.
****
Sam held her fast.
You want it, you got it, he thought; I'm here to oblige. He drove his tongue deeper into her mouth, enjoying the sweetness of it, wondering that a creature so fey could have a kiss so fiery. She was intoxicating, an assault on his senses, from the scent of her hair to the softly seductive contours of her breasts. The novel combination of innocence and willingness was irresistible; he kissed her hotly, hungrily, stunned by the depth of his desire for her.
A femme fatale she may not have been—but somehow or other Holly Anderson knew exactly how to drive a man crazy. Between kisses, he murmured her name just to thrill himself with the sound of her answering groans; he tipped her head back and sank his mouth in the soft flesh of her shoulder, dragging a hot trail of kisses across her neck, flicking his tongue across the top of her breasts, dragging away her tank top and bra to expose still more flesh, hear still more moans, making himself crazy and taking her along for the spin.
He pulled her against the hardness of him, signalling his readiness. Is this what you want? He burrowed into the curve of her shoulder. Is this what you need? Just say the word, lady, and we'll go for a ride ... oh, you are sweet ... you taste so good, he thought, reducing her to whimpers that made him wild to have her.
She was so willing, so pliant, so downright avid, that he found himself reaching down to the zipper of her shorts and giving it a yank.
"Is this a good idea?" he said on a groan. "Is it?"
"Oh ... yes ... absolutely," she said between gasps, dropping the words like cookies before him. "Good ... great ... idea..."
But Sam was, in fact, talking to himself, addressing the thickheaded moron who seemed fixated on the tricky buttonhole above her zipper.
What the hell was he doing?
Seducing the daughter of the man who had taken his wife, that's what. With a wrenching, shuddering effort he made his hands lift up from her hips and onto her shoulders, which he used to brace himself away from her.
"Not a good idea," he said shakily, holding her at arm's length.
"Why?"
There was nothing shaky about her protest, that was for sure; she looked like a kid who's just been told there'll be no trip to Disney World this year.
"Y'know, it's just not the best thing. Maybe if we'd met some other way ... but ... y'know: Eden. We're coming at this from two different directions..."
That craven, roundabout mention of Eden's name was the best that Sam could do. He despised himself for not making a full and abject confession on the spot:
When she left me, I thought I'd die. Worse, I thought she was pregnant. I swear to God: she told me she was sure she was pregnant, and for years and years I wondered if she was hauling my kid around with her, maybe in a shopping cart up and down the streets somewhere as she worked her cons with sometimes more and sometimes less success. That's why I didn't divorce her. But that was before I knew about the visits to my parents, the loans, the engraving. Now I'm sure ... pretty sure ... very sure: there is no kid. There never was. But try to convince me back then.
Unless maybe, just maybe, there's a seven-year-old child with her mother's sweet cunning and her father's bitter fatalism, hanging on a street corner in New Bedford or sitting out her life in foster care.
"Sam? Sam—what's wrong with you?" Holly asked. "Your face is white."
She was breathing heavily and was in some pain. He knew before she did that he was digging his fingers into her flesh enough to make her hurt.
"Ah, Holly! This is not a good idea."
"But why?"
"Why, why, who cares why! It's just not." He let go of her as if her shoulders were hot coals, and she took it as the spurning it was.
"You know what?" she said in a voice thick with hurt. "You're right. This is probably the worst idea I ever had. This is probably right up there with bungee jumping off a bridge in the fog, only with a rubber band instead of a bungee cord."
He sighed and said, "Look ... Holly ... I'm sorry. I can't say more than that. I wish I could, but I can't. Maybe someday—"
"Oh, please, again?" she said, cutting off his excuse at the knees. "Spare me your maybe-someday speech!"
Sighing, he reached into his pocket to retrieve the much-traded key and held it out to her. "I assume you want me to go?"
"To hell, mister! The faster, the better!"
****
Sam sat on the edge of the bed, wondering whether to leave or to stay. The honorable thing would be to leave. He was messing with her head by sticking around. But either for effect or by design, Holly had spun on her heel and marched out of the loft without actually taking his key.
There were several reasons to stay. One, Sam had no desire to spend another night in the car. Two, he needed a base of operations. Three, he felt more than ever that Holly might be in some danger. And, of course, four, he still could taste the sweetness of her kiss.
Four to one. Honor lost.
If Holly wants me out of here, she's going to have to pick me up bodily and throw me down the stairs. He smiled at the very idea. She was so obviously the nonviolent type.
Weary now of his endless pursuit of Eden, and dampened by a sheen of oppressive sadness, Sam headed for the shower. Maybe a meal and a beer would restore his equilibrium before his next move, which was bound to be awkward and might even be brutal: an attempt at a tête-à-tête with Holly's father.
He showered, he shaved, he couldn't shake the sadness. Triggered by the stinging exchange with Holly, his thoughts seemed determined to seek new and wider avenues of pain. What if Eden were dead ... and what if she had given birth to their child? Sam would never know, then, who or where the child was. He would never know if the child had caught a lucky break, a Millie Steadman somewhere, or if his son, his daughter—his child!—was being shuffled without hope from one foster home to another.
His child.
And Eden was the mother of his maybe-child: Eden, in whom he had spilled his seed with high hopes and infinite joy. Eden, the maybe-mother of his maybe-child. His heart ached over the whole misbegotten mess.
For years he'd wondered, and followed up leads, and made inquiries about her. As recently as eighteen months ago, he'd thrown an unexpected windfall at yet another private investigator who ran into yet another brick wall. It seemed inconceivable that he, they, everyone had completely missed the fact of Eden's visits to the Steadmans—but then, the Steadmans had never had any reason to divulge her visits. Sam had never told them about Eden's apparent pregnancy, so how could they know? Maybe if he hadn't been such a tight-lipped bundle of wounded pride ....
Missed opportunities: they lay strewn around him like casualties of war.
He gnawed on the distant past and chewed on recent events until evening, when on an impulse he drove out to the west side of the island to watch the sun go down. He felt restless and weary, angry and tender, all at the same time. His emotions were ripping him apart; he needed desperately to center himself.
He hiked out to a bluff in Chilmark and dropped onto a patch of sand in the grassy dunes, carefully choosing his seat from, oh, a thousand perfect perches for the show. The sun was low and blazing, an immortal diva who knew her own worth. Sam plucked a strand of dune grass and wrapped it around itself, forming a ring, he didn't know why.
Tiny green ring; big red sun. It was all the same, really. You went round and round in circles, and every time, you ended up at the same old spot: wondering why, exactly, you were plunked down on earth.
He slipped the grass ring onto his left ring finger, then felt uncomfortable. Wrong vibes, somehow. He pulled the ring apart and stuck it in his mouth to chew on as he pondered the ocean vista before him.
The diva sun was ready to take her bow for the night. Throwing her arms wide in a last dazzle of pink and blue and gold, expecting—demanding—the applause of the world, she blew everyone a last, heartbreaking kiss and then dipped below the deep blue sea, trailing true clouds of glory behind her.
And an awestruck Sam understood, if only briefly, at least one good reason for having been plunked down on earth.
Chapter 19
When Sam returned home, he saw lights in the studio behind the rolled-shut barn doors: Holly was working late.
Sam had every intention of proceeding up the stairs and to the loft, but his feet had other ideas. He found himself planted in front of the barn door and knocking on it, although he didn't have a clue what he'd say when Holly came to open it.
Through the small square window he saw her look up, recognize him, frown, and go back to her work.
Huh. That didn't sit too well with him. Granted, a cold shoulder from Holly would be the best thing for all concerned, but ... huh.
He knocked again, louder.
She didn't even bother acknowledging him, but bent over her birdhouse with more purpose than before.
He knocked a third time, pleading with her gently to let him in.
"Holly, dammit, will you open the damn door?"
She rolled her eyes and muttered something he was pretty sure had four-letter words in it, but she did relent and unlock the door, sliding it open just enough to let him in.
He looked around at the friendly jumble of broken-down furniture, half-built birdhouses and clutter of old farm tools and wondered how someone like her had ever taken up a career like this. A degree in fine arts, which she'd told him she had, seemed totally irrelevant to the art of making whimsy.
No way was he going to say that out loud, however, so he smiled and said, "Burning the midnight oil, I see. Why don't you leave the door slid open? It's awfully warm in here, no?"
She shrugged and went back to her workbench. "It's the only way I know to keep out a skunk."
"Oh, hey, c'mon," he said, flushing. "Isn't that a little harsh?"
"The furry kind. There's a family living under the shed where I do my woodworking and welding, and one of the litter keeps wandering over here. She must remember the bags of birdseed that I used to store in the corner. I had to relocate all of it to my basement after I came in here one night and found eight babies rummaging through the open bags."
"They sound kind of cute."
"Unless you try to get close," she said, throwing him a dirty look. "Then they turn into skunks."
Oka-aay, it was official: he was not forgiven.
"I, ah, thought I'd ask how your mother was faring after her talk downtown." He had heard Holly's truck leave late in the afternoon and had assumed that she'd gone off to see Charlotte. "Is she all right?"
Holly was painting a picket fence on the outside walls of a pale blue birdhouse that was way too fancy ever to hang from a tree. Personally, Sam didn't see the point.
"Why should you care how my mother is?" Holly asked without looking up from her pickets.
"I don't know. But I do."
"To paraphrase my father—it's none of your business," she answered, and Sam thought, yep, it was time to say g'night and back out smiling.
But instead he hunkered down and waited, and after an interval she said grudgingly, "As soon as my mother saw the tomatoes, she knew that I'd been to see the Bouchards. But since I hadn't said anything when I dropped the bag off, she assumed that my father wasn't staying there. It was a shock to her when I went back and told her he was."
"I can imagine."
Holly started to say something, then decided against it and went back to her birdhouse. Some of the pickets must have been dry; she was painting hollyhocks through and between them. Like the woman herself, the flowers were lively, straightforward, and unpretentious. They were also amazingly realistic; birds were going to love snacking on the beetles that tried to feed on Holly's hollyhocks.
Sam smiled at the notion; damned if she wasn't drawing him straight into her fantasy.
Which wouldn't be a bad place to be, all things considered. He watched, bemused, as Holly scrunched her brow in concentration and dabbed a rainbow of blossoms on the tall, spiky stems. It was picky work, no doubt about it; but she had a wonderful eye and an unerring hand. This was no mass-produced product, but a charming and original work of art. Suddenly Sam wanted to reach out and stroke her hair, just to connect with the creative process.
Or maybe ... just to feel the shining strands between his fingers. It was a maddening thought, when he was doing his best to put her behind him.
Sure you are, pal. Why don't you beat it, if that's the case?
I will. I will. Just ... not yet.
He stood there transfixed, watching Holly make something from nothing, pictures from thoughts. It seemed much more profound a miracle than his merely sticking a camera in someone's face and pressing a button.
So entranced was he that when she finally did speak, it startled him.
"I've decided," she announced without looking up, "to search my father's boat. I'm just waiting for everyone to bed down for the night. That's why I'm working late."
Are you out of your mind, you crazy, nutty lady?
"Uh-h-h, do you think that's altogether wise?" he asked gingerly. "The same laws apply in the wee hours as they do in the afternoon."
"I don't care anymore. I know your engraving is still aboard the Vixen somewhere," she said, leafing here and there with her brush. "I've been thinking about it all day, and I even know where she's hidden it. All I have to do is step aboard the boat and retrieve it."
"I see. Well! You sound pretty confident."
Listen, missy, they won't be letting you take your paintbox to prison.
His smile was inanely upbeat. "On the other hand, we could always just let the authorities find the engraving for us, no? Because they get paid to do stuff like that."
"Obviously they haven't found it, or Chief Cottier would have told us."
"They didn't know they should be looking for it," he argued. "By now, they may well have gone back and found it."
"And if so, do y
ou assume they're going to just fork it over to you?"
Actually, Sam wasn't assuming anything of the kind. Just the opposite, in fact. His parents couldn't seem to find any documentation proving ownership. It's possible that there was no documentation, what with the odd terms of the will and all. He'd been uneasy all along about what would happen to the Durer if it were discovered aboard the boat.
He must have looked it, because she said, "See? You could end up getting really screwed."
That was the only way, then, he thought, noting the hostility in her eyes.
It was so at odds with her Joan-of-Arc plan. "I don't get it, Holly. Why stick your neck out to retrieve the engraving for me?"
She dumped a brush into soapy water and began swirling madly. "Simple. The sooner I find you your engraving, the sooner you're out of my—apartment."
"I see. Your apartment. If it's the money that's worrying you, I've written a check for a week in advance—high-season rate, of course." He slapped his hand on his back pocket. "Here, I'll—"
"That's not the point, Sam!" she cried, wagging the paint brush at him. "The point is, you go on and on about Eden flouting the law for her own evil ends. Maybe it's time someone flouted the law for the other side once in a while."
"Oh, for—is that what this is about? You want to out-Eden Eden?"
"I didn't say that."
"Sure you did." He grinned and said, "If that's not the dopiest—I'm sorry—the most enterprising plan I've ever heard, I don't know what is."
"Oh, stuff it, would you?'" she said wearily. She began wiping her brush dry on a man's undershirt.
While Sam was wondering whose undershirt it was, she said, "I wouldn't have mentioned it at all, except that I don't want you doing anything stupid like sneaking aboard the boat yourself. They'd go harder on you than they would on me."
He laughed louder than he had in a good long while. "You honestly think I'm going to mess up a murder investigation?"
"There is no murder; you said so yourself."
"But there is an investigation."
She scanned him up and down with contempt and said, "Brother. Is there anyone worse than a reformed offender?"
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